Queen Liberty:

The Concept of Freedom in the Polish-Lithuanian

Commonwealth

Studies in Central European

Histories

Edited by

Thomas A. Brady, Jr.,

University of California, Berkeley

Roger Chickering,

Georgetown University

Editorial Board

Steven Beller,

Washington, D.C.

Atina Grossmann,

Columbia University

Peter Hayes,

Northwestern University

Susan Karant-Nunn,

University of Arizona

Mary Lindemann,

University of Miami

David M. Luebke,

University of Oregon

H.C. Erik Midelfort,

University of Virginia

David Sabean,

University of California, Los Angeles

Jonathan Sperber,

University of Missouri

Jan de Vries,

University of California, Berkeley

VOLUME 56

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/sceh

Queen Liberty:

The Concept of Freedom in the

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz

Translated from Polish by

Daniel J. Sax

LEIDEN • BOSTON

2012

Cover illustration: “Polonia-Libertas,” frontispiece of Szymon Starowolski’s book Polonia, (ed.
Dantisci, Amsterdam 1652), Warsaw University Library, Sd.711.291. With kind permission of the
Warsaw University Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Grzeskowiak-Krwawicz, Anna.
Queen Liberty : the concept of freedom in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth / by Anna
Grzeskowiak-Krwawicz ; translated from Polish by Daniel J. Sax.
p. cm. -- (Studies in Central European histories, ISSN 1547-1217 ; v. 56)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-23121-4 (hbk. : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-23122-1 (e-book) 1. Poland--
Politics and government--1572-1763. 2. Lithuania--Politics and government. 3. Liberty--History.
4. Nobility--Political activity--Poland--History. 5. Nobility--Political activity--Lithuania--History.
6. Political culture--Poland--History. 7. Political culture--Lithuania--History. 8. Poland--Intellectual
life. 9. Lithuania--Intellectual life. I. Title.

DK4291.G74 2012
320.01’1--dc23

2012022620

This book has been translated from Polish with the kind support of the Muzeum Historii Polski
(Polish History Museum), Warsaw, Poland.

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ISSN 1547-1217
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CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................................1

1. The Polish Szlachta and Their State .................................................................3

2. Golden Liberty—A Noble Privilege or Universal Idea? .......................... 25

3. The Pillars of Freedom ..................................................................................... 43

4. Freedom in Peril ................................................................................................ 67

5. What Was Wrong with Polish Liberty? ........................................................ 85

6. From Defending Liberty—to Fighting for Liberty ................................. 101

Author Profĳiles ....................................................................................................... 121
Bibliography ........................................................................................................... 129
Index ......................................................................................................................... 133

1 H. T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-century Britain,

Methuen 1979, p. 6.

INTRODUCTION

If […] we wish to make sense of the political actions and the political agents
of any past society, then we need to recognize the political values of that
society and understand what that society or sections of it admired and
condemned.1

This book traces the history of a certain idea, which is at the same time the
story of a certain political myth that enjoyed a very long tradition. Its ori-
gins can be sought in writings dating as far back as the 15th century, and in
the 16th-18th centuries it rose to become one of the most important focal
points, if not the centrepiece, of Polish political thought and a core ele-
ment of noble culture. This idea was the main issue in political disputes,
stirring up great emotions over many centuries—serving as a point of
pride, a subject of unreflective apologies and praise, and at the same time
a target of critical analysis, fĳierce attacks, and attempts at redefĳinition—
and indeed it continues to stir up considerable emotion in Poland to this
very day. This idea is the notion of “Golden Liberty”, as it was known to the
Polish nobles (the szlachta) who were its benefĳiciaries.

Polish discussions about this idea are reminiscent of French debates

about the French Revolution—its interpretations are frequently influ-
enced by contemporary events and rarely manage to refrain from passing
some sort of judgment. Whenever this historic Polish species of liberty is
examined, it usually ends up being either fervently defended or vehe-
mently condemned (more often the latter). Such criticism, which appears
in Polish but also foreign writings, has been largely influenced by the
awareness of the eventual crisis and ultimate demise of the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 18th century. This “Polish anarchy” that
was described with such disgust by both European observers and Polish
reformers, that featured prominently in the propaganda of the partition-
ing empires divvying up the Polish lands among themselves as well as in
the writings of the French philosophers who were on intimate terms with
the leaders of those empires, came to symbolize the degeneration of the
Polish nobility and of the state they founded. We can see this as a kind of

2 introduction

myth (or anti-myth?) that took deep root in the European awareness,
including in Poland. As a consequence, opinions about the Polish “Golden
Liberty” are largely dominated by superfĳicial judgments and banal, knee-
jerk stereotypes.

And yet “Queen Liberty”, as the concept was once dubbed by one of its

17th-century apologists, certainly deserves more in-depth analysis, sine ira
et studio. At the very least because in a certain sense this notion consti-
tuted, from the 16th century onwards, the very foundation of Polish
thought about the state and about the rightful place of the citizen within
that state. But also, because freedom was not just an idea but a real value
cherished for more than 200 years, enshrined in the laws of the Republic.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth indeed remained a republic of
sorts amidst a Europe increasingly dominated by stronger absolute mon-
archies, and so its ideological underpinnings certainly warrant closer scru-
tiny. Although this state was steeped in a serious crisis of governance in
the 18th century, until at least the mid-17th century it had functioned
smoothly and had been a major player in the European political game—
reifying the republican ideal of external strength in tandem with internal
freedoms (at least as regards some of it inhabitants).

Seeking a deeper understanding of this notion of freedom—probing

the virtues ascribed to it and the threats it was perceived to entail, its gen-
esis and its roots within a certain earlier tradition, as well as the evolution
of the concept over the course of several centuries—will help us to under-
stand not just the attitudes of the Polish szlachta and the principles by
which the noble state functioned, but to some extent also the subsequent
history of Polish society, with its periodic armed uprisings sometimes
interpreted as reflecting a kind of anarchic attachment to the idea of
liberty.

CHAPTER ONE

THE POLISH SZLACHTA AND THEIR STATE

King Sigismund Augustus (Zygmunt August), the last of the Jagiellonian
dynasty on the Polish-Lithuanian throne, died on 1 July 1572. Several
months later the noble deputies who gathered at the Sejm which was to
elect his successor prepared a kind of constitution, laying down the insti-
tutional framework of the Rzeczpospolita, a state commonly known in
English as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (also referred to as the
First Polish Republic or the “Republic of the Two Nations”). This act was
subsequently known as the Henrician Articles, after Henry of Valois, the
fĳirst elected monarch coerced into signing it. It provided a legal confĳirma-
tion of the fact that this vast country sprawling over more than
800,000 km2 was the possession not of its king, but of its noble estate. Yet
this single act, signifĳicant as it was, did not actually mark the beginning of
the history of the noble Republic: it was more the culmination of a certain
stage, representing an efffort to safeguard against any future attempts to
disrupt the existing system of governance or to upset the distinctive politi-
cal consensus that had emerged between the kingdom’s ruler and its
subjects—or to describe the true state of afffairs more accurately, between
the nation’s caste of governors and their co-ruler, since by that time the
szlachta held more of a sovereign sway within their own state than the
king himself.

The history of the szlachta’s rule had in fact begun much earlier, as the

foundations of the noble Republic’s political system stretched back to at
least the 15th century. One might even be tempted to trace it further back
to the personal union between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania in 1385, which had imparted a certain preliminary ter-
ritorial shape to the future Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and had
moreover fĳirst installed the Jagiellonians on the Polish throne. Seeking to
achieve their own political and dynastic objectives, the Jagiellonian mon-
archs had been forced to make successive concessions to their noble sub-
jects. Throughout Europe, rulers were granting various prerogatives to the
noble estate, or at least to certain strata thereof. But the rights granted to
the Crown nobility in the 15th century by King Ladislaus Jagiello
(Władysław Jagiełło) and then by his son Casimir Jagiellon (Kazimierz

4 chapter

one

Jagiellończyk) did more than just elevate the nobility as a privileged class;
they laid the foundations of civil rights for the nobles. While it is admit-
tedly quite anachronistic to use the term “civil rights” here to describe
these medieval privileges, it nevertheless seems apt in view of the fact that
one of these rights was the famous neminem captivabimus nisi iure victum
privilege (1433), stating that no member of the nobility could be impris-
oned or have his assets confĳiscated without a valid court verdict against
him. This was, therefore, akin to the Habeas Corpus Act introduced in
English law nearly 250 years earlier—although in the Polish case it applied
only to a single estate. This right, defending the nobility’s freedom against
unauthorized infringement by the ruler, constituted not just a guarantee
of civil liberty but also the basis for political liberty, since an individual so
protected was free to speak their mind about the ruler’s deeds and policies
without having to fear repression. Successive prerogatives continued to
increase the nobility’s hand in political decision-making—King Casimir
Jagiellon made the concession (in the Nieszawa statutes of 1454) not to
impose any new taxes or to raise an army through levée-en-masse without
the szlachta’s consent. The nobility became increasingly active in self-
governance, encompassing more and more domains of life, and meetings
convened by the szlachta took on greater political signifĳicance. At this
stage these were still somewhat informal gatherings of knights from the
province where the king happened to be present, but they marked
the early beginnings of representative self-governance. Although it is true
that a gathering convoked in Piotrków in 1493 is conventionally regarded
as being the fĳirst true Sejm of the Polish Crown, i.e. the fĳirst representative
body to which the nobles of various lands sent elected deputies, the Sejm
assembly held in Radom in 1505 is undoubtedly a more important water-
shed date in the history of the Polish noble Republic: it was here that the
principle of nihil novi sine omnium consensu (nothing new without the
consent of all) was formulated. This important act of law, adopted and
proclaimed by King Alexander Jagiellon, stated:

Because general laws and public acts apply not to individuals but to the
whole nation, therefore from now on nothing new that would be detrimen-
tal or burdensome to the Commonwealth, or harmful or injurious to anyone,
or that would be intended to alter the general law and public freedom, may
be decided by us [the king] or our successors, without a common consensus
of senators and landed deputies.

This law, later known as the Nihil Novi Act, would become, for nearly
300 years, the foundation of the idea that the state should be understood
as the common good of its citizens, who have the right to determine its

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szlachta and their state

afffairs to a degree no lesser than the monarch himself (and as time passed,
even to a greater degree). The Sejm gained powers of a sort no other estate
assembly enjoyed in Europe: the power to enact laws. It gradually became
not merely a consultative body, debating whether to approve new taxes,
but a legislative body per se—a modern-era parliament. The ruler was no
longer external to it, a sovereign standing above it, but instead became
incorporated into the very fabric of the Sejm itself, as the fĳirst of the three
“estates” comprising it. The second estate of the Sejm was the Senate,
which developed out of the Royal Council and was comprised of state offfĳi-
cials nominated for life by the monarch (the voivodes, castellans, and
high-ranking offfĳicials of the Crown) plus the Catholic bishops. The third
estate of the Sejm was the chamber of deputies elected by the nobility
(also known as the izba poselska or chamber of envoys). The political sys-
tem of the Kingdom of Poland thus became a mixed monarchy. Under the
last two Jagiellonian kings, Sigismund the Old and Sigismund Augustus,
the power of the monarch still remained very great, but he was already a
“king in parliament”. Not only was he subject to the laws of the Republic
like everyone else, no longer standing above those laws, he was moreover
no longer able to enact those laws himself, or at least those which per-
tained to the kingdom as a whole or to the noble estate (although he still
retained the privilege of issuing decrees concerning the status of cities, for
instance). The initially small role played by the chamber of noble deputies
clearly began to increase from the mid-16th century onward, in tandem
with an increase in the nobility’s sense of political strength and responsi-
bility for the future of the state. The last decade and a half of Sigismund
August’s reign was already a time of co-governance between the nobility
and the monarch—and very efffective co-governance at that. This period
saw not only reform of the fĳinancial and administrative afffairs of the state,
but also its conclusive unifĳication, with Royal Prussia (until then a prov-
ince quite loosely afffĳiliated with the rest of the country) being brought
fully into the fold of the Crown, and the Crown plus the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania also being combined into a single political entity. This was a
federative entity: Lithuania preserved its own laws, treasury, and army but
shared a common ruler and Sejm; the Lithuanian nobility gained all the
prerogatives of the Crown nobility as well as full civil rights; high-ranking
Lithuanian offfĳicials gained seats in the Senate and representatives of the
Lithuanian nobility sat in the chamber of noble deputies.

It was precisely at this point that the nobility of the Commonwealth

conclusively became a political nation. The uniform privileges and rights
enshrined for the Polish and Lithuanian noble estates at the moment of

6 chapter

one

1 A. Radawiecki, , Prawy szlachcic, Kraków 1625, p. 32

the Union of Lublin (1569) marked the conclusive birth of a single “noble
nation”. A single nation, albeit not a homogenous one. The reader should
bear in mind that the phrase “Polish nobility” used in reference to the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or “Republic of the Two Nations”
should be construed quite broadly, as referring to a multinational mosaic
that would only gradually succumb to Polonization over time. It is still
unclear how numerous the “noble citizens” were in the Commonwealth;
the estimates of historians continue to vary and the noble estate is cur-
rently estimated to have constituted 6–8% of all the inhabitants of the
Polish-Lithuanian lands. This is worth bearing in mind when discussing
their political rights—such a relatively high percentage of politically
active citizens did not appear in other European states until the 19th cen-
tury, indeed more towards its latter half. The term nobility, or szlachta, is
here quite imprecise, as the class included both impoverished noblemen
possessed of a single village (or perhaps not even that) as well as mighty
magnates from the south-eastern expanses of the Republic, who might,
like Jarema Wiśnowiecki in the mid-17th century, have more than 200,000
subjects. No aristocratic stratum ever formally emerged from the noble
estate of the Commonwealth. There were no diffferent ranks of nobility,
there were no orders or titles aside from the former Lithuanian ducal
titles. At least in theory, therefore, things stood as the old saying went:
szlachcic na zagrodzie równy wojewodzie—“a rural nobleman on his plot of
land is equal to a voivode” (province governor), and a voivode would
indeed address such a petty nobleman as Panie Bracie, “lord brother”. This
phrasing was meant to underscore both the class-internal equality and the
strong sense of szlachta community. Yet on the other hand, such a rural
nobleman would never in fact have used the same term to address a
voivode, instead referring to him as “His Honourable Lordship” if not “His
Enlightened Lordship”. As Andrzej Radawiecki caustically remarked:

So you have your talk: ‘I am equal’—yet still you do not dare to sue him, ‘I am
free’—yet still you bow to the high and mighty.1

However, despite the fact that things often looked quite diffferent in prac-
tice, equality was one of the values most highly cherished within noble
society and even the most powerful magnates took pains to keep up at
least the appearances of equality. Although in terms of wealth, and thus
likewise in terms of political influence, the notion of equality became an

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szlachta and their state

2 P. Skarga, Kazania sejmowe, ed. J. Tazbir, M. Korolko, Warsaw—Kraków, 1995, p. 33
3 A. Walicki, Idea narodu w polskiej myśli oświeceniowej, Warsaw 2000, p. 21

illusion following the rise of powerful magnates families in the 17th cen-
tury, in the realm of the law it was a reality: the entire nobility legally
enjoyed the same rights and privileges.

These rights and privileges were what bound them together into a sin-

gle noble nation. A nation, as we have mentioned above, that was highly
diverse, at least at the outset of the Republic of the Two Nations. Much has
been written about the distinguishing characteristics of the Polish nobility
against the European backdrop, and such diffferences have often been
exaggerated—but who knows whether, at least in the 16th century, such
diversity may itself have been the Polish nobility’s most distinguishing fea-
ture? The people who described themselves as the “nation”, even as the
“Polish nation”, were in reality an amalgamation of diverse ethnic, linguis-
tic, and religious backgrounds. The noble citizens included not just the
Polish-speaking szlachta of the Wielkopolska (Polonia Major) and
Małopolska (Polonia Minor) provinces, but also the Ruthenian-speaking
nobles of Ukraine, the Rhutenian- Belarusian and Lithuanian (Aukštaitian
and Samogitian) speaking nobles of Lithuania, and even the German-
speaking nobles of Livonia. The traditional division into Catholic and
Orthodox, existing from the 14th century, was further complicated in the
16th century by the arrival of the reformed confessions: Lutherans,
Calvinists, Bohemian Brothers, and Arians, who garnered numerous fol-
lowers likewise among the nobility (aside from the Lutherans). The nobil-
ity was well aware of its internal diffferences. The famous preacher Piotr
Skarga tellingly wrote in the early 17th century that the Commonwealth
consisted of Poles, of Lithuania, of Ruthenia, of Prussians, Livonians, and
Samogitians.2 And yet, irrespective of ethnicity and religion, the nobility
nevertheless considered itself from the 16th century onward to be repre-
sentatives of a single nation. Indeed a “nation”, not just one estate of the
realm. Joint privileges undoubtedly played a great integrating role, but
even more important were the common political rights, the fact that all
nobleman were citizens of a single republic. As Andrzej Walicki pointed
out, the noble nation was a community of individuals who shared not an
ethnic but a political afffĳiliation—acceptance of the same political ideals
and a certain system of governance that guaranteed the realization of
those ideals.3 Natione polonus entailed not an ethnic nationality, but
being a co-equal member of the political community known as the

8 chapter

one

4 H. Wisner, Najjaśniejsza Rzeczpospolita. Szkice z dziejów Polski szlacheckiej XVI–XVII

wieku, Warsaw 1978, p. 225.

5 A. Zamoyski, Mowa na sejmie convocationis dnia 16 maja 1764 roku w Warszawie miana,

n. p. (no place of publication) 1764, n. pag. (no pagination).

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This strong sense of community, of
identifying with the political nation, moreover contributed to the rapid
Polonization of the nobility, which was already largely Polish-speaking by
the mid-17th century. This did not stand at odds with an awareness of, or
even the prominent manifestation of ethnic diffferences. Especially the
Lithuanian nobility, despite its rapid adoption of the Polish language,
maintained a profound sense of its own distinct “Lithuanian-ness”, a feel-
ing they repeatedly and variously expressed (such as in the catchphrase
“we, Lithuania”), while at the same time considering themselves members
of the very same nation as the “Lord Poles”.

Members of the same nation and of the same state, as the borderline

here was indeed highly fluid. The noble nation of the Commonwealth
identifĳied itself with the state which it resided in and co-governed to a
degree unknown in other countries. Researchers point to a “disappear-
ance of a distinction between the state and society, their mutual perme-
ation”.4 In Polish political discourse, from at least the 16th century, there
was no discussion of any abstract state that stood above its citizens, of the
kind frequently identifĳied in the West with state power. In the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth the state was described in speech and in writ-
ing as a community of its citizens. The term Rzeczpospolita, meaning
Commonwealth or Republic, was a calque from the Latin res publica, “pub-
lic thing” or “common thing”, and tellingly the Polish-Lithuanian nobility
took a very literal interpretation here, using the term to refer to a certain
polity, and to a certain territorial domain, and to a certain community who
formed that polity and inhabited that domain. “Of what does the republic
consist, if not of us ourselves?” asked Andrzej Zamoyski in the mid-18th
century,5 and this was then a wholly rhetorical question: essentially a
statement of proud fact, already deemed obvious back in the 16th century.
We might say that in the Polish understanding, all the way until the end of
the 18th century, the state was construed in a way more akin to the Roman
civitas than to the French état.

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s political system took on its

ultimate shape during what was known as the “great interregnum” (1572–
1576), stretching from the death of Sigismund Augustus to Stephen
Bathory’s ascension to the throne. This period also saw the intensifĳication

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szlachta and their state

6 The declaration of the Confederation of Warsaw of 28 January 1573 was included in

UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2003 as an important achievement in the
development of religious tolerance.

of the nobility’s sense of sovereignty, of co-involvement in shaping the
state. It was the fĳirst time the Sejm assembly—without any king—made
political decisions and enacted laws. It was then decided that the succes-
sors to the Jagiellonians on the Polish throne would be elected by a general
assembly of the nobility (in what were called viritim elections, held in a
fĳield outside of Warsaw) and that the Sejm would convene on a regular
schedule (thenceforth gatherings had to be called every two years for six
weeks); it was then that the possibility of refusing obedience to a king who
violated the laws of the Republic was fĳirst allowed for; and it was then, in
1573, that the nobles of various religious confessions who gathered together
in Warsaw pledged

to maintain peace among one another, not to spill blood or punish over dif-
ferent faiths or difffering Churches, and not in any way to assist any authori-
ties or offfĳice to perform such deeds. And also, should anyone so desire to
spill blood, exista causa [for this reason] we must all object.6

Amidst a Europe then in the throes of religious warfare, this was evidence
of extraordinary pragmatism and political far-sightedness. On the one
hand such tolerance grew out of class solidarity and concern for the com-
mon liberties, which could come under attack by a king taking advantage
of religious feuding, and on the other it was a manifestation of concern for
preserving religious peace, in a country not just of many confessions but
of many religions and many nationalities. Diversity of languages and faiths
in the Commonwealth was not just the stamp of the nobility: the country
was likewise inhabited by German burgers from Royal Prussia, Ruthenian
and Lithuanian peasants, plus Karaims, Armenians, Scots, Tatars, and
Jews. All three great monotheistic religions, plus diffferent variations
thereof, had followers in the Commonwealth, which was in ethnic and
religious terms the most diverse country in Europe and was aptly likened
to a multi-coloured bird. It had become a single polity only three years
previously, and particularism was still very strong (especially in Royal
Prussia and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania). Noble citizens were well aware
that any internal disputes and fĳights (especially over issues of religion)
might easily trigger the disintegration of the state. Their representatives
and leaders at the Sejm showed concern not just for the solid legal under-
pinnings of the political system and for safeguarding the noble liberties,

10 chapter

one

7 J. Tazbir, Kultura szlachecka w Polsce, 2nd ed., Warsaw 1979, p. 65

but also for the efffective functioning of state institutions and especially for
guaranteeing the peace and security of the entire Commonwealth.

This duty was made all the more responsible by the fact that no central-

ized administrative apparatus subordinate to the king had emerged. There
was no complex system of state institutions and state offfĳicials, akin to
those that increasingly regulated the lives of subjects in the monarchies of
Western Europe, then striving towards absolutism. On the local level the
Commonwealth was governed by local bodies, by municipal authorities in
the cities, and by nobles in the provinces (which meant most of the coun-
try, given the poor network of urban centres). Gatherings of nobles from a
given land, county, or voivodship, known as sejmiki (“little Sejms” or
dietines), dealt with local afffairs as well as issues of state-wide politics.
They were nearly 70 such sejmiki bodies throughout the Commonwealth,
and each nobleman residing within the respective area had a right to take
part in their gatherings. It was the sejmiki that proposed candidates to the
king to be appointed to landed offfĳices, that elected judges to the Tribunals
(the highest courts of appeal for the nobility), discussed local economic
matters, and fĳinally chose deputies to send to the Sejm, gave them instruc-
tions, and listened to their reports upon their return. The sejmiki convened
several times a year, with highly varied numbers of nobles in attendance:
ranging from just several dozen or a hundred-odd individuals, up to sev-
eral thousand when a matter was of particular importance (for instance
when the election of a new king was approaching). Sessions of the sejmiki
were not always peaceful and the image of quarrelling and wrangling that
foreign observers took away was not entirely unfounded. Still, that does
not change the fact that these provincial assemblies were capable of mak-
ing highly rational political decisions, not only on particularist issues but
on matters afffecting the entire Commonwealth, such as on taxes or foreign
policy. The sejmiki also served as an excellent political training ground:
before each gathering of the Sejm itself, nobles here had a chance to debate
issues of major importance for the country, to learn how to discuss politics,
and hone their ability to hash out agreements on disputed matters.

It is worth stressing that the political culture of the szlachta was indeed

a culture of discussion and debate, consensus and compromise. Discussion
was conducted in the provincial sejmiki, in the Sejm, and also outside of
such assemblies. As the historian Janusz Tazbir has noted, this was the
political culture of a free people,7 and we may add here: of people fully

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szlachta and their state

aware that they were determining matters for themselves and for their
state. Their output of political writings, especially those penned in con-
nection with important events—elections, Sejm gatherings, “confedera-
tions”—nowadays fĳills thick volumes. Every political event, every dispute,
every decision could and most often did trigger a flurry of commentaries
in writing, sometimes printed but often copied out by hand and distrib-
uted among the “noble brothers”. We might say that political propaganda
had already made its appearance in the Commonwealth as far back as the
16th century. However, the objective was not just to win others over by the
force of one’s arguments, but also to work out some form of agreement on
disputed issues.

Consensus was the supreme political ideal of the noble citizens—an

ideal that was interpreted quite pragmatically, as working towards a com-
promise acceptable to all participants in the political debate. This notion
of consensus was the underlying principle by which the highest body
within the state, the Sejm, functioned. All of its decisions were made after
prolonged debate, in which votes were not counted but rather “weighed”—
meaning that the value of the arguments presented, the political signifĳi-
cance of each speaker, and their intentions were all carefully judged. It is
worth remembering that in the times when Polish parliamentary customs
were crystallizing, the practice of majority voting was still unknown in
Europe. Moreover, in a country with numerous minorities, such majority-
based voting could very simply have ended up leading straight to internal
conflict, to rebellion by those who felt unacceptable decisions were being
forced upon them by a stronger majority, against their will. Through the
practice of ucieranie materii as it was then called in Polish (or “working
matters through”), compromise solutions could be hashed out that would
be acceptable to all or nearly all the Sejm deputies, and moreover to their
noble electors back in their provinces. “Ordinary consensus” was treated
quite loosely, with objections sometimes being ignored if the overwhelm-
ing majority was in favour of adopting a given measure. It was only in the
latter half of the 17th century, when the Commonwealth’s political system
was already in serious crisis, that it began to be treated literally, as entail-
ing that Sejm decisions required full and unanimous acceptance. Through
the principles of consensus and cooperation between the three estates
(one of which was the king), the Sejm was until the mid-17th century not
just a central political body integrating the varied lands of the Republic of
the Two Nations, but also an efffĳicient institution co-administering the
afffairs of the state together with the king. The participating nobles had a
deep sense of responsibility, as well as of power and dignity. A telling

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scene, oft-cited by historians, played out in the Sejm of 1585, when King
Stephen Bathory, furious at an overly bold statement made by one of the
deputies (Mikołaj Kazimierski), cried out at him: Tace nebulo! (Silence,
scamp!). Kazimierski replied: “I am not scamp, only citizen who elects
kings and overthrows tyrants”. Few noblemen in Europe would have dared
to make such a public statement to his monarch, and even fewer could
have managed to get away with it scot-free.

The success of the noble politicians—and also the success of the

Commonwealth itself, as a distinctive system of governance diffferent from
absolute monarchy—may be attested by the fact that over nearly 100 years
of joint noble/royal governance (1560–1648) it enjoyed a time of peace and
security unmatched in other countries. Wars against foreign powers, inso-
far as they occurred, played out in distant peripheries, most often outside
the Commonwealth’s borders, and they were generally victorious wars—
sufffĳice it to mention that by 1634 the country’s surface area had swelled to
nearly 1 million km2. Domestically, there was no religiously-motivated
bloodshed, no rebellions or bloody struggles for power. Despite the some-
times harsh disputes, only once did a serious conflict occur, spilling over
the limits of a political struggle and heading towards civil war (the
Sandomierz rokosz, or insurrection, against Sigismund III in 1606), but it
was ultimately defused by peaceful means after a single armed clash.
Amidst war-torn Europe, the Commonwealth was a calm oasis. Krzysztof
Opaliński, observing the destruction wrought by the 30 Years’ War in
neighbouring countries, asserted with satisfaction in 1630 that his country
“like a safe spectator on the shores of the sea, gazes calmly upon the tem-
pest raging before it”.

However, this sense of security, the ability to calmly enjoy one’s own

wealth, the freedom to cultivate one’s own faith, tradition, and customs
were not enjoyed by the nobility alone. The lack of a strong central govern-
ment, intervening in the private lives of individuals, meant that the
Commonwealth’s residents who did not have political rights nevertheless
also enjoyed a certain “space of freedom”. This was especially true for the
citizens of the royal cities. As the political system of the Commonwealth
was crystallizing, its largest towns (Kraków, Wilno, Lublin, Poznań, Toruń,
and Gdańsk) had the right to participate in the Sejm assemblies, but being
too weak to influence the decisions made by those assemblies they did not
exercise that right, striving instead to arrange their matters either by inter-
vening directly with the king or via behind-the-scenes negotiations. Thus
the Sejm ultimately remained a body purely of the nobility. Burghers

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generally did not influence state-wide politics, although there were some
exceptions here—such as the powerful town of Gdańsk, which sometimes
dictated its own terms to the king and Sejm. Yet within the bounds of their
own cities, the burghers did have their own sense of citizenship and loy-
alty to the Commonwealth. This is evidenced by the stance the towns
adopted in the event of an external threat—such as the loyalty shown by
Lwów and Gdańsk during the Swedish invasion in the 17th century, or the
resistance put up by the cities of Royal Prussia (Toruń and Gdańsk) to the
Kingdom of Prussia as it seized those lands in the 18th-century partitions,
even despite their linguistic and cultural afffĳinities to Prussia.

Other residents of the Commonwealth lands also benefĳited from this

space of freedom, enabling them to enjoy liberties of confession and cus-
tom. Among them were certain people who remained somehow outside
the structures of society at that time, such as the Gypsies. This was espe-
cially evident in the case of the Jews, who had their own justice system
within the Commonwealth, their own self-government, and even a kind
of representative assembly (called the Waad), the only such institution of
its kind in Europe. The only group not encompassed was the peasantry—
consisting of serfs increasingly dependent on their noble landowners.
Although the peasants enjoyed quite decent conditions during the eco-
nomic boom of the 16th and early 17th centuries, their predicament clearly
began to worsen during the time of crisis and military destruction in the
latter half of the 17th century, in tandem with mounting feudal burdens
placed upon them and their increasing subjugation to their lords.
Moreover, another point to note is that there were very wide diffferences
between the individual regions of the country, making it very hard to com-
pare relatively wealthy and frequently free peasants from Royal Prussia or
tenant-farmers from the Wielkopolska region to the serfs in the broad
south-eastern expanses.

The system of governance fĳirst set forth in the Henrician Articles

evolved in subsequent years towards the further strengthening of the
noble nation. The noble judiciary system had been excluded from
the king’s purview already in the 16th century, with the formation of the
Crown Tribunal (1578) and Lithuanian Tribunal (1581), to which judges
were elected by the provincial sejmiki. The power of the chamber of depu-
ties surged and among other things it began to exert an influence over
foreign policy, which had until then been a royal domain. At least until the
end of the 1640s, the institutions of the mixed monarchy system of gover-
nance worked efffĳiciently and the Commonwealth was defĳinitely a major

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political player in its region of Europe, even if not a European power.
Despite that, certain signs of the political system’s future crisis were
already then perceptible.

The system of mixed monarchy was a quite complex and very delicate

construction, functioning well only under specifĳic socio-political condi-
tions. Such conditions did exist under the reign of Sigismund Augustus,
when there was cooperation between the king and the gentry (the nobility
of medium wealth). This was then a numerous group within the Crown,
independent, consolidated, and possessed of considerable civic aware-
ness. Moreover, it was in the gentry’s interests to ensure the rule of law and
domestic peace, ipso facto to strengthen the state and the institutions
which guaranteed these things. It proved capable of putting forth a politi-
cal representation that was modern for its times (known as the “Movement
for the Execution of the Laws”), which in agreement with the king enacted
many measures which strengthened the state whilst reining in the exces-
sive influence of the wealthy families. However, this situation changed
when the Jagiellonian line expired, or even previously, after 1569, when
Poland formed a political union with Lithuania. This merger altered the
balance of forces within the noble class, by bringing in the great Lithuanian
and Ukrainian families. Their vast economic power surpassed even that of
the magnates of the Crown, and although they did not immediately
become active in political manoeuvring, they nevertheless clearly shifted
the political balance. At the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, the gentry
had not yet lost its signifĳicance yet it had already lost its confĳidence in
kings, such as it had harboured for the Jagiellonians. The noble/royal alli-
ance, which had been constructive for the country, thus came into ques-
tion. Distrust was already visible in the decisions made in the fĳirst
interregnum, which boosted the power of the Sejm at the expense of the
monarchs, and it was then not unjustifĳied. The elected monarchs proved
unable to fully exercise the possibilities given to them by the mixed nature
of the Commonwealth’ system of governance. They perceived the institu-
tions that Sigismund Augustus had been able to cooperate with efffĳiciently,
above all the noble Sejm, not as mechanisms for exercising their power in
political cooperation with the nobility, but as a rival for power. The kings
from the Vasa dynasty were already more concerned with their own dynas-
tic interests than with strengthening the institutions of the mixed system.
They tried to boost their own power by violating or “circumventing” cer-
tain legal and systemic principles which the nobility viewed as inviolable.
The fĳirst serious conflict came under the reign of Sigismund III Vasa. Faced
with a king clearly striving to strengthen his own power at the expense of

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the Sejm (including an attempt at imposing fĳixed taxes), in 1606 a sizable
portion of the nobility refused to obey him. They bound together as what
was known as a “confederation”.

A confederation (from the Latin confederatio) was a league of nobles

sworn to pursue a certain objective, an institution deeply rooted in the
longstanding political customs of the Commonwealth, although it did not
have solid legal footing. Its sources should perhaps be sought in medieval
gatherings of noble knights, since it represented a kind of direct democ-
racy. Any noble who accepted the stated objective could participate.
A confederation was led by a “generalcy” chosen from among its members.
Confederations were forged in situations deemed to be extraordinary
(such as during each interregnum), when the legally-sanctioned institu-
tions did not function or were widely viewed as insufffĳicient, and thus a
group of nobles felt an obligation to take matters into their own hands.
A confederation was intended to defend whatever its participants saw as
being under threat: rights, freedoms, the public order, even the country
itself.

The confederation of 1606 was of a particular sort known as a rokosz,

the term used for a confederation formed in rebellion against the king.
Invoking this form of extraordinary action without clear cause was very
dangerous, as it undermined the legal institutions of governance—not
just the king, against whom a rokosz was targeted, but also the Sejm, since
the confederating nobles opted to resolve their dispute with the ruler in
circumvention of it. While the confederation of 1606, known as the rokosz
of Zebrzydowski (or Zebrzydowski’s rebellion) after its leader, did end in
an agreement reached with Sigismund III and the mixed monarchy sys-
tem did still function decently for another few decades, the events of
1606–1608 nevertheless dealt a serious blow to the Commonwealth’s sys-
tem of governance, and at the same time conclusively buried the possibil-
ity of cooperation between the king and the general nobility. In essence,
this represented a victory for the magnates. Relatively quickly, representa-
tives of the great families began to portray themselves as defenders of the
noble liberties, and at the same time as ordo intermedius—a third force
mediating between the king and the nobility.

The former alliance between the king and the nobility came to be

replaced instead by an alliance between the magnates and the gentry, and
starting in the 1620s/1630s the political signifĳicance of the gentry waned
whereas that of the magnates increased. This was partly due to a deteriora-
tion in the economic climate, above all a drop in grain prices which espe-
cially afffected the gentry. It was also the gentry who would bear most of

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the cost of the wars in the mid-17th century. All of this rendered the gentry
increasingly dependent upon the great families and undercut the former’s
political independence. Its degree of political activity also gradually began
to wane. This was related to a gradual drop in interest in political afffairs
and a lessening sense of responsibility for the state, interpreted as the
common good. We might say that the noble citizen gradually came to be
replaced by the wealthy landowner, interested not so much in participat-
ing in the political life of the country as in protecting his own wealth and
liberties. Polish noble culture had always been a landowning culture; the
idea of leading a virtuous life of moderation in the countryside was already
being held up as an ideal in the 16th century—sufffĳice it to mention the
verses of the most illustrious poet of the Polish Renaissance, Jan
Kochanowski. But during the era when the nobility at large was politically
active and the mixed monarchy system enjoyed its greatest successes, this
was chiefly the ideal of a proprietor-citizen always at the ready to serve the
homeland. With time the image shifted instead to that of a meticulous
landowner focused on the afffairs of his own village or villages. The civic
ideals were never fully forgotten, but they distinctly moved into the back-
ground. Already in the times of King Ladislaus (Władysław) IV (1632–1648)
it became evident how political activity was being replaced (then still
gradually) by inertia and a desire to preserve the status quo.

In the domain of political culture, other changes were also taking place.

