(^116) JOGALIA
Yet Sigismund gained little understanding from the Sejm. He was a born parlia-
mentarian, and bore much offence patiently in the hope of reconciliation. He
shrugged his shoulders when his own supporters complained bitterly of the way
Crown Estates were still being traded for favours and securities: 'I had to mort-
gage them', he said sheepishly, 'because I had nothing to eat.' But he never for-
gave his subjects' intrusion into his love for the beautiful Barbara. In the Sejm in
1548, the first of his reign, he submitted to a detailed matrimonial interrogation,
and was told by the Senate to arrange a divorce:
Rex:... I wish that all people enjoyed true freedom of loving. I cannot break my mar-
riage vows without offence to my conscience... There are no genuine grounds for
divorce. ..
Archbishop: Your Royal Highness, grounds for divorce could be found ...
Rex: No doubt they could - if I were a man of ample conscience, but such am I not...
Envoy: It diminishes us, Your majesty, that you should have taken as your wife a woman
from such a family, and from a nation which received its nobility and its Christian faith
from us Poles only one and a half centuries ago.. 7
Sigismund bore the insults. Then, after refusing a year's taxes, the Sejm relented.
Barbara was crowned. But when she died shortly afterwards, the King was incon-
solable. His third, purely political marriage with Catherine of Austria, was disas-
trous. For the last years of his life, he lived alone and dressed in unrelieved black.
Sigismund's principal foreign preoccupation, the Livonian War, was forced
upon him by events beyond his control. Livonia, the northern Land of the
German Crusaders, had maintained its separate existence. But there, as in
Prussia, the Reformation gradually undermined the established political order.
In the 1550s, the Livonian state began to crumble. The Lutheran burghers of
Riga were at odds with the Catholic Church; and the German nobility were at
odds against themselves; the Grand Master of the Knights of the Sword,* von
Furtstemberg, was at odds with the Archbishop of Riga, Wilhelm von
Hohenzollern. The Swedes were interested in the northern area, adjoining
Swedish Finland; the Muscovites were seeking a 'window on the west'. The
Danes were interested in obstructing the Swedes. Sigismund was interested
in the fate of his cousin, the Archbishop. In 1557, a Polish army marched
towards Riga but halted when the Grand Master and the Archbishop settled
their differences. In 1558-9, a Muscovite army seized Dorpat and Narva and
carried the Grand Master off as a trophy. It was the signal for a multilateral
conflict involving the Swedes, the Danes, the Poles, and the Muscovites, which
contested the dominion of the whole Baltic area and was not finally resolved
until 1721. The Catholic party, neglected by the Emperor, turned to Poland for
protection. In 1561, Furstemberg's successor, Gotthard von Kettler, together
- The Order of the Knights of the Sword, founded in 1209 by Albrecht von Buxhovden,
Bishop of Riga, had pioneered the conquest of Livonia before being absorbed into the
Teutonic Order in 1237. Three centuries later, in consequence of the secularization of Prussia,
it was reconstituted under the name of the 'Brethren of Christ's Militia', and operated as a sov-
ereign unit until 1561.