With the Union of Lublin, a unified Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth ("Rzeczpospolita") was created in 1569, stretching from the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian mountains to present-day Belarus and western and central Ukraine (which earlier had been Kievan Rus' principalities). Within the new federation some degree of formal separation of Poland and Lithuania was retained (distinct state offices, armies, treasuries and judicial systems), but the union became a multinational entity with a common monarch, parliament, monetary system and foreign-military policy, in which only the nobility enjoyed full citizenship rights. Moreover, the nobility's uppermost stratum was about to assume the dominant role in the Commonwealth, as magnate factions were acquiring the ability to manipulate and control the rest of "szlachta" to their clique's private advantage. This trend, facilitated further by the liberal settlement and land acquisition consequences of the union, became apparent around the time of the 1572 death of Sigismund Augustus, the last monarch of the Jagiellonian dynasty.