Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: When was the Great Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth established?
The order of precedence for members of the Sejm (parliament) of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was created at the same time as the Commonwealth itself – at the Lublin Sejm in 1569. The Commonwealth was a union, in existence from 1569 to 1795, of two constituent nations: the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland (commonly known as "Korona", or "the Crown") and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The union's legislative power was vested in a diet (assembly) known as the Sejm which consisted of the three Estates of the Sejm: the monarch, holding the titles of King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania; the Senate; and the House of Deputies.
In Poland, after the death of the last Piast in 1370, Polish kings were initially elected by a small council; gradually, this privilege was granted to all members of the "szlachta" (Polish nobility). Kings of Poland and Grand Dukes of Lithuania during the times of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795) were elected by gatherings of crowds of nobles at a field in Wola, today a neighbourhood of Warsaw. Since in Poland all sons of a noble were nobles, and not only the eldest, every one of an estimated 500,000 nobles could potentially have participated in such elections in person – by far the widest franchise of any European country at the time. During the election period, the function of the king was performed by an interrex (usually in the person of the primate of Poland). This unique Polish election was termed the free election ("wolna elekcja").
Warsaw remained the capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795, when it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia to become the capital of the province of South Prussia. Liberated by Napoleon's army in 1806, Warsaw was made the capital of the newly created Duchy of Warsaw. Following the Congress of Vienna of 1815, Warsaw became the center of the Congress Poland, a constitutional monarchy under a personal union with Imperial Russia. During this period under the rule of the relatively liberal Russian Emperor Alexander I, Warsaw experienced much growth such as the founding of the Royal University of Warsaw was established (1816) and what is today's main street of the city—Aleje Jerozolimskie—was marked out. In 1818, the Town Hall on the Old Town Market was pulled down because it had become too small for the city, which had expanded after it incorporated the "jurydykas". The city's authorities moved to Jabłonowski's Palace (by the Great Theater), where it stayed until World War II.
Following the repeated violations of the Polish constitution by the Russians (especially after the Alexander I's death, when the reactionary Nicholas I assumed power), the 1830 November Uprising broke out. It started with the assault on Belvedere - the residence of Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, the commander-in-chief of Polish army and "de facto" viceroy of the Congress Poland, as well as at the Arsenal. The 1830 uprising led to the Polish-Russian war (1831), the greatest battle of which took place on 25 February 1831 in Grochów—a village in the modern northern part of the district, Praga Południe. Because the Polish commanders were stalled, the war ended in defeat, and curtailment of the Kingdom's autonomy. The Emperor established a military administration in Warsaw. An estate of pretty manors on the north of New Town was eradicated and on this place the Citadel was built, where was a fortress and prison. The Sejm was suspended, the Polish army dissolved, and the University closed.
The Polish People's Republic (, ) was a state in Central Europe that existed from 1947 to 1989, and the predecessor of the modern democratic Republic of Poland. With a population of approximately 37.9 million inhabitants near the end of its existence, it was the most populous state of the Eastern Bloc after the Soviet Union. Having a unitary Marxist–Leninist communist government, it was also one of the main signatories of the Warsaw Pact. The official capital since 1947 and largest city was Warsaw, followed by industrial Łódź and cultural Kraków.
The party was established by Jan Stapiński on 5 April 1914 as a breakaway from the Polish People's Party. In the January 1919 elections to elect the first Sejm of the Second Polish Republic it received 3.5% of the vote, winning 12 seats. However, the 1922 elections saw it reduced to two seats in the Sejm and fail to win a seat in the Senate.
During the 14th century, Lithuania was the largest country in Europe, as present-day Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia were territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. With the Lublin Union of 1569 Poland and Lithuania formed a new state: the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was finally destroyed by its neighboring countries in 1795. Most of Lithuania's territory was annexed by the Russian Empire, until the Act of Independence was signed on 16 February 1918, which declared re-establishment of a sovereign state. Between 1940 and 1945 Lithuania was occupied by both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany at different times. When World War II was near its end in 1944 and the Nazis retreated, the Soviet Union reoccupied Lithuania. On 11 March 1990, Lithuania became the first Baltic republic to declare its restored independence after 50 years of Soviet occupation.
