The changes in Poland’s commerce and agriculture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had a very important bearing on the country’s problems of defense and finance. They disqualified the Polish nobility for warfare, and they undermined the revenues of the state. The szlachta, settled on the land, grew more attached to the soil and to the life of country gentlemen than to the camp and the discomforts of military service. Stimulated by the new commercial opportunities and the prospect for gain and enrichment, it naturally became more interested in agriculture and in exports of its agricultural products than in warfare and military expeditions. The rewards of agriculture and of commerce were greater, more certain, less hazardous, and consequently more alluring than those of war. Moreover, the changes in warfare, resulting from the invention of gunpowder, demanded the employment of new methods in the conduct of war, called for more costly equipment, which the warriors had to provide themselves at their own expense, and were fraught with greater perils to life. Naturally, therefore, the nobility grew reluctant to leave the soil, and to engage in war; and when actually called out in emergency in “pospolite ruszenie” it was far more interested in political than in military maneuvers, in extracting new privileges from the king than in vanquishing the enemy. Whether as a defensive or as an offensive force the “pospolite ruszenie” became now both physically inadequate and temperamentally unfit for war. Yet the country’s wars with the Teutonic Knights, Russia, Moldavia, Courland, and the city of Danzig, and its constant menace of Tartar invasion called for a strong and ever-ready military force to repel aggression, subdue rebellion, and to protect the borders in order to guard the country’s safety and to maintain its integrity and prestige.