Wacław Jaruzelski — bohater czy zdrajca? Nieoczywista biografia wojskowego i polityka

Abstract

Wacław Jaruzelski — a hero or a traitor? An unobvious biography of a military man and politician The article is devoted to a rather forgotten figure of an ancestor of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Wacław (1658–1706). The military and political career of the latter unfolded during the reign of John III Sobieski and the first decade of the reign of Augustus II. Born in a family that belonged to petty nobility in the Drohiczyn region in Podlasie, he threw in his lot with a local magnate, Stefan Mikołaj Branicki, owner of vast estates around Tykocin and Białystok. Jaruzelski owed the prominent position achieved in the army and among his fellow noblemen to both his patron’s protection, and his own skills and accomplishments. Thanks to them he was able to move from a purely titulary dignity of stolnik (pantler) of Novgorod to the prestigious office of chorąży (standard-bearer) of the Bielsk region, which gave him fairly broad prerogatives. His activity in the public sphere went beyond the local horizon; he often served as expert parliamentarian and judge. An examination of Wacław Jaruzelski’s colourful biography makes it possible to take a closer look at characteristic phenomena of his day. As we accompany him in the successive stages of his career, we can observe the destructive impact of factional divisions within one local assembly (the dispute between Stefan Mikołaj Branicki and Jan Gniński, Voivode of Bratslav) and then the entire country (the Sapieha case). Jaruzelski’s dramatic protest against the election of Stanisław Leszczyński, imposed by a foreign power, followed by the difficult decision to side with Augustus II, unpopular with his subjects, encapsulate, as it were, the experiences of the Polish and Lithuanian nobility of those turbulent times.