Untitled - Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas

freedom, they continued eyeing the prerogatives of the boyar stratum, seeking to
acquire them by the legalized way to nobility.
The General Confederation of the Grand Duchy, with the help of Russian
Army, annulled the town reforms in the summer of 1792. The Grodno Sejm
decided to expand town rights somewhat in 1793 thus it turned to large cities of
the Grand Duchy to present their requests to the Sejm. The delegates of Grand
Duchy towns demanded the rights and freedom guaranteed by the Law on Towns,
but the Sejm limited the prerogatives of townspeople and only upheld more of
them for merely five large towns. Being dissatisfied with the situation, Grand
Duchy townspeople actively joined the Insurrection of 1794 and briefly reinstated
the rights guaranteed to towns by virtue of the May 3 Constitution.
The increase of town municipalities during the reform years should not
be viewed as a final process, because the events of 1791–1792 were merely the
beginning of reforms. The granting neither of municipal patents of rights nor of
the course of establishing town municipalities can reveal the full picture of all the
reforms their authors had devised. Therefore certain further considerations remain
hypothetical or even require additional evidence. The Law on Towns defined the
circumstances for granting municipal self-governance and it essentially provided
for the granting of the patent of self-governance rights to all royal or free towns and
townships. Actually priority was placed on towns of administrative importance
that had acquired patents of rights; nonetheless, rights were not confiscated
from townships and settlements either as long as they “acquire an appearance
appropriate for a town”. Most of the towns with acquired patents of municipal
rights were not centers of national administration; furthermore they had not
availed themselves of any patents of self-governance rights previously. It should
be assumed that the Police Commission of the Republic of Two Nations had
exceptional influence on the diffusion of municipalities, because its jurisdiction
covered free towns, which grew as the number of free towns increased. The issue
regarding the fate of the elderships was very seriously raised in the Sejm. Although
the Sejm did not approve the project to sell-off elderships, debates branched
out and continued. The course of events indicates that the Two Nations Police
Commission probably intended to leave the towns subordinate to elderships under
national scrutiny, bearing in mind the universal expectation that foreigners would
be moving into these towns. Nevertheless, the most important role is attributed
to the townspeople taking active initiative, which even surpassed the expectations
of reformer supporters, especially in Lithuania. The disputes and discord between
townspeople and eldership administrators in the latter half of 18 th century not
only laid the groundwork for the townspeople movement but also served to speed
it even more.
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