In the summer of 1648, while Europe's attention was held by the dramatic climax of the negotiations in Münster and Osnabrück, the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania had other matters on its mind. In May 1648, a force of rebel Zaporozhian Cossacks inflicted two shattering defeats on the Polish army at Zhovte Vody and Korsun in the Ukrainian steppe south of Kiev. On 20 May, six days before Korsun, king W?adys?aw IV's unexpected death plunged the Commonwealth into the uncertainties of an interregnum. As the Westphalian ambassadors assembled for the ceremonial signing of the treaty on 24 October, Poland-Lithuania was preparing for a royal election with the Cossacks besieging Lwów (Lemberg) and advancing on Zamo??, 100 kilometres from the Vistula.

Although the Treaty of Westphalia is often hailed as the cornerstone of a new European order which was to last until the French Revolutionary wars, it was essentially a west European settlement. Even before the momentous events of 1648 provided such a compelling distraction, Poland-Lithuania, had played no part in the negotiations, and the Polish presence in Münster and Osnabrück was limited to low-ranking observers, only intermittently present and completely unable to affect the outcome.

The absence of any accredited representation at Westphalia from what had unquestionably been one of Europe's great powers on the eve of the war has occasioned little comment from historians outside Poland. [1] Yet it is striking, for Westphalia dealt with matters of clear importance for the Poles, while the transformation of Sweden's international position brought about by the 1648 settlement had profound implications for the Commonwealth. Moreover, Poland-Lithuania had played a role of some significance in the first half of the Thirty Years War; indeed it is frequently presented as an integral part of the Habsburg-Catholic alliance by those who see the war as the first pan-European conflict: in Polišensky's "feudal-Catholic bloc", Poland plays the role of the "Spain of the North"; for others it was merely the "watchdog of the Habsburgs?, in Wedgwood's phrase, to be let off his leash at appropriate moments. [2]

Attempts to present the war as a coherent continent-wide phenomenon are singularly unhelpful with regard to Poland?s role. While it would be foolish to deny the interconnections between the various European wars, to regard the long series of conflicts between Poland-Lithuania, Sweden and Muscovy as merely part of some wider "Habsburg-Bourbon struggle for hegemony" as does Steinberg, is to misunderstand their dynamic. [3] The Northern Wars, which began in 1558 with Ivan IV's invasion of Livonia, constituted an epoch of European history in their own right. [4] After Ivan's attempt to conquer Livonia ended in defeat in 1582, no power was capable of establishing its hegemony in north-eastern Europe, where the complex web of hostility led to three periods of general warfare (1563-82, 1655-60 and 1700-21) and numerous bilateral conflicts. [5] Western powers might take an interest, but if their interventions were frequently significant, they were far from able to direct events, and eastern Europe remained outside the system established by Westphalia. It was not until the partitions of Poland-Lithuania in 1772, 1793 and 1795, and Russia's annexation of Finland in 1809 were sealed at Vienna in 1815 that Russia and Prussia were confirmed as the victors of the Northern Wars, and north-eastern Europe was fully integrated into a European-wide international system.

Nevertheless, the enhanced capacity of European states to wage war, and the dramatic increase in the number and length of conflicts from the late sixteenth century made it increasingly difficult to avoid a degree of overlap between conflicts, although the danger of war on two fronts ensured governments were usually keen to keep them separate. Gustavus Adolphus? observation in April 1628 that "things are come to this pass, that all the wars that are waged in Europe are commingled and become one" was both a recognition that his desire to keep them apart had failed, and an attempt to persuade Axel Oxenstierna of the need to intervene in the Empire. [6] Yet Sweden was only able to do so in 1630 because the Poles agreed to the highly disadvantageous 1629 truce of Altmark, which included the cession to Sweden of the lucrative right to levy tolls on the Prussian ports: if all the wars in Europe had become one in 1628, they had ceased to be so by 1629. Given the role played by Sweden in the Thirty Years War after 1630, the passivity of Poland-Lithuania requires explanation: why did the "watch-dog of the Habsburgs" singularly fail to bark when its supposed master was in real trouble after Breitenfeld, or in the 1640s? To explain this requires an investigation of the war from the Polish point of view.

