The burning of the Łuków land and castle records in 1657

There are no Łuków land or castle records from before 1743 — but their absence on its own explains nothing: they might just as well have perished in Warsaw in 1944, along with thousands of others. It is this document that says what became of them: when, at whose hand, and who secured himself in writing against the consequences.

Where this comes from

The information comes from a single source: the manifestation of Stanisław Domaszewski, starosta of Łuków, made in the royal manor at Łuków on Monday 24 September 1657. Its authenticated extract was entered thirty-six years later, on Wednesday 22 April 1693, into the Lublin castle books of relations by the noble Jakub Mogilnicki. So it is the Lublin entry that survived, and with it the content of the lost document.

Checking the dates. The document gives both dates by feast and weekday, without a day number. The Lublin session: feria quarta post Dominicam Cantate proxima Anno Domini 1693 — Easter 1693 fell on 22 March and Cantate Sunday on 19 April, so the Wednesday after it is 22 April. The Łuków manifestation: feria secunda post festum Sancti Mathaei Apostoli et Evangelistae proxima, Anno Domini 1657 — the feast of 21 September 1657 fell on a Friday, so the nearest Monday after it is 24 September. Both dates check out.

What the document states outright

Fire destroyed both the Łuków land records and the castle records — the document names each of them separately.
The cause was the onslaught and hostile incursion of the rebel Cossacks and the Hungarians, that is, the troops of George II Rákóczi, who passed through these parts in 1657, and the Cossacks who had fled the Kingdom.
It happened before 24 September 1657 — the document gives the date of its own making, not the date of the fire. Stanisław Domaszewski learned of it all “as soon as he had taken up his starosty”, having returned home from the camp.

The year of the fire — what can be established and what cannot

The date of the fire is not in the document. Three pointers narrow it down:

the manifestation was made on 24 September 1657 — so the fire was earlier;
the document names those responsible: the rebel Cossacks and the Hungarians. The Hungarians are the troops of George II Rákóczi, who entered the Commonwealth at the beginning of 1657 and capitulated in July of the same year;
the starosta returned home “after the defeat of the Hungarians and the passage of the rebel Cossacks, fugitives from the Kingdom” — that is, after the summer of 1657.

Taken together the three pointers indicate the year 1657, in the months before 24 September. What settles it is the presence of the Hungarians: they were in the Commonwealth only in 1657, and it is they whom the document names beside the Cossacks.

What the document does not say. It does not mention the Swedes. It ascribes the fire to the Cossacks and the Hungarians. People usually speak of the books burning “during the Swedish Deluge”, and chronologically that fits — the Deluge is counted from 1655 to 1660 — but it is worth remembering exactly whom the source itself names.

A second fire manifestation — a discrepancy I do not smooth over. In the Łuków castle books of 1744 (entry 1601) the chancery refers to a manifestation about the burning of the records, made on the Monday on the vigil of Saints Vitus and Modestus, with the year written “16…”, whose last digit cannot be read: an insertion added above the line runs across it. The vigil of Saints Vitus and Modestus is 14 June, and that day fell on a Monday in 1655, 1660, 1666, 1677, 1683, 1688, 1694 and 1700. I draw nothing further from that note. The only certain thing is that it is a different act from this one — a different month, a different weekday. It means either that the archive burned more than once, or that those who had suffered returned to the matter years later with separate manifestations. I cannot settle which.

When the armies passed through Łuków

The document does not say this — it is knowledge of the campaign itself, from other sources. Set beside the manifestation, however, it narrows the date of the fire from “before 24 September” to a fortnight or so.

