Truce of Altmark
peace treaty
The six-year Truce of Altmark (or Treaty of Stary Targ, Polish: Rozejm w Altmarku, Swedish: Stillståndet i Altmark) was signed on 26 September [O.S. 16 September] 1629 in the village of Altmark (Stary Targ), in Poland, by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden, with help from Richelieu's envoy Charnacé, ending the Polish–Swedish War (1626–1629), and freeing King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden to enter the Thirty Years' War.
Provisions
The truce allowed Sweden to retain control of Livonia. Sweden also evacuated most of the Duchy of Prussia but kept the coastal cities. Poland had other Swedish gains returned from the 1625 invasion. Most of Livonia north of the Daugava River was ceded to Sweden (Swedish Livonia), but Latgale, the southeastern area, remained under Polish rule. Sweden received the right to two third of all the shipping tolls at Polish ports, such as at Gdańsk (Danzig) and Elbląg (Elbing) and from the Duchy of Prussia, for six years. The shipping tolls financed Sweden's involvement in the Thirty Years' War.
The Truce of Altmark was signed shortly after Sweden had been defeated by Poland led by Field Crown Hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski and Holy Roman Imperial troops at Trzciana, which nearly lead to the capture of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. Gustavus was wounded several times and was once saved by one of his men.
The Polish Parliament (Sejm) did not impose new taxes to pay the soldiers of the imperial army fighting under Hans Georg von Arnim-Boitzenburg and low morale made some of them mutiny or go over to Sweden.
“Truce of Altmark” enters the record as peace treaty. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Truce, Altmark and peace can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1347605. The Library of Congress control number is sh85003937. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1629, 1626 and 1625.
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This entry incorporates text from “Truce of Altmark” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.