At first sight, it does not seem inappropriate to consider Poland-Lithuania a part of the Habsburg-Catholic power-bloc. Sigismund III (1587-1632), son of Johan III of Sweden and Katarzyna, sister of Sigismund II August the last Jagiellon king of Poland-Lithuania, was raised a Catholic by his mother, and proved a devout and successful champion of the Counter-Reformation. From early in his reign he followed a broadly pro-Habsburg policy. In 1592 he married Anna, sister of the future emperor Ferdinand II to institute a close dynastic link which lasted half a century: after Anna's death in 1598 Sigismund married her sister, Konstanze in 1605; his eldest son W?adys?aw IV (1632-1648) married Cäcilia Renate, Ferdinand II's daughter, in 1635.

The connections were not just dynastic. In 1613, as tension in the Empire was rising, Sigismund signed an alliance with emperor Matthias, in which each monarch promised to aid the other against internal rebels; in 1619, at the height of the Bohemian Revolt, Sigismund honoured his commitment, and allowed the recruitment of 8-10.000 troops - the famous "Lisowczyk" or "Cossack" cavalry - which crossed the Carpathians into Hungary and won the battle of Humienne (23-24 November 1619), forcing Bethlen Gabor to call off his attack on Vienna. [7] Lisowczyks also fought in Bohemia, with some 4.000 participating in the battle of the White Mountain. Although the 1622 Palatinate campaign was the last great Lisowczyk expedition, many Poles fought for the Habsburgs in the 1630s.

Yet the Habsburg-Vasa relationship was by no means smooth. Sigismund had been elected in 1587 as the anti-Habsburg candidate, and only secured his crown after the defeat and capture of his rival, archduke Maximilian, at Pitschen in January 1588. This affair cast a cloud over Habsburg-Vasa relations for several years. Maximilian spent a year in Polish captivity before his release in March 1589 after the treaty of Bytom-B?dzin, which required him to swear an oath abandoning his claim to the throne. As soon as he was back on Habsburg territory he withdrew his promise, and continued to use the title of rex electus. Although Rudolf II and Sigismund ratified the treaty, Maximilian refused to accept it, as did Philip II of Spain. [8] This was ironic, since Sigismund?s early experiences in Poland-Lithuania, where his powers were bound tightly by the law, soon made him regret his election: by 1589 he was contemplating abdicating in favour of Maximilian's brother Ernst. Yet Maximilian's obstinancy promised to wreck the plan, since the Polish Sejm, outraged at his duplicitous refusal to accept Bytom-B?dzin, passed an act requiring him to take the oath within twenty months; if he refused, the Habsburgs would be excluded to the Polish throne in perpetuity. [9]

Developements in Sweden, however, soon persuaded Sigismund to abandon the plan. On returning to Sweden in 1593 after his father's death, he found a political system determined to put him in his place. A somewhat uneasy alliance between his uncle, duke Karl of Södermanland, and the council was determined to settle the vexed religious question; Sigismund was forced to accept numerous limitations of his power and the definitive triumph of Lutheranism with the adoption by the Swedish church of the Augsburg Confession. By 1594, when he returned to Poland in 1594, Sigismund had realised just how precarious was his position in his native land; under the circumstances it would be folly to abandon his Polish throne. His position in the Commonwealth, however, was also difficult: his contacts with the Habsburgs were deeply unpopular, and he faced powerful attacks at the Inquisition Sejm of 1592.

