234 MIASTO
population was largely Lithuanian or Ruthenian. Everywhere Jewish communi-
ties were well established in all the urban areas.
To most outward appearances the urban life of Poland-Lithuania at the time
of the Union of Lublin was heading in the same direction as that of Western
Europe. The future must have seemed to hold the prospect of unlimited growth
and prosperity. Both the inland and the seaborne trade were flourishing. The
spate of new incorporations was still in full flood. Great cities like Poznan and
Cracow, and small cities such as Tarnow, and Kazimierz Dolny, were being
adorned by architectural wonders commensurate to their new civil pride. Urban
society had reached the unprecedented level of 25 per cent of the Republic's total
population; and within the urban centres, the Christian burghers still outnum-
bered the growing Jewish estate. Yet the seeds of decay were already present. In
1565, only four years before the Union, the Polish Sejm had passed a law which
forbade native burghers to engage in foreign trade. As a result, thousands of
burghers resigned from the citizenship of their native towns in a desperate effort
to preserve their businesses. Henceforth, the more profitable branches of trade
were increasingly taken over either by agents of the nobility or by foreigners.
More seriously, large numbers of people were already finding the means to cir-
cumvent the regulations of city life, and thus to discredit it. The nobles ignored
the ban on their residence in royal cities, and broke the city laws with impunity.
Their private cities avoided the tolls, the market dues, the customs and the rights
of storage from which the older cities had lived; and their jurydyki offered
refuge to all the law-breakers and casual immigrants whom the city courts and
guilds sought to control. Their patronage of the Jews was a major stimulus
whereby the Christian burgher estate came to be physically outnumbered in
their own cities. For the time being, material prosperity masked the deeper
flaws. But the writing was already on the city walls.
Like all European capitals, Warsaw is, in its own way, unique. For much of its
history, it possessed few of the attributes of a capital city. For most of the mod-
ern period, it was more distinguished as the resort of intellectuals, burglars, and
insurrectionists than as the home of a ruling elite. On this score, it is more akin
to Dublin than to London or Washington. It is less elegant than Budapest or
Bucharest, less picturesque than Belgrade or Sofia, less venerable than Prague,
less impressive than Berlin. Most remarkably, when liberated by the Soviet
Army on 17 January 1945, its ruins sheltered not a single living soul. In this
regard, Warsaw is as ancient as a dozen European capitals: yet it is the youngest
of them all.^10
Warsaw's rise to pre-eminence among Polish cities owed less to its inherent
attributes than to its commanding strategic location. Perched on an elevated ter-
race above the high, left bank of the middle Vistula, it is peculiarly exposed to
the elements, especially to the east wind in winter. Lying in the middle of one of