Lithuania became a full member of the Schengen Agreement on 21 December 2007. In 2009, Lithuania celebrated the millennium of its name.Geography of Lithuania
Attempts to reunite the Polish lands gained momentum in the 13th century, and in 1295, Duke Przemysł II of Greater Poland managed to become the first ruler since Bolesław II to be crowned king of Poland. He ruled over a limited territory and was soon killed. In 1300–05 King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia also reigned as king of Poland. The Piast Kingdom was effectively restored under Władysław I the Elbow-high (r. 1306–33), who became king in 1320. In 1308, the Teutonic Knights seized Gdańsk and the surrounding region of Pomerelia.
In 1313–1314, Władysław conquered Greater Poland. In 1320, he became the first king of Poland crowned in Kraków's Wawel Cathedral instead of Gniezno. The coronation was hesitantly agreed to by Pope John XXII in spite of the opposition of King John of Bohemia, who had also claimed the Polish crown. John undertook an expedition aimed at Kraków in 1327, which he was compelled to abort; in 1328, he waged a crusade against Lithuania, during which he formalized an alliance with the Teutonic Order. The Order was in a state of war with Poland from 1327 to 1332 (see Battle of Płowce). As a result, the Knights captured Dobrzyń Land and Kujawy. Władysław was helped by his alliances with Hungary (his daughter Elizabeth was married to King Charles I in 1320) and Lithuania (in a pact of 1325 against the Teutonic State and the marriage of Władysław's son Casimir to Aldona, daughter of the Lithuanian ruler Gediminas). After 1329, a peace agreement with Brandenburg also assisted his efforts. A lasting achievement of King John of Bohemia (and a great loss to Poland) was his success in forcing most of the Piast Silesian principalities, often ambivalent about their loyalties, into allegiance between 1327 and 1329.
After the end of Lubomirski’s rebellion, Polanowski entered in the service of the Crown Hetman Jan or John Sobieski (future elected King John III Sobieski), who during the free election in 1669 was the major candidate for the Polish Crow and therefore ruler of “The Commonwealth” (the whole Realm – nowadays Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, etc. ). He participated in the expedition to Hajec, commanding the left side of the Polish army. In the years 1671-1676 he fought against the Turkish and Tartars troops, participating in the expedition to Bratslav, and fighting the Tatars in Chocimska campaign. In August 1683 went to Vienna, but during the military taking exercise in Tarnów Mountains became ill and had to return to his homeland. Soon after, he resigned from the military, living with the profits of the salt mines of Kraków given to him by the King of Poland (Jan III Sobieski) for live.
The Second Polish Republic, established in 1918, existed as an independent state until 1939, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union destroyed it in their invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II. Millions of Polish citizens perished in the course of the Nazi occupation of Poland between 1939 and 1945 as Germany classified ethnic Poles and other Slavs, Jews and Romani (Gypsies) as subhuman. Nazi authorities targeted the last two groups for extermination in the short term, deferring the extermination and/or enslavement of the Slavs as part of the "Generalplan Ost" ('General Plan for the East') conceived by the Nazi régime. A Polish government-in-exile nonetheless functioned throughout the war and the Poles contributed to the Allied victory through participation in military campaigns on both the eastern and western fronts. The westward advances of the Soviet Red Army in 1944 and 1945 compelled Nazi Germany's forces to retreat from Poland, which led to the establishment of a communist satellite state of the Soviet Union, known from 1952 as the Polish People's Republic.
Jagiellonian Library (, popular nickname "Jagiellonka") is the library of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and with almost 6.7 million volumes, one of the biggest libraries in Poland, serving as a public library, university library and part of the Polish national library system. It has a large collection of medieval manuscripts, for example Copernicus' "De Revolutionibus" and Jan Długosz's "Banderia Prutenorum", and a large collection of underground literature (so-called "drugi obieg" or samizdat) from the period of communist rule in Poland (1945–1989). The Jagiellonian also houses the "Berlinka" art collection, whose legal status is in dispute with Germany.