Habsburg-Vasa friendship was by no means inevitable, and the mid-1590s saw a distinct cooling of relations. Sigismund, obsessed with Sweden, showed little interest in Habsburg attempts to win Polish support in the Turkish war which broke out in 1593. This was a more popular stance. The Habsburgs and the Jagiellons, who had ruled Bohemia and Hungary until 1526, had long been rivals in south-eastern Europe. The Poles maintained a long peace with the Ottomans throughout the sixteenth century and refused to help the Habsburgs in the Habsburg-Turkish wars after 1526. If the Turkish grip on Hungary and the Balkans ever loosened, Poles and Habsburgs were more likely to be rivals than allies. In the 1590s, indeed, Poland-Lithuania was seeking to extend its influence in Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia, while Sigismund was angered by Rudolf's attempts to recruit the Zaporozhian Cossacks against the Turks in 1594. [10] Although Maximilian renounced his claim to the Polish throne in 1598, and Philip II ratified Bytom-B?dzin, it was too late. In 1598, Sigismund was engaged on an armed attempt to secure his Swedish inheritance, which ended in defeat and deposition in 1599; in 1600 Karl invaded Livonia to begin the long cycle of Polish-Swedish wars. The Habsburgs were left to fight the Turk alone.

Nevertheless, Sigismund?s deposition revived his interest in the Habsburgs alliance. The loss of the Swedish throne left the Polish Vasas in a peculiarly vulnerable position. As Sigismund's Polish subjects never ceased to remind him, the Commonwealth was an electoral monarchy, and there was no guarantee that his son W?adys?aw would be elected after his death. Should he fail, the Polish Vasas would be outcasts. The Polish monarchy was deeply impoverished, the Vasas had few private possessions in the Commonwealth, and were now deprived of their extensive Swedish lands. Thus Sigismund had good reasons for his obsession with winning back the hereditary Swedish throne. If he was to pursue this aim, he needed peaceful relations with his southern and western neighbours, while his poverty made foreign support essential. With the end of the Habsburg-Turkish war in 1606, the way was open for a closer relationship.

The considerations behind the 1613 treaty, however, were as much domestic as international. The determined Central European defence of the Ständestaat which was ultimately to produce the Bohemian Revolt was by no means confined to the Habsburg Erblande. For many Poles, Sigismund's support of the Habsburgs was suspicious, especially in the light of what was perceived as his drive towards absolutum dominium. From 1599, he concentrated on asserting his authority and improving the position of the monarchy. He exploited his substantial patronage powers and the support of much of the politically-significant Catholic hierarchy to build up a powerful royalist party. His willingness to evade the restrictive role that the Senate Council was supposed to play as guardians of the law by basing his decisions on an inner council of supporters merely increased opposition. The creation of a Catholic, royalist party, and the consequent assault on Protestant liberties, guaranteed by the Warsaw Confederation of 1573, was the exact parallel of Habsburg policy in the Erblande. The successful undermining of the political strength of Protestantism demonstrated the effectiveness of Sigismund's methods, but ultimately his blatant contempt for the constitution led to open rebellion in 1606/07.

It was therefore very much in the mutual interests of Habsburg and Vasa in 1613 to offer support in the event of rebellion in their respective realms; it was the Habsburgs who were to benefit in 1619-1620. If Sigismund expected Ferdinand's gratitude, however, he was to be disappointed. Once the Bohemian Revolt had been crushed, relations deteriorated. When Sigismund asked for help to repel a Turkish invasion in 1621, he was politely rebuffed: Ferdinand merely agreed to intercede with the Sultan and release the Lisowczyks from his service. [11] This was no great sacrifice: the Lisowczyks had made their name in the savage school of the Muscovite warsin which they have carved an infamous trail of destruction to the Volga and the shores of the White Sea. They had not lost their destructive urges and Ferdinand was deluged with complaints about their behaviour, which was frequently compared, in the cliché of the time, to that of Turks and Tatars, to the Infidel?s advantage. [12]

Ferdinand also failed to support Sigismund against Karl IX?s son Gustavus Adolphus, who mounted three invasions of Livonia between 1617 and 1625, capturing Riga in 1621. Indeed, for Ferdinand this was most convenient: while Gustavus Adolphud was tied up in Livonia, he was in no position to help the anti-Habsburg rebels, who courted him assiduously after 1618. Sweden's military successes, and in particular after Gustavus Adolphus invaded Royal Prussia in 1626, forced the ageing Sigismund to adress the problem of securing the future of his children in the knowledge that he would probably die without regaining the Swedish throne.

