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The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at its greatest extent in 1619. On 11 May 1573, Henry de Valois, son of Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici, was proclaimed King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania in the first royal election outside Warsaw.
A map showing the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at its maximum extent following the Truce of Деулино, superimposed on present-day national borders. The map shows in red all of the territory that was ruled by Zygmunt III Waza in 1619 (the Polish monarch at that time), which made up the Commonwealth; it can be further divided up into:
While the term "Poland" was also commonly used to denote this whole polity, Poland was in fact only part of a greater whole – the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which comprised primarily two parts: the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland (Poland proper), colloquially "the Crown"; and; the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, colloquially "Lithuania".
In 1492, the territory of Poland-Lithuania – not counting the fiefs of Mazovia, Moldavia, and Prussia – covered 1,115,000 km 2 (431,000 sq mi), making it the largest territory in Europe; by 1793, it had fallen to 215,000 km 2 (83,000 sq mi), the same size as Great Britain, and in 1795, it disappeared completely. [4]
The grand duchy expanded to include large portions of the former Kievan Rus' and other neighbouring states, including what is now Belarus, Lithuania, most of Ukraine as well as parts of Latvia, Moldova, Poland and Russia. At its greatest extent, in the 15th century, it was the largest state in Europe. [10]
After the series of devastating wars in the middle of the 17th century (most notably the Chmielnicki Uprising and the Deluge), Poland-Lithuania stopped being an influential player in the politics of Europe. During the wars the Commonwealth lost an estimated 1/3 of its population (higher losses than during World War II).
"A map of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania including Samogitia and Curland divided according to their dismemberments with the Kingdom of Prussia" from 1799. During the Napoleonic Wars and in their immediate aftermath the borders between partitioning powers shifted several times, changing the numbers seen in the preceding ...
The History of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1764–1795) is concerned with the final decades of existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.The period, during which the declining state pursued wide-ranging reforms and was subjected to three partitions by the neighboring powers, coincides with the election and reign of the federation's last king, Stanisław August Poniatowski.