Warsaw Confederation

Timeline

1. 1572–1573Warsaw · WarsawSigismund II died without a male heir, prompting the Commonwealth's first national election under the Lublin Union. Candidates included Henry, Duke of Anjou of France. Polish Protestant and Orthodox nobles, mindful of Western Europe's religious wars and the 1572 Paris massacre, insisted on a confederation before the election: no persecution of dissenters over faith, and office open to nobles of all confessions, lest the new king import religious war.
2. 1573Warsaw · WarsawOn 28 January the convocation sejm passed the Warsaw Confederation act in the form of a konfederacja: maintaining common order during the interregnum while guaranteeing peace among those of different faiths, forbidding religious civil war, and confirming equality of dissenting and Catholic nobles in officeholding, worship, assembly, and publication. Some Catholic bishops refused to countersign, but the noble majority sufficed to enact it.
3. 1573Warsaw–Kamień election field · MasoviaThe religious peace clauses were incorporated into the Henrician Articles, becoming a constitutional oath every subsequently elected king had to swear. Henry of Anjou thus pledged to maintain the Commonwealth's religious peace before being elected king of Poland. He later returned to France to inherit its throne, but the confederation continued to bind his successors, sparing the Commonwealth a Western-style nationwide religious civil war in the late 16th century.