176 SZLACHTAfour secretaries, four sewers, twenty chamberlains, and sixty senior clients. In
addition, there would have been a swarm of aplikanty (candidate clients),
komorniki (seneschals), rezydenci (resident advisers), treasurers, ostlers, mas-
ters-of-robes, masters-of-horse, pages, messengers, military captains, and, of
course, a similar array of ladies-in-waiting to serve in the female quarters. The
non-noble personnel would have included the court physician, the surgeon, the
artist, the ballet-master, the pastrycook, the gardener, the engineer, the archi-
tect, the director of music, and the ekonom or general manager; cooks,
turnkeys, carters, carpenters, butlers, ostlers, cellarers, and domestics. There
was also an exotic tradition of keeping jesters, foreigners, dwarfs, and histor-
ians. It was not exceptional for Polish magnates to have German barons in their
retinue. The Tartar custom of carrying off human yasir into slavery was
matched by the Polish custom of holding Tartar or Negro prisoners as personal
slaves.
The scourge of the noble retinues was described by Ignacy Krasicki, Bishop of
Warmia, with more than a touch of irony:
His Grace, the almighty tyrant, the tin-god of his locality
Maintains a numerous court, as a sign of his splendid quality.
From this arise higher officials, and a host of lesser creeps;
The Master-of-Horse who beats, and the stable boy who weeps.
There's the thieving bursar; and the absentee butler;
The courtier-footman who expects to be served by a page
Because his own noble birth entitles him to rant and to rage.
There's the architect whose plans do not actually work;
The physician who kills his patients; and the dreaming clerk;
The steward who shortens his measures; the accountant who fakes
His figures, like the attorney in court; the agent who takes
More than he earns, and, whilst cheating the lesser rooks,
Is himself exploited in the cause of more important crooks;
The gamekeeper who dines on venison, but never guards the game;
The 'yes-man' retainer, whose nod to the master is always the same;
The Captain who fleeces the Jews whenever they come to trade;
The soldiers who merely act as ushers whenever a banquet's laid;
The Corporal of dragoons, who pilfers more than his company;
And the Drum Major who beats the tattoo from his balcony,
And who, on church parade, as he leads the guests to their places,
Sounds a ragged drum-roll, not to God's glory, but to His Grace's.^18
Hence corruption spread from top to bottom. Venality, debt, and dependence
sapped the nobleman's ability to change with the times. Great men exploited
their inferiors, and lesser men aped their betters.
The rush of ordinations in the Vasa Period provides clear proof that the mag-
natial oligarchy was putting down roots. For this reason it was fiercely resented
by the Nobility as a whole. There is plenty of evidence, however, which suggests
that at least until the mid-seventeenth century the estates of the 'middle nobil-
ity' were just as prosperous as those of the magnates. According to Andrzej