Bogusław Radziwiłł
Bogusław Radziwiłł (Lithuanian Boguslavas Radvila , German Boguslaus Radziwill ; born May 3, 1620 in Danzig ; † December 31, 1669 near Königsberg i. Pr. ) Was a Lithuanian magnate in Poland-Lithuania as Duke of Birsen and Dubinki . In his last twelve years he was governor of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm (Brandenburg) in the Duchy of Prussia .
family
The Radziwiłł Calvinist family, rich in wealth in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , had been the patron and protector of the Reformation in Lithuania since the time of Nicholas "the Black" and thus led the dissidents of Poland-Lithuania. Emperor Charles V had in 1547 Nicholas the Black, his brother Jan Radziwiłł (around 1516–1551) and their cousin " Nicholas the Red " bestowed the hereditary dignity of "Dukes of Nieśwież , Ołyka , Birsen and Dubinki" , combined with the position of Princes in the Holy Roman Empire . Because in 1567 Nikolaus' sons of " Nikolaus the Orphan " had returned to the Catholic faith during the Counter-Reformation in Poland-Lithuania, but the descendants of Nicholas the Red did not, the Radziwiłł house split into a Catholic and a Calvinist (Reformed) branch.
Shortly before converting to Calvinism, Elector Johann Georg von Brandenburg from the House of Hohenzollern married his daughter Elisabeth Sophie to Janusz Radziwiłł , Prince of Dubinki, castellan of Vilna and grandson Nicholas the Red in 1613 . The couple's only son and heir was Boguslaus Radziwill.
Life
Birth, childhood and youth
As the grandson of Johann Georg von Brandenburg, the great-great-grandfather of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm, who had ruled since 1640, Boguslaus Radziwill belonged to the European nobility .
Because his father had already died on December 3, 1620, Boguslaus spent the first years of his childhood on his mother's estate in Upper Franconia , Lichtenberg Castle . At the age of eight, after his mother remarried to Julius Heinrich von Sachsen-Lauenburg, he came to see his uncle and guardian, the Lithuanian grand hetman and voivode, Prince Christoph Radziwiłł in Vilnius . Until 1635 Boguslaus attended the grammar schools in Keidany and Wilna , run by the German Reformed . In the following year Boguslaus came to the court of King Wladislaus IV in Warsaw as a page for a few months . Declared of legal age at the age of sixteen , he appeared in May 1637 as a member of the Sejm in Oszmiana , and in the following year he was given the honorary post of “banner bearer” of Poland-Lithuania .
The big journey
In the summer of 1637, during the Thirty Years War , Boguslaus began his Grand Tour with visits to the Swedish and imperial camps in northern Germany. It took him via Lübeck , Hamburg and Groningen to the University of Utrecht , where he studied mathematics and fortification theory for two semesters . The study of economics and trade, intellectual life and warfare in the Netherlands exerted a great attraction on the modern-oriented young leaders of Europe.
From 1639 Radziwill perfected himself incognito in Paris to become a cavalier through language, riding, fencing and dance lessons. He then traveled to France to learn about the institutions and laws of the most advanced absolutist state. A two-month trip to England at the end of 1639 culminated in visits to King Karl I and the later Elector Karl Ludwig von der Pfalz .
In 1640 and 1642 Radziwill was the travel companion of the Polish Prince Johann Casimir , the younger half-brother of Wladislaus IV. Together with Prince Georg Wilhelm von Braunschweig and the later Prince Friedrich von Waldeck , they gained their first experience of war in the Netherlands under the military reformer Friedrich Heinrich von Oranien .
For the funeral of Louis XIII. Radziwill returned to France in 1643. There the tour turned into an adventurous permanent stay, combined with personal access to Cardinal Jules Mazarin and the regent Anna of Austria . The regent Radziwill made use of diplomatic support for the foundation of Luisa Maria Gonzaga's marriage to the Polish King Wladislaus IV. She would have gladly kept him at her court and in the military service of France by marrying a French woman.
Return to Poland-Lithuania
Since Radziwill settled in the Netherlands in 1647, not far from the residence of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm in Kleve , the two had been in a personal relationship. In the summer of 1648, after the death of King Wladislaus IV and the Khmelnitsky uprising that broke out at the same time , the elector, at the instigation of the Calvinist voivod of Pomerania , Count Gerhard Dönhoff , advised Radziwill to return to his homeland. Radziwill only appeared there for short stays in 1641 and 1646 because of inheritance and family matters and to receive the title of “ Grand Stable Master of Lithuania”. Now the election of the new king, as well as the protection of his Protestant co-religionists, his own property and social position, required his active intervention in Polish politics. He first went to Kleve to negotiate a Polish candidate for the throne of Friedrich Wilhelm. The candidacy corresponded to a project of his cousin Janus Radziwill , the voivode of Vilna and head of the dissidents.
