Polish History Quiz

[Vrylakas]

Well, everyone is posting history quizzes, so why not? I'll try to keep the questions chronological. Here goes:

1. The first mention of Poland in the historical record comes from a Jewish envoy in the service of the Cordoba Caliphate as he negotiated a treaty to end border skirmishes in the Pyrenees with the Holy Roman Empire. What year was it (+/- 5 years), and what was his name?

2. One of the greatest kings of England in the pre-Norman period was part Polish on his mother's side. Who was he, and who was his grandfather? (Hint: He wasn't Anglo-Saxon either.)

3. Why is Konrad Mazowiecki's/Konrad of Mazovia's name infamous among Poles today? (Note: An unfortunate coincidence of names cost an unrelated Mazowiecki, Tadeusz, the presidential election in 1990 because his opponents all portrayed him as "Just Like the last Mazowiecki".)

4. What happened at Legnica, and who was there?

5. Who is the only king in Polish history to be called "The Great", and why?

6. What two foreign dynasties were united inadvertently (i.e., they didn't plan it that way) to rule Poland from 1386 til their natural demise in 1572? (Hint: This is considered the golden age of Poland, and many institutions - including a prominent university - are today named after the resulting dynasty.)

7. Once old enemies, Poland willingly united with what other country (to varying degrees, increasingly integrating) for 409 years, longer than the current English-Scottish union (legally-speaking). What country was that?

8. After the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 and a series of wars in the mid-15th century, Poland (united with the above-mentioned country) managed to subjugate a pesky bordering pseudo-state, making it a fief of the Polish crown for the next two centuries. This was a major turning point in the region's power politics. This state would resurrect however and free itself from Polish rule in the mid-17th century, and in the coming two centuries would wreak terrible revenge. It would re-take its principal port city from Poland only in 1793, although the population would revolt against its renewed rule. What state and city our we talking about?

9. Poland (united with the above-mentioned country) became the only Continental European state to successfully occupy what city intact - though the occupation was almost an accident, and only lasted three years? (Hint: Somebody wrote an opera about it. Who?)

10. Poland after 1572 elected a series of foreign dynasties, only twice (technically 3x) choosing native Polish kings before the disaster of 1772-1795. Can you name the dynasties, or at least what countries they came from?

11. The Baltic was an increasingly unfriendly place throughout the 17th century for Poland, with new rising powers on all sides. These powers would provoke a great struggle in 1700-1721 that would effectively destroy Polish independence, though the state nominally continued to exist. What three powers posed the greatest threat for Poland in the 17th century until that last war? (Hint: I'm not using the name of the war, but I know of at least two scenarios available in the CivFanatics scenario files based on this war.)

12. Disaster came for Poland (and the above-mentioned country) in a series of three partitions between 1772-1795. In the end, the country was erased from the map of Europe. New wars in the West were brewing however, sparked by the French Revolution and lasting until the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Poles enlisted in huge numbers to fight in which one of the warring armies, participating en masse in campaigns all across the world?

13. Poles revolted in 1830, lasting a year before being crushed, when the Russians attempted to recruit soldiers for what major campaign?

14. Lenin had two close associates and fellow conspiractors who happened to be Polish; who were they?

15. Relative to the 20th century, what do the cities Vilnius and Torun, then Lviv and Wroclaw have in common? (Hint: It ain't pretty!)

16. If you've ever visited Warsaw, you'd know that aside from an ugly concrete-block downtown area there is a very quaint and charming standard-European "old town" where all the tourists hang out. How old is the Warsaw Old Town/Stare-Nowe Miasto? (Hint-that-is-not-a-hint: Krakow was the royal capital for most of Polish history until the szlachta/nobility imposed a new capital, Warsaw, in the early 17th century. However, again, this is not really a hint and should be disregarded.)

17. In October, 1956 a communist leader - Gomulka - was in power and people were in the streets cheering. Why?

18. In 1978, the then-communist leader (Gierek) uttered a common Polish phrase expressing shock (according to legend): "Matka boska!" (Mother of God!). What was this in reference to?

