Sigismund I the Old

Sigismund grants a noble status to the professors of the Jagiellonian University, 1535. Painting by Jan Matejko

The internal situation in Poland was characterised by broad authorisation of the Chamber of Deputies, confirmed and extended in the constitution of Nihil novi. During Alexander's reign, the law of Nihil novi had been instituted, which forbade kings of Poland from enacting laws without the consent of the Sejm. Sigismund had little control over the act, unlike the senators, whom he personally appointed. Eventually, during his reign, Sigismund benefited from the advice of the local nobility, competent ministers in charge of the royal judiciary system, and the wealthy influential treasurers of Kraków. Although he was reluctant to the parliamentary system and political independence of the nobility, he recognised the authority of legal norms, supported legalism and summoned annual sessions of the Sejm, usually obtaining funds on state defence. However he was unsuccessful at attempting to create a permanent fund for defence from the annual income tax. Despite this, in 1527 he established a conscript army and the bureaucracy needed to finance it. He set up the legal codes that formalised serfdom in Poland, placing the peasants into the private estates of nobles.

Medal featuring the profile of Sigismund I, by Giovanni Maria Mosca

Likely related to tax matters was an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the king, made on 5 May 1523. The identity of the would-be assassin - who shot the ruler while he was strolling in the evening around the cloisters of the Wawel castle - and his potential supporters was never established. Unclear motives remained after the assassination attempt. Three weeks before the event, Sigismund I introduced a new edict that was very unfavourable and somewhat hostile to the high-ranking nobles and their interests.

Sigismund I achieved several economic successes, including partial debt reduction, separation of accounts of public taxation from the royal treasury, strengthening of the activities of the mint operating in Kraków, and the attempt to organise the processing of income from operating salt mines. Furthermore, he issued a statute for the Armenians (1519) and strongly intended to harmonise the judicial system across the country.

Between 1530 and 1538 the king issued two statutes defining the rules for the selection of the monarch, which permanently established the election viritim. The laws held that all social groups, regardless of their wealth, could watch the election process (unusquisque qui vellet), and the election was to be free (electio Regis libera).

Sigismund successfully organised the agricultural economy, looked after the development of the royal cities and recovered numerous goods of the treasury belonging to the crown that were under lien. During the financial activities, the King received full support of his wife, Queen Bona, who aimed to expand the royal estates by purchasing and improving economic efficiency. In 1514 he set up the Council of Four Lands and put Abraham of Bohemia in charge of it.

Chicken War in 1537 by Henryk Rodakowski. Seated Sigismund is accompanied by his wife Bona Sforza and royal court whilst being surrounded by an angry mob at Lwów High Castle

At the start of his reign, King Sigismund I the Old inherited a Kingdom of Poland with a century-long tradition of liberties of the nobility, confirmed in numerous privileges. A rebellion in Lwów widely known as Chicken War (Polish: Wojna kokosza) was an anti-royalist and anti-absolutist rokosz (revolt) by the Polish nobility that occurred in 1537. The derisive name was coined by the magnates, who for the most part supported the King and claimed that the "war's" only effect was the near-extinction of the local chickens, eaten by the nobles gathered for the rebellion at Lwów in eastern part of Lesser Poland.

To strengthen his power, Sigismund initiated a set of reforms, establishing a permanent conscription army in 1527 and extending the bureaucratic apparatus necessary to govern the state and finance the army. Supported by his Italian consort Bona Sforza, he began buying up land and issue agriculture reformas to enlarge the royal treasury. He initiated a process of restitution of royal properties, previously pawned or rented to the nobles.

The nobility gathered near the city to meet to a levée en masse and called for a military campaign against Moldavia. However, the lesser and middle strata of the nobility organised a revolt to force the King to abandon his risky reforms. The nobles presented him with 36 demands, most notably a cessation of further land acquisitions by Queen Bona, exemption of the nobility from the tithe, confirmation and extension of privileges for nobles and adoption of a law concerning Incompatibilitas — an individual wouldn't be able to hold two or more official administrative positions in the country. The role of the Incompatibilitas was to prevent wealthy magnates from usurping too much power at the expense of lesser nobles.

However, the revolt soon transpired that the nobility's leaders were divided and that achieving a settlement was almost impossible. Too weak to start a civil war against the King, the protesters finally agreed to what was thought a compromise. Sigismund rejected most of their demands, while accepting the principle of Incompatibilitas the following year and agreeing not to force the election of the future king in vivente rege. Thereupon, the nobility returned to their homes having achieved little.

Polish-Lithuanian army during the Battle of Orsha in 1514, by Hans Krell

Sigismund was intermittently at war with Vasili III of Muscovy beginning in 1507, before the Polish army was fully under his command. Further tensions escalated when Vasili also discovered that Sigismund was bribing Khan Meñli I Giray to attack the Grand Duchy of Moscow.[4] In December 1512, Muscovite forces marched into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania seeking to capture Smolensk, a major trading center between Russia and Europe.[5] The initial six- and four-week sieges in 1513 were a failure,[6] but the city fell to the Muscovites in July 1514.[4]