When rebellious Cossacks attacked his town Słuck at the end of August 1648 , Radziwill set out for Poland. In the following years he lived "with princely pomp" at the court of Johann Kasimir in Warsaw and achieved high honors, including command of the royal guard and two cavalry regiments.
In the battle of Berestetschko in June 1651, Radziwill contributed to the victory over the Cossacks at the head of part of the foreign army and later received supreme command of all German troops of the Polish crown. In order to recruit them , he sold some goods, for which the Crown compensated him in 1652 by awarding him the Starosteien Bar and later Brańsk , and the Sejm of the Republic appointed him "Land Messenger Marshal".
At war with Russia
In the meantime, Tsar Alexei had taken on the role of patron offered by the Zaporozhian Cossacks . When a war with Russia became apparent in February 1654 , the Sejm did not appoint Radziwill as a Lithuanian general and refused to approve the necessary means of war. The meeting broke up without a resolution because the king and the opponents of Calvinism had feared that the Radziwill house would gain too much power.
Radziwill was unable to take up his post as Voivode of Połock in May 1654 because the war had broken out and the Russians had already conquered the city. At the end of June, the hastily convened Sejm decided to raise troops and to hand over command to Janus Radziwill. This could not bring the Russians to a standstill with the small armed forces. While the Polish-Lithuanian army withdrew to the west in the spring of 1655 after the failed siege of Mohiljow , the court suspected Janus and Boguslaus Radziwill of treason.
At war with Sweden
In June 1654, the Swedish Queen Christine abdicated from the Wasa family and Karl X. Gustav from the Pfalz-Zweibrücken- Kleeburg family, a branch of the Wittelsbach family , ascended the Swedish throne. King Johann Casimir, who was a Wasa, did not recognize this and described himself as the rightful king of Sweden , which amounted to a declaration of war on Karl Gustav. Johann Kasimir's actions gave Sweden a welcome reason to reopen the Northern War with Poland. The Swedish armed forces, which had not been employed since the Peace of Westphalia , attacked the Greater Poland region from Swedish West Pomerania . There an apparently unwilling aristocratic contingent surrendered to the Swedes after the first clashes on July 25, 1655 in the Treaty of Usch . High Polish dignitaries around the Greater Poland voivode Krzysztof Opaliński recognized Karl Gustav as their liege lord.
A second Swedish army had invaded Polish Livonia at the same time . Under the leadership of the two princes Radziwill, Livonia was now to be defended against the Swedes, as was the case with neighboring Lithuania against the Russians. After the Sweden to Poland in June 1655 before unsuccessfully besieged by the Russians Daugavpils had taken, the Swedish supreme commander offered Magnus de la Gardie the Radziwill a comparison of at the expense of the Russians. At the end of July, the Radziwills began to negotiate clandestinely with de la Gardie, while they assured Warsaw that they would be “extremely ready to defend”. Other Lithuanian dignitaries openly opened negotiations with the Swedes when the Russians captured Minsk , Vilnius and large parts of Lithuania in August .
In alliance with Sweden
Unable to assert itself against two powers at the same time, the Lithuanian side under Janus Radziwill concluded an agreement with Sweden in August 1655 like Opaliński had done before. It recognized Karl Gustav instead of Johann Kasimir as Grand Duke of Lithuania . The Lithuanian troops were to unite with the Swedish troops to fight the Russians, but not the King of Poland. Sweden promised to take over the defense of Lithuania, to obtain the evacuation of the occupied parts of the country by the Russians and promised to return its conquests to the Lithuanian owners.
Like numerous Lithuanian aristocrats, Radziwill had brought his supply of precious metals and hard cash, including the enormous sum of 200,000 thalers , to safety on the Memel in Prussia. In October Friedrich von Waldeck confiscated the cargo from the ships in Labiau in order to top up the Brandenburg war chest.