19. True or false: Germany and Poland signed a peace treaty to end their hostilities in World War II in 1946?

20. FINALLY (Sorry - out of time order): The dictator of Poland from 1926-1935, Pilsudski, was a great admirer of a country, wrote a book about that country, and visited it twice under dificult conditions before World War I. What country was it? (Hint: This is a bit obscure, I know, but if you think about it logically...)

Good luck folks!

 

[Knight-Dragon]

This is extremely tough .... I don't really know much of Polish history. Can only try a few : -

7) Lithuania
8) Prussia. The port is Danzig? Or Koniegsburg?
11) Sweden, Russia and Prussia.

 

[Sodak]

Hmm... I'm with SKM on this one. I'll try, tho...

1) 1180
2) Harold II
3) ?
4) a great battle was won - the MONGOLS were there
5) ?, because he won at Legnica?
6) ? and ?
7) Latvia
8) Prussia/Danzig
9) some city in england?
10) Germany and Latvia?
11) Sweden, Prussia, Russia
12) zee French foreign legion, non?
13) ?
14) ? and ?
15) Jewish ghettos/uprisings/exterminations
16) 600 yrs?
17) european football championship? bread was available?
18) some pole got elected POPE, goddammit!
19) false?
20) either Germany or Russia

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Originally posted by Sodak
4) a great battle was won - the MONGOLS were there
5) ?, because he won at Legnica?

The Mongols never lost a battle in Europe. I think the Mongol army under Batu defeated a combined Hungarian, Polish and German army somewhere in the vicinity. Might be Legnica.

 

[Vrylakas]

SKM wrote:
7) Lithuania
8) Prussia. The port is Danzig? Or Koniegsburg?
11) Sweden, Russia and Prussia.

Right on all accounts! Poland and Lithuania united in 1386, first only under a common king but gradually they fused into each other.

Prussia was right for number 8, and their port was Danzig! It's a bit of a misnomer to call what existed in 1457 "Prussia"; it was sort of a proto-Prussia, but you got the idea. The Prussians would choose Koenigsberg as their capital after they lost both Marienburg (the HQ of the Teutonic Knights) and Thorn/Torun, the first administrative capital, to the Poles.

Right again for # 11! Poland spent from the late 16th century until the 1700-1721 war in a struggle with Sweden for teh Baltic provinces. At first, Poland held out well and even recorded the only major Polish naval victory (Oliwa), but after a nasty Ukrainian revolt in 1648-57 in which the Swedes intervened, things definitely went downhill (from a Polish perspective). Russia was a non-existant threat for most of the 17th century until the rise of Peter I, "The Great". his re-organization of the Russian military in the 1700-1721 war saved Russia and made it a new regional power at a time when Poland was in rubble from repeated wars. Bad combo. Prussia (united with Brandenburg) in the later 17th century also began to menace Poland, though only in the 18th century would the Prussians begin taking action.

Great job SKM! I know it's an obscure topic for most people...

 

[Vrylakas]

Sodak wrote: Hmm... I'm with SKM on this one. I'll try, tho...

1) 1180
2) Harold II
3) ?
4) a great battle was won - the MONGOLS were there
5) ?, because he won at Legnica?
6) ? and ?
7) Latvia
8) Prussia/Danzig
9) some city in england?
10) Germany and Latvia?
11) Sweden, Prussia, Russia
12) zee French foreign legion, non?
13) ?
14) ? and ?
15) Jewish ghettos/uprisings/exterminations
16) 600 yrs?
17) european football championship? bread was available?
18) some pole got elected POPE, goddammit!
19) false?
20) either Germany or Russia

Thanks for taking a stab Sodak! Not bad, though with a few errors. I'll indicate where you're right below, and leave the wrong ones blank so someone else can take a stab:

1. No.
2. No.
3.
4. Partially right - A battle was fought at Legnica (German: "Leignitz") involving the Mongols. While a southern Mongol force concentrated on Hungary, a northern force drove through Poland and slaughtered a combined German-Polish Silesian force at Legnica in 1241 before turning south into Bohemia. There, they laid siege to Olomouc (German: "Olmuetz") and then joined up with the main Mongol force in Hungary. SKM's right; the Mongols were undefeated in their European campaign.
5. No.
6. No.
7. No. (SKM got this one right.)
8. Yes! The defeat of the Teutonic Knights in the 15th century forced them to become vassals of the Polish crown. Danzig was the jewel of the southern Baltic and the main port for the Polish grain trade of Mazovia and lumber (for shipbuilding) of Silesia. When Prussia re-occupied Danzig, its citizens (mixed German-Polish) revolted because they thought the Prussians would interfere with their prosperous trade.
9. No; The only time Polish soldiers have set foot in Britain was as allies in World War II.
10. Partial credit on this one. One of the dynasties - the last - was through a personal union that Poland-Lithuania had with Saxony in the late 17th and throughout the 18th century. At one point in the 1700-1721 war, the Polish nobility refused to take orders from their Saxon king and attempted to elect another Polish king in his place. After the war the Russians re-imposed the Saxon dynasty on a weak Poland...
11. Yes!
12. All French forces, oui! Poles joined Napoleon in droves, and he is still a hero in Poland for attempting to change the European political order. Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia was packed with happy Poles, but they also served with him in Spain, Italy, North Africa - everywhere. When Napoleon stepped onto a waiting boat for exile on Elba, the last military orders he gave were to his personal mounted guard who had escorted him there; all Poles.
13.
14.
15. No; There certainly was a lot of that in every major Polish town in World War II, but I'm refering to another series of events.
16. No. Good try on this one though.
17. No. I laughed at your bread comment... (In 1990 when I worked at PAP, the Polish government press agency, we used to get each month with our salary: 2 bars of soap, 2 rolls of toilet paper, and 1 large bag of tea. By then you could buy these things on the street but it was a holdover from just the year before... The benefits of government employment...)
18. Right on! Whether Gierek really said that or not is irrelevant; he most certainly was not pleased.
19. Right again. The issues of the ziemie odzyskane ("Recovered Territories"; East Prussia, Silesia and Pomerania), the deported Germans, war reparations and art stolen from Poland kept the two from signing a peace treaty until they were forced to as part of the agreement for the Soviet Union to recognize German re-unification in 1990.
20. No.

Thanks again Sodak - a good run for someone in unfamiliar territory!

I'll give it a week or so, then post the remaining answers.

 

[Vrylakas]

Well, this one's about wrapped up. I guess I'll spill the beans. I know everyone's been sitting in suspense all week.



The answers:

1. The first mention of Poland comes from the Jewish envoy in the service of the Cordoba Caliphate, Ibrahim ibn Jakub. He travelled to the region in A.D. 963.

2. Canute the Great (1014-1035, sometimes spelled "Knut" and "Knutr"), the Danish king of England, was half-Polish through his mother the Danish queen, Swietoslawa, who was the daughter of King Boleslaw I Chrobry of Poland.

3. Konrad of Mazovia (the original) had problems with some pagan Baltic peoples attacking his northern realms in the 13th century, so he invited a crusading order recently booted out of Jerusalem to deal with them. This order, the Teutonic Knights, had just been thrown out of Hungary for attempting to take over Transylvania but Konrad invited them in anyway. They slaughtered the Pagans and set up their own state on the Baltic (eventually taking on the name of the people they'd just disposessed - "Prussians"). This is the beginning of the German presence in the Baltic.

4. We've already answered this; the Mongols defeated a German-Polish Silesian army at Legnica.

5. Kazimierz (Casmir) the Great (1330-1370) finished the work of his predecessor in re-uniting Poland. In 1138 the last of the old Polish dynasty kings had pulled a Charlemagne and divided the kingdom when he died. It wasn't until Wladyslaw Lokietek and Kazimierz the Great that it was re-united.

