Silva Rerum | 07.09.2015 After his second mission in Poland in 1674, Callières composed a brief report, which, in contrast to the famous work De la manière de négocier avec les souverains remained a manuscript. It is currently stored at the Polish Library in Paris – the treasury of many valuable historical monuments. The report was most likely written towards the end of 1675 after Callières’ return from Poland, and may have been addressed to his superiors the Duke of Savoy and Piedmont Carlo Emanuele II and his superiors in the Secretariat of State for Foreign Affairs. Speaking to the first recipient is the humble tone when Callières mentions His Royal Highness, as well as flattering praises regarding the glory added by the Savoyard monarch to his possessions and cities, through which Callières rode through on his return trip. The author of the report does not overlook any opportunity to convey conventional compliments made by personalities he visited, and addressed towards the House of Savoy.
At the outset of his report, Callières describes his journey to Poland, begun in Paris on 31 March 1674. The diplomat went on from there to Calais, where he embarked on a yacht of the King of England, supplied at the request of Louis XIV not only to transport Callières, but above all the French ambassador to the Polish election, the Bishop of Marseille, Toussaint de Forbin-Janson. The yacht headed to Hamburg, but initially did not reach the port, pushed back by a headwind all the way to the mouth of the Thames near London. Having finally reached Hamburg, Callières travelled by postal vehicle, through Berlin to Gdańsk, and from there to Warsaw, where he arrived on 5 May. At that time, the election sejm was already in progress in the Polish capital.
After describing the journey, and before the actual report of his actions in Warsaw, Callières sketched a description of the Polish political system apparently so that his report would be understood by the recipient, unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the specific republican form of government in the Commonwealth. We learn here briefly, but competently, about the nature and consequences of the Polish–Lithuanian union, primarily for the dual hierarchy of offices in both countries. Callières describes the composition of the Senate and lists and describes the responsibilities of the central and royal court officials. In order to clarify the characteristics of Polish institutions, the author several times aptly makes analogies to their French counterparts. This also applies to the description of the Polish autorainment, such as arming the cavalry with lances, as was done in French cavalry of old. He rightly, in part, associates the castle starosts with the senechals and bailiffs of medieval France. Next, he presents the composition of the Chamber of Deputies of the Sejm, elected by the landholders’ parliaments. In this context, he refers to the similarities between the Polish Senate and the House of Lords and the Chamber of Deputies and the House of Commons in England, assuming, perhaps, a knowledge of the English parliamentary system for his reader. Callières emphasises here the specific character of Election Sejms, in which every member of the szlachta could take part without need to be elected, equal to the greatest lords in this right.
For obvious reasons, Callières included in his report a description of the procedures of the interregnum. He highlighted here the role of the Primate Interrex and described the particular situation he found in Warsaw. During the Sejm, the Archbishop of Gniezno, Florian Czartoryski, passed away, and he was replaced in the role of Interrex by the next senior bishop, Krakow’s Andrzej Trzebicki.
Another section of Callières’ report is particularly interesting, because it is a description of the location where the election of the king took place. The French diplomat presented here the famous Sejm Circle in Wola near Warsaw. What is interesting, he did not limit himself to a verbal description, but included a sketch. It is a quite awkward, naïve image showing the Circle from a bird’s eye view and a shaky perspective. On the sketch, Callières marked with letters the seats of the main participants of the electoral spectacle. Next, he quite minutely presented the procedure of official welcome to the Circle of a foreign ambassador who was recommending a foreign candidate to the throne. We can read here that after his audience, the ambassador gave many feasts for the senators and szlachta, abundantly watered with Hungarian wine. The expense, as the French diplomat commented, was necessary in this country to make friends.
The short description of the Commonwealth system ends with a list of distribution prerogatives of the kings of Poland, as well as their income and a far from exhaustive presentation of the privileges of the szlachta. Accented among them is the requirement of achieving consensus at sejms, the inviolability of the person and property of the nobleman, and the inequality of the penalty for a murder committed by a nobleman, depending on the status of his victim.
