{"product_id":"diplomatic-archive-of-jan-iii-sobieski-and-louis-xiv","title":"Jan III Sobieski \u0026 Louis XIV: Franco-Polish Diplomatic Archive, 1680–1681","description":"\u003cp\u003eToussaint de Forbin-Janson (1626–1713); Nicolas-Louis de L’Hospital (1636–1685); Louis XIV (1638–1715); Charles Colbert de Croissy (1629– 1696), and others.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eLettres escrites au Roy et à Mr. Colbert de Croissy, secrétaire d'Estat, par Mgr \u003c\/em\u003e\u003cem\u003el'evesque comte de Beauvais, Pair de France, ambassadeur extraordinaire de Sa \u003c\/em\u003e\u003cem\u003eMajesté en Pologne depuis le 3e aoust 1680. [With:] Négociation de Monseigneur \u003c\/em\u003e\u003cem\u003el'evesque et comte de Beauvais, Pair de France, ambassadeur extraordinaire en \u003c\/em\u003e\u003cem\u003ePologne.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003eS.l., compiled shortly after 14 February 1681, probably during the 1680s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4 style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJAN III SOBIESKI BETWEEN FRANCE AND THE \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHABSBURGS, 1680–1681: A CONTEMPORARY \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDIPLOMATIC ARCHIVE OF THE STRUGGLE FOR \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePOLAND’S ALLEGIANCE BEFORE VIENNA.\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center;\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eAn extraordinary 147-folio manuscript preserving both sides of Louis XIV’s attempt to keep Jan III Sobieski and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth within the French alliance during the critical months in which Poland’s future alignment remained open. It records the negotiation at every level: Forbin Janson’s confidential reports of his private conversations with Sobieski and Marie Casimire; the draft articles proposed for a renewed Franco-Polish treaty; French calculations over subsidies, pensions and the political management of the Commonwealth; explicit plans to obstruct or break the Polish Diet should it move towards Austria; intelligence from Hungary, Transylvania, Moscow and the Ottoman frontier; and, in the second part of the volume, the royal instructions, secret Franco-Brandenburg material and responses from Louis XIV and Croissy which reveal the policy being directed from Versailles.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLess than three years before Jan III Sobieski rode to the relief of Vienna, the political choice which would take him there had still not been made. This manuscript preserves that moment. Across nearly 300 manuscript pages the Polish court is observed almost day by day as France attempts to prevent the Commonwealth from turning towards the Habsburg Emperor. Sobieski speaks privately of the alternatives he believes he sacrificed through his attachment to France; Marie Casimire explains why she considers herself and the King betrayed by Versailles; French diplomats calculate which Polish ministers are worth retaining on pensions and how hostile resolutions might be prevented in the Sejm; intelligence arrives from Transylvania, Moscow and the Ottoman world; and the possibility of an Austrian alliance repeatedly appears as the outcome France must prevent. The final result, the Polish-Imperial alliance of 1683 and Sobieski’s march to Vienna, is one of the defining episodes of Polish history. Here it remains undecided.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eForbin-Janson had already played an important part in Sobieski’s political career. He supported his election in 1674 and subsequently participated in the French policy which culminated in the secret agreement of Jaworów, by which Louis XIV encouraged Sobieski’s northern policy against Brandenburg. Sobieski hoped ultimately to recover Ducal Prussia, formerly a Polish fief, while France promised substantial assistance. Within a few years that policy had begun to collapse. Louis XIV reached an accommodation with Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, precisely the ruler against whom Sobieski had expected French support. French promises remained unfulfilled, the Queen’s family felt slighted, and the position of the French party in Poland deteriorated. Forbin returned in 1680 with the difficult task of recovering a relationship which France itself had helped to destroy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first and largest part of the manuscript, ff. 1–104, contains approximately seventy-five letters, dispatches, intelligence reports and associated papers extending from August 1680 into February 1681. They begin during the journey east, but the character of the correspondence changes once Forbin reaches the Sobieski court. Following the royal progress through Medyka, Sambor, Drohobycz, Jaworów and Żółkiew, he gradually gains the confidence of both King and Queen. He hunts and travels with Sobieski, joins the royal party at dinner, spends evenings in the King’s company and is given prolonged opportunities for private conversation. On the road to a hunt Sobieski has Forbin placed in the royal carriage with himself and Marie Casimire specifically so that they may discuss affairs at leisure. The result is a sustained confidential record of Jan III speaking about his own position before Vienna had transformed the public image of his reign.