During the major part of this narrative the people of Poland were organized in these clearly defined categories.
NOBILITY
Magnates: Owners of vast lands and with many prerogatives, they controlled Poland, with no superior power to discipline them. Ostensibly similar to the great barons of England, they were in fact much more powerful, since they refused to grant consistent allegiance to their king. Because of Poland’s geographical position, they often allied themselves, individually, to foreign powers. Thus the powerful Radziwills often represented Russian interests; the Leszczynskis, French. They could be either extremely conservative (Lubomirskis, Mniszechs) or surprisingly liberal (Czartoryskis, Zamoyskis). But they were invariably pigheaded and in the end destroyed their fatherland. The various Counts Lubonski are fictional.
King: Originally an inherited title, it became an elected one, the magnates and gentry doing the voting and preferring to grant the crown to someone outside Poland rather than to one of their own, lest he become too strong. The title was not hereditary, and at the death of any king a riotous election ensued, with foreign powers usually participating with nominees favorable to their interests. This curious system provided one superb king (Stefan Batory of Hungary); one pitiful failure (a weak-willed French prince who resigned after three months); two imbecilic nonentities (from Saxony); three reasonably good kings who brought disaster in their wake (the Vasa rulers from Sweden); and occasionally some authentic Polish nobleman who ruled at least as well as the outsiders (Leszczynski, Poniatowski). They also elected one Pole of dynamic power who proved to be a most memorable ruler (Jan Sobieski, hero of Vienna).
Princes, counts: Poland conferred no titles, but the papacy, the Holy Roman Empire and surrounding countries did, often at a stiff price, so there were princes, dukes and counts, but such titles conferred no power or standing superior to what the magnate enjoyed. Prince Lubomirski and Count Lubonski had no greater standing than tough old Mniszech of Dukla and were sometimes much poorer in worldly goods.
Minor nobility: Verbally, this category causes trouble. Polish writers use the word gentry, which doesn’t sound quite right in English. European writers use petty nobility, but the adjective has unfortunate connotations. The minor nobility were divided into two groups: those owning land controlling the peasants thereon; and the landless factotums who affiliated themselves with one or another of the magnates. These latter resembled the lesser samurai of Japan, men of good lineage without castles or great estates who survived as hangers-on or as mercenaries. Another useful analogy is with the caballero of Spain, the man with only a horse, a lance and a proud name. The minor nobility provided five functionaries popular in Polish fiction: voivode (powerful governor of a territory); hetman (field marshal of the armies); castellan (governor of a palace and the territory subordinated to it); palatine (palace functionary); starosta (warden or constable). The category includes men almost rich and powerful enough to be magnates, and all intervening levels down to the roving rascal with no castle, no money, no village, no peasants, one horse and pride unbounded. The Bukowski family represents the middle levels and is fictional.
CLERGY
Cardinal, bishop, abbot, monk, friar: Directly linked to Rome, members of this group owned vast estates and whole villages and towns, with all the peasants included. Militantly defensive, they opposed the Orthodox Catholics of Russia, the Protestants of Sweden and Germany, the Jews of their own country and the pagans of the Baltic lands. Toward the famous Uniates of Poland, created by Rome to suborn the Orthodox, they were ambivalent; just as the good Catholics of Spain found it difficult to accept wholeheartedly Jews who converted, Polish Catholics always suspected the turncoat Uniates. In the earliest years of Polish nationalism, the clergy were often the only people in an area who could read and write, and thus they exerted great political pressure, but quickly the magnates and the better nobility educated themselves, often with great sophistication, and then a balance of power developed.
TOWNSMEN
Merchants: Polish writers use the noun burgher to designate this category. A growing power throughout this entire narrative, owning their own stores and small factories, they resembled the middle class of all Europe.
Craftsmen: Of considerable skill in Poland, they inhabited the towns, were often owners of their shops, and were governed by their guilds.
JEWS
Financiers: Because the Catholic religion commanded its believers not to charge interest, and because Polish knightly tradition forbade its members to engage in business of any kind (an injunction ignored in the case of wheat and lumber), the handling of money became the accepted responsibility of the Jew. Poland was far more liberal in its acceptance of Jews than most of its neighboring countries, so many found refuge there and prospered, but animosities did sometimes flare.
COUNTRYMEN
Small landholder: Although Polish lands were usually held by either the magnates or the crown, clever farmers managed through adroit behavior, or courage in warfare, or service to magnate or king, to sequester small pieces of land on which they made enough profit to acquire other pieces until they became self-sufficient with their own farms, their own horses, their own rude machinery, and in time, hoards of zlotys which they used for the betterment of their families. Often the money was used as a dowry when an especially attractive daughter was married to a penniless member of the minor nobility.
Peasant: The vast majority of Poles were peasants, like the vast majority of all people in medieval Europe—and down to modern times in eastern European countries like Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Rumania and Hungary. In other countries they were called serfs, esne, villeins, thralls, vassals, muzhiks. They were not exactly slaves, but they belonged to the land, rarely owned their own homes, had to work stated days for their master, could not remove to another village without permission, had no education and not even a remote hope of bettering themselves. However, as in western Europe although at a much later time, Polish peasants did gain certain freedoms, release from ancient impositions and a measure of land ownership.
Despite this harsh system in which the magnate owned and controlled everything, a kind of rude democracy thrived in Poland, which was always much more liberal than its neighbors. In England only three percent of the population could be classified as nobility; in France, only two percent; but in Poland a full twelve percent were so qualified, which is justification for the Polish use of the designation gentry. And in the towns another ten or twelve percent associated themselves with the nobility, which meant that many citizens had an interest in the government.
The incredible liberum veto, by which one man in a Seym (parliament) of hundreds could negate and prorogue the entire work of the Seym by merely crying “I oppose!” was a major cause of Poland’s disappearance from the map of Europe, but it was defended as the last refuge upon which a free man (in this case the magnate or his henchman) could rely to defend his freedom. That Poland survived so many fatal reverses was a testimony to its volatile spirit of freedom.