Wealth of the Polish nobility

Im doing some reasearch on the wealth of the polish nobility.


how was it in England and Europe at that time? could you find just as wealthy nobleman there as you could in Poland? (Im not talking about kings now)


Were the English and european noblemen allowed to have private armies?

polishnobles.com/intro.html

jasinski.co.uk/wojna/index.htm

Ps.
If anyone else knows some more numbers and statistic about the polish nobility's wealth, please post them.

Ah, so that's where the tax money disappeared...

You're forgetting that the only rich nobles in Poland were the magnates and yes, they were RICH. However, most nobles were poor.

Most nobles in Poland were wealthy, if they didnt have a village of their own they had a particularly large farm, in 1586 an average Polish nobles income was 186zł with food and most of the animals provided for free since he had been breeding them for generations, after clothes luxury and livelihood this left him usually with around 90zł for investments.

A good young healthy cow in XVI century Poland cost 1zł so an average noble could buy 80-90 cows, at the same time a German noble of the same class could buy only 40, a British noble only 18, a Scottish noble only 10.

On average the Polish nobility was filthy rich, if you lived next to a river or a major trade route or a city the income doubled, sometimes tripled.

There's quite a few marriage agreements from XV and XVI century Lesser Poland between Poles and Germans which illustrate the dowry of both families, the German side' dowry was typically much much smaller.

Untill XVII century when the "Folwark" system was firmly in place Poland was effing rich and life was good.

David, why on earth would such a thing interest you? The way some people get money is like black magic to me. When you consider that nobility hardly do anything to get their cash, what is there to analyse?

These two questions are dealt with in Polish literature. Top Polish nobles were indecently rich, richer than kings and princes in other countries. When Swedish armies invaded Poland in 17 century, thousands of horse carts with robbed goods from nobles` property were sent to Sweden. Today, in Swedish museums.

At the same time, Polish peasants were extremely poor and were treated like animals or slaves.

Hell! Than lets invade this bluelegged bastards!!!

Well since the Nazi's and the Soviets kinda oppressed the polish people and it's culture and downplayed Poland role in the history books i think it's time to do some research, and share it with the public.

Here is an example what the polish nobility had to go trough in the WW2

Communist myth Pawian, peasants in Poland were never hungry and their ordeal started only in XVII century, they were still much better off then their Western counterparts.

Ofcourse the communists had to hide the truth, the russians were the best right????? The truth is that the russian serfs fleed to Poland in the 15-16-17-18'th century, like the bees to honey.

Sarcasm? There's plenty of lies propagated during communism small and big, from peasant infantry fighting for Poland at Grunwald to polish Commonwealth being a corrupt state.

The "poor opressed peasant" myth was produced purely as a communist construct to create the impression that reinessaince Poland was, despite its incredible advancement built on the backs of slaving working class.


They did not, Germans however did, russian serfs were rooted to the spot through a variety of tactics by their owners.

You measured your property in cows?I guess a bit backwards compared to some more advanced places in the south?

Because those advanced places in the south measured wealth in goats?

I thought southern measured his wealth in the number of Slavic prostitutes he can afford :D

In camels to be precise.I imagine the frustration of the teutonic prince when his daughter could not bring enough cows to marry a Pole.

They did

Its easier then to actually measure it in hard money, cows were across all Europe the most expensive farm animal apart from the horse.


To Ukraine yes, to Poland per se not so much.


At the time everywhere money was measured via its purchase capacity against products that held a similar price Europe wide such as cows, horses for example varied wildly, a horse in Poland cost only 30% of its price in Germany while cow prices were pretty stable.

You don't like Arabs, but you measure your wealth in their animals?? :D

We used to measure properties with gold and as you know more than half of the world's gold was concentrated in Byzantium.

Didn't know ukraine existed in those times, weren't todays Ukraine so called "Crown lands"?

Except that at the time you mention (dark ages) Byzantium was the only template for commerce, in reinessance period there was no such template so we have to count against purchase power of different currencies.

You mean in Feta cheese and olives right?

Those were the days, eh? How times change! lol

These were Polish properties but not Crown proper.

I think the Crown owned about 20%? and the rest to the church and the szlachta?

Not sure though...

"Crown" was the blanket term used to describe Poland and its direct dependencies, it stretched as far as Lwów but beyond that it was frontier land analogous to american Wild West, its to this place that the russian serfs fled, either to Crimea or to the Sich.

Some facts i found.

Radziwiłł family



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radziwi%C5%82%C5%82

Lubomirski family


/wiki/Lubomirski

Something interesting for Crow maybe :D

Czartoryski family
Russian by-branch

A muscovite noble family, Chartorisky, is descended as side-line from the Dukes of Chortoryisk, i.e the Czartoryski princely family. The branching happened in the 1500s. The lineage produced service nobles to Tsars of Russia for centuries, and the Revolution made its members to emigrate to Serbia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czartoryski

I heard that some Polish nobles were so wealthy that they deliberately slipshod their horses gold horseshoes so they would fall off. The fact that they deliberately let them lie in the street thereafter was testament to the fact that they were so wealthy that the loss of a gold horseshoe meant nothing.

haha seriously?

Actually its about some Winged Hussar captains who had their horses lose golden horseshoes in Vienna, it wasnt done everyday, well Zamoyski did that everyday but then again there's a loads of other weird things he did.