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMarie Casimire is the first to speak with real candour. She tells Forbin that she and Sobieski had exposed their persons, blood and political position for Louis XIV, opposed the Austrian party within the Commonwealth, assisted the Hungarian malcontents and supported French designs against Brandenburg, yet had received neither the money nor the favours which they believed had been promised. At Sambor she explicitly tells him that she is speaking “\u003cem\u003enon pas comme à un Ambassadeur de V.M., mais comme une personne en qui elle prenoit confiance\u003c\/em\u003e.” Her father, the Marquis d’Arquien, becomes one of the recurring tests of French sincerity. The Emperor is willing to honour him, while Louis XIV appears reluctant to do so, turning what might otherwise seem a family question into a matter of international competition for the Queen’s allegiance. Forbin eventually reaches a clear conclusion: France cannot recover Sobieski without recovering Marie Casimire. In the long reports of November 1680 the embassy describes her as exercising “\u003cem\u003eun pouvoir absolu sur l’esprit du Roy son mary\u003c\/em\u003e,” while observing that the King concealed little from her and that she involved herself directly in political affairs.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSobieski’s own conversations are still more important. He insists that he had possessed a French heart before his election and had given Louis XIV little cause for complaint afterwards. He recounts the difficulties he had incurred with the Emperor and Brandenburg because of policies favourable to France and describes the French court as having subsequently forgotten or despised him. In the great dispatch of 8 November 1680, occupying a substantial sequence of the volume, he moves beyond grievance and sets out the political alternatives he claims to have sacrificed. He discusses approaches from the Emperor and Brandenburg, dynastic advantages offered to his family and schemes involving the recovery of Livonia, apparently with a hereditary element in favour of his son. His complaint is therefore very specific: attachment to France had carried territorial, dynastic and political costs, while the benefits promised in return had failed to materialise.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe same dispatch contains some of the strongest material concerning the road to the alliance of 1683. Sobieski speaks directly about the proposed defensive league with the Emperor. He tells Forbin that Vienna had pressed strongly for it and that important Polish senators were favourable, but insists that he himself had delayed the project. He even disputes Béthune’s claim to have prevented the league, maintaining that the former French ambassador had taken credit at Versailles for something Sobieski himself had obstructed. The manuscript thus preserves Jan III’s own account of an earlier attempt to create the Polish-Habsburg security arrangement which would finally become reality two years later. At another point the King asks what France would actually provide if Poland went to war against the Turks. He wants an answer strong enough to demonstrate to the Commonwealth that friendship with Louis XIV still offers tangible advantages. In November 1680, the alliance which would lead to Vienna remained one choice among several.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrench money runs through these negotiations. Sobieski raises large outstanding payments and obligations arising from previous agreements, while Forbin begins to consider whether French funds might be more effective if directed through the political structures of the Commonwealth rather than delivered simply to the King. He assesses palatines, bishops, chancellors, treasurers, marshals and military commanders according to their influence and the usefulness of retaining them on French pensions. His object is stated plainly: precautions must be taken in the Diets to prevent a league with the House of Austria being concluded under the pretext of war against the Turk. By 29 November he is discussing with the Grand Treasurer the possibility of securing men capable of “\u003cem\u003efaire casser la Diette\u003c\/em\u003e” if necessary. On 24 January 1681, with the general Diet approaching, he reports that they are “\u003cem\u003eménageons des voies pour rompre la Diette en cas de nécessité.\u003c\/em\u003e” The manuscript therefore gives direct evidence of French diplomacy working inside the parliamentary structures of the Commonwealth, identifying individuals, calculating expenditure and preparing means by which an unwelcome political settlement might be stopped.