Events and Personalities in Polish History

Paul Super

• Publisher: Hesperides Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781406733082, 9781443724975
• eBook ISBN: 9781528760416
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The Polish people enter into recorded history with the conversion of their ruler Mieszko to Christianity in the year 966 A. D., this enlightened leader bringing his people with him into the family of Christian nations. With this event Poland emerges from among the Slavic tribes occupying the areas east of the Elbe and becomes enrolled among the historic and civilized countries of Europe. Both the causes and the consequences of that act are of more than purely Polish interest. As far back as Charlemagne there had begun an expansion of the Teutonic nations toward the east. This is that vast movement called the Drang nach Osten, 'the pressure toward the east'. The Slavs between the Elbe and the Oder, less warlike, smaller in stature than the Teutons, not well organized, relatively ill armed, were slowly subjugated. When Otto I of Saxony was crowned Emperor in 962 his already great power so enhanced that he became a menace to all the Slavs east of him. Mieszko soon saw that the only means of preventing the enslavement or extermination of his people lay in the same alliance that had so strengthened Otto, that with the Church. For as long as the Poles were heathen they were the legitimate prey of any Christian king, but as Christians they would at once be on a par with other western nations. Their entering the fold of the Catholic Church would deprive Otto of a valid excuse for incursions into their territory, win the sympathy of the other nations of Christendom, and gain the favour and advocacy of the Pope. By calling in monks from France and Italy they would forge valuable ties with those lands. These were the motives prompting Polish adhesion to the Christian Church. The results were not only good but momentous. The nation became really and increasingly Christian. In the first centuries of Christianity the people received the light of Latin learning and the advantages of western civilization, largely from the hands of Benedictine, Eremite, and Cistercian monks from the monasteries of Liege, Cluny, and Monte Casino. The Pope became their advocate. But two results even more far-reaching than these were determined by. this step. First, in deciding' to be Catholic, Poland decided to face west. The Czechs had already taken the same step. But when Poland also became Roman Catholic, a second, less desirable effect was permanently to divide Slavdom, for most of the other Slav nations, the Russians, the Bulgarians, and the Serbs, are of the Eastern Orthodox faith.

CHAPTER 1

DURING THE RISE OF POLAND

TENTH TO FIFTEENTH CENTURY

THE CONVERSION OF POLAND TO CHRISTIANITY [966 A. D.]

The Polish people enter into recorded history with the conversion of their ruler Mieszko to Christianity in the year 966 A. D., this enlightened leader bringing his people with him into the family of Christian nations. With this event Poland emerges from among the Slavic tribes occupying the areas east of the Elbe and becomes enrolled among the historic and civilized countries of Europe.

Both the causes and the consequences of that act are of more than purely Polish interest.

As far back as Charlemagne there had begun an expansion of the Teutonic nations toward the east. This is that vast movement called the Drang nach Osten, ‘the pressure toward the east’. The Slavs between the Elbe and the Oder, less warlike, smaller in stature than the Teutons, not well organized, relatively ill armed, were slowly subjugated.

When Otto I of Saxony was crowned Emperor in 962 his already great power so enhanced that he became a menace to all the Slavs east of him. Mieszko soon saw that the only means of preventing the enslavement or extermination of his people lay in the same alliance that had so strengthened Otto, that with the Church. For as long as the Poles were heathen they were the legitimate prey of any Christian king, but as Christians they would at once be on a par with other western nations. Their entering the fold of the Catholic Church would deprive Otto of a valid excuse for incursions into their territory, win the sympathy of the other nations of Christendom, and gain the favour and advocacy of the Pope. By calling in monks from France and Italy they would forge valuable ties with those lands.

These were the motives prompting Polish adhesion to the Christian Church. The results were not only good but momentous. The nation became really and increasingly Christian. In the first centuries of Christianity the people received the light of Latin learning and the advantages of western civilization, largely from the hands of Benedictine, Eremite, and Cistercian monks from the monasteries of Liége, Cluny, and Monte Casino. The Pope became their advocate.

But two results even more far-reaching than these were determined by this step. First, in deciding to be Catholic, Poland decided to face west. The Czechs had already taken the same step. But when Poland also became Roman Catholic, a second, less desirable effect was permanently to divide Slavdom, for most of the other Slav nations, the Russians, the Bulgarians, and the Serbs, are of the Eastern Orthodox faith. However, notwithstanding certain important consequences resulting from the division of the Slavs in the matter of religion, it was good for all the world that in accepting the Christian faith Poland came in through the western and Latin door and not through the more backward Orthodox one, with its absolutism, Greek alphabet, and decaying Byzantinism.

Thus as the year 1000 A. D. approached Poland assumed its now historic role of eastern outpost of western religion and civilization, or, as a British historian puts it, ‘of Christian culture, of the civilization of Rome, and the Latin spirit’, graciously adding that “this heavy charge Poland faithfully fulfilled.” It was through Poland that Christian religion spread towards the north and east, as King Boleslaw the Brave sent Bishop Adalbert in 997 to convert the heathen Prussians, and the conversion of Western Pomerania was accomplished by the envoys of King Boleslaw III. In the 14th century Lithuania became Christian through the Union with Poland.

