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With Fire and Sword 
Military Factors in the Disintegration of the Polish-Lithuanian 
Commonwealth 
 
 
Mikołaj Dueholm 
University of Minnesota 
 
 
Abstract  
This article discusses seventeenth- and eighteenth-century circumstances that adversely 
affected the armed forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It identifies lack of a 
professional army, overreliance on cavalry, failed attempts at reform, funding problems, 
and unrestricted power of the magnates as the primary military factors leading to the 
eventual partition of the Commonwealth. These factors have been relatively unexplored in 
previous literature and serve to highlight the importance of synthesizing diverse 
perspectives and experiences in understanding the fraught history of Eastern Europe. 
 
 
Article  
Introduction 
The year 1569 is one of the most critical dates in Polish and Lithuanian history. This year 
marks the Union of Lublin, a constitutional settlement that brought the Kingdom of Poland 
and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania together into a loose confederation known as the 
Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów, or the Commonwealth of Both Nations, the largest polity 
in Latin-Christian Europe.1 This state occupied the eastern edge of Europe and was 
distinctive from its western neighbors in a number of important ways. The Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth covered a much greater land area, stretching from the Black Sea 
to the Baltic and encompassing much of what is today Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the 
Baltic States (see figure 1). This unique geographic position contributed to a cosmopolitan 
blend of East and West visible in everything from language to dress, combining a largely 
feudal economic and military system with relative religious toleration and political 
freedoms, at least for the aristocracy. This nobility, known as the szlachta, was a social class 
particular to the Commonwealth, comprising a higher share of the population than in any 
other European nation and enjoying an unprecedented array of rights and privileges.2 

 
1 Satoshi Koyama, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a Political Space: Its Unity and  
Complexity,” Regions in Central and Eastern Europe: Past and Present, eds. Tadayuki Hayashi and Hiroshi 
Fukuda (Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2007), 137-153, doi: src-
h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/coe21/publish/no15_ses/08_koyama.pdf. 
2 Norman Davies, God's Playground: A History of Poland in Two Volumes (New York: Columbia University 
Press, 2005), 202. For more discussion of the szlachta and their unique nature, see for instance: Anna 
Grześkowiak-Krwawicz, Queen Liberty the Concept of Freedom in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, trans. 
Daniel Sax (Leiden: Brill, 2012). For comparative analysis of other European aristocracies, see Jonathan 
Dewald, The European Nobility, 1400-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 

https://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/coe21/publish/no15_ses/08_koyama.pdf
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Similarly unique was the religious, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of the Commonwealth. Its 
vast territory incorporated Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Orthodox Christians, and Protestants. 
It also included trader communities from as far afield as Armenia and Persia. These people 
used a variety of languages, including Latin, Polish, Ruthenian, German and Yiddish, and 
maintained a high standard of literacy and education, even among women and the non-
aristocracy.3   
 

 
 

Figure 1: Map of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 16484 
 
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1648 
The Commonwealth’s political system was also distinctive. As Norman Davies aptly 
observed, “Its laws and practices were inspired by deeply rooted beliefs in individual 
freedom and civil liberty which, for the period, were exceptional.”5 The szlachta considered 
themselves citizens rather than subjects and, despite wide disparities in wealth and power, 
were legally equal. A common phrase captured this sentiment well: “A nobleman on his 
garden patch was any Wojewoda’s [administrator’s] match.”6 This equality extended all the 
way up to the throne, as the Commonwealth’s government was predicated on the concept 
of joint rule between the szlachta and the king. Therefore, unlike the more absolutist 
monarchies emerging in France and Spain, the Commonwealth maintained a weak central 

 
3 Koyama, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a Political Space,” 139. 
4 Mathias Rex, “Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1648,” Wikipedia, 
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Polish-Lithuanian_Commonwealth_in_1648.PNG, accessed November 6, 
2021. 
5 Davies, God’s Playground, 321. 
6 Benedict Wagner-Rundell, Common Wealth, Common Good: The Politics of Virtue in Early Modern Poland-
Lithuania (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 75. See also p. 1. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Polish-Lithuanian_Commonwealth_in_1648.PNG


 

73 
 

authority and functioned essentially as a republic. Within this unique arrangement, local 
decisions were left to the sejmiki, or dietines, which then nominated delegates to the Sejm, 
or diet, in order to represent the Commonwealth as a whole. The king governed alongside 
the Sejm, which held the exclusive power to make laws, wage war, levy taxes, and 
determine foreign policy. Since decisions of the Sejm had to be unanimous, this put a strong 
emphasis on agreement through consensus-building.7 It also resulted in a climate where, 
“the nobility constantly suspected the ruler of machinations to extend his powers.”8 These 
potentially competing dynamics of consensus and suspicion were a hallmark of the 
Commonwealth’s political system and set it apart from its neighbors. Together, these 
unique geographical, social, and political factors made the Commonwealth perhaps 
Europe's strangest state. Nevertheless, it operated as an important player on the European 
stage and earned the admiration of both foreign and domestic observers.9 
 
Despite enjoying general peace and prosperity for approximately the first eighty years of 
its existence, the Commonwealth was soon beset by a variety of threats, both foreign and 
domestic. Consequently, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw Poland and 
Lithuania’s gradual decline, as the central government was unable to defend its borders 
and the political system was co-opted by powerful magnates and foreign powers for their 
own agendas. Though the Commonwealth eventually produced Europe’s first written 
constitution and conducted a series of important reforms in its final years, it was 
partitioned three times between 1772 and 1795 at the hands of Austria, Prussia, and 
Russia, ceasing to exist as an independent nation until its rebirth in 1918.  
 
Many historians studying what exactly caused this fall from an influential European power 
to a casualty of rising nation-states have made a connection to the concept of the Golden 
Liberty. This rather nebulous term was used both to encapsulate the impressive array of 
rights and privileges guaranteed to the szlachta and to define the political system of the 
Commonwealth. These included freedom from taxation and arbitrary arrest, as well as 
religious toleration and restrictions on the power of the monarch to raise troops, levy 
taxes, or declare war without the consent of the nobility. The Golden Liberty also ensured 
the right of rokosz, or insurrection, in response to perceived infringement of these rights. 
Finally, there was the liberum veto, or ability for any single delegate to veto the decisions of 
a particular Sejm, which was seen as the capstone of the Golden Liberty.  
 
The foundational privileges of the Golden Liberty in many cases predated the 
establishment of the Commonwealth itself and tended to expand in scope over time. For 
example, the Privilege of Koszyce in 1374 virtually exempted the Polish szlachta from 
taxation.10 Consequently, the szlachta generally opposed efforts to levy taxes of any sort on 

 
7 Jerzy Lukowski, “‘Machines of Government’: Replacing the Liberum Veto in the Eighteenth-Century Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth,” The Slavonic and East European Review 90, no. 1 (2012): 66, 
doi:10.5699/slaveasteurorev2.90.1.0065.  
8 Lukowski, “Machines of Government,” 66. 
9 Grześkowiak-Krwawicz, Queen Liberty, 2. 
10 These concessions also made the szlachta exempt from building and repairing castles, towns, and bridges, 
as well as paying for the travel of the royal court, while also guaranteeing the gentry compensation for 
military service and restricting foreigners’ access to certain royal offices. 



