Skarga ubogiego szlachcica na niesprawiedliwość świata tego – źródło do historii mentalności czasów saskich.

Abstract

The article is devoted to a 18th cetnury confession-complaint, which was written down by Franciszek Husarzewski, a poor noblmen from Podlasie, a lieutnant of infantry of king August II. It is difficult to establish why in 1753 Franciszek, on four little pages, described the unhappy turns of his life: was it for the record for his descendants, or was complaining about his fate to a higher authotity. He enumerates the events of life in a few points, starting with the marriage with Marianna Szczygielska, as badly-off as himself, and taking over of a small and, as it turned out, ruined manor Szczygły, his wife's dowry. Not much is known about Franciszek. He was probably born at the turn of the 1680s and 1690s, in the family of a minor noblemen from Podlasie. In his youth Franciszek was a soldier, a lieutant of the royal infantry, but most of his life he was trying his luck at the courts of more wealthy noblemen. On the 28th of February, 1713 Franciszek married young Marianna Szczygielska, dauther of  Konstancja Szczygielska and Tomasz Szczygielski: her mother was a douther of a court official of Podlasie. Marianna and Franciszek led a life full of hardship, worries, and conflicts with the  neighbours, in the times of the Northern War.

The analyzed text displays not only the tragic figure of Franciszek Husarzewski, strugging with poverty and dishonest neighbours all of his life, but also reality of the Saxon rule in Poland. poverty of minor noblemen, especially in such regions as Podlasie, who owned small manors, usually indebted and ruined by the war, forced them toi try other ways of making a living: it was usually military or court service, in the armies of aristocrats or as officials in gentry's estates.