Wealth of the polish nobility

Members of the magnatial class were every bit the equal of continental dukes. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries an argument could even be made that the richest Polish magnates were wealthier and more powerful than any Peer in England or the United Kingdom. The estates of Prince Karol Radziwill covered approximately 27,000 square kilometres (almost the size of Belgium). In 1763 he owned 16 towns and 583 villages. In the Ukraine one member of the Potocki family owned 3,000,000 acres.

In 1748 the total revenue of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth amounted to 8,000,000 zloties. In that same year the Zamoyski family owned 1,000,000 zloties, Count F.S. Potocki possessed 3,000,000 and Michael Radziwill had amassed 5,000,000 zloties. It has been estimated that Michael Radziwill's 5,000,000 zloties was equal to 139,000 pounds sterling. This would make the income of even the richest British aristocrats (Bedfords, Devonshires etc) pale in comparison. In 1767
James Harris (later the Earl of Malmesbury) calculated Radziwill's income
at 18,000,000 zloties or 500,000 pnds sterling.

In the early 1760s August Czartoryski had a personal court of 375 persons and a
private army of 4,000. F.S. Potocki had 2,000 men in his army. Michael Radziwill could lay claim to 10,000 men in 1750 and his son to 5,000 in 1764.

You're forgetting that the only rich nobles in Poland were the magnates and yes, they were RICH. However, most nobles were poor.

how was it in England and Europe at that time? could you find just as wealthy nobleman there as you could in Poland? ( Im not talking about kings now )
Were the English and european noblemen allowed to have private armies?

Today, in Swedish museums.

David, why on earth would such a thing interest you?

At the same time, Polish peasants were extremely poor and were treated like animals or slaves.

Communist myth

Ofcourse the communists had to hide the truth, the russians were the best right?????

The truth is that the russian serfs fleed to Poland in the 15-16-17-18'th century, like the bees to honey.

A good young healthy cow in XVI century Poland cost 1zł so an average noble could buy 80-90 cows, at the same time a German noble of the same class could buy only 40, a British noble only 18, a Scottish noble only 10.

You measured your property in cows?I guess a bit backwards compared to some more advanced places in the south?

Because those advanced places in the south measured wealth in goats?

They did not, Germans however did, russian serfs were rooted to the spot through a variety of tactics by their owners.

You measured your property in cows?

They did

I guess a bit backwards compared to some more advanced places in the south?

In camels to be precise.I imagine the frustration of the teutonic prince when his daughter could not bring enough cows to marry a Pole.

To Ukraine yes

We used to measure properties with gold and as you know more than half of the world's gold was concentrated in Byzantium

We used to measure properties with gold

We used to measure properties with gold and as you know more than half of the world's gold was concentrated in Byzantium.

Didn't know ukraine existed in those times, weren't todays Ukraine so called "Crown lands"?

These were Polish properties but not Crown proper.

I think the Crown owned about 20%? and the rest to the church and the szlachta?

In total, the Radziwiłł family has had in its possession 23 palaces, 426 large and small towns, 2032 estates, and 10,053 villages.

Radziwiłł Palace in Berlin - A city palace located on Wilhelmstrasse No. 77, acquired by the Prussian state government in 1869 from Antoni Henryk. It was turned into the old Reich Chancellery.

Prince Aleksander Michał Lubomirski, the Equerry of the Crown and the voivode of Kraków, married Helena Ossolińska. Their son Prince Józef Karol, Court Marshal, and later Grand Marshal of the Crown (thanks to marriage with Princess Teofila Zasławska), was an owner of large properties, which included 51 towns, 973 villages and 229 granges. His son Prince Aleksander Dominik (~1693-1720) was the heir in tail of the Ostróg estate (he was the last in the male line),

Wealth of the polish nobility

I heard that some Polish nobles were so wealthy that they deliberately slipshod their horses gold horseshoes so they would fall off. The fact that they deliberately let them lie in the street thereafter was testament to the fact that they were so wealthy that the loss of a gold horseshoe meant nothing.

I heard that some Polish nobles were so wealthy that they deliberately slipshod their horses gold horseshoes so they would fall off.

Zamoyski did that everyday but then again there's a loads of other weird things he did.