304 SERENISSIMA
nine years of his mission, he had maintained a weekly correspondence with
Louis XIV and de Lionne. His 'Relations' are a model of punctilious observa-
tion and human insight.^19
In a situation where Polish politics were dominated by Franco-Austrian
rivalry, the Vatican represented one of the few authorities capable of holding the
ring. Rightly or wrongly, the Republic was counted as one of the major gains of
the Counter-Reformation, and at the end of the sixteenth century figured promi-
nently in the Vatican's plans for consolidating its position in Eastern Europe.
But in the course of the seventeenth century, local politics constantly impinged,
and a long line of Papal Nuncios battled on against problems increasingly
beyond their control. During the Wars of the 1650s, Monsignor Vedoni did
much to inspire Polish resistance with Catholic fervour, and in 1657, the mirac-
ulous preservation of the monastery of Czestochowa from Swedish cannon-balls
under the patronage of its Black Madonna raised the Marian cult into a national
religion. When Vedoni first intoned 'Regina Poloniae Ora Pro Nobis' in the
cathedral of Lwow, he was starting a Catholic tradition which still regards the
'Queen of Heaven' as 'Queen of Poland'. But in the 1660s, Monsignor Pignatelli,
the future Innocent XII, watched helplessly as Lubomirski's Rebellion led to
Civil War and then to the fragmentation of the Roman Party. Pignatelli's suc-
cessor, Galeazzo Marescotti, arrived in Warsaw in mid-1668 at the time when
Jan Kazimierz was sinking towards abdication. After his welcome by the Bishop
of Kiev and his formal entry into the capital, he attended regular audiences with
the King on Sunday afternoons. But he could do nothing to shake the King's
determination to resign the burdens of office. During the ensuing election, in
July 1669, he remained in Warsaw in defiance of the law, and canvassed the can-
didature of the Prince of Lorraine, the Emperor's choice. But on the day, at
the Wola Field, he confined his address to the electors to remarks about the
Republic's need for a God-fearing and Catholic King. Marescotti attended the
ceremony of the Pacta Conventa in the Cathedral of St. John, and travelled to
Cracow for King Michal's Coronation in September. On 16 February 1670 at
Czestochowa, he married the King to the Archduchess Eleonora of Austria. At
which point he was promoted to the nunciatura in Madrid.
In Sobieski's early years, papal designs were complicated by the French con-
nection, but in 1679-88, Monsignor Pallavicini succeeded for a time in over-
coming past difficulties and in co-ordinating the Republic into the operations of
the Holy League. At the election of 1697, papal plans misfired once again, and
the Republic slipped for ever beyond the close orbit of the Catholic-Imperial
Camp. In general, the expectations of the nuncios in Warsaw were high, their
influence slight, and their task thankless.^20
The limitations of diplomacy are underlined still more by the experiences of
the Englishman Lawrence Hyde, who journeyed to Poland in 1676. In pursuit of
the rapprochement with France, and of his plans to recover Prussia, Sobieski
sought to exploit Louis XIV's recent patronage of Charles II and to deflect
England from its traditional Protestant, Prussophile alignment. On 29 October