On 6 December 1656, what was a draft partition of Poland prepared more than a century before the actual first partition took place. It was a partition as radical as the third, i.e. liquidating the First Republic, and most similar to Poland after the Congress of Vienna, as one part was to be called the Kingdom of Poland, albeit under foreign rule.

This partition, fortunately, remained on the paper of a treaty written in Radnot, a town in what was then part of the Duchy of Transylvania - it is now Lernut in Romania.

At the castle of the Duke of Transylvania, George II Rakoczy, representatives of the host and envoys of King Charles X Gustav of Sweden divided Poland between them, taking into account the interests and needs of: the Elector of Brandenburg Frederick William, the Hetman of the Cossacks Bohdan Khmelnytsky and one of the magnates of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Boguslav Radziwill. George II Rakoczy expressed his willingness to cede the south-eastern strip of acquired lands to the Moldavian hospodar and the Wallachian hospodar in return for help in fighting against the Republic. Thus, there were five partitioners, and with the hospodaras it was even seven.

SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE The planned division of the Republic was as follows:

● Charles X Gustav - Royal Prussia, Kujawy, northern Mazovia, Żmudź, the districts of Kaunas, Volkovysky, Upichi, Bracław, part of the Polotsk and Vitebsk provinces along the Dvina, Polish Inflants and Courland;
● Frederick William Hohenzollern - the Łęczyca, Kalisz, Poznań and Sieradz provinces, together with Wieluń Land;
● Jerzy II Rakoczy - the remaining lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, including parts of Mazovia and Lesser Poland, with Warsaw and Krakow, and he was to become king of Poland;
● Boguslaw Radziwill - Novgorod province and rights to Radziwill hereditary estates;
● Bohdan Khmelnytsky - a decision on the transfer of territories to him was postponed, Ukraine in general.

Maritime and terrestrial dreams

It was not customary in Europe at the time to abolish states, especially one as large as the Republic. Dynasties fought for the rule of neighbouring and somewhat distant thrones, such as the Habsburgs in the Netherlands, or (the Spanish Habsburgs) in Portugal, annexed each other's border provinces and sometimes repeatedly. How could the unprecedented Treaty of Radnot have come about?

Carl X Gustav's ambition was to make the Baltic Sea the inland sea of Sweden. The conquest of Vorpommern with Stettin against the Germans as a result of the Thirty Years' War probably whetted his appetite further. Some historians believe that Carl Gustav had nothing to do with an army seasoned from years of fighting in the Thirty Years' War and was looking for something to do with it. However, giving primacy to the desire to interiorise the Baltic, it should be noted that on its southern shores the Swedish king had two opponents he needed to defeat - Poland and Moscow.

Initially, Charles Gustav intended to strike Moscow first. He was prompted to attack Poland by the Commonwealth's involvement in suppressing the Khmelnytsky rebellion and the war with Moscow, which had occupied large areas of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1654.

With Sigismund III on the throne, Poland took on quite an international problem. King Sigismund was also heir to the Swedish throne. When his father died, he took over the crown and there was a brief personal union between Poland and Sweden. Lutheran Sweden feared a Catholic on the throne and he was dethroned. Sigismund III and his two sons, Ladislaus IV and John II Casimir, however, recognised themselves as kings of Sweden, which could not please the real-life rulers in Stockholm.

Frederick William Hohenzollern, Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, first and foremost wanted to be sovereign in Prussia and to unite the duchy with Brandenburg. Ducal Prussia, of which he was a fief of the Polish king, separated Royal Prussia, or Gdansk Pomerania, from Brandenburg. Anyway, the ambitious Hohenzollerns wanted more and more at the expense of Poland.

George II Rákóczi dreamt of unifying Hungary, while the Habsburgs ruled in Budapest. Territorial gains in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were to increase his potential.

Bohdan Khmelnitsky wanted to make Ukraine a separate hereditary state.

The initiator of the Treaty of Radnot was Carl Gustav. The document was signed not at the time of his greatest triumphs in Poland, but when the good luck card began to turn. If the 'Swedish deluge' had not started to dry up, the king would not have needed accomplices.

In July 1655, the Swedish army entered the borders of the Polish Commonwealth. The noblemen's massed movement assembled at Ujście capitulated after two days, on 25 July. Whole provinces, lands and cities surrendered to the Swedish king after brief resistance, or without. On 20 October, at Kiejdany, Janusz Radziwiłł, Voivode of Vilnius and Grand Hetman of Lithuania, surrendered the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the Swedish king's protection, effectively and formally breaking the Lublin Union.

To justify the 'traitor' Radziwill, it should be noted that he had little room for manoeuvre. The Muscovite army occupied a large part of Lithuania including Vilnius. Janusz Radziwill resisted the Muscovites and could not wait for reinforcements from the Crown. He had a choice between Carl Gustav and Alexei Mikhailovich. He chose the Swede, wisely reserving the Novogrudok voivodeship as a new state for his family's hereditary rule. The Swedish protectorate defended against Moscow, a natural opponent of making the Baltic an internal Swedish sea. The Treaty of Radnot does not mention Janusz Radziwill's rights to Novgorod province - he did not live to see the treaty signed, his rights being taken over by his cousin Boguslaw.

