One century and a half later a royal romance with a tragic ending was enacted in Poland. King Sigismund (Augustus) II. (1547-1572), on the death of his first wife Elizabeth, daughter of Emperor Ferdinand I., married secretly Barbara Radziwil, of the most illustrious Lithuanian family. On his accession to the throne he avowed his marriage, and the princess accompanied him to Cracow to attend the funeral of his father. The diet of Piotrkow believing a union with a foreign princess more profitable to Poland, demanded the annulment of his marriage with Barbara, but the king resisted, and saw her crowned as his queen in 1550. Six months after her coronation, however, she died suddenly, probably poisoned by her mother-in-law, the hated Italian, Bona Sforza, who as queen had exercised a baneful influence upon Polish life. The unfortunate Queen Barbara is idealized in Polish lays, and the portraits preserved of her show beauty of form and features. It may be interesting to note the relation of the great Polish king Jan Sobieski (1674-1696), the liberator of Vienna, and in truth of Europe, from the Turkish conquerors, to his wife, who exercised an almost complete dominion over him. We have an admirable description of the Polish court at the time of Sobieski; of his extraordinary wife and daughter, and of social affairs there, in a report by a contemporary, an anonymous French abbé, whose manuscript was found in the Bibliothèque Mazarin, in Paris, and was published for the first time in 1858. He describes the Polish nobility as turbulent in the Diet and at home, tells of their luxury and their habits, the high esteem in which ladies of high birth were held, and the scandalous treatment of peasant women, as well as the absolute power of the _szlachta_ over the life and honor of the serfs and their women.