Kingdom of Poland

The first Kingdom of Poland was the Piast realm that carried Poland from tribal duchies to a crowned European power. Its founder's work began before the crown: Mieszko I accepted baptism in 966, binding his people to Latin Christendom, and his son Bolesław the Brave, who defied emperors and took Kyiv in 1018, was crowned king at Gniezno in 1025, months before his death. The early crown did not hold; pagan reaction and Bohemian invasion toppled it until Casimir the Restorer rebuilt the state. Then came the long fragmentation: Bolesław III's testament of 1138 divided the land among his sons under a seniorate that collapsed into two centuries of feuding duchies, during which the Teutonic Knights rooted themselves on the Baltic coast. The kingdom was restored when Władysław the Elbow-high was crowned at Kraków in 1320, and his son Casimir the Great, the only Polish king so styled, codified the laws, founded the Kraków university, settled German townsmen under Magdeburg law, and extended the realm to Ruthenia. With his niece's daughter Jadwiga the Piast line ended in a queen: her marriage to the Lithuanian grand duke Jogaila, sealed by the Union of Krewo in 1385, joined the two greatest states of eastern Europe and opened the Jagiellonian age. The Jagiellonians made Poland-Lithuania the largest state in Europe: Jogaila's cousin Vytautas crushed the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald in 1410, and Casimir IV recovered the Baltic coast. The crown turned elective after 1572, and the szlachta's liberum veto paralyzed reform while Russia, Prussia and Austria modernized their armies. The Constitution of 3 May 1791 came too late: the three neighbors partitioned the Commonwealth in three cuts, in 1772, 1793 and 1795, and the last king, Stanisław August Poniatowski, laid down a crown no successor would lift for 123 years.