Greatest country of them all. Rip in peace.
>>88284
That doesn't look like the Roman Empire
>>88362
Commonwealth was literally United States beta, with freedoms exceeding anything at that time.
>>88284
They were good but to disunified to fight the larger powers.
>>88525
Yeah, corruption, foreign agents and catholic church was the main reason of downfall.
>>88284
I'd have to disagree with you on that one, senpai.
>>88284
A Polish guy told me that Lithuania was nothing, but an irrelevant part of it. Is this true?
>>88678
Later on it became such but it hadn't been like that at first. Lithuanians were a formidable military power and they managed to incorporate a lot of Ruthenian lands, though it was a lot like Mongolian conquest of China in a sense that it's not even clear who conquered who because Lithuanians easily assimilated, being a less advanced culture. Lithuania used to be a more or less equal partner living in a very effective symbiosis with Lithuanian centralization/military might and Ruthenian riches/culture.
However yes, Poles did manage to get the upper hand on them. In my opinion it was ogre once Ukrainian territory got transferred to Polish Crown.
>>88550
>corruption, foreign agents and catholic church was the main reason of downfall.
Bullshit, it was greed and private of rich noblemen (magnateria) foremostly. They blocked any chance of reforms, and basically sold the country for muh rights and muh freedoms.
>>88904
>Corruption
Exactly what you said.
>Foreign agents
Exactly what you said, plus liberum veto.
>Catholic church
Overzealous catholicism didn't bode well with Ruthenian lands at all.
>>88949
>Overzealous catholicism didn't bode well with Ruthenian lands at all
The Commonwealth still had one of the most tolerant religious laws in Europe, if not the most tolerant. Both protestants and and Orthodox had equal rights for most of time. The main reason of Cossack rebellions were their rights being abused by magnateria. Belarussian and Lithuanian folk didn't feel oppressed.
>>88904
Catholic priests (corrupt foreign agents) were tossing curses on anything they didn't like. Warsaw Confederation that made Commonwealth a great country with personal and religious freedoms - bam, cursed. Every attempt to make peace with cossacks - cursed.
>>89015
[citation needed]
>>89006
While catholic church wasn't the main cause of decline indeed, it still added some fuel into the fire, especially with Jesuits.
>>89035
Jesuits actually provided a lot of good stuff, by funding temple schools for example. They were the reason why 90% of Polish noblemen could speak fluent Latin.
>>88284
For a very short time Polant-Lithuania was in a personal union with Sweden under King Sigismund, creating a state which borders stretched around nearly the entire Baltic Sea. It was doomed to failure, however, as Sweden had just converted to Protestantism under Sigisimund's grandfather while Sigismund himself became a Catholic and spent almost his entire reign in Poland, leaving most of the administration of Sweden to his uncle who would later depose him from the Swedish throne.
