Polish-Lithuanian Unions 1385–1791

In medieval and early modern monarchies unions (personal, dynastic or real) were the most common form of integration of various states. Even if after some time these unions disintegrated, some states often renewed the union, sometimes only in a changed configuration or political form.
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Jadwiga, daughter of Louis I, the king of Hungary and Poland, ascended the Polish throne in 1384. In 1386, she married Jogaila, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, who thus became the king of Poland and took the name Władysław II Jagiełło. The marriage, contracted on the basis of the act concluded in Krewo (today Kreva in Belarus), was supposed to strengthen the position of Poland and Lithuania especially in their conflict with the Teutonic Order. The consequence of the union was the Christianisation of Lithuania and the creation of one of the most powerful alliances in late medieval Europe.
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After Władysław II Jagiełło’s coronation as king of Poland, his cousin Vytautas concluded a temporary alliance with the Teutonic Order. Władysław granted Vytautas direct rule over Lithuania, but kept the supreme power for himself. The cousins pursued a joint policy against the Order, which led to the Teutonic defeat at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410. The union signed in 1413 in the village of Horodło strengthened the ties between  Poland and Lithuania.
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Alexander Jagiellon, grandson of Władysław II Jagiełło and son of Casimir IV Jagiellon, took over as Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1492, while his elder brother Jan Olbracht was crowned king of Poland. Thus the personal union between Poland and Lithuania, maintained during their father’s lifetime, ceased to function formally. In spite of that, the brothers cooperated closely with each other. After Jan Olbracht’s death in 1501, Alexander became king of Poland, renewing the personal union between the two states. However, the new union signed in Piotrków and Mielnik in 1501, intended to link Poland and Lithuania more closely, was eventually rejected by the Lithuanian side.
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King Sigismund II Augustus, despite three marriages, did not live to see his successor, becoming the last ruler from the Jagiellonian dynasty in Poland and Lithuania. In the Declaration on the Polish-Lithuanian Union of 1564, he ceded his hereditary rights to Lithuania to Poland. This enabled a real union between Poland and Lithuania, accepted by the parliament, the Sejm, in Lublin in 1569.
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After long negotiations at the Sejm in Lublin in 1569, the senators and deputies agreed to conclude a real union between Poland and Lithuania. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was to have a common ruler, a common parliament and a common currency. However, both countries retained some of their separate privileges and institutions.
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The engraving by Giacomo Lauro shows the arrangement of the General Sejm, composed of the Senate and the Chamber of the Deputies, proceeding together in the presence of the king. Clerical (Roman Catholic archbishops and bishops) and lay senators (voivodes and castellans) are seated on the royal “right” and “left,” while the crowd of deputies is standing behind them. The chairs opposite the throne are occupied by the 10 most important ministers of the Republic: on the right – the marshals, chancellor, deputy chancellor and treasurer of the Crown, and on the left – the ministers of Lithuania.
See the engraving by Giacomo Lauro.

Until the mid-16th century, the General Sejm consisted exclusively of representatives of Polish lands. After the Union of 1569, they were joined by senators and deputies of Lithuania. In the Chamber of Deputies there were 133 deputies from Poland and 44 from Lithuania. This disproportion was compensated for by the fact that they all voted according to the principle of unanimity and the order of sitting. Thanks to this, the most important regions of Lithuania spoke together with the most important regions of Poland.
See the scheme of sitting and voting in the Sejm.

From 1573 the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was an electoral monarchy – after the death or abdication of a king the Sejm would elect a new ruler. The  representatives the nobility from all provinces would come to Warsaw and, after debates which lasted up to several weeks, they would nominate a new monarch.
Click on the PDF-button to see the looks of the members of the elective Sejm at the end of the 18th century, in the last decades of the Commonwealth’s existence.

“One of the fundamental ways the state as such is imagined seems to involve the conviction that it endures beyond the succession of the generations living and dying within it.”
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