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| 1573–74 |
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| HENRY OF VALOIS was elected king on condition of signing the Pacta Conventa, formally recognizing the right of the nobility to elect kings and strictly limiting the royal power. The diet was to meet at least once every two years. Henry paid richly for his election and for the alliance of Poland with France, but, on the death of his brother, Charles IX, he slipped away and returned to France. There followed a period of confusion, during which the Habsburgs made great efforts to secure the crown. | 1 |
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| 1575–86 |
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| The Poles ultimately elected STEPHEN BATHORY, husband of Anna, the last Jagellon. Stephen was a strong ruler but was unable to make much progress against the powerful nobility. His great success was in foreign affairs and war. With a new army of peasant infantry, raised on the royal estates, he was able, in the last phase of the Livonian War (1579–82), to retake Polotsk and put an end to the steady encroachment of Russia upon Belarus. | 2 |
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| 1587–1632 |
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| SIGISMUND III (Vasa), son of King John of Sweden. He had been educated by the Jesuits and threw his entire influence on the side of the Counter-Reformation. He involved Poland in endless wars with Sweden because of his claims to the Swedish throne. | 3 |
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| 1595–96 |
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| Attempts to reunite the Eastern Orthodox church in Poland with Rome foundered on Jesuit opposition. However, part of the Orthodox formed the so-called Uniate Church, retaining Eastern rites but recognizing papal authority. The result was the confederation of Vilna (1599), an alliance between the Orthodox and the Dissidents against the Roman church. | 4 |
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| 1609–18 |
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| Polish intervention in Russia during the Time of Troubles (See 1604–13). An attempt to put Sigismund's son, Wladyslaw, on the Russian throne ended in the expulsion of the Poles from Moscow. | 5 |
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| 1629 |
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| The Treaty of Altmark, a truce in the long conflict with Sweden, signaled the defeat of the Poles and confirmed the loss of Livonia. | 6 |
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| 1632–48 |
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| WLADYSLAW, the son of Sigismund. He was elected without opposition and pursued a policy diametrically opposed to that of his father. But his efforts to restrict the powers of the Jesuits were in vain. | 7 |
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| 1632–34 |
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| War with Russia, which was ended by the Treaty of Polianov (1634): Wladyslaw renounced his claims to the Russian throne but regained the Smolensk region for Poland. (See Poland) | 8 |
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| Cultural Developments |
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| Literature: Aesop's Fables were paraphrased and a life written by Bernard of Lublin (c. 1515). The spread of Renaissance culture and of the Reformation culminated in a golden age of prose and poetry: poets Nicholas Rej of Naglowice (1505–69) and Jan Kochanowski (1530–84). Prose writers Lucas Gornicki and Peter Skarga (1536–1612). Foremost poet of the 17th century: Waclaw Potocki (1625–96). | 9 |
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