THE NOBLE DEMOCRACY 275
Pan Bog nas ma jak blaznow. I to prawdy blisko,
Ze miedzy ludzmi Polak jest Boze igrzysko.*
The trouble with such Jeremiads was that they did not appear to tally with
the promptings of practical experience. To the modern observer, the benefits of
a centralized state may possibly appear obvious; to the nobleman of the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries, they did not. From the vantage-point of
Warsaw or Wilno or Kiev, life in the Republic, despite its discomforts, looked
far superior to that in the surrounding countries. To those generations of Poles
and Lithuanians who observed the gentilities of Ivan the Terrible at first hand,
who watched the subjugation of Hungary by the Ottomans, or the destruction
of the Bohemian nobility by the Habsburgs, 'Absolutism' was indistinguishable
from tyranny. The Polish nobility had little practical knowledge of conditions
in Western Europe. When they talked of the absolutum dominum which they so
much feared, they were not thinking of France or Spain. For them, the only real
models for judgement were the 'clerical' despotism of Austria, the 'oriental'
despotism of Turkey, and the 'barbarian' despotism of Muscovy. What is more,
Absolutism did not seem to be much of a hedge against civil commotion. The
ceaseless alarms in the adjacent Ottoman dependencies of Transylvania and
Moldavia; the Time of Troubles in Muscovy; and above all the Thirty Years
War in the Holy Roman Empire, all supported the view that political life under
Absolutism was no more stable than under the 'Polish Anarchy'. It was all very
well for Skarga or Opalinski to denounce the excesses of the 'Golden Freedom'.
Their listeners, and their successors, were perfectly aware of that. What they
doubted was that the Anarchy could really be exchanged for something better.
Foreign refugees played a definite role in the formation of these attitudes. The
Republic was a known haven for political and religious exiles, from Jews and
Hussites to the later victims of Absolutism. The arrival of illustrious defectors,
like Andre Dudith, Bishop of Pecs, one-time ambassador of the Emperor, of the
Mogila factions from Moldavia and Wallachia, or of Prince Kurbsky, counsel-
lor of Ivan IV, could not but confirm the nobility in their entrenched convic-
tions.
Andrei Mikhailovitch Kurbsky (1528-83), in particular, was an active publi-
cist and politician. Born into one of the ancient dynasties of Muscovy, he spent
his early career in the service and the company of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. He was
a distinguished general in the Kazan and the Livonian campaigns, and a promi-
nent member of the boyar Council. His disaffection began with the abolition of
the Council in 1560, and grew amidst the mounting horrors of the Oprichnina.
In 1564, when commander of Tartu on the Livonian front, he decided to defect,
and on the night of 29-30 April, he crossed the lines to the Lithuanian-held
* 'Poland stands by unrule'—as someone well remarked.
Yet someone else replied that by unrule she shall perish.
The Good Lord takes us for buffoons. It's near the truth
That of all the human race, the Pole is God's clown.^26