With the decreasing confĳidence in the king and the growing fear of abso-
lutum dominium, the nobility’s stance towards the institutions of the
mixed monarchy began to change. This is evident in the example of the
monarch, who is no longer treated as a political partner, but as a rival to
the Republic. It is also evident in the example of the Sejm. In the times of
King Ladislaus IV and for a signifĳicant portion of the reign of John Casimir,
the Sejm still continued to play the role of a central political nexus, where
the sovereign power of the noble nation was exercised, where laws were
enacted, and where all the most important political decisions were made.
However, a conviction began to take root that the basic function of the
Sejm lay not in being politically active, but in defending the existing sys-
tem of governance and the liberty that guaranteed it against the designs of
the king. The Sejm was seen as the main arena in the battle inter maiesta-
tem ac libertatem (between majesty and liberty). Concern for the good of
the Commonwealth changed into concern for the inviolability of its gov-
ernmental principles, the rule of law turned into stifff observance of the
letter of the law. The latter shift is visible in how the principle of full con-
sensus was applied. What had previously been treated quite flexibly,

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mainly as entailing equal involvement in political decision-making for all
the lands and districts (via their representatives to the Sejm), now began
to be seen as entailing a requirement that every decision must be accepted
by everyone, down to the very last deputy (the principle of liberum veto). If
we consider that in those times the Sejm did not pass laws individually but
rather treated the various decisions made at a single assembly together, as
a whole (subsequently published as what were called “Sejm constitu-
tions”), a lack of unanimity concerning just one insignifĳicant measure
could cause the rejection of all the legislation adopted at a Sejm assembly
and thus entail the complete paralysis of legislative work—and in essence
it soon would mean just that. The objection of a single deputy paralyzed
the Sejm for the fĳirst time in 1652, when that deputy objected to the exten-
sion of debate beyond the statutory 6 weeks. This was already a symptom
of a serious crisis of the Commonwealth’s political system, but not yet a
full crisis of the state.

The mid-17th century was a time of severe warfare, starting with inter-

nal conflict against the Cossacks in the south-eastern borderlands (start-
ing in 1648), followed by the Polish-Russian war fought along the
Commonwealth’s entire eastern frontier (1654–1656) and next by the
Swedish “deluge” (1655–1656). For the fĳirst time, military engagements cov-
ered the entire territory of the Commonwealth. Faced by the Swedish
onslaught, the decentralized system of local governments worked surpris-
ingly well. With a signifĳicant portion of the country occupied by Swedish
forces and with the king in exile, it was the provincial sejmiki that made
and implemented decisions to call up and fund the troops that ultimately
defeated the Swedes. The Commonwealth seemed to emerge victorious
from all this mid-century warfare, but this victory proved illusory—while
it had not sufffered signifĳicant territorial losses it did lose its role as a
regional power, and that role would soon be taken up by Russia. The vast
devastation also triggered a long-term economic crisis and caused the gen-
try to completely lose their political signifĳicance. Their last attempts at
participating in political life came in the latter half of the reign of King
John Casimir, and their last success was the quite unfortunate election
(contrary to the wishes of the magnates) of his inept successor, Michael
Korybut Wiśniowiecki (1669–1672).

By then, the noble nation already clearly difffered from the one that had

forged the governmental framework of the Republic of the Two Nations.
Above all, the once extraordinarily diverse noble class had become a sig-
nifĳicantly more uniform group, becoming almost completely Polonized
and extensively re-Catholicized. The noble nation became increasingly

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one

closed offf—both literally so, because it became increasingly difffĳicult to
attain noble status, and metaphorically so, since there was a rise in noble
self-satisfaction and mistrust for anything foreign, leading to xenophobia.
The wars fought from the middle of the century onward, in which the
Commonwealth’s external foes were representatives of other confessions
and religions (the Protestant Swedes, Orthodox Russia, and fĳinally the
Muslim Turks) bolstered feelings of distrust towards inhabitants of the
Commonwealth who were not of the dominant Catholic faith. Although
all faiths generally did enjoy full freedom (aside from the Polish Bretheren,
who were expelled following the Swedish wars), there was a rising ten-
dency to push the non-Catholic nobility out of political influence, some-
thing that was not conclusively achieved until the 18th century. The noble
class, convinced that they resided in the ideal state, one that guaranteed
the ideals of liberty and mortal happiness, became increasingly closed offf
to foreign influence and models, looking upon other countries with a
sense of superiority and aversion and upon other classes within their own
country with increasing disdain.

At this time, the political system of the Commonwealth was already

functioning very poorly. Aside from objective factors, this was in part
caused by the policies of the last king of the Vasa dynasty, who had consid-
erable opportunities to reform the system with the support of the szlachta,
yet rejected their offfer of cooperation and attempted instead to bolster his
own power, thereby coming into conflict with both the nobility and the
magnate families. This ultimately led to a bloody civil war (1665–1666) and
further undermined the authority of both the monarchy and the Sejm.

Formally speaking, the mixed monarchy system was still the same as

had been created in the 16th century, but in practice its most important
institutions were not functional or functioned poorly. The king, increas-
ingly restrained in his powers, ceased to be a stable political factor guiding
the actions of the state. The Sejm, paralyzed by the principle of mandatory
unanimity, found it increasingly difffĳicult to perform its function as the
noble society’s central institution of power—under the reign of Michael
Korybut, only 2 Sejm gatherings out of six arrived at a successful conclu-
sion (meaning the adoption of laws), and under his successor only half
(6 of 12) managed to produce any legislation at all. At the same time, the
Sejm was treated less and less as a body representing a uniform state, more
and more as a gathering of representatives of the individual lands, closely
bound by instructions issued by their respective sejmiki. Given the weak-
ness and inefffectiveness of the system, more and more decisions needed
to be made and were made by the sejmiki, which remained relatively

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efffĳicient institutions on the local level. This was symptomatic of a broader
problem—in the mid-17th century the Commonwealth experienced a
phenomenon which researchers describe as the decentralization of
sovereignty. The great magnate families emerged still-powerful from the
mid-century warfare, as the destruction wrought by the wars and the con-
sequent economic crisis did not afffect their vast estates to the same degree
as it had the medium-sized noble estates. Their representatives had long
held the highest state offfĳices, which kings frequently granted to members
of the same family, even though formally such titles were not hereditary
but granted for life. In view of their economic and political might, the
most powerful of the magnates—the Radziwiłł, Pac, Sapieha, Wiśniowiecki
lines—were essentially virtual sovereign rulers within their own vast
estates. The impoverished nobles were no longer a political partner for
them, as they had been in the fĳirst half of the century, but became clients
of one family or another. From the 1680s onward, the magnate courts were
the local centres of political control, and the country was ruled more by
contending factions of powerful magnates than by the king or Sejm. A
ruler who wanted to pursue any comprehensive state-wide policies had
to manoeuvre between such factions. The last monarch able to achieve
success in this regard, perhaps because he was a great magnate himself,
was John III Sobieski (1673–1696). This he spectacularly demonstrated
with his victory at Vienna, a military success and a political success for
both the king and for the Commonwealth—fĳielding an army of 83,000 sol-
diers and forging an alliance to defeat the Ottoman Empire, the most men-
acing enemy at that time. Sobieski’s reign was the last period in the history
of the Commonwealth when despite being weak it still remained an active
participant in international politics. Under his successors from the Saxon
dynasty, it would cease to be an active player in its own right, becoming
instead a pawn manipulated by other European powers.

The period from the end of the 17th century until the 1760s was a time

of crisis not only of the governmental system, but of the entire noble state.
It is sometimes described as a period of magnate oligarchy, but this is a
misleading term because it seems to imply that the formal system of gov-
ernance had changed, and that there now existed some central institution
of magnate power. In reality the Commonwealth’s system of governance
formally remained the same as it had been 100 years previously, only its
institutions had completely lost their capacity for political action. The
reigns of the Wettins (1698–1763) brought a complete paralysis of central
institutions, above all the Sejm. Although by law it still convened every
two years, it had become just a kind of shadow-play—over 66 years, only

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one

fĳive Sejm assemblies concluded in any sort of decision-making at all (and
only one under the reign of Augustus III, 1733–1763), the others ending up
interrupted. In essence, no one had any interest in seeing the Sejm func-
tion well—the king preferred to pursue his own policies without being
checked by the nation, the magnates wanted to be left to govern their own
vast estates, while the szlachta, lamenting the crisis of the Sejm and para-
lyzed by the mythical requirement of full and unanimous consensus and
an obsessive fear of absolutum dominium, were unable to take any steps to
remedy things. The only still-functioning bodies of authority were the
sejmiki, which on a local level also took decisions concerning taxation and
military afffairs. The decentralization of the country continued, and pro-
vincial particularisms intensifĳied. While still remaining a mixed monarchy
in formal terms, the Commonwealth was at that time de facto a kind of
federation of magnate-ruled statelets, and at the same time a fĳield of com-
petition between rivalling magnate factions, which were strong enough to
hamper the king from ruling and to paralyze the Sejm, yet not sufffĳiciently
strong to pursue any autonomous state-wide policies of their own. Besides,
the magnate factions lacked any precise political agendas, and difffered
chiefly in terms of their foreign orientation—variously supporting (and
being supported by) France, the Habsburgs, later Russia, and fĳinally
Prussia.

The domestic predicament was further exacerbated by the unfortunate

effforts of King Augustus II, striving to strengthen royal power after the
model of authority he had enjoyed as elector in Saxony, which triggered
great mistrust and fear among the szlachta, who were profoundly attached
to the liberty-based system. Almost from the outset of his reign, this led to
conflict between the noble citizens and the king, and in consequence to a
further weakening in the system of governance. The crisis was deepened
by Augustus II’s decision to embroil the Commonwealth in the highly
destructive Great Northern War (in Poland: 1701–1709). The Commonwealth
became a completely passive, if not to say submissive participant in inter-
national politics, a realm under the multilateral influence of foreign pow-
ers. It did not pursue its own foreign policy; the king generally implemented
the policies of Saxony, the magnates drew upon the assistance of foreign
courts to further their domestic manoeuvring, while the szlachta, con-
vinced of divine Providence, were uninterested in foreign policy and
reluctant towards any attempts at making the Commonwealth more active
internationally, afraid that this could supply grounds for strengthening the
power of the monarchy. A very dangerous situation emerged—a huge
republic, devoid of its own foreign policy and thus of an army, with

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inefffĳicient state institutions, came to be surrounded by the mightiest
absolute monarchies of the epoch. At least from the 1720s, the surrounding
powers not only meddled in the domestic afffairs of the Commonwealth,
but even determined the shape of its governmental system—the fĳirst in a
long series of treaties guaranteeing that the noble republic system would
remain unchanged (including the liberum veto and the free election) was
signed between Russia and Prussia in 1720. Even worse, from the 1720s
onward, interference by foreign powers and its use as a ploy in domestic
political wrangling began to be treated as a fully acceptable element of the
political game.

The fact that not just the political system, but the very sovereignty of

the state was in crisis was clearly confĳirmed by the election which fol-
lowed the death of King Augustus II (1733), when the neighbouring pow-
ers, Russia and Austria, took armed action to force the Saxon Elector,
Frederick Augustus II, onto the throne (crowned as King Augustus III of
Poland), even though the szlachta had legally elected Stanisław (Stanislaus)
Leszczyński, an extraordinarily popular magnate from Wielkopolska (the
father-in-law of Louis XV of France). This came as a huge shock for the
noble society, although positive lessons would not be learned from it for
several more decades. The epoch of King Augustus III was a time of great
political stagnation, but it was then that timid discussion began about the
need to reform the political system of the Commonwealth. The degenera-
tion of the system had been criticized previously, the szlachta had already
realized that it was not functioning as well as it had in the times of their
quite mythical “forebears” and lamented the demise of political virtue, yet
no positive agendas for dealing with the crisis had been put forward,
mainly out of the longstanding fear that any change might lead to despo-
tism on the monarch’s part—omnis mutatio periculosa (any change is dan-
gerous) was one of the axioms of Polish political thinking at least from
turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. Starting in the 1740s certain individuals
began to speak out, proposing certain alterations, sometimes extensive
ones, to the existing organization of the system of governance. They were
put forward by the authors of political writings—in A Free Voice Ensuring
Freedom, a work ascribed to Stanisław Leszczyński, in the publications of
Stanisław Poniatowski and Stefan Garczyński, and in Stanisław Konarski’s
On the Means of Efffective Council (1761–1763), fĳiercely attacking the liberum
veto. The need for reform was also perceived by the leaders of the two
main magnate factions at that time, the Czartoryskis (simply known as
“the family”) and the Potockis. However, in political practice they remained
focused on their own short-term, particular interests and no attempt at

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overcoming the political paralysis was made down to the end of Augustus
III’s reign.

Such attempts would not be made until after his death, under very

inauspicious political conditions, when the Commonwealth was already
de facto a Russian protectorate. The effforts made by King Stanisław August
(Stanislaus Augustus) Poniatowski (1764–1795) to curb the liberum veto
principle and to streamline the organization of the central institutions to
some extent were initially received very badly by a signifĳicant portion of
the szlachta, as an endeavour striving towards absolutum dominium. This
mood of discontent was taken advantage of by the magnates on the one
hand, anxious to preserve their own influence, and by Russia on the other,
not eager to see any reforms that might strengthen the Commonwealth.
This triggered the Commonwealth’s last noble “confederation” formed
against the king, known as the Confederation of Bar. The resulting bloody
civil war, which at the same time was a war against an external enemy
because Russian troops played a large role, lasted four years (1768–1772)
and ended in the First Partition of the Commonwealth and its complete
subjugation to Russia. These dramatic events triggered a revival in politi-
cal interest among the gentry. This group had again begun to gain in
importance, as the economic situation began to improve from the middle
of the century onwards. At the same time, it had borne the main costs of
the events of 1768–1772, a fact that severely undermined its trust in the
magnate leaders. The gentry also began to realize that the real threat to
their freedoms was posed not by Poniatowski the alleged tyrant, but by a
loss of sovereignty and by foreign meddling in domestic state afffairs. This
group did not become politically active immediately, and it took even lon-
ger for it to fully grasp the need for change. Besides, under Russia’s protec-
torate the possibility for any sort of political action was highly limited, and
governmental reforms were completely impossible. They only became
attemptable in 1788–1792, when the longest Sejm ever held in the Republic
of the Two Nations, known as the Four-Year Sejm, convened under an aus-
picious international situation. The king undoubtedly played a huge role
in this assembly, probably as the only participant who had an overall con-
cept for state reform that had been worked out long in advance. The mag-
nate leaders were quite signifĳicant, especially Ignacy Potocki, but there
was also a large group of gentry representatives present, independent and
taking on ever-greater political signifĳicance. There was extraordinarily
lively political discussion not only in the Sejm itself, but also outside it—
the period saw a true outpouring of political writings. Burghers also joined
in, demanding full civil rights and an influence over political decisions.

the

polish

szlachta and their state

Ultimately, after three years of discussion and disputes, on 3 May 1791,
what was called a “Government Act” was adopted—the fĳirst modern con-
stitution in Europe, and the second in the world. Later known as the
Constitution of the Third of May, it was drafted based on foreign mod-
els (especially the English model) and modern political theories
(Montesquieu, Rousseau), but also based on the Polish political tradi-
tion. In 11 short articles, it laid the foundation for a political system that
turned the anachronistic and long-inefffĳicient system of mixed monar-
chy into a modern parliamentary monarchy, with a sovereign nation, a
hereditary monarch (upon Stanisław August’s death this was meant to be
Elector Frederick Augustus III of Saxony and then his descendants), a
separation and balance of powers, and a regularly convening parliamen-
tary assembly. As an aside, it is worth noting that modernization was
in fact a relatively easy task despite the decentralization of the Common-
wealth, since it was a country quite uniform in legal and administrative
terms, there were no local privileges, and no new uniform structure of
power needed to be forged for the entire country. Rather, the functioning
of the existing Sejm, sejmiki, and courts merely needed to be stream-
lined—and this is precisely what the Constitution of the Third of May
achieved. Signifĳicantly, it likewise precipitated processes of social change:
although political power remained vested in the szlachta, by giving the
burghers full civil rights and limited political rights and by placing the
peasants under the protection of the Republic, a fĳirst step was taken
towards eliminating the class-based society, replacing the noble nation
with a nation of all Poles. By Polish standards, these changes were revolu-
tionary and were recognized as such by European opinion, which indeed
described them as “the Polish revolution”. Although initially not imple-
mented too formally, the reforms were accepted by a majority of noble
society in the sejmiki gatherings of February 1792, which constituted a kind
of referendum.

The Commonwealth thus joined in the general European process of

modernization, ceasing to be the nation of just a single class, a nation of
the nobility. But unfortunately, the noble and bourgeois citizens would
never have the opportunity to follow through with such reforms. The
international situation again took a turn for the worse, leading to a Russian
invasion (1792) dealing a defeat to the still weak troops of the
Commonwealth. The Second Partition ensued, and then after the short
interlude of the Kościuszko Uprising, which saw the nobility fĳighting
alongside the bourgeoisie for freedom, the Third Partition quite simply
wiped the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth offf the map of Europe.

24 chapter

one

The state which the nobility had formed back in the 16th century thus

met its demise at the very moment when it was ceasing to be just a “noble”
state, just when it was managing to overcome its long-standing crisis, just
when anarchy was being lifted and governmental and social reforms were
achieving great success. This fact is worth stressing, since contrary to what
the partitioning powers maintained the partitions were not in fact caused
by the weakness and anarchy of the Commonwealth—although such fac-
tors defĳinitely made the partitions easier to carry out.

1 “Uwagi względem Konstytucyi dnia 3 maja zapadłej”, Pamiętnik Historyczno-Polityczny,

June 1791.

2 This ecstatic statement was penned by a defender of the old freedom during the Four-

Year Sejm: Uwagi przeciw elekcyi i sukcesyi tronu w Polszcze, n.p. 1791, p. 9.

3 [F. S. Jezierski], O bezkrólewiach w Polszcze i wybieraniu królów[…], Warsaw 1790, p. 54.

CHAPTER TWO

GOLDEN LIBERTY—A NOBLE PRIVILEGE OR UNIVERSAL IDEA?

“Let us begin with what Poles are concerned with most—freedom”, Piotr
Świtkowski wrote in 1791,1 and his words reflected well the views of his
own time as well as those that had prevailed 100 and 200 years previously.
Starting already in the 16th century, the concept of freedom, love for free-
dom, concern for preserving freedom, and a constant fear of losing free-
dom were permanent elements not just of political discussion, but nearly
every public statement made in the Republic of the Two Nations. Freedom
was perhaps the most frequently appearing catchword in political trea-
tises and propaganda pamphlets, in addresses to the Sejm, sejmiki, and
courts, in sermons and laudations, where it featured as the supreme value,
the most cherished treasure of the Poles. How precious a commodity free-
dom was seen as is indicated by the numerous epithets heaped upon it:
liberty was not just described as “golden”, it was held up as the most prized
and beautiful gemstone, as a treasure, as the “honour of the world”, as the
most precious gift bequeathed by heaven or by nature (depending on the
context and the views of the author), as a “refĳined gift, a magnifĳicent gift,
so magnifĳicent that the human mind is unable to fathom it”.2 It was sacred,
inestimable, sweet. This last adjective was perhaps the most popular: the
slogan libertas patriae dulcissima rerum, taken from the Romans, was
repeated in the Commonwealth from the 16th century onward. The sweet
taste of freedom was appreciated even by 18th-century critics of unbridled
anarchy. Franciszek Salezy Jezierski—by no means a Sarmatian noble-
man, but rather a leading Polish reformer of the late 18th century—felt
that liberty was “a gift from Heaven to sweeten the unpleasant life of mor-
tals on Earth”.3 It seems uncontroversial to conclude that freedom was in
the Polish writings and speeches not just a precious commodity, but
indeed the most precious one of all, verging upon the sacrum. This is con-
fĳirmed by the turn of phrase “faith and freedom” that was popular in the

26 chapter

two

4 Krótkie rzeczy potrzebnych z strony wolności a swobód polskich zebranie, przez tego,

który wszego dobrego życzy ojczyźnie swojej roku 1587, 12 februarii, ed. K. J. Turowski, Kraków
1859, p. 13.

5 J. Zamoyski, Votum … na sejmie warszawskim, już ostatnim za jego żywota, w r. 1605. In:

Pisma polityczne z czasów rokoszu Zebrzydowskiego 1606–1608, ed. J. Czubek, vol. 2: Kraków
1918, p. 94.

6 Naprawa Rzeczypospolitej do elekcyi nowego króla (1573), ed. K. J. Turowski, Kraków

1859, p. 4.

7 Wolność polska rozmową Polaka z Francuzem roztrząśniona, ed. T. Wierzbowski,

Biblioteka zapomnianych poetów i prozaików polskich XVI - XVIII w., vol. 21, Warsaw
1904, p. 7.

17th and especially 18th centuries, equating liberty with the supreme spiri-
tual value. Without freedom, all other values were worthless. Without
freedom, one could not enjoy wealth, success, or even family life. This had
been stressed very heavily by the Renaissance authors at the very dawn of
the Republic of the Two Nations: “Without this gem, all other values be
next to nothing” wrote the author of one pamphlet dating to 1587.4 The
Polish nobility considered themselves to be the possessors of this treasure
starting in the 16th century. Fundamentum nostrae reipublicae libertas est
said Jan Zamoyski in 1605,5 but the conviction he voiced had been around
earlier. It was expressed even prior to the creation of the Republic of the
Two Nations, under the reign of the last Jagiellonian ruler. This conviction
was a source of pride, or even hubris—especially since it was accompa-
nied by a belief that the Polish freedom was something extraordinary and
unparalleled, that no one enjoyed such liberty as the Poles did. This Polish
freedom was viewed not only as the most precious jewel, but as the only
such jewel anywhere in Europe, if not the world. As early as in 1573, an
anonymous author wrote with pride: “No nation in the world hath greater
freedoms and liberties than we”.6 For 200 years, it was reiterated that “there
is no nation under the sun as free as Poland”.7

This latter opinion was shared up to a point by foreign observers at that

time, although they did not share the rapture professed by citizens of the
Commonwealth. Foreigners wrote about the Polish “Golden Liberty” with
surprise, sometimes with admiration, but more often with disapproval,
and later mainly focused on its degradation, descending into anarchy.
Above all they stressed the idiosyncrasy of the Commonwealth’s govern-
mental system, portraying Poland as an oddity and the laughingstock of
Europe. These critical views found reflection in subsequent historiogra-
phy, mainly in the notion of the Polish nobility’s odd views on the state and
freedom, of the exotic political “Sarmatism” that made the Polish nobility
and its ideology stand out against other European concepts. The Polish

golden liberty—a noble privilege or universal idea?

nobility was seen as comparing unfavourably in this regard, as hampering
the adoption of new solutions and ideas. Perhaps, however, analysis of the
notion of freedom that was so focal for the szlachta would do better not to
treat it as some kind of Sarmatian oddity, but rather to take greater account
of the European perspective—the traditions of thought about the state,
society, and its freedoms that were common to the entire continent.

The question immediately arises of whether some sort of deeper, real

content can be unearthed from beneath these layers of well-worn clichés.
Quite often one encounters the assertion that the “Golden Liberty” in fact
had no theoretical underpinnings, that it was more of a myth functioning
within the communal consciousness than any well-thought-out concept,
that hackneyed platitudes singing the praises of “Queen Liberty” in fact
merely concealed the nobility’s own egotism and lack of broader political
horizons. Indeed, it cannot be denied that freedom was a broadly circu-
lated cliché, used and abused in widely varying contexts, sometimes
merely in order to embellish political statements or to stress the gracious-
ness of the orator, portraying himself as concerned for the highest com-
mon good. At other times it was invoked to manipulate the fears and
phobias of the noble society in order to achieve short-term political or
wholly private objectives. But even such writings and speeches should not
be overlooked, since seemingly empty banalities often spring from a
deeper source, from certain fundamental views and convictions that char-
acterize a given community. The Polish clichés concerning freedom were
deeply rooted in a great deal of tradition (by no means just Polish) of
thought about the state and liberty. Although they were sometimes (or
often) rattled offf quite unthinkingly, without much political reflection,
they still reflected a coherent, underlying, older theory of liberty.

Besides, the Polish freedom was in fact not just a cliché, but also a topic

of serious deliberation and dispute among prominent and less-prominent
authors starting as far back as the 16th century—sufffĳice it to mention the
names of such Renaissance-era architects of the freedom doctrine’s foun-
dations as Stanisław Orzechowski or their critics Andrzej Wolan and
Łukasz Górnicki, such 17th-century analysts of liberty as Łukasz Opaliński,
Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro, and Szymon Starowolski, or those 18th-
century writers who sought to restore it to its former glory, such as
Stanisław Leszczyński and Stanisław Konarski, or to adapt it in line with
the latest Western proposals, like Józef Wybicki, Hugon Kołłątaj, and
Stanisław Staszic. And so, given that Andrzej Wolan had already written
his treatise De libertate politica seu civili in 1572 and liberty was indeed the
centrepiece of all political discussion, whence came the conviction that

28 chapter

two

“Golden Liberty” was a shallow doctrine, that Polish freedom lacked any
theory? Presumably from the fact that one characteristic trait of Polish
statements on political issues—not just those produced in response to
current events, aimed at achieving short-term objectives, but also longer
treatises—was that they were very closely intermeshed with the concrete
realities of the Commonwealth. Polish authors were not entirely alone in
this regard, as many seemingly abstract writings about the ideal state had
in fact drawn upon the realities surrounding and inspiring the author—
Machiavelli watched the fall of the Republic of Florence, Bodin looked
upon the emerging French absolute monarchy, Locke witnessed England
in its fĳinal clash with the Stuarts, and Montesquieu saw France under
Louis XV. However, Polish writers were not only shaped and guided by
observations of their specifĳic surrounding realities, but referred much
more straightforwardly to their own specifĳic here-and-now. Note that this
to some degree brings the Polish deliberations closer to the writings of the
English theoreticians of the republican system from the English Revolution
period, and also to the writings of participants in the political debate in
England during the times of the Hanover dynasty. Like England, the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth was a country where at least some of the
inhabitants exerted, or at least believed that they exerted, an influence
over governance, hence the relatively broad (even if not deep) interest in
political and governmental afffairs, especially as concerned what was rec-
ognized as the system’s foundations. Freedom represented one of the
main subjects, if not the main subject of such debate, yet because of the
very concrete way in which the state problems were presented, the authors
did not always defĳine freedom or subject the concept to much analysis.
Sometimes, taking these things to be obvious, they proceeded immedi-
ately to the issues they considered most important: the threats facing lib-
erty, the distortion of liberty, guarantees of liberty, etc. However, close
reading of these writings yields a rich concept of freedom, with a theoreti-
cal foundation that is considerable, although not always posited in out-
right fashion.

To begin with, analysis of the Polish concept of liberty should start by

addressing the quite fundamental question of whether one can speak of
liberty in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at all, or just of various
freedoms understood as class privileges, similar to those enjoyed by the
nobility in other European countries. This latter interpretation seems to
be confĳirmed by the statements, popular in Poland from the 16th century
to the late 18th century, dealing with the “freedoms and rights” of the
noble estate. Deputies at the Sejm gatherings demanded respect for their

golden liberty—a noble privilege or universal idea?

8 J. Olszewski, Snopek najjaśniejszego Zygmunta III Króla Polskiego…, Wilno 1632, cited

from E. Opaliński, Kultura polityczna szlachty polskiej w latach 1587–1652, Warsaw 1995,
p. 82.

9 H. Kołłątaj, Ostatnia przestroga dla Polski (1790), ed. Ł. Kądziela, Kołłątaj i inni. Z pub-

licystyki doby Sejmu Czteroletniego, Warsaw 1991, p. 110.

liberties and rights, the szlachta formed confederative leagues in defence
of the “laws, freedoms, and liberties of the Two Nations”, kings ascending
the throne swore to guarantee the national “liberties and freedoms”, and
even the Constitution of the Third of May 1791 (in Article II—The Landed
Nobility) assured the noble estate of the inviolability of “all liberties, free-
doms, and prerogatives”. What seems to have been the quite widespread
opinion was summed up in the 17th century by Jakub Olszewski, who quite
blatantly identifĳied freedom with privileges: “A Pole [is] free with respect
to his privileges, which he therefore calls his freedom”.8 Such an under-
standing of liberty was criticized by Kołłątaj at the end of the 18th century,
asserting that his forebears had “based their own freedom and liberty
upon exceptional privileges”.9 It cannot be denied that a similar convic-
tion was popular among the nobility practically until the very end of the
Republic of the Two Nations. However, it would be not just an oversimpli-
fĳication but even a complete misrepresentation to assert that this was the
only, or even the prevailing way of understanding freedom at that time
(particularly as regards political theory).

Before we set about analyzing this issue, we should reiterate some of

the points of the previous chapter. The rights of the Polish nobility difffered
quite signifĳicantly from the privileges enjoyed by the noble class in other
countries. Aside from their economic rights, high ranking within the social
hierarchy, and ascendancy over the peasantry, these included a whole
range of political rights underpinned by civil rights. This was a set of pre-
rogatives that not only guaranteed the privileges of a single class, but also
formed a foundation for the governmental system of the republic, thus
essentially rendering this class a political nation. It is widely known that
from the early 17th century onward, the Polish szlachta viewed themselves
as constituting the entire nation. This peculiar blindness to other classes
had come under criticism already in the 16th century (for instance by
Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski and Andrzej Wolan), and it once again became
a point of criticism by reformers at the end of the 18th century, and later
also by subsequent researchers of the old-Polish epoch. Yet there can be
no denying that if one looks at things in terms of governance, the noble
citizens, enjoying full political rights, did have certain grounds to perceive
themselves as constituting “the nation” in a political, but not ethnic sense

30 chapter

two

10 S. Wysocki, Orator Polonus, Warsaw 1740, p. 89.

of the word. What is important for the present discussion, besides, is to
note the very fact that the nobility identifĳied the nation with itself, rather
than passing judgement on that fact as such. However it is judged, this
assumption had a very signifĳicant impact on the old-Polish concept of lib-
erty. Although freedom was undoubtedly the privilege of just a single class,
this assumption enabled freedom to be considered in the same terms as it
had been contemplated in European thought since antiquity.

And here it is time to readdress the issue of how liberty was understood

by the szlachta, and to note another highly signifĳicant fact: among the citi-
zens of the Republic of the Two Nations, there was a deeply-set conviction
shared not only by political writers, but also it seems by the nobility in
general, that alongside the freedoms/privileges listed above there existed
one single indivisible liberty—the freedom to determine afffairs for one-
self and one’s country. To express it most briefly, we can say that starting
already in the 16th century, for the Poles freedom entailed being citizens
dependent upon their own will, rather than on the will of their king.
Importantly, under this construal, the noble privileges did not so much
constitute liberty itself (or liberties), but rather constituted legal guaran-
tees of liberty (in the singular); conversely, such liberty constituted the
basis for the inviolability of those rights. This was handsomely summed up
by Samuel Wysocki: “Upon liberty everyone’s freedoms, happiness and life
hinges”.10 Such freedom was taken as the supreme value, and at the same
time to be the most precious treasure of every free Pole. No less impor-
tantly, this very notion of freedom was already being analyzed by Polish
authors dealing with the theory of the state starting back in the 16th
century.

This Polish notion of liberty, too, seemed to Western critics to be some-

thing odd, anarchic, and by the 18th century anachronistic, running
against the grain of tendencies and concepts then popular throughout
Europe. And once again, some trace of this critical view has survived in
the opinions of researchers who while describing and judging the so-
called “Polish liberty” have compared it to the concepts and solutions
adopted in Western Europe since the 17th century. The Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth and its political system have been judged from the stand-
point of the absolute monarchy, while the Polish understanding of free-
dom has been compared against the concepts created by the precursors of
the liberal ideas, starting from Hobbes. Yet it should be borne in mind that

golden liberty—a noble privilege or universal idea?

although the liberal concept of freedom did indeed lay the foundation for
today’s way of thinking—above all the vision of negative freedom as
defĳined by Isaiah Berlin and Gerald C. Mac Callum, i.e. the ability to pur-
sue individual desires without external limitations—this is still not the
only way to think about freedom, just like absolute monarchy was not the
only route of state development. In recent years, other thinkers, especially
from the English-speaking countries (Philip Pettit, Quentin Skinner), have
pointed out that there was another European tradition of conceptualizing
freedom, one stretching back earlier than the liberal tradition and no less
important: the concept of freedom that is described most often as the
“republican idea”. This concept had been developed by the eulogists of the
Roman Republic—Sallust, Livy, Cicero, drawing upon the vision of a free
state with a mixed system of government that had fĳirst been set forth by
Aristotle and then continued by Polybius. In the Renaissance it was revived
by Machiavelli, who moulded it after his own fashion, and by the admirers
of the Republic of Venice; later it was invoked by Dutchmen protesting
against the despotism of the Spanish king and by the opponents of the
Stewarts during the English Revolution. Ultimately, in the 18th century,
this tradition inspired such thinkers as Montesquieu (partially so) and
Rousseau, to some extent the architects of the constitutional system of the
United States of America, and the leaders of the French Revolution.

This republican tradition, unlike the liberal concept, did not envision

freedom as a natural human right, irrespective of what political system
one lived under, but rather saw it as indigenous to a specifĳic model of gov-
ernment—the mixed monarchy system, where not only was an ideal bal-
ance preserved between the various interests of members of society, but
the people/nation, understood in one way or another, had a hand in wield-
ing power. Unlike the authors of the liberal doctrine of freedom, propo-
nents of this republican freedom believed that the notion of being unfree
did not necessarily mean having one’s rights and freedoms as a citizen vio-
lated in some specifĳic way, but simply being at the mercy of someone else’s
will—or to phrase it in terms of Roman law, being in potestate domini
(in the power of a master). On this interpretation, to remain free, to keep
one’s negative freedom or the freedom to pursue one’s own ends, one had
to have a share of power since only someone who could freely decide mat-
ters for themselves was truly free. The Polish concept of freedom formed
part of this republican tradition, which was well-known and accepted in
Poland already in the Renaissance epoch. Polish authors not only invoked
the widely known Roman authors in this regard, but also drew on Aristotle’s
theory of the state (which Poles had become familiar with back in the

32 chapter

two

11 J. Olszewski, op. cit., p. 82.
12 Naprawa Rzeczypospolitej do elekcyi nowego króla…, p. 18.
13 Libera respublica quae sit. In: Pisma polityczne z czasów rokoszu …, vol. 2, p. 403.

15th century and which was further developed in the 16th century by
Stanisław Orzechowski and Sebastian Petrycy of Pilzno), on the writers of
the Italian Renaissance (especially the proponents of the myth of the
Republic of Venice, chiefly Contarini), and even, although decidedly less
commonly, on the concepts of Machiavelli.

It was not just theoreticians of the state, but also noble politicians who

stressed in their writings that the individual liberties of citizens depend
on their having the right to participate in ordaining laws and deciding
state afffairs. It was repeatedly pointed out that Polish freedom was a free-
dom “under the law”, albeit a self-enacted law—although the above-
quoted Jakub Olszewski identifĳied liberty with privileges in his speech, he
immediately went on to note that a Pole is

free with regard to the law, to whose yoke he does not subject his own neck
if not ordained at his will, free with regard to the truth, which he boldly
demands at Sejms from the Lord himself.11

The conviction that the basis for freedom was an ability to decide afffairs
for oneself, stretching back to the mid-16th century, was deeply ingrained
and widespread. A free man determined matters for himself—and “for
oneself” is perhaps one of the commonest phrasings encountered in the
Polish writings on freedom. The actions of free citizens were restricted
only by the imperatives of law, which they of course enacted for them-
selves. One anonymous politician wrote in 1573:

Great is the common freedom, that I am not ruled by any lord as he wishes
and desires, or by any other frivolous individual, but by my brother (…), and
the more agreeable it is for me as a free man to bear what I myself and my
brother, exalted by me to do so, have consented to bear,12

and thirty years later an anonymous rokosz insurrectionist explained that
the law governing the republic is called a “common law” because

everyone voluntarily ordains that law upon themselves, so that the law be
not burdensome upon him who ordains it upon himself.13

The conviction that freedom above all meant self-determination for citi-
zens endured until the end of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In
keeping with the republican concept, the participants in the Polish discus-
sions on freedom believed that personal freedom, the unrestrained

golden liberty—a noble privilege or universal idea?

14 A. Małachowski, speech to the Sejm in 1780. In: Diariusz sejmu wolnego ordynaryjnego

warszawskiego… 1780, Warsaw 1781, p. 186.

15 Krótkie rzeczy potrzebnych z strony wolności a swobód polskich zebranie…, p. 11.
16 A. M. Fredro, Praerogativa popularis status repraesentatur Monarchiam saepius nisi

regnanti bonam, 1668. Polish trans. by T. Włodarczyk. In: Filozofĳia i myśl społeczna XVII
wieku, ed. Z. Ogonowski, Warsaw 1979, vol. 1, p. 335.

endeavour to achieve individual goals and satisfy individual needs, is only
possible where citizens are free to participate in public life, in governance
(by today’s defĳinitions we would say: where they enjoyed positive free-
dom, although these types of freedom were not yet distinguished by think-
ers of that era, who only perceived diffferent facets, diffferent domains of
exercising the very same freedom). With only a few exceptions, this con-
viction was voiced by nearly all participants in political discussion in the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for more than 200 years, irrespective of
how they diagnosed the Polish realities or what proposals they had to offfer
their countrymen.

