Brandskatt – jedno z mrocznych oblicz szwedzkich grabieży w okresie „potopu”

Abstract

In the early modern era, when the Swedes waged war outside their own territory, they passed on the duty of supplying food and funding the army to the occupied territories (the war was supposed to feed itself). The practice of collecting contributions was based on the experience of the Thirty Years’ War, which was introduced in Germany by the armies of Gustav II Adolphus. Apart from financial contributions and provisions, the occupied terri-tories had to pay brandskatt, an additional enforced tax to protect the occupied lands from looting and destruction. The aim of this paper is, a.o., to determine the position of brandskatt in the extraordinary war taxes imposed on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The basic source is the Warsaw brandskatt register of 1655 found in the Riksarkivet in Stockholm.

Keywords

• contributions
• brandskatt
• the deluge
• warsaw
• 17th century
• robbery
• mansions