?#2: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

I'm back and now we're going to talk about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. "Now what is this nation that you're talking about Andrew?" Well you came to the right place Steve and let's travel back through time to talk about this nation. But first thing first a couple of interesting facts about this country:

• They were an elective monarchy
• They had laws pointing to a more liberal sense and more tolerable than the other powers of Europe
• They had a famous cavalry division called the Winged hussars

The history of the PLC starts with the union between Poland and Lithuania because of marriage. From that union both countries signed the Union of Lublin in 1569 and adopted an elective monarchy. This agreement was one of the greatest achievement Sigismund II Augustus. So the parliament lead the PLC for 3 years. The PLC reached its golden age in the early 17th Century where their territory almost reached the Black Sea.

 The Sejm (Parliament) made an important decision to go neutral in the Thirty Years' War and this proved to be vital as Europe were killing, The PLC were improving and they managed to defend themselves against Sweden, Russia, and the Vassals of the Ottoman Empire. The PLC even took Moscow for 2 years. This golden age didn't really last for long after the Khmelnytski Uprising in Ukraine (1648). Another blow to the PLC is the Swedish invasion supported by Brandeburg-Prussia and others. After the loss of territory, a weaken PLC sets their eyes on The Ottomans with the Holy Roman Empire in the Battle of Vienna which was the turning point for the Great Turkish War for the Christians and the Christians with the PLC pushed the Ottomans to the south of the Danube river and since then the Ottomans never bothered Central Europe. Even after this great victory the PLC still declined as they were facing a lot of internal problems and became a protectorate of the Russian Empire and after becoming a protectorate of Russia, they got partitioned by Russia,Prussia, and the Habsburg in 3 stages thus wiping out Poland and Lithuania from the map until 1918.

Researching on this blog did give me one fact that blows my mind, never go liberal in early modern times. Their tolerable and liberal policies was definitely one of the reasons neighboring countries hated this nations. In fact they were so tolerable they allowed Jews and Muslims as citizens. To sum it up, The PLC was one of the nations to use a liberal system and were one of them interesting countries in the existence of our kind and one more thing All Hail Kazimierz!!


Thank you for reading and have a nice day!