Death of Sigismund Augustus in Knyszyn in 1572

Sigismund Augustus died at Knyszyn, a manor in the northeast of his kingdom he had kept for hunting and horse breeding, on 7 July 1572. He was 51, had married three times, and left no child. With him the Jagiellonian line ran out after nearly two centuries on the Polish throne, and the nobility now had to elect a successor. They did so the following year, and Poland and Lithuania went on choosing their kings by vote until the state itself was partitioned away. What happened in the house immediately afterwards was less orderly. The chests at Knyszyn held jewels, tapestries and cash, and a good deal of it went missing while the court was still under the roof. Matejko painted the scene in 1886 in Krakow, by then a provincial city of the Austrian empire.