January–February 1657 — George II Rákóczi crosses the Carpathians; in Red Ruthenia he joins the Cossacks of Colonel Anton Zhdanovych.
March — the taking of Kraków, where a Hungarian garrison is left behind.
12 April — at Ćmielów he joins the army of Charles X Gustav.
mid-April — the crossing of the Vistula at Zawichost and Annopol, then the march north through the Lublin region.
18–20 April — the capture and destruction of Lublin.
from about 22 April to the beginning of May — the column moves along the route Lublin – Radzyń – Łuków – Międzyrzec Podlaski – Łosice, with Cossack and Transylvanian raiding parties on its flanks. This is when Łuków burned.
13 May — the taking of Brest Litovsk; 17 June — of Warsaw; July — the retreat southwards before Czarniecki and Lubomirski; 23 July — Rákóczi’s capitulation at Czarny Ostrów.

What this means for our date. The manifestation says that the starosta returned home “after the defeat of the Hungarians and the passage of the rebel Cossacks, fugitives from the Kingdom” — that is, after Rákóczi’s defeat in July — and that only then did he learn of the fire. The fire itself therefore falls during the passage of the troops, that is at the turn of April and May 1657, and the manifestation is its legal aftermath, nearly five months later.

A convergence that is not accidental. The document names those responsible as Cosaci Rebelles et Ungari — rebel Cossacks and Hungarians. Those are exactly the two forces that marched together along this route: Rákóczi’s Transylvanian-Hungarian army and Zhdanovych’s regiments moving with it. The Łuków chancery was thus not describing “the enemy” in general terms, but naming the formations that really did pass this way.

What burned in Łuków then was the starosta’s castle, the town hall, the parish church and most of the town’s buildings. The scale of the destruction was recorded by the royal estates survey of 1659–1660: the number of inhabited houses fell from about two hundred before the war to thirty-seven.

Chronology and scale of the destruction — from the royal estates survey of 1659–1660, from the manifestations and protestations of the nobility in the Łuków and Lublin castle and land records, from the diary of the 1657 campaign and the drawings of Erik Dahlbergh, and from the studies of Janusz Woliński, Rzeczpospolita a Siedmiogród w latach 1656–1657, Warsaw 1952, and Tadeusz M. Trajdos, Ziemia łukowska w okresie potopu szwedzkiego.

Two losses, not one

Besides the record books the document describes a second loss, and the two should not be confused: what burned was the manor in the village of Domaszewnica, and in it the Domaszewski family papers. The sentence says the papers were “kept both before the castle and land records and also in the manor in the village of Domaszewnica” — that is, they existed in two places at once: as entries in the books and as originals in the manor. The clerk then lists what perished: “together with the records […] together with the manor in the village of Domaszewnica”.

It does not follow from the document, then, that the Łuków land and castle records burned in the manor at Domaszewnica. What follows is that the record books burned — and, separately, that the manor burned with the family archive in it. If one single place were meant, the construction “both… and also” would lose its sense. Where exactly the books were at the moment of the fire the document is silent, and that cannot be settled from it.

Why the manifestation was made

Without the books, ownership could not be proved. So the starosta put on record, in writing, a reservation of his own rights and those of his two nephews — Kazimierz and Florian Domaszewski, sons of the late Jakub Domaszewski, standard-bearer of the Łuków land, his own brother — to the estates of Domaszewnica, Domaszowska Wólka, Niedźwiadka with the grange of Kij i Jeleniec with a grange in the Lublin Palatinate and the Łuków land, and also to other estates in the Ruthenian Palatinate, in Podlasie and elsewhere. A manifestation creates no right; it puts on record that the right existed and that the proofs of it perished through no fault of the owners.

Translation of the entry

A translation of the whole entry from the Lublin castle books of relations, together with the Łuków document entered into them. In square brackets: dates converted, and places that could not be read. The paragraphing is ours — the manuscript runs on without a break.

