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They are the first Polish princely and royal dynasty. They ruled from the end of the 9th century until 1370.

967 - 1025 - the years of the life of Boleslav I the Brave. For 33 years he was a prince, then he became a king. United and expanded the Polish lands. He conquered East Pomerania, Moravia and partly Slovakia.

990 - 1034 Meshka II. Troubled times for Poland: wars, political isolation, civil strife. The king had to suppress the rebellions and give up part of the lands conquered by his predecessor. Mieszko II was killed by conspirators.
1271 - 1305 - Czech ruler Wenceslas II. In 1300 he became the Polish king. He died during the years of the conflict between the pretenders for the imperial throne of the Roman Empire.

1261 - 1333 - Vladislav I (Lokotok). Became king in 1320. He united the Polish lands, fought against foreign domination.

1310 - 1370 - Casimir III. For the development of the country, he engaged in reforms, the creation of a code of laws for the whole of Poland and the establishment of relations with neighbors - the Germans, Czechs and Hungarians. Founded the University of Krakow.
1326 - 1382 - Louis I - the Hungarian king, in 1370 became the Polish king after the death of his uncle, who left no heirs. Despite the fact that he owned vast territories, carried out reforms, the Poles did not respect him, believing that he did little for Poland, limited to collecting taxes.
1373 - 1399 - Jadwiga I, daughter of Louis I, after his death, received Poland as an inheritance. In 1384, she took the title of king, although, according to Polish law, a woman did not have the right to do so. Because of this, she ruled for only a year. After Yadviga got married, the government was carried out jointly with her husband.

Jagiellonian dynasty

1362 - 1434 - years of life of Vladislav II, the first representative of the Lithuanian princely family. In 1386 he took over as king of Poland. His reign is associated with the famous Battle of Grunwald and the christening of Lithuania.
1424 - 1444 - Vladislav III. Fought for the Hungarian throne, died in the war with the Ottoman Turks.
1427 - 1492 - Casimir IV - achieved access to the sea in the fight against the Teutons. During his reign, the gentry increased its influence in the country.
1459 - 1501 - Jan I. He had to constantly fight with his neighbors - the Moscow principality, the Tatars, the peoples of Moldova. Fought with the expansion of the rights of the gentry. Died suddenly.
1461 - 1506 - Alexander I Jagiellon. He continued to fight with his neighbors. Established a set of unified laws.

1467 - 1548 - Sigismund I. He paid tribute to the Tatars, carried out military reform to strengthen the country's defense capability.

1520 - 1572 - Sigismund II. Famous for the conclusion of the Union of Lublin, which united Poland and Lithuania in the Commonwealth. He fought with Ivan the Terrible and ceded Polotsk to him, issued laws. Catholics and Orthodox received equal rights.

Elected kings

1551 - 1589 — Henry III. Achieved the throne by distributing promises to the gentry. Little was involved in the affairs of the country. In 1574 he fled to France, taking her throne.
1533 - 1586 - Stefan Bathory. He fought with the gentry to strengthen royal power, developed education, the monetary system, and the bureaucracy. He continued to fight with Ivan the Terrible for Livonia.

Later, the elected kings had to continue the struggle with the Polish nobility - the gentry, which marched with varying success. The most famous kings of this time are Jan II Casimir (1609 - 1672), Mikhail Vishnevetsky (1640 - 1673), August II the Strong (1670 - 1733).

The last king of Greater Poland - Stanislav II Poniatowski (1732 - 1798) - was an intelligent and educated person. He was engaged in reforms, the financial system, the army. He unsuccessfully fought against the gentry, which led to a civil war and the divisions of Poland between neighbors. Poniatowski had to renounce the throne and live the last years of his life in Russia.

History of Poland.

Elective Kings: The Decline of the Polish State.