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese manoeuvres take place against a vivid background of factional conflict. Writings circulating through the provincial diets accuse Sobieski of accumulating money, attempting to secure the succession for his son and failing to pursue war against the Turk with sufficient vigour. Béthune is accused of encouraging rumours that the King is seriously ill and that Poland ought already to consider his successor, while Marie Casimire comes to believe that the former ambassador had deliberately spread French money through the lesser diets, created a party of his own and attempted to divide her from her husband. Forbin himself is sceptical of some of these accusations, but records them at length. The papers consequently preserve the atmosphere in which questions of foreign alliance, royal succession, French influence and the constitutional independence of the Commonwealth became intertwined.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJan Andrzej Morsztyn appears within the correspondence long before the final crisis which drove him from Poland. Already in September 1680 his opponents are attempting to use his French connections against him, arguing that his acceptance of office and obligations in France makes him incapable of participating properly in the councils of the Commonwealth. Forbin intends to support him. Other Polish material extends across the leading political and dynastic networks of the period: the Radziwiłł interests and the consequences of the death of Michał Kazimierz Radziwiłł; Brandenburg’s plans surrounding Ludwika Karolina Radziwiłł; Royal Prussia and Elbląg; Crown and Lithuanian military affairs; the Sapieha interest; the Grand Treasurer, Chancellor and other principal ministers; the papal nuncio; Polish-Ottoman frontier negotiations; Podolia; and reports from Moscow, including news of Tsar Feodor III’s marriage to the Polish-born Agafia Gruszecka.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe manuscript also shows why the struggle for Sobieski cannot be separated from the wider politics of Eastern Europe. Copies of letters from Akakia at Alba Iulia bring intelligence from Transylvania concerning Teleki, the Hungarian malcontents, French subsidies and the intentions of the Ottoman Porte. Forbin exchanges information with Vitry at Moscow concerning Muscovite-Ottoman negotiations, since a peace or continuation of war between those powers would alter Poland’s strategic position. French funds intended for Hungary and Transylvania are discussed in practical terms: routes through Danzig, conversion into suitable coin, merchants, couriers, bills of exchange, escorts and the dangers of transporting specie across the region. France is simultaneously attempting to keep Sobieski away from the Emperor and to sustain anti-Habsburg pressure inside Hungary, with Poland serving as the geographical and diplomatic bridge between Versailles and the eastern theatre.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe surviving papers also record the ordinary complications of an embassy at this level. In February 1681 members of Forbin’s household are attacked after leaving court, an incident involving dragoons and the Lithuanian military establishment which prompts an intervention by the King and Queen and ultimately produces a formal decree of the Grand Marshal copied into the volume in Latin. Elsewhere the register distinguishes express dispatches, postal duplicates, covering letters and parallel correspondence to Louis XIV and Croissy. These details are important to the character of the manuscript: it was assembled from several streams of diplomatic material and preserves far more than a sequence of ambassadorial reports.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis becomes explicit at f. 105, where a second major section begins under the formal heading \u003cem\u003eNégociation de Monseigneur l’evesque et comte de Beauvais... Ambassadeur extraordinaire en Pologne\u003c\/em\u003e. The first document is the royal instruction issued at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 12 July 1680 for Forbin-Janson and the Marquis de Vitry. It explains what Versailles believed had gone wrong in Poland and what the ambassadors were expected to accomplish: recover Marie Casimire; restore Sobieski’s confidence; cultivate the principal men of the Commonwealth because the King could not by himself bind the Republic; examine the sincerity of proposals for war against the Turk; watch Austrian influence; manage the Hungarian and Transylvanian question; and rebuild the political relationship with France. Supplementary instructions follow, together with copies of Louis XIV’s letters of credence for the King and Queen.