In modern Poland, its citizens are equal in rights and have no class differences. However, every Pole knows well the meaning of the word "gentry". This privileged estate existed in the state for almost a thousand years, from the 11th century to the beginning of the 20th, when all privileges were abolished in 1921.
History of occurrence
There are two versions of the emergence of the supreme nobility of Poland, the gentry.
According to the first, which is considered more plausible and officially accepted, it is believed that the Polish gentry arose evolutionarily as a result of socio-economic transformations.
The disparate Slavic tribes that lived in Eastern Europe gradually grew and united into alliances. The largest was called the pole. Initially, at the head of the field was a council of elders, elected from representatives of the most powerful and respected families. Subsequently, the management of individual territories of the field was divided among the elders and began to be inherited, and the elders themselves becamebe called princes.
Constant wars and conflicts between the princes led to the need to create military units. Warriors were recruited from among free people who were not tied to the land. It was from this class that a new privileged class arose - the gentry. Translated from German, the word "gentry" means "battle".
And this is what the second version of the origin of the estate is. It belongs to a professor at the University of Krakow, Franciszek Xavier Pekosinski, who lived in the 19th century. According to the scientist, the Polish gentry was not born evolutionarily in the bowels of the Polish people. He is convinced that the first gentry were descendants of the Polabs, warlike Slavic tribes that invaded Poland in the late 8th - early 9th century. In favor of his assumption is the fact that Slavic runes are depicted on the family coats of arms of the most ancient gentry families.
First chronicles
The first mention of the Polish knights, who became the founders of the nobility, was preserved in the annals of Gall Anonymus, who died in 1145. Despite the fact that the “Chronicle and Acts of the Princes and Rulers of Poland” compiled by him sometimes sins with historical inaccuracies and gaps, it nevertheless became the main source of information about the formation of the Polish state. The first mention of the gentry is associated with the names of Mieszko 1 and his son, King Boleslav 1 the Brave.
During the reign of Boleslav, it was established that the status of "lord" was assigned to each warrior who rendered the king a significant service. There is a record of this dated 1025.
King of Polish knights
Boleslav 1 the Brave granted the honorary title not only to princes, but also to slaves, although the former demanded a special status for themselves - “monarchists”, which they were especially proud of. Until the end of the 11th century, the lords, they are also knights, they are also the founders of the gentry class, did not have their own land holdings.
In the 12th century, under Bolesław Krivoust, the knightly class turned from tumbleweeds into landowners.
Europe of the middle of the last century knows the knights as the warriors of the church, carrying the Christian faith to the pagans. The Polish knights began not as warriors of the church, but as defenders of princes and kings. Boleslav 1 the Brave, who made this estate, was first the prince of Poland, and then the self-proclaimed king. He ruled for almost 30 years and remained in history as a very smart, cunning and courageous politician and warrior. Under him, the Kingdom of Poland expanded significantly due to the annexation of Czech territories. Boleslav introduced part of Great Moravia into Poland. Thanks to him, the city of Krakow, the capital of Lesser Poland, entered the Kingdom of Poland forever. For a long time it was the capital of the state. To this day, it is one of the largest cities in the country, its most important cultural, economic and scientific center.
Piasts
The Piast dynasty, to which King Boleslav belonged, ruled the country for four centuries. It was under the Piasts that Poland experienced a period of the most rapid development in all areas. It was then that the foundations of modern Polish culture were laid. Notthe last role in this was played by the Christianization of the country. Crafts and agriculture flourished, strong trade ties were established with border states. The gentry took an active part in the processes contributing to the development and ex altation of Poland.
Separation of nobility and chivalry
By the 14th century, the Polish gentry was a rather numerous and very influential estate. Now it became impossible to enter it just like that, for a knightly feat. Laws on indigenate, adoption and nobilitation were passed. The gentry fenced themselves off from other classes, putting pressure on the king. They could afford it, as for several centuries they became the largest landowners in the state. And in the reign of King Louis of Hungary, they achieved hitherto unheard of privileges.
Kosice privileged
Louis had no sons, and his daughters had no right to the throne. In order to obtain this right for them, he promised the nobles-gentry the abolition of almost all duties in relation to the monarch. So, in 1374, the famous Kosice privilege came out. Now all important government positions were held by the Polish gentry.
In accordance with the new treaty, the nobility significantly limited the power of the royal family and the high clergy. The gentry were exempted from all taxes, with the exception of land, but it was also meager - only 2 pennies were charged from one field per year. At the same time, the nobles received a salary if they participated in hostilities. They are notwere obliged to build and repair castles, bridges, city buildings. During the trips of the royal person through the territory of Poland, the gentry no longer accompanied her as a guard and an honorary escort, they were also relieved of the obligation to provide the king with food and housing.
Rzeczpospolita
In 1569, the Kingdom of Poland united with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into a single state, the Commonwe alth. The political system in the new state is usually called gentry democracy. In fact, there was no democracy. At the head of the Commonwe alth was a king elected for life. His title was not hereditary. Together with the monarch, the Seimas ruled the country.