For the Poles (i.e. the Polish nobility), be it in the 16th or 18th century, it

was something that contradicted freedom and was completely unaccept-
able to be in a situation when

every citizen’s property, honour, and life depended on the eccentricities of a
single autocrat.14

As the author of one anonymous publication from the 16th century wrote:

Because there they have every abundance, yet they are not owned by those
who possess them. And moreover, whenever the supreme ruler so deems,
thou must present thyself and allow thyself to be judged as he seeth fĳit and
whenever thou be so ordered; when they order so needlessly, should thou
wish to avoid trouble then mount thy horse.15

In the mid-17th century Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro put this even more
aptly:

Many people fare well under absolute rule, especially if they chance to have
a good ruler. But such freedom I may describe as a freedom at another’s
mercy, not real freedom, because the people are constantly on the verge of
domination and the people’s blood and life are in danger under the lord,
who hath the right to lash out freely and with impunity should he fly into a
rage.16

Like other proponents of republican freedom, the Poles believed that
such freedom could be realized only in a state with a mixed system of
governance, combining three elements: monarchic, aristocratic, and

34 chapter

two

17 Libera respublica…, p. 403.
18 Libera respublica…, p. 407.
19 Cited from C. Backvis, Szkice o kulturze staropolskiej, Warsaw 1975, p. 731.

democratic (in Poland’s case the king, the Senate, and the Sejm represent-
ing the nobility at large). In the 16th century and the fĳirst half of the 17th
century, the system of rule was most often described as monarchia mixta
or regimen mixtum, later as mixed government. This use of the term
monarchia/regimen does not signify that the Poles considered their coun-
try a monarchy, after the French model for instance. Rather, the stress
should be seen as falling on the qualifying adjective, on the fact that this
mixed system of rule laid the foundation for an ideal republic. As early as
in 1606 the author of a rokosz insurrectionist pamphlet explained:

We call it rempublicam liberam when not one but three estates govern there
and rule simul et semper [together and always].17

This citation shows a characteristic stressing the notion of a “free repub-
lic”, an important phrasing at that time since the term “republic” alone was
frequently used to describe any state, irrespective of its system of
governance.

The Polish nobility had a profound sense of being part of a common,

European tradition of free states. This is illustrated by comparisons and
references made to other republics. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
was seen as a continuator of the tradition of the great republics of antiq-
uity, although links to contemporary states were also perceived. This was
nicely summed up by the same insurrectionist author:

And here be the form of Republics which we call free (…) and of which there
have been but three in the world: the Roman, (…) then it shifted to the
Venetians there it remains to this day. Our forbears formed this third of their
own, ad normam [after the model of] the Venetian one….18

Already prior to him, Marcin Kromer had likened Poland to Sparta and
Venice. In 1587, papal nuncio Girolamo Lippomano wrote that “without
even the slightest of doubts the Poles greatly revere Venice, seeing a like-
ness to the organization of government in their own republic”.19 It is telling
how strongly these writings are afffected by the myth of Venice, fĳirst cre-
ated by the Florentines fascinated with “La Serenissima”, but popular
throughout Europe. That myth proved to be more resilient in Poland than
elsewhere and survived all the way until the mid-18th century, although in
other countries Venice was at that time already garnering harsh criticism.

golden liberty—a noble privilege or universal idea?

20 Komparacyja wolności polskiej i litewskiej z wolnością postronnych książąt udzielnych,

a mianowicie Rzeszy Niemieckiej, a Polono Borusso, [c. 1697], manuscript 191 at the
Czartoryski Library, p. 289.

21 Krótkie rzeczy potrzebnych …, p. 12.

It is worth noting that although the conviction of Poland and the Poles
being completely diffferent from other European countries is considered to
be a standing element of “Sarmatian” views, it is not unconditionally true.
The Polish nobility did perceive a similarity to, and even a certain com-
monality with other countries considered to be free, guided by the prin-
ciple that freedom,

when perfect, makes similar and binds together nations and lands, although
they may lie under diffferent suns.20

Apart from the great republics of antiquity and the Italian republics, in the
17th century mention started to be made of Holland and Switzerland, and
in the 18th century of freedom-age Sweden, the United States, and (with
certain reservations) England. Interestingly, the representatives of the
“noble nation”, describing themselves as citizens, saw themselves as hav-
ing much more in common with the citizens of other republics—such as
Venice or Holland—than with the noble class living in absolute monar-
chies, whom they described as “subjects”, a term also used for the Polish
peasantry. Already in the 16th century, this distinction was clearly
expressed by one anonymous author:

To be a Polish nobleman is to be the supreme ruler in other lands, whereas
to be a nobleman in other lands is to be but the subject of a Polish
nobleman.21

Things in this regard varied in practice, and the splendour of the French
aristocracy did make a distinctly greater impression on Polish travellers
than the simplicity and hard-working attitude of the Dutch burghers, but
in theory it was the latter that instilled the greatest sympathy, as free and
independent people who determined their own fate. This sense of com-
munity among free peoples and sympathy for all those who fought for
freedom still made themselves felt near the end of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth. Towards the end of the 18th century, its noble citizens
were clearly sympathetic not only with the American Colonies’ fĳight for
independence, but also, irrespective of its bourgeois character, with the
French Revolution (at least until 1792), which they saw as the French liber-
ating themselves from monarchic despotism. Who knows whether the

36 chapter

two

22 A. Pułaski, speech delivered on 07 Nov. 1778, Zbiór mów różnych w czasie sejmu

sześcioniedzielnego roku 1778 mianych, Wilno 1778, n.pag.

conviction that freedom binds together all those peoples who enjoy it, or
let us say who fĳight for it, may have been the ultimate root of the 19th-
century Polish ideal of fĳighting “for your freedom and ours”? That this
might be more than just wanton speculation seems to be confĳirmed by the
words of Antoni Pułaski when he interceded in the Sejm on behalf of his
brother Kazimierz, who had been sentenced to banishment for attempt-
ing to take King Stanisław August hostage and was then serving in the
American army (with the rank of general). When praising his brother’s
deeds in the fĳight for US independence, Antoni stated:

Although he chose to be far away, some sort of glory remains due to him for
risking his life for the sake of his own homeland by defending the liberty of
others.22

Since freedom could be fully realized in all its aspects only in a free state,
the central concern of all citizens should be to protect this state, and
thereby also their own liberty. This conviction, common to all the propo-
nents of republican solutions, was likewise shared by the Poles. Although
the szlachta’s fear of losing their freedom sometimes even became a pho-
bia, it rested on the very same anxieties that had underpinned Cicero’s
speeches, Machiavelli’s Discorsi, and statements by the Englishmen com-
bating Charles I, on the same conviction that freedom is something fragile
and easily lost. In essence, a free state could face two dangers: the loss of
its sovereignty, which entailed becoming dependent upon the will of a for-
eign power, or the despotism of its own monarch. In the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, the latter of these two threats was defĳinitely a source of
greater fear. This stemmed in large part from the real situation in Poland at
the time when the freedom-minded ideology of the szlachta was being
moulded. No external threat was tangible in the late 16th and fĳirst half of
the 17th century, whereas royal power was still strong enough that it was
perceived as a real danger to the delicate balance of mixed government.
The notion that the king could pose a threat to the republic and to the
freedom of its citizens instilled fear not just in the Polish nobility; English
writers during the time of the 17th-century struggle against the Stuart
dynasty also devoted a great deal of attention to this very issue. The Poles
and the English harboured the same apprehensions about leaving a stand-
ing army at the disposal of a king, or about a king being granted stable
income independent of parliament’s decisions. However, in Poland this

golden liberty—a noble privilege or universal idea?

23 J. Zamoyski, Votum …, p. 92.

anxiety with time grew virtually into an obsession and in the fĳirst half of
the 18th century all ideas for reforming the inefffective system of gover-
nance were halted by this fear of royal despotism, of a ruler just waiting to
pounce on the citizens’ liberty.

Another element of the Polish concept of freedom, directly invoking

the European republican tradition, was the conviction that the citizens of
the free Commonwealth had a duty to show concern for its strength and
efffectiveness, to participate actively in public life. This concept had already
been voiced by the writers of the Polish renaissance, and moreover this is
how the noble citizens viewed their duties at the turn of the 16th and 17th
centuries. Even if as time passed such concern for the public good often
became an empty platitude eagerly used as an embellishment to public
statements in order to cover up quite private objectives, this does not
change the fact that the notion was also one of the foundations of Polish
thinking about freedom. Polish political thinkers were not alone in grap-
pling with this issue. It was also deliberated by Italian republican theoreti-
cians during the Renaissance, and like the Polish writers they too invoked
earlier traditions, in this case chiefly the Roman tradition. On this inter-
pretation, freedom was envisioned no longer as just a privilege but as a
duty imposed on citizens, demanding certain attitudes and behaviours
from them—what the Italians called vita activa and the English termed
active citizenship. The fate of the free state, and thus of freedom itself,
hinged on such attitudes and behaviours.

It is also worth stressing that a distinction between patriotic love for the

homeland and one’s duties to the king came to be drawn in the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth earlier than in other countries. Although Jan
Zamoyski could still say to King Sigismund III that he did

not distinguish between Your Royal Majesty and the Republic, because this
should be one and the same and always go coniunctim [together], and who-
ever wishes to separate them does so wrongly,23

loyalty towards the ruler/dynasty quickly shifted into the background (if
not even farther) in favour of loyalty towards the common republic and
common values. Besides, this concerns not just political theory, but also
the practice of law and governance. As early as in 1588, anticipating
other European countries by many years, a distinction was introduced in
Polish law between the crime of betraying the country and the crime of
lese majesty (offfending the dignity of the sovereign). We might say that the

38 chapter

two

24 J. Zamoyski, Votum…, p. 95.
25 Ł. Opaliński, Rozmowa plebana z ziemianiem [1641]. In: idem, Pisma polskie, ed.

Ł. Kamykowski, Warsaw 1938, p. 35.

26 A. M. Fredro, Punctum primum de potentia populi…, [1668]. Polish trans. by

J. Domański. In: Filozofĳia…., vol. 1, p. 348.

27 Ł. Opaliński, Obrona Polski przeciw Janowi Barklayowi. In: idem, Wybór pism, ed.

S. Grzeszczuk, Wrocław 1959, p. 197.

homeland-and-freedom combination in a sense supplanted the former
homeland-and-king association. One could still be a patriot while being
opposed to, or even in outright defĳiance of the monarch, an idea stressed
by the participants of all the great uprisings and insurrections against the
king—from the Zebrzydowski rokosz (1606), the Lubomirski rokosz (1666),
to the Confederation of Bar (1768–1772). On the other hand, love for the
homeland was demanded of the king just as it was demanded of citizens:

Oh king, do love this homeland of ours” was a phrase reiterated to suc-

cessive monarchs, with the explanation that “whatever kings have they
have from it [the homeland], whatever they give they give from its
wealth.24

Rulers, just like citizens, were expected to serve the Republic.
No one could shirk this obligatory service, this concern for the public

good, this duty to the common state and thus to liberty itself. As Łukasz
Opaliński reminded Poles:

There can be no common good without joint efffort and service (…), because
if no one wanted to bear such a burden the common homeland would have
to be in jeopardy, together with the private freedom that you so love.25

It turned out that the basic right entailed by republican freedom—
self-determination, participation in governance—was at the same time a
duty. It was a political and moral imperative to participate in public life, to
deliberate the fate of the homeland, and fĳinally to defend it and its free-
dom. In the 17th century Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro wrote:

Citizens of equal dignity serve the Republic with their virtue, fĳidelity, and
love and faithfully take care of what has been entrusted to them, not as ser-
vants but indeed as citizens (…) who at the same time govern and are gov-
erned—not for the sake of power and the benefĳit of the individual, but for
the Republic and for freedom.26

This was a burden voluntarily shouldered—Łukasz Opaliński stated with
pride:

We take care of the Republic because it so pleases us. Without being coerced
we take duties upon ourselves, we do not take them offf without reason, such
as when so ordered.27

golden liberty—a noble privilege or universal idea?

Such a situation meant that the citizens of a free country faced very high
demands. Concern for the state was supposed to fĳind concrete expression
not only in participation in public life, but also in making decisions favour-
able for the republic, even though sometimes against the individual inter-
ests of its citizens. This is why Polish deliberations of freedom devoted a
great deal of space to the issue of the character of the people who enjoyed
freedom, and how that character should be cultivated.

In line with a tradition stretching back to Livy, Sallust, and above all

Cicero, they saw virtue as the foundation upon which the republic rested.
Only virtue, instilled in citizens, could restrain them from taking egotistic
actions leading to anarchy, the degeneration of the state, and fĳinally the
loss of freedom. The canon of civic virtues was also drawn from Roman
writers, and essentially remained in force from the Renaissance to the end
of the 18th century. This primarily meant wisdom, understood as pru-
dence, and courage/valour. A free Pole was expected to be courageous in
battle and prudent in counsel, to love his homeland and be show concern
for the public good. The notion of “shaping the citizen” was one of the
most important political issues, with much attention paid to it not only in
treatises concerning the upbringing of young people, but also in writings
and speeches dealing with issues of governance. A characteristic example
here can be found in a speech delivered by Andrzej Zamoyski to the
Convocation Sejm of 1764, which alongside an agenda of political reform
devoted much attention to the cultivation of the proper civil attitudes.
This problem remained a current one until the end of the 18th century,
although as time passed it became a subject of fĳierce debate.

Before concluding this chapter, we should pause to consider one more

issue that is always important whenever freedom is discussed—namely its
limits. Contrary to what is sometimes believed about the Polish vision of
freedom, it was not unbridled and its proponents did not ignore the dan-
gers posed by what was known in Polish as swawola, or wanton behaviour
on the part of citizens, descending into anarchy. It is good to draw a dis-
tinction between anarchy and the kind of disputes and commotion that
were seen as inevitable, not only in the Polish view, in any state where the
nation or its representatives have a hand in governance. This was not some
sort of special perversion contrived by Polish political thinkers, but a com-
mon conviction held by proponents of republican freedom. Machiavelli
believed that even harsh disputes were benefĳicial to a republic, and
Rousseau was still of a similar opinion. Disputes—but not lawless
license (swawola). Throughout the existence of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, Polish political thinkers deliberated—with varying out-
comes—an issue that can be summed up as limiting freedom for freedom

40 chapter

two

28 [W. Pęski], Domina palatii regina libertas. In: J. Dębiński, Różne mowy publiczne…,

[Częstochowa] 1727, p. 13.

itself. The view that a free nation should “curb its freedom for the sake of
its freedom” was voiced not only by Górnicki and Starowolski, critics of the
Polish liberties, or by the quite cautious Opaliński, but also by Walenty
Pęski, likewise considered to be a model eulogist of the Golden Liberty
concept, who wrote that

a free nation should be far from miserable servitude, yet it does not need to
have total liberty, that is to say dissolute licence without laws, but rather
often restrains its own freedom for the sake of freedom.28

Like their Roman precursors, Cicero and Seneca, the Poles believed that
laws should constitute such an impediment to freedom. Indeed, laws were
the only such impediment. Polish thinkers essentially ruled out the idea,
adopted at some point by Western thinkers, of a strong government
that reined in the excesses of mutually coequal subjects, thus guarantee-
ing the negative freedom of the individual. In the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, this role was ascribed to laws. It was laws, and only laws,
that were meant to guard the freedoms of the individual against attempts
made to limit them not only by the government, but also by other
co-citizens. Laws were also intended to guarantee the “real freedom” and
to warn citizens, even contrary to their will, against anarchy that would
lead to the loss of their freedom.

We will discuss the link between law and liberty more extensively in the

next chapter, but here we should note how the interpretation of Polish
authors diverged on this point quite strongly from the concepts which the
Western precursors of liberalism had been propounding since the 17th
century. Under the republican doctrine, the law was ascribed not just a
passive role, protecting freedom, but also an active role. Laws were meant
to impart the right shape to freedom, to prevent it from degenerating.
Being free meant not so much behaving in ways that laws did not forbid,
as acting in line with the imperatives of law—and this applied to both citi-
zens and government. It is telling how much space in Polish writings was
occupied by this, we may call it, educational role of the law. While it is true
that Machiavelli’s idea of being “forced into virtue” was never accepted in
Poland, echoes of it can be found in the concept of the law not as a guard-
ian, but as a moderator of freedom—as Łukasz Opaliński wrote in the 17th
century:

golden liberty—a noble privilege or universal idea?

29 Ł. Opaliński, Rozmowa…, p. 19.

Because free states have no other way to improve bad customs than to enact
harsh and severe laws….29

This view was still being espoused at the end of the 18th century, indeed
consistently with the republican concepts of Rousseau, then popular in
Poland. On the other hand, such laws generally were not enacted in
practice.

This chapter’s short review has shown that although freedom was

exclusively a privilege of the “noble nation” in the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, the Polish understanding of freedom was nevertheless
deeply rooted in the European republican tradition. The problem lay not
in the oddness of this understanding, but in the fact that at the turn of the
17th and 18th centuries, in a time of state crisis and a consequent crisis of
political thought, this image underwent a certain petrifĳication and both
political writers and even more so the nobility at large refused to even
entertain the possibility of altering it in any way, ignoring the new con-
cepts of freedom then emerging in the West. Even worse, at some point a
certain confusion of concepts came about within the awareness of the
nobility and in political practice, as the republican notion of freedom as
participation in public life began to be interpreted no longer as an ability
to determine matters for oneself and to protect the free state, but exclu-
sively as a means of defending the individual liberties of citizens. Or per-
haps the problem may have lain elsewhere, in the fact that the Polish
nobility attempted to implement in practice a model that had worked in
its purest form only in theory, a model based on something as fĳickle as the
virtue of citizens. A model which still enchanted Rousseau, but which in
practice led inevitably to a collision between the citizen’s individual inter-
ests and his duties to the state.

As a closing point here, we may note that the Polish concept of free-

dom, derived from republican ideas, would prove to be very enduring and
surprisingly flexible. In the latter half of the 18th century, it managed to
absorb certain elements of the newly-emerged concepts of freedom—
freedom as a law of nature, the division of freedom into political and civil
freedoms—and its social scope was also expanded. However, it never
ceased to be a republican concept, seeing individual freedom as depend-
ing upon the form of government and stressing the need for citizens to
take an active stance.

1 [T. Dłuski] Refleksyje nad projektem pod tytułem „Zbiór praw sądowych…”, n.p. 1780,

n.pag.

CHAPTER THREE

THE PILLARS OF FREEDOM

The guarantees of Polish freedom, as perceived by the nobility of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, are usually considered by historians
mainly in terms of its well-known, distinctive mechanisms: the free elec-
tion of kings and the right of liberum veto. Indeed, these two institutions
have always been sources of great emotions—and interestingly, not always
positive ones. However, when seeking to identify the foundations of the
Polish freedom, we need to scrutinize not just the attitudes which were
then harboured towards specifĳic elements of the Commonwealth’s system
of governance, even very important ones, but to analyse the very funda-
mentals of Polish political thought about the state and about freedom
itself. Such analysis will enable us to view both the specifĳic institutions
and their perception by the szlachta as parts of a broader political concep-
tion, and thereby to better grasp the attitudes expressed by Polish political
thinkers and perhaps held by the broader nobility at large. And so, whilst
certainly not underestimating the traditionally-understood pillars that
held up the edifĳice of Polish freedom, here we will be analysing the archi-
tecture of this construction somewhat diffferently, in a sense seeking to
trace out its deeper foundations.

One of those foundations was undoubtedly the law. Legalism and the

cult of the law were a hallmark trait of Polish noble culture. The noble citi-
zens saw their Commonwealth as a country “governed by laws since time
immemorial”, as Tomasz Dłuski asserted in 1780, with a certain pride.1
Defending the country’s law or laws, especially its old laws, was a funda-
mental duty of each noble citizen (at the very least on the level of paying
lip-service), and the notions of love and respect for the law, obedience to
the law, appear in Polish writings almost as often as concern for liberty,
and are often seen as linked to the latter. This is not surprising as the two
notions were indeed intertwined, as is evidenced by extreme popularity of
the turn of phrase wolność i prawa, “freedom and laws”. This juxtaposition
of concepts was not original, as the two had gone hand-in-hand since

44 chapter

three

2 A. Wolan, O wolności Rzeczypospolitej albo szlacheckiej, transl. from Latin by

S. Dubingowicz, [1606], ed. K. J. Turowicz, Kraków 1859, p. 12.

3 Quoted after: A. Sucheni-Grabowska, Obowiązki i prawa królów polskich w opiniach

pisarzy odrodzenia, in: Między monarchą a demokracja. Studia z dziejów Polski XV–XVIII
wieku, ed. A. Sucheni-Grabowska, M. Żaryn, Warsaw 1994, p. 73.

4 Libera respublica.. In: Pisma polityczne z czasów rokoszu Zebrzydowskiego 1606–1608,

ed. J. Czubek, vol. 2: Kraków 1918, p. 403

antiquity. Like Cicero, and long before Locke, Poles were profoundly con-
vinced that freedom could not exist without laws. “And so where there are
no rights, there is no freedom”, Andrzej Wolan wrote in the 16th century,2
and the opinion that “where there is law there is freedom” would be reiter-
ated for the next 200 years.

The conceptual links between the law and freedom were surprisingly

multifaceted. The law protected the freedom of the individual against
designs of the monarch and against violence by co-citizens and it was the
framework that supported the construction of free government, but it also
formed a kind of channel through which the surging waves of freedom
could flow, it was a signpost pointing citizens towards the proper sort of
behaviour, and it was meant to cultivate the right civic attitudes—to
educate them on how to properly exercise their liberties.

The most well-known role of the law is that of a guardian of the noble

freedoms, protecting them from the ruler. This particular function was
especially highlighted in political discussions, as a kind of barrier guarding
the liberties of the individual from being violated by the monarch, by his
offfĳicials, or by any other state authority. This issue was deliberated in two
diffferent perspectives. One, we might call it the more practical perspec-
tive, discussed specifĳic laws restraining the power of kings over the noble
citizens, whereas the other, more general perspective, pondered not con-
crete laws in specifĳic but the very fundamentals of what role the law was
understood to play within the state.

The Jagiellonian monarchy had already been perceived by the szlachta

as a law-governed state, meaning a state in which the law, not the king, was
truly sovereign—lex regnat, non rex (the law rules, not the king). This con-
viction was further cemented during the age of the elected monarchs: “the
king, under a single law with us” Stanisław Sarnicki wrote in 15943. The
anonymous author of an insurrectionist pamphlet in 1606 explained:

In this Commonwealth the law is the king, the law is senator, the law is the
nobleman whom all are bound to obey […] and this is what we call
freedom4

the pillars of freedom

5 A. M. Fredro, Praerogativa popularis status repraesentatur Monarchiam saepius nisi

regnanti bonam [1668]. . Polish trans. by T. Włodarczyk. In: Filozofĳia i myśl społeczna XVII
wieku, ed. Z. Ogonowski, Warsaw 1979, vol. 1, p. 335.

6 Ł. Opaliński, Obrona Polski przeciw Janowi Barklayowi. In: idem, Wybór pism, ed.

S. Grzeszczuk, Wrocław 1959, p. 199.

—a view that would continue to be espoused until the end of the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth. And this was not just in theory, as every
newly elected ruler actually swore to uphold the laws of the Commonwealth,
and the noble citizens could refuse obedience to him if he broke that oath
and violated the law. That gave them a sense of security and was a source
of pride. As Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro wrote in the mid-17th century:

It is safer in every regard to live in the full freedom of the Commonwealth,
where you cannot perish because you are protected by the authority of the
law, than not to perish because you are protected from danger solely by the
arbitrary discretion of the ruler.5

The assertion that it was the law that held full and sovereign sway in the
Commonwealth, that the king was on a par with citizens in being a subject
of that law, was voiced at gatherings of the Sejm and sejmiki and espoused
in political publications from the 16th century onward, through the entire
17th and 18th centuries. In the latter half of the 18th century the tradition
that the law (as ordained by the nation itself) was sovereign dovetailed
with modernist “state of law” concepts, as propounded by Western theore-
ticians. The deeply-harboured conviction about law’s sovereign role with
respect to the king formed a kind of theoretical basis for recognizing spe-
cifĳic rights and privileges as being freedom’s main means of protection
against attempts by authorities, a kind of defensive wall encircling free-
dom, or a barrier erected between freedom and the monarch. In this inter-
pretation, laws became a kind of protector, a warden watching over
monarchs. “Laws are becoming as if a guardian of power”, Łukasz Opaliński
explained in the mid-17th century.6

However, in the understanding of the noble politicians, or essentially

the nobility at large, laws not only provided direct protection of individual
liberties against any designs of the king, but were also, or perhaps
primarily, meant to protect the edifĳice that guaranteed those liberties: the
free republic. Although the nobility considered this construction to be
close to ideal in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it was neverthe-
less an extraordinarily delicate structure and removing or altering even
its smallest component could upset its balance and thus lead to its col-
lapse and the inevitable loss of freedom. Since the whole edifĳice of the

46 chapter

three

7 Libera respublica…, p. 407.

Commonwealth rested upon laws, any violation or infringement of those
laws—or even disobedience with respect to them—on the part of either
the ruler or the citizens could undermine the very foundations of free-
dom. Each violation of the law could threaten the whole construction, as
even an insignifĳicant law could after all prove to be the last small brick
whose removal would bring the whole edifĳice tumbling down. It seems
that this may have been the source of the faith maintained in the some-
what mythologized virtues of the “old rights”—one of the most frequently
emphasized elements of the “Golden Liberty” ideology. This was not just
simple conservatism on the part of the szlachta, nor was it an exclusively
Polish speciality. The citizens of “free states” were generally sceptical about
any alterations to the age-old rights, since they were precisely what guar-
anteed their freedom. To cite an example: in Holland in the early 18th cen-
tury, the Grand Pensionary was prohibited from not just making, but even
from proposing any changes to the Constitution. In the case of the 18th-
century Polish nobility, on the other hand, it must be admitted that this
turned into a resistance to even the smallest, must urgently needed
changes.

Although the noble politicians devoted more attention to the role of the

law as the guardian of freedom in the “vertical” confĳiguration, there was
another vision deeply rooted in the Polish tradition of thought on the state
and freedom—albeit one less emphasized—which saw laws as barriers
erected not just against the designs of rulers, but against the designs of
fellow citizens as well. When the author of a rokosz insurrectionist pam-
phlet wrote in 1606 that

whoever wishes to live in this Commonwealth wishes to live a blessed and
fortunate life, for being positioned behind a law that is fervently cherished,
followed, and defended by all the estates, one lives as securely as behind the
best walls and embankments7

he meant not just protection against the king, but also against violence
wrought by “coequals”. For the Commonwealth’s noble citizens, viewing
the law as a defensive wall protecting against the designs of the monarchy
and seeing it as a kind of fence guarding against one’s neighbour were not
incompatible, but in fact complemented one another. Indirect confĳirma-
tion of the perception of this latter function can be found in common-
place complaints that it was not being implemented appropriately, that

the pillars of freedom

8 S. Starowolski, Reformacyja obyczajów polskich, Kraków 1650, p. 26.
9 S. Leszczyński, Głos wolny wolność ubezpieczający, ed. S. Rembowski, Warsaw 1903,

p. 113.

10 Ł. Górnicki, Rozmowa Polaka z Włochem o wolnościach i prawach polskich (1616). In:

idem, Pisma, ed. R. Polak, vol. 2: Warsaw 1961, p. 348.

11 [W. Pęski], Domina palatii regina libertas. In: J. Dębiński, Różne mowy publiczne…,

[Częstochowa] 1727, p. 6.

the liberties of individual citizens were not being guaranteed to equal
degrees.

Where the law does not restrain people, where the authorities do not rein in
wanton license, where everyone is free to do as they wish, where one person
is permitted to bring another to ruin, this is already universal captivity…

Szymon Starowolski opined.8 Besides, the blame for this was seen as lying
not so much in shortcomings of the law as in a lack of respect for the law,
and even worse in a lack of efffĳicient institutions capable of enforcing such
respect and protect citizens from violence wrought by others. The overall
quandary of old Polish political thought is nicely evident here: fearing that
freedom might be violated by authority, any authority, and not just in
practice but in theory, Poles were unable to cope with the problem of how
to ensure efffective laws protecting one citizen from another.

So far we have generally discussed the law’s role in protecting liberty

against either the power of the monarch or against fellow citizens, yet
Polish deliberation about the state and liberty also ascribed other, no less
weighty functions to the law. It was meant to protect freedom not only
from outside infringement, but also from freedom itself. The law was
meant to impose a shape upon freedom, to restrain it so that it did not
become dangerous to itself—de facto meaning to the citizens who enjoyed
that freedom and also, or perhaps primarily, to their state. Telling meta-
phors likened the law to a bit thrust into the mouth of an unruly horse, to
a set of pruning shears clipping the excessively lush shoots springing forth
from the tree of freedom.9 There was a deeply-held and lasting conviction
that without the “restraint” of the law, liberty would quickly degenerate
into wanton license (swawola) or anarchy. “Where there is law, excess
license there cannot be”, the Polish character in Górnicki’s Conversation of
a Pole with an Italian defended against the Italian’s accusations.10 Even the
most ardent devotees of Golden Liberty agreed with this, such as the
author of Domina palatii regina libertas, who had no doubt that “if free-
dom is ailing it must be treated with salubrious laws, even if this be an
unpleasant remedy”.11 “The law coerces every man, but such coercion is

48 chapter

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12 S. Konarski, O skutecznym rad sposobie, vol. 2: Warsaw 1761, p. 123.
13 S. Sokołowski, deputy from Inowrocław, 23 Sep. 1776, Zbiór mów różnych w czasie

sejmów ostatnich roku 1775 i 1776 mianych, vol. 3, p. 107.

14 Ł. Górnicki, Rozmowa…, p. 389.

sweet and wholly benefĳicial”, wrote Stanisław Konarski.12 It is telling
that the most popular of Cicero’s maxims in the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth seems to have been servi legum sumus, ut liberi esse pos-
simus (we are slaves to laws so that we may be free)—although we may
have considerable doubts about its actual observance in practice.

To fully understand this function of the law, we must remember that in

a free state (such as it was understood by republican theory since at least
Roman times, and such as the szlachta considered their Republic of the
Two Nations to be), unlike in a monarchy, there was no authority capable
of forcing citizens to take certain actions or to adopt specifĳic attitudes.
In this situation, obedience of the law became the citizen’s primary duty,
the basis of his freedom. This was a duty with respect to one’s fellow
citizens—only equal observance of the law by everyone guaranteed the
freedom of each. At the same time, it was a duty with respect to the state
and with respect to freedom itself. Obedience of the law supported the
construction of the Commonwealth, guaranteeing not only the liberties of
all the members of the community, but the very existence of the free state
and the collective freedom of its citizens. “Let there today be no obedience
to the law, and the construction of our liberties will tumble down of its
own accord, its collapse smothering us and our liberties”—as one of the
Sejm deputies warned his countrymen in 1776.13

As is evident, the Polish tradition of legal thought was not exclusively

limited to its negative imperatives, i.e. to the notion that a citizen was per-
mitted to do anything that was not prohibited by law. There was also strong
stress laid on the active role of the law—it was not just a kind of “embank-
ment” encircling and guarding the freedom of the individual, but also a
guideline for proper behaviour. This active role was suggested by the very
phrase “being obedient to the law”, used instead of today’s “observance of
the law”. Obedience to the law meant not just that a citizen should not do
what the law prohibited, but also that he should act as the law indicated.
“Law is a rational resolution grounded in nature, a resolution that stipu-
lates what is to be done and prohibits what is not to be done”14—this
Aristotelian view expressed by Łukasz Górnicki, consistent with the gen-
eral conviction, retained its popularity through the end of the 18th cen-
tury. Here Poles clearly looked back to the Roman republican tradition

the pillars of freedom

15 A. Wolan, O wolności…, p. 12.
16 A. Wolan, O wolności…, pp. 37 and 39.

and its notion that in a republic the law should cultivate civic attitudes
favourable for the state. The educational role of the law, perceived by theo-
reticians of republicanism from antiquity to Rousseau, occupied much
space in Polish writings as well. As Andrzej Wolan had written as early as
in the 16th century: “That is why there are laws, in which all honourable
duty is encompassed”.15 This conviction survived practically until the
Commonwealth’s dismemberment in the partitions, and it was shared by
people of widely varying political views.

In large part the role that was proscribed for the law at the beginning of

the noble republic’s existence remained unchanged all the way until its
downfall. Even authors invoking liberal concepts at the end of the 18th
century generally did not abandon the notion of law as the foundation of
the free republic, nor did they completely reject its educational function,
although unlike their predecessors they concentrated mainly on the law’s
role as a restraint on individual freedom. In fact, in certain cases it was
only in writings from the latter half of the 18th century that truths which
had been obvious to writers from turn of the 16th and 17th centuries resur-
faced, having been somewhat forgotten in the interim.

***

Since the Polish freedom was a kind of “freedom under the law”, this gave
rise to a fundamental question: who was law’s creator, and simultaneously
guardian? Here there could be but one response: the nation (again mean-
ing the noble nation, of course). Even authors who understood freedom as
chiefly entailing the ability “to own [property], serenely and without fear
of harm”, and were thus close to an understanding that would later be
defĳined by the liberals, did not consider it in isolation from the political
system of the Commonwealth, from the question of who exercised power
within the state. A good example of this mindset can be found in Andrzej
Wolan’s writings, from which the above quotation is drawn. Although his
defĳinition of freedom would probably have been accepted without quali-
fĳication by Hobbes himself, at the same time he recognized it as a “great
fortress of liberty” that “in our country, the ruler has no power to enact
anything concerning the foremost needs of the Commonwealth without
the consent of the nobility”.16

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17 Absolutum dominium quid sit. In: Pisma polityczne z czasów rokoszu…, vol. 2, p. 410.
18 E. Opaliński, Sejm srebrnego wieku, Warsaw 2001, p. 193.

That leads us to another of the elements forming the foundations of

freedom: power. We can safely say that essentially until the demise of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth both theorists of the state and partici-
pants in political life perceived a close link between the freedom of citi-
zens and their exercise of power within the state. Proposals to entrust
power to an authority independent of the will of the nation were extraor-
dinarily rare in Polish political theory (and wholly absent in practice), and
even more rarely were they recognized as not running counter to the free-
dom of the citizens. The dominant conviction was that wresting power
completely away from the nation meant not just a threat to freedom, but
essentially its eradication, including in the negative sense—as the safe
exercise of ownership and the pursuit of private objectives. “Under such a
ruler thou hast nought but terror, fear, constant danger, and fright” the
author of the insurrectionist pamphlet of 1606 wrote,17 and this thought
was reiterated through the end of the 18th century. Any power that broke
free of the control of the nation could be dangerous, and hence, although
the monarch was viewed as the main threat, concern was also instilled by
the power of the Senate, the power of the Hetmans, and even—as we will
discuss below—by the power of the Sejm itself, that is to say the very insti-
tutions seen as protecting freedom by defĳinition, even serving as its
foundation.

The time is here ripe to elucidate what “power” meant to the citizens of

the noble Commonwealth. The answer is relatively simple: the ability to
make decisions concerning the state, but above all to make decisions con-
cerning themselves. Or perhaps, to phrase things slightly diffferently, it was
the ability to make decisions concerning the state, and ipso facto concern-
ing themselves. We have already discussed a certain phenomenon extraor-
dinary on a Europe-wide scale: “Citizens fully identifying with the state
which they not only built in the past, but which they also formed and con-
stituted at present”.18 Noble citizens could echo Louis XIV’s “L’état c’est
moi” (or rather “L’état ce sont nous”), and indeed they did say and think just
that. They therefore desired for the state, meaning for themselves, their
rights and privileges, to depend not on another’s whim but on their own
will. We might say that power vested in the hands of the nation, as
the guarantee of liberty, implemented the principle of nothing about us,
without us.

the pillars of freedom

19 Quoted after: E. Opaliński, Kultura…, p. 81
20 Przestroga braterska w teraźniejszych podczas interregnum ojczyzny naszej zamiesza-

niu stanom Rzeczypospolitej od szlachcica i ziemianina polskiego podana, n.p. [1733], n.pag.

