Czy tak zwane postanowienie wileńskie mogło zostać uchwalone w 1701 roku?

• Authors: Gintautas Sliesoriūnas

Title variants

EN

Could the so-called ‘Vilnius act’ have been adopted in 1701?

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The so-called ‘Vilnius act’ is one of the documents of the Internal War in Lithuania between the Sapieha faction and the so-called Lithuanian Republican Movement, which occurred at the turn of the eighteenth century. Researchers have so far been unable to reach an agreement concerning its authenticity. In the ‘Vilnius Act’ the leaders of the Lithuanian Republican Movement and the more influential individuals of contemporary Lithuania, who are shown as signatories of this Act, declared King August II the absolute ruler (Grand Duke) of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and gave the Wettin dynasty hereditary rights to rule Lithuania. All of the ‘freedoms’, constitutions and the Lithuanian statute, which had been taken from Poland and, as was declared, had harmed Lithuania, were rejected and it was promised to recognize any rights, which the monarch should establish. The monarch was also given the right to single-handedly judge disloyal Lithuanian inhabitants. Although no dissolution of the union with the Kingdom of Poland was declared, nevertheless this is seen from the text of the Act. The Act was dated 24 November 1700 and Vilnius indicated as the place of its adoption. As it is known, on the same day in Valkininkai the Valkininkai Resolution was adopted, which legally established the republican victory over the Sapieha family at the Battle of Valkininkai, which had taken place a week earlier (on 18 November). Because the same individuals could not have been in Vilnius and in Valkininkai on the same day to adopt and sign two different acts, researchers admit that the date of the Vilnius Act is conditional (or fictitious). At the diet that took place in Warsaw on 30 May – 18 June 1701, the Vilnius Act was declared counterfeit and null and void while an executioner symbolically burned the text in the market place. But a certain doubt remained as to whether such Act had indeed had been signed. Various opinions are found in the twentieth century historiography. A new impulse for the discussions about the verisimilitude of the Vilnius Act was provided, after the hypothesis, based on the French diplomatic reports, was raised that the Vilnius Act was adopted at the Lithuanian republican congress in Vilnius in early May 1701. This article does not attempt to unquestionably confirm or refute the verisimilitude of Vilnius Act but strives to analyse one aspect of this problem, i.e. whether the Vilnius Act could have been adopted at the Vilnius congress in early May 1701. In order to answer this question it attempts to compare the reports by French diplomats about events in Lithuania and the information contained in the diary of Lithuanian Chancellor Karol Stanislaw Radziwill, a participant in the Vilnius congress. It was established that the Lithuanian envoys to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth diet who actually traveled to Vilnius, undertook in so-called ‘letter’, which is identified with the ‘Vilnius Act’: 1) to unanimously demand that no diet marshal be elected (i.e. that the diet formally not begin its work) so long as the Saxon army units had not been withdrawn from Lithuanian territory; 2) to publicly declare to the Polish lords that they had never sign any Act, which granted the king absolute power and that they would not agree to join the war with Sweden so long as the entire Commonwealth had not unanimously agreed to it (i.e. the Commonwealth diet. – G. S.); and 3) to respectfully comply with the Valkininkai Resolution (of 24 November 1700) and to demand that its decisions be implemented. This ‘letter’ signed in Vilnius was given to the Lithuanian chancellor for safekeeping. The main conclusion of this article was: not only could so-called ‘Vilnius Act’ not have been adopted at the Lithuanian republican congress that took place in early May 1701 but also its text was already known to the nobility at that time, created anger and suspicions among them, and the republican leadership was already being forced to explain, justify, and deny the suspicions heaped on them. In the situation that had developed, the republican leadership itself decided and obligated the Lithuanian envoys in the upcoming diet to distance themselves from the Act ascribed to this leadership, to deny it, and to demand it be declared null and void. The authorship of so-called 1700 or 1701 ‘Vilnius Act’ has still not been established. It is most likely that its text began to circulate in Poland and Lithuanian at the very beginning of 1701. The version that the ‘Vilnius Act’ was fabricated, must be assessed as having priority. Representatives of both the Sapieha group and the radical anti-royal opposition in the Kingdom of Poland could have been the authors of this fabrication. The latter looks more likely.

• Publisher: Towarzystwo Naukowe w Toruniu
• Journal: Zapiski Historyczne
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 74
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 7-30

Contributors

author

Gintautas Sliesoriūnas

• Lietuvos istorijos institutas, Wilno (Litwa)