Poles III

1569-1650 CE

From 1569 to 1650 CE, the Poles built the strangest great power in Europe — a republic of nobles who elected their kings and exercised liberum veto, their cavalry charges legendary from Pskov to Khotin, their tolerance sheltering Jews and Protestants whom other kingdoms expelled. The Commonwealth stretched from the Baltic nearly to the Black Sea, yet the seeds of its destruction — magnate anarchy and Cossack fury — were already sprouting.