After almost all of Poland-Lithuania was occupied by Russians in the east and by Swedes in the west, including Warsaw and Krakow , Radziwill went over to Sweden in October 1655. Meanwhile, King John Casimir, abandoned by many dignitaries and without his own army, fled under the protection of Emperor Ferdinand III. to Silesia in the Holy Roman Empire . On October 20, 1655, a meeting of the Lithuanian estates convened by Janus Radziwill in the " Union of Kėdainiai " decided to remove Johann Kasimir and recognize Karl Gustav as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. For many Lithuanians this meant a salvation from the Russians, with the Poles it brought the Radziwills into the reputation of treason.
Even before King John Casimir had the Calvinist Radziwill for their transition to Sweden in outlawed done and possessions for ownerless explained. At the end of 1655 Boguslaus Radziwill said of himself: "Itzo I am a ruined prince".
Karl Gustav, however, was unable to break the resistance of the Tyszowce Confederation . As more and more Polish and Lithuanian nobles assured Johann Kasimir of their loyalty, he returned in December 1655. Karl Gustav, who could no longer hold his position without help, offered the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg sovereignty in Prussia and part of the Polish territories he had conquered for an alliance against Poland .
Conversion to the Elector of Brandenburg
The elector was drawn into the war between Sweden and Poland as the sovereign of Western Pomerania and Neumark , the transit areas from Swedish Pomerania to Poland, and as Duke in Prussia. When the war broke out, he and his advisers had already considered shaking off the Polish feudal rule in Prussia. The Swedes, which invaded Prussia, forced him in the Königsberg Treaty of January 17, 1656 to recognize Karl Gustav as his liege lord in place of the King of Poland and to support Sweden logistically .
The military and diplomatic activities that followed culminated in the Treaty of Marienburg in June 1656 . Reinforced by the Brandenburgers, Karl Gustav was able to defeat the Poles under Johann Casimir in the Battle of Warsaw at the end of July 1656 . Radziwill's regiment had been in the ranks of the Swedes, but without himself because he did not want to fight the Polish king personally. In November, in the Treaty of Labiau , Karl Gustav recognized Friedrich Wilhelm as the sovereign Duke of Prussia. Friedrich Wilhelm separated from Karl Gustav after the battle and withdrew to Prussia. He was not interested in a decision to go to war as long as Poland had not recognized its sovereignty in Prussia.
With the death of Janus Radziwill, Radziwill had become head of the Calvinist house of Radziwill, but was now morally discredited by the Poles as a Swedish partisan, cut off from his own income and under severe military pressure. After the Battle of Warsaw, his troops joined the Brandenburgers, who were defending Prussia along the Elk from a Tatar invasion ordered by Johann Casimir . In the battle near Prostken on October 8, 1656, Tatars captured Radziwill, seriously wounded. He owed his survival only to the help of Lithuanian officers and his alarmed Catholic cousin Michael . On October 22nd, a victory for Prince Waldeck at Philippowo Radziwill brought back freedom. Karl Gustav received him with high honors in Frauenburg , appointed him Swedish General Field Marshal and assured him of the Nowogródek Voivodeship as sovereign possession. Nevertheless, Radziwill refused to enter the service of Karl Gustav. Instead, he sought to be close to the elector.
When Poland and Russia allied themselves in the Treaty of Vilnius against Sweden in the autumn of 1656 , Sweden suffered military failures and an alliance between Johann Kasimir and the Habsburg ruler Leopold came about, Friedrich Wilhelm had Poland and Austria feel what the price would be for an alliance and offer his voting vote in the impending election of Leopold as emperor .
Radziwill, who wanted to return to Poland, overcome his political isolation and regain his goods and their income, intervened as a mediator in the secret negotiations in favor of Friedrich Wilhelm. The elector gladly accepted Radziwill's service and appointed him lieutenant general in the Brandenburg army in 1656 . In July 1657 he also gave him the honor of being godfather of his second son Friedrich , like Leopold, the French King Louis XIV , the Elector Johann Georg II of Saxony and other princes .
The interaction of the middlemen led in September 1657 to the recognition of the sovereignty of the Elector in the Duchy of Prussia by the King of Poland in the Treaty of Wehlau . The elector honored Radziwill by stipulating an amnesty and the return of his possessions in Poland in the treaty . King Johann Casimir, on the other hand, humiliated Radziwill on the occasion of the ratification of the treaty in Bromberg : When the elector and his entourage were solemnly welcomed in the marketplace on October 30, 1657, he was not satisfied with receiving a kiss on the hand from Radziwill , but insisted on dropping his feet and a loud plea for forgiveness, only to comply with it with a sigh.