This was likely to involve him in further disagreements with Ferdinand. Despite Sigismund's obstinant refusal to resign his claim to the Swedish throne, he was by no means blind to political realities, and was already seeking to strengthen the position of the dynasty, either as a stepping-stone towards the recovery of its birthright, or as compensation for its loss. His main aim was to secure an independent, hereditary power-base beyond the reach of the Commonwealth's institutions. Unfortunately, the most suitable principalities were likely to provoke Habsburg opposition. Livonia, Courland and the Ducal Prussia were all former lands of the Teutonic Order, which had come under Habsburg protection following Maximilian?s election as Grand Master in the wake of his humiliation in 1587-1589.

This was even more true of the new possibiliy which emerged with the Bohemian Revolt. Silesia, lost to the Polish crown in the twelfth century, still had a large Polish-speaking population and was a rich and flourishing province. In May 1619, even before Ferdinand's deposition as king of Bohemia, Sigismund?s eldest son W?adys?aw travelled to Neisse in Silesia at the invitation of his uncle, archduke Karl, bichop of Wroc?aw. Here he met envoys from the Silesian and Bohemian estates who suggested his candidature for the Bohemian throne. After a long stay, during which he discussed adjustments to the Polish-Silesian border in return for military help, W?adys?aw returned to Warsaw with Karl in September. [13]

In the dark days following his deposition from the Bohemian throne in 1619, there is evidence that Ferdinand encouraged Vasa hopes. [14] Once the immediate crisis had passed, his attitude changed: Silesia was far too important to cede to a potential rival. Ferdinand backed Sigismund's campaign to have his third son, Karl Ferdinand, elected bishop of Wroc?aw in 1625, but this was a minor concession: it was unpopular with the chapter, and carried no risk of permanence; moreover, in order to obtain it, Sigismund was forced to promise that Poles should henceforth be excluded from the chapter, and - without consultation abandoned the traditional claims of the archbishop of Gniezno to jurisdiction over the bishopric of Breslau. [15] All attempts by Sigismun and W?adys?aw to carve out a hereditary Vasa principality in Silesia were rebuffed. Offers by W?adys?aw in 1632, just before the death of his father, and by his brother John Casimir in 1635, to lead a Habsburg-Vasa army based in Silesia, were treated with deep suspicion: Ferdinand would only agree to John Casimir?s appointment as colonel of a cavalry regiment in August 1635. [16]

Vasa prospects were better in Madrid than Vienna. Since the 1590s, the Spanish government had sought to strengthen its position in northern Europe: after Sigismund's accession to the Swedish throne, Philip II had seen the potential of Älvsborg, Sweden's only outlet to the North Sea, as a naval base from which he could harry the Dutch and the English. Sigismund's loss of the Swedish throne ended these plans, but relations remained cordial, and Philip III invested both Sigismund, in 1600, and W?adys?aw, in 1615, with the order of the Golden Fleece. [17] In the early 1620s it was Sigismund, however, not the Spaniards, who took the initiative. Realising that a fleet was essential for the recovery of his throne, he established a naval commission, which launched its first ship in 1622, and had built seven by 1625, when he approached Spain to offer alliance. [18]

Sigismund, aware of Olivares's interest in attacking Dutch-Baltic trade, was seriously disappointed by the response to his proposal for a joint Baltic fleet. He was promised a 200,000-ducat subsidy, but it was to be regarded as part of the so-called Neapolitan Sums, the unpaid dowry of Bona Sforza, wife of Sigismund I, which was a source of bitter dispute between the Polish and Spanish monarchies throughout the early modern period; despite orders from Madrid for the subsidy to be raised on the Neapolitan and Sicilian revenues, the vicroys refused to comply and the subsidy was still unpaid three years later. [19] Olivares did appoint Jean de Croy, comte de Solre and Charles de Bonnières, baron d'Auchy as envoys to Sigismund but showed no urgency in sending them to Warsaw. It was only when the armies of Wallenstein and the Catholic League entered northern Germany in 1626 that Spain's interest in a Polish alliance was awakened. Olivares sent Gabriel de Roy to negotiate with the Hanse towns, while Solre and d'Auchy finally travelled to Poland, where they signed an agreement to form a joint Spanish-Polish fleet. [20]

