SIGISMUND II - KING OF POLAND -
1520-1572
Robert Nisbet Bain
Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, 1910,
vol 25, pages 68
SIGISMUND II. (15201572), king of Poland, the only son of
Sigismund I., king of Poland, whom he succeeded in 1548, and Bona Sforza. At
the very beginning of his reign he came into collision with the turbulent
szlachta or gentry, who had already begun to oust the great families
from power. The ostensible cause of their animosity to the king was his second
marriage, secretly contracted before his accession, with the beautiful
Lithuanian Calvinist, Barbara Radziwill, daughter of the famous Black
Radziwill. But the Austrian court and Sigismund's own mother, Queen Bona, seem
to have been behind the movement, and so violent was the agitation at
Sigismund's first diet (31st of October 1548) that the deputies threatened to
renounce their allegiance unless the king instantly repudiated Barbara. This he
refused to do, and his moral courage united with no small political dexterity
enabled him to win the day. By ~ when he summoned his second diet, a reaction
in his favour began, and the lingering petulance of the gentry was sternly
rebuked by Kmita, the marshal of the diet, who openly accused them of
attempting to diminish unduly the legislative prerogative of the crown. The
death of Barbara, five days after her coronation (7th of December 1548), under
very distressing circumstances which led to an unproven suspicion that she had
been poisoned by Queen Bona, compelled Sigismund to contract a third purely
political union with the Austrian archduchess Catherine, the sister of
Sigismund's first wife Elizabeth, who had died within a twelvemonth of her
marriage with him, while he was still only crown prince. The third bride was
sickly and unsympathetic, and from her Sigismund soon lost all hope of progeny,
to his despair, for being the last male of the Jagiellos in the direct line,
the dynasty was threatened with extinction. He sought to remedy the evil by
liaisons with two of the most beautiful of his countrywomen, Barbara
Gizanka and Anna Zajanczkowska, the diet undertaking to legitimatize and
acknowledge as his successor any heir male who might be born to him; but their
complacency was in vain, for the king died childless. This matter of the king's
marriage was of great political importance, the Protestants and the Catholics
being equally interested in the issue. Had he not been so good a Catholic
Sigismund might well have imitated the example of Henry VIII by pleading that
his detested third wife was the sister of his first and consequently the union
was uncanonical. The Polish Protestants hoped that he would take this course
and thus bring about a breach with Rome at the very crisis of the confessional
struggle in Poland, while the Habsburgs, who coveted the Polish throne, raised
every obstacle to the childless king's remarriage. Not till Queen Catherine's
death on the 28th of February 1572 were Sigismund's hands free, but he followed
her to the grave less than six months afterwards. Sigismund's reign was a
period of internal turmoil and external expansion. He saw the invasion of
Poland by the Reformation, and the democratic upheaval which placed all
political power in the hands of the szlachta; he saw the collapse of the
ancient order of the Knights of the Sword in the north (which led to the
acquisition of Livonia by the republic) and the consolidation of the Turkish
power in the south. Throughout this perilous transitional period Sigismund's
was the hand which successfully steered the ship of state amidst all the
whirlpools that constantly threatened to engulf it. A far less imposing figure
than his father, the elegant and refined Sigismund II. was nevertheless an even
greater statesman than the stern and majestic Sigismund I. Tenacity and
patience, the characteristics of all the Jagiellos, he possessed in a high
degree, and he added to them a supple dexterity and a diplomatic finesse which
he may have inherited from his Italian mother. Certainly no other Polish king
so thoroughly understood the nature of the ingredients of that witch's caldron,
the Polish diet, as he did. Both the Austrian ambassadors and the papal legates
testify to the care with which he controlled this nation so difficult to
lead. Everything went as he wished, they said, because he seemed to know
everything beforehand. He managed to get more money than his father could ever
get, and at one of his diets won the hearts of the whole assembly by
unexpectedly appearing before them in the simple grey coat of a Masovian
squire. Like his father, a pro-Austrian by conviction, he contrived even in
this respect to carry the Polish nation, always so distrustful of the Germans,
entirely along with him, thereby avoiding all serious complications with the
ever dangerous Turk. Only a statesman of genius could have mediated for twenty
years, as he did, between the church and the schismatics without alienating the
sympathies of either. But the most striking memorial of his greatness was the
union of Lublin, which finally made of Poland and Lithuania one body politic,
and put an end to the jealousies and discords of centuries (see POLAND,
History). The merit of this crowning achievement belongs to Sigismund
alone; but for him it would have been impossible. Sigismund II died at his
beloved Knyszyne on the 6th of July 1572, in his fifty-second year.
See Ludwik Finkel, Characteristics of Sigismund Augustus
(Pol.) (Lemberg, 1888); Letters to Nicholas Radziwill (Pol.) (Wilna,
1842);Geheime Briefe an Hozyus, Gesandten am Hofe des Kaisers Karl V (Wadowice,
1800); Adam Darowski, Bona Sforza (Pol.) (Rom 1904). (R. N. B.)