Anne of Austria, Queen of Poland

Anne of Austria (16 August 1573 – 10 February 1598) was queen consort of Poland and Sweden by marriage to Sigismund III Vasa, king of Poland and Sweden.

Biography

Anne was a daughter of Charles II of Austria and Maria Anna of Bavaria. Her paternal grandparents were Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor and Anne of Bohemia (1503–1547), daughter of King Ladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary and his wife Anne of Foix-Candale.

Anne became the first wife of Sigismund of Poland and Sweden on 31 May 1592. This marriage was opposed by many nobles (szlachta) of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, who were opposed to the alliance with the Habsburgs that Sigismund pursued.

When Sigismund sent a diplomatic mission, led by Cardinal Radziwill, to Prague for his bride, the anti-Habsburg party with chancellor Jan Zamoyski guarded the borders to prevent the Archduchess from entering the country. Anne evaded the guards, arrived in Kraków and was crowned in May 1592 by Primas Karnkowski as the Queen of Poland. (Later during her lifetime the capital of the Commonwealth was moved from Kraków to Warsaw.)

In 1594, she followed her spouse to Sweden, where she was crowned as the Queen of Sweden in Uppsala the 19 February. The Poles demanded that she leave her daughter behind her as security in Poland during their stay in Sweden, and she was afraid that the Swedes would demand the same when she returned to Poland, if she gave birth during her stay in Sweden. 19 April 1594, she gave birth to a daughter, whose baptism was elaborately celebrated at the Swedish court, but the child died soon after. During her stay in Sweden, she became involved in a conflict with Dowager Queen Gunilla Bielke. She was regarded as quite polite but distant and depressive during her stay. She did not speak Swedish, and she regarded the Swedish people as heretics and rebels and only showed herself in public when she was forced to. At her departure from Sweden in July 1594, she was granted Linköping, Söderköping and Stegeborg on the condition that she respect the Protestant belief within in these feifs.

Anne and Sigismund fell in love and Anne gained the friendship and respect of many of her former enemies with her politeness and culture.

Issue

They had five children, but only Vladislaus lived to become an adult:

1. Anna Maria (23 May 1593 – 9 February 1600)
2. Catherine (19 April 1594 – 16 May 1594)
3. Vladislaus (9 June 1595 – 20 May 1648), (reigned 1632-1648 as Władysław IV Waza of Poland)
4. Catherine (27 September 1596 – 2 June 1597)
5. Christopher (10 February 1598 – 10 February 1598)

Anne died on 10 February 1598 and Sigismund III then married her sister Constance Renate of Habsburg.

Ancestors

Gallery

References

• http://runeberg.org/sqvinnor/0024.html (Swedish)

Further reading

• Europe in the sixteenth-century, Andrew Pettegree, 2002, ISBN 063120704X
• (Swedish) Den svenska historien. 4. Gustav Vasa. Riket formas (The History of Sweden. 4. Gustav Vasa. The empire is formed), Gunvor Grenholm, Jan Cornell, Jerker Rosén, Sten Carlsson and Svenolov Ehrén, 1978, ISBN 9100426679

Succession