Pagan reaction in Poland

[7] In any case, Poland in the early 1030s was torn by a number of conflicts, and in 1031 Mieszko II had to briefly seek refuge in Bohemia after losing a civil war to his brother Bezprym, before returning to reclaim the Polish lands in 1032.

[6]: 355 [8] The pagan reaction and related uprisings and rebellions of the time, coupled with foreign raids and invasions, threw the young Polish realm into chaos.

[9] Among the most devastating of the foreign contributions was a raid by Duke Bretislaus I of Bohemia in 1039, which pillaged Poland's first capital, Gniezno.

[10] The destabilization wrought by these events was so severe that historians doubt that anyone can be considered Poland's ruler in the late 1030s; the name of one of the pretenders, Bolesław the Forgotten, illustrates ("with a proper irony", writes Vlasto[10]) the complexity and obscurity of the situation.

[12] According to some historians, the 1030s pagan uprising marks the end of the earliest period of Polish history, under the "First Piast Monarchy".