Polish History - Potop

The commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania escaped the ravages of the thirty-years war, which ended in 1648. But the ensuing two decades subjected the country to one of its most difficult trials. This ruinous period, the stuff of legend and the popular historical novels of nobel prize winner Henryk Sienkiewicz, became known as the "potop," or deluge, for the magnitude and quickness of its many disasters. The emergency began with an uprising of Zaporojhian cossacks in Ukraine which quickly spread to the whole of the Eastern commonwealth. This culminated in an attempt of establishing an independent Cossack nation with Kiev as its capital, in spite of the efforts of the commonwealth to crush the rebellion by force. After the Cossacks concluded the Treaty of Pereyslav with Moscuvy, prolonged and increasing Russian intervention began in the Ukrainian and Belarusian territories. Taking advantage of Poland's preoccupation and weakness, Charles X of Sweden rapidly conquered much of the remaining territory of the Commonwealth in the same year. Many Polish magnates who were Protestants betrayed the commonwealth and joined forces with the Swedes in an attempt to overthrow the Polish king. Poland-Lithuania was Pushed to the brink of dissolution, but rallied to recover most of its losses from the Swedes. In exchange for breaking the alliance with Sweden, the ruler of Ducal Prussia was released from his vassalage and became an independent sovereign. Swedish brutality, and especially the failed siege of Jasna Gora monastery at Czestochowa in the winter of 1655 raised the level of resistence against Charles, whom a part of Polish nobles had recognized as their ruler in the meantime.

One noble who did not switch sides, became something of a national hero for the commonwealth. Hetman Czarniecki distinguished himself by his heroic defence of Cracow, which he only surrendered under the most honorable conditions. His energy and ability as a leader hampered Charles X at every step, and though he was frequently defeated by the superior forces he from time to time inflicted serious defeats upon the Swedes. The most famous victories came at Jaroslaw and at Kozienice in 1656. Under his leadership the popular rising against the invading Swedes ultimately proved triumphant. It was he who brought King John Casimir back from exile and enabled him to regain his lost throne. He is well remembered as a hero in Poland and his name is even mentioned in the Polish national anthem.

Despite the survival of the Commonwealth in the face of the deluge,the episode inflicted irreperable damage to the commonwealth and contributed heavily to the ultimate fall of the state. When King John Casimir abdicated in 1668, the population of the Commonwealth had been reduced by almost half owing to war and disease. War had destroyed the economy of the cities and raised animosity between Catholics and Protestants which ended the commonwealth's policy of religious tolerance. From that point on the Commonwealth would be constantly on the defensive facing hostile neighbors. Never again would the commonwealth compete with Russia as a military equal.

According to Norman Davies, the reason why the commonwealth was able to lose all her prestige, strength and unity in a matter of decades was the internal stucture of governance in the country to begin with. The traditional rights of the "szlachta" or nobility were greater than those of any other nobility in Europe. They included the "liberum veto" which allowed any one delegate the right to shoute "veto," and thus bring the work of the parliament ("sejm"), to a halt. This was thoroughly exploited by the enemies of the commonwealth to cause internal strife at key moments. Such moments were usually crucial votes in the sejm calling for a "general levy," which was the mobilization of all the armed forces of the commonwealth. Such anarchy was bound to cause the commonwealth to fall to her more centralized neighbours.

-- Contributed by Jan --

So basically it means Poland defeated the Russians, correct?

^^^ It means that Poland had won a 5 front war against the Swedes, Prussians, Cossacks, Tatars and Polish traitors. After Potop (or the Flood) Poland had been weakened and and the country that for a very long time has been one of Europes superpowers (at that time the Polish teritory was larger than that of Russia at the same time) has been slowly degrading untill the moment when it dissapeared from the World Map.

