POLAND
See also - DANZIG · EAST PRUSSIA · SWIDNICA · WEST PRUSSIA

Vladislav II Jagiellon (1386-1434)

Jogaila, or Wladyslaw II Jagiello, was a Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland. He ruled in Lithuania from 1377, at first with his uncle, Kestutis. In 1386, he converted to Christianity, married the eleven-year-old Queen Jadwiga of Poland, and was crowned Polish king as Wladyslaw Jagiello. His reign in Poland lasted a further forty-eight years and laid the foundation for the centuries long Polish-Lithuanian union. He gave his name to the Jagiellon dynasty which ruled both states until 1572, and became one of the most influential dynasties in medieval Europe. Jogaila was the last pagan ruler of medieval Lithuania, and a holder of the title Didysis Kunigaikštis. As King of Poland, he pursued a policy of close alliances with Lithuania against the Teutonic Order. The allied victory at the battle of Grunwald in 1410, followed by the First Peace of Torun, secured the Polish and Lithuanian borders and marked the emergence of the Polish-Lithuanian alliance as a major European force. The reign of Wladyslaw II Jagiello extended Polish frontiers and is often considered the beginning of Poland's "Golden Age".

Denar
This crude little billon coin is the only example I have had of this long-ruling king's various coins of Poland and surrounding territories.

Casimir IV Jagiellon (1447-1492)

Casimir succeeded his brother as King of Poland after a three-year interregnum on 25 June 1447. In 1454, he married Elisabeth of Austria, daughter of the late King of the Romans Albert II of Habsburg by his late wife Elisabeth II of Bohemia. Her distant relative Frederick of Habsburg became Holy Roman Emperor and reigned as Frederick III until after Casimir's own death. The marriage strengthened the ties between the house of Jagiellon and the sovereigns of Hungary-Bohemia and put Casimir at odds with the Holy Roman Emperor through internal Habsburg rivalry. That same year, Casimir was approached by the Prussian Confederation for aid against the Teutonic Order, which he promised, by the act of incorporation of Prussia to the Polish Kingdom. However, when the cities of Prussia rebelled against the Teutons, the Order resisted with greater strength than expected, and the Thirteen Years' War (1454-1466) ensued. Casimir and the Prussian Confederation defeated the Teutonic Order, taking over its capital at Marienburg (Malbork Castle). In the Peace of Torun (1466), the Order recognized Polish sovereignty over Royal Prussia and the Polish crown's overlordship over Ducal Prussia. Elisabeth's only brother Ladislas, king of Bohemia and Hungary, died in 1457, and after that Casimir and Elisabeth's dynastic interests were directed also towards her brother's former kingdoms.

Half Groschens
These are the most commonly seen coins from the long reign of Casimir IV. There are two varieties, the early coins are larger and read MK MONETA KAZIMIRI on the eagle side, later coins lack the MK.

John I Albert (1492-1501)

John was the third son of Casimir IV Jagiellon, King of Poland, and Elizabeth, daughter of Albert II of Germany. As crown prince, he distinguished himself by his brilliant victory over the Tatars at Kopersztyn (1487). In 1490, the Hungarian nobility proclaimed John King of Hungary at the Rákos diet. He was, however, defeated by his brother, King Ladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary. In 1492, John succeeded his father as King of Poland. Losses of revenue due to the secession of Lithuania placed John at the mercy of the Polish sejmiks, or local diets, where the szlachta, or local nobles, made their subsidies dependent on the king's subservience.

Primarily a warrior, with a strong taste for heroic adventure, John desired to pose as the champion of Christendom against the Ottoman Turks. Circumstances seemed, moreover, to favor him. In his brother Ladislaus, who as King of Hungary and Bohemia possessed a dominant influence in central Europe, he found a counterpoise to the machinations of Emperor Maximilian I, who in 1492 had concluded an alliance against him with Ivan III of Muscovy. As suzerain of Moldavia, John was favorably situated for attacking the Turks. At the conference of Leutschau (1494), the details of the expedition were arranged between the kings of Poland and Hungary and Elector John Cicero of Brandenburg, with the co-operation of Stephen III of Moldavia, hospodar of Moldavia, who had appealed to John for assistance. In the course of 1496 John collected an army of 80,000 men in Poland with great difficulty, but the crusade was deflected from its course by the sudden invasion of Galicia by the hospodar, who apparently — for the whole subject is still very obscure — had been misled by reports from Hungary that John was bent upon placing his younger brother Sigismund on the throne of Moldavia. Whatever the reason, the Poles entered Moldavia not as friends but as foes, and after the abortive siege of Suceava were compelled to retreat following defeat at the Battle of the Cosmin Forest. The insubordination of the szlachta seems to have been one cause of this disgraceful collapse, for John after his return confiscated hundreds of their estates; in spite of which, to the end of his life he retained his extraordinary popularity. When the new Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Friedrich Wettin von Sachsen, refused to render homage to the Polish crown, John compelled him to do so. His intention to still further humiliate the Teutonic Order was frustrated by his sudden death in 1501.

