(^256) ANARCHIA
officers, having taken a great deal of money from other candidates, say 'Wait! Have we
gone mad?'. .. Pisarski asks me what I think of the situation. 'I think what God has put
in my heart,' I replied, 'Vivat Rex Michael'. Whereon, I ride out of our line, charging
after Sandomierz; and all our squadrons with their standards follow....
Then we led Wisniowiecki to the Assembly. There were congratulations for the King,
... and heartache for the evildoers.^7
This extreme application of the elective principle to the monarchy of
Poland-Lithuania recalls James Bryce's famous judgement on the constitution
of the Holy Roman Empire in medieval Germany. Speaking of the formalization
of the imperial electoral system by the Emperor Charles IV in 1356, Bryce com-
mented: 'He legalised anarchy, and called it a constitution.'^8 The parallel is an
apt one. Many scholars, including Bryce, have held the Polish constitution to be
a derivative, if not a copy, of the German system. Certainly, the ultimate
supremacy of the Electors over the monarch provided one of the main causes of
the monarchy's decline, in Poland-Lithuania, as also in Germany.
Once elected, the king-elect proceeded to the Sejm to hear the nobility's pro-
posals concerning the conditions on which they would agree to his coronation.
In 1573, after the first election, nine such articles were drawn up for Henry
Valois. In subsequent reigns, these 'Henrican Articles' formed a fixed constitu-
tional contract which never varied. They insisted, among other things, on the
nobility's right to elect their king freely in the future, irrespective of the king's
plans for his own family; on their right to approve all declarations of war, all
impositions of taxes, and all summons of the levee-en-masse; on regular meet-
ings of the Sejm according to the Union of Lublin, and on the principle of toler-
ation as enshrined in the act of the Confederation of Warsaw; and on the
nomination of the sixteen resident Senators, not by the king, but by the Sejm. A
final article enunciated the nobility's right of resistance, indeed their duty to dis-
obey the king if he contravened his oath. In 1576, at the second election, a num-
ber of additional articles, called Facta Conventa or 'agreed points', were
negotiated with Stefan Bathory. They related to specific promises which he had
made at the time of his election regarding the conduct of foreign policy and the
management of the royal debt; but they were not renewed. For the rest of the
Republic's history, the terms 'Pacta Conventa' and 'Henrician Articles' were
used indiscriminately. By these means, the King of the Republic was appointed
as a lifelong manager, working on contract to the rules of the firm. From coro-
nation to the grave, he could have no illusions but that he was the servant, and
the nobility his master.^9
Yet parliamentary control over the royal Executive was by no means com-
plete. In the detailed conduct of government, the king retained important pow-
ers, and considerable room for political manoeuvre. For 98 weeks out of 104, he
was the undisputed ruler of the Republic. As the incumbent of the Crown
estates, he directly managed one-sixth of the land and population, disposing
of economic and military resources greater than those of the greatest of the mag-
nates. As a political patron, he could offer his loyal supporters not merely the
c. jardin
(C. Jardin)
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