 

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their estate, even for the purpose of national defense. Similarly, statutes in 1430 and 1433 
ensured the szlachta’s freedom from arbitrary arrest. Religious toleration had also enjoyed 
a long tradition in Poland and Lithuania, but it was not a formal guarantee until the 1573 
Confederation of Warsaw. Fears of religious persecution had been validated by events 
elsewhere in Europe, specifically the 1572 Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and the 
strife of the Thirty Years' War abroad. Consequently, many considered toleration essential 
to preserving liberty.  
 
Since the Golden Liberty extended many rights to the nobility, it also necessarily prevented 
the monarchy from infringing on those privileges. The Nihil Novi Act of 1505 ensured that 
the king could not pass laws without the consent of the gentry, cementing the power of the 
szlachta in the political system. This prerogative was jealously guarded; members of the 
1702 Sejm asserted that King August II’s (1670-1733) waging of war without a declaration 
of the Sejm trampled upon their freedom. The nobility opposed countless military reforms, 
tax proposals, and other attempts to centralize power on behalf of the king on the grounds 
that they limited the power of the gentry and thus endangered their liberty. In addition to 
these formidable shackles on the king’s authority, the szlachta still had at their disposal a 
mechanism to protect their liberty by force. The rokosz, which was essentially an armed 
lobby formed in protest to perceived infringements on noble rights, was perhaps the most 
extraordinary aspect of the Commonwealth’s political system. It was also regularly 
exercised to protect perceived attacks on the Golden Liberty; the orchestrators of both the 
Zebrzydowski and Lubomirski rokosz in 1606 and 1666-1667 respectively saw themselves 
not as rebels or rival claimants to the throne but as protectors of the szlachta’s freedom 
from absolutism.  
 
While all of these noble privileges were key components of freedom in the Commonwealth, 
its culmination was the liberum veto, or the right of a single member of a Sejm or sejmik to 
veto a piece of legislation by exclaiming, “Nie pozwalam!” (“I do not allow it!”). The 
implications of such a tool are not difficult to realize; as the Commonwealth entered its 
twilight years, the liberum veto began to loom large. Previously, it had been used to raise 
objections to individual pieces of legislation that were quickly resolved, but it began to 
disrupt entire Sejms, blocking not only the legislation directly vetoed but everything else 
that had been previously decided. Although finally abolished by the Constitution of the 3rd 
of May in 1791, it was far too late at that juncture.  
 
Historians are largely in agreement that the legislative paralysis induced by the use of the 
liberum veto and jealous preservation of privileges had a detrimental impact on the 
Commonwealth and contributed to its fall.11 More generally, they have identified the 
Golden Liberty as a source of weakness if not an outright catalyst for the decline of the 
Polish-Lithuanian state. According to this narrative, the Golden Liberty fostered a system of 
government unable to reform itself in response to societal and political challenges, 
vulnerable to interference by foreign powers and powerful domestic interests. This in turn 

 
11 Wagner-Rundell, Common Wealth, Common Good, 4. This perspective was posited by Władysław 
Konopczyński and members of the nineteenth-century “Kraków School.” 



 

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resulted in an environment of competition between different organs of government and 
denied the monarchy the authority necessary to function as an effective European state.  
 
Consequently, it is well-supported that the Golden Liberty exerted a significant impact on 
the fall of the Commonwealth, and modern evaluations of this decline have thus focused on 
the influence of the Golden Liberty on political factors within Poland and Lithuania. 
However, the impact of the armed forces on the disintegration of the Commonwealth has 
received less attention. This is an important topic for discussion, as the last century and a 
half of the Commonwealth’s history saw it involved in a series of exhausting conflicts that 
weakened it considerably. Consequently, this article considers how military factors, 
specifically lack of a professional army, overreliance on cavalry, failed attempts at reform, 
funding problems, and unrestricted power of the magnates contributed to the 
Commonwealth’s fall.  
 
In order to chart the Commonwealth’s military decline, I rely on a variety of primary 
sources in both Polish and English, most notably Jan Chryzostom Pasek’s Memoirs of the 
Polish Baroque and Stanisław Żołkiewski’s The Beginning and Progress of the Muscovy War. 
Both are diaries of politically and militarily active seventeenth-century Polish nobles. These 
works provide first-hand accounts not only of perceptions of the Golden Liberty but also its 
influence on military developments. These will be supplemented by primary texts on 
political and military reform, including the writings of Andrzej Fredro and Stanisław 
Karwicki, which provide different perspectives on the political system and reforms within 
the Commonwealth. I will also draw on secondary sources, including Norman Davies’s 
God’s Playground, for historical context. My analysis will also build on the work of previous 
researchers, such as Robert Frost and Benedict Wagner-Rundell, who explore the military 
state of the Commonwealth in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  
 
The period of decline and eventual fall of the Commonwealth coincided with a series of 
unsuccessful wars against Muscovy, Sweden, and the Crimean Tatars. Additionally, during 
this same period, the Cossacks in what is today Ukraine led a series of revolts against the 
Commonwealth. These setbacks on the battlefield contributed in their own way to the 
collapse of Poland-Lithuania. The factors that contributed to military failure were both 
causes and symptoms of the broader malaise affecting the state. This article examines five 
of these variables: the lack of standing troops, the predominance of cavalry, unsuccessful 
attempts at military reform, chronic underfunding, and the outsized autonomy of 
magnates. A close examination of these issues helps us understand the Commonwealth’s 
military failings specifically but, more generally, offers important insights into its most 
glaring weaknesses leading to its ultimate dismemberment in the eighteenth century.  
 
Absence of a Standing Army 
One of the overarching themes in the history of the Commonwealth’s military are efforts to 
create a large, permanent army. Although its forces consisted primarily of a variety of 
levies and private military units, the elected monarchs of the Commonwealth realized the 
need for a standing professional army to protect their borders and enact their will. This 
standing army was important in light of changes happening in the rest of Europe, as the 
military revolution of the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries brought about a series of 



 

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profound changes in organization and structure of the armed forces. Gone were the days of 
feudal levies and small cores of heavily armored knights. Instead, the fledgling nation-
states of Europe began fielding successively larger standing armies of predominantly pike 
and musket-armed infantry. For example, Louis XIV modernized the French army and 
turned it into a professional force, growing it from 70,000 men to approximately 400,000 
men by 1700, making it the largest army in Europe.12 Similarly, the Spanish army swelled 
from 20,000 in 1470 to approximately 300,000 in the 1630s.13 While conflicts as late as the 
Thirty Years’ War were fought primarily by mercenaries, rulers quickly realized that a 
standing domestic army strengthened the power of monarchs. Kings would no longer have 
to rely on hiring expensive foreign soldiers who would pillage both friend and foe or slow 
and unreliable feudal levies of peasants and knights. Instead, professional standing armies 
were directly loyal to the crown and always available, meaning rulers had substantially 
more freedom to pursue their goals, safe in the knowledge that their troops could bring 
both foreign and domestic opposition to heel. This swelling of royal power precipitated the 
growth of nation-states in France, Spain, England, and elsewhere and fostered loyalties to a 
state and ruler rather than to a family or region.14 Though the aristocracy may have 
resented this vast accumulation of power by the monarch, they were happy to no longer 
see their lands looted by mercenary companies. Additionally, the new army provided 
myriad opportunities for advancement based on merit.15  
 