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe importance of this second section lies in the relationship between the documents. The instructions provide the programme; the preceding hundred folios show its execution. Versailles orders its diplomats to recover the Queen, and Forbin’s dispatches record his prolonged attempts to do so. The instructions recognise the constitutional limits of Sobieski’s monarchy and order the ambassadors to cultivate the leading men of the Republic; the correspondence then identifies those men, assesses their loyalties and calculates what French money might achieve among them. The government warns of Austrian influence and the Ottoman question; Forbin subsequently reports Sobieski’s account of the proposed Habsburg league and devises means to prevent it in the Sejm. The manuscript therefore brings policy, intelligence and execution into direct relation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe dossier then inserts confidential Franco-Brandenburg material, including an article explicitly headed as taken from a “\u003cem\u003eTraité secret\u003c\/em\u003e” of October 1679. Its presence is quite interesting. French accommodation with Brandenburg belonged directly to the policy which had alienated Sobieski and undermined the Jaworów system. The volume consequently places within the same documentary sequence the confidential settlement which helped damage the Franco-Polish relationship and the subsequent mission undertaken to repair it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe final section, ff. 117–147, completes the structure by preserving letters from Louis XIV and Charles Colbert de Croissy to Forbin and his colleagues between July 1680 and February 1681. The manuscript thus contains both sides of the negotiation: the policy formulated at Versailles, the instructions carried into Poland, the embassy’s confidential reports of its conversations with Sobieski and Marie Casimire, incoming intelligence from other French agents, and the responses sent back from the King and his foreign minister. No equivalent private manuscript bringing together this precise negotiation in comparable form has been identified.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe correspondence closes at the point which gives the entire archive its historical force. In February 1681 Forbin records the “\u003cem\u003eparole positive\u003c\/em\u003e” of Jan III and Marie Casimire that they would remain attached to Louis XIV and intended after the Sejm to enter into a new treaty with France. The French alternative was therefore still alive. Within two years the French party would collapse, Morsztyn would be accused of treason and flee to France, relations with Versailles would deteriorate decisively, and on 1 April 1683 the Commonwealth would enter into alliance with Emperor Leopold I. On 12 September Sobieski became the victor of Vienna. This manuscript preserves the preceding political world in full operation, when France was still attempting to prevent that alliance and believed Sobieski could still be retained.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe physical evidence strongly supports compilation close to the embassy of 1680–1681. The paper bears a distinctive paired clock-face watermark and B♥C countermark, the latter identifying the stock with the important Auvergnat papermaker Benoît Colombier of Ambert, whose mills were producing paper until his death in 1685. The precise combination of clockface and B♥C is independently documented in the papers of Blaise Pascal, where eight sheets of the same type, approximately 47 × 37.5 cm with chainlines spaced at 25 mm, occur among material used between March 1656 and the beginning of 1657; Colombier’s B♥C countermark itself continued in documented use into the 1680s, including on dated paper of 1683 (the latest example of its use so far discovered), entirely consistent with its presence in a manuscript compiled shortly after February 1681, possibly before the Battle of Vienna had actually happened. The systematic organisation of the volume, its professional secretarial hand or hands, and the continued styling of Forbin-Janson as Bishop-Count of Beauvais rather than Cardinal, a dignity conferred upon him in 1690, also support the view that the present manuscript was produced between February 1681 and 1690, probably prior to 1685.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe manuscript has no identified official archival shelfmark and has an early 19th century binding. Its confidential contents required direct access to the documentary material of the mission, including royal instructions, incoming and outgoing diplomatic correspondence and material expressly identified as deriving from a secret treaty. The most convincing interpretation is that it was assembled within Forbin-Janson’s diplomatic or secretarial milieu as a privately retained fair-copy or memorial archive of the Polish negotiation. Related Forbin-Janson papers survive in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, while the principal official series is today divided among the French diplomatic archives.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eParts of this correspondence subsequently entered Polish scholarship through Kazimierz Waliszewski’s \u003cem\u003eArchiwum spraw zagranicznych francuskie do dziejów Jana Trzeciego\u003c\/em\u003e, volume III, published at Kraków in 1884, where material from the French diplomatic archives was printed, extracted or calendared. The present manuscript is a seventeenth-century witness to that corpus, preserving the texts together in the documentary order created around the mission and containing substantial material apparently unpublished in full. Waliszewski published material which is in the present manuscript, but often in abridged form or not at all, according to his own interpretation of the material most relevant to Poland.