The Privilege of Buda (also known as the Treaty of Buda) was a set of promises and concessions made to ensure that

Louis I of Hungary Louis I, also Louis the Great (; ; ) or Louis the Hungarian (; 5 March 132610 September 1382), was King of Hungary and Croatia from 1342 and King of Poland from 1370. He was the first child of Charles I of Hungary and his wife, Elizabeth of ...

would succeed to his uncle Casimir III's Polish throne, thus enabling the union of Hungary and Poland.

Background

By 1355, the

Piast The House of Piast was the first historical ruling dynasty of Poland. The first documented Polish monarch was Duke Mieszko I (–992). The Piasts' royal rule in Poland ended in 1370 with the death of King Casimir III the Great. Branches of ...

King Casimir III's second marriage, to Adelaide of Hesse, was failing. His only legitimate children, born of his marriage to Aldona of Lithuania, were his two daughters, Duchess Elizabeth of Pomerania and Electress Cunigunde of Brandenburg. Elizabeth and Cunigunde both aspired to the crown; the former in the name of her four-year-old son,

Casimir Casimir is a Latin version of the Polish male name Kazimierz (). The original Polish feminine form is Kazimiera, in Latin and other languages rendered as Casimira. It has two possible meanings: "preacher of peace" or alternatively "destroyer of p ...

, and the latter for her husband, Elector Louis II. Other candidates were the surviving Piasts, Casimir III's distant

agnate Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritanc ...

s: Duke Vladislaus of Gniewkowo and Duke Siemowit III of Masovia. However, the King had arranged to be succeeded, should he himself have no legitimate sons, by either his sister Elizabeth's son, King Louis I of Hungary or her grandson Duke John of Slavonia. The arrangement was confirmed by the Treaty of Vyšehrad in 1339 and consolidated more clearly in

Buda Buda (, ) is the part of Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, that lies on the western bank of the Danube. Historically, “Buda” referred only to the royal walled city on Castle Hill (), which was constructed by Béla IV between 1247 and ...

in 1355.

Provisions

The Privilege recognised the right of the ''

szlachta The ''szlachta'' (; ; ) were the nobility, noble estate of the realm in the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Depending on the definition, they were either a warrior "caste" or a social ...

'' to elect the Polish monarch. Louis solemnly promised that he would not impose any new taxes on the nobility and clergy and that he would not demand any financial support for his court while travelling in Poland.{{cite book, title=A Concise History of Poland, last1=Lukowski, last2=Zawadzki, first1=Jerzy, first2=Hubert, publisher=Cambridge University Press, year=2006, isbn=052185332X Despite Casimir III's later inclination to designate his grandson as his heir, Louis ascended the throne of Poland without difficulty on his uncle's death in 1370. He was, however, soon forced to make new concessions to the ''szlachta''; he himself had no sons and wished to secure the future accession of one of his daughters by granting the Privilege of Koszyce.

References

Legal history of Poland 14th century in Poland Treaties of the Kingdom of Poland (1025–1385) 1355 in Europe 1350s treaties