Polish landed gentry (, from "ziemia", "land") was a social group or class of hereditary landowners who held manorial estates. Historically, "ziemianie" consisted of hereditary nobles ("szlachta") and landed commoners (). The Statutes of Piotrków (1496) restricted the right to hold manorial lordships to hereditary nobility. The non-nobles thus had to either sell their estates to the lords or seek a formal ennoblement for themselves (not an easy task), or had their property taken away. A rare exception was the burgesses of certain specially privileged "ennobled" royal cities who were titled "nobilis" and were allowed to buy and inherit manorial estates and exercise their privileges (such as jurisdiction over their subjects) and monopolies (over distilleries, hunting grounds, etc.). Therefore, in the "szlachta"-dominated Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth there was almost no landed gentry in the English meaning of the term, i.e. commoners who owned landed estates. With the Partitions these restrictions were loosened and finally any commoner could buy or inherit land. This made the 20th-century Polish landed gentry consist mostly of hereditary nobles, but also of others.
It was founded as a Royal University on 19 November 1816, when the Partitions of Poland separated Warsaw from the oldest and most influential University of Kraków. Alexander I granted permission for the establishment of five faculties – law and political science, medicine, philosophy, theology and the humanities. The university expanded rapidly, but was closed during November Uprising in 1830. It was reopened in 1857 as the Warsaw Academy of Medicine, which was now based in the nearby Staszic Palace with only medical and pharmaceutical faculties. All Polish-language campuses were closed in 1869 after the failed January Uprising, but the university managed to train 3,000 students, many of whom were important part of the Polish intelligentsia; meanwhile the Main Building was reopened for training military personnel. The university was resurrected during the First World War and the number of students reached 4,500 in 1918. After Poland's independence the new government focused on improving the university, and in the early 1930s it became the country's largest. New faculties were established and the curriculum was extended. Following the Second World War and the devastation of Warsaw, the University successfully reopened in 1945.
Currently, despite formally being just one of the 460 MPs in the Polish Parliament's lower house (Sejm), Kaczyński is amongst the most influential politicians in Poland. He is considered the de facto ruler of Poland, from whom President and Prime Minister take orders. On 19 November 2017, President of the European Council Donald Tusk warned that Kaczyński's leadership played into the Kremlin's hands and endangered the independence of Poland.
The first historical document attesting to the existence of a Warsaw castellan dates to 1313. Fuller information about the age of the city is contained in the court case against the Teutonic Knights, which took place in Warsaw cathedral in 1339. In the beginning of the 14th century it became one of the seats of the Dukes of Masovia, becoming the capital of Masovia in 1413 (Prince Janusz II). Warsaw's economy of the 14th century rested on crafts and trade. The townsmen, of uniform nationality at the time, were marked by a great disparity in their financial status. At the top were the rich patricians while the plebeians formed the lower strata.
The Provisional People's Government of the Republic of Poland (), also known as the Government of Ignacy Daszyński, was established on 7 November 1918 in Lublin, Austrian Galicia, as one of the precursors of Poland's sovereignty following World War I. It proclaimed the creation of a constitutional republic with the right to parliamentary elections, nationalization of key industries, as well as social, labour, and land reforms. Prominent personalities of the provisional government included Stanisław Thugutt as Minister of Internal Affairs, Tomasz Arciszewski as Minister of Labour, as well as Col. Edward Rydz-Śmigły as the Minister of War and Supreme Commander of 
the Polish Armed Forces. Ignacy Daszyński became Prime Minister. The Provisional Government dissolved itself after several days when Józef Piłsudski became Head of State ("Naczelnik Państwa") on 14 November 1918 in Warsaw.
The Polish People's Republic ("Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa") was established under the rule of the communist Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR). The name change from the Polish Republic was not officially adopted, however, until the proclamation of the Constitution of the Polish People's Republic in 1952.
