Visegrád 1335 (Budapest, 2009)
The Congress of Visegrád by György Rácz
S?" English The Congress of Visegrád In 1334, to settle the dispute over Polish territories, the parties involved chose arbiters: the Polish king appointed Charles of Anjou, while the Teutonic Order appointed John of Luxembourg. This move served as a platform for the subsequent peace process. The Hungarian king - who, after the death of Lokietek, became ruler of the region - accepted the task with great zeal and mediated between the old Bohemian king and the young Polish ruler. Chief among his motives was his long-term goal to lay claim to the Polish throne for the Anjou dynasty. With Hungary as mediator, the conference at Visegrád thus marked the closure of a two-year process of diplomatic negotiations between Bohemia and Poland on the one hand, and Poland and the Teutonic Order on the other. The mechanism of diplomatic preparations seems to have been engineered in Visegrád, which meant the constant coming and going of envoys to maintain contact and secure the flow of information. As a first step, Casimir signed a one-year ceasefire with Charles, Moravian Margrave and son of Bohemian King John at Sandomir, on May 28, 1335. In the treaty he included Hungarian King Charles along with two Polish dukes as bail to seal the peace treaty with their charters. Afterwards, on August 24, John’s and Casimirs envoys met in the territory of the Hungarian kingdom, in the town of Trenčín (Slovakia). Casimir authorized his envoys to follow the advice of the representatives of the Hungarian king throughout the peace process. The envoys also had the right to take financial responsibility on behalf of the king at up to 30,000 silver Marks. The Polish politicians were well aware that reimbursement of the financially unstable Bohemian king would be the key to the solution. After all, with the exception of the financial aspect, the points of the peace treaty, which constituted the Bohemian king's claims on the Kingdom of Poland, had already been clarified. Consequently, King John, along with his son, waived his rights concerning Poland, while the Polish king gave up the feudal tenures of Bohemian-governed Silesia and Masovia (Plock). The agreement was documented in a charter issued by the representatives of Casimir and sealed by their own seals upon the promissory note that the Polish king would 22