We must admit that the young, 29-year-old diplomat already possessed solid knowledge of the system and political culture of Sarmatian Poland. In his sketch, he avoided the more serious errors. The more important inaccuracy concerns the hierarchy of the landowner officials. The presence of the hierarchy was ascribed by Callières to the need for serving the king during his travels around the country. The court officials were to give up their landowner responsibilities. Callières did not associate the genesis of landowner offices with heredity after the feudal fragmentation of the Crown in the Middle Ages.
After these preliminary considerations, Callières moves to the proper description of his mission in Poland. He directed his first steps to the Great Crown Marshal and Hetman Jan Sobieski, then to his friend Morsztyn, and then to the senators – the leaders of the alliance gathered around the Chocim (Khotyn) victor. He gave them all a full complement of letters from his principal – the Duke of Savoy and Piedmont. It was already then that Callières began to have suspicions – justified, as it turned out – about the sincerity of Sobieski’s support for the Prince of Condé, in a situation where Louis XIV’s official candidate was the Prince of Neuburg. Such suspicions were aroused especially by the attitude of the Hetman’s wife, Marysieńska, with whom he met several times, sensing her great ambition to make her husband a king. However, seeing the momentary hesitation of Sobieski, who was worried about a divided election, Callières even more zealously suggested to him the candidacy of Louis Thomas, Count of Soissons. The count, should he marry the widowed queen Eleonor of Austria, could, in Callières’ opinion, reunite the quarrelling alliances. Callières judged that his candidate would receive the support of the Pac family, who were particularly against Neuburg, seeing in him a creature of France. They were also worried about his family ties to the branch of the German family Wittelsbach that ruled in Sweden. This last circumstance would make it possible for France to realise their long-spun plans to build the so-called eastern barrier – both directed against and dividing the Habsburg Empire and the Moscow tsar rule – composed of Sweden, Poland and Turkey. Sobieski declared his support for the Savoy candidacy on paper, should the Pac alliance also support it.
Callières then headed for the leaders of the opposition alliance, beginning with a conversation with the lady of honour of the widowed queen. This was the wife of the Great Chancellor of Lithuania Krzysztof Pac – Frenchwoman Klara Izabella de Mailly. Callières showed her a miniature of the Count of Soissons. The picture was to be to the liking of the lady, as well as Queen Eleonor, whom it reached through her lady in waiting. Our diplomat also spoke with her husband, Krzysztof Pac. This latter put forwards, however, the doubt whether the 17-year-old Savoyard candidate would be able to marry the widow of Wiśniowiecki. And most of all, due to his young age, whether he would be able to command the army and rule by himself. Callières, knowing how determined the Pac alliance was to marry Eleonor to Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine, asked Pac whether he would, in case of the Sobieski alliance’s opposition, give priority to the Savoyard over the young Neuberg. To this question, he received an affirmative answer. In this situation, Callières handed the Chancellor, as was the practice in the old Commonwealth, a note for a “substantial sum”, payable after the election had gone Callières’ way. The diplomat recruited someone, most likely with money, someone he trusted in the court of the chancellor, as well as someone in Sobieski’s camp, to be well informed about what the warring factions were plotting.
Callières then had an official audience with the Interrex and the senate of the Commonwealth at the castle in Warsaw, presenting his credentials with all the letters of credence described here. Also on occasion were read the credentials issued to the diplomat by the Savoyard prince and his cousin.
On 19 May, the Sobieski alliance sent five bishops to Eleonor and Krzysztof Pac with the questions whether they would forsake their support of Charles of Lorraine and agree to marry the widowed Queen to the Prince of Neuburg. As we can thus see, already at that moment, the supporters of Sobieski did not take Callières’ pupil into consideration. The enjoys received an evasive answer that everything would be settled the next day by the electors in the Circle of the Sejm. The stubbornness of the Pac family to stand by the Lorraine prince, in the opinion of Callières, suited Sobieski, since it showed the electorate their inability to compromise constructively. This was supposedly what convinced the hesitant hetman to put forward his own candidacy.
