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Poland The Polish-Lithuanian Union
Poland's unlikely partnership with the adjoining Grand
Duchy
of Lithuania, Europe's last heathen state, provided an
immediate
remedy to the political and military dilemma caused by the
end of
the Piast Dynasty. At the end of the fourteenth century,
Lithuania was a warlike political unit with dominion over
enormous stretches of present-day Belarus and Ukraine.
Putting
aside their previous hostility, Poland and Lithuania saw
that
they shared common enemies, most notably the Teutonic
Knights;
this situation was the direct incentive for the Union of
Krewo in
1385. The compact hinged on the marriage of the Polish
queen
Jadwiga to Jagiello, who became king of Poland under the
name
Wladyslaw Jagiello. In return, the new monarch accepted
baptism
in the name of his people, agreed to confederate Lithuania
with
Poland, and took the name Wladyslaw II. In 1387 the
bishopric of
Wilno was established to convert Wladyslaw's subjects to
Roman
Catholicism. (Eastern Orthodoxy predominated in some parts
of
Lithuania.) From a military standpoint, Poland received
protection from the Mongols and Tatars, while Lithuania
received
aid in its long struggle against the Teutonic Knights.
The Polish-Lithuanian alliance exerted a profound
influence
on the history of Eastern Europe
(see
fig. 3). Poland and
Lithuania would maintain joint statehood for more than 400
years,
and over the first three centuries of that span the
"Commonwealth
of Two Nations" ranked as one of the leading powers of the
continent.
The association produced prompt benefits in 1410 when
the
forces of Poland-Lithuania defeated the Teutonic Knights
in
battle at Grunwald (Tannenberg), at last seizing the upper
hand
in the long struggle with the renegade crusaders. The new
Polish
Lithuanian dynasty, called "Jagiellon" after its founder,
continued to augment its holdings during the following
decades.
By the end of the fifteenth century, representatives of
the
Jagiellons reigned in Bohemia and Hungary as well as
PolandLithuania , establishing the government of their clan over
virtually all of Eastern Europe and Central Europe. This
farflung federation collapsed in 1526 when armies of the
Ottoman Empire (see Glossary)
won a crushing victory at the Battle of
Mohács (Hungary), wresting Bohemia and Hungary from the
Jagiellons and installing the Turks as a menacing presence
in the
heart of Europe.
Data as of October 1992
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