The text describes Niasvizh, which was the former seat of the Radziwills. The history of this place is recalled, in a written version dating back to the Middle Ages. The history of the castle and the successive generations of Radziwiłłs living there is described in detail. The text ends with a summary related to the recent destruction of the castle, of which the walls remained (Source: "Ziemia. Tygodnik Krajoznawczy Ilustrowany' Warsaw 1925, no. 10-11-12, pp. 36-40, after: Wielkopolska Biblioteka Cyfrowa).

A modernised reading of the text

Nieśwież

For centuries, the classic country of state microbes had been Germany. Prior to its war catastrophe alone, the German Reich had 22 reigning dynasties. There is no doubt that such a breakdown of state power had its many and serious disadvantages. However, there were also positive sides to it - the existence of so many monarchical courts in the country created so many centres of cultural and social life. After all, there wasn't a court that didn't create for itself a beautiful residence, decorated with works of art, that didn't bring together the most prominent individuals from society. Each residence had to have its museums, its court theatre, its artists, its historiographers. More powerful princes, without stopping there, wanted to have their own scientific institutes, academies, universities. A great number of various institutions of this kind were established in Germany thanks to the noble competition of individual princes.

Poland knew no such political breakdown as Germany. Even at the height of the Saxon disorder, the idea of state unity managed to hold together, at least in theory. However, if we look at the old Poland not from the point of view of state law, but of the actual relations which developed in it, we come to the conclusion that we actually had at home a state of affairs very similar to the German "petty-statehood" (Kleinstaaterei). After all, could not the position of the Polish magnates of the 18th century ("royals") be placed on a par with that of their contemporaries, the benefiting German princes? Did they not have sovereign power over the entire population (even the nobility) settled in their courts? Did they not conduct their own foreign policy and maintain diplomatic relations with foreign powers? Did they not have their own army, their own fortresses? And in order to give external form to this state of affairs, which was so flagrantly at odds with the age-old Polish tradition of the freedom and equality of the nobility, they sought ducal and count titles from the German emperors. Despite parliamentary constitutions forbidding the acceptance of titles, the more prominent of them even obtained confirmation of these titles by the national authorities.

Thus, we also had courts of almost lordly lords and princes, which may have broken up the unity of the state and introduced anarchy, but which undoubtedly contributed to the development of culture in the districts where they were established. Such residences were: Białystok of the Branickis in Podlasie, Tulczyn of the Potockis in Podolia; such a residence was above all that of Nesvizh Radziwill in the Novogrodek Voivodeship. However, the influence of this centre was not limited to just one province, but reached as far as the influence of this most powerful magnate family in Lithuania.

The origins of Nesvizh are lost in the mists of time. There is no doubt, however, that Nesvizh owes its beginnings and later prosperity to its inaccessible location in the marshes by the Usha River. By damming up this river, extensive ponds were created which became a natural defence for the castle rising among them. On the other side of the ponds a town was founded, connected to the castle by a causeway. The manor house of Niasvizh is mentioned in older documents of the 15th and 16th centuries, and the castle is mentioned for the first time in 1533, when Niasvizh which belonged to the Nemirovichs, the Montygirds and the Kishkys became the property of the Radzivills.

Who was the founder of Niasvizh Castle, we do not know. In any case, the castle became the residence of the famous Nikolai Radzivill the Black, during whose reign the Radzivills' influence on state affairs reached its peak. In 1547 Nikolai the Black received a ducal title for himself and his brothers from Emperor Charles V. This title was approved by King Sigismund Augustus at the Piotrków Sejm of the same year. From then on, the Radziwills began to be called dukes of Ołyka and Nesvizh, or (the line of Mikolaj Rudy) of Birża and Dubinki. In 1558, after the death of Queen Bona, two district principalities were given to Nicholas the Black: In 1561 he was temporarily entrusted with the regency of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Being an ardent follower of Protestantism, he established a printing house in Nesvizh (or maybe he just moved it from Brest Lit.), where Protestant religious books were printed in Ruthenian and Polish (1562-1571). Occupying the highest posts in the state and staying mostly by the king's side, Nicholas the Black could not properly take care of arranging a residence corresponding to the position he held. This task fell to his son, Nicolas Christopher, known as 'the Orphan'.