Governor of the Elector in Prussia
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Immediately thereafter, Friedrich Wilhelm appointed Boguslaus Radziwill his governor in Prussia . The elector, who preferred adherents of his Reformed creed, hoped that the alien , but moderately-minded, diplomatically and militarily savvy Radziwill would help him enforce his sovereign interests in Prussia and increase his influence in Poland and Lithuania. Radziwill, with his many personal contacts in Poland-Lithuania, including the royal couple, offered the governor post the opportunity to maintain his princely position and to legitimately win back his place as magnate in Poland.
In the years of his governorship until the end of the war in 1660, Radziwill led the Brandenburgers against the Swedes under Duke Adolf Johann in Prussia and in the Duchy of Courland . Despite a success in October 1658, the capture of Elbing failed , but in autumn 1659 he conquered the Duchy of Courland with the exception of the Bautzke fortress .
In the Duchy of Prussia itself, a conflict between the elector and the estates that had not participated in the negotiations in Wehlau and Oliva was developing . They and the "powerful and largely independent councilors" saw their position weakened by the sovereignty of the elector. They now refused to pay homage to him because they continued to see their legitimate overlord in the King of Poland. In 1661, Radziwill at the court of Warsaw, in cooperation with the Brandenburg ambassador Johann von Hoverbeck , prevented the spokesman of the class rebellion, Hieronymus Roth , who had traveled there , from being able to persuade the Polish king to break the Treaty of Oliva. Ultimately, the Königsberg uprising was unsuccessful. Friedrich Wilhelm had appeared in Königsberg with armed might, but then followed Radziwill's and Otto von Schwerin's advice to make political concessions to the estates. After Roth's arrest in 1662, he was able to get the estates to pay homage the following year.
Magnate in Poland-Lithuania
During the dispute with the estates in Prussia there was a break between Poland and Russia . The elector allowed Radziwill, to whom the royal couple had again granted a seat in the Sejm, to take part in the war with Russia at the head of a separate contingent in the Lithuanian contingent in November 1661 .
In 1665 Boguslaus Radziwill married Anna Maria Radziwiłł, the twenty-five-year-old daughter of his cousin Janus and Katharina Potocka , daughter of Stefan Potocki (1568–1631) , in order to keep the family property together . Anna Maria died in 1667 as a result of the birth of her only child, daughter Louise Charlotte . In the same year, after the death of the owner Jonas Casimir von Eulenburg, the elector awarded him one of the first 1655 infantry regiments of the Brandenburg army .
The Elector's goals did not always coincide with those of Radziwill. When the magnate Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski approached Radziwill to support his intentions against Johann Kasimir's reform projects, he met with rejection, much to the displeasure of the elector. While the elector wanted to secure his territory stretching from the Netherlands to Lithuania and to expand his power, Radziwill in Poland-Lithuania was concerned with the complete restoration of his possessions and the protection of the Reformed creed. Against the background of the imminent abdication of Johann Kasimir, Radziwill led violent arguments with the Pac family , which was emerging in Lithuania , in particular with the cousins Michael and Christoph Pac . In the negotiations on the Konvokationsreichstag , which the Pacta conventa had to fix for the actual electoral assembly, Radziwill defended the rights of the dissidents, which exposed him to the accusation of being “servant of a foreign prince”. The election of Michael Korybut Wiśniowiecki as king meant a defeat for the elector and Radziwill, around whom eighteen Lithuanian magnates had rallied.
Death and afterlife
Prince Radziwill Boguslaus died on New Year's Eve 1669 at the gates of Konigsberg while returning from Heiligenbeil in touring car at a stroke . On May 6, 1669, after lavish celebrations and in the presence of his cousin Michael Kasimir, he was buried in the electoral burial place of the Königsberg cathedral .
According to his biographer Jörg Jacoby, “the innermost driving force for all human and political decisions Radziwill” was his “unshakable Calvinist belief”. This was followed by Radziwill's efforts to secure a seat in the Reichstag of the Holy Roman Empire in Regensburg , where he appeared in 1654 and 1664, but failed despite support from the Electorate of Brandenburg. In his will, Radziwill suggested to the family to buy territory in the empire and to marry off the daughter, with the elector as guardian , to a reformed German prince.
Since Boguslaus left no male descendants, the Calvinist princely line of the Radziwiłł family died out with him. The marriage of his daughter Luise Charlotte to Ludwig von Brandenburg , the third son of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm and Luise Henriette von Oranien , in 1681 remained childless, but brought the dominions of Tauroggen and Serrey to the Brandenburg-Prussian state. Radziwill became one of the ancestors of the kings of Bavaria through a daughter from the later connection between Luise Charlotte and Karl Philipp von der Pfalz from the Wittelsbach family .