Poland survived "the Flood" but it was almost totally destroyed by it - i.e. during that perion from the population of my city which at that period had some 6000 inhabitants only (it was a medium sized city for XVII century standards) only about 20 (!) survived the war.

btw. here`s a map of Europe showing the political situation in that period.

euratlas.com/big/europe_1600.jpg


Btw. Poland conquered Moscow 2 times but that happened on 2 fully different occasions :)

The whole situation was a result of the death of W 2;adys 2;aw IV the king of Poland. W 2;adys 2;aw IV wanted to create a Cossack (the Cossacks were for us something like the Scots for the English for most of the time - though they were defenitely the toughest and most war-like people in Europe at that time. And well I think that we`ve opressed them a little bit more than the it was the case of the Scots) army and attack Istambul. Waging war and looting was an important source of income for the Cossacks.. But the King had died suddenly the warplans were canceled and the Cossacks were forced to work as slaves on the so called "latyfundia" which were huge farms owned by Polish nobility. Many of them had escaped to Sicz (today`s Crimea region in today`s Ukraine). There, with the help of the Crimean Tatars (voilent steppe people who were vasals of the the Ottoman Empire) they organized a rebelion against the Polish rule.

The Cossacks organized many rebelions before and all of them were pacified in blood - but this time our country was weakened becaouse of the powerstruggles concerning the election of a new King. Becaouse of that there were not enough forces to pacify that rebelion - it spread onto almost whole Ukraine - at the end the Cossacks were largerly defeated - but they managed to bring Russia (actually it was Moscovy - cose Russia hasn`t existed at that time) by asking for its protection. Almost at the same time the Swedes had attacked from the north and the Radziwill`s a very powerfull nobel family, who controlled that part of Poland that is now Belarus as well as part of the army had rebeled against the newly elected king. During the Swedish invasion - Prussia, which was a Polish vasal also forcefully declared its independance.

You could say that all of this was a badly timed coincidence - cose if all of those things would happened in a separate time all of those issues wouldn`t have a major impact on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.. but all of that happened almost at the same time - and it was one of the greatest tragedies in Polish history.

Your Point-this is now that was then. So what have they done lately-nothing

What exactly is "sarmata"? I think it's not something good...

Sarmata = Sarmatia

The Sarmatians were ancient people who originated in the area of present Ukraine - their teritory covered large parts of Asia:

geocities.com/reginheim/sarmatians.gif



- they are the precursors of medieval knights
- they`ve invented all of the horse gear that is being used till this day
- before the Sarmatians there was no real cavalery in Europe - and beside the Huns and the Mongols they were the best cavalery the world had ever seen

- Sarmatian cavalerymen they were often employed by the Romans - according to some theories one of those Roman cavalery men became king Arthur of England



- They are our (as well as the Ukrainan, Russian and Saxon) ancestors
- The land of the Sarmatians is Sarmatia - Sarmatia is one of the names of Poland (when our eastern border had been not far from Moscow)



this is what`s bein called sarmatian clothing - it was quite popular here - untill the XIX centrury - where sutes went into fashion:

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/43/Waclaw_Rzewuski_(1705-177 9).jpg



Many people here belived also that they are direct heirs of the ancient Sarmatians - they followed a Sarmatian ideology - one of the key elements of this ideology was to

"learn as much as you need to have a happy life" - in practice those people haven`t lerned anything beyoned what they needed to exercise their profession - later on they even haven`t done even that - during late XVII century most of those people have read only 2 books during their whole life: the Bible and the work of Mikolaj Rej (who was one of the people, who had created this whole ideology) - the result was - that those peple - became totally ignorant - they had no idea what was going on beyoned their realestate and on top of that they became totally decadent - 200 years earlier the Sarmatians were most patriotic in Poland - later on, becaouse of their stupidity, they became one of the reasons why our country disapeared from the map.

Thanks for the detailed explanations! Yes, I've heard that Sarmatas were quite stupid and lazy...

They weren`t always lazy and stupid - at first being a Sarmatian in Poland was a very positive thing - but - one of their beliefs (and they treated Sarmatism almost as a religion) lead to their and stupidity and ignorance - and at the end to the downfall of our country.