The notion of power thus construed, entailing above all self-

determination, was recognized not only as a guarantee of freedom, but
quite simply as freedom itself. It also had a very broad scope—determin-
ing afffairs for oneself meant taking part in electing the king as well as the
ability to unseat him from the throne later, to impose taxes, to elect depu-
ties, judges, and state offfĳicials, to make a broad range of political decisions,
to enact laws, and also the ability to refuse to consent to such laws. Without
a doubt, however, certain issues were emphasized more than others.

The privileges underpinning freedom were undoubtedly considered to

include the right to elect the ruler, which already in the 16th century had
been recognized as the “basis et fundamentum […] of all our liberties”19.
The power to elect the king was indeed not just one of the most important
powers of the noble citizens, but it also in some sense formed the basis
upon which the construction of the Commonwealth’s political system was
erected. We should not forget that the conviction that the nation was the
state’s sovereign ruler and was vested with the highest power (even if it did
not exercise that power) was by no means something obvious to political
theorists of other countries in the 16th and 17th centuries—at the time
when the Polish szlachta was laying the groundwork of its liberty and way
of thinking about the state. As evidenced by the popularity of Jean Bodin’s
theory, the prevailing trend was to draw precisely the opposite conclu-
sions. Signifĳicantly earlier than the residents of other European countries,
the Poles shifted their notion of sovereignty away from institutions such as
the monarch and parliament, to the nation itself (albeit only the noble
nation). What Western political philosophers were working out in the 18th
century had been present in Polish practice and theory already since the
turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. The fact that it was the nation which
selected who would be king was highly important in the development of
this concept: it served as an indication that the nation, rather than the
king, was the rightful possessor and ruler of the country. “To possess the
power to make whoever I please my lord and the power to deprive him of
his reign at my own will”20—this was not just a source of pride but stressed
the noble nation’s supremacy over the monarch: that the nation, rather
than the monarch, was sovereign.

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21 A. Frycz Modrzewski, O poprawie Rzeczypospolitej księgi czwore, [trans. C. Bazylik

1577], ed. M. Korolko, Warsaw 2003, p. 71.

22 Głos obywatela dobrze swej ojczyźnie życzącego, 1788, p. 207.

It was from the power to elect the king that the second most crucial

power of the noble citizens in some sense stemmed: having a hand in
enacting laws. It was still back in Jagiellonian times when Andrzej Frycz-
Modrzewski asserted:

Because Polish kings are not born [as kings] but are chosen with the sanc-
tion of all the estates, it thus does not befĳit them to wield this power to
arrange things according to their will, or to enact laws, or to levy a tax on
subjects, or to determine something for eternity. Because they do everything
with the sanction of all the estates or in accordance with the intention of
laws […].21

Initially there was discussion about the (noble) nation’s co-involvement in
enacting laws together with the king, but relatively quickly it came to be
the dominant view that sovereign power, summa potestas, was vested
in the knightly estate. The conviction that legislative power—or to be pre-
cise the broader power to confer about the homeland, as it was then
known—was the basis and guarantee of freedom, remained unchanged
throughout the entire existence of the noble Commonwealth. “Lawmaking
power” was cited as the foundation of freedom under highly diverse cir-
cumstances by various political writers, by orators in the Sejm, and by the
authors of propaganda pamphlets or even poems:

Where be there no freedom the laws to enact / seek you no good, there be
but repression / there is no felicity where despots rule / as the laws change
and augment exploitation22

wrote an anonymous poet at the beginning of the Four-Year Sejm, versify-
ing an opinion that had then been widespread for 200 years. At the end of
the 18th century it was merely given a more modern shape, consistent
with the latest Western concepts of the state, and crucially, the social
scope of legislative privileges was expanded. But the very conviction of the
link between freedom and power understood in this way did not change.
Sufffĳice it to cite here the opinion of Stanisław Staszic, the famous Polish
thinker from the end of the 18th century, who concluded that when legis-
lative power does not rest with the nation, not only is there no freedom
but it is even hard to speak of any society: “Where lawmaking does not

the pillars of freedom

23 S. Staszic, Przestrogi polityczne dla Polski (1790). Ed. S. Czarnowski, Kraków 1926, p. 51.
24 S. Konarski, O skutecznym..., vol. 1: Warsaw 1761, p. 373.

belong to the nation, there is no society, only a lord and his herd of
cattle”.23

A crucial question was who should exercise such power so that it did

not threaten freedom. In the 16th/17th centuries there was generally no
doubt that the institution established for this purpose was the Sejm com-
prised of all its three estates, or in the narrower sense the chamber of dep-
uties itself. As Konarski was still writing in the mid-18th century: “The
Sejm is thus the absolute monarch in our country”24. The nation exercised
its sovereign power by electing deputies and issuing them with instruc-
tions, in a certain sense it shifted its power onto them, in today’s language
we would say that power was delegated to them. It is a telling fact that the
term Rzeczpospolita, meaning Commonwealth or Republic, was then pop-
ularly used in reference to the Sejm as a whole or as the representative
body of the knightly estate. However, already in the 17th century there
were some who voiced doubt as to whether it might be dangerous to free-
dom for full power to be entrusted to the Sejm. This was associated with a
conviction that not only was power vested in the nation but the nation
should unceasingly exercise that power, whereas the deputies were not its
representatives but its delegates, the “bits of paper” upon which the
instructions of their delegating sejmiki had been inscribed, who were not
allowed to make any political decisions on their own. This concept arose
as early as during Zebrzydowski’s rebellion and underpinned various “con-
federation” leagues. As long as the structure of governance functioned
well, i.e. at least until the mid-17th century, this was not a dominant view
and the power of the Sejm was generally not called into question. Later, as
well, for many authors of theoretical or not-so-theoretical texts, the sover-
eign Sejm was the representation of the noble nation and the guarantor of
its liberties. Even in the fĳirst half of the 18th century, i.e. the times of the
greatest crisis of the noble parliament, prominent authors such as
Leszczyński or especially Konarski advocated the delegation of power
(although they did not use that term). But still, the general sense was that
this was a dangerous measure: one anonymous author from the early
18th century vented the widely-held view by writing: “The power of a
deputy unrestrained by instructions makes him a tyrant over his fellow

54 chapter

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25 Objaśnienie nieszczęśliwych skutków z tylo zerwanych sejmów wynikających, quoted

after: H. Olszewski, Sejm Rzeczypospolitej epoki oligarchii 1652–1763, Poznań 1966, p. 112.

26 M. Wielhorski, O przywróceniu dawnego rządu według pierwiastkowych Rzeczy-

pospolitej ustaw, 1775, p. 38, 59.

brothers”.25 The Poles were not entirely alone in harbouring such fears; for
instance similar anxieties were shared by the English, afraid of the tyranny
of their own parliament, but 18th-century English political thought
rejected the timid proposals for imposing greater responsibility of depu-
ties, recognizing them as representatives of, not proxies for the people.

This particular development in the Polish approach to power and free-

dom was undoubtedly greatly afffected by the longstanding crisis of parlia-
ment, paralyzed by the liberum veto principle and the shift of a large share
of its power to the sejmiki. It seems that the real political situation afffected
how the traditional conviction of the nation being sovereign in its
free state was interpreted, and contributed to the intensifĳication of the
just-as-traditional fear of any power external to the nation itself. Although
deeply rooted in both the political reality of the Commonwealth and in
Polish political philosophy, the notion of a kind of direct democracy as a
guarantee of freedom did not take its ultimate shape until the 1770s under
the influence of Western concepts, especially Rousseau’s Considerations
on the Government of Poland. The fĳirst to develop it, under the Genevese
philosopher’s influence, was Michał Wielhorski, who followed his sage in
asserting that deputies are “not the highest lawmakers, but only envoys, so
to speak, of the szlachta and followers of its instructions”, adding that “if
the voivodships, lands, and poviats did not have the power to enact laws,
they would not be free”.26 The concept of a “lawmaking nation” and the
inalienability of its power, the inalienable power of even a single individ-
ual citizen, dominated Polish political debate all the way until the begin-
ning of the Four-Year Sejm. The vision of deputies completely paralyzed by
instructions was on the other hand accompanied by a fear of allowing
Sejm sessions to be prolonged. There was a fear that such representatives,
remaining in session for longer, might manage to liberate themselves from
the tutelage of their electors and want to impose their own will upon the
nation, or even worse, they might allow themselves to be corrupted by the
monarch—the English Parliament being a negative example at that time.

This mindset would not be overcome until the heated political debate

of 1788–1792. Ultimately, both political theoreticians and practitioners
of the Four-Year Sejm abandoned the concept of leaving legislative
power directly in the hands of the nation, reverting in a certain sense to

the pillars of freedom

the previous tradition of transferring that power to the Sejm. It seems that
this shift was not triggered by the influence of one theory or another as
much as by disappointment in governance by the sejmiki. The Constitution
of the Third of May abolished the sejmiki instructions and prolonged the
term of the Sejm. We should stress yet again that while the idea of direct
democracy dominated Polish political thought for but a short time, the
notion of “lawmaking power in the assembled estates” had long been
rooted in Polish thinking about the state and freedom, and in no way ran
counter to the equally deep-seated conviction that “all authority in human
society has its origin in the will of the people” (Article 5 of the Constitution).

***

Since exercising power was not just a guarantee of freedom, but consti-
tuted freedom itself, all the citizens of the Commonwealth should enjoy it
to equal degrees. But does “all” citizens mean “each and every” citizen
here? This very weighty question leads to what was probably the prickliest
aspect of the Polish liberty: the liberum veto. It needs to be stated at the
outset of such discussion that this systemic institution, the symbol of
the Polish anarchy, was by no means something organically linked to the
Polish liberty itself: it did not begin to function essentially until the second
half of the 17th century, which was when it gained its theoretical under-
pinnings, and its legal footing did not arise until 1696. It should also not be
confused with the principle of general consent adopted at the beginning
of the Republic of the Two Nations, which demanded that decisions made
by the Sejm should gain the acceptance of all participants in the debate.
On the one hand this was an invocation of a medieval principle stretching
all the way back to Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis (in 531)—quod omnis tan-
git, ab omnibus tractari et approbari debet (what concerns all should be
debated and approved by all)—and on the other hand it represented one
of the fundamental principles of the mixed monarchy system. The point
was that in political disputes, which are an inseparable part of any free
state, citizens needed to know how to yield from their positions for the
sake of working out a consensus, which was the foundation upon which
the Commonwealth rested.

However, with time this principle began to be interpreted variously.

This was related to a change in the perception of the proper role for the
most important political institutions through which the power of the noble
citizens was exercised, above all the Sejm itself. From at least the mid-17th
century onward, the noble society was increasingly convinced that the

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27 A. M. Fredro, Scriptorum seu togae et belli (1660), Polish trans. F. Wujtewicz. In:

Filozofĳia…, p. 306.

28 [J. S. Jabłonowski], Skrupuł bez skrupułu, Lwów 1730, p. 34.

Polish freedom had already reached its zenith, enshrined in the existing
political system, and thus any alterations to that system—that is to say,
enacting any new laws—could be dangerous to it. That being the case, less
and less importance came to be ascribed to the Sejm’s role as a temple of
law, where the most important political decisions were made, with the
focus shifting instead to its function as a guardian of freedom against the
designs of the king. This highest body of noble power and the deputies
which comprised it were mainly ascribed a negative task: “to protect the
freedoms and fortunes” of citizens. In this understanding, consensus
worked out among all citizens gradually metamorphosed into an objec-
tion that could be lodged by just one. This individual citizen (a righteous
one, of course) was able to rescue freedom from harm to be wrought upon
it by a Sejm majority that had been spoiled and corrupted by the ruler. The
theoretical foundations of this conviction were laid in the mid-17th cen-
tury by Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro—convinced that righteous defend-
ers of freedom are always in the minority, he wrote:

and so if anyone should doubt the principle of unanimity and the freedom
to lodge the veto, it is not because he wishes to introduce a majority princi-
ple, but because he would like to overthrow freedom and the power of the
Sejm.27

His opinion would be echoed for at least 100 years, with the scope of the
veto’s power merely being expanded.

This was accompanied by an increasingly individual treatment of self-

determination, turning the nothing about us without us principle into
nothing about me without me, the latter signifĳicantly more dangerous to
the state. In this understanding, power emanated not from the whole
nation but from each individual citizen. As Jan Stanisław Jabłonowski
wrote in the 1730s, when the veto principle was at its peak: “(…) every
nobleman, with offfĳice or without, has the prerogative of a minister of the
state, as a keeper of public afffairs”.28 It was not until the fĳirst half of the
18th century that the right of individual objection began to be identifĳied
with the sovereign power of each citizen to make political decisions. The
broadest interpretation of the liberum veto principle, understood in this
way, was voiced by its advocate Wojciech Bystrzonowski:

the pillars of freedom

29 W. Bystrzonowski, Polak sensat w liście, w komplemencie polityk, humanista w dys-

kursie, w mowach statysta na przykład dany szkolnej młodzi, Lublin 1730, n. pag.

30 S. Konarski, O skutecznym…, vol. 1: Warsaw 1760, p. 72.
31 T. Lubomirski at Convocation Sejm 1733, quoted after: H. Olszewski, Sejm…, p. 314.
32 A. M. Fredro, Scriptorum…, p. 307.

To permit or not to permit [a certain decision] according to one’s own opin-
ion and will is consequence and evidence of both the free will granted by
God and of liberty.29

This was therefore no longer a guarantee of freedom, but freedom itself.
In the extreme interpretation, like free will, this was a freedom unfettered
in practically any way:

Because I may, because such is my opinion, because I so desire, because I do
not have to explain my opinion to anyone.30

Importantly, the power of veto belonged, at least in theory, in equal degrees
to all citizens, or perhaps more precisely to each and every citizen: “The
free voice of the poorest nobleman always has its strength and valour”.31
This was in a certain sense also an extreme manifestation of political
equality—a levelling out of each citizen’s ability to determine state afffairs,
and at the same time the most efffective protection of his individual liberty,
since he had a hand in making any decisions bearing upon it and could
prevent its violation, not only by the ruler but also by his fellow citizens.

Both the advocates and opponents of the liberum veto realized that it

put vast power into the hands of the individual. This power was described
as “autocratic”, it was likened to the sic volo, sic jubeo (“thus I wish, thus
I command”) of absolute monarchs, to the power of the Popes, even to the
divine fĳiat (“let it be so”). Although unlike the divine power of creation,
this was more a power of destruction, or a “negative power” if it can be so
described. That is how it was defĳined already by Fredro, who asserted:
“Such power lies not in acting, but in impeding”.32 One might say that
while the power to be involved in enacting laws had been the foundation
and guarantee of freedom in the early noble republic, by the 18th century
this was more a power of preventing their enactment. Noble citizens were
not so much concerned with deciding matters for themselves as anxious
to make certain that no one else had the ability to decide anything on their
behalf.

At the turn of the 18th century, the liberum veto began to be treated as a

kind of lex legum (law of laws)—the veto was seen as being what defended
the national freedom against the designs of the king and magnates, what
enabled each citizen to enjoy political freedom to an equal degree and

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gave him the power to determine afffairs pertaining to himself and the
country, what protected his individual liberty from being infringed upon
by decisions made by either the monarch or by his fellow citizens. The
prevailing conviction was that this right of veto, being fundamental to
freedom, was an incredibly delicate construction, the pupilla libertatis (the
“apple of liberty’s eye”), and every attempt at limiting it might destroy it.

Paradoxically, this so highly cherished right was at the same time a tar-

get of harsh criticism. It seems that no other right was the source of such
mixed emotions. Even the veto’s most ardent apologists generally realized
that the reality diverged from the ideal vision they advocated. The self-
same people who wanted to “defend it with our throats”, as the foundation
of all liberties, were at the same time afraid that the disruption of Sejm
sessions might cause the Commonwealth to “lose its freedom and its most
pertinent rights”. Recognizing the veto as not just the “foundation” but the
very quintessence of freedom, at the same time they pointed out that it
was, or at least could be, a threat to that freedom, leading to the paralysis
of the free state’s institutions. Moreover, it was also realized that the objec-
tion of a single individual in some sense deprives the remaining partici-
pants in a public debate—de facto meaning all other citizens—of the
freedom to determine afffairs for themselves. However, an unremitting fear
that making even the smallest alteration could end up destroying this trea-
sure led not just the liberum veto’s advocates but also its critics to feel that
their hands were in some sense tightly bound.

A bold attack against the liberum veto as an element of the system of

government would not be mounted until the mid-18th century, fĳirstly by
Stanisław Leszczyński in his Free Voice Ensuring Freedom, later by Stanisław
Konarski, who pointed out that the veto was not the highest manifestation
of the freedoms of the individual, but a symbol of the tyranny and autoc-
racy of the individual, in no way reconcilable with liberty itself. Konarski
pointed out that the power of self-determination is exercised through
active endeavour, whereas the liberum veto, by paralyzing the representa-
tive institutions, ran counter to such active effforts. His stance is encapsu-
lated well by a statement he addressed to one advocate of the veto:

Your objective, therefore, is that nothing harmful to the country should
enter the constitution; my objective is to ensure that the most salutary
things for the country should not be cast out of the constitution.33

33 [S. Konarski], Projekt do pogodzenia “Myśli” przeciwnych pokazujący jako zgodzić

razem cum pluralitate taki prawdziwie wolny głos jaki jest opisany konstytucyją Anni 1609,
[1764], p. 6.

the pillars of freedom

He also returned to the rudiments of the theory of republican freedom, as
it had been understood in Polish political philosophy in the 16th and early
17th centuries, when he asserted that anything that threatened the efffĳi-
cient functioning of the free state and its institutions, which therefore
included the liberum veto, was incompatible with freedom itself. This
enabled him not only to criticize the abrupt disruption of Sejm and sejmiki
gatherings, not only to undermine the foundations of one-man opposi-
tion, but to defend the majority principle as being the only vehicle truly
enshrining the political freedom of the individual. Individual freedom, in
his view, consisted not in the power of each individual citizen to deter-
mine state afffairs, but in co-determination, meaning that each citizen had
the right to participate (personally or via a chosen representative) in the
process of working out political decisions, not to conclusively dictate such
decisions—here it was a majority of votes that mattered.

It is hard to discern whether Konarski’s arguments were so strongly con-

vincing or whether they fell upon such fertile ground, but in any event
after he voiced them the liberum veto had few defenders left. Indeed, the
veto was in practice not lodged a single time in the Sejm after 1764. During
this period, the authors of theoretical works, if not yet the general nobility
as a whole, began to perceive—like their forebears back at the outset of
the noble Commonwealth—the guarantees of their freedom more in
terms of the nation’s sovereignty, understood as entailing that all the insti-
tutions of the free state were under the nation’s own authority, rather than
in terms of the individual objection raised by a single citizen.

The majority-rule principle was ultimately accepted by Polish political

thinkers during the Poniatowski era, and with time also by the political
nation. On the other hand, Poles who remained true to the old tradition
did remember that not only the despotism of the individual, but also the
tyranny of the majority could prove dangerous to liberty.

***

Our blueprint of the foundations lying beneath the edifĳice known as the
“Golden Liberty” would be incomplete if we were to fail to consider one
more highly important element: the “free voice ensuring freedom”. From
at least the end of the 16th all the way until the 18th century, freedom of
speech was considered one of the fundamental freedoms of the noble citi-
zens, and at the same time a signifĳicant guarantee of their liberty. While
long remaining but a theoretical postulate in Western Europe, freedom
of speech was implemented in practice in the Commonwealth from the

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34 M. Wielhorski, speech on 11 Oct. 1766, Diariusz sejmu walnego ordynaryjnego

w Warszawie roku 1766, Warsaw [1766], n.pag.

35 J. S. Jabłonowski, Skrupuł…, p. 13.

16th century onwards. It gained extensive legal guarantees as early as in
1609—or perhaps even earlier, because in a certain sense this is how we
can interpret the law on treason dating from 1588, which clearly diffferenti-
ated between the crime of betraying the country and crimen laese maies-
tatis (the crime of offfending the dignity of the sovereign). This law
precluded a citizen from receiving the kind of severe punishment the
French and English kings certainly relished meting out, just for having
gone too far in expressing himself about the monarch. Legal safeguards for
this “free voice” were reiterated and expanded in laws enacted by the Sejm
in both the 17th century (1669) and in the 18th (1775).

We can say that whereas for the Western theoreticians the freedom of

speech was a distant ideal, something that society should strive towards,
for the Polish szlachta it was an actually existing law, serving more as a
point of departure for than as an objective of political deliberation. Such
origins afffected not only the way the freedom of speech was understood,
but also its scope and treatment. In the Polish understanding, it was not a
negative freedom, a kind of freedom from—from persecution for one’s
views—but also, or perhaps chiefly, a positive freedom, a freedom to—to
participate in public life, to have a hand in determining state of afffairs. We
can say that for the Poles, the freedom of speech was above all a political
freedom.

Tellingly, although the freedom of speech was sometimes described as a

divine gift it was not, unlike in Western theories, thought of as something
derived from nature itself, but rather as something closely linked to the
form of government in the Commonwealth. The freedom of speech was
recognized as one of the basic criteria distinguishing republican govern-
ment from monarchical government. As Michał Wielhorski summed this
up in the 18th century:

Obeying and conferring are two things so distant from one another, that the
fĳirst constitutes the essence of monarchical governance, the latter that of
free governance.34

The situation in the monarchies was being watched with concern, in the
conviction that “in despoticis et absolutis dominii [under despotic and
absolute rule] (…) words are punished just as deeds are, and nations
remain in such terror that few men are so bold as to even think bad
thoughts” as Jan Stanisław Jabłonowski wrote in 1730.35

the pillars of freedom

36 Ł. Opaliński, Rozmowa plebana z ziemianiem [1641]. In: idem, Pisma polskie, pub.

Ł. Kamykowski, Warsaw 1938, p. 23.

37 Quoted after: S. Ochmann, Sejmy z lat 1615 - 1616, Wrocław 1970, p. 30.
38 Quoted after: E. Opaliński, Kultura polityczna szlachty polskiej w latach 1587–1652,

Warsaw 1995, p. 85.

39 A. M. Fredro, Scriptorum …, p. 318.

Besides, there was a distinctive kind of feedback here: the freedom of

speech was only possible in a republic, and at the same time it was one of
the foundations of free governance. Sometimes the assertion was even
made that it was the only such foundation, and at the same time the hall-
mark of true liberty: “… this freedom of speech, upon which all your liber-
ties rest”, Łukasz Opaliński reminded the szlachta in the 17th century,
indeed while warning them against abusing it.36 The conviction that los-
ing the liberty to express one’s opinion essentially entailed niewola (the
Polish term for “being unfree” or “living in servitude”) was quite widely
held and had a long tradition behind it. In 1614, representatives of the
szlachta demanded:

let […] everyone be free to express that which offfends and displeases him,
because he who binds my tongue renders me a slave.37

Free speech, or the “free demanding of liberties and the whole of one’s
rights”, as it was summed up in 1609, was meant to protect the liberties of
citizens and to guard them against the designs of the king. As Andrzej
Stawiszyński said in 1615:

It is better for subjects to freely demand their rights, better than in Italy, than
in France, than in England, than in Scotland, where subjects are not free to
demand or even to breathe.38

Fredro, writing several decades later and polemicizing with statements
criticizing the excessive quarrelling in the Sejm, wrote:

… these harsh critics, recognizing the freedom of speech, would rather
deprive the Commonwealth of defence and liberty than put a limit to the
wanton license (which they deceitfully call freedom).39

However, the freedom of speech was a guarantee of liberty not just because
it enabled citizens to stand up and demand respect for liberty and allowed
them to limit power. To fully understand its vast signifĳicance as a founda-
tion of liberty, we need to once again point out that Poles understood the
freedom of speech as not just the ability to speak out freely on political
matters, but also as a completely unrestrained ability to participate in
public life, or even more, to have a share in wielding power. One highly

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40 [I. Łobarzewski], Odpowiedź autora “Testamentu politycznego” na list do niego

drukiem przesłany, Warszawa [1789], p. 2.

distinctive trait of the Polish understanding of the freedom of speech was
a fluid boundary between the ability to speak out and the act of making
political decisions itself. This undoubtedly stemmed from the fact that the
Polish tradition of the freedom of speech had been cultivated in large part
at the gatherings of the Sejm and sejmiki. This tradition of binding the
freedom of speech together with political freedom remained vibrant until
the end of the 18th century. It was accompanied by a conviction that only
the completely unfettered ability to freely express one’s own opinion on
every and any topic which pertained to the state enabled citizens to fully
participate in public life. In this situation, the freedom of speech became
something more than expressing one’s own opinions—it was a form of
participation in governance itself. Each nobleman was potentially a law-
maker, and thus the voice of each citizen was at the same time the voice of
a representee appealing to his representatives in the Sejm. Everyone had
the right, or even the duty, to judge the decisions of the Sejm, the behav-
iour of the deputies, to share with them and with other citizens their own
ideas, advice, and warnings.

The ability to express one’s own opinion on all topics concerning the

state likewise meant the free conduct of political discussion. It should be
borne in mind that such discussion had a rich and long tradition in Poland,
as is evidenced by the vast quantities of writings produced in response to
major political events like elections, confederations, Sejms. The prevailing
conviction was that every signifĳicant decision or alteration to the law
should in essence be put to public debate. Being able to familiarize them-
selves with all the pros and cons of an issue enabled citizens to make a
well-thought-out decision. Even misplaced—if not to say stupid—
arguments could assist in arriving at the right conclusions, since

the truth can never shine brighter than when set alongside mistakes, which,
because they eliminate the truth, are endured in any free government, just
as calumny and pasquinade are scorned.40

In a certain sense we can say that the very fact of speaking out was cher-
ished as a value, irrespective of the content, sense, or further consequences
of what was said.

Since words were recognized, at least theoretically, as the basic weapon

in the political battle, the ability to convincingly lay forth one’s views was
highly prized. Rhetoric was considered the daughter, perhaps even the

the pillars of freedom

41 [W. Pęski], Domina palatii…, p. 6.
42 Seweryn Potocki, speech to the Sejm on 05 Oct. 1791, quoted after: J. Szczepaniec,

Sejm Wielki wobec zagadnień cenzury i wolności słowa. In: Antynomie Oświecenia, Prace
literackie Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, vol. 31: Wrocław 1991, p. 181.

43 Myśli patriotyczno-polityczne do Stanów Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej na sejm 1788 roku

zgromadzonych, [Warsaw 1788], p. 4.

sister of liberty, and at the same time an indispensible skill for every
citizen of any free country. The author of Domina palatii believed that all
free nations “base their integrity magna parte [in large part] upon freely
and wisely expressed language”.41 The Polish tradition of freedom of
speech was, after all, a tradition of the spoken word, and as such remained
guaranteed by law all the way until 1791, when the printed word was men-
tioned in the Sejm for the fĳirst time. Although it is true that for partici-
pants in political disputes, a citizen’s statement had the same virtue
regardless of whether it was expressed in speech or in writing, following
the notion that “it is one and the same to express one’s thoughts by mouth,
as by writing”.42 For a long time, the issue of the freedom of the press was
not especially discussed. Most political writings were distributed as
manuscripts and it is hard to speak of any limitations imposed on this
unofffĳicial circulation, and so separate guarantees of freedom were not
necessary here. But when this problem became more urgent, when the
printed word began to take on increasing signifĳicance in political discus-
sions, more or less from the 1770s onward, the laws concerning the free-
dom of speech almost automatically came to be extended to embrace the
printed word as well.

Speaking out on public afffairs was considered not just a right, but also a

duty for every free citizen: a manifestation of his concern for liberty and
the fatherland. Keeping one’s opinion to oneself would even be a
misdeed:

To my thinking, there is nothing more disgraceful in a free citizen than his
concealing his thoughts about the Commonwealth in order to ingratiate
himself to someone or to avoid offfending someone.43

This applied to statements made in the public forum, as well as to political
writings.

The noble citizens saw the freedom of speech as having an extremely

important and multifaceted role to play in guaranteeing liberty, and so it
comes as no surprise that vast importance was ascribed to it and that any-
thing and everything seen as an attempt to limit it was treated with a deep
mistrust. Successive Sejms in the 17th and 18th centuries reiterated and

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expanded the laws protecting the freedom of speech—interestingly,
already from 1669 they strove to prevent it from being violated not only by
the king, or more broadly by the state authorities, but also by private
individuals.

Despite this vast importance ascribed to the freedom of speech, there

was also discussion about where its proper boundaries lay. Certain restric-
tions stemmed, so to speak, from its very nature. The very fact that the
freedom of speech was treated in Poland not so much as a natural human
right, but as an inalienable right of a free citizen, had certain consequences
in terms of the scope assigned to that freedom. To a lesser extent this con-
cerned societal restrictions. By defĳinition, as a political liberty, it was a
privilege solely of the noble citizens and the laws of the Commonwealth
likewise guaranteed it only to the noble citizens—but the conviction that
every participant in political discussion had a right to express their opin-
ion was so old and strong that when the burghers joined into such discus-
sion their right to do so was accepted nearly automatically.

Rather than the issue of who was free to speak their mind, more

attention was devoted to what they were permitted to say. Certain
limitations stemmed from the very way the freedom of speech was under-
stood. Its treatment as a right of the citizen, clearly underscoring its politi-
cal signifĳicance, almost automatically entailed limitations due to the
fact that certain topics fell outside its scope of interest. This liberty was
understood above all as a freedom to speak out on state-related
afffairs, broadly construed—and so matters related to religion, for instance,
remained outside the scope of legal safeguards enshrining the freedom
of speech. Still, noble authors were protected in such a case by the law
of neminem captivabimus nisi iure victum and the conclusions of the
Warsaw Confederacy. The latter also applied to burgher authors, who were
furthermore protected by the laws of their cities. Even in the times of the
Catholic reaction of the 17th/18th centuries, aside from statements made
by clergymen, no one demanded that the publication or import of non-
Catholic books be outlawed, and no such restrictions were exercised in
practice.

Discussion about the proper limits of the freedom of speech centred in

essence around the problem of what should be done if someone’s verbal
or printed words harmed another citizen, or harmed the Commonwealth
itself. These two issues were the focus of particularly heated debate
towards the end of the 18th century. As for the fĳirst, the prevailing opinion
was that it would be better for “a particular citizen to sometimes sufffer,

the pillars of freedom

44 K. N. Sapieha, speech to the Sejm on 05 Oct. 1790, quoted after: J.Szczepaniec, Sejm

Wielki…, p. 177.

45 J. U. Niemcewicz, speech to the Sejm, 20 Oct. 1789, quoted after: J. Szczepaniec, Sejm

Wielki, p. 165.

46 Volumina legum, vol. 9, Kraków 1889, p. 204.

then for the entire country to sufffer by having free expression stifled”.44
A more serious issue was what to do if certain statements or writings
proved damaging to the Commonwealth. The problem of such abuse of
the freedom of speech had worried Poles for a long time. However, all the
dangers that excessive liberty in this regard could entail for a state were
not analysed until the end of the 18th century, during the great political
revival that accompanied the Four-Year Sejm. The conviction which then
ultimately prevailed was that it was one thing to obey the law, but another
thing entirely to express one’s opinion about that law. It was only under
despotism that “everyone listens in silence and must obediently follow
orders, whereas a citizen of a free government is obedient, yet is allowed
to express his thoughts and speak his mind”.45 The enactment of the
Constitution of the Third of May 1791 and the ensuing harsh attacks by
malcontents gave rise to a question: What should be done with writings
that went further than just criticizing a certain law and incited active
rebellion against the legal authorities of the Commonwealth? This was
related to a quite fundamental question: Where does freedom end, and
anarchy begin? There was an awareness of the power of words, of how
much harm they could cause. But in the discussion of which was the worse
evil—the commotion caused by excessive freedom of speech, or despo-
tism leading to a lack of such freedom—the prevailing view was once
again that a restless freedom was better than a safe tyranny. Here it is
worth citing a lengthy fragment of Article 11 of the Cardinal Laws enacted
on 8 January 1791:

The free voice of each nobleman at the sejmiki and of each envoy at the Sejm
is most ceremoniously safeguarded and is not subject to court action under
any pretext whatsoever. Also the free voice of each citizen, not just at public
assemblies but in his thoughts and opinions or issued in writing or print and
bearing his signed name, is ensured without the need for permission,
approval, or in short in any form signed by any name. Including answering in
court if someone has, in writing or print, directe incited rebellion or infringed
upon the reputation of his neighbour […].46

In keeping with 200-year-old tradition of the Commonwealth, it was
the concept of nearly unlimited freedom of speech that won out in both

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theory and practice. The abandonment of legal limitations on the freedom
of speech meant that whatever its political signifĳicance, it constituted a
value in and of itself and needed to be respected as such both by state
authorities and by citizens. Despite the uncertain international situation
and fears about society’s reaction to the new Constitution of the Third of
May, its authors stuck to the letter of the law. Preventative secular censor-
ship (in a harsh form, at that) would only be introduced for the fĳirst time
by those who had criticized the Constitution’s authors of blocking the
freedom of speech: the Targowica confederates, who rose to the fore after
Poland’s defeat in its war against Russia.

1 J. Tazbir, Kultura szlachecka w Polsce: Rozkwit – upadek – relikty, 2d ed.: Warsaw 1979,

p. 65.

2 S. Leszczyński, Głos wolny wolność ubezpieczający, ed. S. Rembowski, Warsaw 1903,

p. 74.

3 K. Raczyński, speech to the Sejm on 24 Oct. 1788, Zbiór mów i pism niektórych w czasie

sejmu stanów skonfederowanych, vol. 1, Wilno 1788, p. 285.

4 J. Wybicki, speech to the Sejm on 20 Oct. 1784, Zbiór różnych mów w czasie sejmu

sześcioniedzielnego w Grodnie, Wilno 1784, p. 202.

CHAPTER FOUR

FREEDOM IN PERIL

Stressing the sense of security felt by the noble citizens, the prominent
Polish historian Janusz Tazbir noted in his work on the culture of the old
Polish nobility that the word “fear” appears extremely rarely in the politi-
cal treatises of the day.1 And yet, if we scrutinize more closely the political
discourse from this time, especially from the second half of the 17th cen-
tury until the demise of the Commonwealth, it becomes clear that a cer-
tain fear—or at least unease—was ever present. This was a fear for the
preservation of freedom.

This feeling of threat (an anxiety not unknown to other “free nations”)

can be sensed in almost every Polish political debate. Freedom seemed to
its Polish benefĳiciaries to be the greatest good, one that required the most
meticulous care. The fear that freedom might be lost can be seen as directly
proportional to the importance attributed to freedom. As Stanisław
Leszczyński expressed it:

The more our freedom is dearer and venerable, the more we must guard it
like a treasure which anyone will easily covet as soon as he spies it
unprotected.2

The idea harboured by the noble citizens that their freedom was of a
unique and matchless sort fĳilled them at once with pride and with anxiety
over pitfalls lurking everywhere. What the Poles observed in the world of
absolute monarchies around them strengthened their incessant fear of
losing their own freedom. The conviction that “apprehension and covet-
ousness [are] always common and necessary in free nations”3 was wide-
spread; it was even advocated by people as far removed from republican
demagoguery as Józef Wybicki, who supposed that “the more a nation
regards itself as free, the more carefully it minds its liberties”.4

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four

5 A. W. Rzewuski, speech to the Sejm on 31 Oct. 1782, Zbiór mów różnych w czasie

sześcioniedzielnego sejmu roku 1782 mianych, Wilno n.d., n.pag.

6 [J. Boczyłowicz], Orator politicus…, quoted from: H. Olszewski, Doktryny prawno-

ustrojowe czasów saskich (1697 - 1740), Warsaw 1961, p. 42.

7 [F. Radzewski], Kwestyje politycznie obojętne, n.p. n.d., p. 164.

The writings and speeches of Poles were characterized by a view that

they were not simply free, but rather “still” free. This “still” suggested
that freedom could be lost at any moment, that it was already in decline,
that “a terrible chasm beneath your freedoms”5 lay waiting just around the
corner. This image of freedom in decline had a very long history—rokosz
insurrectionists had wanted to defend it as early as 1606, and with time it
became a key political slogan. Besieged by dangers on all sides, the Polish
freedom was not just wary and suspicious but even “apprehensive”, “fear-
ful”, and “scared”.

It was also perceived as something not only incredibly valuable, but

also immensely delicate, fragile, easy to destroy and lose forever. “The
common freedom is like a glass vessel whose whole hangs upon one event,
and once dropped thou wilt see nought but broken shards”, warned Jakub
Boczyłowicz.6 It did not just require care, but also very cautious handling;
in fact it was best to leave it completely untouched. As Franciszek
Radzewski wrote, freedom was like a flower, which “although one wishes
to touch it with a pure hand, it immediately closes up entirely”.7 Radzewski
framed his assertion in ironic parentheses, but his readers took it rather
seriously.

