And now, having made the reader acquainted with the raison d'etre of this proem, I shall plunge without further preliminaries in medias res.
The palmy days of Poland came to an end soon after the extinction of the dynasty of the Jagellons in 1572.

So early as 1661 King John Casimir warned the nobles, whose insubordination and want of solidity, whose love of outside glitter and tumult, he deplored, that, unless they remedied the existing evils, reformed their pretended free elections, and renounced their personal privileges, the noble kingdom would become the prey of other nations.

Nor was this the first warning.

The Jesuit Peter Skarga (1536--1612), an indefatigable denunciator of the vices of the ruling classes, told them in 1605 that their dissensions would bring them under the yoke of those who hated them, deprive them of king and country, drive them into exile, and make them despised by those who formerly feared and respected them.

But these warnings remained unheeded, and the prophecies were fulfilled to the letter.