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A King Bee

60 bytes added, 23:28, 1 January 2021
{{ Cytat
| I spent the entire following day, the eve of the election, meeting with senators. I talked with the chaplain to Grand Crown Marshal John Sobieski, who told me that his master hadn't written down the treaty yet, but he would trust my word. The real reason for the delay was that Lady Sobieska had forgotten to include her brother, Lord d'Arquien, in the treaty, and as the date of the election would fall on the feast of Corpus Christi, she wanted to postpone it by one day, so that she would have more time to haggle something out for her brother. The Palatine of Podolia [Aleksander Stanisław Bełżecki], whom she had enlisted into her service, could think of no other way to delay the election than to propose a Piast, that is, a native-born king. He imagined that the Crowners would never agree to a king from Lithuania, nor would the Lithuanians ever vote for a Crowner king [the Crown and Lithuania were the two constituent nations of the Polish Commonwealth]; * that it would cause mayhem and put off the election, giving Sobieski's wife the time to make me accept her conditions. Confident of this scheme, he left her and went to [meet the nobles of] his palatinate, whom he told that on his way he had been harassed by swarms of bees, which led him here, and that it surely meant that a Piast should be elected king, as these were the bees from Piast's own apiary.
| oryg = Nazajutrz, w wigilię elekcji, cały dzień jeździłem po senatorach; widziałem się ze spowiednikiem M[arszałka] W[ielkiego] K[oronnego, Jana Sobieskiego], który mi powiedział, iż pan jego nie miał czasu przepisać traktatu, lecz że się spuszczał na słowo moje; prawdziwa spóźnienia przyczyna była, że pani S[obieska] zapomniała była umieścić w traktacie brata swego, P. d'Arq[u]ien, a że dzień elekcji przypadał w Boże Ciało, chciała ją odłożyć na dzień jeden, by mieć czas wytargować co dla brata. Wojewoda podolski [Aleksander Stanisław Bełżecki], którego sobie pozyskała, nie znalazł innego sposobu odłożenia tej elekcji, jak mianując Piasta, to jest króla rodaka. Wnosił on sobie, że gdy nigdy Polacy nie pozwolą na króla z Litwy, Litwini zaś na króla z Korony, że to sprawi zamieszanie, przynagli do odłożenia elekcji i da czas żonie S[obieskiego] wymuszenia na mnie żądanych kondycji. W tym zaufaniu w[ojewo]da, wychodząc od niej i przyjechawszy do [szlachty z] województwa swego, powiedział szlachcie, iż po drodze napadały go roje pszczół i prowadziły aż do nich, co nic innego nie znaczyło, tylko to, że trzeba wybrać Piasta za króla, pszczoły te bowiem są z pasieki Piasta.
| źródło = {{Cyt
| tom = IV
| strony = 228–229
}}, own translation <br>* The Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were the two constituent nations of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. }}
As you can see, this was a very clever plot, but it didn't quite work out. All because of possibly the greatest miracle in Polish history – the Poles immediately agreeing to elect a single common candidate, no other than Prince Michael Wiśniowiecki. It's quite telling that, apart from this one incredible miracle, there is nothing supernatural in either of these accounts. A swarm of bees had come and gone, and it was up to the politicians to assign a symbolic meaning of their choice to a simple natural occurrence. Kochowski is actually quite straightforward about it:

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