When everyone arrived armed at the electoral field, there was worry that a bloody conflict would break out. Warsaw merchants closed down their stalls. Nothing like that happened, however. The deliberations began quietly in gatherings composed of nobles and senators of individual voivodeships. A turning point was the appearance of the Ruthenian voivode Stanisław Jabłonowski, who convinced the electorate of his voivodeship to select their countryman Sobieski. For residents of the border voivodeship, Sobieski’s military competence was key, giving them a guarantee of security in case of the expected Turkish invasion. The nobles of the Krakow and Poznań voivodeships followed the example of the Ruthenian electorate, and soon after the rest of the voivodeships of the Crown. However, 600-700 Lithuanians who supported the Pac alliance left the Circle. In that situation, the Krakow bishop, Andrzej Trzebicki, declined to proclaim Sobieski king and deferred the matter until the next day. On 20 May, the opponents of Sobieski were to send assurances to the French ambassador of their withdrawal of support for the Duke of Lorraine and transferring it to Louis Thomas of Savoy. The manoeuver did nothing, however. The determination of the Sobieski supporters was too great. That day, there were still negotiations to persuade the Lithuanians to return to the Circle, where Sobieski was to be proclaimed king. To achieve this goal, 100,000 francs were promised to the Great Marshal of Lithuania, Aleksander Pałubiński. That very day, the bishop of Vilnius, Mikołaj Pac, gave a speech in the Circle, referring to Sobieski as king for the first time, which heralded the withdrawal of Lithuania’s opposition. At the same time, however, he persuaded the voters to postpone the final proclamation until the next day. In the evening on 20 May, Sobieski was congratulated on his election at his residence in the Kazimierz Palace in Warsaw. Among those congratulating him, the greatest importance for the elect was the French ambassador. Sobieski received them with tears of emotion, knowing, in Callières’ opinion, that he owed the defeat of the opposition solely to the protection of the Sun King. On 21 May in the afternoon, the Krakow bishop proclaimed in the Circle the election of Jan III Sobieski as the King of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Only one envoy from Poznań spoke out against the election, but he was forced to leave the Circle by the hetman’s supporters. From Wola, the elect proceeded in the company of the crowds to the College of St John, where he was greeted at the door by the papal nuncio and the bishop of Marseille – the ambassador of France. “Te Deum” was sung and cries of “Vivat Johannes Rex!” were heard. After the ceremony, Jan Sobieski paid a short visit to the widowed queen at the Castle. Eleonor shortly after moved to the Camaldolese monastery and from there, left Poland. The king elect received congratulations from the nobility and foreign envoys, among whom were absent representatives of the Habsburg courts – Vienna and Madrid – protesting in this way the choice of a candidate who was unpleasant to them.
Also among the congratulating ambassadors was of course Callières. To the complements of our diplomat, Sobieski answered with pleasantries addressed to his principal and himself, expressed in French. Callières paid a similar visit to Marie Casimire, who, according to the custom of the time, received him in the bedroom of the Kazimierz Palace.
On the day of his patron saint, Sobieski gave a sumptuous banquet for the ambassadors and senators. The author of our report also participated in the feast. The King drank to his health, and then gave him his own cup, so that the French diplomat could also drink from it.
In this, Callières ends the substantial part of his report. In the last sentence, he writes that he used his further stay in Poland to proclaim the glory of the House of Savoy, with a view to future circumstances that could arise in the electoral kingdom. He did not exclude his return to Poland, which came true in 1682, but this time was not in connection to a free election.
In the last subchapter, Callières describes his return trip from Warsaw. He started out on 2 October, heading towards Imperial Silesia. From there, he travelled through Dresden to Leipzig, where the Saxon Elector pair resided on occasion of a fair. He also visited the Elector of Bavaria in Munich and through Tyrol found himself in Venice. From there, after a few days, he travelled through Milan, and then reached the capital of his principal, Charles Emanuel II – Turin. Callières did not find his patron there, and headed to the residence of the Prince of Savoy and Piedmont in Moncalieri. There, as we can surmise, he gave him a verbal report from his actions in Poland. Callières’ manuscript ends with a panegyric in honour of the ruler, to whom he has given his service, as well as a sweeping signature of the author.
Translation: Lingua Lab