The feeling of fragile freedom being under constant threat was not just

a phobia of the nobility, nor was it simply a result of practical observations
of goings-on in Poland’s neighbouring countries and the ever growing
attempts by the Commonwealth’s consecutive monarchs to bolster their
own power. The concern had a theoretical basis as well, which was by no
means purely Polish but common to the entire European nation-state
idea, born of the Renaissance and based on the philosophy of antiquity. It
is worth investigating how those threats to freedom were perceived by the
participants in Polish political discourse—especially because such fear
for liberty was not just a rhetorical platitude but an important element in
the nobility’s political ideology and in theoretical deliberations on the sys-
tem of governance.

It is worth pointing out yet again that liberty—as it was understood

within the Commonwealth until almost the end of the 18th century—was
guaranteed by a very fragile and shaky balance. This certainly was not just
a Polish problem: Western theoreticians were also convinced that under a

freedom in peril

8 I. Kurzeniecki, Refleksyje nad projektem Consilii Permanentis, n.p. [1774], n.pag.
9 A. Wolan, O wolności Rzeczypospolitej albo szlacheckiej, [1606], ed. K. J. Turowicz,

Kraków 1859, p. 38.

mixed system of government, as was present in all free countries, the ruler
naturally strives to seize all power, thus tending towards tyranny, while
the people desire to continuously expand their liberties, thus stretch-
ing them to their limits. Or, to phrase the predicament more poetically:
freedom struggled to cling to a narrow ridge wedged between the preci-
pice of despotism on one side and the chaos of anarchy on the other. Nam
ut neglecta libertas in servitutem, ita libertas sine modo in licentiam degen-
erat (because, as neglected liberty degenerates into servitude, so too lib-
erty without moderation degenerates into license), warned Sebastian
Kochowski in the 17th century. It could be said that the key problem of
Polish political thought throughout the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries was
the somewhat universal question of what to do “so that power should not
tyrannise and the people should not sink into anarchy”.8

It was the perceived threat posed by the king that undoubtedly aroused

the greatest interest and most concern. Distrust in the monarch was one
of the most enduring elements of the Polish perception of the state.
Indeed, such caution towards rulers was one of the rudiments of republi-
can doctrine, and again by no means unique to its Polish incarnation. It is
as well worth remembering that those concerns were not just theoretical,
but were also grounded in what the Poles observed in neighbouring mon-
archies as well as in the domestic Polish realities.

For almost two centuries—from the 16th century on—the Polish nobil-

ity compared the situation in what they called their respublica libera to
what was going on in other European countries. As Andrzej Wolan wrote:
“We have many examples of the strict severity of masters over their sub-
jects, not only in nearby countries, but also in faraway lands”.9 The situa-
tion in the increasingly absolutist monarchies presented Polish observers
with a dangerous reminder. Frequently dramatic descriptions of absolute
rulers’ actions and the predicaments of their subjects repeatedly featured
in Polish political discourse in the 17th and 18th centuries, usually in stark
counterpoint to praise of Poland’s freedom. The remoteness of those
countries, compounded by a lack of accurate knowledge about the actual
situation there, made this picture all the more menacing. Countries such
as Bohemia, Hungary, and Denmark—where a more or less free govern-
ment was being replaced by a more or less absolute monarchy—were
watched with particular unease, seen as a formidable warning for the

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four

10 S. Leszczyński, Głos…, p. 17.
11 Fundament rokoszu. In: Pisma polityczne z czasów rokoszu…, vol. 3, p. 347.

Commonwealth. The widely described lack of freedom within monarchies
was contrasted against the Polish liberty, thus stressing its value and arous-
ing pride in it, but also underscoring the sense of threat. In addition, the
actions of at least some of Poland’s rulers confĳirmed in practice the fears
of the country’s nobility, as grounded in such republican theory. Elected
rulers were unable to make the most of the opportunities provided by the
mixed nature of the Commonwealth’s government, and from Sigismund
Vasa to Augustus II they attempted to strengthen their power at the
expense of republican institutions—in particular the Sejm. This resulted
in increasing distrust and a growing fear for freedom.

Our home-grown examples teach us that for those ascending to it, the throne
represents just the fĳirst step in unlimited ambition, especially our throne,
upon which liberty and laws curtail the taking of broader license10

warned Stanisław Leszczyński, a king who, by losing the very throne he
spoke of, had himself been spared of this temptation.

In reality the threat posed by the ruler was seen as unavoidable, a con-

viction held not only by the Polish nobility but also by the political phi-
losophers of the time, especially from nations enjoying some degree of
freedom within a monarchy. It was generally felt that the monarchs’ natu-
ral desire was to exercise absolute rule unrestrained by any legal or institu-
tional limits. In the Commonwealth, the participants of Zebrzydowski’s
rokosz claimed that “the nature of kings is such: when warring they think
of how to acquire what belongs to others, and when idle they wish to rule
their country absolutely”.11 This was thought to result from the weakness
of human nature, which craved power, as well as from the inherent nature
of any power, which always strives to expand its ambit. This belief was not
always expressed quite so explicitly, but it was an enduring element of
political ideology in the Commonwealth and a common belief of the
szlachta from as early as the 17th century. But it was not just bad and des-
potic rulers who threatened liberty—even very best king could prove
dangerous to it, too. A warrior-monarch conquering more and more new
territories certainly was not regarded as Poland’s ideal type of ruler; quite
the opposite, in fact—he was treated as a dangerous troublemaker pursu-
ing absolutism, at the cost of the spilt blood of his own and foreign sub-
jects. Not even a king blessed with such virtues as common sense,

freedom in peril

12 Fundament rokoszu…, p. 347.
13 T. Dłuski, Usprawiedliwienie się przed publicznością z manifestu przeciwko Ustawie

dnia 3 maja roku teraźniejszego 1791 nastąpionej […]. In: Za czy przeciw Ustawie rządowej.
Walka publicystyczna o Konstytucję 3 maja. Antologia, ed. A. Grześkowiak-Krwawicz,
Warsaw 1992, p. 58.

moderation, and thriftiness was to be trusted. The prevailing view on
monarchs was summed up well by Jan Szczęsny Herburt in 1606:

He who is of good character tendit ad monarchiam [strives for monarchy], he
who is of bad tendit ad tyrannidem [strives for tyranny], and the diffference
between the two is as between a fĳisherman who spears for fĳish and one who
uses a rod.12

The threat posed by monarchs was not only related to their personali-
ties and actions, but was somehow unavoidably written into the very
nature of free government. Paradoxically, the ruler was an essential ele-
ment of that system but also the greatest threat to freedom and the
Commonwealth itself. At the basis of the Polish free-republic concept was
a conviction of the indispensability of the king (the monarchic element)
in imparting balance to the elaborate construction of mixed government,
as the sole guarantor of freedom. And yet an alternative vision of the state
functioned in parallel, depicting the king as something exterior and dan-
gerous to the Commonwealth. In a sense, the ruler and the republic
(understood here as the noble nation at large) were regarded as two not
overly amicable political powers, linked by an agreement (pacta conventa),
but pitted against one another and constantly seeking to undercut one
another’s powers. This was vividly expressed in the 18th century by Tomasz
Dłuski:

Our ancestors held up the king and the nation as two neighbouring poten-
cies, allied with one other by solemn treaty and presenting an unifĳied front
against all others, yet eyeing each other with caution.13

This clear conflict of interest quite simply put liberty and the royal majesty
on an inevitable collision course.

Because of this incessant conflict, it was exceedingly important for the

sanctity of the Commonwealth’s laws to be safeguarded as the basic mech-
anism keeping the king’s power in check and ipso facto guaranteeing the
nobility’s liberties, especially given that the kings seemed to constantly
harbour designs to undermine those laws. According to Łukasz Opaliński
in 1641:

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14 Ł. Opaliński, Rozmowa plebana z ziemianinem [1641]. In: idem, Pisma polskie, ed.

Ł. Kamykowski, Warsaw 1938 p. 28.

15 Uwagi z okoliczności rysu rządu publicznego, n.p. [1790], p. 6.

In free countries, where the authority of royal majesty is either equal or
smaller cum authoritate legum [than the power of laws], rulers impatiently
enduring this situation tend to wish to rid themselves of it through strength
and force.14

The conviction that in the interests of freedom the king must strictly obey
the laws—the old laws—lasted essentially until the end of the 18th cen-
tury. At the same time even the smallest, most timid attempts at broaden-
ing the monarch’s entitlements were treated as an assault against the
system of laws.

This leads us to another issue: when we look more closely at the accusa-

tions levelled against subsequent monarchs of harbouring designs against
freedom, it turns out that what was referred to as a struggle to defend free-
dom was actually a struggle for power between the monarch on the one
hand and the nobility on the other. This was, in fact, a logical consequence
of the Polish understanding of freedom. Since freedom entailed being
dependent upon one’s own will rather than anyone else’s, the extent of the
king’s power was inversely proportional to the extent of the subjects’ liber-
ties. This was summed up by an anonymous author at the end of the 18th
century: “As the throne’s power increases, so freedom diminishes”.15 It is
characteristic that the kings’ designs against freedom relatively rarely
involved specifĳic violations of the citizens’ personal liberties, violations
which did not generally occur in any case. Much more often they involved
rulers’ attempts to broaden the scope of the monarchy’s power, or the pro-
verbial aspiration towards absolutum dominium. Infringement of individ-
ual liberties was really a secondary matter here; it was the form of
governance that was under direct threat rather than citizens’ specifĳic indi-
vidual liberties or property. The latter would only come under threat if the
king took away their power, precluding them from having a hand in mak-
ing decisions pertaining to the country and to themselves.

In reality any power wielded by the king—or within his grasp—could

pose a danger to freedom. As the logic went: he must not have power over
the army, as he might use it against the nation; he must not control the
treasury, as access to funds would enable him not only to corrupt the
nation’s representatives but also to raise troops and pursue autonomous
policies; he especially must not have the right to impose taxes, as this
would enable him to oppress his citizens; he must not have any influence

freedom in peril

16 A. Popławski, Zbiór niektórych materyi politycznych, Warsaw 1774, p. 173.

over foreign policy as he might drag the country into war or make unfa-
vourable alliances; naturally the system of justice must remain outside his
realm of influence; under no circumstances should he have any influence
over legislation despite the fact he was the only individual with legislative
initiative, and so on, and so forth. From matters of fundamental gravity all
the way down to prerogatives that would seem quite unimportant—each
and every one might threaten the citizens’ liberties; each and every one
might be the fĳirst step towards despotism. It is telling that when
Montesquieu’s formulation of the separation of powers became popular
in the Commonwealth during the latter half of the 18th century, the king
was not only traditionally denied any influence over legislation, but his
participation in wielding executive power was also severely questioned, as
according to most authors it would simply lead straight to an out-and-out
monarchy. The fact that the power of the Commonwealth’s kings was
only lifelong, rather than hereditary, provided some protection over free-
doms—any assaults mounted against the liberties of subjects had to come
to an end the moment of the monarch’s death. Yet as long as the king was
treated as the Commonwealth’s inherent opponent any power invested in
him was deemed dangerous, whether it was interpreted in contemporary
separation-of-power categories or in the previous fashion of royal
privileges.

This brings the following question: If the monarch was perceived as

such a danger to freedom and to the Commonwealth, why were there not
calls for his abdication, why were proposals to usher in a pure republic so
rare? Such appeals only arose in the 18th century, and even then they were
the exception. Not even during the most turbulent attacks against the
monarchy, during the Great Sejm (1788–1792), did many authors propose
the complete abolishment of the royal offfĳice.

The answer is relatively simple, if paradoxical. Although the king was

the greatest threat to freedom, he was at once its greatest guarantor, not
least because he constituted an essential element of the mixed govern-
ment system. Poland’s political tradition also ascribed him with a more
personal role in the protection of freedom. The very existence of the king
was regarded as a specifĳic guarantee of balance and order in the country,
which would otherwise be threatened by “the ambitions of the more pow-
erful, the discord between the ruling and the ruled, and the diffference—
or, rather, opposition—of their interests”.16 And so the monarch was seen

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17 Głos obywatela dobrze swej ojczyźnie życzącego do narodu polskiego, n.p. 1788, p. 270.
18 W. Skrzetuski, Prawo polityczne narodu polskiego, vol. 1: Warsaw 1782, p. 117.

as a necessary counterbalance to anarchy. He was also meant to protect
the weak from the more powerful. Although Polish discourse about the
threat to freedom was dominated by the danger posed by the monarch,
this does not mean that the possibility of violence from fellow citizens was
not considered as well. Górnicki, Petrycy and others warned against it at
the end of 16th century, and still others continued to point it out through-
out the 17th and 18th centuries. The most dangerous fellow citizens were
those who had “risen above equality”, namely the magnates. The monarch
was there to cap their influence, to restrain the wealthy families’ aspira-
tions to dominate the country, and to protect the ordinary nobility’s liber-
ties. As one anonymous supporter of such a solution wrote on the subject
of the monarchy:

It clips the hubris of the haughty / quells unrest and rescues property.17

Interestingly, although the monarchs were constantly being accused of
harbouring designs against the Commonwealth’s laws, their main duty
was nevertheless seen as the protection of law and justice. Wincenty
Skrzetuski wrote thus in his textbook of law: “The King of Poland is both
the fĳirst guardian of the laws, and has a duty to abide by them himself and
to ensure that they are not violated by others”.18 It could be said that the
citizens had to be on guard against the king’s assaults against freedom,
whereas he in turn should guard them from violating their own freedom
themselves.

And so it seems the Poles feared their king while being unable to imag-

ine their Commonwealth without him. The question of how to reconcile
the monarchy with liberty was an insurmountable problem for at least as
long as the Commonwealth and the ruler were presented as two contend-
ing sides vying for power. Such an understanding paralyzed Polish politi-
cal theory as well as political practice from the end of the 17th century
onwards. Participants in political discussions concentrated on how to pre-
empt absolutist coups, but were unable to suggest any positive alternative
programme for the country. The theoretical groundwork necessary for
resolving the problem of how to reconcile the monarchy with the freedom
of the Commonwealth’s citizens was only beginning to enter political dis-
course during the 1770s, driven by the contemporary concepts of the sepa-
ration of power. For at least some authors this allowed them to view the
king not as the Commonwealth’s powerful rival but as its highest offfĳicial,

freedom in peril

19 H. Kołłątaj, Uwagi nad pismem, które wyszło w Warszawie w drukarni Dufourowskiej pt.

Seweryna Rzewuskiego […] o sukcesyi tronu w Polszcze rzecz krótka, Warsaw 1790, p. 20.

20 [I. Łobarzewski], Testament polityczny […], Warsaw 1789, introduction, n.pag.

not all that diffferent from the other offfĳicials of the republic and nation.
Such an interpretation resolved the main point of contention, the contra-
dictions between the republic and ruler that had engrossed the Polish
authors for so long—the highest power remained fully vested in the sover-
eign nation.

The notion of the king as an offfĳicer of the free nation was especially

favoured by authors who advocated strengthening the monarch’s position
or imposing a hereditary succession to the throne. The leading propagator
of this concept, Hugo Kołłątaj, tried to convince his readers that “the king
of a nation that knows its rights is nothing but the fĳirst coequal citizen in
terms of legislative power, the highest offfĳicer in terms of executive
power”.19 In this case awarding the monarch with greater power, albeit still
not too great, or even making the throne hereditary was not perceived as a
danger to freedom. One of the supporters of this king-as-state-offfĳicial idea
wrote,

[He] may make no assault against his own nation nor overthrow its freedom,
but must himself respect it, as there be no chance nor likelihood that he may
impose autocracy, the way being closed offf by good government and
lawmaking.20

The argument that the king is but a “minister” of the Commonwealth was
also being used after the Constitution of the Third of May was put in place,
defending that Constitution against accusations that it bestowed exces-
sive power upon him that might prove dangerous to freedom. It was also
noted that this new form of government brought the king’s and the nation’s
interests closer together.

Although the image of the king as an offfĳicial closely bound up with the

Commonwealth was becoming more common, it did not dominate Polish
political thought at the end of the 18th century. The old concept of the
“mutual struggle between liberty and the throne” proved difffĳicult to shake
offf. Besides, one would go too far to claim that such an offfĳicer-king did not
arouse any suspicions even for the very authors suggesting this interpreta-
tion of his position within the state. Polish republicans—including the
majority of the participants in political discourse—were deeply convinced
that all power and any offfĳicial function were potential dangers to freedom,
should they slip out from the nation’s control.

***

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21 S. Leszczyński, Głos…, p. 3.

The time has now come to consider the other direction from which a dan-
ger to freedom lurked. Although more attention was undoubtedly paid to
the threats posed to it by the governing authorities, this does not mean
that there was no understanding of the fact that freedom also posed a dan-
ger to itself.

The issue of the proper boundaries of freedom and the possibilities of

its degradation represents one of the fundamental problems in the theory
of the state. The question of where freedom ends and where wanton
license begins—of when libertas begins to be replaced by licentia—was
by no means distinctly a Polish question, as it had its genesis in antiquity.
It had long been raised by theorists of the state, especially those who advo-
cated solutions in the republican spirit. The prevailing conviction was that
just as the inherent nature of a ruler, or essentially any governing author-
ity, was to strive towards expanding its powers and therefore towards des-
potism, so too the inherent nature of the people was to strive towards
unlimited freedom. Similarly, within the Commonwealth it was thought
that it was just as difffĳicult to prevent the king’s assaults upon liberty as it
was to keep impetuous liberty itself under control. The latter was likened
to a swift river current, to a wild horse that needed to be tamed. As
Stanislaw Leszczyński put it:

Sooner might one catch a bird aloft in one’s hand, sooner might one restrain
the momentum of a swift river, than halt freedom in its course.21

For Polish authors considering the problem of freedom not only as a theo-
retical issue isolated from reality but also, or perhaps primarily, as a prob-
lem bearing upon the political realities surrounding them, it was an issue
of great gravity. It seems that the danger to freedom posed by freedom
itself was fully realized, yet frequently no remedy for it could be seen. It is
worth noting how frequently freedom was described using the Latin adjec-
tive periculosa, or perilous. While admittedly there was a popular maxim
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietuum servitium (better a dangerous
liberty than a quiet servitude), this does not change the fact that although
freedom may have been better than calm servitude, it was still indeed
“perilous”—dangerous even to itself. Even the greatest admirers of the old
Polish liberty admitted that danger itself was somehow an inherent part of
its essence. Notably, despite the widely-held views about Poles’ blind
attachment to liberty, the noble citizens were profoundly aware that

freedom in peril

22 Ł. Górnicki, Rozmowa Polaka z Włochem o wolnościach i prawach polskich. In: idem,

Pisma, ed. R. Polak, vol. 2: Warsaw 1961, p. 438.

23 S. Starowolski, Reformacyja obyczajów polskich, Kraków 1650, p. 26.

although it was something highly cherished it could not be enjoyed with-
out any restraint, and exercising freedom without moderation became
downright dangerous. Łukasz Górnicki’s assertion that “excessive freedom
has ruined many a state which had long enjoyed moderate freedom”22 was
shared by practically everyone, although there was less consensus about
what “moderate” and “excessive” freedom meant.

Political philosophers (from as far back as Plato and Aristotle) had seen

the danger of excessive license and the attendant anarchy, which de facto
entailed the demise of the state, as a threat hanging above every free state.
This danger was treated very seriously in Poland, too. Starting already in
the 16th century, much space in Polish writings and statements had been
given to warnings against letting freedom run too wild, to complaints
about the abuse of freedom. Despite what is sometimes thought, the
Polish freedom was not considered by its benefĳiciaries to be unrestrained,
nor did they feel it should be unrestrained. To the contrary, it had clearly
set boundaries: the laws of the Commonwealth, the common good, and
the interests of fellow citizens. However, it was as if no sentry had been
posted to guard those boarders—the kind of role that might have been
played by strong royal power. It is no wonder that the problem of excessive
freedom was one of the most important issues of Polish political thought.
From the very beginning of the Republic of the Two Nations (or actually
even earlier), a clear distinction was drawn between good and true free-
dom, as moderated by laws, on the one hand, and excessive, false license
or lawlessness (swawola in Polish) on the other. Dramatic descriptions of
the latter can be found in the writings of Górnicki, Opaliński, and
Starowolski. This latter writer followed Seneca in asserting:

So where the people order the common law, rather than the law ordering the
people, there is no freedom only lawlessness, which will swiftly bring to ruin
[…] anyone who assents to it as well as every state, every Commonwealth,
every home or family.23

For all the Polish authors speaking out on this issue, from the 16th to 18th
centuries, excessive license was not just a threat to freedom but quite sim-
ply its opposite. It was a threat to freedom—because it hampered the
functioning of and weakened the free state and this could be taken
advantage of by the monarch (to impose absolute rule) or by neighbouring

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24 Or to use the Polish terms: swawola ultimately led to niewola. More broadly, the logic

of the reasoning outlined in this section is nicely encapsulated by the parallelism of the
Polish terms: wolność (freedom) → swawola (license) → niewola (servitude).

25 Egzorbintancyja powszechna która Rzeczpospolitą królestwa polskiego niszczy, zgubą

grożąc (1628), ed. K.J. Turowski, Kraków 1658, p. 5.

26 J. Ostroróg on the sejm 1611, quoted from: J. Urwanowicz, Ideologia a działalność poli-

tyczna szlachty w czasach Zygmunta III. Wokół wartości ustrojowych. In: Między monarchą a
demokracja. Studia z dziejów Polski XV–XVIII wieku, ed. A. Sucheni-Grabowska, M. Żaryn,
Warsaw 1994, p. 187.

powers (to undercut the country’s autonomy); in both cases, unrestrained
license ultimately led to servitude.24 And it was the opposite of freedom—
because individual freedom was only guaranteed by the uniform obser-
vance of the law by all members of society. Licence, on the other hand,
meant disobedience of the common law, and thus entailed excessive free-
dom for certain citizens at the cost of infringing upon the liberties of the
others; it was warned against not only by critics of the Golden Liberty, but
also by its advocates and defenders.

A question here arises of how this almost universal warning can be

related to praises expressed for nierząd (which may be variously rendered
in English as “disorder”, “misrule”, or simply “lack of government”), a con-
cept seen as the foundation that Poland rested upon. We should start by
noting that those praises were by no means unanimous, and that 18th cen-
tury reformers were not the fĳirst to cast doubt on this maxim (many previ-
ous political authors had also doubted it). One 17th century author
scathingly noted that he was familiar with only one republic “founded
upon disorder”—this was the republic of hell, and it only survived in such
a state because God so deemed.25 Importantly, the notion that disorder
was something inevitable in republics was indeed popular in both the
17th century and in the fĳirst half of the 18th. Interestingly, the very same
author might repeatedly voice this conviction yet at the same time com-
plain about excess license and condemn abusus libertatis (the abuse of
liberty) in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. To explain this seeming
paradox, we need to realize that at least until the early 18th century the
Polish notion of nierząd did not yet conjure up images of wanton excess or
misruled anarchy, as it later came to in the 18th century, but above all
denoted the kind of messy disputes and disarray that are unavoidable in a
country governed not by a single ruler but by the collective will of its citi-
zens, with all their contradictory individual interests. “Like by shadow, tyr-
anny be accompanied by rule, freedom by misrule”, Jan Ostroróg asserted
in 1611.26 To some extent this dovetailed with a tradition stretching back to
antiquity, which saw a certain amount of turmoil as inevitable in any

freedom in peril

27 [W. Pęski], Domina palatii…, p. 47.

country with a free system, or even an element necessary for shaping the
characters of the citizens, meant to cultivate the proper virtues necessary
in the free state. “Our freedom is and must be perilous”, Walenty Pęski
declared at the end of the 17th century,27 and that view was reiterated by
the defenders of the old system of rule (or misrule) all the way until the
demise of the Commonwealth. There was thus a fundamental distinction
between the Polish concepts of disorder (nierząd) and unrestrained
license (swawola): although the former was potentially dangerous, it was
somehow inherently linked to freedom, while the latter was the very
antithesis of freedom. Disarray naturally stemmed from lively debates
over the content of laws or decisions, but placing one’s own interest above
the public good and the attendant refusal to obey the jointly enacted
law—that was already destructive licentia. True, the border was quite fluid
here and there was a serious danger that the tumult inherent in the repub-
lican system could easily change into unbridled license or even anarchy.
And what is more, the szlachta began to treat the disruption of Sejm and
sejmiki sessions, symptoms of the serious crisis of the Commonwealth’s
political system, as unavoidable elements of this tumult guaranteeing
freedom. Hence 18th century writers, especially in its latter half, had con-
siderable grounds to abandon such a distinction and to wrap the two phe-
nomena into one, which they indeed did.

Starting in the 16th century, there were not only warnings about exces-

sive license and complaints about the abuse of freedom, but also repeated
suggestions that licentia was no longer a potential threat to Polish liberty
but had become an actual state of afffairs that needed to be redressed.
Although this latter conviction was especially voiced by the critics of the
Golden Liberty, complaints about licentios libertas (licentious liberty) like-
wise appeared even in impassioned panegyrics in praise of freedom, and
so we can say that the perception of license as a threat was widespread.
It is no wonder that this conviction served as the point of departure in the
18th century for debate about state reform. Tackling the problem from this
direction was undoubtedly convenient for propaganda purposes: it pro-
vided a way to reassure the nobles, presenting all proposals of change as a
means of remedying the abuse of freedom. However, this was not just a
propaganda trick, but a profound conviction that licentia posed a grave
threat to Poland’s very existence, and therefore to freedom itself. We might
say that the advocates of political reforms from the fĳirst half of the

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28 A. Zamoyski, Mowa na Senatus Consilium podczas interregnum dnia 7 listopada roku

1763 w Warszawie miana, [Warsaw 1763], n.pag.

29 [S. Konarski], Projekt do pogodzenia “Myśli” przeciwnych pokazujący jako zgodzić

razem cum pluralitate taki prawdziwie wolny głos jaki jest opisany konstytucyją Anni 1609,
n.p. [1764], p. 19.

30 S. Konarski, O skutecznym rad sposobie,, vol. 2, p. 168.

18th century onward wanted to safeguard freedom from the absolutist
designs of the monarch, but to rescue freedom from itself, from its degen-
eration. When Andrzej Zamoyski appealed in an address to the Council of
the Senate that God “leaves it in your hands to rescue this freedom” he was
not thinking of saving it from any royal expansiveness, but from
anarchy.28

Warnings and complaints about license continued throughout the

entire 18th century, but during this time such words of caution began to
mention anarchy as well—and they surged with greater force in the wake
of Konarski’s writings. Aside from a contrast between moderation and
license, a dichotomy was drawn between governed freedom and misgov-
erned freedom. This was a problem that had been perceived previously—
17th century writers had already warned that unfettered license on the
part of citizens could and did lead to anarchy—but in the 18th century
more and more authors were increasingly prioritizing the concept that
anarchy was not just a hypothetical threat, but already a Polish reality, that
it had already supplanted liberty. From the 1760s onward, writings begin to
be dominated by dramatic descriptions of a nation “without freedom,
without council, without strength, without money, without justice, with-
out honour, without governance, without hope of anything good”.29
The most dramatic condition of the state “without council or governance”
as described by Konarski—

anarchy is where thou hast no obedience nor subordination, where justice
from the courts be haughty, the weak gather against the strong, there arise
seditions and rebellions, hatred among equals, oppressions, animosities,
and fĳinally civil wars, neighbours attack the country, tear it asunder, and rule
it as their own30

—shows that anarchy was the opposite of freedom to an even greater
degree than unrestrained license was. Not just because in the prevailing
tumult no one protected the individual liberties of citizens, but also
because the freedom to determine afffairs for oneself, the basic freedom in
a republic, remained unfulfĳilled when the representative bodies of the
state were not functional, paralyzed by the liberum veto principle. As
Leszczyński wrote: “In the imagination alone does our freedom prevail, in

freedom in peril

31 S. Leszczyński, Głos…, p. 51.
32 S. Konarski, O skutecznym…, vol. 3, p. 232.
33 O konfederacyi lwowskiej w roku 1622 uczynionej nauka, ed. K. J. Turowski, Kraków

1858, p. 21.

reality there is but grave servitude”.31 At the same time, anarchy, just like
license, posed a threat to freedom—and indeed, the sources of that threat
were the same in both cases. Concisely put, these sources were despotism
at home and interference from abroad. Especially the advocates of a cer-
tain “bridling” of freedom and the related political reforms stressed that a
state in turmoil could offfer an excellent opportunity for the ruler to make
a bid for absolute power. Here the example of Denmark, and later Sweden
were cited, countries where absolutist coups were said to have been suc-
cessful specifĳically because of the prevailing anarchy and citizens’ weari-
ness with misgoverned freedom. Konarski even went so far as to claim that
citizens there consented to stronger royal power voluntarily, “out of des-
peration, out of weariness of violence, out of a loathing for general mis-
rule”.32 We should add that the defenders of the old system drew quite
diffferent conclusions from the very same events, perceiving them as
merely confĳirming the conviction that every king harboured designs
against freedom and stressing that there could never be too much vigi-
lance in guarding against them.

The problem of the external threat to freedom as a consequence of

anarchy/license was especially engrossing for authors in the latter half of
the 18th century. This does not mean that it had not been noticed earlier.
Warnings that neighbouring countries might pounce upon the weakness
that stemmed from excessive license, conquer the country steeped in tur-
moil, and deprive its licentious citizens of their very freedom had already
been voiced in the 17th century, and Piotr Skarga was by no means alone
here. Sufffĳice it to cite a statement by the anonymous author of a certain
pamphlet dating from 1622:

The root of evil: excessive freedom or rather license—so long as it is not
reined in by the Sejm voluntarily […], there will never be hope for the better.
Deliver [us from] the foreign weeder, oh Lord.33

However, the issue did not take on painful urgency until the 18th century,
particularly after the Confederation of Bar (1768–1772) and the fĳirst parti-
tion of Poland (1772). Much credit goes to Konarski for clearly drawing a
link between anarchy and the external threat to freedom. He repeatedly
stated that anarchy would lead to foreign interference, and at the same
time reminded his noble readers of the old truth that once the free state of

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34 S. Konarski, Rozmowa na czym dobro i szczęście Rzeczypospolitej zaległo, Warsaw 1757,

p. 28.

35 M. Wielhorski, O przywróceniu dawnego rządu według pierwiastkowych Rzeczypospo-

litej ustaw, n.p. 1775, p. V; “All things in disorder perish and decay, yet Polish freedom should
stand because of disorder and last long? That can never be”, S. Sienicki, Sposób
nowoobmyślony konkludowania obrad publicznych, Łowicz 1764, vol. 1, p. 34.

36 Sz. Potocki, Odezwa obywatela i posła do narodu, n.p. [1790], n.pag. This was presum-

ably the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was cited by Potocki elsewhere and who
had presented precisely such an evaluation of the situation in the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth in his Considerations sur le gouvernement de Pologne.

which they were citizens lost its independence, they stood to lose their
own freedom. He explained that the neighbouring countries’ ostensible
concern for the Polish “freedom” was in reality a desire to preserve the very
anarchy that kept the Commonwealth weak:

and this tumult, this weakness, this confusion that they, I do not doubt,
maintain in our country, they call maintaining our freedom and rights.34

By the 1770s, this view was espoused by nearly all those who spoke out on
the issue of Polish freedom. Even defenders of the Commonwealth’s exist-
ing system like Szczepan Sienicki or Michał Wielhorski agreed that “mis-
rule deprives the country of its strength and dignity”.35 This was then no
longer a forewarning, but a diagnosis of the existing state of afffairs. It was
reiterated all the way to the Four Year Sejm (1788–1792), and the only dif-
ferences of opinion were about the causes of anarchy, not its conse-
quences. It took the hotheadedness of the most fervent defenders of the
old system to maintain that anarchy, far from being dangerous to freedom,
was even an inseparable aspect of the republican system and that Poland,
“though powerless, though plunged into misfortunes”, was nevertheless
still free.36 The question remains of where such ardency, where such zeal-
ous defence of anarchy sprang from, since previously both the apologists
and the critics of the Polish freedom had complained about unbridled
license.

We can begin to answer that question by turning our attention to a cer-

tain subtle yet signifĳicant shift that occurred in statements about freedom
in the 18th century, especially in its latter half. Authors at that time began
not only to showcase the threat of anarchy to a greater extent than license,
but importantly to draw an increasingly clear distinction between the two
issues. This was an important change, because both concepts refer to dif-
ferent spheres of political theory and reality. The concept of licentia
stresses to a greater extent the attitudes of members of a free commu-
nity—it is citizens, after all, who are then disobedient of the law, who

freedom in peril

37 C. Pyrrhys de Varille, Listy o bezkrólewiach polskich, Warsaw 1764, p. 67.

place their own good over the common good, who engage in heated quar-
relling, who in a nutshell exhibit licentious behaviour. Anarchy, on the
other hand, is defĳined as the condition of a state in which the basic institu-
tions are nonexistent, non-functional, or dysfunctional. In the 17th cen-
tury, when the crisis of the state and its institutions was not yet widely
perceived, greater attention had been devoted to behaviours on the part of
citizens that might be dangerous to freedom. Importantly for the Golden
Liberty ideology, it was even possible for complaints about unbridled
license and warnings against it to be combined with an apology of the
existing situation, or at least the foundations of the existing system—it
was people, after all, who were guilty of any abuses. It comes as no surprise
that the blame for the crisis of Polish freedom was so eagerly pinned upon
the demise of morals, upon neglect for the virtues one cultivated by
forebears, upon the “lasciviousness” and decadence of contemporary
citizens—in other words upon the “poor exercise of freedom”. This allowed
for the view that an improvement in attitudes alone could restore freedom
back to its former ideal state, without any interference with the founda-
tions of the political system. Things were diffferent in the case of anarchy,
which began to be discussed increasingly in the 18th century at least in
part due to the mounting crisis of the Commonwealth and its institutions
in the latter half of the century. This does not mean that those warning
against anarchy or the search for its causes completely passed over the
blame due to citizens, but that more attention was devoted to the short-
comings of institutions, laws, and the political system overall. This increas-
ingly led writers to conclude that in order to rescue the Polish freedom, the
very foundations of the system needed to be altered or reformed, rather
than merely trying to cultivate better citizens.

The threat of anarchy stemming from flaws in the very system of gover-

nance began to be discerned by advocates of political reforms from the
1760s onward. In their opinion, the Polish government was a “fĳigure of
unstable freedom, undetermined by limits such as it should have, and thus
always subject to inevitable improprieties”.37 This perception of the causes
of anarchy as lying not in the attitudes of citizens but in systemic flaws
meant that combating anarchy became, from at least the 1770s, a rallying
cry for advocates of any political reform. Each portrayed their pro-
posed changes to the Polish system of governance as a way to rescue free-
dom from anarchy—although the specifĳic elements of the system seen as

84 chapter

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38 S. Konarski, O skutecznym.., vol. 1, p. 175; vol. 3, p. 218.
39 Refleksyje polityczne super moderno interesów europejskich statu in Januarii Anno 1734,

manuscript, Kórnik Library, no. 95.

40 Odezwa Galicjanina do Polaków, n.p. [1790], p. 22.

needing to be revamped varied based on the specifĳic views of the author.
Writers in the 1760s and 1770s mainly saw anarchy as emerging from the
Polish Sejm, or more precisely the practice of disrupting Sejm sessions: “By
incessantly breaking offf, ruining our Sejms, we have already well begun
descending, and will undoubtedly ultimately descend into anarchy”,
Konarski wrote in the fĳirst volume of his work.38 As an aside we can note
that this danger had been sensed earlier. The author of a pamphlet in 1734
wrote philosophically: “Three or four disrupted Sejms threatened Poland
with the quite ordinary misfortune of anarchy”.39 However, this was seen
as involving not an institutional flaw, but insufffĳicient virtue on the part of
participating deputies. With time other, institutional sources of anarchy
came to be discerned: above all the free election of kings, as advocates of a
hereditary monarchy had been suggesting starting in the 1770s and which
they especially promoted during the debates of the Four Year Sejm, seeing
the free election as spelling “certain disorder, and thus the certain ruin
of the whole country”.40

And so although as we have seen the perception of freedom’s threat to

itself evolved somewhat between the 16th and 18th centuries, the basic
notion that it was indeed self-dangerous remained beyond doubt over the
more than two centuries the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was in
existence. While enraptured with their Golden Liberty, the noble citizens
were well aware that it was a highly precious, but very dangerous com-
modity. And yet—having this awareness did not help them cope with the
danger in time.

1 The fĳirst two citations are from: Ł. Opaliński, Obrona Polski przeciw Janowi Barklayowi,

in: idem, Wybór pism, ed. S. Grzeszczuk, Wrocław 1959, p. 197; whereas the latter is

CHAPTER FIVE

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH POLISH LIBERTY?

