The Compact of Warsaw, concluded on January…
January 1573 CE
The Compact of Warsaw, concluded on January 28, 1573 settles religious disagreements in Poland-Lithuania, granting all non-Catholics religious freedom, and aids in clearing the way for the election to the Polish throne of Henri de Valois, duc d’Anjou, younger brother to the King of France, presented as a candidate the previous year by his mother, Catherine de Medicis.
To avoid chaos, a Warsaw assembly convenes in April 1573 to select a new king from five candidates.
Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II is offered the vacant Polish throne, but the proposal collapses because of some Polish opposition.
The twenty-two-year-old French duke is finally elected king of Poland-Lithuania in May.
As prerequisite to his "free election," Henri is compelled to sign the Pacta conventa and the Henrician Articles, pledging religious tolerance in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
From this point forward, the Republican Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania is organized around a system of elective monarchy and of a Sejm in which each of the nobles has a vote.
Power is thus transferred from the aristocracy to the broader class of the nobility called the “szlachta.”