There have been few wars in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth so short and so full of sensational twists and turns. by Michał Wasiucionek The story of the short but bloody Khotyn War (1620–1621) was full of dramatic twists and turns: from the unexpected and overwhelming defeat of the Crown army at Țuțora…
On the night from 6 to 7 October 1620, a seventy-three-year-old Crown Grand Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski perished on the battlefield in the last act of a drama that had begun a month prior. At the beginning of September, amid growing political tensions between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire, the Hetman entered Moldavia –…
One of the tasks of historians (at least those who have learned the principles of modern scientific techniques) is to search for sources, and to subject those already found to critical appraisal. However, won’t the resources of unknown documents be exhausted one day? Fortunately, not only is the number of documents increasing (and archives make…
During his June 1979 meeting with youth in Gniezno, Pope John Paul II intoned the song ‘Red belt’. Three hundred thousand participants of the Holy Mass sang the refrain in chorus: ‘For a Hutsul, there is no life like in the highlands / when fate throws him into the pits – he soon perishes from…
While writing rhetoric textbooks, he illustrated a critique of macaronic, heavily latinized language with excerpts from his own youthful works. Acting as if he was a political scientist avant la lettre, he created the first systematic critique of the liberum veto system, advocating the introduction of the principle of majority voting in parliament of the…
The course of the boundary between Moldavia and the Polish Crown was, on the surface at least, quite clear, especially in comparison with a fuzzier Polish-Ottoman demarcation further to the east. For most of its course, it ran along the rivers of White Cheremush, Kolachin and the Dniester, extending from the hilly and forested landscape…