6. The first dynasty is obvious because it comes from the answer to the next question, which SKM answered right. The Lithuanian dynasty of the Mindaugas line was the half, represented by Jogaila (known in Polish as Wladyslaw Jagiello; hence the Jagiellonian Dynasty). The 2nd half is a bit trickier; this was a branch of the Anjou dynasty from Burgundy (France) that had seized Naples and Sicily in Italy, then sent one of their brothers (Louis) as king to the Hungarian kingdom (Nagy Lajos). Louis eventually also ruled as king of Poland (1370-1382: "Wegier Ludwik"), and his daughter Hedwig - in Polish "Jadwiga" - married Jagiello to found the Jagiellonian Dynasty of 1386-1572. Aren't European dynasty histories fun?

7. Lithuania and Poland united in 1386 through Jagiello's and Jadwiga's wedding. At first it was just a personal union (meaning they were separate countries but with the same monarch, like Britain and Canada today) but they grew closer until 1569 when they threw in the towel and became one country. They remained united until they were destroyed in 1795.

8. This one was already guessed right; Prussia began its history as a Polish fief (1457-1652). The city in question was of course fabled Danzig.

9. Poland-Lithuania was the only European country to successfully occupy the city of Moscow intact, from 1610-1613. The French under Napoleon would occupy it but it would be burned from under them; the Swedes and Germans tried but failed to reach it. The Polish "success" was really at a time when Muscovy was in turmoil and no one resisted the Poles (initially). When the Poles were driven out, it was by a Boyar named Mikhail Romanov, who would found the Russian dynasty that would rule until 1917. The Polish troops were in Moscow to support the Polish king's candidate for the Czarist throne, so it wasn't as dramatic as I made it sound. The Russians later wrote an opera about it, Boris Gudanov, which still plays in the Bolshoi in Moscow today. (It was Stalin's favorite opera.)

10. The foreign dynasties are as follows:

1st. Henri Valois (Anjou) French: 1573-1574 (fled back to France to become King Henry III when Charles IX died)
2nd. Bathory dynasty, from Hungarian-Transylvania. (1576-1586)
3rd. Vasas (Catholic Swedish) 1587-1668
4th. Wettin (Saxon) 1697-1763
The holes in time were filled with Polish kings.

11. Already guessed correctly: Russia, Prussia and Sweden. The war of course was the Great Northern War with Poland-Lithuania, Denmark and Russia against Sweden.

12. Already guessed correctly; Poles fought for Napoleon in large numbers.

13. The Russians were attempting to organize a pan-European effort to suppress the Belgian revolt of 1830. as the leaders of the "Concert of Europe", the Russians felt it was their job (especially Nikolai I) to stamp out rebellion wherever it broke out in Europe, for whatever reason. The Russians were attempting to recruit soldiers among the Poles, which was an idiotic idea because the Poles sympathized with the fellow Catholic Waloons and Flemish...

14. Lenin's close buddies were: Rosa Luxemburg, the radical socialist and Polish-Jewish girl in 1919 Germany (who ironically would disagree with Lenin about terror and mass slaughter before being murdered with Karl Liebknecht), and even better - Felix Dzier¿yñski (Russian transliteration: Dzherzhinsky), the friendly fellow who brought the world the Cheka, and whose statue stood for decades in front of the KGB building in Moscow (1 Dzherzhinsky Square) until being torn down in 1991.

15. This was a tough one. When Stalin hacked off one-third of Poland in 1944, he deported the two million Poles living in these regions to the new Polish borders. (My family was in that group.) Two cities with strong Polish populations and institutions, Wilno (now capital of Lithuania, Vilnius) and Lwow (now in Ukraine, Lviv) were emptied of Poles. Their universities, libraries, museums, etc. were emptied (what was left) and taken to Poland; the Wilno people to a former German city that was similarly emptied (of Germans) - Thorn (now Torun), and the Lwow people to emptied-Breslau (now Wroclaw). Folks, the pictures we all saw a year ago of the hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians being "ethnically cleansed" by Serbs were terrible indeed, but imagine the nearly 16 million people being forcibly moved across Poland in 1945-1947: Poles, Germans, Gypsies, Ukrainians, Slovaks, Jews, Belarussians, Lithuanians, etc.