In the early 13th century, Lithuania was inhabited by various pagan Baltic tribes, which began to organize themselves into a state – the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. By the 1230s, Mindaugas emerged as the leader of the Grand Duchy. In 1249, an internal war erupted between Mindaugas and his nephews Tautvilas and Edivydas. As each side searched for foreign allies, Mindaugas succeeded in convincing the Livonian Order not only to provide military assistance, but also to secure for him the royal crown of Lithuania in exchange for his conversion to Catholicism and some lands in western Lithuania. The status of a kingdom was granted on July 17, 1251, when the Bishop of Chełmno was ordered to crown Mindaugas by Pope Innocent IV. Two years later, Mindaugas and his wife Morta were crowned as the king and queen of Lithuania. In 1255, Mindaugas received permission from Pope Alexander IV to crown his son as a king of Lithuania.
Poland is a representative democracy, with a president as a head of state, whose current constitution dates from 1997. Poland ranks in the top 20 percent of the most peaceful countries in the world, according to the Global Peace Index. The government structure centers on the Council of Ministers, led by a prime minister. The president appoints the cabinet according to the proposals of the prime minister, typically from the majority coalition in the Sejm. The president is elected by popular vote every five years. The current president is Andrzej Duda and the prime minister is Mateusz Morawiecki.
In 1807 Napoleon created a powerful outpost of his empire in Central Europe. Poland had recently been partitioned by its three large neighbours, but Napoleon created the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, which depended on France from the very beginning. The duchy consisted of lands seized by Austria and Prussia; its Grand Duke was Napoleon's ally the king of Saxony, but Napoleon appointed the intendants who ran the country. The population of 4.3 million was released from occupation and by 1814 sent about 200,000 men to Napoleon's armies. That included about 90,000 who marched with him to Moscow; few marched back. The Russians strongly opposed any move towards an independent Poland and one reason Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 was to punish them. The Grand Duchy was dissolved in 1815 and Poland did not become a state until 1918. Napoleon's impact on Poland was huge, including the Napoleonic legal code, the abolition of serfdom, and the introduction of modern middle class bureaucracies.
The reforms of the Partition Sejm, subject to intrigue and obstruction and never fully put into effect (especially the treasury-military aspects), had however become the necessary foundation for the establishment of the emerging "Republic Enlightened" movement. This turned out to be the case even though this sejm lacked (besides the monarch) enlightened leaders, like the ones that would soon become prominent in the era of the approaching Great Sejm reforms.
In 1768, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth became a protectorate of the Russian Empire. Control of Poland was central to Catherine the Great's diplomatic and military strategies. Attempts at reform, such as the Four-Year Sejm's May Constitution, came too late. The country was partitioned in three stages by the neighboring Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Habsburg Monarchy. By 1795, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth had been completely erased from the map of Europe. Poland and Lithuania were not re-established as independent countries until 1918.
The weakened Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth soon came to be regarded as almost a protectorate of Russia. In 1709 Augustus II returned to the Polish throne under Russian auspices. Once again he attempted to establish an absolute monarchy in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, but was faced with opposition from the nobility ("szlachta", see Tarnogród Confederation). He was handicapped by the mutual jealousy of the Saxons and the Poles, and a struggle broke out in Poland which was only ended when the king promised to limit the number of his army in that country to 18,000 men. Peter the Great seized on the opportunity to pose as mediator, threatened the Commonwealth militarily, and in 1717 forced Augustus and the nobility to sign an accommodation favorable to Russian interests, at the Silent Sejm ("Sejm Niemy").
It is estimated that between 1493 and 1793 sejms were held 240 times. Jędruch gives a higher number of 245, and notes that 192 of those were successfully completed, passing legislation. 32 sejms were vetoed with the infamous liberum veto, particularly in the first half of the 18th century. The last two sejms of the Commonwealth were the irregular four-year Great Sejm (1788–92), which passed the Constitution of the 3 May, and the infamous Grodno Sejm (1793) where deputies, bribed or coerced by the Russian Empire following the Commonwealth defeat in the War in Defense of the Constitution, annulled the short-lived Constitution and passed the act of Second Partition of Poland.