BOLESLAW THE BRAVE FIRST CROWNED KING OF POLAND

[992—1025]

A great father was followed by an even greater son. Seeking allies against the ever expanding and advancing Teutons, Mieszko had married Dombrowka, a Czech princess. From their union came the capable, brave, and energetic Boleslaw who in 992 at the age of 25 inherited the ducal throne upon the death of his father. The Czech alliance and the conversion of the nation to Christianity somewhat consolidated things on the west.

Extending his domain he united under his rule the Slavic groups from the Baltic Sea to the plains south of the Carpathians and from the Elbe to the Bug. In 1024 he was crowned the first Polish king at Gniezno near Poznan. He developed internal organization, established a definite system of taxation, and maintained a large standing army.

His brilliant career, considers Professor Slocombe, ‘had no parallel in the history of contemporary Europe.’ Within a century before or after him probably only the Emperor Otto I was his equal. During his reign Poland became one of the greatest powers of Europe, a position it was again to occupy during the 16th and early 17th centuries. It is interesting to add that a sister of Boleslaw’s was the mother of King Canute of England, and his aunt was the mother of Stephen, the great king of Hungary and its patron saint. One of Boleslaw’s principal achievements was the establishment of an Archbishopric at Gniezno, symbol of Poland’s political independence and autonomy.

It is strange that this ‘Polish Charlemagne’ should be so little known in the western world of today. The broad extent of his asknowledged Polish territories is worth noting. They are at that time capable of quite definite delimitation. On the north, the boundaries are the Baltic Sea from the River Oder to the Vistula. Present-day East Prussia, beyond the Vistula, was an independent heathen people. The eastern boundary of Poland was the line of the river Bug. On the south the dominions of Boleslaw included Slovakia as far as the Danube, and Bohemia. On the west he waged war for fifteen years against the German Emperor Henry II for possession of the Slavic lands of Lusatia, during which period his power extended to the middle Elbe, and for a time even to the Saale.

This kingdom of Boleslaw’s was subject to threefold pressure. That from the south was dynastic, local and temporary. Its last echoes in modern times have been the disputes over the possession of Cieszyn, or Teschen, and the question of Upper Silesia. The second, from the west, was more fundamental in character, and has lasted from the days of Otto I to those of Hitler. The third was the pressure from the east, executed in turn by Tartars, Turks, and Muscovites, from the days of Genghis Khan to those of Lenin and Stalin.

THE THREAD OF THE STORY

[1025—1225]

At the death of Boleslaw III in 1135, Poland, by the last will of the dying king, was divided into 5 principalities: Silesia, Great-Poland, Mazovia, Sandomierz and Cracow, each of his four sons receiving a principality and the eldest son, two (Silesia and Cracow). In this he was rocognized as the superior of his brothers; each of these, except the Duke of Sandomierz who fell in battle, became the founder of a separate ducal line. In total they formed the Piast dynasty, which in spite of subdivisions preserved the feeling of kinship and with it a degree of unity in the state. The province around the Warsaw of today was the. Duchy of Mazovia, and to this section we now turn.

THE TEUTONIC KNIGHTS

[1226—1308]

East of the Vistula between the Duchy of Mazovia and the Baltic Sea lay a province occupied by a savage pagan tribe from whose name the modern name of Prussia is derived. These heathen resisted all efforts for their conversion. They became so aggresive in their warlike incursions into Northern Poland that they constituted a serious and continuous menace to the life and peace of the border people of the Duchy of Mazovia. The then duke, Conrad, seeking protection against them, in 1226 called to his aid the military and religious order of the Teutonic Knights of St. Mary’s Hospital at Jerusalem, recently expelled from Hungary and seeking lands and occupation. They are sometimes referred to as the Knights of the Cross because of the large black cross on the white cloak they wore over their armour.

Conrad offered them lands and special privileges in return for their services in the conversion and pacification of the heathen Prussians, just as the Benedictines or other orders were given grants of land, with no thought on the part of the duke of a surrender of sovereignty. The Knights soon proceeded against the Prussians with vigour, and practically exterminated them, either reducing survivors to serfdom or driving them into their inaccessible swamps and marshes. The Order built huge castles on Polish territory, of which the one at Marienburg is the best specimen, and with these as their base proceeded to occupy, colonize, and christianize the lands farther east, not as missionaries, however, but as sovereign rulers. They applied this idea of complete ownership to Polish land also, basing their claims on a document of 1230 now recognized even by German palaeographers as a falsification of the ‘lost’ original document signed by Conrad.

