Jan I Olbracht

Jan Olbracht took an army into Moldavia and lost most of it in a forest, and the proverb about the nobility perishing under King Albert has outlived everything else he did. He was a son of Casimir IV Jagiellon, one of six brothers of whom three became kings, and was taught by the historian Jan Dlugosz. He beat a Tatar raid at Kopystrzyn in 1487 and was a candidate for the Hungarian throne, losing it to his brother Vladislaus. He became king of Poland in 1492 while another brother, Alexander, took Lithuania, so that the union was suspended for a decade. He was the first Polish king to accept a general parliament in the modern shape: at Piotrkow in 1496 he confirmed the privileges that bound peasants to the land, barred townsmen from owning landed estates and gave the nobility exemption from customs duties, in exchange for support and money. That statute is one of the foundations of Polish serfdom and of the political dominance of the szlachta. In 1497 he marched into Moldavia, ostensibly to recover Black Sea ports from the Ottomans; his ally Stephen the Great of Moldavia turned on him, and the retreat through the Cosmin Forest in October became a massacre of the levy. Ottoman and Tatar raids followed into Poland itself. He died at Torun in 1501 at forty-one while preparing to deal with the Teutonic Order. His brother Alexander succeeded him and reunited the two states. He had a Renaissance education and brought Italian humanists to Krakow. His brother Frederick was a cardinal and another, Casimir, was canonised. The saying that under King Albert the nobility perished was current within a generation of the Moldavian campaign and is still quoted in Poland. His tomb in Wawel Cathedral is one of the first Renaissance monuments north of the Alps.

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