Yet Habsburg and Vasa interests were too divergent for the project to succeed. Sigismund's main aim was, as ever, the recovery of the Swedish throne; for Olivares, however, the thrust of the scheme was essentially anti-Dutch. This was problematical for Sigismund, since Danzig remained unremittingly hostile to any anti-Dutch project. Sigismund's reception of Solre and d'Auchy was distinctly cool, since they failed to offer any commitment of Spanish ships to the Baltic and demanded that the Polish fleet be placed under Spanish control. Olivares's conception rested on unrealistic hopes of winning the support of the Hanse, which proved distinctly unenthusiastic, and de Roy was only empowered to construct or buy the necessary ships. Sigismund's request in April 1628 for naval help from the Flanders armada for an attack on Pillau was brusquely rejected by Olivares, who stressed that he had always made it plain that he would not draw strength from other fronts. [21]

Sigismund, who had played far from a subordinate role in the "maritime plans of the Habsburgs", was left utterly exposed. Although he had been unable to prevent the much larger Swedish navy from effecting the landing in Royal Prussia in 1626, the recapture of Putzig in April 1627 in a daring amphibious operation gave him a base from which to challenge the Swedish blockade of Danzig, in a campaign which culminated in the battle of Oliva (28 November 1627), where an outgunned Polish fleet defeated a numerically-inferior Swedish force. [22] Wallenstein, partly in an attempt to persuade Sigismund to send his fleet to Wismar, promised to supply 12.000 men to support the Poles in Royal Prussia, although von Arnim brought only about 5,000 in 1629. [23] When Polish ships had finally reached Wismar in early 1629 the moment had passed. W?adys?aw, by now more enthusiastic than his father, wanted a naval attack on Sweden which was not at all what Olivares or Wallenstein had in mind. [24] Despite all the grand Habsburg promises, the Polish contingent of eight vessels, small though it was, formed well over a third of the allied force; in addition, the Polish ships, led by the 400-ton, 33-gun King David, were larger, more powerful armed and better manned. [25] Sigismund immediately regretted sending his fleet, which was destined to rot away in Wismar, where its last remnants fell into Swedish hands in January 1632. The chief beneficiary of the great Habsburg-Vasa Baltic plan was the wrong branch of the Vasa dynasty.

Within weeks of this debacle, Sigismund's long reign was at an end; with his death, the Habsburg alliance entered a new period of uncertainty. W?adys?aw IV, elected after a fraught interregnum in November 1632, soon demonstrated that his foreign policy was far more flexible and imaginative than his father's. The death of Gustavus Adolphus in 1632, leaving the infant Christina as his successor, seemed to provide a new opportunity. W?adys?aw had long recognised the difficulties posed by his father's ultra-Catholic stance, and had cultivated a reputation for religious tolerance. Feelers were put out to Sweden to explore the possibility of a dynastic reunion through a marriage between W?adys?aw and Christina; when these were rebuffed, W?adys?aw approached England over a possible marriage with Elizabeth, daughter of Frederick V of the Palatinate.