Prince Orphan was no longer as influential at court as his father. His health, impaired in his youth, made him lead a life of domesticity. He devoted himself entirely to the upkeep of his extensive estate and, in particular, his residence at Nesvizh. It is no exaggeration to say that Nesvizh as we see it today is Prince Orphan's work: he had a new, huge castle built (1583-1587) instead of a much more modest one, surrounded by ramparts and a moat. He expanded the town and endowed it with privileges. He founded the Jesuit college with its magnificent church, which we can still admire. Living in the Counter-Reformation era, he was as devout a Catholic as his father was a Protestant. It was later said that he used more money to buy up and burn the heretical Brest Bible than Nicholas the Black used to print it. In addition, he was a man of high culture and was fond of beautiful things. His beautiful, artistically crafted armour, stored in the former imperial collection in Vienna, still inspires admiration. Very interesting are the bronze cannons with the Coats of Arms of Duke Sierotka, which have been preserved until the last days in Nesvizh and are now in the castle of Warsaw. These cannons, cast in Nesvizh in the years 1600-1609 by a certain Herman Molzer, are true masterpieces of brass work. They include a column wrapped in grapevine, another cracked and bound with ropes, another with the head of Cerberus and another with a five-headed hydra.

Prince Orphan was not only interested in art - scientific issues also concerned him. In 1613, thanks to his efforts and at his expense, a large four-sheet map of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was made and published. The map of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was produced and published in 1613, and is rightly highly regarded by historians of geography as one of the most outstanding cartographic works of the century. Recent research has shown that this map was mainly, if not exclusively, the work of Tomasz Makowski (1575-1630), hitherto known only as an engraver. Makowski stayed for a long time in Nesvizh, where he worked on the map, and for some time managed the Nesvizh printing house.

Prince Sierotka, concerned about the splendour of his family, tried to have the Ordynacja House of the Radziwiłłs approved by the Sejm (1586). The following were recognised as Ordynacja estates, which could not be alienated or divided: Ołyka, Nesvizh, Mir, Kleck and Dawidgródek.

The splendour of Nesvizh, created by Prince Orphan, continued even in the days of his successors. Contemporaries admire the splendid reception that Prince Ladislaus (Władysław) received in 1617 when he and his retinue arrived in Nesvizh on their way to Moscow.

The Cossack, Muscovite and Swedish wars, which caused so much damage to Poland, did not spare the Nesvizh Ordinance. The town of Nesvizh was destroyed by Muscovites and Cossacks, but the castle survived. The Radziwiłł fortresses, Niasvizh and Slutsk, were able to resist when almost all of Lithuania was occupied by the Muscovite army.

After the national disasters, Niasvizh could not regain its former glory for a long time. It even ceased to be the residence of the Ordinates for some time, who moved to Biala. It was only during the reign of Duke Anne of Sanguszko and her son, Duke Michael Casimir II (1719-1762), that it once again became the capital of the vast Ordinate and Allodial estate and the permanent residence of the Ordinates. The castle was renovated, and a magnificent castle library was created, formed by combining the former library with the library inherited from the Saxon Field Marshal Count Flemming (1745), married to Radziwillowna. This library was given a suitable room for itself.

A printing press was again established in Nesvizh; a number of factories ("manufactories") were set up, mainly to cater for the needs of the huge ducal court. Although the most prominent of these factories were not located in Nesvizh, they mainly served the needs of the Nesvizh Castle. These included glass factories in Naliboki and Urzecz, a belt factory ('persjarnia') in Slutsk, a tapestry factory ('szpalernia') in Korelicze, and a porcelain factory ('farfurnia') in Swierzen. Glass products from Užutsk and Nalibok have long been valued by connoisseurs, Slutsk sashes are better known, while the Korelicze 'gallery' is less well known. At that time, the Nesvizh castle was decorated with a number of tapestries from Korelicze, depicting scenes from the history of the ducal family, i.e. the granting of the ducal title, reviews of troops, victorious battles, etc. These tapestries have been preserved for a long time. These tapestries have been destroyed and dispersed over time, like most of the Nesvizh treasures. Only a few specimens, and they were badly damaged, returned to the family over time. One tapestry (cut off to the right), depicting the conferment of the title of Duke to Mikolaj Radziwill by Emperor Charles V, is reproduced here.

In addition to these tapestries and numerous portraits, paintings and bronzes which adorned the chambers of the castle, Nesvizh at that time had a very rich treasury located in a vaulted chamber downstairs called the "Grüntgewölbe". From the inventories of this treasury, we learn of the innumerable different valuables and historical relics which were stored there. Particularly noteworthy among these valuables were the keepsakes of King John III Sobieski, which were bequeathed to the Radziwills, as family ties united the two families.

The Nesvizh treasures included the large archive of the Nesvizh castle, the largest of any private archive in Poland. This archive contained letters and documents not only of the Nesvizh Radziwill line, but also of the Birzhany line, which died out in the 17th century. Besides, it possessed an invaluable treasure in the form of 100 parchments containing the most valuable state records of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the times of Jogaila until the mid-17th century. Among these acts were all the privileges of the Polish-Lithuanian Union, issued by the Crown to Lithuania, all the land privileges of the W. Duchy of Lithuania and a number of diplomatic acts. The Radziwills saved these treasures from annihilation during the Swedish and Muscovite wars and have since become their custodians. Although the privilege of Sigismund Augustus, which allegedly granted them the right to keep Lithuania's most important state acts at their home, turned out to be unauthentic on closer examination, the right to keep these acts at their home was formally granted to the Radziwills of Nesvizh by a parliamentary resolution of 1760.

