THE LITHUANIAN UNION 117with Archbishop Wilhelm and representatives of all the estates of Livonia
assembled in Wilno to pay homage to Sigismund I. Kettler was to receive
Courland and Semigalia in fief; Riga was to be incorporated into the kingdom
with the same privileges and conditions as Danzig. It was a conscious copy of
the Prussian submissions of 1466 and 1525. A naval war began for control of the
Narva trade. The fifteen ships of Poland's 'Maritime Commission' were licensed
for unlimited piracy. An embassy was sent to Denmark to negotiate an alliance.
The King's sister, Katarzyna, was sent to Stockholm as a bride for the Swedish
Crown Prince. But with Muscovy no rapprochement was possible. Sigismund's
notification of the Wilno submission was answered by a brusque note from Ivan
IV demanding the return of Kiev, Volhynia, and Podolia, 'the patrimony of his
forebear, St. Vladimir'. The Lithuanian army was engaged from 1560, the Polish
army from 1563. In that year Polotsk was lost, and no means was found of
recovering Smolensk or Czernihow or of exploiting Ivan's preoccupations with
the Turks and his rebellious boyars. The Polish-Lithuanian Army camped for
seven years at Radoszkowice near Wilno, debating the state of the constitution,
and waiting in vain for a change in Muscovite attitudes. It was in the long, cold
evenings of enforced idleness in this encampment that the nobility of Poland and
Lithuania took stock of their mutual predicament. They were faced with a
numerous resilient fanatical foe who did not understand the meaning of mag-
nanimity or compromise. They perceived a danger far more acute than that pre-
sented by the late Teutonic Order. They foresaw a long, bitter struggle for
which their ramshackle political order was poorly designed. They understood
that the personal union of the two crowns, agreed in 1386 in face of the Teutonic
threat, no longer matched their needs, and that it would have to be replaced by
a new, organic, constitutional union. By the end of 1568, when the camp at
Radoszkowice disbanded, wide agreement had been reached on the ultimate
aim. But the terms were far from settled.
To anyone unfamiliar with the subject, the 'Polish Renaissance' sounds omi-
nously like an oxymoron. It may well seem highly improbable that a northern,
Slavonic country, far removed from the influence of the Ancient World or of
contemporary Italy, could ever have experienced the Renaissance in any but the
most superficial form.
Indeed, in many of the arts Poland did still lie on the periphery of Europe. In
architecture, the monuments which remain bear witness to the work of mainly
imported talent. The palaces of Baranow and Krasiczyn, or the decorated gra-
naries of Kazimierz Dolny are certainly minor jewels of their kind; but they do
not surprise the visitor who has seen Florence or Venice, or the chateaux of the
Loire. In painting, too, the Polish achievement was modest.
In the less tangible world of ideas, however; in science, literature, and learn-
ing, the Polish talent was astonishingly rich and profound. Here, in the reigns of