Sigismund II Augustus
Sigismund II Augustus was the last Jagiellon king of Poland and secured the union that created the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Born in Kraków in 1520, he was crowned as a child during his father's lifetime, which the nobility resented, and was Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1544. He married three times. The second marriage, to Barbara Radziwiłł, was made secretly and for love in 1547 and provoked a constitutional crisis; the nobility and his own mother demanded he repudiate her, and he refused, forced her coronation in 1550, and she died months later, which he never recovered from. He was a cultivated and cautious ruler who collected tapestries, books and arms, and preferred negotiation to force. His religious policy was unusual for the century. Poland contained Lutherans, Calvinists, Bohemian Brethren, Orthodox, Jews, Muslim Tatars and Antitrinitarians, and he declined to persecute any of them, saying he was not king of men's consciences. The Warsaw Confederation guaranteeing religious peace followed shortly after his death. He fought the Livonian War against Ivan the Terrible for control of the Baltic coast, gaining much of Livonia and building a navy. His life's work was the Union of Lublin in July 1569. Poland and Lithuania had been joined only through his own person, and he had no children, so the connection would lapse when he died. He pressed the Lithuanian nobility for months, transferring Ukrainian territories to the Polish crown to force their hand, and obtained a single state with one elected monarch, one parliament and one currency. He died in 1572, and the Commonwealth lasted until 1795.
- Lived: 1520 CE – 1572 CE
- Nationality: Polish
- Roles: ruler