After the death of the childless Sigismund II, the central power in the vast Polish-Lithuanian state began to weaken. At a stormy meeting of the Diet, a new king, Henry (Henrik) Valois (r. 1573–1574; he later became Henry III of France), was elected. At the same time, he was forced to accept the principle of "free election" (election of the king by the gentry), as well as"consent pact" to which each new monarch had to swear. The right of the king to choose his heir was transferred to the Sejm. The king was also prohibited from declaring war or raising taxes without the consent of Parliament. He had to be neutral in religious matters, he had to marry on the recommendation of the senate. The council, which consisted of 16 senators appointed by the Sejm, constantly advised him. If the king did not fulfill any of the articles, the people could refuse him obedience. Thus, the Henryk Articles changed the status of the state - Poland moved from a limited monarchy to an aristocratic parliamentary republic; the head of the executive branch, elected for life, did not have sufficient powers to govern the state.

The weakening of the supreme power in Poland, which had long and poorly protected borders, but aggressive neighbors, whose power was based on centralization and military force, largely predetermined the future collapse of the Polish state. Henry of Valois ruled for only 13 months, and then left for France, where he received the throne, vacated after the death of his brother Charles IX. The Senate and the Sejm could not agree on the candidacy of the next king, and the gentry finally elected Stefan Batory, Prince of Transylvania (reigned 1575–1586), giving him a princess from the Jagiellonian dynasty as his wife. Batory strengthened Polish power over Gdansk, ousted Ivan the Terrible from the Baltic states and returned Livonia. At home, he won the loyalty and help in the fight against the Ottoman Empire from the Cossacks - fugitive serfs who organized a military republic on the vast plains of Ukraine - a kind of "border strip" stretching from southeast Poland to the Black Sea along the Dnieper. Bathory gave privileges to the Jews, who were allowed to have their own parliament. He reformed the judiciary, and in 1579 founded a university in Vilna (Vilnius), which became an outpost of Catholicism and European culture in the east.

A zealous Catholic, Sigismund III Vasa (r. 1587-1632), the son of Johan III of Sweden and Catherine, daughter of Sigismund I, decided to create a Polish-Swedish coalition to fight Russia and return Sweden to the bosom of Catholicism. In 1592 he became the Swedish king.

In order to spread Catholicism among the Orthodox population, a Uniate church was established at the cathedral in Brest in 1596, which recognized the supremacy of the Pope, but continued to use Orthodox rituals. The opportunity to seize the throne of Moscow after the suppression of the Rurik dynasty involved the Commonwealth in the war with Russia. In 1610, Polish troops occupied Moscow. The vacant royal throne was offered by the Moscow boyars to Sigismund's son, Vladislav. However, the Muscovites rebelled, and with the help of the people's militia under the leadership of Minin and Pozharsky, the Poles were expelled from Moscow. Sigismund's attempts to introduce absolutism in Poland, which at that time already dominated the rest of Europe, led to a revolt of the gentry and the loss of the king's prestige.

After the death of Albrecht II of Prussia in 1618, the Elector of Brandenburg became the ruler of the Duchy of Prussia. Since that time, the possessions of Poland on the coast of the Baltic Sea have become a corridor between two provinces of the same German state.

During the reign of Sigismund's son, Vladislav IV (1632–1648), the Ukrainian Cossacks revolted against Poland, the wars with Russia and Turkey weakened the country, and the gentry received new privileges in the form of political rights and exemption from income taxes. Under the rule of Vladislav's brother Jan Casimir (1648–1668), the Cossack freemen began to behave even more militantly, the Swedes occupied

 O most of Poland, including the capital - Warsaw, and the king, abandoned by his subjects, was forced to flee to Silesia. In 1657 Poland renounced sovereign rights to East Prussia. As a result of unsuccessful wars with Russia, Poland lost Kyiv and all areas east of the Dnieper under the Andrusovo truce (1667). The process of disintegration began in the country. The magnates, creating alliances with neighboring states, pursued their own goals; the rebellion of Prince Jerzy Lubomirski shook the foundations of the monarchy; the gentry continued to defend their own “freedoms”, which was suicidal for the state. Since 1652, she began to abuse the pernicious practice of "liberum veto", which allowed any deputy to block a decision that he did not like, demand the dissolution of the Sejm and put forward any proposals that should have been considered by its next composition. Taking advantage of this, the neighboring powers, through bribery and other means, repeatedly frustrated the implementation of decisions of the Sejm that were objectionable to them. King Jan Casimir was broken and abdicated the Polish throne in 1668, in the midst of internal anarchy and strife.

