94 JOGALIA
were servants of 'the German God'. Right until his elevation to the Polish
throne, his raiding parties and rustlers regularly crossed the borders and carried
off captives and loot. Yet the Catholic clouds on his western horizon were
unmistakable. The consolidation of Poland under Casimir the Great was
matched by the relentless advance of the Teutonic State, whose Grand Master,
Winrich von Kniprode (1352-1382) was bringing his charge to a peak of condi-
tion. Having defeated the Lithuanians at Rudau in 1370, he was now planting
colonies in the Samogitian wilderness. He had an open licence to convert the
Lithuanians, issued by the Pope in 1339, and made no secret of his intention to
subject them to the fate of the Prussians. Jogaila could not hold off two Catholic
powers at once. In the long run, he realized that he could only choose the man-
ner of his conversion - and the least agreeable manner was at the point of a
Teutonic sword. Christianity was coming, one way or the other. Thus he was
driven towards Poland by the coldest and most calculated reasons of state. He
was informed no doubt of his grandfather's alliance with Lokietek which had
bought some decades of respite in the north. He knew of the marriage of his
aunt, Aldona, which at the cost of 26,000 Polish slaves, had been arranged for
the same purpose. His duty was clear; and the prospect of a nubile Hungarian
princess was an added bonus. In 1385, as soon as Jadwiga arrived in Cracow,
the Lithuanian matchmakers made their first approaches. A conjugal and a
political union were proposed. It was a decisive moment in the life of two
nations. For four long generations spanning 186 years, Jogaila and his heirs
drove the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in harness, like
a coach-and-pair. They presided over an era when the Lithuanian elite was pol-
onized, and the Poles acceded to the problems of the east.^2
In Cracow, the Polish barons, too, had their reasons. After thirteen years of
Angevin rule, when they had escaped from the direct supervision of a native king,
they were not now disposed to submit to the first man, who by marrying
Jadwiga, could impose himself on them. Having rejected Louis's elder daughter,
Maria, on the grounds that she was married to Sigismund of Brandenburg, they
could hardly accept Jadwiga's present fiance, Wilhelm von Habsburg, Prince of
Austria. For them, the Lithuanian connection was much more interesting.
Jadwiga could be told to do her duty. Maidenly and ecclesiastical reticence could
be overcome. On 14 August 1385, at Krewo in White Ruthenia, an agreement
was signed, in which the Polish barons persuaded Jogaila to concede a number
of very advantageous undertakings. In return for the hand of Jadwiga, the
Lithuanian prince was ready to accept Christian baptism, to convert all his pagan
subjects to Roman Catholicism, to release all Polish prisoners and slaves in his
possession, to co-ordinate operations against the Teutonic Knights, and to asso-
ciate the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with the Kingdom of Poland in a permanent
union. On this basis, in February 1386 a great assembly of Polish barons and
nobility at Lublin elected Jogaila, whom they knew as 'Jagiello)', as their king.
For Jadwiga, the experience was extremely painful. She was eleven years old,
and virtually alone in a foreign country. She was being told to abandon a young