While other European powers were busy raising these professional armies, the 
Commonwealth largely stuck to its older military structure, relying on general levies, small 
standing forces, and cobbled-together support from private and mercenary units. The 
permanent forces known as the wojsko kwarciane and its successor, the wojsko komputowe, 
were often ill-paid and small, something which would plague the Commonwealth, 
particularly after 1648. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the wojsko komputowe 
numbered only 24,000 men, which paled in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of 
troops the soon-to-be partitioning powers of Prussia, Austria, and Russia could bring to 
bear.16 
 
Some have argued that this failure to modernize the military stemmed from a close-minded 
resistance to reform among the nobility.17 While this perspective does not necessarily 
make an explicit connection to ideals of the Golden Liberty, many members of the szlachta 
felt the Commonwealth had reached its zenith in terms of freedom and prosperity and 
bitterly opposed any changes to the status quo.18 Others argue for a more nuanced 

 
12 John A. Lynn, "Recalculating French Army Growth during the Grand Siècle, 1610-1715," French Historical 
Studies 18, no. 4 (1994): 881-906, doi:10.2307/286722. Rene Chartrand, Louis XIV’s Army, Men-At-Arms 
Series 203 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1988), 8. 
13 M.S. Anderson, War and Society in Europe of the Old Regime 1618-1789 (London: Fontana Press, 1988), 17. 
14 Robert Ian Frost, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,” in Poland and 
Europe: Historical Dimensions: Selected Essays from the Fiftieth Anniversary International Congress of the Polish 
Institute of Arts and Sciences of America Vol 1, eds. James Pula and Marian Biskupski, East European 
Monographs 390 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 37. 
15 Frost, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,” 38. 
16 Frost, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,” 24. 
17 Frost, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,” 23. 
18 Grześkowiak-Krwawicz, Queen Liberty, 56. 



 

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perspective, positing that the failure to expand the standing army did not represent simple 
opposition to military reforms per se, but a conscious rejection of the power such 
innovations would give the monarchy.19 Historians cite many examples of innovations the 
Commonwealth was willing to make without having to modify its political structure, for 
instance the establishment of weapon foundries and penning of influential treatises on 
siege craft.20 Essentially, the nobility was happy to adopt certain aspects of the military 
revolution as long as they did not change the political status quo.  
 
Regardless of the motivation behind the szlachta’s rejection of a large standing army, the 
impact was essentially the same. Robert Frost has rightly noted, “For it was the failure of 
the noble citizens of the Commonwealth to cross this psychological watershed 
[establishment of a permanent army] which doomed it to a decline which was by no means 
inevitable.”21 The nobility perceived a standing army as a fundamental threat to their 
liberty, since it would allow the monarch to bypass the diet, which was normally required 
to levy and pay troops as well as declare war. As a result, the gentry were generally 
opposed to efforts to enlarge the military and remained more concerned about the threat of 
absolutist monarchy than foreign invasion.22 This was rationalized by the military 
successes of Poland and Lithuania at the end of the sixteenth and in the first half of the 
seventeenth century, which prevented many nobles from recognizing the threat posed by 
their neighbors.23 Unfortunately, this myopic perspective would have disastrous 
consequences when the outdated, underpaid, and untrained military of the 
Commonwealth—far from being able to serve as a tool of monarchical oppression—was 
unable to defend the nation against foreign invasion. 
 
The history of what has become known as the Cossack Register is an excellent example 
highlighting the impact of the szlachta’s reluctance to enlarge the army. Established in 
1572, the Register was a list of names of Cossacks, a people inhabiting Ukraine. The 
Register integrated these individuals into the army of the Commonwealth, granting them 
special privileges and wages in an attempt to discourage raiding and turn them into a 
regular fighting force.24 This was conceptually an excellent solution; it converted the 
Cossacks from a potential threat into highly loyal and fierce troops able to defend the 
Commonwealth from Tatar and Muscovite incursions. In practice, it was significantly less 
effective, as the Crown was not able to pay the Cossacks consistently, who continued 
raiding and plundering with little regard for whether they were part of the Register or 
not.25 Additionally, local diets tended to be resentful of the rights granted to the Cossacks 
and consistently tried to shrink or abolish the Register. This hostility is typified by one 
Polish noble in the Sejm, who quipped, “You [Cossacks] say that you are like all others, 
members of the Commonwealth and thus demand the rights of the nobility. Verily, you are 

 
19 Frost, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,” 24. 
20 Frost, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,” 25. 
21 Frost, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,” 38. 
22 Grześkowiak-Krwawicz, Queen Liberty, 36. 
23 Grześkowiak-Krwawicz, Queen Liberty, 36. 
24 Linda Gordon, Cossack Rebellions: Social Turmoil in the Sixteenth-Century Ukraine (Albany:  
State University of New York Press, 1983), 90. 
25 Gordon, Cossack Rebellions, 95. 



 

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indeed members of this Commonwealth, but like fingernails, meaning you must from time 
to time be trimmed.”26  
 

 
 

Figure 2: Ilya Repin, Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman 
Empire, 189127 

 
This arrogance belied a fear that the king would use the Register in order to limit the 
szlachta’s freedoms.28 Not only would the Register provide the monarch with a larger 
standing army, but it would eliminate the Cossack’s dependence on the local szlachta, since 
their wages and privileges would come directly from the king. This concern that the 
Cossacks could not be controlled by the magnate regime was typified by Ilya Repin’s 
painting, Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire (see 
figure 2). It portrays the writing of a defiant and profanity-ridden letter the Cossacks 
allegedly sent in response to the Ottoman Sultan’s request for submission. While the story 
is largely a legend, it demonstrates the perception of the Cossacks as free-spirited and 
fiercely independent, unwilling to submit to the yoke of foreign control, much less the 
power of magnates. These fears about royal power and Cossack autonomy may have been 
exaggerated, however, since despite nominally being part of the royal standing army, the 
Register Cossacks reported to local magnates, who deployed them in conjunction with their 
own private troops without having to pay for their upkeep.29 Nevertheless, families such as 
the Wiśniowiecki or Kalinowski saw a large, organized force of Cossacks as a threat to their 
interests. Consequently, the szlachta and powerful magnates tried to limit the size of the 

 
26 Zbigniew Wójcik, Dzikie Pola w Ogniu; o Kozaczyźnie w Dawnej Rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw: Wiedza 
Powszechna, 1968), 110. Author’s translation. As cited in Davies, God’s Playground, 446.  
27 Ilya Repin, Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire, 1891, oil on 
canvas, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, http://en.rusmuseum.ru/collections/painting-of-the-second-
half-of-the-xix-century-beginning-of-xxi-century/artworks/zaporozhye-cossacks/?sphrase_id=259736, 
accessed November 6, 2021. 
28 Gordon, Cossack Rebellions, 94. 
29 Gordon, Cossack Rebellions, 94. 