W?adys?aw was not adopting an anti-Habsburg policy, merely exploring alternative routes to the achievement of his main aim: the recovery of the Swedish throne, or compensation for resigning his claim. Although he renewed the Habsburg alliance in 1633, he was not satisfied with the treaty, which granted Ferdinand the right to recruit in the Commonwealth without conceding anything in return. Nevertheless, the Habsburg alliance remained essential. With Sweden facing serious problems in 1632-1635, and buoyed by his military triumphs against the Muscovites and Turks, W?adys?aw energetically revived the plans for an attack on Sweden. Sweden's very weakness, however, was to foil him: although there was, for the first time, substantial support in Poland for war with Sweden to win back control of the Prussian ports, the willingness of the Swedish negotiators at Stuhmsdorf in 1635 to abandon the tolls cut the ground from under his feet. Support for war evaporated, and he was forced to sign a twenty-six year truce in what was a triumph for the French mediators. [26]

Although W?adys?aw married Ferdinand?s daughter Cäcilia Renate in 1635, he was already disillusioned. In 1637, with the Habsburgs once more on the defensive in the Empire, he took the opportunity to negotiate a new treaty in which Ferdinand at last promised to support efforts to recover the Swedish throne. If these failed, he agreed to the establishment of a hereditary Vasa principality - which was not to be a Habsburg fief - in lands taken from the Ottomans in any future Austro-Turkish war. In return, W?adys?aw granted reversionary rights in Sweden to the Habsburgs if the Vasas should die out in the male line. [27]

The 1637 treaty was not welcomed by the Habsburgs. The commitment to support W?adys?aw's bid for the Swedish throne would be an obstacle in any peace talks with Sweden, while the agreement to provide compensation for a resignation of the claim to Sweden might bring pressure for the cession to the Polish Vasas of part of the Habsburg patrimonial lands. [28] Nevertheless, there was, in the military and political circumstances of the late 1630s, little chance that the emperor would ever face this dilemma. Once again, it was W?adys?aw who was to be disappointed. His renewed attempts to establish a Baltic fleet in late 1637 were greeted with resistance from Danzig and indifference by Ferdinand III, while his insistence on meeting Ferdinand at Nikolsburg in October 1638 led to a diplomatic disaster on a grand scale. [29]

The Nikolsburg meeting marked the beginning of a drift away from the alliance which had been central to Vasa foreign policy since 1613. The 1637 treaty gave Ferdinand III an important reason for excluding W?adys?aw from any role in peace talks, since it would greatly complicate negotiations with Sweden. While the Polish Vasas were appeased with the odd scrap from the Habsburg table they received nothing of substance. [30] It was not until May 1645, during the crisis after Jankau, that W?adys?aw finally forced a concession. Raising once more the question of the unpaid dowries of Anna, Konstanze and Cäcilia Renate, who had died in March 1644, he secured Ferdinand's agreement to mortgage the duchies of Oppeln and Ratibor for fifty years to his son, Sigismund Casimir, though he failed to win their permanent possession. Even this was achieved with difficulty: W?adys?aw had to agree a substantial loan, and accept a stipulation that the duchies should never be held by a reigning king of Poland-Lithuania. [31]

It was small reward for over thirty years of support for the Habsburgs, and, following difficulties over the agreement?s implementation, W?adys?aw ostentatiously distanced himself from his cousin. In March 1646 he married Louise Marie Gonzaga, who had been brought up at the French court, and granted France the right to recruit in Poland-Lithuania. Mazarin?s pledge to support W?adys?aw's bid to mediate in the Westphalian negotiationswas worthless, since there was little chance that the Habsburgs would agree. With the great hopes generated by the triumphant first two years of his reign long since dashed, W?adys?aw turned away from western Europe and spent the last two years of his life on grandiose but abortive plans for a Turkish war.

The long Habsburg-Vasa alliance had proved a marriage of convenience in which little benefit had been dereived by either side. One should not, however, identify the policy of the Polish Vasas with the policy of the Commonwealth. Since 1574 the formulation and conduct of foreign policy was explicitly a matter for the Commonwealth as a whole. The king, although charged with the conduct of government, could not send or receive ambassadors, declare war or make peace without the permission of the Sejm or of the Senate Council, which charged with ensuring that the king obeyed the law between sessions of the Sejm. There were also practical restraints on his freedom of action. The Sejm only granted taxes from one session to the next, insisting on scrutiny of the king's past policy to ensure that any money voted had been spent in accordance with its intentions, and on the regorous evaluation of his proposals for the future.