The Sejm consisted of two chambers - the Senate and the Embassy hut. The Sejm consisted of senior government officials and the supreme clergy, and the Ambassador's hut - their elected representatives of the gentry class. In fact, the history of the Commonwe alth is the history of how the nobility autocratically and unreasonably ruled their own state.
The power of the gentry over Poland
With a weak monarchy, the Polish gentry achieved great influence on the legislative and executive authorities. Historians assess gentry self-government as a precondition for anarchy.
This conclusion is based on the unlimited influence of the gentry on the political and economic processes in the country. The gentry had the right to veto if the king intended to convene a militia, pass any lawor establish a new tax, the last word, whether it be or not be, always stood with the nobility. And this despite the fact that the gentry class itself was protected by the law on personal and property inviolability.
Relations between the nobility and peasants
After joining in the 14th-15th centuries. to Poland, sparsely populated Chervonnaya Rus, Polish peasants began to move to new territories. With the development of trade, agricultural products produced on these lands began to be in high demand abroad.
In 1423, the freedom of the communities of peasant settlers was limited by another law, introduced under pressure from the gentry class. According to this law, the peasants were converted into serfs, obliged to fulfill the panshchina and did not have the right to leave the area where they lived.
Relations between the gentry and the philistines
The history of the Commonwe alth also remembers how the gentry treated the urban population. In 1496, a law was passed prohibiting the townspeople from buying land. The reason seems far-fetched, since the argument in favor of the adoption of this resolution was only that the townspeople tend to evade military duties, and the peasants assigned to the land are potential recruits. And their urban masters, the philistines, will prevent the conscription of their subjects for military service.
Under the same law, the work of industrial enterprises and trade establishments was controlled by elders and governors appointed from among the gentry.
Shlyakhetskoeworldview
Gradually, the Polish gentry began to perceive themselves as the highest and best of the Polish classes. Despite the fact that, in the general mass, the gentry were not magnates, but had rather modest possessions and did not differ in a high level of education, they had an extremely high self-esteem, because a gentry is primarily an arrogance. In Poland, the word "arrogance" still does not have a negative connotation.
On what was such an unusual worldview based? First of all, on the fact that every nobleman elected to the Government had the right to veto. The then gentry culture even implied a dismissive attitude towards the king, whom she elected at her own discretion. Rokosh (the right to disobey the king) put the monarch on the same level as subjects from the gentry class. A gentry is a person who equally despises all estates except his own, and if the king himself is not an authority for a gentry, and even more so not God's anointed, then what can we say about peasants and philistines? The gentry called them serfs.
What did this idle part of the population of the Commonwe alth occupy their time with? The gentry's favorite pastimes were feasts, hunting and dancing. The morals of the Polish nobles are colorfully described in the historical novels of Henryk Sienkiewicz "Pan Volodyevsky", "With Fire and Sword" and "The Flood".
However, everything comes to an end. The autocracy of the nobility also ended.
Poland within the Russian Empire
At the end of the 18th century, part of the territories of the Commonwe alth became part of the Russian Empire. That's when the so-called analysis of the gentry began. This term refers to a set of activitiescarried out by the Russian government. They were aimed at limiting the undivided and inappropriate, within the framework of state development, the power of the Polish nobility. By the way, at that time the percentage of the noble population in Poland was 7-8%, and in the Russian Empire it barely reached 1.5%.
The property status of the gentry did not reach that adopted in Russia. According to the sovereign Decree of September 25, 1800, those residents of the Vistula provinces (as the Polish lands within Russia were called) could be attributed to the nobility, who would be able to provide documentary evidence of their status within two years, dating back to the gentry revision tales of 1795. All the rest will be distributed among other estates - peasant, petty-bourgeois and free-growers. During the gentry self-government in the Commonwe alth, the gentry class was actively replenished with new members. By the time of joining the Russian Empire, among the gentry there were those who managed to receive this status from the Nobility Assembly, but did not have confirmation from the Heraldry of the Senate. This category has been excluded from the list of candidates for nobility.
After the Polish uprising of 1830-1831, the Senate adopted a Decree on the ordering of the Poles, referring to themselves as the gentry, and dividing them into three categories, followed by reckoning to the nobility.
The first category included Poles who own estates with peasants or who own subjects, but do not have land, regardless of whether they are approvedNobility or not.
The second category included Poles who did not have land and subjects, but were approved by the Assembly of Nobility.
The third category included Poles who consider themselves gentry, but do not have land and subjects and are not approved by the Assembly of Nobility.
From the moment this Decree came into force, Assemblies of Nobility were prohibited from issuing certificates of nobility to Poles if the said status was not certified in the Heraldry.
Poles-gentry who submitted documents for granting the nobility were recorded as citizens or one-palaces. All the rest were registered as state peasants.
Shlyakhtichi, not approved in the Russian nobility, did not have the right to buy land with the peasants. In the end, they replenished the philistine class and the peasantry.
The end of the nobility
The era of the Polish gentry ended with the acquisition of Poland (at the beginning of the 20th century) of independence from the Russian Empire. In the new Constitution of 1921-1926. the words "gentry" or "nobility" are never mentioned. From now on and forever in the newly proclaimed Polish Republic, all its citizens were equalized in rights and duties.