 

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Register once any immediate threat had passed, while the Cossacks, who maintained their 
loyalty to the throne and instead saw the local nobility as oppressors, tried to permanently 
enlarge the size of the Register.30 Since the king generally strove to increase Cossack 
recruitment and the Cossacks lacked direct representation in the Sejm, the political 
struggle over the Register primarily pitted the szlachta against the monarchy.  
 
In the rare instance that the interests of the magnates and monarch concerning the number 
of troops coincided, the former were known to oppose efforts to expand the army on the 
grounds that they were illegal. This occurred most notably in 1646, when King Władysław 
IV (1595-1648) attempted to recruit Cossacks for a war against the Ottomans and Tatars 
without approval of the diet. Despite saying that he supported the king’s policy, Great 
Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński (1595-1650) and other magnates refused to sign off on the 
recruitment on the grounds that it was not legal.31 Legalism was a common feature of 
szlachta political thought, and respect for the laws was seen as the duty of every noble.32 
Thus, both personal interest and a concern with preserving “the rule of law” could put the 
magnates at odds with increasing the Register.  
 
These various tensions came to a head with the Khmelnytsky Uprising in 1648. Poor 
relations between the Polish Catholic nobility and their Orthodox Ukrainian subjects 
prompted the Ukrainian peasantry to ally themselves with the Cossacks and revolt. The 
leader and namesake of the revolt was Bohdan Khmelnytsky, a minor noble who had 
significant ties to the Cossacks. His forces won a series of victories, plunging Ukraine into 
chaos and permanently damaging Commonwealth-Cossack relations. As a result of this 
conflict, the Register essentially ceased to function after 1648, leaving behind a void that 
was never successfully filled. The Cossack’s absence would be felt when Sweden invaded in 
1655, and the beleaguered Commonwealth, beset by threats from Muscovy, Sweden, 
Transylvania, and the Ottoman Empire, began to cede territory to its rivals. Soon, Poland 
and Lithuania had to face internal threats in the form of the Lubomirski Uprising, a 
response to attempts at reform from King Jan Kazimierz (1609-1672) that saw much of the 
army revolt against the king. These costly conflicts slowly sapped Poland-Lithuania’s 
strength, leading to the eventual partitions starting in 1772. One cannot but wonder if the 
enlargement or preservation of the Cossack Register may have served to delay or even 
prevent the collapse of the Commonwealth, especially considering that in the aftermath of 
the Khmelnytsky Uprising, many of the disillusioned Cossacks switched their allegiance to 
Russia, one of the eventual partitioning powers.  
 
The controversy surrounding the Cossack Register and the subsequent Khmelnytsky 
Uprising deprived the Commonwealth of a large force of excellent infantry that would be 
sorely missed in the coming years. Additionally, it resulted in the loss of lands used for 
extensive taxation and recruitment.33 This crippling blow to Poland-Lithuania became 
apparent during the Swedish invasion of 1655. Though the tide was eventually turned, this 

 
30 Frost, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,” 41. 
31 Koyama, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a Political Space,” 147-148. 
32 Grześkowiak-Krwawicz, Queen Liberty, 43. 
33 Frost, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,” 41. 



 

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was in part due to foreign pressure, as the Commonwealth desperately cast about for allies 
willing to contribute much-needed infantry and artillery required to reduce Swedish 
garrisons and actually drive out the invaders. In previous conflicts, these forces had been 
supplied by the Cossacks, giving the Commonwealth’s armies the vital ability to take and 
hold ground.34  
 
Predominance of Cavalry 
This lack of infantry and preponderance of cavalry was itself a factor leading to the 
Commonwealth’s decline. Both Polish and Lithuanian forces included a much higher ratio 
of cavalry and significantly fewer pikemen than their European neighbors. This was 
because the Great European Plain along much of the Commonwealth’s southern and 
eastern borders offered little in the way of natural barriers, and there were few fortresses 
that would require infantry or artillery to attack or defend. Additionally, opponents such as 
the Tatars fought as light cavalry, meaning a highly mobile, decentralized force of cavalry 
was required for defense.35  
 
However, this preference for horsemen was more than tactical; it represented the 
conscious reflection of cultural and philosophical ideas into the military sphere. 
Traditionally, the szlachta believed that they had received the rights and privileges of the 
Golden Liberty in return for their military service to the crown.36 Thus, allowing foreign 
mercenaries or non-nobles (such as the Cossacks) to fight in the army potentially 
jeopardized the nobles’ liberty. Consequently, warfare, like many other things in the 
Commonwealth, was seen as the prerogative of the gentry, who almost exclusively fought 
mounted. In fact, Andrzej Fredro (1620-1679), a notable supporter of the Golden Liberty, 
talked about horsemen being soldiers of a free republic, while infantry were a tool of 
autocracy.37 This penchant for mounted warfare was also supported by cultural traditions 
among the nobility. Well-bred horses were both plentiful and highly prized, and 
horsemanship was learned from a young age. Similarly, fencing both on foot and horseback 
was taught to young nobles by experienced veterans, ensuring that the Commonwealth was 
known far and wide for its excellent swordsmen.38 This, coupled with a lack of formal 
military academies, meant that szlachta culture bred independent and accomplished 
horsemen and fencers rather than the trained and disciplined members of an officer corps 
or infantry formation. Considering all these factors, it is hardly surprising that the 
Commonwealth armies tended to consist primarily of horse. 
 
Despite the varying reasons for the dominance of cavalry, Commonwealth military 
reformers and leaders recognized the need for more and better infantry, particularly in 
response to facing more “Westernized” militaries such as Sweden’s. Though Fredro had 

 
34 Frost, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,” 38. 
35 Frost, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,” 27. 
36 Wagner-Rundell, Common Wealth, Common Good, 2. 
37 Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro, Militarium, ad Harmoniam Togae Accommodatorum (Amsterdam, 1668), 180-
181.  
38 Bartosz Sieniawski, "From Szabla to Saber: the Polish Saber, its History, and Impact on Swords East and 
West" (Online Event, University of Minnesota Center for Early Modern History and the Oakeshott Institute, 
March 26, 2021). 

mailto:bartosz.sieniawski@gmail.com


 