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor a Polish collection, the importance of the manuscript is straightforward. Its central subject is Jan III Sobieski and the foreign policy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth immediately before Vienna. It preserves the King’s private explanations of his position, Marie Casimire’s confidences and political influence, French plans to manipulate the Sejm, the gathering crisis around Morsztyn, intelligence from the Ottoman, Hungarian and Muscovite theatres, and the instructions and responses which directed French policy from Versailles. It is a contemporary private archive of the struggle for Sobieski, recording in extraordinary detail the last serious French attempt to determine the political direction of the Commonwealth before the alliance of 1683 with much of its content apparently unpublished and therefore presently unavailable to scholarship.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eContents\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eff. 1–104. Correspondence and intelligence of the Polish mission, August 1680–February 1681.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSeventy-five diplomatic letters, reports and associated papers documenting Forbin-Janson’s negotiations with Jan III Sobieski and Marie Casimire. The sequence includes extensive reports of private conversations with the King and Queen; Sobieski’s grievances against France and his discussions of the proposed Habsburg league; the draft articles for a renewed Franco-Polish treaty; French calculations concerning pensions, subsidies and political influence within the Commonwealth; plans to obstruct or break the Sejm if necessary; Jan Andrzej Morsztyn and the French party; Brandenburg and Prussia; the Radziwiłł and Sapieha interests; Polish-Ottoman relations; and intelligence from Hungary, Transylvania and Muscovy. The long reports of 8 November 1680, ff. 23–38, form one of the principal documents in the volume, combining a detailed assessment of Sobieski and Marie Casimire with discussion of the Emperor, Brandenburg, the Ottoman question, French financial commitments and the political management of the Commonwealth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eff. 105–112. Royal instructions for the Polish embassy.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eMémoire pour servir d’instruction tant au Sr. évesque de Beauvais allant de la part du Roy ambassadeur extraordinaire en Pologne qu’au Sr. marquis de Vitry\u003c\/em\u003e... Formal instructions issued at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 12 July 1680, setting out French policy towards Sobieski, Marie Casimire, the principal ministers of the Commonwealth, the Ottoman question, Austria, Brandenburg, Hungary and Transylvania.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eff. 113–116. Supplementary instructions.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eAddition au mémoire servant d’instruction\u003c\/em\u003e. Further directions for the conduct of the mission, supplementing the principal memorandum and clarifying the political objectives of the embassy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eff. 116v–117r. Royal credentials.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCopies of Louis XIV’s letters of credence for presentation to Jan III Sobieski and Marie Casimire, authorising the embassy at the Polish court.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ef. 117. Secret Franco-Brandenburg material, October 1679.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArticle copied from the confidential agreement with Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, explicitly identified in the manuscript as deriving from a “\u003cem\u003eTraité secret.\u003c\/em\u003e” Its inclusion is directly relevant to the deterioration of Franco-Polish relations which the embassy of 1680–1681 was sent to repair.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eff. 117–147. Versailles to Poland, July 1680–February 1681.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLetters of Louis XIV and Charles Colbert de Croissy to Forbin-Janson and his colleagues, with associated diplomatic correspondence. These preserve the answering side of the negotiation and complete the documentary structure of the volume: instructions sent from Versailles, reports and intelligence from Poland, and the royal and ministerial responses returned to the embassy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Julia Woodward Antykwariat","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55185582883157,"sku":"35SAWP","price":40000.0,"currency_code":"PLN","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1081\/7922\/6965\/files\/DSC01594.jpg?v=1791289979","url":"https:\/\/antykwariat-woodward.com\/products\/diplomatic-archive-of-jan-iii-sobieski-and-louis-xiv","provider":"Julia Woodward Antykwariat","version":"1.0","type":"link"}