The 18th century was a time of enormous cultural, political and societal upheaval for the West. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it was a period of decline that was completed by the partitions. However, reducing the 18th-century history of the Polish-Lithuanian state to a mere falling into political non-existence would be a simplified and thus false…
It was a type of competition, not to say casting, for a wife for the King of France. The list consisted of one hundred princesses. Brief comments on age, religion and origin were written next to each of the candidates. by Maciej Forycki In 1725 Marie Leszczyńska, hailing from a Polish noble family, became…
The universal tendency to reproduce the model created by the Sun King – also discernible in seats of democratic power, the palaces of the mighty, or the individual microcosms imitating the Bourbon inheritance – cannot obscure the long-standing fascination of the Sarmatian world with Versailles. In many cases, we are dealing with the comprehensive assimilation…
