The extraordinary diet session in Warsaw - March 5- April 19,1670

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Michal Wiśniowiecki became king thanks to the decisive support of the gentry, whereas the majority of the magnates remained opposed to the king and soon attempted to remove him from the throne. After the dissolution of the election Diet (October 1 - November 12, 1669) the king decided to many the sister of Emperor Leopold 1, the archduchess Eleonora. The above marriage had led to the worsening of relations between the king and the opposition. Already during the coronation Diet the pro-French malcontents had formed a plot whose aim was to dethrone the king and elect Conde’s nephew, Charles Paris of Orleans, Count Saint Paul de Longueville. Before the extraordinary Diet session called for March 5, 1670, the majority of the dietines had supported the king; some instructions issued for the deputies had even postulated a limitation of the so called liberum veto or the right of dissent. In spite of the fact that on March 13, the deputies had taken an oath pledging not to break up the Diet (and in any case, that the protest of a single deputy would not halt the proceedings of the Diet), during the Diet session, the opposition had quickly gained the upper hand. In the course of a stormy debate, nobody remembered about the interest of the state. The deputies protested against the king’s marriage and demanded that the emperor’s envoys be removed from the Polish Commonwealth. The supporters of the king, on the other hand, demanded the levying of a special tax for the creation of a standing army. The gentry exiled from the territories situated along the Dniepr river which had been lost to Moscow in 1667, demanded compensation for the lost estates. In this situation, on April 17 a Braclaw deputy, Aleksander Zabokrzycki, had left the Diet session as a sign of protest. On April 19, his colleague Krzysztof Kordysz as well as two deputies from Środa: Jan Gorzeński and Stanislaw Kożuchowski had also left the Diet in protest. After the break up of the Diet, the king called in the standing army and with its help he managed to call up a subsequent Diet session (from September 9 to November 1, 1670).