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been an ideological supporter of cavalry, he authored a 1670 treatise that seemed to largely 
reverse his stance from two years prior. He advocated for greater use of infantry and 
encouraged the gentry to fight on foot, referencing the effectiveness of an all-noble infantry 
regiment during the 1581 campaign against Muscovy.39 The notable reformer Stanisław 
Karwicki (c. 1640-c. 1725) was also a great proponent of infantry, arguing that it should 
constitute a higher ratio of the Commonwealth’s armies. He stated that more infantry was 
necessary to compete with more Westernized armies because they were better suited to 
siege warfare and more dependable.40 He also criticized the Commonwealth’s noble 
cavalry: “But in the cavalry of our army, a soldier is known as towarzysz [comrade], inflated 
with his own opinion and even more with his property, considers himself equal to his 
officers, even the Hetmans [military commanders], and coolly tolerates commands of his 
superiors. Infantry in regiments, by contrast, much more diligently applies itself to the 
orders of its superiors.”41 The term towarzysz was used throughout the Commonwealth’s 
military, regardless of rank, and was intended to represent equality among the nobility.42 
In addition to this preoccupation with equality, Karwicki also accused the gentry of 
campaigning with lavish baggage trains and being more interested in taking part in sejmiks 
as opposed to fighting for the Fatherland.43 All these critiques imply that the nobility’s 
priorities were political influence and social standing as opposed to warfare. It was not just 
Karwicki who harped on these vices. Fredro likewise spent much of his overview of the 
military discussing methods for improving discipline and training, demonstrating that the 
poor behavior of the army and cavalry in particular was common knowledge.44  
 
These calls for change did not fall completely on deaf ears. Infantry played an increasingly 
prominent role in the armed forces, acquitting themselves particularly well in the Swedish 
wars, but the Commonwealth struggled to deploy and pay substantial and well-trained 
infantry units.45 In his memoirs, Początek i Progres Wojny Moskiewskiej (Beginning and 
Progress of the Muscovite War), Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski (1547-1620) recounts how 
the siege of Smolensk in 1609 was delayed because of a lack of infantry and artillery. 
Crucially, it was the arrival of allied Cossacks that finally allowed the Commonwealth to 
make headway.46 A similar problem would face Żółkiewski’s forces a year later during the 
Battle of Kłuszyn (see figure 3), when Polish winged hussars were forced to break through 
picket fences and charge dug-in Russian infantry, a task normally reserved for infantry.47 

 
39 Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro, O Porządku Wojennym i o Pospolitem Ruszeniu Małym (Sanok:  
Kazimierz Józef Turowski, 1856), 42. 
40 Stanisław Dunin Karwicki, Dzieła Polityczne z Początku XVIII Wieku (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Polskiej 
Akademii Nauk, 1992), 139. Author’s translation. 
41 Karwicki, Dzieła Polityczne z Początku XVIII Wieku, 140. Author’s translation. 
42 Davies, God’s Playground, 239. 
43 Karwicki, Dzieła Polityczne z Początku XVIII Wieku, 158. 
44 Fredro, O Porządku Wojennym i o Pospolitem Ruszeniu Małym, 5. Even contemporary authors were 
themselves guilty of occasional rabble-rousing: Jan Chryzostom Pasek (1636 - 1701), a noble and important 
diarist who also took part in many military campaigns, recounts many armed altercations he had, frequently 
over matters of honor. These invariably left behind substantial casualties. 
45 Frost, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,” 30. 
46 Stanisław Z� ółkiewski, Początek I Progres Wojny Moskiewskiej, 2nd ed. (Kraków: Nakładem.  
Krakowskiej Spółki Wydawniczej, 1925), 26. 
47 Z� ółkiewski, Początek I Progres Wojny Moskiewskiej, 42. 



 

82 
 

This deficiency in foot soldiers was further on display in 1656, when a Polish force attacked 
Brandenburg in an effort to induce it to sever its alliance with Sweden. However, the 
invasion force consisted primarily of cavalry and was unable to capture any cities. As a 
result, it contented itself with raiding and failed to put any significant pressure on 
Brandenburg to desert the Swedish cause.48 These examples serve to illustrate problems 
facing the Commonwealth’s military operations owing to its lack of infantry. Overall, the 
increased cost of cavalry and its inability to compete with modernized armies made largely 
mounted forces just another symptom of the decline of the Commonwealth. 

 

 
 

Figure 3: Szymon Boguszowicz, Battle of Kłuszyn, 165049 
 
Attempts at Reform 
While there were many forces opposing changes to the military status quo, there were also 
attempts at reform. The reigns of Jan Kazimierz (1648-1668) and August II (1697-1706, 
1709-1733) represent two concerted efforts at structural reform of the Commonwealth’s 
military. They also highlight the dynamics that made reform so difficult in the 
Commonwealth. Jan Kazimierz was very popular with the army and proved himself a canny 
general, leading royal troops to a resounding victory over the Cossacks at the Battle of 
Beresteczko in 1651.50 However, like most of the Commonwealth’s elected monarchs, he 
chafed at the power of the diet and tried to use the army in order to bypass its authority. To 
this end, he attempted a variety of military reforms, designating many army units as “royal” 

 
48 Robert Ian Frost, After the Deluge: Poland-Lithuania and the Second Northern War, 1655-1660 (Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 98. 
49 Szymon Boguszowicz, Battle of Kłuszyn, 1650, oil on canvas, Borys Voznytsky Lviv National Art Gallery, 
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/hetman-battle-of-klushino-szymon-
boguszowicz/8gG2NoK9AwtWvA?hl=en, accessed November 6, 2021. 
50 Frost, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,” 43. 

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/hetman-battle-of-klushino-szymon-boguszowicz/8gG2NoK9AwtWvA?hl=en
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/hetman-battle-of-klushino-szymon-boguszowicz/8gG2NoK9AwtWvA?hl=en


 

83 
 

and making sure they were paid by and directly loyal to the monarch.51 He also tried to 
enlarge the wojsko komputowe directly and through an increase in the size of the Cossack 
Register. He also attempted to centralize military power in his own person by not 
nominating new Hetmans, or military commanders.52 These military reforms were also 
coupled with a variety of plans surrounding the impending royal election.  
 
Nevertheless, his reforms met resistance. This controversy eventually led to the 
Lubomirski Rokosz of 1665-1666, which left the Commonwealth unable to successfully 
execute the ongoing war with Muscovy. Jan Chryzostom Pasek (1636-1701)—a noble, 
soldier, and diarist who experienced the revolt firsthand—described it as uniquely 
calamitous: “Our villages are shuddering, our poor are weeping, our bishops and senators 
are urging the king to take pity on the country, seeing that we are plainly displeasing to God 
if luck is not with us.”53 While the material damages caused by the Lubomirski Rokosz were 
significant, perhaps even more important was the fact that Jan Kazimierz’s efforts forever 
tainted plans to enlarge the military in the eyes of the nobility, largely condemning future 
desultory efforts to increase the size of the army. According to Frost, “The greatest danger 
to Polish liberties, it seemed, was the Polish monarchy and its alleged wish to introduce 
absolutum dominium by force of arms; it was therefore vital to prevent it building up the 
sort of military powerbase which Jan Kazimierz had attempted to construct.”54 
Consequently, his reign represented perhaps the last real opportunity to modernize and 
reform the military of the Commonwealth.55   
 
