- Sigismund III Vasa
-
Polish Zygmunt Wazaborn June 20, 1566, Gripsholm, Swed.died April 30, 1632, Warsaw, Pol.King of Poland (1587–1632) and of Sweden (1592–99).Son of King John III of Sweden (1537–1592) and Catherine, daughter of Sigismund I of Poland, he was elected king of Poland in 1587. On his father's death (1592), he accepted the Swedish throne and was crowned in 1594. He left his paternal uncle Charles (later Charles IX) as regent in Sweden and returned to Poland, but Charles later rose in rebellion, defeated Sigismund's army (1598), and deposed Sigismund (1599). Poland and Sweden fought intermittently from 1600 as Sigismund tried to regain the Swedish throne. He invaded Russia in the Time of Troubles and held Moscow (1610–12). In a renewal of the Polish-Swedish conflict in 1621, King Gustav II Adolf seized most of Polish Livonia, which Sweden retained under the terms of a 1629 truce.
Sigismund III, detail of a painting, school of Rubens; in the Bayerische ...By courtesy of the Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich* * *
▪ king of Poland and SwedenPolish Zygmunt Waza , Swedish Sigismund Vasaborn June 20, 1566, Gripsholm, Swed.died April 30, 1632, Warsaw, Pol.king of Poland (1587–1632) and of Sweden (1592–99) who sought to effect a permanent union of Poland and Sweden but instead created hostile relations and wars between the two states lasting until 1660.The elder son of King John III Vasa of Sweden and Catherine, daughter of Sigismund I the Old of Poland, Sigismund belonged to the Vasa dynasty through his father and to the Jagiellon dynasty through his mother, who brought him up as a Catholic. He was elected king of Poland in August 1587, succeeding his uncle King Stephen Báthory. To obtain the throne he had to accept a reduction of royal power and a consequent increase of the power of the Sejm (Diet). In 1592 he married the Austrian archduchess Anna, and, after his father's death the same year, he received the Sejm's permission to accept the Swedish throne. He was crowned king of Sweden in 1594, but only after promising to uphold Swedish Lutheranism.Leaving his paternal uncle Charles (later Charles IX) as regent in Sweden, Sigismund returned to Poland in July 1594. Charles, however, rose in rebellion, and, when Sigismund returned to Sweden with an army, Charles defeated him at Stångebro (1598) and deposed him in 1599. Sigismund's subsequent foreign policy was aimed at regaining the Swedish throne, and from 1600 Poland and Sweden were involved in an intermittent war. He also attempted to maintain an alliance with the Austrian Habsburgs. When his first Austrian wife died (1598) and he married her sister Constantia (1605), he provoked his opponents, already aroused by his efforts to introduce majority rule in place of unanimity in the Sejm, to engage in a civil war (1606–08).Shortly after his victory over his internal enemies, Sigismund took advantage of a period of civil unrest in Muscovy (known as the Time of Troubles) and invaded Russia, holding Moscow for two years (1610–12) and Smolensk thereafter. In 1617 the Polish-Swedish conflict, which had been interrupted by an armistice in 1611, broke out again. While Sigismund's army was also fighting Ottoman forces in Moldavia (1617–21), King Gustavus II Adolphus (Gustav II Adolf) of Sweden (Charles IX's son) invaded Sigismund's lands, capturing Riga (1621) and seizing almost all of Polish Livonia. Sigismund, who concluded the Truce of Altmark with Sweden in 1629, never regained the Swedish crown. His Swedish wars resulted, moreover, in Poland's loss of Livonia and in a diminution of the kingdom's international prestige.Additional ReadingMaria Bogucka, The Lost World of the “Sarmatians,” trans. from Polish (1996).* * *
Universalium. 2010.
