with suspicion, and where every effort was made to thwart his far-seeing and patriotic political combinations, which were beyond the comprehension of his self-seeking and narrow minded contemporaries. This was notably the case as regards his dealings with the old enemy of his race, the Teutonic Order, whose destruction was the chief aim of his ambition.
The Teutonic Order had long since failed as a religious institution, it was now to show its inadequacy as a political organization. In the domain of the Knights the gentry, parochial clergy and townsmen, who, beneath its protection, had attained to a high degree of wealth and civilization, for long remained without the slightest political influence, though they bore nearly the whole burden of taxation. In 1414, however, intimidated by the growing discontent, which frequently took the form of armed rebellion, the Knights consented to the establishment of a diet, which was re-formed on a more aristocratic basis in 1430. But the old abuses continuing to multiply, the Prussian towns and gentry at last took their affairs into their own hands, and formed a so-called Prussian League, which demanded an equal share in the government of the country. This league was excommunicated by the pope, and placed under the ban of the empire almost simultaneously in 1453, whereupon it placed itself beneath the protection of its nearest powerful neighbour, the king of Poland, who (March 6, 1454) issued a manifesto incorporating all the Prussian provinces with Poland, but, at the same time, granting them local autonomy and free trade.
But provinces are not conquered by manifestoes, and Casimir's acceptance of the homage of the Prussian League at once involved him in a war with the desperate Teutonic Knights, which lasted twelve years, but might easily have been concluded in a twelvemonth had he only been loyally supported by his own subjects, for whose benefit he had embarked upon this great enterprise. But instead of support, Casimir encountered obstinate obstruction at every point. No patriotic Pole, we imagine, can read the history of this miserable war without feeling heartily ashamed of his countrymen. The acquisition of the Prussian lands was vital to the existence of Poland. It meant the excision of an alien element which fed like a cancer on the body politic, it meant the recovery, at comparatively little cost, of the command of the principal rivers of Poland, the Vistula and the Niemen, it meant the obtaining of a seaboard with the corollaries of sea-power and world-wide commerce. Yet, except in the border province of Great Poland, which was interested commercially, the whole enterprise was regarded with such indifference that the king, in the very crisis of the struggle, could only with the utmost difficulty obtain contributions for war expenses from the half-dozen local diets of Poland, which extorted from the helplessness of their distracted and impecunious sovereign fresh privileges for every subsidy they grudgingly granted. Moreover Casimir's difficulties were materially increased by the necessity of paying for Czech mercenaries, the pospolite ruszenie, or Polish militia, proving utterly useless at the very beginning of the war. Indeed, from first to last, the Polish gentry as a body took good care to pay and fight as little as possible, and Casimir depended for the most part upon the liberality of the Church and the Prussian towns, and the valour of the Hussite infantry, 170,000 of whom, fighting on both sides, are said to have perished. Not till the victory of Puck (September 17, 1462), one of the very few pitched battles in a war of raids, skirmishes and sieges, did fortune incline decisively to the side of the Poles, who maintained and improved their advantage till absolute exhaustion compelled the Knights to accept the mediation of a papal legate, and the second peace of Thorn (October 14, 1466) concluded a struggle which had reduced the Prussian provinces to a wilderness.[1] By the second peace of Thorn, Poland recovered the provinces of Pomerelia, Kulm and Michalow, with the bishopric of Ermeland, numerous cities and fortresses, including Marienburg, Elbing, Danzig and Thorn. The territory of the Knights was now reduced to Prussia proper, embracing, roughly speaking, the district between the Baltic, the lower Vistula and the lower Niemen, with Königsberg as its capital. For this territory the grand-masters, within nine months of their election, were in future to render homage to the Polish king; but, on the other hand, the king undertook not to make war or engage in any important enterprise without the consent of the Prussian province, and vice versa. Thus Prussia was now confederated with Poland, but she occupied a subordinate position as compared with Lithuania, inasmuch as the grand-master, though filling the first place in the royal council, was still a subject of the Polish crown. Thus the high hopes entertained by Casimir at the beginning of the war had not been realized. The final settlement with the Poles was of the nature of a compromise. Still the Knights had been driven beyond the Vistula, and Poland had secured a seaboard; and it was due entirely to the infinite patience and tenacity of the king that even as much as this was won at last.
The whole foreign policy of Casimir IV. was more or less conditioned by the Prussian question, and here also his superior diplomacy triumphantly asserted itself. At the beginning of the war both the empire and the pope were against him, but he neutralized their hostility by allying himself with George of Podvebrad, whom the Hussites had placed on the throne of Bohemia. On the death of George, Casimir's eldest son Wladislaus was elected king of Bohemia by the Utraquist party, despite the determined opposition of Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, whose ability and audacity henceforth made him Casimir's most dangerous rival. Sure of the support of the pope, Matthias (q.v.) deliberately set about traversing all the plans of Casimir. He encouraged the Teutonic Order to rebel against Poland; he entertained at his court anti-Polish embassies from Moscow; he encouraged the Tatars to ravage Lithuania; he thwarted Casimir's policy in Moldavia. The death of the brilliant adventurer at Vienna in 1490 came therefore as a distinct relief to Poland, and all danger from the side of Hungary was removed in 1490 when Casimir’s son Wladislaus, already king of Bohemia, was elected king of Hungary also.
It was in the reign of Casimir IV. that Poland first came into direct collision with the Turks. The Republic was never, indeed, the “Buckler of Christendom.” That glorious epithet belonged of right to Hungary, which had already borne the brunt of the struggle with Poland and the Turks. the Ottoman power for more than a century. It is true that Wladislaus II. of Poland had fallen on the field of Varna, but it was as a Magyar king at the head of a Magyar army that the young monarch met his fate. Poland, indeed, was far less able to cope with the Turks than compact, wealthy Hungary, which throughout the 15th century was one of the most efficient military monarchies in Europe. The Jagiellos, as a rule, prudently avoided committing themselves to any political system which might irritate the still distant but much-dreaded Turk, but when their dominions extended so far southwards as to embrace Moldavia, the observance of a strict neutrality became exceedingly difficult. Poland had established a sort of suzerainty over Moldavia as early as the end of the 14th century; but at best it was a loose and vague overlordship which the Hospodars repudiated whenever they were strong enough to do so. The Turks themselves were too much occupied elsewhere to pay much attention to the Danubian principalities till the middle of the 15th century. In 1478 Mahomet II. had indeed attempted their subjugation, with but indifferent success; but it was not till 1484 that the Ottomans became inconvenient neighbours to Poland. In that year a Turkish fleet captured the strongholds of Kilia and Akkerman, commanding respectively the mouths of the Danube and Dniester. This aggression seriously threatened the trade of Poland, and induced Casimir IV. to accede to a general league against the Porte. In 1485, after driving the Turks out of Moldavia, the Polish king, at the head of 20,000 men, proceeded to Kolomea on the
- ↑ 18,000 of their 21,000 villages were destroyed, 1000 churches were razed to the ground, and the population was diminished by more than a quarter of a million.