The reign of August II also saw the thwarting of efforts to enlarge the standing army. The 
Sejm of 1712-1713 proposed a variety of reforms, including a permanent force of 36,000 
troops and the necessary permanent taxes to pay them.56 Interestingly, this proposal seems 
to have met little opposition, as the szlachta resented the increasing presence of Swedish, 
Russian, and Saxon armies in the Commonwealth, which were known for exacting 
“contributions'' from the local populace. Consequently, August II’s supporters were quick 
to represent this new force and the associated funding as a way to protect the ever-
important Golden Liberty from foreign encroachment. However, many envoys to the Sejm 
saw the main problem to be not the lack of appropriate military funding but the damage to 
szlachta property from marauding armies.57 These excesses were pinned on the Hetmans 
for not maintaining better behavior among their troops, echoing concerns held by Fredro 
surrounding discipline and likely influencing Karwicki’s proposals to limit their power.58  
As a result, the focus of the Sejm shifted from military reforms to curbing the power of the 
Hetmans and restricting licentious and immoral behavior. This shows that even when the 

 
51 Frost, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,” 43. 
52 Frost, After the Deluge, 32. 
53 Jan Chryzostom Pasek, Memoirs of the Polish Baroque: The Writings of Jan Chryzostom Pasek, a Squire of the 
Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 187. 
54 Frost, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,” 44. 
55 Frost, After the Deluge, 179. 
56 Wagner-Rundell, Common Wealth, Common Good, 80. 
57 Wagner-Rundell, Common Wealth, Common Good, 85. 
58 Fredro, O Porządku Wojennym i o Pospolitem Ruszeniu Małym, 15. Karwicki, Dzieła Polityczne z Początku 
XVIII Wieku, 161. 



 

84 
 

gentry were willing to enlarge and modernize the army, it was seen as tangential to the 
preservation of property rights. Commissions to address property damages and the 
culpability of the Hetmans were proposed, but negotiations quickly bogged down. 
Eventually, supporters of one of the Hetmans exercised the liberum veto, breaking the Sejm 
and dooming the entire package of legislation, including the increase to the size of the 
army.59 The nobility were primarily concerned with the threat to their private property 
rather than the threat of foreign encroachment. As a result, they seized on immorality and 
the power of the Hetmans as the fundamental issue, rather than the need to strengthen the 
army.  
 
Thus, it is evident that both the gentry and the monarch were engaged in a zero-sum battle 
for power with the military as a key institution affecting the struggle. Even militarily 
successful kings such as Zygmunt III (1566-1632) or Jan Sobieski (1629-1696) were 
perceived by the gentry as a threat, since their attempts at expanding the Commonwealth 
were seen as warmongering and a dangerous step towards absolutism.60 By keeping the 
wojsko komputowe small, the nobility ensured that the monarch was dependent on the 
senate and diets, giving the szlachta power and thus by extension liberty. Though both Jan 
Kazimierz and August II sought to introduce serious reforms to the military, they were 
unable to garner sufficient support for their efforts. In the end, the reforms failed for 
political rather than military reasons.  
 
Underfunding of the Military 
While the calls to enlarge and modernize the army were constant, the Commonwealth’s 
military was frequently unable to pay the soldiers it already had, leaving commanders with 
only emotional appeals to secure their troops’ continued cooperation. The memoir of 
Hetman Stanisław Z� ółkiewski routinely deals with chronic problems of underfunding 
during the Commonwealth’s invasion of Russia in 1609. Originally, Z� ółkiewski advised King 
Zygmunt III against the campaign, as few troops had arrived and those that had were 
unpaid.61 Since the king personally assured the Hetman that he would gather the necessary 
funds, it can be inferred that Zygmunt III was independently funding the army through his 
own channels, given that the slow-moving Sejm had yet to authorize the war and thus the 
requisite fiduciary resources. This situation was far from unique; not only did the diet have 
to approve funds to pay troops, but the next diet had to ratify the resolution. According to 
Fredro, this whole process of debating, approving, and gathering taxes took at least five 
months.62 Even when a monarch was able to secure the necessary funding from the diet, 
the local dietines lacked the political infrastructure to actually enforce collection of taxes it 
decided on, meaning that the troops still frequently went unpaid. This was compounded by 
the nobility's refusal to agree to a survey of land, which made tax rates hard to enforce.63 
All this meant that money to pay troops was extremely hard to secure, a factor that would 
continuously hamper the military efforts of the Commonwealth. 

 
59 Wagner-Rundell, Common Wealth, Common Good, 94. 
60 Grześkowiak-Krwawicz, Queen Liberty, 70. 
61 Z� ółkiewski, Początek I Progres Wojny Moskiewskiej, 15. 
62 Fredro, O Porządku Wojennym i o Pospolitem Ruszeniu Małym, 58. 
63 Frost, After the Deluge, 23. 



 

85 
 

 
These financial problems continued well into Z� ółkiewski’s campaign. After winning a great 
victory at the Battle of Kłuszyn and leading his forces to the gates of Moscow, Z� ółkiewski 
began negotiating with prominent boyars. He tried to convince his soldiers to continue to 
serve during the negotiations without pay: “Because with such perseverance, one could 
with God’s help induce this nation [Muscovy] to offer more advantageous conditions for the 
Commonwealth.”64 However, the troops demanded their wages (which the shrewd 
Muscovites offered to pay in exchange for peace) and an end to the conflict, forcing 
Z� ółkiewski to broker a suboptimal peace for the Commonwealth. Any potential gains from 
this campaign were soon reversed as the Polish garrison in the Kremlin was forced to 
surrender in 1612.65 This lack of funding continued to plague the reign of Zygmunt III. 
Since the diet was unwilling to approve the taxes necessary to continue paying the army, he 
was forced to surrender Livonia to Sweden as part of the Peace of Altmark in 1629, another 
“disadvantageous” outcome for the Commonwealth.66  
 
These problems would resurface during the reign of Jan Kazimierz thirty years later. 
Despite military successes in 1660-1661, the diets responsible for voting and collecting 
taxes to pay the army were broken. This left the military, much as it had been during the 
1609 campaign, unpaid and unwilling to press its advantage by attacking Muscovy and 
regaining lost territory. Jan Chryzostom Pasek documented the formation of a union by 
unpaid troops in 1661. Though Pasek was sympathetic to the cause of the union, he wrote, 
“Our division opposed it, seeing therein great detrimentum to our country.”67 Consequently, 
his memoirs include a speech he gave to discourage his fellow soldiers from joining the 
union and exhorting them to exhibit public virtue. Public virtue, or the sacrificing of private 
interest for the sake of the public good, was a central value in szlachta culture, and similar 
appeals to Pasek’s were made by reformers in the mid eighteenth century.68 The speech 
highlights one of the responses to the ills facing the Commonwealth: a call for moral 
reform, either in addition to or even instead of institutional reform. Thus Pasek began by 
urging patriotic self-sacrifice: “I know not how any man could call himself a son of this 
fatherland, who could wholly forget its public interests for the sake of his private ones.”69 
He then continued by urging an attack on Muscovy in order to press the Commonwealth’s 
advantage: “Let us consider how these deceitful people [the Muscovites] plundered three-
quarters of our fatherland with fire and sword. Let us consider how many outrages against 
God they committed in His churches. Let us show them that we too are capable of finding 
our food abroad in the country which robbed us of so much of it.”70 Calls for crusade 
against the Muslim Ottomans were a frequent tool in attempts to reignite the martial virtue 
of the nobility through religious warfare, and Pasek appealed to a similar sentiment by 
mentioning desecration of presumably Catholic churches by the Orthodox Muscovites.71 