Mikhail Vyshnevetsky (r. 1669–1673) turned out to be an unprincipled and inactive monarch who played along with the Habsburgs and ceded Podolia to the Turks. His successor, Jan III Sobieski (r. 1674–1696), waged successful wars with the Ottoman Empire, saved Vienna from the Turks (1683), but was forced to cede some lands to Russia under an "Eternal Peace" treaty in exchange for her promises of assistance in struggle against the Crimean Tatars and Turks. After the death of Sobieski, the Polish throne in the new capital of the country, Warsaw, was occupied for 70 years by foreigners: the Elector of Saxony August II (reigned 1697–1704, 1709–1733) and his son August III (1734–1763). August II actually bribed the electors. Having united in an alliance with Peter I, he returned Podolia and Volhynia and stopped the exhausting Polish-Turkish wars, concluding the Karlovitsky Peace with the Ottoman Empire in 1699. The Polish king unsuccessfully tried to recapture the Baltic coast from the King of Sweden, Charles XII, who invaded Poland in 1701, and in 1703 he took Warsaw and Krakow. August II was forced to yield the throne in 1704-1709 to Stanislav Leshchinsky, who was supported by Sweden, but returned to the throne again when Peter I defeated Charles XII at the Battle of Poltava (1709). In 1733, the Poles, supported by the French, elected Stanislav king for the second time, but the Russian troops again removed him from power.

Augustus III was nothing more than a puppet of Russia; patriotic Poles tried with all their might to save the state. One of the factions of the Sejm, led by Prince Czartoryski, tried to cancel the pernicious "liberum veto", while the other, led by the powerful Potocki family, opposed any restriction of "freedoms". Desperate, Czartoryski's party began to cooperate with the Russians, and in 1764 Catherine II, Empress of Russia, succeeded in electing her favorite Stanisław August Poniatowski as King of Poland (1764–1795). Poniatowski was the last king of Poland. Russian control became especially evident under Prince N.V. Repnin, who, being ambassador to Poland, in 1767 forced the Sejm of Poland to accept his demands for equality of confessions and the preservation of the “liberum veto”. This led in 1768 to an uprising of Catholics (the Bar Confederation) and even to a war between Russia and Turkey.

Standard of the rulers of the Commonwealth

Since ancient times, the banners of the Polish monarchs depicted a white eagle on a red field. As a standard of the Commonwealth, a white cloth with the image of the small coat of arms of the Commonwealth was originally used. But since red and white were the national colors in both Poland and Lithuania, in the 17th century a single state began to use a standard consisting of three or four horizontal stripes of red and white, ending in a dovetail. In addition, the Commonwealth coat of arms was present on the standard (in the figure - the standard with the coat of arms of the Vaza dynasty).

Historical coat of arms of the Piasts

The legend says that the legendary progenitor of the Poles founded his capital Gniezno in the place where he saw a white eagle sitting on the branches of trees, against the backdrop of a sky flaming from the sunset, and since then the white eagle has become a symbol of Poland. However, if we proceed not from legends, but from historical facts, then the white eagle was originally a personal sign, and became a national symbol at the end of the 14th - beginning of the 15th century.

The coat of arms of the Commonwealth was a combined coat of arms of Poland and Lithuania in a four-part shield, in the first and fourth parts - the Polish white eagle, in the second and third - the Lithuanian "Pursuit". A small shield with the coat of arms of the reigning monarch was usually superimposed on the main shield.

