ABSTRACT
In 1772, over 2,000 localities within the Rzeczpospolita laid claim to chartered town status. Wielkopolska and Royal Prussia boasted the densest concentrations. The traveller was twice as likely to come across a town in the palatinates of Poznań and Kalisz – on average, 1 town for every 170 square kilometres – as he was in Lithuania – on average, 1 town for every 370 square kilometres. He was almost twice as likely to encounter a town in the Grand Duchy as in the deep Ukraine of the palatinates of Braclaw or Kiev, with 1 town for every 628 or 683 square kilometres. In more meaningful terms, the furthest a peasant could be expected to walk to market and back in a single day was 20 kilometres; with a horse and cart, he might manage a 30 kilometre round trip. A 10 kilometre radius covers 314 square kilometres, a 15 kilometre radius 707 square kilometres. Even in the obscurest corners of the Commonwealth, towns were never impossibly distant from one another.