16. Trick question. the original "Old Town" (Stare Miasto) of Warsaw dates to the 16th century, but after the August-October 1944 Warsaw Uprising, those buildings that were not destroyed in the fighting were destroyed by Hitler's orders to dynamite the whole city. He also gave orders to dynamite Paris, but the Nazi general there didn't listen. The one in Warsaw did. In 1938 Warsaw had almost 1 million citizens; in 1945 it had fewer than 100,000, and they all lived in the one district the Soviets had occupied during the Uprising. 95% of all buildings in Warsaw were destroyed in 1945 (meaning razed to the ground). The answer is that the Old Town today is about 45 years old. It was reconstructed from old photographs, paintings, etc. It was about the only thing the communists did right in 50 years.

17. Gomulka was a populist communist leader who was elected to the leadership by the Politburo without consulting the Soviets. Khrushchev himself and the whole Soviet Politburo showed up and ordered the Soviet Army in Poland to occupy the cities. The Polish Army refused to help them though and made it known they would fight; they handed out guns to Poles in the street, who blocked all the main roads into the cities (19-20. October 1956). Finally the Soviets let go and allowed Gomulka to stay on. This is called the "Polish Spring in October". The Hungarians were demonstrating in support of the Poles when their own revolution broke out on 23. October. Khrushchev didn't let them off so easily... In the end it didn't matter; Gomulka turned out to be just like any other communist, and he was forced to leave in December 1970 when he ordered the army to shoot down unarmed workers in the streets who demanded cheaper food with tanks and helicopters.

18. Already guessed right; Edward Gierek was shocked that the Holy Synod in the Vatican had just elected a Polish Pope, Karol Wojtyla, bishop of Krakow - Jan Pawel II, or John Paul II.

19. Already answered. Peace was signed only in 1990.

20. Tough one; and probably surprising - although logical. jozef Pilsudski was an enemy of Russia. What country was a constant enemy of and threat to Russia in the first half of the 20th century? Not Germany; they were actually allies with Russia briefly in the 1920s and again from 1939-1941. France? Britain? No. The answer: Japan. Pilsudski was amazed when the Japanese defeated the Russians in the 1904-05 war, and he travelled to Japan secretly. He admired the Japanese generals, battle tactics and political organization, studied them all his life, and wrote a book on the war. During World War I he convinced the Japanese to send his secret Polish army-in-training some arms and equipment, though the Japanese never took him very seriously. For the rest of his life Pilsudski tried to emulate the Japanese. (This isn't very surprising; Poland has always been fascinated by the Eastern cultures. Turkish and Chinese fashions were hot in Poland in the 17th and 18th centuries.) It is perhaps then ironic that in World War II, a decade after Pilsudski's death, it would be a Japanese consul in Pilsudski's hometown of Vilnius who would secretly save hundreds of Jews from Hitler's gas chambers though only Raoul Wallenburg would get the historic credit for doing the same thing in Budapest.

That's all folks!

Well, at least I had fun...

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Yes, at least YOU had fun. Most of the time, I was stratching my head in bewilderment. It's way too tough for the layman.

 

[Vrylakas]

SKM wrote: Yes, at least YOU had fun. Most of the time, I was stratching my head in bewilderment. It's way too tough for the layman.

Sorry SKM - I tried to make it approachable, though tricky. I know it's obscure, but in other discussions in the Civ Forums I've had many people reveal a fairly decent knowledge of Polish history. Surprised me!

I'll try to be more general next time...

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Originally posted by Vrylakas
Sorry SKM - I tried to make it approachable, though tricky. I know it's obscure, but in other discussions in the Civ Forums I've had many people reveal a fairly decent knowledge of Polish history. Surprised me!

I'll try to be more general next time...

Don't worry, I am just BSing a bit. Bring it on, your next quiz! Doesn't matter how hard cos the harder it is, the more you learn.