Sigismund I the Old

• 1. Introduction

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  Sigismund I the Old was born on the 1st of January 1467 as the fifth son of a king, and nobody expected him to rule anything. His eldest brother took the throne of Bohemia and Hungary. His other brothers divided Poland and Lithuania between them. For the first four decades of his life, Sigismund was a man without land, without title, and without prospects. He spent years petitioning relatives for scraps of territory, enduring failed attempts to install him on the throne of Moldavia, and waiting. Then, in a single year, both of his reigning brothers died, and in 1506, at the age of thirty-nine, Sigismund finally became king. What happened next would shape Poland and Lithuania for generations. How did a man who spent so long on the margins build a reign that lasted forty-two years? And how did an Italian-born duchess reshape the culture of a northern kingdom she had never seen?

• 2. A Life Without Land

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  Casimir IV died in 1492, and at that moment Sigismund was his only son who held no titles and no land whatsoever. He spent 1495 and 1496 writing letters to his brother Alexander, asking for territory. His mother, Elizabeth of Austria, tried separately to secure him a seat on the Austrian throne. Both campaigns came to nothing. In 1497, his brother King John I Albert led an army into Moldavia with the explicit goal of placing Sigismund on its throne. That campaign, too, collapsed in disaster. It was not until his eldest brother Vladislaus, King of Bohemia and Hungary, intervened that Sigismund received anything at all. Vladislaus granted him the Duchy of Głogów in 1499 and the Duchy of Opava in 1501. By 1504, Sigismund had also become governor of Silesia and Lower Lusatia. When John I Albert died suddenly in 1501 and his successor Alexander died in 1506, the path finally cleared. On the 20th of September 1506, the Lithuanian Ducal Council elected Sigismund Grand Duke of Lithuania in Vilnius, and on the 8th of December 1506, the Polish Senate in Piotrków elected him King of Poland. He was crowned four days after arriving in Kraków on the 20th of January 1507, in Wawel Cathedral, by Primate Andrzej Boryszewski.

• 3. The Chicken War

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  A rebellion in Lwów in 1537 earned one of history's more undignified names. Polish nobles gathered near the city in what was supposed to be a military levée en masse, demanding a campaign against Moldavia. Instead, the lesser and middle nobility turned the assembly into a revolt against the king himself. They presented Sigismund with thirty-six demands. Among the most significant were a halt to Queen Bona's land acquisitions, exemption of the nobility from the tithe, and adoption of a principle called Incompatibilitas, which would prevent any individual from holding two or more official administrative positions simultaneously. The magnates who sided with Sigismund coined the name "Chicken War" in mockery, claiming the rebellion's only real achievement was the near-extinction of the local chickens, which the assembled nobles had eaten. The revolt exposed deep fractures among the nobility's own leadership. Too divided to risk a civil war, the protesters eventually agreed to what was called a compromise. Sigismund rejected the bulk of their demands. He did accept the principle of Incompatibilitas the following year and agreed not to force a vivente rege election of a future king. The nobles went home having gained very little. Three weeks before the revolt took shape, Sigismund had issued an edict hostile to the interests of high-ranking nobles, and tax matters were almost certainly part of what drove the anger.

• 4. Wars on the Eastern Frontier

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  Vasili III of Muscovy began pressing westward in 1507, before Sigismund had fully consolidated command of the Polish army. Tensions sharpened when Vasili discovered that Sigismund was paying the Crimean Khan, Meñli I Giray, to attack the Grand Duchy of Moscow from the south. In December 1512, Muscovite forces marched into Lithuania targeting Smolensk, a major trading center between Russia and Europe. Two sieges in 1513 failed, but the city fell to the Muscovites in July 1514. Russia then suffered a catastrophic reversal at the Battle of Orsha on the 8th of September 1514, where the Polish-Lithuanian forces inflicted a major defeat that blocked Russian ambitions over the former Kievan Rus' lands. The Polish side exploited the victory for propaganda, dispatching a letter to Rome that described the Muscovites in strikingly hostile terms. In 1518, Russian forces were repelled again at the siege of Polotsk. A truce was signed in 1522 and held until 1534. When Grand Hetman Jerzy Radziwiłł and the Tatars pillaged western Russia in 1534, Muscovy struck back. Polish commander Jan Amor Tarnowski eventually stopped them at Starodub in 1535. That outcome secured the Polish-Lithuanian union's eastern border until the beginning of the Livonian War in 1558.