Moscow did not want to strengthen Sweden

Jan Kazimierz Vasa was not a well-liked ruler. The monarch's national alienation was inherent in the Republic's system - a Polish magnate would increase the importance of his family, and the nobility, which was attached to equality, would not tolerate it. Also, he was not the only one of the reigning monarchs who wanted to strengthen royal power. He was disliked for his vacillation, unpredictability, pride and other character flaws. The nobility, by succumbing to the 'deluge', thought they were changing the king for a better one.

Charles Gustav pledged the preservation of the privileges of the nobility, respect for the Catholic faith and was hopeful of repelling Moscow. It soon became apparent that the Swedes were ruthless occupiers. Large-scale robberies began, especially of monasteries and churches. Gold, silver, jewels and even structural elements of buildings, if they were made of marble or sandstone, were exported to Sweden. Swedish troops scraped gold inlays off the walls of churches and manor houses, and what they did not export, they destroyed. They also took away book collections and documents..

The Poznan Voivodeship, which was the first to surrender to the Swedes, was also the first to begin resistance by organising partisans. King Jan Kazimierz, who initially fled the country, issued a manifesto in Opole calling for a fight. The broader masses of the nobility were mobilised by the defence of the Jasna Góra monastery, when for several weeks a two-thousand-strong Swedish corps could not cope with two hundred defenders in the small fortress. It was not without significance that the Polish Catholics were besieged by foreign Lutherans.

More and more crown troops left the Swedish king. In Lithuania, at once the majority of the army did not stand by Janusz Radziwil and came under the command of Field Hetman Pavel Sapieha. Jan Kazimierz returned to the country, which was a motivation for resistance. The nobility recovered from their stupor and universally began to fight. However, this would not be enough.

Moscow did not want to strengthen Sweden even at the expense of Poland and ceased all offensive actions. The truce was made on the condition that Aleksei be elected king of Poland vivente rege (i.e. while the previous ruler was still alive), but with the proviso that he take the throne after the death of Jan Kazimierz. The Senate, reinforced by deputies elected by some local assemblies, elected the Tsar as King of Poland.

The appeasement from Moscow came in very handy, because in January 1657 George II Rakoczy entered the Ruthenian province with an army of 25,000. He first went to the aid of a Swedish garrison defending against the Poles in Kraków. He then moved north, but after losing battles and skirmishes, he withdrew from the borders of the Republic as early as July. Meanwhile, General Hetman Jerzy Lubomirski's forces were sacking Transylvania in retaliation, and Rakoczy's returning army was partly slaughtered and sometimes taken captive by the Tartars, Poland's allies since the beginning of the Deluge.

Contributing to the fate of Rakoczy's expedition to Poland was the declaration and initiation of war against Sweden by Denmark, on 1 June 1657. Charles Gustav, attacked in his Pomeranian possessions and faced with the threat of losing indigenous Sweden to the Danes, had to withdraw from Poland with most of his troops, leaving Rakoczy alone - to which the Brandenburg Elector Frederick William also contributed by changing his front. The negotiations with the Elector were aided by Habsburg diplomacy. The German emperor was so concerned about the change in the balance of power in central Europe that he sent an army to help the Republic. Poland was important - it was putting up a dam against predatory Sweden and partitionist Moscow.

Frederick William Hohenzollern concluded the Treaties of Wielavia and Bydgoszcz with Poland, in which the Republic relinquished sovereignty over Ducal Prussia. The Elector had to forget about the Greater Poland promised by the Swedish king, but quite legally he ceased to be a fief of the Polish king. Although Charles Gustav had promised the same thing, it was not the same under international law. The Treaties of Wielavia and Bydgoszcz laid a foundation stone for the future Kingdom of Prussia, a state with great prospects, as it was to turn out.

In the peace concluded with Sweden at Oliva, the Republic lost part of Inflants, not much compared to the dreams of the signatories of the Treaty of Radnot. The other winner at the Swedish Deluge, known in European historiography as the Second Northern War, besides Frederick William, was Moscow. The entire Ukraine on the left bank of the Dnieper and with Kiev on the right fell to the state of the tsars. The Commonwealth, devastated by the Deluge, could not counteract the Cossack accession to the Muscovite state and the actions of the Russian army.

Poland struggled with the effects of the Deluge for decades. Towns and villages were depopulated, epidemics inherent in wars took 30-40% of the population in some areas. After the Swedes left, the fields stood fallow, as the occupying forces exported not only crops but also grain. It took a long time for the towns to recover from the destruction. The Swedes dismantling tiled cookers, chopping up furniture and slashing portraits of manor houses and palaces with rapiers remained in the memory of generations. However, this was not the worst of it. Directly and indirectly as a result of the Deluge, the future partitioners of Poland were strengthened, and in the following century - when the Commonwealth was no longer important and nothing depended on it - they carried out the real partition. As if foretold by the Treaty of Radnot.

– Krzysztof Zwoliński
-translated by Tomasz Krzyżanowski

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists