(^260) ANARCHIA
towns of Wielkopolska formed a confederation to rid themselves of outlaws
who were infesting the province. In 1382-4, both burghers and nobles formed a
confederation to guard against a suspected plot on the death of King Louis of
Anjou. In 1439, a confederation was formed by the magnate, Spytek of
Melsztyn. In the 1560s, the Army went into confederation to ensure payment of
its arrears; and in 1573, the whole Sejm joined in the Confederation of Warsaw
in order to establish the principle of religious toleration. In the seventeenth cen-
tury, major confederations were formed in 1656, and again in 1672: and in the
eighteenth century, in 1704,1715,1733,1767,1768, and 1792. By that time, they
were almost as frequent as sessions of the Sejm. On all these occasions, the con-
federates followed a time-honoured procedure. They met together at an
appointed time and place, as if to attend their dietine, and drew up an 'act of
confederation' which listed their demands and grievances. They would then
swear an oath to fight together to the death against all comers. Henceforth, dur-
ing the life of the Confederation, they kept their common counsel in regular
assemblies, and, unlike the Sejm, passed their resolutions on policy and tactics
by majority voting. When their ends had been achieved, or when they had been
defeated in battle, their association was formally terminated, and they were
released from the consequences of their oath. In effect, the Confederation was a
legalized form of civil war, and no one thought it unusual.^13
Confederation, of course, should not be confused with rebellion. To the ide-
ologists of the Republic, the two were entirely different. Confederation was a
legal procedure. It was undertaken in the name of the common good, by citizens
acting in defence of the law, and conscious of its protection. Rebellion, in con-
trast, assumed that the aim of the action was illegal, and that legal procedures
had not been observed. It is true, of course, that rebels and outlaws would usu-
ally try to blur the issue by vaunting their worthy motives and by maintaining
that they, too, were acting for the common good. Yet in the greatest rebellion of
the Republic's history, the issues were not so blurred. Chmielnicki did not claim
that his actions were legal; neither did he attempt to form a Confederation as a
cover to his cause. In terms of damage and disturbance, the Rebellion of 1648
was fairly matched by the troubles of the perfectly legal 'Kokosz' of 1606-9 and
of 1665-6.
The 'Rokosz' was a particular form of Confederation. In origin, it was a
name given to mounted assemblies of the entire nobility as at the royal elections,
and derived from the field of Rakos outside Buda, where the Hungarian nobles
had customarily met to confirm their privileges in like manner. But in so far as
successive monarchs opposed the practice, except for the purpose of royal elec-
tions, it came to be associated with movements of resistance against the king. In
the reign of Zygmunt III, in the eyes of the Regalist party, it was tantamount to
treason; in the eyes of their opponents, it formed the quintessence of the 'Golden
Freedom'.
The conflict between King and Nobility came to a head in 1606. The King
clearly did not possess either the ambition or the mettle to erect the absolution
c. jardin
(C. Jardin)
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