Crown of Bolesław the Brave
(modern copy)

Kingdom of Poland
Krolestwo Polishie(Polish)

People settled the territory of modern Poland already during the Paleolithic period, about 800 thousand years ago. By the period of classical antiquity (400 BC - 500 AD), tribes of Celts, Germans and Balts lived here. They did not have their own written language, but, according to indirect evidence, they reached a high level in material culture and social organization. Perhaps they already had "princes". At least some of the burials unearthed by archaeologists stand out in terms of richness.

The Slavs entered the territory of Poland around the 5th-6th centuries as a result of the Great Migration of Nations. In ancient chronicles, legends about the rulers of those times are widespread, who, as usual, allegedly traced their lineage from the biblical patriarchs and were related to the Roman Caesars. These legends are distinguished by a variety of variants (the same deeds are attributed to different princes with the same name) and chronological inconsistencies. Thanks to these legends, Poland acquired two centers of statehood - Krakow, allegedly built by the first legendary prince of the Lechites, where subsequent monarchs were crowned and the possession of which meant supremacy over all the rulers of the Polish land, and Gniezno, the former residence of the first historical rulers of Poland.

More or less reliable information about the Polish princes begins in the 10th century, when he accepted Christianity. The subsequent history of Poland until the 14th century is a series of ups and downs, when some sovereigns collected lands, trying to equal the power of the German emperors, while others divided them among their children. And one of their descendants again began the process of unification. Poland reached the first at . Having united the Polish lands after the death of his father, shortly before his death in 1025, he assumed the royal title. However, his death was followed by a traditional strife between his sons, as a result of which he lost a significant part of the land and the royal title. He put an end to it, not in vain called the Restorer. His son influenced affairs in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kievan Rus and in 1076 was proclaimed king. Under his grandson, Ancient Poland reached . annexed Pomorie and repelled the attack of the German emperor. However, his "Statute" (testament), issued with the intention of preventing internecine wars between his sons, marked the beginning of more than two hundred years of feudal fragmentation.

According to the "Statute of Boleslaw Wrymouth" in 1138, Poland was divided into four parts between his sons. Krakow land, Sieradzsko-Lenchitsky land, Western Kuyavia and the eastern part of Greater Poland stood out in a special "delnitsa", which was supposed to belong to the eldest of the Piasts. The descendants began a long struggle for the seigneury, even though over time the possession of Krakow became simply a matter of prestige and did not give any real advantages. Pomorie was deposited, the northern regions fell under the control of the Teutonic Knights, the Germans began to advance from the west, and the Tatar-Mongols attacked from the east. At the end of the XIII - beginning of the XIV centuries, most of Poland became part of, and in 1300 he was crowned in Krakow with the Polish crown.

Against the background of numerous troubles in Poland, centripetal tendencies began to be observed again. In 1295, the prince of Greater Poland independently assumed the royal title in Gniezno, but was soon killed by the magnates of Greater Poland, who entered into an agreement with the Elector of Brandenburg. In 1306, the Přemyslid empire suddenly collapsed, and Krakow again went to Piast, the Kuyavian prince. The energetic prince in a short time annexed East Pomerania and Great Poland and in 1320 was crowned in Krakow with the royal crown, although he did not succeed in complete unity of the Polish lands. This was achieved by his son, the only one of the Polish kings who deserved the nickname Great. He managed to restore order in internal affairs and achieve success in foreign policy with the help of not force, but diplomacy. Unfortunately, he did not leave his sons, which is why the Polish throne for the first time went to a foreigner - his nephew. Owning from the Baltic to the Black and Adriatic seas, he did not have the strength and time to carefully delve into the affairs of a foreign country. Not having a strong foothold in Poland, in 1374 he issued the Kosice Privilege, which granted all magnates and gentry the rights and privileges that had previously been enjoyed only by the highest secular and spiritual feudal lords. Priviley gave impetus to the growth of the power of the Polish nobility and the decline in the authority of the king. Kosice privilege was conceived as a means of securing the Polish throne for one of the daughters.