Historians contemplating the degeneration of Polish liberty have usually
discussed how things worked in practice, the anarchic political system
that brought the state to crisis. However, certain dangerous shifts can also
be observed within Polish theoretical thought on freedom. It is worth tak-
ing a closer look at these shifts, as well as at how the Polish theory of the
state coped with them in the 18th century—the time when degeneration
of the notion of freedom reached its apex, as did attempts to re-evaluate it
and look upon it from fresh perspectives.

The republican concept of freedom that had been adopted by Polish

political thinkers in the 16th century concealed certain dangers. They did
not make themselves manifest as long as the political system of the
Commonwealth functioned efffĳiciently and freedom was a vigorous idea,
thoroughly analysed and developed through political disputes and discus-
sions. But with the coming of the crisis of state institutions in the latter
half of the 17th century, the Polish vision of freedom became increasingly
static, if not to say fossilized. Not only did new Western proposals for
understanding freedom remain unadopted, but even the old republican
tradition became impoverished, in places deformed. We might say that at
the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, freedom was already more an
object of unreflective adoration than a subject of analysis and discussion,
a kind of political myth rather than a vigorous idea.

It was only then that freedom was recognized as not just the supreme

value, but as the sole value, the most precious commodity supplanting all
others. For earlier authors from the 16th and early 17th century (like for
Western admirers of liberty) freedom had not represented happiness
itself, but a guarantee of happiness—auspiciousness, prosperity, and
above all security for the people blessed with it and their assets. Writers
stressed that the Poles lived “without dread”, that they could “safely lead
private lives, holding offfĳices does not expose one to any fear”, in other
words, that “it is in every respect safer to live under the full freedom of a
republic” than under a monarchy.1 However, with time this connection

86 chapter

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from: A. M. Fredro, Praerogativa popularis status repraesentatur Monarchiam [1668], Polish
trans. T. Włodarczyk, in: Filozofĳia i myśl społeczna XVII wieku, part. 1: ed. Z. Ogonowski,
Warsaw 1979, p. 335.

2 Bezstronne zastanowienie się nad proponowaną ustawą następstwa tronu w Polszcze,

n.p. [1789], p. 41.

3 As this was described by one critic of such views: List obywatela do wszystkich

stanów[…], n.p., 1776, p. 9.

began to fade, and even to be questioned. Contrary to the opinions of their
forebears, at least some of those speaking and writing in the 18th century
considered it an “undoubted truth that bliss and peace cannot endure
freedom, and vice versa”.2 We can say that this change was underpinned by
a change in the real situation of the Commonwealth: when writers from
the 16th century and early half of the 17th century were expressing their
views Poland had been living proof of the close link between freedom and
security, whereas by the early 18th century fĳirst-hand experiences with tur-
moil and the ravages of war inclined writers to take the opposite view.
Calmness and prosperity were seen as being present under Europe’s pow-
erful monarchies, while the Polish liberty was increasingly viewed as
linked to unrest and uncertainty. In this situation, freedom was no longer
so much meant to guarantee all other values, as to replace them in a cer-
tain sense. Recognizing freedom as a value unto itself, setting it apart from
other values underlying human happiness, essentially cherishing it in
place of them, was a kind of Polish idiosyncrasy in the 18th century. The
assertion that

…freedom should be held up above all things […], there is no value higher
than freedom and people should not desire anything above it3

amounted to a kind of self-consolation in a situation of uncertainty and
danger—despite the worsening predicament of the country and its resi-
dents, it enabled them to continue to look down upon nations that did not
enjoy freedom to the same extent as they did.

A related problem was a certain passive attitude towards freedom. Since

no value could compare to liberty, and at the same time the latter had here
reached its ideal state (or so it was believed), there was no reason to pro-
pose any sort of change to how it was understood or any reform of the
political system meant to guarantee it—such changes would be unneces-
sary, and might very well be dangerous. Such statements very frequently,
more frequently than other opinions, took the form of demagogic decla-
mations. This quickly became one of the favourite lines of argumentation
used by those opposed to governmental reforms in the Commonwealth:

what was wrong with polish liberty?

4 S. Sienicki, Sposób konkludowania obrad publicznych, Łowicz 1764, vol. 1, p. 6.

conceding that such changes might even yield certain benefĳits but insist-
ing that they would nevertheless still be incomparable with freedom.
Interestingly, in general everyone recognized that the realities surround-
ing them difffered vastly from the mythical ideal. Complaints about the
degeneration of freedom were a characteristic feature of nearly all Polish
writings, from the 17th or 18th centuries. But the authors of most of them
proved to be at a complete loss in the face of this phenomenon. Such help-
lessness was expressed well by Szczepan Sienicki, who himself happened
to be one of the defenders of the liberum veto:

Such fateful times have come for us […] that it is as if we did not hear the
widespread grievances about the inevitable consequences, could not see the
consequent ruin.4

Indeed, the defenders of the “old” freedom may have perhaps “seen its
ruin” but, possessed by an obsessive fear of any change at all, they lamented
liberty’s downfall without being able to propose any positive agenda. They
pinned the blame for the crisis of the Commonwealth’s state institutions,
and thus of freedom itself, exclusively upon the decline in citizens’ morals,
and the only concept they had to propose was that the lost virtue of their
forebears needed to be restored. Such erstwhile virtue was believed to be
the reason why the institutions functioning badly during the epoch of
degeneration and immorality had once managed to function excellently,
back in the mythical times when everyone had been more concerned for
the common good than for their own interests. This was a reference to the
republican tradition, which linked ethics and politics to a degree that is
hard to imagine nowadays—but a clearly distorted reference, ignoring
other aspects of republican thought about freedom.

This was not the only shift. In statements from the crisis period of Polish

political thought, one can perceive a certain breakdown in the hierarchy
of values posited by republican theory. Most signifĳicantly, the freedom to
participate in public life was no longer treated as the ability to participate
in making decisions that concerned the state and the community, and
which therefore bore upon one’s own fate, but exclusively as the ability to
defend one’s own individual liberties as a noble citizen. The possibility of
such an interpretation had earlier been warned against by Machiavelli,
who stated that a people’s love for freedom was not so much about a desire
to govern as a desire not to be governed by anyone else. This concept was
perhaps presented best by Antoni Popławski:

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five

5 A. Popławski, Zbiór niektórych materyi politycznych, Warsaw 1774, p. 248.
6 [T. Dłuski], Refleksyje nad projektem pod tytułem “Zbiór praw sądowych”[…], n.p. 1780,

n.pag.

7 Mowa J.W. Imci Wielhorskiego KWLitt. posła wołyńskiego miana dnia 18 9bris 1766, n.p.

n.d., n.pag.

8 S. Rzewuski, O sukcesyi tronu w Polszcze rzecz krótka, n.p. [1790], p. 10.

Our sole concern is not how to turn political freedom into the good fortune
of the homeland, the rights of all, and to rein in prepotencies, but how to
turn it into the private independence of each individual.5

This statement was to a greater degree a critique of the practical ills of the
Sejm, but such a treatment of freedom was also evident in theoretical trea-
tises. Here there was a very dangerous blurring of the boundary between
(or even equating of) the public good and the defence of individual rights
and liberties, a notion that the public good quite simply constituted
the sum total of the individual interests of all the citizens, in keeping with
the principle that “the whole cannot otherwise be fortunate, only by ren-
dering fortunate all its parts”,6 or as Michał Wielhorski summed it up:
“the good of the republic hinges upon each citizen in specifĳic being
fortunate”.7

From there, a re-evaluation of attitudes towards the homeland and

towards liberty was just one step away. When the concept of the noble
state was forming in the 16th century, essentially all contributors to the
discussion were aware that since a free republic was the only guarantee of
liberty, concern for liberty essentially entailed love for the homeland, anx-
iety for its strength and safe existence. Until the mid-17th century, essen-
tially no one had any doubt that without the homeland, without the
Commonwealth, there could be no freedom. Later, especially in the fĳirst
half of the 18th century, this argumentation came to be flipped around,
and it dangerously began to be suggested that without liberty there could
be no homeland. In such an interpretation, patriotism was seen as a love
not for the free country, but for the liberties of its citizens. Any attempt at
limiting that freedom, even necessary to strengthen and later even to res-
cue the state, was seen as an assault against the common homeland, as
tantamount to treason.

Offf with you, you disgraceful sons of the homeland, go to foreigners to curry
their favour or scorn and leave to righteous Poles this freedom that they
cherish more than life, and which you know not how to enjoy properly nor
to retain,

declared Seweryn Rzewuski,8 a fanatical defender of the old rights,
addressing the authors of the reforms during the Four-Year Sejm

what was wrong with polish liberty?

(1788–1792). It comes as no surprise that advocates of such an interpreta-
tion (who were by then not very numerous) accused the creators of the
modern Constitution of the 3rd of May 1791 specifĳically of treason—in
their understanding it undercut the noble liberties, and therefore
amounted to betrayal of the country (as equated with the noble nation
and its privileges).

This was all the more dangerous an interpretation in that it enabled

foreign powers to be viewed as guarantors of the Polish liberty. Since the
only measure of freedom was the individual liberties of the noble citizens,
and they in turn were guaranteed by the unchanged existence of the old
rights and the old institutions, including the liberum veto, the neighbour-
ing powers meddling in the internal afffairs of the Commonwealth, seeking
to preserve unchanged its anarchic system of governance, could indeed
portray themselves as defenders of the Polish liberty. Similar views
appeared in Polish statements in the fĳirst half of the 18th century, during
the period of the Commonwealth’s profound crisis, seeing fĳirst the weak-
ening and then the loss of its sovereignty. Those who saw foreign “caretak-
ing” as the sole guarantee of the Polish liberty were speaking exclusively
about internal freedom, meant to be guaranteed by a political system left
unchanged in every detail. While devoting much attention to the dangers
faced by freedom or outright lamenting its demise, they completely passed
over the issue of the country’s independence, even at a time when that
independence was under in peril or being violated. In a certain sense their
statements formed a certain type of imaginary world, completely or largely
ignoring the current realities—a world in which the greatest threat to
freedom was still royal despotism, which might be unleashed by any
changes made to the old rights. Such logic would lead the Radom confed-
erates (1767) to head to St. Petersburg with a supplication for guarantees of
their freedom, and the Targowica confederates (1792) to go there with an
appeal for Russia’s intervention in its defence. Unfortunately, Catherine
the Great was more than happy to comply with both requests.

But even at the apex of the crisis in Polish political thought, not every-

one accepted this mythologized and warped picture of liberty. Likewise,
not everyone writing about freedom wallowed in inertia and blissful igno-
rance. Nearly from the very beginning of the 18th century, there were some
authors who did perceive the country’s real predicament and thus chal-
lenged the szlachta’s myths. The most interesting analyses of freedom at
this time were proposed by Stanisław Karwicki in his unpublished De
republica ordinanda (written in the early 18th century), by Stanisław
Leszczyński in his Free Voice Ensuring Freedom (1749), and by Stanisław
Konarski in several works, chiefly his most famous On the Means of Efffective

90 chapter

five

9 S. Konarski, O skutecznym rad sposobie, vol. 4: Warsaw 1763, p. 12.
10 S. Leszczyński, Głos wolny…, p. 37.
11 [S. Konarski], Projekt do pogodzenia“Myśli” przeciwnych, pokazujący jako zgodzić

razem cum pluralitate taki prawdziwie wolny głos, jaki jest opisany konstytucyją Anni 1609,
n.p. [1764], p. 19.

12 S. Dunin Karwicki, O potrzebie urządzenia Rzeczypospolitej (De ordinanda Republica),

in: idem, Dzieła polityczne z początku XVIII wieku, Polish trans. and edit. A. Przyboś,
K. Przyboś, Kraków 1992, p. 123.

Council (1760–1763). What they all shared was their stance towards free-
dom. In contrast to the general passivity, theirs was an active agenda
focused on cultivating and improving freedom. Each of the above three
authors proposed quite far-reaching changes to the existing political sys-
tem precisely for the sake of rescuing, remedying liberty. Konarski went so
far as to assert: “Even rights which in other times were useful, when cus-
tom renders them harmful or better custom improves them, need to be
promptly abolished”.9 This was a shocking formulation against the back-
drop of the widespread concern for preserving the “old, good rights”.

These authors also managed to liberate their political treatises from

vacuous moralizing, to avoid putting all the ailments of the system exclu-
sively down to lost virtue among Poles. Karwicki polemicized with such
views indirectly, opting not to discuss ethical issues nearly at all, whereas
Leszczyński mounted a full-on attack, reversing the logic and claiming: “In
this unfortunate disarray, even if someone be born cum hac innata indole
[with this innate capability], he will immediately suppress it in youth”.10
This thought was repeatedly and resolutely echoed by Konarski, convinced
that the crisis of the state was a cause, not a consequence of the decline in
virtue. It is no surprise that he wanted to rescue liberty not by reviving
some mythical virtue of old, but by efffecting real reform of specifĳic institu-
tions of the Commonwealth. He maintained that the proper functioning
of these institutions would nearly automatically bring back good customs.
He repeatedly stated: “Anarchy has spoiled us, […] better governance and
council will make this nation diffferent in several years”.11 Such an interpre-
tation also fĳit squarely within the republican tradition, which held that a
citizen’s character should be moulded by the “constitution”—the frame-
work of government and law in his country. This reversal of perspective
did not entail any lack of interest in the issue of cultivating the right atti-
tudes among free people (a key point in republican theory) or negation
that there was a link between virtue and freedom—everyone stressed that
a free state could thrive with “good and courageous citizens”.12

what was wrong with polish liberty?

13 S. Leszczyński, Głos wolny… p. 74.
14 S. Konarski, O skutecznym…, vol. 2, p. 152.

The writers of the fĳirst half of the century did not so much propose new

concepts of freedom as return back to the fundamentals of the republican
theory of government, in its pure (we might say), classic form. In a certain
sense they simply pointed out truths that had already been known to the
Polish Renaissance: the ascendancy of public over private good, the need
to obey self-enacted laws, and the fact that the strength of a free state was
the only guarantor of the freedoms of the individual. This latter notion
was still approached quite timidly by Karwicki, but formed one of the
major aspects of the Free Voice Ensuring Freedom in which Leszczyński
reminded his countrymen:

Unable to avoid certain cladem [defeat] in wars through the insufffĳicient
strength of our forces, we face the inevitable loss not just of our homeland,
but of our liberties and freedom.13

Konarski, in turn, posed the quite rhetorical question: “When our
Commonwealth and our homeland perishes without council and without
Sejms, where will this freedom be?”14 For the author of On the Means of
Efffective Council the conviction that only a strong and free state could
guarantee the liberties of its citizens was the very foundation and pivot of
all political philosophy. Moreover, viewing individual freedom as contin-
gent on the freedom of the community, on the independent existence of
the Commonwealth, enabled him to make far-reaching proposals for gov-
ernmental reform. Since they strengthened the state, they would also
strengthen freedom. That is why he could permit himself to mount an
uncompromising attack against the liberum veto, which by ruining Sejm
sessions weakened the country and therefore undermined the freedom of
its citizens. Konarski was the fĳirst author to completely break free of the
obsessive fear of losing freedom, of royal designs against it. By invoking
the republican tradition, both Polish and ancient, and enriching it with
the theories of Montesquieu, he revived the old way of thinking about free-
dom. What had seemed to be an empty platitude became, in his interpre-
tation, a coherent concept of freedom as a nation’s self-determination.

Konarski managed to raise an efffective polemic against what he aptly

saw as the degeneration of the republican concept of freedom, and his
argumentation would be echoed all the way until the 1790s. But he did not
manage to resolve certain problems related to Polish liberty, because they

92 chapter

five

15 S. Konarski, O skutecznym…, vol. 2, p. 129.

stemmed not from its deformation but from the very core of the republi-
can doctrine.

We have already discussed the interpretive possibilities that arose out

of the republican theory’s very strong emphasis on the character of free
citizens—a certain neglect for the role of the free state’s institutions,
focusing exclusively on the issue of lost virtue. But a greater problem lay in
a certain confusion of concepts, or more precisely in the insufffĳicient con-
ceptual framework for distinguishing between various levels of freedom.
As we have already stated, the republican freedom encompassed both
negative and positive freedom, although republican theory did not use
such terminology and the division itself was imprecise. It was viewed
more as one and the same freedom, only realized in various aspects. As
Konarski wrote:

Because true freedom of the country and its citizens for you rested upon
this—to govern yourself, to write laws for yourself, to levy taxes for yourself,
to establish government for yourself, to be certain of your fortune, honour,
and life […].15

Although he in fact excellently distinguished the freedom of the individ-
ual to pursue private aims from the notion of freedom as self-determina-
tion, many of his predecessors and successors had trouble doing so. One of
the consequences of this was that freedom was equated with power, a
notion typical of Polish writings and statements, both those that were of a
more theoretical nature and those which were delivered in the public
forum, during political discussions. This was dangerous, since every pro-
posal that was interpreted as limiting the power of the nation, de facto
meaning every proposal to reform the existing political institutions, was
treated as an assault against liberty. On the other hand, when proposals to
grant certain liberties to peasants began to appear in the mid-18th century,
their authors had to go to great lengths to explain that they did not mean
allowing them to have a share of power, only ensuring their individual lib-
erties. Giving some thought to the rights of residents of the Commonwealth
other than the noble citizens also lays bare another weakness of the repub-
lican theory. Here we should point out again that this theory held that
freedom sprang from and was guaranteed by the institutions and laws
of the Commonwealth. Liberty was thus not a natural human right, but
a consequence of belonging to a community that formed a free state.

what was wrong with polish liberty?

Given this, it was easy for political discussions to pass over the problem of
the liberties of people who did not belong to the community of citizens—
slaves in Greece and Rome, the plebs in the Italian republics, peasants in
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, black slaves in the American
Colonies. Warnings against this had been raised by writers in the 16th cen-
tury, such as Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski and Andrzej Wolan, but in subse-
quent centuries, although the plight of the peasants was quite frequently
lamented, the issue of their freedom remained seemingly beyond the hori-
zons of Polish political philosophy. Even authors who tried to consider the
issue presented it solely in moral or economic terms; we might say that
they lacked the tools to analyse it in political categories.

Those tools would only be supplied by 18th-century authors who drew

upon Western theories, especially the concepts of the French physiocrats.
Writers such as Antoni Popławski, Hieronim Stroynowski, Józef Wybicki
and others, who were not very innovative and have been forgotten almost
completely today (with the exception of Wybicki, remembered as the
author of the Polish national hymn), were the fĳirst to move beyond the
republican understanding of liberty. It was they who introduced two
issues of watershed signifĳicance into Polish political discourse: the con-
cept of freedom as a law of nature, and the division between civil and
political freedom.

Freedom as a natural human right was not a new concept; it had been

known to writers of the Polish Middle Ages and Renaissance but had since
been completely forgotten by Polish political philosophy. Credit for rein-
corporating it into 18th-century Polish deliberations about the state and
society goes to less prominent authors who were fascinated with the polit-
ical philosophy of the French economists. The adoption of this concept
could (and frequently did) have far-reaching consequences for the under-
standing of freedom and especially for evaluations of its realization in
Poland. Above all, it enabled Polish discourse on freedom to be brought
into a kind of order, by drawing a clear distinction between two levels of
freedom and above all introducing a new category: civil freedom. Western
theories, when speaking of natural freedom, specifĳically meant civil, not
political freedom. This was a logical consequence of its recognition as an
inborn right of man as an individual, irrespective of what political system
he lived under, and at the same time a conviction that it existed even prior
to the emergence of societies, and thus of political power. For European
philosophers natural freedom formed the basis of the theory of negative
freedom, of human freedom in any society irrespective of the form of
government. Although this concept was never embraced unreservedly

94 chapter

five

16 [F. Bieliński], Sposób edukacyi w XV listach opisany, [Warsaw] 1775, p. 137; this was a

quotation taken from Politique naturelle, a fact the author did not conceal.

17 K. Bogusławski, O doskonałym prawodawstwie, Warsaw 1786, p. 81.
18 J. Wybicki, Myśli polityczne o wolności cywilnej, ed. Z. Nowak, Gdańsk 1984, p. 171.

in Poland, credit for its introduction into Polish political philosophy, or
perhaps for teasing it apart from the general concept of freedom, is due to
the authors who espoused the theory of natural freedom in Poland. They
were the ones who drew a distinction between and separately defĳined civil
vs. political freedom. Political freedom they understood, like before, as
meaning involvement in wielding power and making state decisions,
whereas civil freedom they presented—following Western theorists, cit-
ing them explicitly or not—as a freedom “which enables everyone to
occupy themselves with their own happiness, without injury to the public
happiness or that of their fellow citizens”, as Franciszek Bieliński stated it,
echoing d’Holbach.16 Importantly, they tried at the same time to persuade
their readers that freedom did not have to entail the sharing of power, but
rather the “free exercise of ownership under the protection of law”.17 The
conviction that freedom meant the ability to freely and safely enjoy one’s
property was not alien to republican thought, either, but in Polish state-
ments in the 18th century it only appeared together with the modern defĳi-
nition of civil liberty.

The most interesting attempt at explaining these two diffferent free-

doms to the Poles at that time was made by Józef Wybicki, whose Political
Thoughts on Civil Freedom assumed that the crisis that had befallen the
Commonwealth was a consequence of the Poles’ failure to comprehend
freedom:

Poles […] unsatisfĳied with civil freedom, always thirsted for political free-
dom […] [they] were almost always unfortunate captives when they so
greedily appropriated freedom for themselves, because they understood it
as free license, without due obedience of law, love for government, and
respect for the common good.18

This assessment of the situation led him to devote his entire book to a
lecture on what political freedom and civil freedom meant, especially the
latter, which like the liberals he equated with the freedom to act within
bounds set by law. At the same time, he harmoniously invoked the old
republican ideals, above all virtue and the public good.

Distinguishing between these two levels of freedom enabled Polish

authors, without rejecting the foundations of the republican ideal, to

what was wrong with polish liberty?

polemicize with what they considered its degeneration, with what
they described as “false” or “purported” freedom, in its place proposing
their own clearly constructed concept. Clearly defĳining the two free-
doms made it possible, among other things, to explain that a whole
range of noble rights and privileges in fact had nothing in common
with freedom, and thus stubborn defence of them was not in fact the
defence of freedom itself. Aside from that, teasing apart civil and politi-
cal freedom made it possible to draw a clear distinction between an
individual’s personal freedoms as a human being, and their political
rights/liberties as a citizen. Finally, the stress laid in the defĳinition of
civil freedom on the issue of its being safeguarded from infringement not
only by governmental authority, but also by fellow citizens, shifted the
centre of gravity of discussion somewhat, relieving the obsessive anxiety
about protecting freedom from the monarch. This paved the way for
bolder proposals of political reform, which by establishing greater order in
the country were meant to protect the freedom of the individual against
infringement by fellow citizens. These possibilities would not be fully
explored until the political discussions of the Four-Year Sejm, but the
authors of the 1770s do deserve credit for “tidying up” discourse on free-
dom in this way.

The assertion that freedom was naturally innate had very signifĳicant

implications not just for the understanding of freedom but also for its per-
ceived societal scope. We should once again stress the diffference between
the natural-law interpretation of freedom as opposed to the republican
tradition—the former was no longer a freedom created by the laws of a
free state, but was a natural right with which every human being entered
the world, and positive laws were meant to safeguard it on the one hand
and limit it on the other, so that it should not collide with the freedom of
others. In other words the assertion that freedom had its source in nature
meant that it was an inalienable right of every human being, not just of
noble citizens. This truth had been realized by Renaissance authors but
later it receded into the background, together with the natural theory of
freedom. It began occasionally resurfacing in the fĳirst half of the 18th cen-
tury (in Leszczyński, later in Konarski), not so much in reference to con-
temporary (or earlier) political philosophers as in reference to divine law.
However, these were just individual mentions, none of them expounding
on the issue more broadly. It was only the “Polish physiocrats” who would
reintroduce the notion in the latter 18th century. “As everyone is by nature
the owner of his own person, so he is by nature free in this respect and not

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19 H. Stroynowski, Nauka prawa przyrodzonego, politycznego, ekonomiki politycznej

i prawa narodów, Wilno 1785, p. 25.

20 J. Wybicki, Listy patriotyczne, ed. K. Opałek, BN I, 155, Wrocław 1955, p. 93.
21 Such was the title of one of the chapters of Letter VI, J. Wybicki, Listy…, p. 93–95.
22 H. Stroynowski, Nauka…, p. 51 n.
23 A. Popławski, Zbiór niektórych materyi politycznych, Warsaw 1774, p. 54.

subjugated to others” wrote Hieronim Stroynowski.19 Wybicki asserted
resolutely:

He who seeks to fĳind a rightful and justifĳied origin of servitude strains his
mind in vain. The truth that must always prevail is that nature, as the com-
mon mother of all people, has given them all freedom.20

In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, even if such deliberations
mainly operated in the domain of general theory, they naturally referred
to the peasant issue. It is no wonder that authors of broader writings on
the issue could not and did not want to omit this issue. It became for
Wybicki one of his major arguments in favour of improving the situation
of the serfs—he devoted much space in his Patriotic Letters to explaining
that “subjugation is against the law of nature”.21 He was doubtlessly the
only thinker in the 1770s who appealed to the concept of natural freedom
in political discussions, but it would be an injustice to claim that the links
between it and the Polish realities were not noticed at all by more theo-
retical writers. Even the author of the deliberations most abstracted from
the Polish realities, Hieronim Stroynowski, stated that excessive preroga-
tives held by a single group, at the expense of limiting the innate rights
of other members of society, were a “consequence of violence and
injustice”.22 Although he did not relate this explicitly to the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth, such conclusions suggested themselves.
Antoni Popławski, on the other hand, concluded his general discussion of
similar concepts by stating outright:

And if these invariable rights, meaning ownership and the freedom to pro-
vide for and exercise it, granted by nature to hearten the human condition,
need to be safeguarded for all in a decent country then it must be done so
separately for the farmers.23

It would be hard to point to any signifĳicant impact of the natural-law
concept of freedom on mainstream views at that time—besides, such
influence would be quite strange, considering that this was a typical
philosophical notion. However, we cannot underestimate its impor-
tance in shaping the concept of freedom in Polish political thought.

what was wrong with polish liberty?

24 [J. Pawlikowski], Myśli polityczne dla Polski, Kraków 1789, p. 173.

It was precisely what led the traditional way of thinking to be overcome
and constituted a fĳirst step towards a more modern treatment of liberty,
and at the same time towards its recognition not as a (noble) privilege of
each citizen of the free Commonwealth, but as a right of each person,
regardless of his social estate and irrespective of the type of government
under which he lived. Although as we have noted the credit for introduc-
ing it into Polish political writings and discussions goes to those somewhat
forgotten writers, they did not posit any original visions of freedom and
were not fully able to apply the foreign concepts to the situation in the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

This would only be achieved by the prominent writers of the late 1780s

and early 1790s, when the most interesting perspectives on freedom were
put forward. Although their authors made use of Western proposals, these
largely continued to be concepts in the republican tradition, recognizing
political freedom, that is to say the citizen’s involvement in governance
and making decisions concerning the fate of the community, which guar-
anteed civil freedom. It must be stated clearly that the adoption of the
concept of freedom as a law of nature and the inclusion of civil freedom
into Polish political writings and discourse did not entail the adoption of
the liberal vision of freedom. For a clear majority of authors, laws that pro-
tected civil freedom would be laws enacted by citizens themselves, and
the type of state that best safeguarded both political and civil freedom was
the republic. It was also quite widely thought that the freedom to which
people were entitled by nature was best realized in free countries.

Departures from the republican model of freedom were made by a very

few Polish authors of strictly theoretical writings, generally of little origi-
nality, clearly drawing their inspiration from the works of Western theo-
rists. Of all the participants in political discussion, there was just one
author who clearly focused on negative freedom, guaranteed not only by
laws but also (something which sounded downright revolutionary under
Polish conditions) by stronger power granted to the king. This was the
21-year-old writer Józef Pawlikowski. His plebeian origins were no doubt a
factor at work here, leading him to concentrate on issues important for the
non-noble estates, and political freedom was not really such an issue. But
even he believed that to preserve civil freedom “lawmaking must be the
will of the whole nation” and admitted that greater freedom prevailed in
free countries.24 Essentially only one Pole polemicized (albeit cautiously

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25 Troskliwość z ufnością, czyli uwagi na pochwałę sejmu, Warsaw 1790, p. 48, a letter most

likely originating from circles afffĳiliated with the king.

26 For instance: S. Staszic, Uwagi nad życiem Jana Zamoyskiego, ed. S. Czarnowski,

Kraków 1926, p. 63; idem Przestrogi dla Polski, ed. S. Czarnowski, Kraków 1926, p. 23.

27 Staszic nevertheless used the terms civil and political freedom in a diffferent sense:

for him the fĳirst entailed broadly understood human freedom within society, the latter
independence, the political autonomy of the country.

so) with the view that saw freedom as linked with having a hand in power,
and this writer was like Pawlikowski situated outside the structures of the
noble nation (albeit at the opposite end of the social ladder)—this was
King Stanisław August Poniatowski himself. It was on his behalf that an
anonymous author explained:

The whole happiness of a man does not hinge upon his ruling others and
being obedient to no one in any way, solely to the mute law—the security of
all ownership is what renders life free.25

For understandable reasons the king found the concept of civil freedom
guaranteed by stronger state power to his liking. But this was a very atypi-
cal view.

Other participants in the political discussions of the late 1780s and early

1790s remained faithful to the republican idea to lesser or greater degrees.
Some of them were still defenders of the old system and old liberty, eagerly
invoking the authority of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose republican ideas
were extraordinarily popular in Poland and whose work Considerations on
the Government of Poland praised the Commonwealth’s old framework of
governance, including the liberum veto. Rousseau’s theories became an
inspiration likewise for the modern republicans, who already noticed all
of society, not just the noble nation. Foremost among them was undoubt-
edly Stanisław Staszic. Like Pawlikowski he was a burgher, but he remained
faithful to the republican ideal, and in a very resolute form at that. It is true
that given the situation he believed that internal freedom was most at risk
and that it should be protected by all means (even by yielding to despo-
tism by the monarch), but he was nevertheless a republican and all power
separate from the will of the nation, especially royal power, instilled a
deep mistrust in him, something he vented repeatedly.26 Characteristically,
in keeping with the republican tradition, when discussing freedom Staszic
did not draw any distinction between political and civil freedom27 and did
not devote much space to natural freedom either, even though like his
master Rousseau he did accept the concept. But it seems that he was the
last author to devote much space to the educational role of the law, to
cultivating the proper civic attitudes.

what was wrong with polish liberty?

28 H. Kołłątaj, Do Stanisława Małachowskiego anonima listów kilka, in: idem, Listy anon-

ima i Prawo polityczne, ed. B. Leśnodorski and H. Wereszycka, Warsaw 1954, vol. 2, p. 146
(cited below as Listy anonima).

29 [H. Kołłątaj], List do przyjaciela na sejmiki, n.p. [1790], n.pag.
30 H. Kołłątaj, Listy anonima…, vol. 1, p. 296.
31 H. Kołłątaj, Listy anonima…, vol. 1, p. 296.

Nevertheless, the most interesting and most profoundly-thought-out

concept of freedom at that time was proposed by Kołłątaj—an outstand-
ing political thinker from the end of the century. Like probably no other
Polish writer he knew how to combine modern concepts of freedom
(drawn mainly from the physiocrats) with the tradition of republican free-
dom, thus developing his own proposal of freedom for the Commonwealth.
We can say that in a certain sense he took as his point of departure a refor-
mulation, in modern terms, of the old republican truth that free govern-
ment guaranteed the individual liberties of its citizens: “All the conditions
of free governance come down only to this—for man to be the truly free
owner of his own person and property…” he wrote in his most famous
work, Anonymous Letters.28 And he related this assertion not just to the
szlachta, but to all the residents of the Commonwealth without exception.
This was a logical consequence of his recognition that freedom in a repub-
lic is not a privilege granted by the ruler to one group of society or another,
but sprang from nature itself. On the one hand, Kołłątaj (following the
physiocrats) asserted that since the laws of society could not run counter
to the laws of nature no one could be deprived of their natural freedom,
and on the other he pointed out that all Poles (not just the szlachta) jointly
comprised the Commonwealth and no one could be excluded from the
domain of its laws and its government. Interestingly, he went so far as to
reverse in a certain sense the traditional republican logic which held that
there could be no freedom without free government, and stated that wher-
ever a portion of society remained in captivity there could be no free gov-
ernment: “There can be no free government in a country where the
hardest-working millions of peasants [remain] in servitude…”29 Although
Kołłątaj called all the residents of the Commonwealth its citizens, that
does not mean he was proposing that they should all be granted political
freedom: “We need to distinguish between the freedom of man and gov-
ernmental freedom”30 he stipulated, seeing the fĳirst as granted to all, but
the latter (the freedom of a citizen combined with power in the state)
to the noble and bourgeois owner-citizens.31 He also pointed out several of
the old principles of republican liberty, namely the dependency of indi-
vidual freedom upon the strength and efffĳiciency of the free state, the need
to show concern for the common good, obedience to the law, etc.

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None of Kołłątaj’s contemporaries posited such a coherent and

extensive concept of freedom in a free country. However, a clear change
had gradually emerged within the Polish understanding of freedom.
Participants in Polish political discussions by the end of the 18th century
had managed to extricate their way of thinking about freedom from the
ossifĳied platitudes, to revive the republican vision of freedom, and to
incorporate modern Western concepts into it. In what are undoubtedly
the most interesting and most mature statements from the period, it is
evident how durable and surprisingly flexible the Polish concept of free-
dom, born out of republican ideals, really was. Even resolute critics of the
noble freedom, like Staszic and Kołłątaj, believing that they were propos-
ing a completely new “real” freedom to their countrymen, retained at the
same time a sense of continuity with the old tradition of Polish freedom—
and moreover harboured a conviction that precisely because of it Poland
was now nearly the last island amidst a sea of despotism. They proposed
for the Commonwealth a modern construction of governance with the
delegation and separation of power, etc., but as for their predecessors from
the 16th and 17th centuries, for them freedom entailed not just the pursuit
of one’s own objectives without impediment from the ruler or fellow citi-
zens, but also self-determination. Polish authors assimilated the modern
distinction between civil and political freedom, recognizing the former as
a natural right of the individual, and this enabled certain thinkers to
disentangle themselves from its estate- or class-based understanding,
although they still posited their visions of freedom within the framework
of the image of a free state and frequently invoked republican ideals, in
terms of both the scope of freedom and the obligations which it entailed.
At the end of the 18th century, basing themselves specifĳically on the ideal
of republican freedom, altering not its fundamentals but only the inter-
pretation of the concept of “nation”, the leading Polish reformers devel-
oped modern visions of a free nation dependent upon its own will,
enjoying civil rights but also influence on the governance of the country.
This was a nation no longer of a single estate, but of all property owners.
To simplify things somewhat, we can say that the major achievement of
Polish political thinkers in the 18th century, or more precisely its latter
half, was to combine the liberal understanding of freedom—as the maxi-
mal capacity to act within the bounds set by law—with the republican
idea of citizens’ active involvement in political life. In so doing, they drew
upon certain aspects of modern Western political philosophy as well as
the republican traditions.

CHAPTER SIX

FROM DEFENDING LIBERTY—TO FIGHTING FOR LIBERTY

Almost from the very inception of the Republic of the Two Nations, a vast
amount of words were written and uttered about the threats to liberty;
constant attention was paid to the obligation to care for liberty and to
defend it against real or imagined dangers. Liberty was—no one had any
doubt—an extant reality, the greatest treasure, and at the same time the
rightful inheritance of Poles. But the Poles would lose that liberty in the
late 18th century. Polish ideals and concepts of freedom were then sud-
denly confronted not with any hypothetical despotism of a Polish king but
with the brutal reality of foreign aggression, and next with the partitions
of the Commonwealth and life under foreign rule. The noble (but also bur-
gher) citizens, who had been accustomed to making decisions for them-
selves and were attached to their liberties in a sometimes anarchic way,
now found themselves to be subjects under the dominion of strong and
centralized monarchies. Indeed, it is worth noting that the lands of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth fell under the control of Europe’s most
absolutist monarchies: Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Conflict was essen-
tially inevitable and it did come very quickly, already after the second par-
tition (1793). In the lands seized by the occupying powers and in the rump
of the Commonwealth that was then theoretically still free, but in actual-
ity ruled by the Russian ambassador and Russian troops, an insurrection
erupted in the spring of 1794, known after its leader as the Kościuszko
Uprising. It would be the fĳirst in a long series of insurrections against the
partitioning powers. Like for many of their ancestors since the 16th cen-
tury, for these insurrectionists freedom was a treasure and an ideal, but
now it was a lost ideal whose recovery was being sought through armed
action. Liberty was the slogan of this insurrection, and as such it carried a
dual meaning, as both freedom and independence.