Nevertheless, monarchs frequently ignored or evaded the legal constraints on their powers, sending their own, private envoys and conducting foreign policy behind the backs of the Sejm, with the support of royalist senators. This practice was already causing strains under Batory; under the Vasas it led to open and bitter conflict. Whereas the legitimacy of Sigismund's pursuit of his Swedish inheritance could hardly be denied, there was no desire for an absentee monarch and little support for his two trips to Sweden in 1593-1594 and 1598. The Commowealth's expansionist urge had been largely directed eastwards and southwards in the sixteenth century; the Vasa attempt to reorientate it towards the north cut across the interests of many magnates in expansion into Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania, for whom the Habsburg alliance was highly inconvenient.

Until 1621, Sigismund's pursuit of his personal interests had not seemed to involve much danger: Karl IX's attempts to invade Livonia had been brushed aside contemptuously. Support was forthcoming for the defence of Livonia, although there was never enough money to provide proper garrisons or to construct effective fortifications and it was increasingly regarded as more of a burden than a benefit to the Commonwealth. [32] With the fall of Riga, the new military capacity of the Swedes became obvious; Riga?s recapture would require a major military effort. The quarrel with Sweden was, however, largely seen as the king's private affair; this was underlined when Sigismund rejected offers by Gustavus Adolphus to restore his conquests in Livonia in return for Sigismund resigning his claim to the Swedish throne. Although support for the expulsion of the Swedes from Prussia after 1626 was more forthcoming, the invasion was still widely regarded as having been provoked by Sigismund's intransigence, and there was little support for his ambitious Baltic plans, which went far beyond the defence of the Commonwealth. As was demonstrated by the substantial forces raised in 1620-1621 to counter the Turkish threat, and in 1632-1634 to beat off the Muscovite attack on Smolensk, the szlachta was still capable of considerable efforts to defend the Commonwealth?s interests. By 1635, however, The ambitious Vasa foreign policy had stimulated the widespread belief that the Commonwealth should not seek war, but merely be ready to defend itself.

Moreover, Sigismund?s support of the Habsburgs after with the Bohemian rebels and their defence of estates rights, and anger at Sigismund's illegal aid to Ferdinand II in 1619-1620. The Sejm proved sympathetic to approaches from the Bohemian rebels, such as the November 1620 embassy from the Silesian estates which claimed that Sigismund's actions threatened the ancient alliance between Bohemia, Silesia and the Commonwealth. Although the royal government succeeded in outmanoeuvering the Silesians, giving them a bland reply to their petition after the Sejm's closure, Sigismund failed to prevent the official condemnation of the Lisowczyk expedition, and the whole episode raised in the starkest possible way the issue of whether, as Sigismund maintained, international treaties were made between monarchs, or - as his critics argued - between peoples as represented in their estates. [33]

The most trenchant attack on Sigismund's pro-Habsburg policy came in a blistering pamphlet written by the opposition magnate Jerzy Zbaraski, which advanced seventy arguments for avoiding involvement in the Bohemian revolt. [34] Zbaraski, though a Catholic, stressed his support for the Protestant rebels, and emphasised the political nature of his objections, attacking the Jesuits and maintaining that the interests of the Catholic church in the Commonwealth were best served by staying neutral. [35] He recalled that the Bohemian estates had blocked Rudolf II's attempts to aid Maximilian in 1587-1588 and argued that the Hungarians and Bohemians were entirely justified in their opposition to the Habsburgs: ?inn deme sie ihnen alle Freyheiten und Leges fundamentales [...] verdrucken, und auß einem frey? Wahl Königreich ein Erbland machen wollen?. [36]

The barb struck home. The right of free election had long been regarded as the most effective guarantee of szlachza liberties, and Sigismund's attempts to abdicate his throne in favour of the Habsburgs and to promote the illegal election of W?adys?aw vivente rege were well remembered. The ruthless crushing of the Bohemian Revolt, and the subsequent remodelling of the Bohemian political system - described in detail by the many rebels who fled to Poland in the 1620s - merely confirmed many Poles in their belief that the Habsburgs were dedicated promoters of absolutum dominium - and underlined the fragility of constitutional safeguards against royal power.