The reign of the last king, Stanislaw August, brought a series of severe disasters to Niasvizh, as to the whole of Poland. The Ordinate of the time, Prince Charles "Lord Lover", who was famous throughout Poland for his adventures, allowed himself to be drawn into the Bar Confederation and thus brought a Moscow invasion to Niasvizh. The duke's small militia did not even try to resist the regular Russian troops, who, having seized the castle, managed there for several years as if they were at home. Although the Ordinate managed to remove what was valuable from the castle and place it in a safe place (in Broszów, Hungary), the devastation wreaked on the castle was quite considerable. At that time (in 1772), the entire library, together with part of the archive, was taken to St Petersburg.

The times of Prince "Lord Lover" were the last glimmer of splendour for the former Nesvizh. Endowed with social talent but little mental culture, the adventurous prince gathered whole clouds of nobility at his court, who adored him as the most perfect type of the old noble fantasy, and, it should be added, also of the old noble varmint. A vivid testimony to the extraordinary wealth and unbelievable splendour with which this richest of Poland's magnates of that time surrounded himself, is the description of a party given by Prince "Panie Kochanku" to King Stanisław August when he visited Nieświeże in 1783. The death of Prince "Lord Lover" (1790), and later the unfortunate war with Russia (1792), when Niasvizh was re-occupied and plundered by the Russian army, put an end to its splendour.

During the reign of the still young Prince Dominik, who lived cheerfully at the castle for a few years before joining the Napoleonic army and dying a brave death in exile, Nesvizh was crowded and bustling. But the year 1812 was approaching - fatal for Napoleon's star, fatal also for Nesvizh. The retreating French army was followed by the Russians who, having seized Niasvizh, decided to take revenge on the Ordinate fighting on Napoleon's side by plundering his residence. A long fleet of carts carried all the wealth of the ducal residence, accumulated over the centuries, deep into Russia. The treasury of the "Gryngewelb" was taken away, even the castle's interior furnishings, upholstery, mirrors and bronzes were not spared. Everything was looted to the ground. Only the bare walls remained. The Radziwill treasures, if not stolen by the generals, found a place in the St Petersburg Hermitage and other Russian museums. Only a small part was returned to the Radziwills in 1904, and our Special Delegation to Moscow has so far been asking for the rest in vain. In this general pogrom, only a part of the archive survived.

The Ordinate family deserves credit for the fact that in the most critical moments they were able to protect this priceless deposit, the 100 most important documents of Lithuania, from destruction. The Russian army did not find this deposit in the castle, while the remaining archive was thrown by the soldiers partly in the castle courtyard and partly in the moat. It was difficult to collect it later and put it back in order. Many a document was lost this way!

Since then, the period of gradual decline and ruin of the once splendid Nesvizh began. Władysław Syrokomla, a "village lyricist" born in these parts and educated in Nesvizh schools, speaks with tenderness about the ruin in which the castle, still remembering the glorious times of Prince "Lord Lover", was located in his times. After the extinction of the Nesvizh line of the Radziwiłł dukes to Prince Dominik, Nesvizh passed to the Klecka line, which, allied to the Hohenzollerns, resided in Berlin. Rarely did any of the heirs look into the abandoned and desolate ducal residence. It took the hand of an enlightened and brave foreigner, Duchess Marie Radziwill (née Castellane), to restore the character of the Nesvizh castle as a lord's residence.

However, even this renewed castle was not destined to keep its festive appearance for long. The Great War came, followed by the Russian Revolution, the waves of which spread to these parts as well. Following the example of so many manor houses, the castle of Nesvizh was also completely destroyed. The only things that survived were the walls and what the Ordinates had managed to transport in advance. When Nesvizh returned to Poland after the war and the revolution, the former heirs returned and started to settle down again in their residence. However, they did not bring back to Nesvizh the archives, nor Prince Orphan's cannons, nor the precious deposit of 100 parchments of first-class state importance. All this has found a good and reliable shelter elsewhere. The castle of Nesvizh, stripped of its monuments, is empty.

There is, however, another legacy from the former princely Nesvizh. The extensive Radziwiłł estate required a large administration. The centre of this administration had been in Niasvizh for centuries. Thus, there was always a large cadre of senior and junior officials of the Radziwiłłs, who were the most intelligent, nationally and socially aware part of the local population. Thanks to them, Niasvizh retained its Polish character in the era of the most violent Russification and is now one of the most vibrant of our borderland outposts in terms of cultural work.