Half Groschens
John I Albert's half groschens continue in the style of Casimir, with the only real change being the king's title. MONETA×I×ALBERTI (Iohan Albertvs)

Alexander Jagiellon (1501-1506)

Alexander Jagiellon (Polish: Aleksander Jagiellonczyk; Lithuanian: Aleksandras; 5 August 1461 – 19 August 1506), King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, was the fourth son of Kazimierz IV Jagiellon. He was elected Grand Duke of Lithuania on the death of his father (1492), and King of Poland on the death of his brother Jan I Olbracht (1501). His shortage of funds immediately made him subservient to the Polish Senate and nobility (szlachta), who deprived him of control of the mint (then one of the most lucrative sources of revenue for the Polish kings), curtailed his prerogatives, and generally endeavored to reduce him to a subordinate position. For want of funds, Alexander was unable to resist the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights or prevent Grand Duke of Muscovy Ivan III from ravaging Grand Duchy of Lithuania with the Tatars. The most the King could do was to garrison Smolensk and other strongholds and employ his wife Helena, the Tsar's daughter, to mediate a truce between his father-in-law and himself after the disastrous Battle of Vedrosha (1500). In the terms of the truce, Lithuania had to surrennder about a third of its territory to the nascent expansionist Russian state.

During his reign, Poland suffered much humiliation at the hands of her subject principality, Moldavia. Only the death of Stephen, the great hospodar of Moldavia, enabled Poland still to hold her own on the Danube River; while the liberality of Pope Julius II, who issued no fewer than 29 bulls in favor of Poland and granted Alexander Peter's Pence and other financial help, enabled him to restrain somewhat the arrogance of the Teutonic Order. Alexander Jagellon never felt at home in Poland, and bestowed his favor principally upon his fellow Lithuanians, the most notable of whom was the wealthy Lithuanian magnate Michal Glinski, who justified his master's confidence by his great victory over the Tatars at Kleck (August 5, 1506), news of which was brought to Aleksander on his deathbed in Vilnius. It is important to note that Alexander Jagellon was the last known ruler of the Jagiellon dynasty to have maintained the family's ancestral Lithuanian language. From his death, Polish became the sole language of the family, thus fully Polonizing the Jagiellon family.

Half Groschens
A somewhat modernized design and revised legends set Alexander's half groschens apart from the more primitive issues of preceding reigns.

Sigismund I (1506-1548)

Sigismund I the Old of the Jagiellon dynasty reigned as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1506 to his death at age 81 in 1548. Before that, Sigismund had already been invested as Duke of Silesia. Sigismund I owed allegiance to the Imperial Habsburgs as a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece. The son of King Casimir IV Jagiellon and Elisabeth of Austria Habsburg, Sigismund followed his brothers John I of Poland and Alexander I of Poland to the Polish throne. Their elder brother Ladislaus II of Hungary and Bohemia became king of Hungary and Bohemia. Sigismund was christened the namesake of his mother's maternal grandfather, Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, who had died in 1437.

Sigismund faced the challenge of consolidating internal power in order to face external threats to the country. During Alexander's reign, the law Nihil novi had been instituted, which forbade Kings of Poland from enacting laws without the consent of the Sejm. This proved crippling to Sigismund's dealings with the szlachta and magnates. Despite this Achilles heel, he established (1527) a conscription army and the bureaucracy needed to finance it. Intermittently at war with Vasily III of Muscovy, starting in 1507 (before his army was fully under his command), 1514 marked the fall of Smolensk (under Polish domination) to the Muscovite forces (which lent force to his arguments for the necessity of a standing army). Those conflicts formed part of the Muscovite wars. 1515 he entered an alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. In return for Maximilian lending weight to the provisions of the Second Peace of Thorn, Sigismund consented to the marriage of the children of Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary, his brother, to the grandchildren of Maximilian. Through this double marriage contract, Bohemia and Hungary passed to the House of Habsburg in 1526, on the death of Sigismund's nephew, Louis II. The Polish wars against the Teutonic Knights ended in 1525, when Albert of Brandenburg, their marshal (and Sigismund's nephew), converted to Lutheranism, secularized the order, and paid homage to Sigismund. In return, he was given the domains of the Order, as the First Duke of Prussia. This was called the Prussian Homage.

In other matters of policy, Sigismund sought peaceful coexistence with the Khanate of Crimea, but was unable to completely end border skirmishes. Sigismund was a Humanist. He and his third consort, Bona Sforza, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Sforza of Milan, were both patrons of Renaissance culture, which under them began to flourish in Poland and in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Groschens
Groschens of this basic type were minted in scattered years of the latter half of Sigismund's reign.