The Kościuszko Uprising represents a very important watershed in the

history of Polish thinking on freedom. It was then, during the battles of
this uprising, that a new concept of the struggle for freedom emerged out
of the old tradition. This was a struggle that would be waged throughout
the 19th century, with its various freedom-seeking rebellions and quarrels
with God over the fate of the nation, and later in the 20th century, with its

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1 Mowa Ks. J. G. Plebana W. do ludu rolniczego swojej parafĳii—in terms of both content

and literary value, one of the most interesting writings from the uprising period, generally
ascribed to leftist circles. Gazeta Narodowa Wileńska (hereafter cited as GNW), no. 5/18 May
suppl.

imperative to fĳight against any occupation and never to accept limited
sovereignty. People brought up in the tradition of republican freedoms
came face-to-face with a situation in which these liberties were lost, and
the only route to regaining them was armed struggle. And so, here it is
worth examining the impact of these changed domestic conditions on the
Polish idea of freedom, whether it triggered any fundamental alterations,
or whether—despite a certain re-evaluation of some issues, shifting of
accents, prioritizing of certain aspects over others—it in fact remained
the selfsame idea that had developed back in the early days of the noble
Commonwealth.

The Kościuszko insurrectionists were themselves convinced that the

liberty they were fĳighting for was indeed the very same freedom that Poles
had enjoyed for centuries and which had been unjustly wrested away from
them just two years before. Even those considered to be extreme leftists,
with their eyes fĳixed fĳirmly upon French models, did not treat liberty as
something new that needed to be acquired afresh, but as something Poles
had long possessed and needed to be recovered. The anonymous author of
a newspaper article captured this beautifully:

Oh Lord Almighty! All the titles of this world are but a form of prejudice;
liberty alone is your gift and befĳitting for the nature of man. It is your sacred
law […] that is the law of my homeland. But here the enemy designs to wrest
it away, and having trampled upon your sacred laws, he wishes to have us
among his slaves.1

For these freedom-fĳighters, as for the Polish szlachta over nearly 200 years,
liberty was something old, something secured by the “blood of forebears”,
an inalienable right of Poles. The proclamation declaring the insurrection,
issued in Kraków as the Act of the Uprising of the Polish Nation, stated that
citizens were fĳighting in order to “liberate the nation” and to “strengthen
the national freedom”. Similar terminology was also found in statements
of accession to the insurrection, in offfĳicial documents, and in poetry. Even
the awareness that the new situation demanded a new interpretation of
freedom, mainly in terms of its social scope, was not an obstacle to view-
ing Polish liberty as something ancient—like Franciszek Dmochowski’s
statement, in the newspaper he edited (Gazeta Rządowa), that the Poles:
“are striving for the freedom they have always enjoyed, which they want to

from defending liberty—to fighting for liberty

103

2 Gazeta Rządowa (hereafter cited as GRz), no. 112/24 Oct. 1794.

set aright and extend to all residents”2 [emphasis added]. Interestingly,
this sense of lost liberty was passionately and ruefully discussed not only
by the noble insurrectionists but also by the burghers taking part in the
insurgency. We can say that, imperceptibly, freedom had ceased to be but
a noble privilege but become the rightful possession if not of every Pole,
then defĳinitely of the townsmen in addition to the nobility. This was
undoubtedly in part a consequence of the events of the Four-Year Sejm
(1788–1792), where civil rights and to some extent political rights had been
extended also to the burghers. This sense of jointly held, and thus jointly
lost liberty also stemmed from the fact that statements from the Kościuszko
Uprising period generally did not treat freedom as any concrete system of
rights, but more as a general value once possessed by Poles but lost. The
prevailing situation was not conducive to overly concrete debate: the most
important thing was that the insurgency was fĳighting for “general liberties”
and “the freedom of all”.

During this period there were almost no broader attempts at defĳin-

ing what freedom actually was, where its limits lay, by what it was
guaranteed—issues that had occupied so much space in previous discus-
sions. It seems that like previously, liberty was understood above all as the
ability to make decisions and laws for oneself. The word-association
underlying one of the paroles required to gain entry to Kościuszko’s camp
is a highly telling example of this: in response to the cry “free” the correct
password was “lawmaker”. The experience of living under partition pain-
fully confĳirmed the Poles’ age-old conviction that without co-involvement
in the exercise of power, without political freedom, the civil freedom of
the individual (the liberals’ negative freedom) was likewise impossible.
However, it above all became prominently clear how great, how “precious”,
how “sacred”, how “inestimable” a value liberty truly was. The loss of lib-
erty in a sense elevated its value once again, and at the same time simpli-
fĳied the conceptual approach taken to it. The various former disputes over
its shape, fears about its anarchy, critiques of its degeneration all disap-
peared. Even if this lost liberty had had any shortcomings, it fĳirst needed
to be recovered and only then could such issues be addressed.

In the propaganda of the rebellion, and it seems in the minds of the

freedom-fĳighters themselves, the struggle for individual freedom was
strongly linked with the fĳight for their homeland’s independence. They
gathered under the “banners of freedom” to defend the country, and at the

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3 Proklamacja względem spokoju i szanowania członków Rady Zastępczej Tymczasowej

22 Apr.1794, Akty Powstania Kościuszki, ed.: Sz. Askenazy, W. Dzwonkowski, Kraków 1918,
(hereafter cited as APK), vol. 1, p. 20.

4 Uniwersał 2 litewski, GNW no. 1/04 May 1794.
5 Supreme National Council, Odpowiedź na raporty Deputacji Centralnej Litewskiej, 20

Aug. 1794, APK, vol. 2, p. 86.

6 Provisional Council, 30 Apr. 1794, APK vol. 1, p. 83.
7 Gazeta Krajowa no. 31/22 Apr. 1794.

same time victory would mean that “freedom had regained its land”, as one
of the fĳirst proclamations of the rebel government, the Provisional Council,
declared.3 Although it is true that the slogans of the insurrection clearly
diffferentiated between freedom and independence, this distinction was
quite fluid in the statements made by the insurrectionists themselves. And
it is no wonder: homeland and liberty had long been conceptually linked,
and living under foreign domination distinctly convinced the Poles of the
old republican truth that Konarski had pointed out long before—that
only possessing their own, independent state could ensure citizens’ free-
dom, and thus there could be no freedom without a homeland. “We our-
selves, and liberty, and our property, all will perish when the homeland
perishes” a proclamation of the Lithuanian Council, leading the uprising
in Lithuania, dramatically pointed out.4 The objective of the uprising
was to defend the homeland, fĳighting for freedom meant liberating the
country from foreign invaders and at the same time its citizens from
tyranny:

“Liberating the homeland from violence and recovering the native lib-

erties”.5 “Fellow citizens!”—the Provisional Council joyfully proclaimed—
“our Homeland is returning to us, and liberty together with it…”6

For people who had grown accustomed to living free lives and deter-

mining their own afffairs, the realities of the absolutist monarchies they
now found themselves residing in felt like onerous servitude. This was evi-
dent in the very terminology used by the insurrectionists. Writers described
the “shackles” and “fetters” that had been put upon Poland and the Poles,
who had come under the “yoke of cruelty”, the “dreadful yoke of servitude”,
and lived in “ignominious servitude”, “captivity worse than under the
Turks”. The Act of the Uprising of the Polish Nation had already listed the
crimes against Poland committed by despots, in this case specifĳically
Catherine II, who “treads upon its most sacred laws of liberty, security, and
the ownership of citizens’ persons and assets”.7 Other descriptions were
even more dramatic:

from defending liberty—to fighting for liberty

105

8 Komisyja Porządkowa ks. Mazowieckiego do duchowieństwa obojga obrządków i wszel-

kiego wyznania przełożonych i nauczycielów 19 July 1794, GRz no. 23/23 July 1794.

9 Głosy Polaka do współziomnków, [Kraków 1794], Głos II, n.pag.
10 M. Karpowicz, Kazanie na żałobnym obchodzie pamiątki tych obywateli, którzy w dniu

powstania narodu w Wilnie i w następnym gonieniu nieprzyjaciół życie swe mężnie za wolność
i ojczyznę położyli, w kościele S. Jana miane w Wilnie dnia 20 maja 1794, printed on the orders
of the Supreme Lithuanian Council, Wilno 1794, p. 2.

11 A. Małachowski, speech to the Sejm in 1780. In: Diariusz sejmu wolnego ordynaryjnego

warszawskiego… 1780, Warsaw 1781, p. 186.

Our calm and innocent nation […] has become […] a theatre for all rapes
and tyrannies, a pitiful sight […] with all public faith rent asunder, with all
the morality of the oppressed, innocently sufffering people toppled.8

We can echo one of the authors in asserting:

There is no type of deceit, violence, cruelty, or misery which we have not
experienced at the behest of Catherine and her friendly and allied Prussian
neighbour.9

To fully capture the horror of the imposed servitude, clergymen drew
upon Holy Scripture, especially the Books of Maccabees. “The people of
Israel were not persecuted any more cruelly by Antiochus in the times of
the Maccabees, than our Polish nation has been ruined and oppressed
before our very eyes”, the priest Michał Karpowicz declared in a sermon.10
Such dramatic descriptions undoubtedly also played a propaganda role,
being meant to inspire Poles to fĳight. But they were nevertheless an expres-
sion of real emotions—the Poles found themselves in a situation they had
long feared, when “every citizen’s property, honour, and life depended on
the eccentricities of single autocrat”.11

The list of specifĳic complaints levelled against the despotism of the par-

titioning powers—alongside their infringement of the inviolability of citi-
zens’ person and property, their imposition of decisions and laws that
citizens had no influence over—included frequent mention of their viola-
tion, or essentially abolishment of the freedom of speech and conscience.
We have already discussed how important a component of, and also a
guarantee for the Polish liberty this freedom of speech had been for nearly
200 years. It is no surprise that its loss was felt very painfully. This com-
plaint was described not just by printers and newspaper publishers
directly afffected by censorship; similar accusations against Russia’s despo-
tism were included in the programmatic declaration of the Act of the
Uprising of the Polish Nation:

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12 Gazeta Krajowa no. 31/22 Apr. 1794.
13 Appeal of the Provisional Council, 19 Apr. 1794, APK, vol. 1, p. 5.
14 [F. Jelski], V Kazanie obywatelskie przy okopach warszawskich. O dwoistej straży mia-

sta, Warsaw 1794, p. 6.

15 Korespondent Krajowy i Zagraniczny no. 32/22 Apr. 1794.
16 Akt powstania w Ks. Mazowieckim Ziemi Wizkiej, 27 June 1794, GRz no. 10/10 July 1794.
17 Dekret Sądu Kryminalnego Wojskowego na W. Skarszewskiego, 11 Sep. 1794, GRz

no. 73/15 Sep. 1794.

18 Uniwersał 19 Rady Litewskiej do obywateli zakordonowych, 30 May 1794, GNW no. 12/11

June 1794.

19 J. Wybicki to the Commander-in-Chief, 10 July 1794, GRz no. 11/11 July 1794.
20 Rada Najwyższa Narodowa do obywateli województw wielkopolskich, 06 Sep. 1794, APK

vol. 2, p. 137.

The thoughts and feelings of upright Poles fĳind no protection from her suspi-
cious persecution; she has laid bonds upon speech itself.12

Likewise the fĳirst statement by the Provisional Council (dated 19 April)
mentioned

slavish ukases which placed a yoke upon the most virtuous hearts, prohibit-
ing them from even manifesting what most decently was obligatory and
pleasant to feel.13

The partitioning powers not only banned “the speech of a free man” and
“the reading of sensible books” but even “very nearly prohibited any
thoughts leaning towards liberty”—as the priest Florian Jelski maintained
in his Civic Sermon.14 This was a situation in which people accustomed to
the completely free expression of their opinions were “by violence nearly
prohibited from breathing”, as the state of afffairs was fĳiguratively described
by Karol Malinowski.15 It is no wonder that regaining freedom was at times
described as breathing the “pure air of liberty”.16

It was frequently stressed that this servitude was all the harder to bear

in that it had been imposed upon a free nation, whose citizens had previ-
ously freely determined their own afffairs. Here a “nation free and depen-
dent upon no one” had suddenly become a “tributary” nation.17 As the
Proclamation of the Lithuanian Council asserted, “the Pole had not the
soul to bear […] this yoke of servitude”.18 “This people was not created to
wear shackles or yield to foreign oppression” Józef Wybicki wrote to
Kościuszko.19 The insurrectionist government appealed to the citizens of
the Wielkopolska provinces:

No one better than you, fellow citizens, can sense what diffference there is
between a self-imposed government and the imperatives of a menacing des-
pot, because you have experienced both in a sorrowful order.20

from defending liberty—to fighting for liberty

107

21 M. Karpowicz, Kazanie…, p. 7.
22 Głosy Polaka …, n.pag.
23 T. Kościuszko, Pisma, pub. H. Mościcki, Warsaw 1947, p. 80.
24 Appeal of the Provisional Council, 30 Apr. 1794, APK vol. 1, p. 84.

Here a conviction long popular in Poland had found confĳirmation in prac-
tice: that for a nation living under a monarchy, sufffering a foreign invasion
merely meant replacing one ruler with another, but for a free nation, los-
ing its homeland meant losing at the same time its land and the “exercise
of the most sacred rights of liberty”.

To some extent, this loss triggered a change in the conceptual approach

to liberty. Prior to 1792, much space in discussion about the Polish liberty
had been taken up by expressions of the fear of losing it. It had been
treated as something delicate, easily destroyed. Events from 1792 onwards
triggered a dramatic shift in emphasis. Instead of a hypothetical home-
grown despot, the nation was struggling against a real foreign invader.
Hence the fundamental task was no longer to defend freedom, but to
regain it, and concern for it was replaced by the determination and will to
fĳight. The crueller the oppression, the greater the victims’ thirst for
freedom—“the harshness of servitude whets an efffective desire for sweet
freedom for the nation”, Father Karpowicz stated in his sermon.21 It was
thought that a people who no longer had anything to lose simply had to
win: “There has not yet been any case in human history in which a people
tormented so much that it was left only to perish did not either valiantly
rebound or perish without taking vengeance”, maintained the author of a
Pole’s Appeals to Fellow Countrymen.22 In general, the issue was viewed
optimistically and the second of these two possibilities was ignored: deter-
mination was expected to compensate for the disparity of strength
between the combating sides. “Be bold enough to be free” was one of the
uprising’s main slogans. “The fĳirst step to casting offf captivity is to be bold
enough to be free”, Kościuszko himself declared on 24 March 1794.23 This
thirst for liberty was meant to be decisive in ensuring the success of the
uprising. Offfĳicial and unofffĳicial statements were dominated by a faith that
“someone who wants to be free can be defeated by no one”.24 Examples of
other countries demonstrating that the will to be free was crucial for vic-
tory were eagerly cited. The oldest evidence here was found in the Old
Testament uprising of the Maccabees, liberating the Israelites from the
oppression of Antiochus, with more recent examples being the United
States, Switzerland, and Genoa. These last three examples were cited by
the priest Mejer, when trying to convince readers of the newspaper he

108 chapter

six

25 Gazeta Obywatelska no. 8/17 May 1794.
26 Supreme National Council, Odezwa do obywatelów Polski i Litwy z powodu deklaracyj

moskiewskich bezwstydnych, 27 June 1794, APK vol. 1, p. 367.

27 Description from GRz no. 96/08.10. 1794.

edited (Gazeta Obywatelska) that it was of no signifĳicance that the upris-
ing had begun under inauspicious circumstances—in his view the above
countries had already demonstrated that the “despair of the people” usu-
ally “begins with weapons being wrested from the hands of the enemy, but
ends in incomparable victory”.25 Poland’s enemies, too, were said to be
aware of this: “It is well known to the Muscovite that every nation thor-
oughly wanting to be free, must be free”.26 Moreover, they were said to
have found this out through fĳirsthand experience.

The notion that “all it takes to be free is to want to be free”, well known

to both the American Colonists and revolutionary France, was an impor-
tant motif in Polish insurrectionist propaganda. But here, victory was to be
ensured not just by the impassioned thirst for freedom, but by the fact that
a once-free people was fĳighting for it. The notion that a people who had
been moulded by freedom, who were aware of what they were fĳighting for,
who were defending their own homeland and freedom, were superior to a
“despot’s mercenaries” had its roots in antiquity and had been reiterated
throughout the existence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and
so it is no surprise that it was again invoked during this time of national
uprising. This diffference between the troops on both sides was likewise
evident in the very terminology used: on the one side stood “valiant sol-
diers”, the “citizen-soldiers” of the “republican forces”, or even “knights of
liberty”, who were squaring offf against “clutches of fearful slaves”, “abject
captives”, “predatory throngs”, “despots’ miserable flocks”, and “an enslaved
people, led by plunderers”. These two sides were the complete opposite of
one another. During a funeral procession organized by Warsaw’s Third
District for its fellow brothers who had died for their country, the decora-
tions included the fĳigure of a knight “casting away the despotic Prussian
standard laying on the ground, as unworthy of mingling with the stan-
dards of the defenders of liberty”.27 Even their weapons were diffferent: the
“arms” taken up by the free fĳighters contrasted against the “instruments of
death” in the hands of the opposing forces. Such terminology, while
undoubtedly playing an important propaganda function, was at the same
time meant to underscore a fundamental diffference: that those who stood
against the free Poles were being forced to do so at the behest of their ruler,
or were fĳighting as paid mercenaries—in neither case having sufffĳicient

from defending liberty—to fighting for liberty

109

28 [F.Jelski], V Kazanie obywatelskie…, p. 6.
29 J. Łęski, Taktyka w której się traktuje o broni, pozycji i poruszeniach piechoty i jazdy i o

sprawianiu się podczas batalii…, cited from: A. Woltanowski, Prasa i pisma periodyczne
powstania Kościuszkowskiego, Białystok 1984, p. 353.

30 By contrast, “the soldier under despotism and a tyrant is an armed scoundrel, sold to

the whim and humour of his lord, who, obedient to orders, knows not citizenship nor
homeland, knows not virtue nor humanity, knows not love for his nation nor the interest
of his country, knows not natural justice nor human rights”, M. F. Karpowicz, Kazanie…,
p. 16.

31 T. Kościuszko to the Order-Keeping Commission of Kraków, 06 May 1794, APK vol. 3,

p. 22.

32 T. Kościuszko, Pisma…, p. 103.

motivation to fĳight. It was believed that “no kopek-soldier nor kreuzer-
soldier can ever defeat a knight fĳighting for his own freedom”28—or at
least that is what the propaganda preached. After all, what could be said
about people forced to fĳight for a cause alien to them? Against these troops
of despots, there stood free citizen-soldiers fĳighting out of their own
desire, conscious of what they were fĳighting for, and recognizing that these
ideals were even worth dying for. This conviction even found its way into
handbooks on military tactics: the author of one of them devoted an entire
paragraph to “the influence of governance on tactics”, in which he juxta-
posed two types of troops: “governmental” vs. “national”. The latter type, to
which he ascribed a much higher value, were republican forces comprised
of citizens “whose private good remains tightly linked to the public good,
or more precisely is equivalent to it”.29 He considered this latter type to
include the armies of Switzerland, America, France, and Poland.

Very great stress was laid with the idea that the Polish soldier “knows

what he is fĳighting for”, and these were causes worthy of the greatest sacri-
fĳice. A republican soldier was fĳighting “for his own rights, liberties, and
freedoms […], for his homeland, nation, integrity of borders, indepen-
dence of government, for his own laws common to all”, but also for his own
personal happiness, “for his home, for his family, for his youngsters”30 and
fĳinally for the felicity of future generations. Here is worth noting that the
fact that “freedom cannot be defended but by the hand of free people”31
constituted an important argument in favour of freedom for the serfs, who
played an important role in the armed uprising. Kościuszko cited this
argument repeatedly, including in his Proclamation of Połaniec which
improved the plight of the peasants:

Against a clutch of fearful invaders we should fĳield a powerful mass of free
inhabitants, who, fĳighting for their own felicity, cannot miss their target.32

110 chapter

six

33 “Our forces gathered mostly of peasants already taught the enemy what arms can

achieve in the hands of the free, prepared to die or win”, Rozmowa do okoliczności
dzisiejszych przystosowana, [Warsaw] 1794, p. 27.

34 T. Kościuszko, Przepis nauk dla księży zatrudniających się obozową duchowną usługą,

GRz no. 57/30 Aug. 1794.

35 Gazeta Wolna Warszawska (hereafter cited as GWW) no. 40/09 Sep. 1794.
36 T. Kościuszko, Order of 30 Sep. 1794 in Grodno, GRz no. 93/05 Oct. 1794 supplement.
37 APK, vol. 1, p. 413.

Others described the successes of the peasant-soldiers as yet another con-
fĳirmation of “what arms can achieve in the hands of the free”.33 This was in
reference to an ancient conviction about the attractive power of freedom
and the moral gulf that was thought to separate a free man from a slave, a
conviction that had also been voiced in Poland. It was not the belief that
loving liberty made free people invincible in battle that was the novelty
here, but how this belief was highlighted so prominently in statements
about freedom. This was a natural consequence of the wartime condi-
tions, which would serve to verify the belief in practice.

Great importance was ascribed to the civic education of the freedom-

fĳighting soldiers, for as Kościuszko maintained, one could not be a good
soldier without being a good citizen.34 Only such a soldier was capable of
making the greatest sacrifĳices, of fĳighting “with the valour that typifĳies
only a free man”, and setbacks only served to further inflame his passion.
Such sacrifĳice and patriotism were only possible among a nation fĳighting
for its own freedom. When reporting the valiant defence of Warsaw, the
editor of Gazeta Wolna Warszawska stated that “similar paragons of pure
patriotism can only be found among the free nations” and went on to posit
such a vision: “Let some enemy approach the gates of Berlin and we shall
see who would come out against him—probably none but the mercenary
slaves of the monarch”.35 Any prevarication or fear ran counter to the spirit
of a free nation—“it is dishonourable for any man to flee, but for a free
man it is dishonourable even to contemplate fleeing”, Kościuszko stated
when expressing outrage at the desertion of Sierakowski’s soldiers from
the battlefĳield.36 And the Supreme National Council, in its Proclamation to
Citizens Avoiding the General Mobilization, expressed shock that Poles
needed to be reminded that it was the sacred duty of every citizen capable
of bearing arms to fĳight for freedom and independence.37

Special emphasis was laid upon bravery, patriotism, and the capacity

for sacrifĳice as distinguishing characteristics of troops fĳighting “under
the banners of freedom”; this was as much an appeal to tradition as some-
thing natural for wartime propaganda. However, these were not the only

from defending liberty—to fighting for liberty

111

38 27 May 1794, leaflet.
39 GWW, no. 50/14 Oct. 1794.
40 GRz no. 5/05 July 1794 and others following, such as GNW no. 21/13 July 1794.
41 Supreme National Council, Do obywatelów prowincji W.Ks. Lit. 11 Sep. APK vol. 2, p. 155.

diffferences between citizens and the minions of a despot. Just as the cru-
elty of the latter and their brutal behaviour in the occupied lands were
strongly accented, so too was the nobleness of the Poles—even towards
their own enemies. This was, indeed, their duty: a nation fĳighting for free-
dom “should respect the humanity even in the invader, should demon-
strate to him the mercy of the national character, should bring the enemy’s
mind to consider the grandness of every act”—stated a proclamation of
the Lithuanian Council.38 A similar view was expounded by the editor of
Gazeta Wolna Warszawska when reporting on the public assistance
shown to the Russian prisoners of war, and he moreover promoted the
ideal of humane treatment of enemy troops at critical moments of
the insurgency.39

Those promoting such ideals tried to illustrate their arguments with

concrete examples of decency shown by free soldiers. In July, the story of
Lieutenant Colonel Niewiadomski made the rounds in the press: he was
said to have not only released the wife of a Prussian offfĳicer from captivity,
but even to have given her back the money that had been found on her,
saying:

Go back to Prussia and tell your countrymen that the Poles are not greedy for
the money of others, but are only defending their own property and
freedom.40

The insurrectionist press frequently described cases of soldiers showing
indiffference to material gain—their true profĳit in this endeavour was
meant to be regaining their freedom and an independent homeland.

The worse the predicament of the uprising became, the more effforts

were made to make Poles realize that “it is not defensive walls that offfer a
bastion and protection, but the unconquerable fountain of freedom and
independence that lies within us ourselves […] As long as our personal
strength sufffĳices, we remain invincible”—the National Supreme Council
wrote to Lithuanian citizens.41 This argument was invoked for the last time
in an already hopeless situation at the very end of the rebellion, after
Kościuszko had already been taken captive and Warsaw faced renewed
siege: Kościuszko’s successor, Tomasz Wawrzecki, repeated it yet again in

112 chapter

six

42 GWW no. 54/28 Oct. 1794.
43 T. Kościuszko, Odezwa do obywatelów litewskich i komisjów porządkowych, 02 May

1794, idem, Pisma…, p. 259.

44 Uniwersał do województw i powiatów prowincji W.X.Lit. i miast wolnych, 25 Apr. 1794,

GNW no. 5/10 May 1794.

45 Appeal from 24 June 1794, GNW no. 17/29 June 1794.

his appeal of 23 October 1794, claiming seemingly against all hope: “No
power of despots can defeat a free nation”.42

However, at the same time there was a diffferent motif that can be

summed up most succinctly as “freedom or death”—a rallying cry that had
used in the French Revolution as well. This was not a new slogan in Poland:
the cliché of sacrifĳicing one’s life for freedom had previously been voiced
extremely eagerly, but especially when the given speaker in fact faced
absolutely no danger whatsoever and generally in reference to the threat
posed by domestic royal despotism to citizens’ rights. In reference to the
national freedom threatened from outside, the cry “we shall live free or
die” had appeared in poetry during the Polish-Russian war of 1792. But it
was not until the Kościuszko Uprising that the motif of sacrifĳicing every-
thing for the sake of liberty became fully elaborated. This was the result of
a situation that Kościuszko dramatically presented as

the last moment for Poland […] either personal liberty and national inde-
pendence or a terrible yoke and the moans of a million-strong people, either
freedom and happiness or vengeful persecution by enraged enemies, either
the perdition of Poland’s name or splendour distinguishing it among the
ranks of nations—such are the prospects.

Such an alternative essentially meant no alternative: “Oh countrymen!
Should you seek to spare your own lives, it is only so as to become destitute
slaves”.43 “We should not seek to spare our property and lives when what is
at stake is the preservation of liberty, more precious than both”, appealed
the proclamation announcing the uprising in Lithuania.44 No sacrifĳice
was too great in this case. “What need has a free man for property or even
his own life, when he is to fall under the yoke of oppression and cruel cap-
tivity forever?”—the Central Lithuanian Deputation asked rhetorically in
its summons concerning the collection of taxes.45 Naturally the most
important thing was the armed struggle against the enemy, and therefore
sacrifĳicing one’s life for the country and for liberty. Dulce et decorum est pro
patria mori (sweet and honourable it is to die for the fatherland)—this
maxim was reiterated in all possible confĳigurations, stressing that it was
better to die in defence of freedom, “valuing a noble death above the yoke

from defending liberty—to fighting for liberty

113

46 Komisja Porz. Ks. Maz. Odezwa do duchowieństwa obojga obrządków…, GRz no. 24/24

July 1794.

47 This would remain so during the period of the uprising’s defeats. Supreme National

Council, Do obywatelów prowincji W.Ks. Lit. 11 Sep., APK vol. 2, p. 156.

48 Głosy…, Głos I, n.pag.
49 Odezwa […] do obywateli woj. rawskiego, kujawskiego, łęczyckiego i sieradzkiego, z 15

Sep. 1794, GRz no. 76/18 Sep. 1794.

50 Proclamation of the Provisional Council, 22 Apr. 1794, Względem spokoju i usza-

nowania członków Rady, APK vol. 1, p. 20.

of an abusive life”, than to live on in captivity.46 Speeches and sermons
delivered at the burials of freedom-fĳighters stressed that dying for liberty
was an honour; for the families of the deceased it was a cause for pride, not
sadness. Death for the liberty and freedoms of one’s fellow brothers was
not just a “sweet gift to society”47 but even something to be desired by
every free Pole. “Valorous death in defence of the homeland, a death
desired because it is for the sake of freedom, liberties, laws […], for the
sake of everything that is most precious in the world”, the author of a Pole’s
Appeals to Fellow Countrymen wrote about death on the battlefĳield.48

Sacrifĳicing everything for freedom was not only meant to serve its

recovery, but also to demonstrate that the insurrectionists truly did
deserve it. The question of being worthy of freedom had appeared in
Polish statements earlier as well, especially when it had been argued that
the political enemy was unworthy of it. However, the noble citizens had
generally treated it as something they obviously deserved, and no one had
demanded from them that they should prove it. Freedom-fĳighter writings
from the Kościuszko period, on the other hand, treated freedom not just as
the greatest good fortune and a right to which all peoples were entitled,
but also as an honour that needed to be earned. Such worthiness was
earned by those who sought to secure freedom for themselves, engaging
the enemy without concern for his superior strength. “You did not reckon
your strength against the might of your enemies, virtue itself gave you
courage, you are worthy of being free”, Józef Wybicki wrote on behalf of
the insurrectionist government to the rebelling Wielkopolska provinces.49
Similarly, the residents of Warsaw, by ousting the Russian troops from
their city at the start of the uprising, proved themselves worthy of being a
“self-ruling people”, of being free.50 Soldiers bravely fĳighting against the
superior numbers of enemy forces were worthy of freedom, those who fled
the battlefĳield were not. It was not enough to rise up once, a people had to
show not just courage but also virtue and valour—staying the course and
not yielding to inauspicious circumstances. It was suggested that Divine

114 chapter

six

51 T. Kościuszko, Odezwa do narodu 24 Sep. 1794, APK vol. 2, p. 185.
52 Supreme National Council, appeal from 27 Oct. 1794, Do mieszkańców Warszawy

nawołująca do obrony stolicy, APK vol. 2, p. 276.

53 T. Kościuszko, Raport narodowi polskiemu o bitwie pod Szczekocinami stoczonej dnia 6

czerwca 1794 roku, 09 June 1794, idem, Pisma, p. 128.

54 Warschauer Zeitung no. 50/15 Oct. 1794, cited from: A. Woltanowski, op. cit., p. 531.
55 Supreme National Council, Do obywatelów ziemi wizkiej, 03 July 1794, APK vol. 1,

p. 389.

Providence or fate wished to fĳirst test a nation before bestowing its great-
est gift, in line with the principle that the dearer the price of freedom the
greater is value. “Freedom is the greatest good that man can savour on
earth, lent by God only to those nations who become worthy of it through
constancy, fortitude, and persevering through all adversities”, Kościuszko
called out to the nation in one of his appeals.51 This point was brought up
at moments of defeat. When calling for the defence of Warsaw, then
besieged by Russian troops, the rebel government appealed to the city’s
residents:

Such is the fate of a people striving to secure its own freedom that it must
pass through long hardships and dangers before reaching the intended for-
tuitous end.52

Any doubt would in this case mean that the nation was not worthy of
being free. Kościuszko himself made this point, such as after the defeat at
Szczekociny and after the fall of Kraków:

Oh nation! This is the fĳirst test of the constancy of your spirit […]. Would you
be worthy of freedom and self-governance if you did not know how to sufffer
the vicissitudes of fate?53

Even after the Battle of Maciejowice and the commander-in-chief’s cap-
ture, the press appealed: “Let us show the enemy, through perseverance,
bravery, and steadfastness, that we are worthy of freedom”.54

Such summons to fĳight for freedom were accompanied by appeals for

unity. Given the disparity in terms of forces it was obvious that only joint
action by all citizens could possibly bring victory. It was believed that
“unity alone can regain our liberties, freedom, integrity and independence
and redeem us all”.55 Freedom itself was here considered a cohesive factor.
This was a novel view—while certain commonalities had long been per-
ceived among countries that enjoyed freedom, few individuals in Poland
had seen freedom as guaranteeing internal unity. Calls for national unity
had been voiced essentially throughout the entire existence of the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth, but they were accompanied by a deeply-set

from defending liberty—to fighting for liberty

115

56 Order-Keeping Commission of Mazovia, Odezwa do duchowieństwa obojga

obrządków, 19 July 1794, GRz no. 24/24 July 1794.

57 T. Kościuszko, Odezwa do duchowieństwa polskiego grecko-orientalnego nieunickiego,

tak zakonnego jako i świeckiego, 07 May 1794, APK vol. 1, p. 262.

58 GRz, no. 117/30 Oct. 1794.
59 GRz, no. 78/20 Sep. 1794.

conviction that such expectations were unrealistic. Nearly to the very end,
disputes and turmoil had been considered inevitable elements of free gov-
ernance and the generally prevailing view had been that a turbulent free-
dom was better than a calm captivity.

It was not until the time of the Kościuszko Uprising that freedom ceased

to be seen as inherently linked to turmoil and disputes—to the contrary, it
was now expected to unite the nation, as the supreme value, one and the
same for everyone (like the homeland), and at the same time as a common
cause to fĳight. A nation struggling for its freedom was meant to be trans-
formed “into one vast and invincible formation of free people”.56 Above all
this meant all the estates taking part in the struggle, and quite often atten-
tion was paid to the need to show the peasantry the value of being free, in
a sense teaching them how to enjoy freedom. The slogan of freedom was
meant to unite various groups that had previously been at odds with one
another or indiffferent to one another. It was in this spirit that Kościuszko’s
appeal to the Orthodox clergy was formulated, urging them to “unite your
hearts with the Poles, who have taken up arms to seek their own freedom
and yours”.57 Elements invoking such unity-across-barriers, especially reli-
gious ones, were found in the actions of the Wielkopolska insurrectionists.
The same faith was expressed by Franciszek Dmochowski in one of the
last issues of Gazeta Rządowa,58 in an optimistic commentary accompany-
ing a report on how the Evangelical community had done its part by
donating church bells to the uprising:

Freedom unites all people regardless of their beliefs and difffering faiths. It is
pleasant to see that the residents of our land, be they Catholic, Greek, or
Protestant, are striving to rescue the homeland and reclaim liberty.

In support of this notion of the unifying power of freedom, the involve-
ment of Jews in the uprising was highly emphasized. The most interesting
argumentation was employed by the editor of Gazeta Rządowa when
reporting that the Jews “had undertaken to defend the cause of liberty”.59
He posed the question of why the Israeli nation, so valiant in biblical
times, had subsequently carefully avoided involvement in any wars, strug-
gles, or even military service. The answer was, for the author, quite simple:

116 chapter

six

60 Supreme National Council, Do obywatelów ks. Kurlandii, 06 July 1794, APK vol. 1,

p. 406.

61 Ibidem.
62 Proclamation to inhabitants of West Prussia, incipience: “Rząd Najwyższy Polski…”

leaflet printed in Polish and German.

the Jews had fought only as long as they had their own state and were
defending their own liberty. But “since that time liberty has disappeared
from nearly the entire earth, and so this nation withdrew completely from
the bloody games of tyrants”, not wanting to serve despotism. It was only
the April 1794 uprising in Warsaw that changed this situation, with Jews
taking active part:

They sprinkled their own blood upon the beginnings of the freedom of the
nation and their own freedom, and demonstrated to the world that, unwill-
ing to fĳight at the behest of tyrants, they are unable to guard their own lives
when the population stands to gain.

In this case liberty was a value so precious that it could encourage to act
even those who would presumably have remained indiffferent to the slo-
gan of defending the homeland. Its attractive power was said to be so great
that it encouraged even foreigners to join in. “The most efffective weapon
of liberty is its sweetness, its benefĳicial consequences for the felicity of
nations” stated the Supreme National Council’s appeal to the inhabitants
of Courland.60 It is no surprise that statements addressed to the inhabit-
ants of such areas as Courland and Eastern and Western Prussia devoted
much space to discussing liberty; here, it seems, freedom was stressed
more than the notion of homeland. Poland was portrayed as a land of lib-
erty, as having long been such a land. The return of the Commonwealth’s
former territories lost long before (back in the 17th century) was meant to
let their inhabitants regain their old liberties and freedoms. The insurrec-
tionist government called upon the citizens of Courland

to transplant to neighbouring Livonia (Inflanty) and lands severed from the
Commonwealth a true love for their homeland, a desire to return to the fold
of the Commonwealth, whose liberties and freedom will enable them to for-
get the ignominy of the foreign yoke.61

A similar appeal to the inhabitants of Western Prussia promised that once
they had cast offf the “shackles of the Brandenburger” and returned to their
“ancient homeland” then “we will all be free and felicitous”.62

Liberty was held to have such strong attractive power that it even

exerted an influence on the enemy—cases of Prussian and Russian

from defending liberty—to fighting for liberty

117

63 GWW, no. 53/25 Oct. 1794.

soldiers switching sides were interpreted in this light. Their previous
involvement in the campaign on the side of the despots was seen as merely
resulting from their ignorance of what cause they were fĳighting against.
“Upon having learned about it, they swore to share with us liberty, free-
dom, or sweet death for the sake of their new homeland” wrote Gazeta
Wolna Warszawska about turncoat Russian soldiers.63 It is no wonder that
the appeals to the Prussians and Russians spoke about liberty and depicted
Poland as an oasis of freedom. Konstanty Jelski, crossing the border with
Prussia, passed out to its residents a bilingual appeal stating:

The oppression you have sufffered from your despot, out of fear of hunger,
and destitution, and excessive punishment, has sometimes showed you the
path to free Poland and there you were received by us as if you were our own
countrymen; there some of you witnessed that everyone lived a calm life
honestly from his own work, breathing free air.

