1 - Poland–Lithuania 1609–48

Summary

In the first half of the seventeenth century the kingdom of Poland-Lithuania was still the most important Power in the Slav world. With an area of over 375,000 square miles (in 1618) and a population of some 8 to 9,000,000, it was smaller than Muscovite Russia, but compensated for this inferiority by its greater political and military strength. From the standpoint of its national composition, Poland was not homogeneous. The Poles themselves, the largest group, comprised less than half the total population. After them came eastern Slavs (White Russians, Ukrainians), followed at a considerable distance by non-Slavic nationalities, amongst whom the most important groups were the Lithuanians, Germans and Jews.

Formally at least, the constitutional structure of the Polish state remained by and large unchanged during this period. As in the sixteenth century, political power lay with the king and the Diet [Sejm], which consisted of two houses, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies [izba poselska]. The Diet, as is well known, was a parliament of nobles. The Senate was composed exclusively of high-ranking ecclesiastical and lay dignitaries, that is ‘magnates’, or members of the upper aristocracy; whilst in the Chamber of Deputies there sat, apart from some deputies of the urban population, few representatives of the lesser nobles, the szlachta or gentry, who constituted about one-tenth of the population. The peasants, who comprised the overwhelming bulk of the population, exercised no political influence whatsoever. Already in the sixteenth century they had to a large extent forfeited their legal rights and had become entirely dependent upon landed proprietors from the nobility.