Many of the insurgents during the Peasants’ War, waged in central Europe from 1524 to 1526, fight under a triangular pennant with a white field bearing the device, in red, of a foot trailing its unwound cloth wrapping; the cloth strip meandering toward the pennant’s point.

Emperor Charles V had determined in 1546 to destroy the power of the German Protestant princes, who have allied against him in the Schmalkaldic League.

The death of King Francis of France leaves Charles temporarily free to pursue this action.

Charles declares war from Regensburg, using as a pretext the Protestant princes’ refusal of his invitation to attend the ongoing Council of Trent.

Neither of the formidable imperial armies is near the emperor at this time, and the league’s forces could almost certainly overcome either, but the princes delay mobilization.

The imperial forces opposing the nine-member German Protestant Schmalkaldic League arrive at Mühlberg in April 1547.

The league’s forces are still not unified, and some of the members, including Maurice, duke of Albertine Saxony, defect to the side of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Charles’ forces, commanded by the Duke of Alba, rout the league’s Saxon army and capture its leader, Maurice’s second cousin, Elector Johann Friedrich (John Frederick) of Ernestine Saxony.

Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, the league’s Hessian leader, surrenders.

Sigismund II, architect and ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, dies at his beloved Knyszyn on July 7, 1572.

As this last king of the Jagiello dynasty leaves no heir, the choice of a successor is left to the citizenry, among whom opposition to the Union of Lublin is widespread.

The Hungarians complain that they are being ruled and exploited as a subject people by foreigners, while Vienna looks on them as truculent rebels.

Matters grow worse after the mentally unbalanced Rudolf II, whose advisers hate Hungary and its traditions, succeeds his father in late 1576 and a religious conflict supervenes on the constitutional dispute, for in the preceding half-century the Reformation has swept over Hungary.

Jan Kochanowski's cycle crowning achievement is his Treny (Laments), nineteen poems inspired by the death of his beloved daughter, Urszula, and written in 1580.

Modeling his poetry on the best classical traditions, he is able to transpose them into his native tongue with a pertinence and elegance that has not hitherto been achieved.

Besides his achievements in versification, he employs with great artistry a number of literary forms, such as hymns, lyrical songs, epigrams, satires, translations from the Bible, and others.

His role in developing Polish literary standards cannot be underestimated.

Kochanowski's place is also unique in Slavic literature generally, and he is considered to have had no equals until the nineteenth century.

A true humanist, he is the best representative of the Renaissance period in that region of Europe.

Born into the country nobility, Kochanowski  had studied at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and later, from 1552, at the University of Padua in Italy.

He had served as a secretary at the royal court in Kraków on his return to Poland in 1559.

Having married about 1575, he has retired to his family estate at Czarnolas, in central Poland.

His first poems, mostly elegies, had been written in Latin, but he soon turned to the vernacular.

Since Polish is not fully developed at this time as a language of literary expression, Kochanowski devises his own poetic syntax and patterns of versification, setting high standards for the centuries to come.

Kochanowski authored the first Polish Renaissance tragedy, Odprawa poslów greckich (The Dismissal of the Grecian Envoys), in 1578.

With a plot from Homer's Iliad and written in blank verse, it was performed at the royal court in Ujazdów near Warsaw in 1578 and was regarded as a political commentary on the contemporary situation in the country, which is getting ready for a war with Russia's Ivan the Terrible.

Sigismund will be occupied with internal problems of his own, like the coming civil war in the Commonwealth and the ongoing wars with Sweden and in Moldavia, for most of the 1600s.

However, when the impostor appeared in Poland in 1603, he had soon found enough support among powerful magnates such as Michał Wiśniowiecki, Lew and Jan Piotr Sapieha, who are willing to provide him with funds for a campaign against Godunov.

Commonwealth magnates look forward to material gains from the campaign and control over Russia through False Dmitry.

In addition, both Polish magnates and Russian boyars are advancing new plans for a union between the Commonwealth and Russia, similar to the one Lew Sapieha had discussed in 1600 (when the idea had been dismissed by Godunov).

Finally, the proponents of Catholicism see in Dmitry a tool to spread the influence of their Church eastwards, and after promises of a united Catholic dominated Russo-Polish entity waging a war on the Ottoman Empire, Jesuits also provide him with funds and education.

Dmitry visits the royal court of Sigismund in Kraków in March 1604.

Although the Polish king declines to support Dmitry officially with the full might of the Commonwealth, Sigismund is always happy to support pro-Catholic initiatives and provides him with the sum of four thousand zlotys–enough for a few hundred soldiers.

Nonetheless, some of Dmitry’s supporters, especially among those who will soon be involved in the coming Zebrzydowsk rebellion, have begun working actively to have Dmitry replace Sigismund.

Polish nobles form a konfederacja, an ad hoc association that acts in lieu of state authority or to force their demands upon that authority, gathering at a rokosz (a semi-legal rebellion against the king) in Stężyca and Lublin on August 5, 1606. (A "confederation", so understood, should not be confused with the modern senses of a "confederation".)

The nobles,  including Mikołaj Zebrzydowski, Jan Szczęsny Herburt, Stanisław Stadnicki, Aleksander Józef Lisowski and Janusz Radziwiłł, outline their demands in sixty-seven articles.

They demand Sigismund’s dethronement for breaching the Henrician Articles, and the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

They further demand that the Sejm appoint state officials instead of the king; that local officials should be elected and not appointed, and that Protestant rights should be expanded and protected.

The intellectual and artistic climate of the early nineteenth century further stimulates the growth of Polish demands for self-government.

During these decades, modern nationalism takes shape and rapidly develops a massive following throughout the continent, becoming the most dynamic and appealing political doctrine of its time.

By stressing the value and dignity of native cultures and languages, nationalism offers a rationale for ethnic loyalty and resistance to assimilation.

The associated principle of the nation state, or national homeland, provide a rallying cry for the stateless peoples of Europe.

The Vaud, annexed by Bern in 1536 and having had the Reformation imposed on them by force, has long chafed under the administration of Bernese bailiffs when in 1723 Jean-Abraham-Daniel Davel becomes the focus of discontent.

Claiming divine inspiration and envisioning a Christian revival, he leads a contingent of followers upon Lausanne, the administrative capital of the Vaud (March 31, 1723), where he urges the declaration of Vaudois independence.

The city's councilors refuse compliance with his demands and deliver him to the Bernese authorities.

Within three weeks, the movement is crushed and Davel executed, but his heroic manner on the execution block wins him the admiration of many, and he is to became a continuing symbol of the Vaudois struggle for independence, occupying a significant place in local tradition well into the twentieth century.