God’s Playground. A History of Poland, Vol. 1. The Origins to 1795

(^202) HANDEL
was exceeded in its destructiveness only by the decade 1700-10 when the Great
Northern "War ebbed and flowed across Poland. In between times, drought,
floods, storms, blight, and the plague did their work. The records of the
Lubomirski's estate at Kanczuga, for instance, mention the following incidents:
1654: Quartering of Crown cavalry and German regiments: looting of Kanczuga
town, and Gac village.
1655: Quartering of Swedish Army.
1656: Requisitioning by Crown, Swedish, Transylvanian and Cossack forces.
1657: Transylvanian Requisitioning.
1689: Drought. Failure of oats, and of sowing.
1708-10: Military contributions: burning of the barns with all stores: collapse of the
town and markets.
1721: Plague.
1734-5: Crop failure: passage of troops, requisitioning.
At Opatow, near Sandomierz, the story was similar, though aggravated by the
raids of a hostile neighbour, Stanislaw Jagninski, whose men, having driven off
the inhabitants, would regularly harvest the Lubomirski's crops for themselves.
In such conditions, trade was bound to be affected. At Kanczuga, in 1654-8,
34 per cent of the rye, 24 per cent of the wheat, 12 per cent of the barley, 15 per
cent of the hemp, 3 per cent of the oats, and 2 per cent of the buckwheat was
actually sold. In the next five-year period, 1659-63, the percentages rose respec-
tively to 37 (rye), 48 (wheat), 29 (barley), 6 (hemp), 10 (oats), and 1 (buckwheat).
On a yearly breakdown for corn sold locally as against corn exported beyond
the locality fluctuations are still more marked. In 1654, Kanczuga exported 55.2
per cent of its rye, but nothing else. In 1655 and 1656, barely enough was sal-
vaged for sowing, the only sales being small quantities of rye and oats disposed
of locally. In 1657, 56.6 per cent of the rye was exported, but again nothing else.
In 1658 and 1659, nothing was exported at all, despite a reasonable harvest. The
year 1660 when the war ended, was a bumper one, and 58.5 per cent of the rye
and 46.4 per cent of the wheat was exported. In 1661, rye at 44.8 per cent held
steady, though such wheat as there was, was sold locally. In 1662 and 1663, rye
exports at 9.2 per cent and 3.7 per cent dropped in response to the increased
wheat exports, which at 50.6 per cent and 57 per cent were the highest of the
decade. Taking the ten years as a whole, therefore, average figures are quite
misleading. Of the two major grains, rye seems to have ensured the more
reliable surplus. Wheat was only exported when both the harvest and external
conditions combined to justify sizeable shipments. From total production, large
quantities had always to be held back for sowing, for wages in kind, for feeding
livestock, for home consumption, for assisting the serfs, for transfer to other
less successful estates of the latifundium, for milling, for military deliveries, for
storage, or for local sale; and it was only in favourable years that any one estate
produced enough to make export worthwhile. In any given year, an estate
would tend either to export upwards of half its rye and wheat, or else to export
nothing.