The Procedural Problems of Negotiations Between the Supporters of the „Rokosz of Łowicz” and the „Saxon Party” During Congresses in Łowicz in February and May of 1698 in the Light of the Old-Polish Legal and Political Culture

Abstract

The presented paper is devoted to political negotiations between two rival parties in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth between February and May 1698. One of those parties was the majority supporting the newly coronated king, August the 2nd. Another party consists of oppositionists (former supporters of the candidacy of Prince de Conti), organized around the leadership of primate – cardinal Michał Radziejowski in the so-called Rokosz of Łowicz. The abovementioned negotiations were interesting, mainly because of the chosen working method of preparing the peace treaty. Discussions were conducted in two universal and public congresses of all the nobility who supported the ‘Rokosz’ movement, which were summoned in February and May 1698. According to circumstances, the opposition leaders and the king’s plenipotentiaries were forced to deal with an unpredictable and radical crowd.

The paper’s author tries to explain the crucial formal problems of this negotiation – especially legal, symbolic, and prestigious dilemmas. He mainly focuses on how both parties decided to call themselves in public documents, what role foreign mediators played in talks, whether there was any representative mandate for participants of both congresses, as well as if and how parliamentary and debate rules and customs were used during conciliation. In the end, the author attempts to place the history of Rokosz of Łowicz in a larger context of similar negotiations carried out in the years 1672–1673 and 1716–1717.