Political loyalties in the Commonwealth's borderlands: Bogusław Radziwiłł (1620-1669) and the problem of treason

EN[...] This leads us back to Kalicki’s original question: why was Bogusław Radziwiłł singled out by contemporaries as well as historians? Why did he have to fight so hard in courts of law and in the Sejm to gain what came easy to most other "traitors" of Ujście and Kiejdany? Sienkiewicz’s fictitious quote at the start perceptively captures the aspirations of magnate families. Historians of Poland-Lithuania need to have a second look at the projects magnates planned for the Commonwealth, particularly in borderlands which were under pressure from external enemies. For Bogusław Radziwiłł the alternatives were not royalism versus szlachta republicanism. He looked across borders to emulate the European aristocracy and their territorial ambitions. Pasek, representing the average Polish nobleman, surmised and rejected such plans, while Radziwiłł realised that his circumstances hampered their full realisation. Ducal Prussia became the territory over which Radziwiłł exercised quasi-princely power after being excluded from the career he desired in the Commonwealth. Did this make him a traitor? His testament paints him as a regalist at heart. He admonished future generations of his family to "hold the king always in high esteem, serve him faithfully, and if he is a bad king, still patiently to bear his defects, in the knowledge that he was given to us by God, and ab extremis he may be a foreigner, who never fits in well, but patience overcomes everything". This comes from the pen of a man who knew exactly that the king was not chosen by God but by the Commonwealth’s citizens. Radziwiłł’s testament does not sound like a traitor’s last stand, but the testimony of somebody very much aware of his own limits and the limitations that royal policies could impose on magnate power in general.His king raised homines novi, newcomers such as the Pac family, against the older magnateria, triggering the conflict that alienated Radziwiłł, the king’s man, from his king. Radziwiłł did not commit treason against his king; he felt betrayed himself. In contrast, Friedrich Wilhelm conceded to his governor the power of creative rulership and an autonomy that strengthened Radziwiłł’s loyalty to the Elector. Over time, in his role as Prussian governor, his commonwealth discourse of liberty, virtue and the common good became tainted by the language of command and subjection and the self-interest of the state. This, in the end, was the real betrayal that Radziwiłł committed against the Commonwealth and its civic ideals. [Extract, p. 168-169]