The Greatest King of Poland?

John III Sobieski, Casimir the Great, Stefan Batory?

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I vote for Władysław £okietek

i vote for Sobieski, because he stopped the Turks... :)

O yey went on a trip to Vienna wooow big deal...

he was an exellent military mastermind ...

A good political leader, it doesn't reqire much to send Hussaria down the hills...

in the other hand, Kazimierz wasn't by mistake called 'the great'... he built castles, university (UJ), reformed the army, law.... and there were the kings' meetings in Krakow back then...

"In 1318, he embarked on a coronation campaign. The pope, though initially unwilling, finally granted his approval and Władysław was crowned King of Poland on 30 January 1320 in Kraków. The coronation was a sign that he had overcome Poland's internal fragmentation and re-united and re-instated the country as an independent kingdom under his rule."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wladyslaw_Lokietek

U N I T E D T H E C O U N T R Y

Not just Vienna, the battle of Parkany in Hungary a few days later when Polish forces collided with the retreating ottoman forces, and the victory that followed was a much more complete victory than Vienna.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_P%C3%A1rk%C3%A1ny
He defeated them earlier at Chocim in the Ukraine, also countless victories against the Tatars. Sobieski and Batory were great military leaders, Casimir the Great built Poland.

Your not helping

Casimir the Great
"He found Poland wooden and left it made of stone"
or something like that

In terms of sheer "balls" and a lust for conquest, it's hard to top Chrobry.

His European Tour 992-1025:

1002 - Lusatia, Meissen (not far from modern-day Berlin)
1003 - Bohemia (Prague)
1003 - Moravia
1003 - Slovakia
1018 - Ruthenia (Kiev)

Sobieski would have expanded Poland's boundaries, but even before he was king just a commander, the Cossack Rebellion was going on, Cossack and Tatars invading Poland, Swedes invaded, Swedes were driven our, Poland began to beat Cossack/Tatar/Russian armies Battle of Berestechko, Battle of Chudniv, internal conflict between nobles Lubomirski Rokosz, putting Polish forces against each other, ended with the Treaty of Treaty of Bila Tserkva, which was more favorable for the Cossacks, splitting the Ukraine in half. Too many internal and external conflicts at once, he therefore could only prevent territorial loss.

I agree with MrGrunwald. Lokietek re-united Poland after Krzywousty's blunder.

We had an arseton of military geniuses,he was one of the best but definitely not The best, he lacked administrative and political qualities.

I'd go with Chrobry or Casimir, Chrobry challenged the Holy Roman Empire which was considered a suicide at the time and won, he was an absolute genius in every field, diplomacy, politics and military.

Bolesław Chrobry get my vote as he was the first king of Poland

It is a very interesting map, Sandman. When I carefully examined the map, it looks like after almost a millenium of endless fights, disputes, tears, dead people, invasions, repulsions etc. that occurred on this piece of land, we ended up practically at what was set in 1018. Don't you think it is funny and ironic? ;) If this was recognized then as a border, it would have been so much more beneficial for both Ukraine and Poland. But the history played it differently. Cool anyway.

It was that whole Curzon line idea which came about after WWI in which the Western powers i guess by their extensive knowledge of of regions history, said that that's the ethnic divide. For the most part they were right, but many people east of that line, Poles settled those lands 1.5 to 2 million of them, plus many Polonized en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonization#Second_Polish_Republic_.281918-1939.29

Catholicised Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Belorussians lived there, therefore Pilsudski saw things differently.

Well, Chrobry wasn't clairvoyant, he couldn't tell upfront which territorial gains will "stick" over time and which won't. Today's borders include his Pomeranian gains, but not his Ruthenian ones. He couldn't have known that back in 1018. You could say a similar thing about pretty much any country in Europe that expanded at some point. Lithuania once owned Ruthenian lands, today Lithuania is back to its small, ethic self. You could say that Lithuania could've "skipped the whole GDL" and save time. Sweden once owned Finland and Estonia, today Sweden is back in its (largely) ethnic borders. You could say that Sweden could've "skipped the whole Finnish adventure" and saved time. Denmark once owned Norway, today Denmark is back to its small ethnic self (plus Greenland, see PS below). Germany made big inroads into East-Central Europe (East Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania), today it's back where it was ca. 1000 (plus the land of the Polabian Slavs, who never managed to wholly unify and form an independent state). Today's borders won't change the sense of achievement borne out of those historical expansions. Also, even though e.g. today Lwow/Lviv is outside Poland, it won't change the lasting, historical contribution to the Polish (sometimes world) culture and science made by Lvovian Poles while Lwow was Polish. Born there: Stanislaw Lem (Solaris), Stanislaw Ulam (hydrogen bomb with E. Teller), Maria Konopnicka (Rota), Alexander Fredro (Zemsta), Stefan Banach (Lwow School of Mathematics), etc.

PS. The territorial gains in or around Europe which seem to "stick" over time are large, uninhabited areas, like Russia's Siberia and Denmark's Greenland.

PennBoy

Poniatowski-A much Maligned, and at first sight not an obvious candidate for the title of the greatest king. However, he was supremely qualified for the job, and amongst European monarchs of his time, the most enlightened. In any other era he would have been unquestionably one of, if not the greatest.

He betrayed Poland, lost faith in victory and abandoned his own army for the camp of the enemy, only an idiot would name him as a good king.

Obviously the greatest king of Poland is this one: The King of Poland

Yep, Harry, you're right now;)))
There was even a madman who worked in Polish parliament for establishing Jesus as a formal king of Poland. Just found his name: Artur Górski, poseł PiS.

Its only a map, made by people in the second part of the XX century !
Serious historians recognize that so called Grody Czerwienskie extended much more to the east for your liking.
Anyway Rus was a term for Christians in Byzantium style, and has nothing to do with ethnicity, political allegation and so on !
At the time Kiev was ruled by Vikings, they gone native after about 1156 when for the last time, Kievan ruler invited a new warriors from his motherland in Scandinavia.

Poniatowski tried to 'play' Catherine the Great with hopes of marriage and becoming a Russian Tsar one day, but she just kept him as a lover.

That's right I can't understand why most Poles can't appreciate him a bit more, if not for him then there wouldn't be ANY Poland!!! Other just improved Poland a little...

i appreciate him a lot, because we have something in common - the height....
;)

I think that if you subtract 140,000 Polish military retirees dumped in Ukrainian Wolyn' region in 1930s and consider Operation Wisla's forceful deportation of around 250,000 Ukrainians living in what is now Eastern Poland + quite a significant number of Poles with Ukrainian roots in Peremyshel' and Kholm regions, you will realize that there is a great balance. Regarding Pilsudski and his ideas of Trojga Narodow and the way he betrayed both Lithuanians and Ukrainians seems enough to discount him as "viewer" of things. He was a liar and haven't kept his word.

Greatest King of Poland? I think the one living in 1018. He understood the Line where to stop to avoid bloodshed. It is so important to know one's limit.

Just to clarify: Chrobry didn't stop anywhere. He went all the way to Kiev to settle the Kievan succession.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boles%C5%82aw_I_Chrobry

I must see Pilsudski as a great man cause he was a Polish patriot and what he did was for the good of Poland and it's people, just not all of it's inhabitants. Him being a descendant of Lithuanian nobility and as you say betraying them wasn't right, he should have went ahead with that idea, Rzeczpospolita Trojga Narodow, just like the Zaporozhyan Cossacks wanted and King Wladyslaw IV before the rebellion.