WLADISLAUS IV. (1595-1648), king of Poland, son of Sigismund III., king of Poland, and Anne of Austria, succeeded his father on the throne in 1632. He had already served with distinction under Zolkiewski in the Muscovite campaigns of 1610-12, and under Chodkiewicz in 1617-18; and his first official act was to march against the Muscovites, who had declared war against Poland immediately after Sigismund's death, forcing the Mus covite general, after bloody engagements (Aug. 7-22, 1632), to raise the siege of Smolensk and surrender (March 1, 1634). Wladislaus then concluded peace (May 28), conceding the title of tsar to Michael Romanov, who renounced all his claims upon Livonia, Estonia and Courland, besides paying a war indem nity of 200,000 rubles. Wladislaus then marched to Lemberg, and under threat of invasion the Porte offered terms, which were ac cepted in October, whereby each Power engaged to keep its borderers, the Cossacks and Tatars, in order, and divide between them the suzerainty of Moldavia and Walachia, the sultan bind ing himself always to place philo-Polish hospodars on those thrones. In the following year the long-pending differences with Sweden were settled, very much to the advantage of Poland, by the truce of Stumdorf (Sept. 12, 1635). Thus externally Poland was everywhere triumphant. Internally, however, things were in their usual deplorable state owing to the suspicion, jealousy and parsimony of the estates. When Danzig rebelled openly against dues lawfully imposed by the king, and a Danish admiral broke the blockade and almost destroyed the flotilla Wladislaus had sent against the rebellious city, the Sejm connived at the destruction of the national navy and the depletion of the treasury, "lest warships should make the crown too powerful." For some years
after this humiliation, Wladislaus sank into a sort of apathy; but the birth of his son Sigismund (by his first wife, Cecilia Renata of Austria, in 1640) gave him fresh hopes and energy. With the aim of bringing about a royalist reaction, he founded the Order of the Immaculate Conception, consisting of 72 young noblemen who swore a special oath of allegiance to the Crown, and were to form the nucleus of a patriotic movement antago nistic to the constant usurpations of the diet. After the Sejm had frustrated this attempt, Wladislaus, assisted by the grand hetman of the Crown, Stanislaw Koniecpolski, tried to use the Cossacks, who were deeply attached to him, to chastise the szlachta, at the same time forcing a war with Turkey, which would make his military genius indispensable to the republic. Simultane ously Wladislaus contracted an offensive and defensive alliance with Venice against the Porte, a treaty directly contrary, indeed, to the pacta convents he had sworn to observe. The ill-prepared enterprise fell through; and the king, worn out, disillusioned and broken-hearted at the death of his son (by his second wife, Marie Ludwika of Angouleme, Wladislaus had no issue), died at Mer ecz on May 20, 1648.
See W. Czermak, The Plans of the Turkish Wars of Wladislaus IV. (Pol.) (Cracow, 1895) ; V. V. Volk-Karachevsky, The Struggle of Poland with the Cossacks (Rus.) (Kiev, 1899) ; Letters and other Writings of Wladislaus IV. (Pol.) (Cracow, 1845).