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The only son of Sigismund I the Old and Bona Sforza, Sigismund II was elected and crowned coruler with his father in 1530.

In 1559, when the Livonian Order (a branch of the Teutonic Knights) became too weak to protect itself from Muscovite attacks, it sought and obtained Sigismund’s previously offered protection. The Polish king intervened

The subsequent war (see Livonian War) with Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible over Livonia compelled Sigismund to strengthen his position by constitutionally uniting all the lands attached to the Polish crown. Supported by the Polish and Lithuanian gentry, Sigismund ceded his hereditary rights in Lithuania to Poland (1564), thus placing the two states in constitutional equality but not in a complete union. In 1569 he formally incorporated Podlasie, Volhynia, and Kiev provinces into the Polish kingdom, thereby giving their representatives seats in the Sejm; the enlarged Sejm then enacted the Union of Lublin (1569), uniting Poland and Lithuania as well as their respective dependencies.

virtual ruler of Sweden

Charles in 1568 was one of the leaders of a rebellion against the rule of his half brother Erik XIV that placed his other brother on the throne as John III.

The brothers were reunited in 1587, however, when both opposed the nobles’ state council, which promoted the candidacy of John’s son Sigismund (king of Poland as Sigismund III Vasa) for the Polish throne.

king of Poland (1587–1632) and of Sweden (1592–99)

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.

In a short time his judicial and administrative reforms transformed those territories into model states. He succeeded his brother Alexander I as grand prince of Lithuania and king of Poland in 1506. Although he established fiscal and monetary reforms, he often clashed with the Polish Diet over extensions of royal power. At the Diet’s demand he married Barbara, daughter of Prince Stephen Zápolya of Hungary, in 1512, to secure a defense treaty and produce an heir. She died, however, three years later, leaving only daughters. In 1518 Sigismund married the niece of the Holy Roman emperor Maximilian, Bona Sforza of Milan, by whom he had one son, Sigismund II Augustus, and four daughters.

Largely sympathetic to the Lithuanian desire for autonomy and determined to create a strong, central royal power, Casimir clashed with the Polish magnates, large landowners who had dominated the earlier Jagiellon reigns, by granting extensive and exclusive rights and privileges to the gentry in order to gain their political and financial support for his active foreign policy. As a result, Casimir was able not only to engage successfully in the Thirteen Years’ War (1454–66) against the Teutonic Knights, by which he acquired a large portion of their territory, but also to place his son Władysław on the thrones of Bohemia (as Vladislav II; 1471) and Hungary (as Ulászló II; 1490) and to fight the Turks (1485–89), who had disrupted his kingdom’s trade by seizing control of the mouths of the Dniester and Danube rivers.

When Sigismund I the Old succeeded his brother Alexander in 1506, the Polish–Lithuanian federation was seriously threatened by foreign invasion as well as by internal decay.

Sigismund’s nephew Louis II succeeded Władysław as king of Bohemia and Hungary in 1516, but his death at the Battle of Mohács (at which the Turks destroyed the Hungarian monarchy; 1526) brought an end to Jagiellon rule there. Sigismund, on the other hand, improved the political stability of Poland and Lithuania, incorporated Mazovia into his realm (1526), and also promoted the development of Renaissance culture in Poland.

leading to a conflict with his half brother Erik XIV, king of Sweden from 1560. Erik limited John’s authority and imprisoned him in 1563 after the Duke had acquired a base in Poland by marrying Catherine (1562), sister of Sigismund II Augustus of Poland. After his release in 1567, John joined with his younger brother, the future Charles IX of Sweden, in 1568 to overthrow Erik and secure the throne for himself.

In 1586 John nominated his son Sigismund, who had been brought up as a Catholic, for the vacant Polish throne but withdrew his sponsorship when the Poles demanded the return of Estonia as a condition of Sigismund’s accession.

John and Charles, who had contested his brother’s religious policy, became reconciled in common opposition to the nobles’ aspirations, but Sigismund nevertheless assumed the Polish throne in 1587.

Throughout most of Europe the medieval system of estates evolved into absolutism, but in the Commonwealth it led to a szlachta democracy

The end of the Jagiellonian dynasty meant the beginning of unrestricted election to the throne. The first king elected viritim (i.e., by direct vote of the szlachta) was Henry of Valois, the brother of the king of France. On his accession to the throne (reigned 1573–74), which he quickly abandoned to become Henry III of France, he accepted the so-called Henrician Articles and Pacta Conventa. Presented henceforth to every new king as a contract with the noble nation

The most spectacular achievement of Báthory’s reign was a series of military victories (1579–81) over Ivan the Terrible of Russia.

made it a major European power

Gustav was the eldest son of Charles IX and his second wife, Christina of Holstein.

Charles IX had usurped the throne, having ejected his nephew Sigismund III Vasa (who was also king of Poland) in 1599, and the resulting dynastic quarrel involved Sweden and Poland in a war that continued intermittently for 60 years.

expanded the powers of the monarchy and pursued an aggressive foreign policy that led to the Seven Years’ War of the North (1563–70) against Denmark.

Erik’s major foreign policy objective was to free Sweden’s Baltic Sea trade from Danish control.

his half brother John, duke of Finland, also sought a foothold in the east and signed a treaty with Sigismund II Augustus, king of Poland, agreeing to marry the king’s daughter against Erik’s wishes.

king of Poland (1704–09, 1733) during a period of great problems and turmoil

In 1702 King Charles XII of Sweden invaded Poland as part of a continuing series of conflicts between the powers of northern Europe. Charles forced the Polish nobility to depose Poland’s king, Augustus II (Frederick Augustus I of Saxony), and then placed Stanisław on the throne (1704)

In 1709 Charles was defeated by the Russians at the Battle of Poltava and withdrew to Sweden, leaving Stanisław without any real support. Augustus II regained the Polish throne, and Stanisław left the country