• 5. The Teutonic Knights and the Prussian Homage

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  Over two centuries of intermittent war against the Teutonic Knights came to an end in 1525 with the Treaty of Kraków, following the final Polish-Teutonic War of 1519-1521. The Order had long resisted paying tribute to Polish monarchs, even after the Second Peace of Thorn in 1466 had placed it under Polish suzerainty. Under the new treaty, the Order was secularised and became, in practice, a puppet state of Poland. Sigismund's nephew Albert, Duke of Prussia, converted to Lutheranism under the persuasion of Martin Luther and paid formal feudal homage to his uncle in what became known in Polish and Lithuanian history as the Prussian Homage. In exchange, Albert received the Order's territories as the First Duke of Prussia. The Prussian Landtag assembled in Königsberg and embraced both the new Duke and the Protestant Reformation. The Teutonic Order thereafter retreated into the Holy Roman Empire, its military role in Prussia finished. The arrangement Sigismund reached with Albert carried a forward-looking condition: Albert's Protestant successors would continue paying feudal homage to Polish monarchs. That obligation held until the Treaty of Bromberg in 1657, when Brandenburg finally gained sovereignty over Ducal Prussia.

• 6. Renaissance Patronage

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  Bona Sforza, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, arrived in Poland as Sigismund's second wife in 1517 and brought Italian artists, architects, and sculptors with her. Among the figures who lived or worked at the Polish court were Bartholommeo Berecci, Francesco Fiorentino, Santi and Mateo Gucci, Bernardo Morando, Giovanni Battista di Quadro, and Hans Dürer. Most of the decorators working for the court were Italians and Germans. Wawel Castle in Kraków, the seat of Polish monarchs and one of the largest castles in Central Europe, was extensively reconstructed in the Renaissance style during Sigismund's reign. The Italian cloistered courtyard, corridors, archways, and portals were designed by Fiorentino with the help of Benedykt from Sandomierz. A similar design was applied at Niepołomice Castle, the Jagiellonian hunting retreat. The most permanent architectural monument Sigismund left behind is the funerary chapel at Wawel Cathedral, constructed between 1519 and 1533 according to plans by Bartolomeo Berrecci of Florence. Its exterior dome is gold-plated; its interior tombs, made of marble, were designed by Santi Gucci. Historians, experts, and architects have called it the most beautiful example of the Tuscan Renaissance north of the Alps. Sigismund also commissioned a 12.6-tonne bell named in his honour. The Royal Sigismund Bell was installed on the 13th of July 1521 on the northernmost tower of Wawel Cathedral and remains one of Poland's national symbols.

• 7. Health, Death, and Succession

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  Sigismund had suffered from fevers since his youth, and by the autumn of 1528 gout and acute rheumatism had begun attacking his joints and right leg. The condition recurred in 1529 and again in 1534. His son Sigismund Augustus was made co-king vivente rege in 1529, a decision driven in part by fears that the king's persistent pain could lead to sudden death. Bad eating habits compounded his decline; large amounts of beer and mead contributed to his ailing health. Eventually he could no longer walk and had to be carried in a litter. In 1543 he recovered from an influenza that swept Kraków, and in 1545 he managed a last hunting excursion to Niepołomice. He remained mentally sharp and politically engaged until the end. Sigismund died on the 1st of April 1548, Easter day, at the age of eighty-one, and was buried on the 7th of July at Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, next to his and Queen Bona's deceased younger son, Prince Albertus. His successor, Sigismund II Augustus, became the last Jagiellon king of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. The Jagiellon bloodline continued through Sigismund's daughter Catherine, who married John III of Sweden, until the death of their son John II Casimir Vasa.