The Constitution introduced hereditary succession to the throne for the Saxon Wettin dynasty, in reference to the provisions of the Third of May Constitution. The Sejm was maintained as a bicameral parliament, consisting of a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies. Bishops, voivodes and castellans (titular offices by then) held seats in the Senate ex officio, just like in the pre-partition Commonwealth. As in France, the executive power was strengthened. The government consisted of ministers. A Council of State chaired by the king and consisting of ministers, a secretary and four referendaries, was also set up according to the French model. The Council was tasked with drafting laws, resolving conflicts of competence between courts, cassation jurisprudence, and bringing ministers to justice. Similarly, following the French example, the country was divided into departments and districts, headed by prefects and sub-prefects respectively.

The direction of the planned social reforms and those of the political system, particularly the actions of Russian ambassador Nikolai Repnin (for instance, his pushing of the project to grant political rights to infidels, which eventually became incorporated into the so-called Cardinal Laws, that is, the principles of the Commonwealth’s political system guaranteed by Russia) caused an outrage among much of the nobility engaged in the public life. Leaders of the opposition (for instance, Bishop of Kamianets-Podilskyi Adam Stanisław Krasiński) to the king and the political faction associated with him prepared a plan for a confederation. The purpose was to depose Poniatowski, fight against Russia, and reform the state.

With the end of February 1768 substantial volunteer troops, partly made up of rebellious detachments of the Crown’s army, assembled in Bar, a town in Podolia in today’s Ukraine. Present were, for instance, the Pułaskis: Józef, who was declared the military union’s marshal, and his son Kazimierz, the later hero of the American War of Independence and one of the Confederation’s leaders. Announced on that occasion, the act establishing the Confederation declared all acts of Parliament passed under coercion null and void. The Confederates’ main motto was “faith and freedom.” The Confederation was ultimately suppressed in 1772, becoming a pretext for the first partition of the Commonwealth.

The Confederation has become a subject of both positive and negative legends. The former originate from the Enlightenment-period political commentary, which condemned the purported Sarmatian reactionism, which the Confederation members were identified with. The Romantic interpretation of the historic role of the 1768‒1772 events was completely different, with works such as Henryk Rzewuski’s Pamiątki Soplicy [Soplica’s memoir], Wincentyy Pol’s Pieśni Janusza [Janusz’s songs], or Juliusz Słowacki’s Ksiądz Marek [Father Marek] contributing to the sublimation of the Bar Confederation by incorporating it into the pro-independence tradition along with the Kościuszko Uprising, the Polish Legions’ act, and the November Uprising.

Defeated by the Swedes in combat, Jan Kasimir fled to Silesia, to the terrains under the Habsburg rule. The nobility and the royal clerks recognized the king of Sweden as the king of Poland in return for a guarantee of rights. At the same time Great Hetman of Lithuania Janusz Radziwiłł surrendered the Great Duchy of Lithuania to Sweden. With time, however, the Swedes began to treat the captured territory in an increasingly harsh way. They started to transport valuables and works of art out of the Commonwealth. They also accepted the fact that their soldiers were robbing peasants. To make the renegade king’s contact with the country more difficult the Swedes began to capture towns and fortresses on the border with Silesia. That was when they came to the foothill of the fortified cloister called Luminous Mount (Jasna Góra), the most important Marian sanctuary in the Crown. Their attempt to capture it, combined with other Swedish misdeeds, outraged the nobility, which turned back to Jan Kasimir. Under those circumstances, in December 1655 hetmans of the Crown with the army, representatives of the disappointed nobility, and the Lithuanian troops which had turned against Radziwiłł assembled in Tyszowce. They decided to establish a confederation, that is, an armed union of citizens formed to defend their violated rights. The Confederates declared their subordination to Jan Kasimir, promised to fight against the Swedes, and announced universal conscription. The Confederation of Tyszowce is regarded as the symbolic turning point in the Polish-Swedish War, which transformed from the invaders’ triumphant march into a bloody and difficult war, which came to an end in 1660 with the signing of the Treaty of Oliva and the Swedes’ retreat.

Nihil novi rendered the “Union of Mielnik” null-and-void in its entirety and strictly limited the legislative competences of the monarch and the Senate, banning the issuance of laws without the consent of the senators and gentrymen represented in the Chamber of Deputies. The thrust of Nihil novi was essentially to reinforce the position of the bicameral parliament in the political system of the Polish-Lithuanian Rzeczpospolita (Commonwealth). In so doing, the parliament, and particularly its Chamber of Deputies, attained the position of highest authority in the state. The functioning of the Sejm was henceforth to be based on smooth co-operation between the king, the royal council – i.e. the Senate – and the deputies elected locally or regionally to the Chamber of Deputies.

Constitutional and legal historians recognize Nihil novi as marking the beginning of the ‘nobles’ democracy’ (or, democracy of the nobility) in the Polish-Lithuanian Rzeczpospolita.

The privilege was corroborated confirmed in Krakóow, in 1433.

By the document of 17 September 1374, King Louis granted the noblemen in the whole kingdom a privilege, under which knights were released from the obligation to pay tribute, except for an annual fee of two Groschen (about 10% of the income of the average nobleman’s estate at that time) from a field (about 25 ha). Moreover, under the new law noblemen were guaranteed full compensation for their participation and losses incurred in a foreign expedition, the construction of new castles, either at the expense of the sovereign or with co-financing from local knights, if they agreed to the tax, the costs of the monarch’s stay in the estate were to be covered by himself, there was also an obligation that new officials would be recruited from amongst the inhabitants of the Kingdom.

Such privileges were nothing special in Europe at that time. Social layers and their parliaments were careful to ensure that sovereigns, when implementing their policies, did not deprive their subjects of their last money. In the Kingdom of Poland, the law of King Louis became one of the foundations for the development of parliamentarianism. Even before the times of the privilege, knights enjoyed much freedom, as they were obliged not by a fief relationship but by knightly law. Noblemen’s ownership was full, not based on the mechanism of feudal contract according to the Western European model. However, from 1374, the position of a knight towards a monarch became even more meaningful. Every time the king needed additional financing, he had to ask the noblemen to enact new taxes. Ruling without the consent of the subjects became very difficult and the way to transform a knight into a citizen was opened.