Feria quarta after the nearest Cantate Sunday, in the year of Our Lord 1693. [Wednesday 22 April 1693]

Oblata of the manifestation of the magnificent Domaszewski

Before the present Office and records of the Lublin castle court of the starosta, the noble Jakub Mogilnicki, appearing in person, produced and handed to that same Office for entry the manifestation written out below, made by the magnificent Stanisław Domaszewski, starosta of Łuków, before the Łuków castle records and issued authentically from those same records; the tenor of which is as follows:

Done in the royal manor of Łuków, on the Monday after the nearest feast of Saint Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist, in the year of Our Lord one thousand six hundred and fifty-seven. [Monday 24 September 1657]

Before the present Office and records of the Łuków castle court of the starosta, in which sat the nobles Stanisław Celiński, vice-starosta, and Wacław Rosiński, notary, officials of the Łuków castle court — appearing in person, the magnificent Stanisław Domaszewski Widlica, starosta of Łuków, rittmeister of His Sacred Royal Majesty, after the defeat of the Hungarians and the passage of the rebel Cossacks, fugitives from the Kingdom, having returned from the camp to his own threshold and having received, as soon as he had taken up his starosty, fuller news of the burning of both the Łuków land and the castle records — through the onslaught and hostile incursion of the rebel Cossacks and the Hungarians — at once, safeguarding the integrity of the rights and possession of the estates both of his own and of the nobles Kazimierz and Florian Domaszewski, sons of the late noble Jakub Domaszewski, standard-bearer of the Łuków land, his own brother, and his nephews by that same brother, openly and publicly manifested before the present Office and records:

that to him, the manifestant, and to his nephews by his brother, inscriptions, resignations with general warranties — obligatory, cessionary, commutatory and debitory alike — boundary acts, quittances and any others whatsoever, by various persons, both to him and to his nephews by his brother, upon the estates of the villages of Domaszewnica, Domaszowska Wólka, Niedźwiadka with the grange of Kij, Jeleniec with a grange, in the Lublin Palatinate and the Łuków land, and likewise upon other estates lying in the Ruthenian and Podlasie Palatinates and in other palatinates — were in past years recognised before those same records and before any other records, and were contained in them.

By virtue of which rights the said magnificent manifestant and his nephews by his brother were and are the peaceful possessors of the above-named estates.

And since certain of them, and dispositions which, by God’s permission, through the hostile onslaught — kept both before the castle and land records and also in the manor in the village of Domaszewnica — were declared to have been rifled and were burnt by the taking of fire, therefore the aforesaid magnificent manifestant, caring for the integrity of the rights and possession of the estates both of his own and of his nephews, and making reservation as to the losses described above, manifesting for himself and for the above-written nephews by his brother — as to the documents recognised before the land and castle records by any persons whatsoever, together with the records and with […], and further with the others named above, together with the manor in the village of Domaszewnica, rifled by hostile assault, torn apart and consumed by fire — manifests again and again. Offering himself to lay before the records, should the need arise, a fuller manifestation in the matters above.

Transcribed from the starosta’s castle records of Łuków; read by Radzikowski, collated with the records by Skrzyszowski. Place of the seal of that castle court.

The original of the above manifestation was taken back by the man who had presented it; of which receipt and actual delivery the Office gives quittance by these presents.

What could not be read

One place was left blank in the translation, marked “[…]”: one the word after “together with the records and with…”, covered by ink bleeding through from the other side of the leaf. The legible ending points to “letters”, but I do not confirm that.

Two places read only at a second look. The word between the starosta’s surname and his title is Widlica — the Domaszewski family byname, not a dignity; that is why it fitted no known office. The word before the surname of the clerk who made the extract is not a forename but Legit, “he read it” — the chancery counterpart of the Correxit, “he corrected it”, standing beside it: one official read the extract through, the other collated it with the book.

Two remarks on the text itself. In the sentence about the destruction of the documents the manuscript plainly has declarata — “declared, made known” — although the sense of the sentence would expect dilacerata, “torn apart”, as a few lines further on. We keep what stands in the manuscript, hence “were declared to have been rifled” in the translation rather than “were torn apart”. Beyond that, the clerk’s Latin comes apart in places: the participles stand in a gender and number that match no noun in the sentence. The translation of those places is a reading of the sense, not a literal rendering.

Where this is taken from

State Archive in Lublin, Book of relations [of the Lublin castle court] 1693–1694, folios 60–61 (scans 61–62 of 411). Read and translated from the original scans: the scan at Szukaj w Archiwach.