5
JOGALIA:
The Lithuanian Union (1386-1572)
The Lithuanians prided themselves on being the last pagan people in Europe. In
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when all their Baltic neighbours - the
Prussians and Sudovians to the south, and the Letts, Finns, and Estonians to the
north - had been converted to Christianity, they still resisted. Indeed, under
their Grand Prince Gedymin (c. 1275-1341), they forged a state of enormous size
and considerable power at the expense of their Christian neighbours. Barred by
the Teutonic Knights from access to the Baltic coast, their energies were
diverted from the ethnic heartland between the Nieman and Dvina rivers
towards the south and east. Here they met with little opposition. The Ruthenian
principalities which lay across their lines of expansion were demoralized by the
Mongol yoke, and the Mongol Empire itself was contracting. A century of raid-
ing, of castle building, and of exacting tribute, brought startling results. Red
Ruthenia was carved up with Poland in 1349. In 1362, at the Battle of the Blue
Water, in the bend of the Dnieper, Gedymin's son Olgierd broke the Mongol
power for good. Kiev was taken in 1363, Polotsk in 1375, Smolensk in 1403. By
the 1370s, when Louis of Anjou reigned in Poland and Hungary, Lithuania
already rivalled the Angevin empire. It was ruled from the ancient capital of
Vilnius in the north, and dominated by a pagan warrior elite who regarded their
lives and estates as the prince's absolute patrimony. Its inhabitants were largely
East Slavs, devoted to the Orthodox faith. Its official language was ruski or
Ruthenian - in a form which is now known as 'Old Byelorussian'. Success on
this scale created obvious drawbacks. Like all the primitive states united by con-
quest — like the empires of Canute the Great, of Rurik, or of Genghis Khan, or
indeed of Boleslaw Chrobry - there was a very real danger that Lithuania would
crumble as quickly as it had been built. It was a cairn of stones thrown together
on a bleak plain - with no cement. It could be undermined by a revolt of its sub-
jects, by dissension amongst its warlords, or by an incursion of its neighbours.
Lithuania, proud and confident in the protection of Perkun, the God of the
Thunderclap, was none the less lonely and very exposed.^1
Jogaila (c. 1351-1434)* succeeded to the throne of Lithuania at the age of
twenty-six, in the prime of life, and lived to be eighty-three. Of all the neigh-
bouring peoples, he had no special love for the Poles, who to his pagan mind* Jogaila in Lithuanian, became Jagietlo in Polish, and lagiellonus in Latin.