And so in this case Poland was considered to have long been viewed as a
land of freedom by the inhabitants of neighboring countries.

And yet despite such lofty ideals, the leaders of the uprising also did not

lack a sense of realism. Their appeal to the inhabitants of Western and
Eastern Prussia contained lofty apostrophes in praise of liberty but also
included a note about lower taxes; the pamphlets addressed directly to the
Prussian soldiers (printed in the huge quantity of 21,000 copies, indicative
of how important they were viewed as a vehicle of propaganda) called
upon them to join with the Poles offfering them freedom but also con-
cretely promised each soldier 1 gold coin, coverage of the costs of outfĳit-
ting both them personally and their horse, if any, and after the war was
over also a plot of land. Clearly, it was realized that the sweetness of liberty
alone might not be sufffĳiciently attractive to win over the “despot’s
minions”.

In keeping with the republican tradition, servitude was always servi-

tude and it was of no signifĳicance whether an overthrown tyrant was
home-grown or foreign. This served as a convenient propaganda argu-
ment in appeals addressed to the soldiers and inhabitants of Prussia and
Russia. In fĳighting for their own independence, the Poles were at the same
time also defending the freedom of nations whose rulers had destroyed
the liberties of their own citizens, to just the same extent as they had
destroyed the Polish freedom. Konstatny Jelski wrote in his summons to
“Prussian Citizens”: “Since elaborate autocracies began to spring up among

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six

64 K. Jelski, Obywatele Prusacy…, n.pag.
65 Odezwa do Rosjan żołnierzy, 13 May 1794, GNW no. 6/21 May 1794.
66 Order of T. Kościuszki issued on 10 June 1794 outside of Kielce, announced by the

Supreme National Council on 12 June 1794, leaflet.

67 Odezwa braterska do obywatela uprzedzonego przeciw powstaniu narodowemu,

[Warsaw] 1794, n.pag.

68 GWW no. 9/24 May 1794.

people, they have had two objectives: cruelty to the people under their
dominion and voracity in taking away the lands of others”, but “the mighty
and great hand of God has set a limit to the lawlessness of tyrants, drinking
the blood of humanity every day for centuries”.64 Similarly, the Lithuanian
Council commiserated in its appeal to the Russians that “although you
yearn for freedom, you cannot exercise and savour it under your barbarian
government”.65 But they could regain it for themselves, by joining the
uprising. Kościuszko’s order concerning encroachments into “enemy
lands” instructed all military commanders, after crossing into Prussia or
Russia, “to call upon the people, oppressed and weighed down by subjuga-
tion, to unite with us, to take up arms together against the cruel usurper”,
to extend a helping hand to the inhabitants everywhere, both those “desir-
ing to reinstate the sweet liberties of their homeland” and those “wanting
to regain their free homeland”.66

In this situation, the Poles’ struggle against foreign domination was not

just a struggle for the country’s independence and the freedom of its citi-
zens, but became something more—somewhat akin to the military strug-
gles of revolutionary France, this was a clash between liberty and
despotism. This motif was repeated very frequently in offfĳicial letters as
well as in the press and all types of literary writings, especially poetry.
It was, it seems, a very important element, of not just propaganda but of
what might already be called the ideology of the uprising, one which dove-
tailed well with the old Polish tradition. Thus what was at fĳirst glance a
local conflict took on universal signifĳicance, in a sense becoming a clash
between good and evil. All the moral advantages were on the Polish side,
and the time had come for a “great and glorious epoch in every country,
when virtue must square offf against lawlessness, patriotism against wick-
edness, liberty against servitude”; this was a war “of virtue against crime,
justice against violence, freedom against tyranny”67 and at the same time
a “fĳight between despotism and human rights”.68 Thus the struggle of the
Poles almost automatically became part of the broader struggle of peoples
against despots, and the Commonwealth became one of the countries
where the universal aspiration for freedom was being pursued. Indeed, it

from defending liberty—to fighting for liberty

119

69 Uwagi przyjaciela ludzkości z francuskiego przełożone, n.p. [1794], p. 5.
70 “Obraz stanu Europy”, GRz, no. 109/21 Oct. 1794.
71 [F. Jelski], V kazanie…, p. 10.

even became a paragon for such countries. As the anonymous author of
the Polish-French Remarks of a Friend of Mankind wrote, the uprising
would be a “signifĳicant epoch in the history of the 18th century, setting a
great example for all of Europe”.69 One press commentator, concluding
that Poland was the stage for a showdown between liberty and despotism
which “puts Europe into a new shape today”, set France and Poland along-
side one another among nations fĳighting despotism in his Picture of the
State of Europe.70 The same point was driven home much more dramati-
cally and fĳiguratively in Father Jelski’s sermon:

From America through Paris to Warsaw, the lightning of freedom will pro-
ceed all the way to Kamchatka; the tyrants will not realize how speedily they
will fall from their eternal and unjust thrones, like so many Lucifers from the
heavens.71

Revolutionary slogans melded here with the old Polish dislike for despots
on their thrones and with the conviction (likewise not novel) that freedom
binds nations together in some way. The struggle for liberty was meant to
function similarly.

***

In concluding these deliberations, we should point out a certain paradox:
within the concept of freedom espoused in the propaganda of the
Kościuszko Uprising, those elements which had been contributed by writ-
ers of the Enlightenment—especially by authors in the 1770s and 1780s,
adapting the ideas underlying liberty in its liberal understanding to fĳit
Polish conditions—would become blurred or would even disappear.
Statements from the period of rebellion generally do not discuss natural
freedom, the freedom of the individual seen as “the free exercise of owner-
ship under the protection of law”. Instead, thinkers reverted to the old
idea, inseparably linking individual freedom and political freedom, under-
stood as the ability to determine afffairs for oneself. This view of liberty was
undoubtedly afffected by the events of 1792–1794—defeat at the hands of
Russia, and then the struggle for independence. It then turned out that
freedom in its liberal understanding, as individual freedom which was
guaranteed solely by law and irrespective of who wielded power in a given

120 chapter

six

state, simply could not be exercised under the conditions present in the
partitioned and occupied lands. Reality thus provided a poignant confĳir-
mation of the old republican conviction that individual freedom was only
possible within a free country, where citizens have an influence upon gov-
ernance. Somewhat grandiloquently we might say that the idea which had
failed to work well in the conditions of the crisis-plagued Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth turned out to work well as a slogan in the struggle to
regain the free state. Under the influence of current events, therefore, the
Poles reminded themselves of the old truth that the only guarantee of citi-
zens’ liberties was the freedom of their country, and so, that the struggle
for an independent country was at the same time a struggle for their own
independent liberties. As we have already noted, this was at the same
time a struggle against despotism, and in the fĳinal tally a struggle of good
vs. evil.

And so, in closing, we should repeat what we said at the outset: that the

way the uprising’s participants conceived of liberty was informed above
all by the longstanding tradition of Polish freedom—a freedom enabling
those who enjoyed it to make decisions bearing upon themselves and
their country, a freedom that represented the supreme treasure, worth any
sacrifĳice. The most important shift pertained not to liberty’s interpreta-
tion per se, but to its social scope, which by this time defĳinitely extended
beyond the strict estate-based construal of the concept. This was corre-
lated with a diffferent understanding of the world “nation”, which may per-
haps not yet have referred to each and every resident of the Commonwealth
(or what remained of it) but defĳinitely was no longer limited just to the
noble citizens. We might say that the battles of the uprising were the
crucible that would transform the old noble traditions of freedom into a
19th-century ideology of national independence. Some of the old traits
ascribed to liberty, or problems related to it, quite simply ceased to exist in
the new situation or were forgotten, but its most important values
remained unchanged—above all the age-old conviction that “a Pole” was
synonymous with “a free man”, except now “a Pole” meant more than just
a nobleman.

AUTHOR PROFILES

This section presents short profĳiles of the most important Polish authors
who wrote about liberty. The reader should bear in mind, however, that a
signifĳicant number of primary source texts cited in this book were pro-
duced anonymously, and their authors have not been identifĳied to date.

Franciszek Bieliński (1742–1809)—Grand Notary of the Crown, an afffĳiliate
of the Commission of National Education. He presented his concepts for
civic education in Sposób edukacyi w XV listach opisany [Method of
Education Described in 15 Letters] (1775).

Jakub Boczyłowicz (latter half of the 17th cen.)—Writer and poet, the
author of a selection of models and guidelines for public speakers, Orator
politicus (1699).

Wojciech Bystrzonowski (17th/18th cen.)—Jesuit and mathematician, the
author of a collection of rhetorical exercises Polak sensat w liście, w kom-
plemencie polityk, humanista w dyskursie, w mowach statysta [The Pole,
Sensible in Letters, Politic in Complements, Humanist in Discourse,
Politician in Speeches] (1730).

Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro (–1679)—Voivode of Podolia, writer, and
philosopher, the author of several Latin treatises on the ideals of human
and civic life, and also issues pertaining to the system of governance. He
is considered one of the leading defenders and theoreticians of the
liberum veto.

Łukasz Górnicki (1527–1603)—Royal secretary, Renaissance humanist,
translator, writer. Well known for his Polish reworking of Castiglione’s
The Courtier (1565). His political works Rozmowa Polaka z Włochem
[Conversations of a Pole with an Italian] (1616) and Droga do zupełnej
wolności [The Road to Complete Freedom] (published posthumously,
1650) critically analysing the political system of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth and proposing extensive reforms, clearly manifest the
influence of Italian thought and a fascination with the political system of
Venice.

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profiles

Jan Stanisław Jabłonowski (1669–1731)—Voivode of Ruthenia, writer. His
best-known work is Skrupuł bez skrupułu w Polszcze [Scruple without
Scruple in Poland] (1730), a moralizing and quite vacuous critique of the
situation in the Commonwealth.

Franciszek Salezy Jezierski (1740–1791)—Priest, writer, and a commentator
active during the Four-Year Sejm period (1788–1792). He produced writings
harshly criticizing the social situation within the Commonwealth and
demanding improvement in the situation of the underprivileged estates.
His works include the satirical Katechizm o tajemnicach rządu polskiego
[Catechism on the Secrets of Polish Government] (1790) and the paradox-
ridden dictionary/encyclopaedia Niektóre wyrazy porządkiem abecadła
zebrane [Certain Expressions Gathered in Alphabetical Order] (1791).

Stanisław Dunin Karwicki (1640–1724)—Calvinist, politician, writer. His
treatise De ordinanda Republica (written in the early 18th century, circu-
lated only through hand-written copies) is one of the most interesting pro-
posals for reforming the Polish system of governance in a resolutely
republican spirit. He exerted a great influence upon his successors, all the
way to Konarski and Kołłątaj.

Wespazjan Kochowski (1633–1700)—Poet and historian.

Hugo Kołłątaj (1750–1812)—Priest, schooling reformer, politician, and
political theorist. One of the most active politicians of the Four-Year Sejm
(1788–1792) and leaders of the Kościuszko Uprising. He was a passionate
commentator, producing several dozen political treatises and brochures.
His greatest works were Do Stanisława Małachowskiego anonima listów
kilka [Several Anonymous Letters to Stanisław Małachowski] (1788–1789)
and Prawo polityczne narodu polskiego [Political Law of the Polish Nation]
(1789). Drawing upon domestic tradition and Western theories, he devel-
oped a coherent and extensive vision of the Commonwealth as a free state
governed by owner-citizens.

Stanisław Konarski (1700–1773)—Piarist priest, schooling reformer, the
most outstanding and most original political writer of the 18th century. He
dusted offf and modernized the classical republican concept of the state.
In his greatest work, O skutecznym rad sposobie [On the Means of Efffective
Council] (1760–1763), he presented an extensive concept for reforming
Polish parliamentarianism.

author

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123

Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746–1817)—Involved in the American War of
Independence (there attaining the rank of general), general of the Polish
forces, commander-in-chief of the 1794 uprising that bears his name.

Marcin Kromer (1512–1589)—Bishop of Warmia, writer, historian.

Ignacy Łobarzewski (ca. 1750–1826)—Offfĳicer and commentator. In his
treatises, including Zaszczyt wolności polskiej angielskiej wyrównywający
[Pinnacle of the Polish Freedom Equalling the English] (1789) he proposed
that the Commonwealth’s political system should be reformed after the
English model.

Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski (1503–1572)—Secretary to King Sigismund
Augustus, political writer, political theorist, the most prominent Polish
political thinker of the Renaissance epoch. His most famous work was
Commentarium de Republica emendanda published in Basil (1551), with a
Polish translation O poprawie Rzeczypospolitej [On Reform of the Republic]
(1577). This was an extensive vision of the ideal state, and at the same time
a thorough analysis of the situation within the Kingdom of Poland.

Jakub Olszewski (ca. 1586–1634)—Jesuit, professor at the Vilnian Academy,
preacher

Łukasz Opaliński (1612–1662)—Grand Marshal of the Crown, poet, politi-
cal writer. His publications included Rozmowa plebana z ziemianiem
[A Parish Priest’s Conversation With a Landowner] (1641), in which he
thoroughly criticized the political system of the Commonwealth and pro-
posed extensive reforms of the Sejm. He published an apology of that sys-
tem in his 1648 polemic against the caustic criticism of the Republic
authored by the Scot John Barclay, entitled Polonia defensa contra Ioannem
Barclaium.

Stanisław Orzechowski (1513–1566)—Priest, religious polemicist, one of
the most outstanding Polish commentators in the 16th century. His trea-
tises laid the theoretical groundwork for the “Golden Liberty” idea and the
concept of the nobility as a chosen nation. His main works pertaining to
the political system were Quincunx, to jest wzór Korony Polskiej [Quincunx,
or a Model of the Polish Crown] (1564) and Policyja Królestwa Polskiego
[Policy of the Polish Kingdom] (1566).

124 author

profiles

Józef Pawlikowski (1767–1829)—Commentator, participant in the
Kościuszko Uprising, émigré activist, involved in independence-minded
conspiracies. During the Four-Year Sejm, he published two books
anonymously: O poddanych polskich [On Polish Subjects] (1788) and Myśli
polityczne dla Polski [Political Thoughts for Poland] (1789). In his very well-
written texts, he resolutely demanded civil freedom for the serfs and
improvement in the situation of burghers. As the only political writer of
his time, he proposed that the Commonwealth should have a limited
monarchy system.

Sebastian Petrycy of Pilzno (ca. 1554–1627)—Doctor, philosopher, professor
at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. The most prominent representative
of Renaissance Aristotelianism in Poland, publishing Polish translations
of Aristotle’s Politics (1605) and Ethics (1618). He outfĳitted Aristotle’s work
with extensive commentaries that essentially constituted separate trea-
tises of their own.

Walenty Pęski (ca. 1630–1681)—Jezuit preacher, political writer. He is con-
sidered the model eulogist of the “Golden Liberty” yet in reality had quite
a critical stance towards the Commonwealth’s system of governance—his
proposals included abolishing the liberum veto. His Latin treatise Palatium
reginae libertatis Rempublicam oratorium continens (written 1672) was a
masterful literary construction presenting the political system of the
Commonwealth and its liberty. The publisher of the fragment of the trea-
tise devoted to liberty (Regina palatii domina libertas, 1727) altered its
tenor signifĳicantly with respect to the original, supplementing it with
numerous apologetic interpolations—and it is this version that continues
to be considered the quintessence of Sarmatian self-satisfaction.

Antoni Popławski (1739–1799)—Piarist priest, pedagogue, political writer.
He was distinctly under the influence of the French physiocrats, especially
in terms of socioeconomic issues. However, he was also familiar with other
political theories, chiefly Montesquieu, and tried to adapt them to Polish
conditions. He put forward his own economic, social, and political con-
cepts in Zbiór niektórych materyi politycznych [Collection of Certain
Political Matters] (1774).

Franciszek Radzewski (died 1748)—A noble political activist and political
writer. His treatise entitled Kwestyje politycznie obojętne [Politically
Indiffferent Issues] (1743) analysed the workings of the Commonwealth’s

author

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125

state institutions (the Sejm, sejmiki, and king), and he advocated certain
changes meant to streamline their functioning.

Seweryn Rzewuski (1743–1811)—Field Hetman of the Crown, politician,
commentator. He was an impassioned defender of the Commonwealth’s
system in its old, archaic form. During the Four-Year Sejm (1788–1792) he
published a range of brochures attacking ideas for political reform and
defending the age-old solutions. After the enactment of the Constitution
of the 3rd of May, he left Poland in outrage. He was one of the organizers
of the Targowica Confederation (1792), which served Russia’s interest and
is still considered a symbol of treason.

Szczepan Sienicki (died after 1792)—The author of what seems to have
been the last treatise in defence of the liberum veto, entitled Sposób
nowoobmyślony konkludowania obrad publicznych [Newly Contrived
Means of Concluding Public Debate] (1764). In the three volumes of this
work he pondered what needed to be done to ensure that it would be used
exclusively for the common good.

Piotr Skarga (1536–1612)—Priest, theologian, court preacher to King
Sigismund III Vasa, famous for his Kazania sejmowe [Sejm Sermons] (pub.
1597) sermons, which essentially constituted a vast political treatise berat-
ing the wanton license of the szlachta and the shortcomings he perceived
in the Commonwealth’s political system. An advocate of strengthening
royal power.

Stanisław Leszczyński (1677–1766)—King of Poland elected in 1733,
unseated from the throne by Russia in favour of the Saxon Elector Frederick
Augustus. Later (from 1736), Duke of Lorraine. He was extensively involved
in literary/philosophical debates. He put forward far-reaching propos-
als for reforming the political system and societal relations in the
Commonwealth in his most important work Głos wolny wolność
ubezpieczający [A Free Voice Ensuring Freedom] (1749). The authorship of
this book is a point of controversy, with some scholars doubting that
Leszczyński was indeed its writer, but there is no conclusive evidence for
or against this.

Szymon Starowolski (1588–1656) priest, writer, historian. His works, espe-
cially Prywat Polską kieruje [Self-Interest Rules Poland] (1624) and
Reformacyja obyczajów polskich [Reformation of Polish Customs] (1650)

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profiles

criticized the abuse of liberty by the nobility, especially its attitude towards
the serfs.

Stanisław Staszic (1755–1826)—Naturalist, philosopher, writer, and politi-
cian. He set forth his political concepts in Uwagi nad życiem Jana
Zamoyskiego [Remarks on the Life of Jan Zamoyski] (1787) and Przestrogi
dla Polski [Warnings for Poland] (1790). His views may be described
as modern republicanism, encompassing not just one estate but all of
society. With time his views shifted, leaning towards concepts in the spirit
of an absolute monarchy; these he voiced in his historiosophical work Ród
ludzki [The Human Family] (1819–1820).

Hieronim Stroynowski (1752–1815)—Piarist priest, economist, rector of the
Vilnian University. Fascinated with the theories of the French physiocrats,
he based on them his textbook for Piarist schools: Nauka prawa przyrodzo-
nego, politycznego, ekonomiki politycznej i prawa narodów [The Science of
Natural and Political Law, Political Economy, and the Law of Nations]
(1785).

Michał Wielhorski (ca. 1730–1814)—Political writer, representative of the
Confederates of Bar (1770) in France, he inspired the works written by
Rousseau and de Mably about Poland. He summed up his views, quite
conservative despite his being under the influence of Rousseau and his
acquaintance with the latest political theories, in his small work O przy-
wróceniu dawnego rządu według pierwiastkowych Rzeczypospolitej ustaw
[On Restoring the Old Government According to the Elementary Laws of
the Commonwealth] (1775).

Andrzej Wolan (1530–1610)—Royal secretary (serving from Sigismund
Augustus to Sigismund III), diplomat, a Calvinist engaged in religious dis-
putes. His most prominent political work, De libertate politica seu civili
(1572), Polish translation O wolności polskiej abo szlacheckiej [On the Polish
or Noble Freedom] (1606), was a critical analysis of the government and
laws of the Commonwealth from the standpoint of the general principles
governing countries and societies.

Józef Wybicki (1747–1822)—Lawyer, economist, poet, political writer, the
author of the Polish national hymn. He was a participant of the
Confederation of Bar and the Kościuszko Uprising, one of the organizers
of the Polish Legions fĳighting alongside Napoleon. In his Myśli polityczne o

author

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127

wolności cywilnej [Political Thoughts on Civil Freedom] (1775–1776), he
analyzed the Polish system and Polish liberty from the standpoint of the
latest concepts of the state. His next work, Listy patriotyczne [Patriotic
Letters] (1777–1778), was a staunch appeal for improvement in the plight
of the serfs.

Andrzej Zamoyski (1717–1792)—Grand Chancellor of the Crown, an out-
standing politician of the latter half of the 18th century. The author of a
modern code of law (rejected by the Sejm in 1780).

Jan Zamoyski (1542–1605)—Grand Chancellor and Hetman of the Crown,
statesman, political leader of the szlachta, one of the co-creators of the
political system of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

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Secondary Sources – Bibliographical Note

ecause the footnotes to this book have referred exclusively to primary source texts, it

seems necessary to present at least a basic overview of the literature on the subject. What
follows is by no means a complete bibliography, but a selection offfering some guidelines to
readers who would like to explore the issues touched upon herein more deeply.

The formation and history of the noble Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth have been

the subject of many studies; those taking a synthetic approach include Andrzej Wyczański’s
Polska Rzeczą Pospolitą szlachecką [Poland as a Noble Res Publica], Warsaw 1991, and the
collection of studies edited by Richard Butterwick, The Polish-Lithuanian Monarchy in
European Context, c. 1500–1795, Palgrave 2001. The Republic of the Two Nations at its height
is depicted in the works of Henryk Wisner: Najjaśniejsza Rzeczpospolita—Szkice z dziejów
Polski szlacheckiej XVI–XVII wieku [Republic Most Serene—Sketches on the 16th-and 17th-
Century History of Noble Poland], Warsaw 1978, and Rzeczpospolita Wazów—Czasy
Zygmunta III i Władysława IV [Republic of the Vasas—The Times of Sigismund III and
Ladislaus IV], Warsaw 2002. The period of the crisis of the political system and state is
depicted in monographs by Józef A. Gierowski, The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the
XVIIIth Century: From Anarchy to Well-organised State, Kraków 1996, and by Jerzy Lukowski,
Liberty’s Folly: The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Eighteenth Century, 1697–1795,
London 1991. The functioning of the most important institutions of the noble state
was presented synthetically in books by Edward Opaliński, Sejm srebrnego wieku [Sejm
of the Silver Age], Warsaw 2001, and by Wojciech Kriegseisen, Sejmiki Rzeczypospolitej
szlacheckiej w XVII i XVIII wieku [Dietines of the Noble Commonwealth in the 17th-18th
Centuries], Warsaw 1991 and Sejm Rzeczypospolitej szlacheckiej (do 1763 roku): geneza i kry-
zys władzy [Sejm of the Noble Commonwealth (to 1763): Genesis and Crisis of Power],
Warsaw 1995.

The noble culture is the subject of numerous works by Janusz Tazbir, including the syn-

thetic essay Kultura szlachecka w Polsce: Rozkwit – upadek – relikty [Noble Culture in
Poland: Peak—Demise—Relicts], second ed., Warsaw 1979; another important source is

132 bibliography

the collection of studies by Claude Backvis, Szkice o kulturze staropolskiej [Sketches on Old
Polish Culture], Warsaw 1975. The political culture of the szlachta is described in synthetic
fashion by Jarema Maciszewski’s book Szlachta polska i jej państwo [The Polish Nobility and
Their State], fĳirst ed., Warsaw 1969, still an important work despite its ideological tilt.
Among the studies focusing on individual periods, the most important monographs are
Edward Opaliński’s Kultura polityczna szlachty polskiej w latach 1587–1652 [Political Culture
of the Polish Nobility, 1587–1652], Warsaw 1995, and Urszula Augustyniak’s Wazowie i
“królowie rodacy” [The Vasas and “Native Kings”], Warsaw 1999, depicting not just the func-
tioning of the noble state, but also the szlachta’s stance towards state institutions, their
civic attitudes, understanding of their duties to the community, etc. Such issues are also
described in the essays comprising such collections as: Między monarchą a demokracją—
Studia z dziejów Polski XV–XVIII wieku [Between Monarchy and Democracy—Studies in
the History of Poland, 15th-18th Centuries], eds. A. Sucheni-Grabowska, M. Żaryn, Warsaw
1994; Tradycje polityczne dawnej Polski [Political Traditions of Old Poland], eds. A. Sucheni-
Grabowska, A. Dybkowska, Warsaw [1993]; and Constitution and Reform in Eighteenth-
Century Poland, ed. S. Fiszman, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1997.

There is no comprehensive study covering the political thought of the Polish-Lithuanian

Commonwealth. Important works pertaining to the issues described herein include
Trójpodział władzy i zgoda wszystkich—Naczelne zasady „ustroju mieszanego” w staropol-
skiej myśli politycznej [Tripartite Division of Power and the Consent of All—Leading
Principles of the “Mixed System” in Old Polish Political Thought] by Janusz Ekes, Siedlce
2001, Filozofĳia polityczna w Polsce XVII wieku i tradycje demokracji europejskiej [Political
Philosophy in 17th-Century Poland and the Traditions of European Democracy] by
Zbigniew Ogonowski, Warsaw 1992, Sejm Rzeczypospolitej epoki oligarchii 1652–1763:
Prawo—praktyka—teoria—programy [The Sejm of the Commonwealth in the Epoch of
Oligarchy, 1652–1763: Law—Practice—Theory—Programmes] by Henryk Olszewski,
Poznań 1966, Doktryny prawno-ustrojowe czasów saskich (1697–1740) [Legal and Systemic
Doctrines of the Saxon Times (1697–1740)] also by Henryk Olszewski, Warsaw 1961, The
Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Nationhood: Polish Political Thought from Noble
Republicanism to Tadeusz Kościuszko by Andrzej Walicki, Notre Dame 1989; Disorderly
Liberty. The political culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the eighteenth cen-
tury by Jerzy Lukowski, Continuum 2010, and various publications by Jerzy Michalski, espe-
cially his monograph Rousseau i sarmacki republikanizm [Rousseau and Sarmatian
Republicanism], Warsaw 1977.

A general overview of contemporary concepts of freedom is offfered by the book Liberty

edited by David Miller, Oxford 1991. In the historical context, the issue is dealt with in such
collections as: Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy, eds. Z. Pelczyński, J. Gray,
London 1984, and The Origins of Modern Freedom in the West, pub. W. Davis, Stanford Univ.
Press, 1995. The republican theory of liberty is expounded by Philip Pettit’s Republicanism:
A Theory of Freedom and Government, second ed., Oxford University Press, 1999. The history
of the idea has been traced in numerous works by Quentin Skinner, of which a certain sum-
mary can be found in his book Liberty before Liberalism, CUP 1998. Republican topics have
been the subject of a great many monographs and collections in recent decades; an exten-
sive bibliography of them, as well as studies of the republican tradition in various European
countries (including Poland) can be found in the collection Republicanism: A Shared
European Heritage, ed. M. van Gelderen, Q. Skinner, CUP 2002.

The understanding of liberty in Polish political thought is examined in Anna

Grześkowiak-Krwawicz’s book Regina libertas—Wolność w polskiej myśli politycznej XVIII
wieku [Regina Libertas—Freedom in Polish Political Thought of the 18th Century], Gdańsk
2006, which in fact extends beyond the bounds of the 18th century and traces the history of
the understanding of freedom from the inception of the noble Commonwealth; the book
likewise includes extensive references to both primary source texts and the secondary
literature.

Alexander Jagiellon, King of Poland 4
Antiochus 107
Aristotle 31, 77
Askenazy, Szymon 104
Augustus II, King of Poland 20, 21, 70
Augustus III, King of Poland 20–22, 125
Augustyniak, Urszula 132

Backvis, Claude 34, 132
Barclay, John 123
Berlin, Isaiah 31
Bieliński, Franciszek 94, 121
Boczyłowicz, Jakub 68, 121
Bodin, Jean 28
Bogusławski, Konstantyn 94
Butterwick, Richard 131
Bystrzonowski, Wojciech 56, 57, 121

Casimir Jagiellon, King of Poland 3, 4
Catherine II, Empress of Russia 104
Charles I Stuart, King of England and

Scotland 36

Cicero, Marcus Tullius 31, 36, 39, 40, 44, 48
Contarini, Gasparo 32
Czartoryskis, family 21
Czarnowski, Stefan 53, 98
Czubek, Jan 26, 44

Davis, Richard W. 132
Dębiński, Jan 40, 47
Dickinson, Henry T. 1
Dłuski, Tomasz 43, 75, 88
Dmochowski, Franciszek 102, 115
Domański, Juliusz 38
Dubingowicz, Stanisław 44
Dybkowska, Alicja 132
Dzwonkowski, Włodzimierz 104

Ekes, Janusz 132

Fiszman, Samuel 132
Frederic Augustus II, see Augustus III
Frederic Augustus III, Elector of Saxony 23
Fredro, Andrzej Maksymilian 27, 33, 38,

45, 56, 57, 61, 86, 121

Garczyński, Stefan 21
Gelderen, Martin van 132

Górnicki, Łukasz 27, 40, 47, 48, 74, 77, 121
Gray, John 132
Grzeszczuk, Stanisław 38, 45, 85
Grześkowiak-Krwawicz, Anna 71, 132

Habsburgs, dynasty 20
Henry of Valois, King of Poland, King of

France 3

Herburt, Jan Szczęsny 71
Hobbes, Thomas 30, 49
Holbach, Paul 94

Jabłonowski, Jan Stanisław 56, 60, 122
Jagiellonians, dynasty 9, 26, 44
Jelski, Florian 106, 109, 119
Jelski, Konstanty 117, 118
Jezierski, Franciszek Salezy 25, 122
John Casimir, King of Poland 16, 17
John III Sobieski, King of Poland 19
Justitian 55

Kamykowski, Łukasz 38, 61, 72
Karpowicz, Michał 105, 107, 109
Karwicki, Stanisław Dunin 89, 90, 91, 122
Kazimierski, Mikołaj 12
Kądziela, Łukasz 29
Kochanowski, Jan 16
Kochowski, Sebastian 69, 122
Kołłątaj, Hugo 27, 29, 75, 99, 100, 122
Konarski, Stanisław 21, 27, 48, 53, 57–59,

80–82, 84, 89, 90–92, 95, 104, 122

Korolko, Mirosław 52
Kościuszko, Tadeusz 23, 101–103, 106, 107,

109–115, 118, 123

Kriegseisen, Wojciech 131
Kromer, Marcin 34, 123
Kurzeniecki, Ignacy 69

Ladislaus IV, King of Poland 16
Ladislaus Jagiello, King of Poland 3
Leszczyński, Stanisław, see Stanisław

Leszczyński

Leśnodorski, Bogusław 99
Lippomano, Girolamo 34
Livy 31, 39
Locke, John 28, 44
Louis XIV, King of France 50
Louis XV, King of France 28

INDEX

134 index

Lubomirski, Jerzy 38
Lubomirski, Teodor 57
Lukowski, Jerzy 131, 132
Łęski, Józef 109
Łobarzewski, Ignacy 62, 75, 123

Mably, Gabriel Bonnot de 126
Mac Callum, Gerald C. 31
Maccabees 105, 107
Machiavelli, Niccolo 28, 31, 32, 36, 39,

40, 87

Maciszewski, Jarema 132
Malinowski, Karol 106
Małachowski, Antoni 33, 105
Mejer, Karol 107
Michael Korybut Wiśniowiecki, King of

Poland 17, 18

Miller, David 132
Modrzewski, Andrzej Frycz 29, 52, 93, 123
Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron

de 23, 28, 31, 73, 91

Mościcki, Henryk 107

Niemcewicz, Julian Ursyn 65
Niewiadomski 111
Nowak, Zbigniew 94

Ochmann, Stefania 61
Ogonowski, Zbigniew 33, 45, 86, 132
Olszewski, Henryk 54, 57, 68, 132
Olszewski, Jakub 29, 32, 123
Opaliński, Edward 29, 50, 51, 61, 131, 132
Opaliński, Krzysztof 12
Opaliński, Łukasz 27, 38, 40, 41, 45, 61, 71,

72, 77, 85, 123

Opałek, Kazimierz 96
Orzechowski, Stanisław 27, 32, 123
Ostroróg, Jan 78

Pac, family 19
Pawlikowski, Józef 97, 98, 124
Pelczyński, Zbigniew 132
Petrycy of Pilzno, Sebastian 32, 74, 124
Pettit, Philip 31, 132
Pęski, Walenty 40, 47, 63, 79, 124
Plato 77
Polak, Roman 47, 77
Polybius 31
Popławski, Antoni 73, 87, 88, 93, 96, 124
Potocki, Ignacy 22
Potocki, Seweryn 63
Potocki, Szczęsny 82
Potockis, family 21

Przyboś, Adam 90
Przyboś, Kazimierz 90
Pułaski, Antoni 36
Pułaski, Kazimierz 36
Pyrrhys de Varille, Cesare 83

Raczyński, Kazimierz 67
Radziwiłł, family 19
Radawiecki, Andrzej 6
Radzewski, Franciszek 68, 124
Rembowski, Stanisław 47, 67
Rousseau, Jean Jacques 23, 31, 39, 41, 54,

82, 98, 126

Rzewuski, Adam Wawrzyniec 68
Rzewuski, Seweryn 88, 125

Salust 31, 39
Sapieha, Kazimierz Nestor 65
Sarnicki, Stanisław 44
Seneca 40, 77
Sienicki, Szczepan 82, 87, 125
Sierakowski, Józef 110
Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland, King of

Sweden 12, 14, 15, 37, 70, 125, 126

Sigismund Augustus, King of Poland 3, 5,

8, 123, 126

Sigismund the Old, King of Poland 5
Skarga, Piotr 7, 81, 125
Skinner, Quentin 31, 132
Skrzetuski, Wincenty 74
Sokołowski, Serafĳin 48
Stanisław Leszczyński, King of Poland 21,

27, 47, 58, 67, 70, 76, 81, 89, 90, 91, 95, 125

Stanisław August Poniatowski, King of

Poland 21–23, 36, 98

Starowolski, Szymon 27, 40, 47, 77, 125
Staszic, Stanisław 27, 52, 53, 98, 100, 126
Stawiszyński, Andrzej 61
Stephen Bathory, King of Poland 8, 12
Stroynowski, Hieronim 93, 96, 126
Stuarts, dynasty 28
Sucheni-Grabowska, Anna 44, 78, 132
Szczepaniec, Józef 63, 65
Świtkowski, Piotr 25

Tazbir, Janusz 10, 67, 131
Turowski, Kazimierz Józef 26, 44, 78, 81

Urwanowicz, Jerzy 78

Walicki, Andrzej 7
Wawrzecki, Tomasz 111
Wereszycka, Hanna 99

index

135

Wettins, dynasty 19
Wielhorski, Michał 54, 60, 82, 88, 126
Wierzbowski, Teodor 26
Wiśniowiecki, family 19
Wiśniowiecki, Jarema 6
Wisner, Henryk 8, 131
Włodarczyk, Tadeusz 33, 45, 86
Wolan, Andrzej 27, 29, 44, 49, 69,

93, 126

Woltanowski, Andrzej 114

Wujtewicz, Feliks 56
Wybicki, Józef 27, 67, 93, 94, 96, 106, 113,

126

Wyczański, Andrzej 131
Wysocki, Samuel 30

Zamoyski, Andrzej 8, 39, 80, 127
Zamoyski, Jan 26, 37, 38, 127
Zebrzydowski, Mikołaj 15, 38, 53, 70
Żaryn, Małgorzata 44, 78, 132

Document Outline

Queen Liberty:The Concept of Freedom in thePolish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Copyright
Contents
Introduction
1. The Polish Szlachta and Their State
2. Golden Liberty—A Noble Privilege or Universal Idea?
3. The Pillars of Freedom
4. Freedom in Peril
5. What Was Wrong with Polish Liberty?
6. From Defending Liberty—to Fighting for Liberty
Author Profiles
Bibliography
Index

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