Polonophile

                                        - Translation of King John III's official title.

Times were not good in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth when Jan Sobieski was elected king in 1674.

Nearly fifty years of incessant wars with the Swedes, Cossacks, Tatars, Russians, and Ottomans had drained the treasury and taken its toll on the economy. The Golden Age of Poland was at its end, but one moment of glory still remained to unfold.

Plans in 1658 for the creation of the Principality of Ruthenia, which would then have become a full member of a Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth, were shelved after a series of military reversals at the hands of the Cossacks and Russians.

The plans were discarded entirely in 1667 after the signing of the Treaty of Andrusovo, whose terms were a clear and ominous indication of the rapid ascendency of the Russian Empire. Despite the standoff result