THE LITHUANIAN UNION 95man to whom she had been betrothed since infancy and to wed a pagan bache-
lor more than three times her age, with whom she could not even converse.
She was intelligent, pretty, an accomplished musician and scholar, and entirely
helpless. After her lonely coronation on Wawel Hill on 15 October 1384, her
Habsburg prince had arrived to claim his bride. The German city and corpora-
tion of Cracow rejoiced. All the prisoners of the city dungeon were released. But
the rejoicing was short-lived. Jadwiga watched as the Castellan of Cracow
broke into the royal castle and chased the unhappy Habsburg from the
Kingdom. She turned to her mother, who did not want to know, and to the
Archbishop, who informed her that her engagement was annulled. After weeks
of agonized prayer, she bowed to the inevitable. On the 15 February 1386, by the
splash of the baptismal water, Jogaila was transformed into a Christian prince,
christened 'Wladyslaw' (Ladislaus), and formally known henceforth as
Wladyslaw-Jagiello. Three days later, the wedding was staged, and in March
their joint coronation. After such treatment, it is not surprising that Jadwiga
turned to a life of charity. She despised the barons, and loved the poor. The tat-
tered remains of her cloak, with which she had covered the corpse of a copper-
smith drowned in the river, became the banner of the Coppersmiths' Guild. The
imprint of her shoe, which she had rested on a stone while tearing off the golden
spur to give to a poor mason, was preserved for posterity in the wall of one of
the city's churches. When she fell gravely ill in 1399, the castle was besieged by
peasants and townsfolk bearing gifts of chickens and lambs and mushrooms for
her recovery, and kneeling on the cobbles in prayer. In her last days, she thanked
God for the victory of the Tartars on the Vorksla over the Polish and Lithuanian
barons, for the 'humbling of their pride'. She died on 17 July 1399, at the age of
24 leaving her entire personal fortune for the refounding of the Cracovian
Academy, the Jagiellonian University. Thus were the fortunes of two countries
served by the tears and humility of an unhappy girl. The Union of Krewo was
abrogated by Jadwiga's death, but the political arguments which inspired it
remained operative throughout the Jagiellonian era. On every occasion that
serious difficulties arose, they ensured that the Polish-Lithuanian Union was
renewed on terms of increasing intimacy. From the personal union of 1385-6,
the relationship was gradually strengthened, until in 1569, the prospect of the
dynasty's extinction encouraged the creation of a permanent, constitutional
union. (The process was essentially comparable to that observable later in the
history of England and Scotland, where the personal union of crowns under the
Stuarts in 1603 led over a bumpy road to the Act of Union of 1707 and the cre-
ation of the United Kingdom in 1801.) The first stage was effected in 1401. As
Jogaila and Jadwiga were childless, it was necessary to design the machinery of
a future succession. Meeting in their separate camps at Radom and Wilno, the
Polish and Lithuanian barons agreed that nothing should be decided in future
without mutual consultation. In the so called 'Wilno-Radom Act', Jogaila's
cousin Witold (Vitovt) was to rule Lithuania for life; thereafter, it was to revert
to Jogaila and his successors. If Jogaila were to die without natural heirs, the