The nearly bloodless conquest of the huge Commonwealth came as a shock to many Poles and foreigners. Yet Polish resistance to what turned out to be a regime of brutal occupation developed very quickly. The successful defense of the fortified monastery of Jasna Góra (now in Częstochowa) became a rallying point and provided a symbolic religious-ideological banner. Although the Poles were seldom a match for the Swedish professional troops, they excelled at partisan warfare and at winning minor battles. Not only the szlachta but also the peasants fought the foreigner and enemy of Roman Catholicism. Stefan Czarniecki became the hero of the war.
Returning from exile in Silesia, John Casimir built an international coalition against the Swedes, whose successes were upsetting the balance of power. A cease-fire intervened on the Russian front, and the Cossacks were neutralized by the Tatars, while the Habsburgs, Denmark, and Brandenburg-Prussia went to Poland’s aid. The Swedes were gradually driven out of the Commonwealth, despite an armed intervention on their side by Transylvania’s Prince György II Rákóczi, who aspired to the Polish crown. The war ended with the Treaty of Oliwa (1660), which restored the territorial status quo before the Swedish invasion and brought the final renunciation of John Casimir’s claim to the crown of Sweden.
The real winner in the conflict proved to be Frederick William, the elector of Brandenburg and duke of Prussia. Adroitly maneuvering between Sweden and Poland and extracting a price for his collaboration from both sides, the “Great Elector” finally switched his support to John Casimir and thereby received the recognition of full sovereignty over Prussia for himself and his male descendants through the treaties of Wehlau (Welawa) and Bromberg (Bydgoszcz) in 1657.
Eastern wars still continued for Poland for several years. In Ukraine the Hadziacz agreement of 1658 with Khmelnytsky’s successor provided for the creation of a Ukrainian state as a third member of the Commonwealth with its own offices and army, as well as mass ennoblements of Cossacks and the suspension of the Union of Brest-Litovsk. The accord was short-lived. A pro-Russian faction in Ukraine denounced and nullified the pact, which led to a renewal of hostilities with Muscovy that ended in 1667 with the Truce of Andrusovo and was confirmed by a treaty in 1686. Restoring the occupied parts of Lithuania to the Commonwealth, the truce divided Ukraine along the Dnieper River. Together with the Treaty of Oliwa, that agreement marked the beginning of the decline of the Commonwealth’s international standing. The 17th-century crisis Social and economic changes
The two decades of war and occupation in the mid-17th century, which in the case of Lithuania gave a foretaste of the 18th-century partitions, ruined and exhausted the Commonwealth. Famines and epidemics followed hostilities, and the population dropped from roughly 11 to 7 million. The number of inhabitants of Kraków and Warsaw fell by two-thirds and one-half, respectively. Wilno was burned down. The Khmelnytsky uprising decimated the Jews in Ukraine, even if they recovered fairly rapidly demographically. The productivity of agriculture diminished dramatically owing to labour shortages, the destruction of many farm buildings and farming implements, and the loss of numerous cattle. The dynamic network of international trade fairs also collapsed. Grain exports, which had reached their peak in the early 17th century, could not redress the unfavourable balance of trade with western Europe. Losses of art treasures—the Swedes engaged in systematic looting—were irreplaceable.
The Commonwealth never fully recovered, unlike Muscovy, which had suffered almost as much during the Time of Troubles. Twentieth-century Marxist historians blamed the manorial economy based on serf labour for pauperizing the masses and undermining the towns, yet the Polish economy was not unique in that respect. Moreover, some attempts to replace serfs with rent-paying tenants did not prove to be a panacea. The economic factor must therefore be treated jointly with other structural weaknesses of the Commonwealth that militated against recovery.
The 17th-century crisis—a European phenomenon—was basically a crisis of political authority. In the Commonwealth the perennial financial weakness was the central issue. The state budget in the second half of the century amounted to 10–11 million złotys, as compared with the equivalent of about 360 million in France or 240 million in England. About nine-tenths of it went for military purposes, compared with half in Brandenburg and more than three-fifths in France and Russia. Equating a large army with royal absolutism and extolling the virtue of noble levies, the szlachta was unwilling to devise defensive mechanisms. This was true even after the chastising experience of the Swedish “deluge.” Most nobles contented themselves with invoking the special protection of St. Mary, symbolically crowned queen of Poland, as a sufficient safeguard. Political stagnation
Those wishing to reform the state without strengthening the monarchy wanted to make the Sejm an effective centre of power. The szlachta, however, refused to accept the notion that liberty could be better preserved in a stronger state. In 1652 the notorious and often misunderstood practice of liberum veto (free veto) appeared: a single negative vote by a member of the Sejm was considered sufficient to block the proceedings. It was argued that unanimity was essential for passing laws, for deputies, as representatives of the local sejmiki, were bound by instructions. Moreover, a majority could disregard local interests and be corrupted by the administration. Hence, liberum veto came to be regarded as the kernel of liberty and a safeguard against tyranny. In reality, the dissenting deputy was usually an instrument of a magnate or even of the king.
The liberum veto could paralyze the functioning of the state, and in the 17th century it was used sparingly. The weakening of the Sejm meant that some of its functions, notably in matters of taxation, had to pass to local sejmiki. Without a central bureaucracy and with a dual structure of offices in the Crown and Lithuania, the fragmentation of sovereignty became increasingly ominous. The attempts at reform by John Casimir and his energetic wife, Marie Louise, may have been ill-conceived, but, given the factional strife within the oligarchy, it was difficult for the monarch to find a stable base of support. The szlachta, ever suspicious of anything that could smack of absolutism, was naturally opposed. The royal plans were defeated by a rokosz in 1665–66 led by Marshal Jerzy Lubomirski. Two years later the frustrated John Casimir abdicated and settled in France, having prophetically warned the Sejm that Poland would fall victim to its rapacious neighbours unless it reformed its ways. Cultural changes
The prevalent mentality in the Commonwealth in the 17th century manifested itself in Sarmatism. The name came from alleged ancestors of the szlachta (Sarmatians), and the concept served to integrate the multiethnic nobility. Representing a symbiosis of a political ideology and a lifestyle typical of a landowning, rather provincial, tightly knit, and increasingly xenophobic culture, Sarmatism extolled the virtues of the szlachta and contrasted them with Western values. An Orientalization of Polish-Lithuanian culture (including modes and manners) was occurring. Roman Catholicism was Sarmatized in its turn, assuming a more intolerant posture toward other denominations. The struggles against Lutheran Swedes and Prussians, Orthodox Russians, and Muslim Turks and Tatars strengthened the belief in Poland’s mission as a Catholic bastion. The expulsion in 1658 of Polish Brethren—accused of collaboration with the Swedes—when taken together with the virtual elimination of non-Catholics from public offices, was the first harbinger of the Pole-Catholic syndrome (the notion that a true Pole must be a Catholic). Decline and attempts at reform