Sigismund III Vasa of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Sigismund of Sweden (June 20, 1566 – April 30, 1632 N.S.), was the son of Sweden's King John III (1537 – 1592) of the House of Vasa, and his first wife, Catherine Jagiellon (1526 – 1583). Sigismund owed allegiance to the Imperial Habsburgs as a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Sigismund ruled the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where he was known as Zygmunt III Waza, 1587 – 1632, and Sweden, where he was known as Sigismund Vasa, from 1592 until he was deposed in 1599. Thus he began and ended his kingship in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, spending thirty eight years of his forty-five year reign, on the Polish-Lithuanian throne. Elected to the throne of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Sigismund sought to create a personal union between the Commonwealth and Sweden (Polish-Swedish union). After he had been deposed from the Swedish throne, he spent much of his time attempting to reclaim it. His reign initiated a series of wars between the Commonwealth and Sweden that would continue until the 1660s. Due to his failure to achieve anything of lasting importance apart from setting the stage for future devastating wars, some historians, such as Pawel Jasienica, regard his reign as marking the beginning of the end of the Polish Golden Age. He was commemorated on the striking of Zygmunt's Column in Warsaw, commissioned by his son and successor, Wladyslaw IV.

Ort (1/4 Thaler, 18 Groscher)

6 Groscher

3 Groscher
These coins were issued from several mints for various periods all through Sigismund's reign, leading to numerous legend, date, and mintmark combinations. The 1594 coin at left displays the ring and triangle mark of Marienburg (modern Malbork). The 1621 coin shows the crescent, stars, and arrow of Krakow.

Groschens

Dreipolkers (equivalent to 3 kreuzers or 1/24 thaler, as indicated in the orb)
Sigismund III's dreipolkers are common little coins, and there are numerous varieties through their run.

John II Casimir (1648-1668)

John's father Sigismund, grandson of Gustav I of Sweden, had in 1592 succeeded his own father to the Swedish throne, only to be deposed in 1599 by his uncle, Charles IX of Sweden. This led to a long-standing feud wherein the Polish kings of the House of Vasa claimed the Swedish throne, resulting in the Polish-Swedish War of 1600-1629. Poland and Sweden were also on opposite sides in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), although in that war Poland for the most part avoided taking part in any major military actions. John Casimir for most of his life remained in the shadow of his brother, Wladyslaw IV Waza. He had few friends among the Polish nobility (szlachta), as he openly sympathized with Austria and showed disregard and contempt for Polish culture. Unfriendly, secretive, dividing his time between lavish partying and religious contemplation, and disliking politics, he did not have a strong power base nor influence at the Polish court. He did display talent as a military commander, showing his abilities in the Smolensk War against Muscovy (1633). Between 1632 and 1635, Wladyslaw IV sought to enhance his brother's influence by negotiating a marriage for John Casimir to Christina of Sweden, then to an Italian princess, but to no avail. In 1635 John Casimir undertook a diplomatic mission to Vienna, which he abandoned to join the army of the Holy Roman Empire and fight against the French. After his regiment was defeated in battle, he spent a year living lavishly at the Viennese court. In 1636 he returned to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and fell in love with Baroness Guldentern, but his desire to marry her was thwarted by King Wladyslaw. In return, Wladyslaw attempted to make him the sovereign of Courland, but this was vetoed by the Commonwealth parliament (Sejm). Taking offence at this, John Casimir in 1638 left for Spain to become Viceroy of Portugal, but was captured by French agents and imprisoned by order of Cardinal Richelieu until 1640. He was then freed by a diplomatic mission of the Voivod of Smolensk, Aleksander Gosiewski.

In 1641 John Casimir decided to become a Jesuit. In 1642 he again left the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, accompanying his sister to Germany. In 1643 he joined the Jesuits, against vocal opposition from King Wladyslaw, causing a diplomatic rift between the Commonwealth and the Pope. John Casimir was made a cardinal, but in December 1646, finding himself unsuited to ecclesiastical life, he returned to Poland. In October 1647 he resigned as cardinal to stand in elections for the Polish throne. He attempted to gain the support of the Habsburgs and marry an Austrian princess. In 1648 John Casimir was elected to succeed his half-brother on the Polish throne. The reign of the last of the Vasas in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth would be dominated by the Russo-Polish War (1654-1667), followed by the war with Sweden ("The Deluge"), the scene for which had been set by the Commonwealth's two previous Vasa kings. During the Deluge, nearly all of Poland was captured by the Swedes, who, though unable to retain most of their conquests and forced to retreat, had fairly devastated the entire country. In 1660 John II Casimir was forced to renounce his claim to the Swedish throne and acknowledge Swedish sovereignty over Livonia and the city of Riga.

John Casimir had married his brother's widow, Mary Louise of Mantua (Polish: Maria Ludwika), who was a major support to the depression-prone King. Maria Ludwika died in 1667. On September 16, 1668, John II Casimir abdicated the Polish-Lithuanian throne, and returned to France, where he joined the Jesuits and became abbot of St. Martin's monastery in Nevers. He died in 1672 and left no surviving children. All his brothers and sisters having predeceased him without surviving issue, he was the last of the line of Bona Sforza. With him, all the legitimate issue of Alfonso II of Naples died out. His heir in Ferrante I of Naples and in the Brienne succession was his distant cousin, Henry de La Tremoille, Prince of Talmond and Taranto, the heir-general of Federigo di Aragona (second son of Ferrante I and Isabella of Taranto), who also was the heir-general of Federigo's first wife, Anne of Savoy.

Ort (1/4 Thaler, 18 Groscher)