Sigismund III Vasa

Sigismund III Vasa

 Polish Zygmunt Waza

Sigismund III, detail of a painting, school of Rubens; in the Bavarian State Picture Galleries, …

(credit: Courtesy of the Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich)

(born June 20, 1566, Gripsholm, Swed.—died April 30, 1632, Warsaw, Pol.) King of Poland (1587–1632) and of Sweden (1592–99). Son of King John III of Sweden (1537–1592) and Catherine, daughter of Sigismund I of Poland, he was elected king of Poland in 1587. On his father's death (1592), he accepted the Swedish throne and was crowned in 1594. He left his paternal uncle Charles (later Charles IX) as regent in Sweden and returned to Poland, but Charles later rose in rebellion, defeated Sigismund's army (1598), and deposed Sigismund (1599). Poland and Sweden fought intermittently from 1600 as Sigismund tried to regain the Swedish throne. He invaded Russia in the Time of Troubles and held Moscow (1610–12). In a renewal of the Polish-Swedish conflict in 1621, King Gustav II Adolf seized most of Polish Livonia, which Sweden retained under the terms of a 1629 truce.