In the Polish culture of remembrance, Boguslaus Radziwill is alive as a villain in Henryk Sienkiewicz's novel Potop (German: Flood ) from 1886. The novel is school material in Poland. Jerzy Hoffman filmed it in 1974 under the same title with Leszek Teleszyński in the role of Bogusław Radziwiłłs. The film was internationally successful, but was not shown in both German states.
In addition to religion, the Western European habitus, Radziwill wore an allonge wig and was always dressed in French fashion, and the Western-oriented education through the Grand Tour may have been a reason for Radziwill's vulnerable position. The increased rejection of travel to Western Europe was accompanied by a wave of xenophobia in aristocratic circles.
The Polish historian Janusz Małłek, in view of Radziwill's position as a citizen, that of the Polish aristocratic republic and Roth, who certainly did not speak Polish , as an advocate of Polish sovereignty over the duchy , comes to the conclusion that national interests play a minor role in the construction of the absolutist State in Prussia as well as in the spread of the model of the corporate state .
With the fall of Prussia and the majority of its historical locations, in the tradition of which the name Radziwill also belonged, Boguslaus Radziwill fell into oblivion in Germany. In contrast, in Kaliningrad, Russia, which has been in Russia since 1945, the grave tablet of Anna and Boguslaus Radziwill on the north wall of the Königsberg Cathedral was rebuilt after three years of work.
literature
- Jörg Jacoby: Boguslaus Radziwill. The governor of the Great Elector in East Prussia (= scientific contributions to the history and regional studies of East Central Europe. Published by the Johann Gottfried Herder Institute, No. 40). Marburg / Lahn 1959
- Tadeusz Nowakowski : The Radziwills. The story of a great European family . Piper, Munich 1966, pp. 123–154 (feuilleton-like representation)
- Kurt von Priesdorff : Soldier leadership . Volume 1, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg, undated [Hamburg], undated [1937], DNB 367632764 , p. 13, no. 14.
- Grischa Vercamer in Perspectivia.net
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jacoby, with evidence, p. 23
- ^ Jacoby, with proof, p. 26. Radziwill's seized cash assets had forcibly loaned Kurbrandenburg .
- ↑ Wolfgang Neugebauer: The Hohenzollern. Volume 1: Beginnings, state and monarchical autocracy until 1740 , Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, Berlin, Cologne 1996, p. 159/160
- ↑ Jacoby, with evidence, p. 28.
- ^ Frank Göse: Friedrich I. (1657-1713). A king in Prussia. Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 9783791724553 , p. 18
- ↑ Jacoby, with evidence, p. 51, details in Nowakowski (Lit.), pp. 146–148
- ^ Ludwig Hüttl: Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg, the Great Elector 1620–1688. A political biography , Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich 1981, p. 246 (Elbing) and p. 250 (Bautzke)
- ↑ On this Christopher Clark: Prussia . Rise and decline 1600–1947, DVA², Munich 2007, pp. 81–86, cit. P. 84
- ↑ Jacoby, p. 154. According to Nowakowski (lit.) he is said to have conquered Vilna with a ruse, p. 151
- ^ Jacoby, p. 207
- ^ Jacoby, p. 211
- ↑ See the summary in Jacoby, pp. 212–221
- ^ German editions in several publishers, including Globus Verlag, Berlin 1905 [“six books in one volume”], most recently by Salzwasser Verlag, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-8460-0318-3
- ↑ This Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg : nobles mobility and Grand Tour in Polish and Lithuanian nobility (1500-1700) In: perspectivia.net. Supplement to the Francia . Vol. 60, 2000, p. 322 f.
- ^ Janusz Małłek: Prussia and Poland. Politics, estates, church and culture from the 16th to the 18th century (= writings of the Mainz Philosophical Faculty Society No. 12), Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 978-3-515-05943-5 , pp. 58–68 , here p. 68
- ↑ See FA Morosov and AN Schevzov on Radzwill's epitaphs in the information of the Cathedral Church in Kaliningrad on the history of the cathedral ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Russian website with illustration of the epitaph and translation of the Latin inscription ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Radziwiłł, Bogusław |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Radvila, Boguslavas |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Lithuanian magnate, governor in Prussia |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 3, 1620 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Danzig |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 31, 1669 |
| Place of death | near Königsberg , Duchy of Prussia |