330 VASAduring the ceremony, insisting that the King keep all three fingers exactly erect
during the swearing of the oath. He refused to kneel before the new monarch,
and rolled his coronet at the King's feet as a sign of defiance. After five months
of fruitless argument, and a number of incidents between the Polish and
Transylvanian guard and the Stockholm mob, Zygmunt fled, leaving, Duke
Charles and the aristocratic Council as joint-regents.^3 When he arrived in
Cracow, he forestalled a movement to hold a new election. Whichever way he
turned, it seemed, he was bound to lose. In 1598, he returned to Sweden with an
army, but to no effect. At the first confrontation, at Stangebro, he ordered his
victorious troops to refrain from fratricidal slaughter. At the second, at
Linkoping, his cavalry refused to charge. He left Sweden for ever. In 1599, he
was formally deposed. Duke Charles gradually eliminated those nobles who had
remained loyal to their rightful king; and in 1604 with the aid of the Diet was
able to arrange for his own election. As Charles IX, he was thus the founder of
the line of Protestant Vasas who made such an impression on seventeenth-
century Europe. (See Diagram F.) This long struggle had inevitably alienated
many of Zygmunt's Polish subjects. Whatever policies he pursued in the future,
he was sure to be seen as a ruler who had shown more concern for Sweden than
for Poland. For this reason, if for no other, his reputation has always suffered in
Polish eyes. (See Map 17.)
In effect, both Zygmunt and his sons proved to be competent managers. They
were not allowed to be innovators. But neither were they fanatics, nor latent
despots. Of course, they made mistakes. But most of the troubles which shook
the Republic in their time can be attributed less to poor leadership than to the
inflexibility of a system whose arteries were visibly hardening. What is more, in
the three or four decades which preceded the shattering rebellion of Chmielnicki
in 1648, in an era when the rest of Central Europe was rent by disasters of every
sort, the Republic of Poland-Lithuania reached its greatest territorial extent and
enjoyed prosperity and security to a degree which was never repeated.
In matters of religion, fashionable excess was largely avoided. Like Bathory,
Zygmunt III was a devout Catholic, and a firm adherent of the aims of the
Counter-Reformation. Jan Kazimierz actually served for a time in the ranks of
the Society of Jesus, and became a cardinal. Catholics were preferred at court,
and in state appointments. Large numbers of nobles returned to the Roman
faith. The predominant tone, set by Skarga, was one of enthusiasm but not of
coercion. Sectarians of all shades flourished, although a certain intolerance was
seen in specific acts of the Sejm in the 1630s. Calvinists, Lutherans, and Jews
maintained their privileges. At the Union of Brest in 1596, the Orthodox com-
munity entered a period of strife which was brought under control, if not solved,
by the compromise of 1632.
In social affairs, a decisive stage was reached in the growth of magnatial for-
tunes. Zamoyski, who started his career as a tribune of the noble democracy,
emerged as an overmighty subject of the most embarrassing kind. Radziwill was
equally powerful in Lithuania. Their power was perpetuated by the rush of