- The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. The correct title is Janusz Radziwiłł.
For other people with the name of Janusz Radziwiłł, see Janusz Radziwiłł.
Prince Janusz Radziwiłł (also known as Janusz the Second or The Traitor) (1612-1655) was a powerful Polish szlachcic. Podkomorzy of Lithuania since 1633, Field Lithuanian Hetman and starost żmudzki since 1646, voivode of Wilno Voivodship since 1653, Great Hetman of Lithuania since 1654, Starost kamienicki, kazimierski and sejwejski.
Since several decades, the interests between Radziwłł family and the state (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) begun to drift appart, as Radziwłł were less and less satisfied with the magnatial status of the family and its immense wealth and began craving for more political power. This culuminated in the doings of Janusz Radziwiłł, who is remembered in the Polish history as one of the nobles responsible for the end of the Golden Age of Commonwealth.
His vanity and ambitions appeared early in his career. Upon marching into Kyiv in 1651, he ordered a production of a commemorative medal on which he compared his victory to the taking of Kyiv by the first Polish King, Boleslaw Chrobry, some six hundred years earlier.
Janusz used political influence against King Jan Kazimierz Vasa in order to secure the voivode, hetman and other offices. In 1652 he paralysed the central government by evoking a Liberum veto, a procedure whereby any single member of the Sejm (Commonwealth Parliament) could completely halt and annul its proceedings by the simple expression of dissent, saying 'Veto'. This was the start of anarchy in the Commonwealth, as Liberum veto paralysed next Sejm sessions for over a century.
In 1654, during the Swedish invasion of Poland, known as The Deluge, together with his cousin Bogusław Radziwiłł, he began negotiations with Swedish king Charles X Gustav of Sweden, aimed at breaking the Commonwealth and the Polish-Lithuanian union. They signed a treaty according to which Radzuiłłs were to rule over two sovereign principalities carved up from the lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which were to become a Swedish protectorate.
The Swedish defeat and eventuall retreat from the territories of the Commonwealth abruptly ended the plans of Janusz and Bogusław. Janusz died in the in Tykocin, besieged by the loyal Commonwealth forces. Their lines of the Radziwiłl family became extinct by the next generation, and their only lasting achievement was to tarnish the Radziwiłł family name for years to come, their treason eclipsing the deeds of other Radziwiłłs like Michał Kazimierz Radziwiłł, who fought for the Crown and the Commonwealth against the Swedes.
Both Radziwiłł cousins were proclaimed cowards and traitors, and infamously immortalized by the the 19th century Polish writer and Nobel Prize winner, Henryk Sienkiewicz, who in his famous historical novel 'Potop' wrote about Janusz's death: Earthly ruin, a fallen soul, darkness, nothingness-that is all he managed to attain as a reward for service to himself.
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