The so-called Saxon period of Polish history, from 1697 to 1763, was after 1717 one of uneasy peace, illusory prosperity and bad leadership, an era of decline during which Poland degenerated into Sarmatia—an earthly paradise for a minority of its inhabitants and a wild benighted squirearchy in the eyes of the outside world. The term ‘Gentry Democracy’ (demokracja szlachecka), sometimes used to describe Poland's Constitution between 1572 and the second half of the eighteenth century, is a complacent and self-contradictory misnomer, especially when applied to the years 1697–1763. This system at the best of times had never been a democracy but an aristocracy disguised as an elective monarchy which, in the second half of the seventeenth century, assumed the form of oligarchy and, in the first half of the eighteenth century, sank to the level of anarchy.

One of the principal defects and a distinctive feature of the Saxon period was the constant and fruitless attempt on the part of the leading families in the land to seize power for themselves. Their failure and the Crown's inability to subdue its enemies and enforce its own authority prolonged the struggle, absorbed the energy of the parties and finally brought the machinery of government to a standstill.

In the initial stages of the development of the Polish Republic, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the szlachta, although an aristocracy in relation to the country as a whole, enjoyed equality within their own class. By the beginning of the Saxon period, however, the szlachta were freer than ever but no longer equal.