about 811-861 about 861-892 around 892-930 around 930-964

Old Polish state

Princes and kings of Poland

prince around 964-992
prince 992-1025
king 1025
(1) king 1025-1031
prince 1031-1032
(2)

co-princes 1032-1033
(3) prince 1033-1034
Bezkrulevye1034-1038
prince 1039-1058
prince 1058-1076
king 1076-1079
prince 1079-1102
(part of Poland)
(part of Poland) 		princes 1102-1106
prince 1106-1138

(titular prince) 1291-1295 (Prince of Krakow)
(King of Poland) 1295 1295-1300

Kings of Poland

United Kingdom of Poland

1320-1333
1333-1370
1370-1382
1384-1386

(co-ruler) 		1386-1399
1399-1434
1434-1444
"Rollless" 1444-1447
1447-1492
1492-1501
1501-1506
1506-1529

(co-ruler) 		1529-1548
1548-1569
Union of Lublin: unification of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into the Commonwealth 1569


The most proud and independent in spirit (according to its own legend, at least) of the Slavic countries, Poland, was very often ruled by foreigners. Moreover, many legendary Polish kings were aliens. The French, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Germans, Swedes, Czechs and Russians sat on the Polish throne.

True, how Russian the Russian tsars can be considered, each of whom was predominantly of German blood at the time when he was separately crowned in Warsaw, is a big question. But a fact is a fact: when Poland was part of Russia as the Kingdom of Poland and the Russian emperor had to separately undergo a coronation with the Poles for the legitimacy of his reign, all three Alexanders and both Nicholas were kings of Poland.

French on the Polish throne

First of all, this phrase recalls the story of Henry III of Valois, who so persistently sought the Polish throne and so dishonorably fled from his throne after a very short reign. He, of course, entered the Polish legends, but not in the way he would have liked.

However, even before Henry, there were Frenchmen on the Polish throne. The first was Louis of Anjou, who entered the history of neighboring Hungary as Lajos the Great - since he ruled both countries. However, strictly speaking, Louis belonged to the Neapolitan, that is, Italian, branch of the dynasty, so that he can be remembered in exactly the same way as the Italian on the Polish throne.



Louis of Anjou had no sons, only two daughters. To the eldest, Maria, he bequeathed Hungary, and to the youngest, Jadwiga, Poland. Moreover, he died when both were still just girls, and it was not easy for them to keep the thrones. Under pressure from the Poles, Jadwiga had to marry the old, ugly Lithuanian prince Jogaila, who was considered a bit of a scumbag in his family, instead of taking as her husband the young Austrian duke, whom she really liked. When the wedding took place, the bride was not even fifteen, and she walked down the aisle in dark clothes, without a single decoration, so that no one could suspect that she was glad for this day.

Even during her lifetime, the Polish people fell in love with Jadwiga very much, and after her death, many believed that she was a saint. But the Catholic Church canonized her only in our time. When this happened in 1997, Pope John Paul II, himself a Pole, arrived in Krakow and turned to the queen's tombstone: "You have been waiting for a long time, Jadwiga ..."



Well, it is always worth remembering that Poland, like many other countries, was once conquered by Napoleon and even married a Polish noblewoman.

Hungarian - object of all-Polish love

Polish history was connected with Hungary not only by Jadwiga's father, but also by the king who replaced the escaped Henry of Valois, Stefan Batory, nee Istvan Bathory. The Bathory clan was at one time one of the most influential in Eastern Europe thanks to a cunning system of marriage unions, and when one of them ascended the throne, the rest probably thought that they had won a big dynastic game and from now on the Bathory clan will be remembered as royal. But Istvan failed to found a dynasty - his wife Anna, a Pole, a distant descendant of Jogaila, was over fifty and she could not conceive a child, and Istvan saw no point in making heirs on the side.



