WARSAW

WARSAW (Polish, Warszawa). A small late medieval settlement on the left bank of the middle Vistula, Warsaw became the capital of the Principality of Mazovia during the reign of Janusz I the Elder (ruled 1374–1429). "Old Warsaw" was founded c. 1300 on the escarpment overlooking the Vistula, just north of an existing castle. By 1408 a "New Warsaw," lying due north of Old Warsaw, had established its own autonomous municipality, with a separate magistracy and market square. Old Warsaw was the more populous and affluent, with the bricked houses of the patriciate and wealthier tradesmen. Artisans, shopkeepers, and small farmers occupied the mostly wooden structures of New Warsaw.

The last Mazovian prince, Janusz III, died in 1526, and from that time Mazovia and Warsaw came under the Polish crown. No longer the small capital of an independent principality, Warsaw nonetheless continued to grow modestly, thanks partly to its expanding ties with Cracow and the kingdom. In 1527 and 1529, Sigismund I (ruled 1506–1548) granted charters to eleven Warsaw guilds, removing them from the jurisdiction of the Cracow brethren. By 1564, Old Warsaw encompassed 486 stone houses, New Warsaw 204 still mostly wooden houses. Jews were expelled from Warsaw in 1483, and a privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis, granted its burghers in 1527, forbade Jewish settlement in the town itself, relegating them to the suburbs for most of the early modern period.

Warsaw grew quickly in significance toward the end of the sixteenth century. From 1569 it was the site for meetings of the General Parliament, and from 1573 for the Election Parliaments that chose the kings of Poland and the grand dukes of Lithuania. A fire in the Wawel Castle in Cracow in 1596 moved Sigismund III Vasa (ruled 1587–1632) to begin expanding the Warsaw castle and to make it into the residence of Polish kings and their courts beginning in 1611. (Cracow would remain the capital and coronation city.) With the transfer of the royal court to Warsaw, the city began to draw magnates and gentry, who established residences in privately owned suburban "jurisdictions," which formed a chain of autonomous towns around Old and New Warsaw and offered competition to Warsaw's patriciate and guild artisans. The right-bank Praga suburb, the site of breweries, warehouses, and granaries, received its municipal privilege in 1648.

The wars of the mid-seventeenth century interrupted Warsaw's rapid growth from modest sixteenth-century numbers (its population had reached 20,000 by 1655). Swedish and Transylvanian armies finally left the city on 23 June 1657, and the rebuilding of Old and New Warsaw was largely completed by 1670. Under John III Sobieski (ruled 1674–1696) the center of gravity moved to the west, beyond the old walls, and settlement expanded into the magnates' suburban jurisdictions to the north and south along the river. The city again rebuilt after the Northern War (1700–1721). Warsaw became the center of Polish commerce and enlightenment under the last Polish king, Stanisław II Augustus Poniatowski (ruled 1764–1795). A "Black Procession" of burgher leaders to the Royal Castle on 2 December 1789 paved the way for belated urban reform in the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania. The autonomy of the "jurisdictions" was finally abolished, and Old and New Warsaw, plus the suburbs, now formed one urban legal unit. Warsaw's growth (to 110,000 in 1792) was delayed with the sacking of Praga by Russian armies on 5 November 1794 and the third partition of Poland (1795), which initially gave part of Mazovia, including Warsaw, to Prussia. In 1799, the city's inhabitants numbered 64,000.

WARSAW

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