Sigismund's halfarmour, Polish Army Museum

Russia subsequently suffered a series of disastrous defeats in the field. In 1512, Grand Hetman of Lithuania, Konstanty Ostrogski, ransacked the region of Severia and vanquished a Russian force of approximately 6,000 men. On 8 September 1514, Muscovy suffered a major defeat at the Battle of Orsha, which prevented the Russians to place all the former Kievan Rus' lands under their lordship.[7] Poland exploited the battle for propaganda purposes with strong anti-Russian sentiment. A letter sent to Rome stated that "Muscovites are not Christians; they are cruel and barbaric; they are Asians and not Europeans; they are in league with Turks and the Tatars to destroy Christendom".[8] Regardless of victory, the Polish–Lithuanian troops were incapable of moving quickly enough to retake Smolensk.[9] In 1518, Russian forces were again beaten during the siege of Polotsk,[10] when according to legend the Lithuanian forces were inspired by the sight of their patron saint, Saint Casimir, the older brother of Sigismund. However, this was dubbed by historians as a folk tale. In 1522, a truce was signed between Lithuania and Muscovy which extended until 1534.

In 1534, when Grand Hetman Jerzy Radziwiłł and the Tatars pillaged western Russia, the Muscovites in retaliation invaded Lithuania once more. They were eventually stopped by Polish commander Jan Amor Tarnowski and allies at Starodub in 1535.[11] Their defeat strengthened the Polish-Lithuanian union's eastern flank until the beginning of the Livonian War in 1558.[11]

Queen Bona Sforza was instrumental in establishing alliances for Poland. She was known for being a notorious conspirator.

In 1515 Sigismund entered into an alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. In return for Maximilian lending weight to the provisions of the Second Peace of Thorn (1466), Sigismund consented to the marriage of the children of Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary, his brother, to the grandchildren of Maximilian. Through this double marriage contract, Bohemia and Hungary passed to the House of Habsburg in 1526, on the death of Sigismund's nephew, Louis II, who led his forces against Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire in the disastrous Battle of Mohács.

Worried about the growing ties between the Habsburgs and Russia, in 1524 Sigismund signed a Franco-Polish alliance with King Francis I of France to avoid a possible war on two fronts.[12] Francis I himself was looking for allies in Central Europe to curtail the increasing power of Habsburg Emperor Charles V, whose realms were labelled "the empire on which the sun never sets".[13] Furthermore, Queen Bona was instrumental in establishing an alliance between Poland and France, with the objective of recovering Milan.[12] The official negotiations were conducted by Antonio Rincon in 1524, who was then followed by Jerome Laski.[13] Through the agreement, the son of Francis, Henry, Duke of Orléans, was to marry one of Sigismund's daughters, and Sigismund's eldest son was to marry a daughter of Francis I.[13]

The negotiations came to an end and the alliance was disbanded when Francis' troops were defeated by Charles V at the Battle of Pavia in 1525.[13] Disturbed by the failure of his campaign, Francis turned to Hungary instead and formed a Franco-Hungarian alliance with King John Zápolya in 1528.[13]

After the death of Janusz III of Masovia in 1526, Sigismund succeeded in uniting the Duchy of Masovia and Warsaw with the Kingdom of Poland. There was speculation whether Janusz and his younger brother Stanisław were poisoned by a subject of Queen Bona.[14][15] The accusations were so pervasive and rampant that Sigismund ordered an investigation, as a result of which a special edict was declared on 9 February 1528 confirming that the Masovian princes died naturally or due to related illness. According to chronicler Jan Długosz, the real cause of the death of both princes could have been inherited tuberculosis.[16]

In other matters of policy, Sigismund sought peaceful coexistence with the Khanate of Crimea, but was unable to completely end border skirmishes.[17]

Prussian Homage, by Jan Matejko, 1882. Albrecht Hohenzollern receives the Duchy of Prussia in fief from Poland's King Sigismund I the Old, 1525

Over two centuries of wars against the Teutonic Knights ended in 1525 with the Treaty of Kraków after the final Polish–Teutonic War (1519–1521).[18] Previously, the Second Peace of Thorn (1466) placed the Teutonic Order under Polish suzerainty and interfered with German interests in Livonia, Pomerania, Warmia and Masuria. The Order attempted to avoid paying tribute to Polish monarchs which was a demonstration of weakness and dependence.

In accordance with the new Treaty of Kraków, the Order was abruptly secularized and turned de facto into a puppet state of Poland which lasted until the Treaty of Bromberg in 1655. Sigismund's nephew Albert, Duke of Prussia, converted to Lutheranism under the persuasion of Martin Luther, and paid a feudal homage to Sigismund.[19] In return he was granted the domains of the Order as the First Duke of Prussia. This became known in Polish and Lithuanian history as the "Prussian Homage", which was often featured in arts. The Prussian Landtag and parliament assembled in Königsberg, where envoys embraced both the new Duke and the Protestant Reformation. Thereupon, the Teutonic Order lost its importance as a military order in Prussia and retreated to the Holy Roman Empire where it became secluded.[18]

• Soloviev, Sergei M. (1976). Graham, Hugh F. (ed.). History of Russia. The Age of Vasily III. Vol. 9. Gulf Breeze: Academic International Press. ISBN 978-0875690667.
• Stevens, Carol B. (2007). Russia's Wars of Emergence 1460–1730. Pearson Education. ISBN 978-0-582-21891-8.
• Ostrowski, Jan K. (1992), Cracow (in Polish), International Cultural Centre, ISBN 83-221-0621-1.