Stefan Batory did not just become the great Polish king - he is remembered with admiration and love by all the peoples whom he then ruled: Poles, Lithuanians and Belarusians. Moreover, he did not speak any of the three languages ​​and he had to write decrees in Latin. In the ebullient activity, this did not stop Stefan at all, he also corresponded with the Russian Tsar Ivan IV - he challenged him to a duel. Simply because he believed that it was impossible to be so cruel in the world. In addition to being challenged to a duel, he sent the king a pile of books for self-education.

Czechs also wanted to be Poles

Some of the Czech kings were not averse to being also the Polish king. This distinguished two representatives of the Přemyslid dynasty, Wenceslas II and his son Wenceslas III. Wenceslas father received from the hands of the Polish king Przemysl II the Principality of Krakow. In fact, this gesture was already preparing Wenceslas to receive the throne after Przemysl, it was believed that whoever owns Krakow also owns Poland. He also later received the crown of Hungary, establishing the glorious tradition of the future kings of Poland (or Hungary) to rule both of these countries.



Vatslav himself was a very interesting person. He became the king of the Czech Republic after his stepfather-regent, who had been too long, suddenly turned out to be guilty of various kinds of crimes and had to be beheaded. From the age of seven to twelve, Vaclav spent his childhood as a hostage of a stern German knight who went down in history as Otto the Long, and this probably spoiled Vaclav's character a little, otherwise his stepfather would have got off with some exile.

In Polish history, he was not marked by anything interesting, except for marrying the daughter of King Przemysl after the death of the latter, and acquiring a crowd of illegitimate children. Why did he need Poland at all, except for pride, it was not very clear. In any case, the son of Vaclav Vaclav Poland almost drank it away, but he was killed earlier. After that, the Czechs on the Polish throne were no longer announced.

Sweden also wants Poland

At a time when the kings in Poland were already elected, one of the Swedish kings almost managed to establish a dynasty in Poland - that is, not only he himself was king, but also his two sons. We are talking about Sigismund Vasa, where Vasa is not a nickname, but the surname of the Swedish royal dynasty.

Prince Sigismund participated in the elections with some reason - his mother was Katerina Jagiellonka, one of the offspring of Jagiello. By seating the Swedish prince on the throne, Poland hoped to settle land disputes on the Lithuanian shores (Lithuania generally plays a huge role in Polish history). They waited for him with great enthusiasm, but no one liked the prince on the spot. He doesn’t walk like that, he doesn’t sit like that, he doesn’t look like that, he doesn’t talk like that ... Hostility was mutual, and the prince even thought about transferring the crown along with the country to the Austrians, but later his thoughts turned in a different direction: how to make Sweden with Poland single country?



Now the plans seem ridiculous: where are the Swedes and where are the Poles. But at that time, Poland owned much more Baltic lands, and the Swedes owned modern Finnish and Estonian lands, so it would have turned out to be a wonderful empire with the Baltic Sea in the middle. The project, however, failed. Moreover, having become the Swedish king, Sigismund discovered that the Swedes did not like him in the same way as the Poles, and that this was the only point on which the two peoples were ready to unite.

Germans in the city

From time to time the Germans also ruled Poland. We are talking not only about the Second World War, but also about the times of kings. For example, at the end of the seventeenth century, the Elector of Saxony, who entered the history of Poland as Augustus the Strong, was chosen as the Polish king. He was allowed to the throne only on the condition of accepting the Catholic faith.



August entered Russian history as an ally of Peter I in the war against Sweden. However, at the same time, he made secret agreements with the Swedish king. In general, he pursued a two-faced policy. His son Augustus also became the King of Poland (yes, diversity in royal families was found superfluous), but this one became even less famous - solely for his special waste and love for a beautiful life. In general, the Poles did not work out with the Germans long before Hitler. Although no one can surpass Hitler: he was very fond of building death camps in Poland. And kill thousands of people in them.

It is impossible to write about Poland under Nazi Germany without shuddering. , and this is only one of the few testimonies of a huge tragedy.