Fortece Rzeczypospolitej : studium z dziejów budowy fortyfikacji stałych w państwie polsko-litewskim w XVII wieku

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Tvirtovės; Abiejų Tautų Respublika (ATR; Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów; Žečpospolita; Sandrauga; Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth); Karybos istorija; Fortifikacijos technologijos; Fortifikacija; Fortresses; Military history; Fortification technology; Fortification.

ENPermanent fortifications in the Early Modern period have been a subject of research in various historical disciplines, from military history, the history of architecture and cartography, through to archeology. In Polish academic research, extensive and thorough studies have been conducted in all those fields of history, the main focus of research being the form and military value of fortifications, whilst the issues addressed by the author of this work have been treated marginally. The aim is to deal with the questions which seem to be far more interesting for a historian than the mere external form of the fortifications and their military functions. The work traces the process of the creation of Early Modern fortifications and seeks to grasp the various factors underlying this process. It concentrates on permanent fortifications constructed during times of peace, which differ from those erected temporarily in connection with specific military campaigns. The attempt to approach this problem on a national scale does not result from a mere mechanical extension of the research field; nor is it the accumulation of fragmentary pieces of research. It is the consequence of a belief that in Europe in the Early Modern period, the role of the state increased significantly in this area. This increase saw the state taking over the process of initiating and administering the construction of permanent fortifications and supervision of the functioning of permanent fortifications, which gradually led to their being organized in centralized and strategically determined systems. This development is connected both with technical-economic construction factors and the political changes affecting early modern states.The 17th century saw the climax of the phenomena discussed here. On the one hand, the level of the development of early modern fortification technology was quite advanced, which - in the form of the so-called Old Dutch System - had become relatively cheap, which, in turn, facilitated its distribution. On the other hand, the 17th century in Europe was the time when early modern absolute monarchies were established, which then took over the construction of early modern bastioned fortifications. The starting point of the analysis is the term of the early modern fortress understood as the fundamental type of fortified building of the epoch, not only from the technical-military point of view, but also from the social-economic and political perspective. In each of the above-mentioned aspects, the constructions differed from medieval fortifications (city castles or defensive walls). The creation of the early modern fortress was a process that developed from the construction of fortifications of local significance, serving to defend local communities, to fortresses of supralocal significance, which protected not only the local population, but were part of the broader system protecting the entire territory of the state. This process eventually ended in the 18th century, but the mid-17th century constitutes a turning point in this practice.The fundamental questions posed are as follows. To what extent did the process of creating early modern fortifications within the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth reflect developments taking place in Europe in this period? How and to what an extent were early modern fortresses built in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, given the differences in the political system and the country's "spatially" specific character - the vast extent of the state and its relatively low population, along with the enhancement of military techniques used in the wars against the Polish state? To some extent, the aim is to confront the opinion, which had become popular as early as the 17th century, that Poland was a state devoid of fortresses, and to check whether the statement used in the title of the work Fortresses of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was also the title of the constitution of the sejm of 1658, should be considered an ephemeral aim or whether it reflected the changes in the status of permanent fortifications during the 17th century. The work does not, however, aim to provide a detailed evaluation of the role of permanent fortifications in the wars involving Poland in the i7lh century as this problem deserves a separate and thorough examination. [...]. [From the publication]