Sigismund III. von Polen und Jan Zamoyski

Sigismund, son of the king of Sweden, has been elected king of Poland in August 1587. The command of the Polish language and the Polish origin of his mother qualified him for this position. The Polish historian Kazimierz Lepszy has published in two volumes (1929,1939) a detailed description of the beginning of the king`s reign based upon material to be found in various collections in Poland. He also studied the Austrian archive material, but did not gain this way some distance to the traditional view of the historians: He too like many of his predessors worked hard to enhance the image of Jan Zamoyski as a national hero. Occasionally he left unconsidered sources, that could have contaminated the heroic image of this man, who was both head of the civil and of the military administration (great chancellor and great hetman of the crown). Immediately after the coronation of Sigismund III (27th of December 1587) the diet invested Zamoyski with full powers, which made him actually dictator of the country. Sigismund had the title, Zamoyski the power. The chancellor, however, wanted both, used the apparatus at his disposition to lance a propaganda campaign to ruin Sigismund`s reputation and to make life in Poland intolerable to him, to force him this way to go back to native Sweden. In this campaign Zamoyski`s the demand to transfer the province of Estonia from Swedish to Polish-Lithuanian sovereignty had an important function frequently misinterpreted by the historians. The demagogue was not able to force the king out of Poland but he has damaged the reputation of Polish royalty in general, which had consequences for the future of the country. The author has found sources unused so far for these problems and has reinterpreted others that had been known and used before.