at their expense. The mere instinct of self-preservation had, at last, drawn the Poles and Lithuanians together against these ruthless and masterful intruders, and the coronation of Jagiello at Cracow on the 15th of February 1386, was both a warning and a challenge to the Knights. But if the Order had now become a superfluous anachronism, it had still to be disposed of, and this was no easy task. For if it had failed utterly as a mission in partibus, it had succeeded in establishing on the Baltic one of the strongest military organizations in Europe. In the art of war the Knights were immeasurably superior to all their neighbours. The pick of the feudal chivalry composed their ranks; with all Europe to draw upon, their resources seemed inexhaustible, and centuries of political experience made them as formidable in diplomacy as they were valiant in warfare. And indeed, for the next twenty years, the Teutonic Order more than held its own. Skilfully taking advantage of the jealousies of Poland and Lithuania, as they were accentuated by the personal antagonism of Jagiello and Witowt (q.v.), with the latter of whom the Knights more than once contracted profitable alliances, they even contrived (Treaty of Salin, 1378) to extend their territory by getting possession of the province of Samogitia, the original seat of the Lithuanians, where paganism still persisted, and where their inhuman cruelties finally excited the horror and indignation of Christian Europe. By this time, however, the prudent Jagiello had become convinced that Lithuania was too strong to be ruled by or from Poland, and yet not strong enough to stand alone, and by the compact of Vilna (January 18, 1401, confirmed by the compact of Radowo, March 10) he surrendered the whole grand duchy to Witowt, on the understanding that the two states should have a common policy, and that neither of them should elect a new prince without the consent of the other. The wisdom of this arrangement was made manifest in 1410, when Jagiello and Witowt combined their forces for the purpose of delivering Samogitia from the intolerable tyranny of the Knights. The issue was fought out on the field of Tannenberg, or Grünewald (July 15, 1410), when the Knights sustained a crushing defeat, which shook their political organization to its very foundations. A few weeks after the victory the towns of Thorn, Elbing, Braunsberg and Danzig submitted to the Polish king, and all the Prussian bishops voluntarily offered to render him homage. But the excessive caution of Jagiello gave the Knights time to recover from the blow; the Polish levies proved unruly and incompetent; Witowt was suddenly recalled to Lithuania by a Tatar invasion, and thus it came about that, when peace was concluded at Thorn, on the 1st of February 1411, Samogitia (which was to revert to the Order on the death of Jagiello and Witowt), Dobrzyn, and a war indemnity of 100,000 marks payable in four instalments, were the best terms Poland could obtain from the Knights, whose territory practically remained intact. Jagiello's signal for the attack at the battle of Grünewald, “Cracow and Vilna” (the respective capitals of Poland and Lithuania) had eloquently demonstrated the solidarity of the two states. This solidarity was still further strengthened by the Union of Horodlo (October 2, 1413) which enacted that henceforth Lithuania was to have the same order of dignitaries[1] as Poland, as well as a council of state, or senate, similar to the Polish senate. The power of the grand-duke was also greatly increased. He was now declared to be the equal of the Polish king, and his successor could be elected only by the senates of Poland and Lithuania in conjunction. The Union of Horodlo also established absolute parity between the nobility of Poland and Lithuania, but the privileges of the latter were made conditional upon their profession of the Roman Catholic faith, experience having shown that difference of religion in Lithuania meant difference of politics, and a tendency Moscow-wards, the majority of the Lithuanian boyars being of the Greek Orthodox Confession.
During the remainder of the reign of Wladislaus II. the Teutonic Order gave Poland much trouble, but no serious anxiety. The trouble was due mainly to the repeated efforts of the Knights to evade the fulfilment of the obligations of the Treaty of Thorn. In these endeavours they were materially assisted by the emperor Sigismund, who was also king of Hungary. Sigismund, in 1422, even went so far as to propose a partition of Poland between Hungary, the empire and the Silesian princes, a scheme which foundered upon Sigismund's impecuniosity and the reluctance of the Magyars to injure the Poles. More than once Wladislaus II. was even obliged to renew the war against the Knights, and, in 1422, he compelled them to renounce all claims upon Samogitia; but the long struggle, still undecided at his death, was fought mainly with diplomatic weapons at Rome, where the popes, generally speaking, listened rather to the victorious monarch who had added an ecclesiastical province to the Church than to the discounted and turbulent Knights.
Had Wladislaus II. been as great a warrior as Witowt he might, perhaps, have subdued the Knights altogether. But by nature he was pre-eminently a diplomatist, and it must in fairness be admitted that his diplomacy in every direction was distinctly beneficial to Poland. He successfully thwarted all the schemes of the emperor Sigismund, by adroitly supporting the revolutionary party in Bohemia (q.v.). In return Hussite mercenaries fought on the Polish side at Tannenburg, and Czech patriots repeatedly offered the crown of Bohemia to Wladislaus. The Polish king was always ready enough to support the Czechs against Sigismund; but the necessity of justifying his own orthodoxy (which the Knights were for ever impugning) at Rome and in the face of Europe prevented him from accepting the crown of St Wenceslaus from the hands of heretics.
Wladislaus II. died at Lemberg in 1434, at the age of eighty three. During his long reign of forty-nine years Poland had gradually risen to the rank of a great power, a result due in no small measure to the insight and sagacity of the first Jagiello, who sacrificed every other consideration to the vital necessity of welding the central Slavs into a compact and homogeneous state. The next ten years severely tested the stability of his great work, but it stood the test triumphantly. Neither a turbulent minority, nor the neglect of an absentee king; neither the revival of separatist tendencies in Lithuania, nor the outbreaks of aristocratic lawlessness in Poland, could do more than shake the superstructure of the imposing edifice. After the death at Varna, in 1444, of Jagiello's eldest son and successor, Wladislaus III. (whose history belongs rather to Hungary than to Poland), another great statesman, in no wise inferior to Wladislaus II., completed and consolidated his work. This was Wladislaus's second son, already grand duke of Lithuania, who ascended the Polish throne as Casimir IV. in 1447, thus reuniting Poland and Lithuania under one monarch.
Enormous were the difficulties of Casimir IV. He instinctively
recognized not only the vital necessity of the maintenance
of the union between the two states, but also the
fact that the chief source of danger to the union lay
in Lithuania, in those days a maelstrom of conflicting
political currents. To begin with, Lithuania was Casimir IV.,
1447–1492.a far less
composite state than Poland. Two-thirds of the grand duchy
consisted of old Russian lands inhabited by men who spoke
the Ruthenian language and professed the Orthodox Greek
religion, While in the north were the Lithuanians proper, semi-savage
and semi-catholic, justly proud of their heroic forefathers
of the house of Gedymin, and very sensitive of the pretensions
of Poland to the provinces of Volhynia and Podolia, the fruits of
Lithuanian valour. A Lithuanian himself, Casimir strenuously
resisted the attempts of Poland to wrest these provinces from
the grand duchy. Moreover, during the earlier years of his
reign, he was obliged to reside for the most part in Lithuania,
where his tranquilizing influence was needed. His supposed
preference for Lithuania was the real cause of his unpopularity in
Poland, where, to the very end of his reign, he was regarded
- ↑ All the chief offices of state were consequently duplicated, e.g. the hetman wielki koronny, i.e. “grand hetman of the crown,” as the Polish commander-in-chief was called, had his counterpart in Lithuania., who bore the title of wielki hetman litewski, i.e. “grand hetman of Lithuania,” and so on.