 
64 Z� ółkiewski. Początek I Progres Wojny Moskiewskiej, 54. 
65 Davies, God’ Playground, 346. 
66 Frost, After the Deluge, 23. 
67 Pasek, Memoirs of the Polish Baroque, 95. 
68 Wagner-Rundell, Common Wealth, Common Good, 1 and 34. 
69 Pasek, Memoirs of the Polish Baroque, 97. 
70 Pasek, Memoirs of the Polish Baroque, 97. 
71 Wagner-Rundell, Common Wealth, Common Good, 39. 



 

86 
 

The exhortation to fight strove to unite the fractious gentry against a common foe and 
alleviate financial strain on the Commonwealth, since its troops would sustain themselves 
by looting in foreign lands. Additionally, since the szlachta saw their privileges as a reward 
their ancestors had received from a grateful monarch for military services, it made sense to 
engage in warfare in order to return the Commonwealth to its golden age and reignite the 
patriotic virtue of the nobility.72 Within Pasek’s speech, we see a call to moral reform 
through a renewal of public virtue and religious warfare. Despite Pasek’s impassioned 
speech, the paralysis induced by the lack of funding led to the signing of the Treaty of 
Andrusovo in 1667, which made significant territorial concessions to Muscovy in exchange 
for token sums of money.73 This continued the pattern of the Treaties of Moscow in 1610 
and Altmark in 1629, with the Commonwealth gaining a military advantage only to sign 
unfavorable treaties when the military was starved for money.  
 
It is important to note, however, that Poland and Lithuania were hardly the only countries 
struggling to pay their armies.  Especially in the first half of the seventeenth century, even 
countries undertaking the so-called “military revolution” still relied heavily on mercenary 
forces and the pillaging of enemy territory, as they had not developed the sophisticated 
bureaucracies necessary to finance their growing armies.74 However, this problem was 
more acute in the Commonwealth, since it never developed the mechanisms necessary to 
consistently pay its troops. Furthermore, attacking foreign territory and living off the land 
was also not possible, since the szlachta were inherently suspicious that foreign wars were 
a way for their monarchs to increase their power at the expense of noble liberties.75     
 
Polish reformers were hardly blind to these financial problems. Stanisław Karwicki 
advocated for a smaller army but with regular wages, rather than pay requiring ratification 
by the Sejm, noting, “Thus we would avoid so many discomforts, which have during our 
time grievously afflicted the Commonwealth due to the halt in wages. The nation’s jewels 
are dispersed, cities and provinces appropriated, in the end the very free election for the 
price of what is to be paid to the soldiery as wages, extended for sale.”76 Karwicki and other 
reformers were acutely aware that the necessity of the Sejm’s approval for wages led to an 
ineffective military that was unable to defend the Commonwealth. However, the szlachta 
feared that an army that did not require approval of the Sejm for its wages would be too 
independent and could easily be used by a monarch to fight wars or enforce his will 
without consent of the nobility, trampling on their liberties and leading to the dreaded 
absolutum dominium. As a result, reformers such as Fredro were eager to suggest 
improvements in discipline and training, identifying license and insubordination as the 
true problems plaguing the armed forces and effectively ignoring funding issues in favor of 
calls for moral reform.77 Even those such as Karwicki who advocated financial reform were 
unsuccessful. This was because the lack of a comprehensive land survey and the 

 
72 Wagner-Rundell, Common Wealth, Common Good, 2. 
73 Frost, After the Deluge, 170. 
74 Frost, “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the ‘Military Revolution,” 37. 
75 Grześkowiak-Krwawicz, Queen Liberty, 70.  
76 Karwicki, Dzieła Polityczne z Początku XVIII Wieku, 138. Author’s translation. 
77 Fredro, O Porządku Wojennym i o Pospolitem Ruszeniu Małym, 10. Grześkowiak-Krwawicz, Queen Liberty, 
83. 



 

87 
 

requirement for diet approval and dietine execution of the new tax levy made collection of 
wages time-consuming and inconsistent. This fostered an incredibly fragile system of 
military funding that made it nearly impossible for the army to maintain the initiative. 
Consequently, the Commonwealth’s leaders were left appealing to their soldiers’ 
patriotism. Unfortunately, this was no substitute for regular pay, and efforts at reviving 
public virtue fell largely on deaf ears. Ultimately, the szlachta’s unwillingness to relinquish 
political control over the armies’ purse-strings would be ruthlessly exploited by the 
partitioning powers, as the Commonwealth’s languishing military proved ineffective at 
protecting its borders.  
 
Power of Magnates 
While the royal army’s effectiveness was hampered by lack of funding, the private armies of 
magnates had no such troubles. This was because the political system of the 
Commonwealth gave a significant amount of power to the magnates, which in large part 
contributed to the Khmelnytsky Uprising and the disastrous settlements of the seventeenth 
century, most notably the Treaty of Kiejdany. While subsequent claims that in its latter 
years the Commonwealth was a magnate oligarchy are to some extent reductionist, it is 
undeniable that families such as the Potocki, Radziwiłł, Sapieha, Lubomirski, and 
Czartoryski wielded a tremendous military and political power in Poland and Lithuania. 
Their power in large part stemmed from the royal court’s difficulty in securing funding 
from the diet. This meant that the crown was heavily dependent on loans from wealthy 
magnates. In return, the powerful clans were leased royal lands and the associated 
revenue.78 While the 1567 diet established that a quarter of the revenue from these lands 
would go towards national defense, the lack of an effective bureaucracy and land survey 
meant that monarchs were able to collect substantially less in practice.79 This compounded 
the issue of magnate power, as they became even wealthier and the monarchy lost access 
to regular revenue from crown lands. Additionally, while the royal bureaucracy was often 
unable to even collect the taxes from its own lands effectively, the magnates developed 
efficient systems for collecting taxes and labor, enslaving the peasants and provoking anger 
and resentment.80 In fact, the Khmelnytsky Uprising was at least partially due to 
exploitation of the peasants and Cossacks by regional magnates and szlachta.81 
 
This situation was bemoaned by many within the Commonwealth, and Karwicki proposed 
the return of all leased lands to the crown upon the renter’s death. This would give the 
monarchy a solid base of revenue from which to collect the funds necessary to pay the 
army.82 However, this was never put into practice, and the vast revenue from appropriated 
crown lands gave many magnate families the ability to establish private armies to defend 
their vast domains all over Poland and Lithuania. Immediately after the Khmelnytsky 
Uprising, the entire royal army numbered 5,400 men, while the palatine of Ruthenia Jeremi 
Wiśniowiecki (1612-1651) could muster up to 12,000 men to defend his lands in the 

 
78 Frost, After the Deluge, 142. 
79 Frost, After the Deluge, 20. A quarter, known as a kwarta, provides the linguistic root for the wojsko 
kwarciane, theoretically paid with a quarter of the revenue from royal lands. 
80 Gordon, Cossack Rebellions, 41.  
81 Davies, God’ Playground, 446. 
82 Karwicki, Dzieła Polityczne z Początku XVIII Wieku, 145. 