The 1620s were a watershed in the relationship between the monarchy and the Commonwealth. Sigismund?s intervention in the Bohemian Revolt and his attempt to win Habsburg support for his anti-Swedish policy brought to a head problems which had long festered in the body politic. The inability of the elaborate constitutional safeguards erected since 1574 to prevent Sigismund from pursuing its own foreign policy provoked growing concern. Sigismund's illegal introduction of Wallenstein's reinforcements to Prussia in 1629 without Sejm consent seemed sinister to many observers. [37] While the defence of Royal Prussia aroused a far greater degree of support in Poland than had the defence of Livonia, suspicion over Sigismund's plans ensured that the Commonwealth's negotiators were prepared to buy peace at Altmark despite the high cost.

After 1629, opposition or indifference to their plans meant that the Vasas were unable to intervene in the Thirty Years War, or even exploit the difficulties of the Austrian Habsburgs to their own ends, and were increasingly disregarded as a factor the leading powers. Sweden's alliance with France, however, effectively shackled W?adys?aw to the unsatisfactory Habsburg alliance. The fact that the 1637 treaty was explicitly signed by W?adys?aw as king of Sweden alone, without mention of his Polish titles, symbolised the blind alley into which the dynasty had strayed. As king of Sweden, W?adys?aw had no influence whatsoever; as king of Poland-Lithuania, his dynastic policy had effectively undercut what influence he might otherwise have enjoyed. All this was only too evident to foreign powers, who had already begun to learn how to lobby opinion in the Commonwealth to achieve their own ends or block royal policies of which they did not approve.

It is therefore hardly surprising that the statesmen at Westphalia paid little attention to Poland-Lithuania. Yet the failure to do so was to threaten the whole edifice so painstakingly constructed in 1648. The rapid collapse of Polish resistance in the face of the Swedish invasion of 1655 brought the renewed prospect of war against Sweden at a point when the imperial succession was looking insecure for the Habsburgs. Between 1658 ans 1660, Poland-Lithuania did at last receive military support from the Austrian Habsburgs, but it was slow in coming, and the half-hearted prosecution of the war by tzhe Austrians, who were desperate to avoid the conflict spilling over into the Empire, only increased anti-Habsburg feeling. Leopold I successfully avoided reopening the Thirty Years War and the Westphalian peace survived ist first great test, but the cost to Habsburg-Polish relations was great.

Ultimately, the great conflicts of western and north-eastern Europe had remained separate, despite the extensive degree of overlap. Nevertheless, if the institutionalisation of a non-expansionist Holy Roman Empire at the heart of Europe by the treatys of Westphalia was of fundamental importance for the future course of international relations, [38] it is equally important to stress that the consolidation of the new international system after 1648 was only possible because the Commonwealth had also become a non-expansionist power. This was new: Poland-Lithuania had expanded substantially since 1558, reaching its most extensive boundaries, indeed, only in 1619. the rejection of agressive war between 1619 and 1648 was to have important consequences. The refusal to fight abroad removed one way of sustaining long-term military effort, while the inability of the political system to control the king?s foreign policy by any means other than refusing him the means to be aggressive deprived the Commonwealth of a coherent defensive structure, as was to be brutally revealed after 1654. Although the Commonwealth eventually rallied to expel the invaders, the 1660 peace of Oliva, which ended the second Northern War and saw the final abandonment of the Polish Vasa claim to the Swedish throne, was merely an international treaty. There was to be no Westphalian settlement for the Commonwealth?s internal problems. That was to be as significant for the subsequent history of Europe as the successful reordering of the Imperial constitution in 1648.

FOOTNOTES