The religious and military functions of the Knights being accomplished, the Polish rulers desired them to restore to Poland the Polish lands they had pre-empted, but the Knights had established themselves too firmly and were too well satisfied with the secular state they had founded to retire from it. Their constantly increasing numerical strength, territorial expansion and military prowess threatened to and eventually did separate Poland from the Baltic Sea and the mouth of the Vistula, and this the Poles regarded as a fatal menace to their political and economic life, especially when the Knights exterminated the Polish population of Danzig in 1308 and thereafter completely controlled Poland’s access to the sea. The power of the Order became so great that in 1343 the Polish king Kazimierz the Great acknowledged the necessity of giving up to it eastern Pomerania, which the Teutonic Order had occupied by force of arms in 1308—09; and this surrender of territory had to be made notwithstanding the fact that the Poles had obtained a judgment favourable to their claims from the papal court in 339 and had the support of Pope Benedict XII.

At this same time the Margraves of Brandenburg were expanding eastward and conquering the Slavic tribes in western Pomerania and thus excluding Poland from contact with the sea. ‘Pomerania’ is an adaptation of the Polish Pomorze, meaning ‘by he sea’.

Conrad, seeking the welfare of his country, had brought about its destruction, for the founding of the state of Prussia led, through a series of events which we shall trace, due consideration being given to other causes also, to the partition of Poland in 1772 and to its disappearance from the map of Europe from 1793 to November 1918.

In 1331, at Plowce, during one of many wars with he Order, the Poles won a great victory in a battle with the invading Knights; an incident of which introduces an ancestor of Jan Zamoyski, of whom we hall hear more, and illustrates how crests and coats of arms developed. This ancestor of Zamoyski’s was Florian, called Szary because of the gray clothes he wore. After the battle, as the Polish king rode about the field viewing the dead and wounded he saw Szary on the ground with three spear wounds in his abdomen and his entrails exposed. The king was impressed by he man’s suffering and ordered him to be well cared or. He recovered, and for his bravery in battle and because of his three spear wounds, received as an addition to his coat of arms three spears. This had been a goat’s head and shoulders; below were added three crossed spears, and the whole was renamed Jelita, for every armorial bearing has a name independent of the name of the family. The main branch of the family eventually lived in a house beyond a little stream, approached by a bridge. Owing to this circumstance going to their place was referred to as going za most, ‘beyond the bridge’. From this the name of the family property gradually acquired the form Zamośc and in due time the family name Zamoyski evolved, for in Poland, as elsewhere, noble families often took their name from the name of their chief estate.

THE TARTAR INVASIONS

[1241 AND AFTER]

Let us now turn our attention from these western forces to the further great pressure to which Poland has been subjected all through its history, that from the east. The earliest dramatic event on a grand scale connected with it was the Tartar invasion of 1241 under Batu, grandson of Genghis Khan and one of the greatest of all the Mongol generals.

The long ranges of the Carpathian Mountains sweep eastward across the whole southern length of Poland and then bend southward through western Rumania, and invasions of Europe from Asia through Russia are naturally directed to the north of them. So when Batu led his mounted Tartar hordes into Europe it was Poland which received them as they swarmed westward. They hurled themselves across southern Poland in countless thousands, destroying and killing as they went, leaving the land a smoking desert. Burning Cracow they advanced into Silesia, destroyed the Polish forces and their ruler at the battle of Liegnica, April 9, 1241, and then turned back and south, leaving age-long memories of rapine and horror. Other great incursions followed, notably those of 1259 and 1287, and on through the centuries until their once invincible force had been spent and curbed. But maps, made as late as 1692 and 1709, still show three great roads leading across southern Russia to Poland and converging upon Lwów, with the name Czarny Szlak ‘black trail’.

The Tartars played a part in the east of Poland similar to that of the Red Indians in the west of America, only the role of invader and numerical strength was in Poland on the Tartar side. It used to be said that grass never grew on ground once touched by the hoofs of Tartar horses. Often there were two invasions a year. A Polish general of the Middle Ages speaks of having seen thirty. In the museum of a walled city far to the north of the Czarny Szlak there is a tablet recording over forty Tartar sieges sustained by the place. In turning back these terrible invasions Poland earned for itself the honourable name of ‘the rampart of Christendom’. The might and extent of this pressure can probably best be visualized if one remembers that what is now Russia was once entirely under Tartar rule.

KAZIMIERZ, WELL CALLED ‘THE GREAT’

[1333—1370]

When Kazimierz III, ( Casimir in English ) came to the throne at 23 and began a reign that was to last 37 years, he adopted the policy of depending more upon his head than upon his sword. He stands in Polish history as one of the wisest of Polish kings, the only one except Boleslaw I now generally called ‘The Great’. Many of his notable achievements are of interest only to Poles, but the results of some of his acts last until today and are of permanent significance to the wider world. It may be recalled that he was a contemporary of Edward III of England.

The father of Kazimierz, Wladyslaw ‘Lokietek’ or the Short, had united the Poland divided into dukedoms by Boleslaw III in 1138. What the father had united the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Dedication
• On the pronunciation of Polish names
• Contents
• Chapter 1. During the Rise of Poland
• Chapter 2. During Poland’s ‘Golden Age’
• Chapter 3. During the Decline and Fall
• Chapter 4. During the Period of the Partitions
• Chapter 5. The World War and the Great Deliverance
• Conclusion