 

88 
 

southeast.83 Similarly, the “Alban Band” of Prince Karol Stanisław Radziwiłł (1734-1790) 
consisted of 6,000 retainers lavishly dressed in snow white.84 These troops were 
frequently used to further the interests of the magnates. For example, the early response to 
the Khmelnytsky Uprising was almost exclusively from the private army of Jeremi 
Wiśniowiecki, who possessed substantial land holdings in the regions affected by the 
revolt.85 This type of private military intervention naturally did little to soothe the existing 
tensions between the Cossacks and peasants and their magnate overlords, whose power 
was so extensive that they, not the king, were perceived by Khmelnytsky’s followers as the 
enemy. During the beginning of the revolt, Khmelnytsky maintained his loyalty to the king, 
insisting that his quarrel was with the magnates and not the Crown.86 This conceptual 
disconnect of the king from the de facto rulers of the southeast of the Commonwealth 
illustrates the extent of magnate power and independence. Unfortunately, this freedom 
would be a significant catalyst for the woes befalling the Commonwealth after 1648. 
 
While contributing to tensions with the Cossacks and peasantry, the power of the magnates 
also allowed them to conduct their own foreign policy and diplomacy, which often pitted 
rival families against each other. For instance, Stanisław Z� ółkiewski was a lifelong enemy of 
the powerful Potocki family on account of their support for the Austrian faction at court. He 
went so far as to lay the blame for the deterioration of the Commonwealth’s position after 
the 1610 Russian campaign at their feet. He accused them of convincing King Władysław IV 
to violate the treaty with Muscovy so that Z� ółkiewski would not get all the glory for 
brokering the peace.87 Z� ółkiewski also criticized the king for acting in bad faith and being 
amenable to arguments of the Potocki’s, since “facile creditur quod desideratur” (It is easy 
to believe what you desire [to believe]).88 The fact that Z� ółkiewski would be bold enough to 
include such an insult in his account illustrates hostility vis-à-vis not only other magnate 
clans but also the monarch himself. These tensions and even military dangers stemming 
from magnate influence were perhaps best illustrated by the period from 1648 to 1660. 
This era represented a time of unique crisis for the Commonwealth as it conducted a war 
against Muscovy before being invaded by Sweden in 1655. Lithuania in particular had been 
devastated by the Muscovites, and the local nobility felt abandoned by the Poles as the diet 
refused to approve the necessary funding for its military defense.89 These ill feelings were 
exacerbated by anti-Protestant sentiment targeted against Janusz Radziwiłł (1612-1655), 
one of the premier magnates in Lithuania and also a Calvinist (see figure 4).90 Not 
surprisingly, the troops sent to face Sweden had extremely low morale and capitulated at 
Ujście after a brief struggle. This, coupled with a resumed Muscovite offensive, convinced 
Radziwiłł that the Grand Duchy needed to beg for Swedish protection in order to preserve 
the liberties of its gentry. Consequently, he signed a treaty at Kiejdany in 1655, which 

 
83 Frost, After the Deluge, 17-18. 
84 Davies, God’s Playground, 226. 
85 Frost, After the Deluge, 18. 
86 Davies, God’s Playground, 446. 
87 Z� ółkiewski, Początek I Progres Wojny Moskiewskiej, 66. 
88 Z� ółkiewski, Początek I Progres Wojny Moskiewskiej, 67. Author’s translation of Polish translation of Latin 
phrase. 
89 Frost, After the Deluge, 44. 
90 Frost, After the Deluge, 44. 



 

89 
 

effectively abolished the Polish-Lithuanian Union and established Lithuania as essentially a 
Swedish vassal.  
 

 
 

Figure 4: Daniel Schultz, Portrait of Janusz Radziwiłł (1612-1655), 165491 
 
The surrender at Ujście and the subsequent Treaty of Kiejdany set off a chain reaction of 
military disasters, leading to the occupation of most of Poland by Sweden. The Polish 
szlachta were reluctant to contribute their own funds to the war effort in Lithuania, and 
Radziwiłł subsequently allied himself with Sweden in order to protect his own interests 
and those of the local nobility. While there were a variety of factors leading up to the 
Khmelnytsky Uprising and the Treaty of Kiejdany, the power and influence of prominent 
magnate families can be seen as a major contributor to these disastrous events. Both saw 
the military effectiveness of the Commonwealth severely hampered by the independent 

 
91 Daniel Schultz, Portrait of Janusz Radziwiłł (1612-1655), 1654, oil on canvas, National Art Museum of 
Belorussian Republik, Minsk, 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Janusz_Radziwi%C5%82%C5%82_by_Daniel_Schultz.PNG, 
accessed November 6, 2021. 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Janusz_Radziwi%C5%82%C5%82_by_Daniel_Schultz.PNG


 

90 
 

actions taken by these magnates acting in their own self-interest or in the interests of some 
subgroup within the Commonwealth.  
 
Conclusion 
A variety of military factors contributed to the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian 
Commonwealth. These included suboptimal composition of the armed forces, 
underfunding, and power of the magnates, which all served to stymie attempts at reform 
and restrict the Commonwealth’s ability to establish a strong standing army. This failure to 
create such a force was caused in part by the controversy and eventual dissolution of the 
Cossack Register, which would permanently cripple the ability of Poland and Lithuania to 
wage war. Similarly damaging was the Commonwealth’s reliance on cavalry, which would 
prove ineffective against more Westernized armies, especially Sweden’s. While there were 
concerted efforts at reform during the reigns of Jan Kazimierz and August II, they were 
doomed by political controversy. All these challenges left an army that was not only 
antiquated and small but also underpaid, as inefficient bureaucracy and competing 
interests confounded efforts to regularly pay the Commonwealth’s soldiers. Consequently, 
commanders in the field such as Hetman Stanisław Z� ółkiewski and Jan Chrysostom Pasek 
were forced to appeal unsuccessfully to sentiments of patriotism and self-sacrifice in order 
to induce their soldiers to fight. Finally, the outsized power of magnates allowed them a 
degree of autonomy that precipitated the catastrophic Khmelnytsky Uprising and the 
Treaty of Kiejdany. All of these factors made a significant but perhaps understudied 
contribution to the partitions of the Commonwealth. 
 


