Lithuania: Political History and Notable Figures

1377 - 1434 - Jagello (All Facts)

• First Supreme Duke of Lithuania

• He had diplomatically maneuvered to lay the foundations for the union, with the namesake out to save his own position as well as Lithuania’s future

  • He did this having long wanted to enter the sphere of western civilization

• During his reign, he laid down the foundations for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth via marriage to Jadwiga, Queen of Poland

  • Initially a polytheist, he converted to Catholicism and was baptized after marriage

  • The marriage allowed the rivalry between the two kingdoms to end

  • Their unification allowed them to unite against the Teutonic Order, their common enemy

• Under his reign,

  • Lithuanian nobbles proceeded to adopt the manners and traditions of the Polish aristocracy

1434 - 1444 - Wladyslaw III (All Facts)

• 2nd Supreme Duke of Lithuania

1440 - 1492 - Casimir IV (All Facts)

• Grand Duke of Lithuania

1492 - 1506 - Alexander Jagiellon (All Facts)

• Grand Duke of Lithuania

• He issued an Edict of Expulsion against the Jews in Lithuania, forcing them to leave or be baptized

1506 - 1529 / 1548 - Sigismund (All Facts)

• Grand Duke of Lithuania

  • He eventually co-ruled with his successor

  • He ruled for more than 40 years

  • He was Catholic and kept Lithuania a Catholic state in the midst of the Protestant Reformation

  • He was considered blessed with a strong character and considerable political perception

• During his reign,

  • He established serfdom in Poland

  • He implemented a series of financial reforms

  • He enforced strong measures against Lutherans, anxious to unite his realm of Poland to the Catholic Church in Rome

    • He introduced death at the stake for anyone who imported heretical books

    • He ordered all his subjects attending heretical universities abroad to return home

    • He brought in a similar penalty to burning at the stake for subjects who disobeyed his order to return home from heretical universities

    • These edicts of his, however, were widely ignored

• He attended the First Congress of Vienna, where he

  • forged an alliance with Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian and King Vladislaus II of Bohemia and King of Hungary

• He and his Polish-Lithuanian forces were defeated by Vasily III and his Muscovite forces in the Fourth Muscovite-Lithuanian War / Ten Years’ War

  • He was forced to sign an armistice treaty with Vasily III, forced to settle with Vasily III after Vasily III had made a defensive alliance with Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, creating papal concern about the conflict and having brought pressure from the Catholic Church on the namesake to settle

  • At one point during this war, however, he and his forces defeated Vasily III and his Russian forces

• He imposed his rule on Wallachia

• He stamped his authority on East Prussia

• Under his reign,

  • Poland was at its peak

  • Poland had been (profoundly) influenced by the Italian Renaissance

  • Nicolas Copernicus proposed the “Heliocentric Theory” of the Universe

• He died in Cracow, in which he was buried in his namesake monument / tomb at Wawel Cathedral

1534 - Mikhail Glinsky (All Facts)

• He led a revolt of Lithuanian rebels against Duke Sigismund of Lithuania

• He and his Lithuanian forces helped Vasily III of Moscow take take Smolensk during the Muscovite-Lithuanian War / Ten Year’s War

1529 / 1548 - 1572 - Sigismund II Augustus (All Facts)

• Grand Duke of Lithuania and Final Grand Duke of Lithuania from the House of Jagiellon

  • He initially co-ruled with his predecessor

• During his reign,

  • The Union of Lublin was established

    • His lands thus stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Dniester River

• He died with no heir

1569 - 1795 - Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (All Facts)

• State which stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Dniester River

• State established via the Union of Lublin, during the reign of Sigismund II Augustus

• State which was officially Catholic but which was (initially) tolerant of Orthodox and Protestant Christians as well as Jews

• State in which the King had to work through the Polish parliament despite his many various powers and prerogatives

1573 - 1575 - Henry / Henry III of France (All Facts)

• Grand Duke of Lithuania

  • He was from the House of Anjou

  • He was the brother of King Charles IX of France

  • His election was secured by Catherine de Medici (his mother)

    • She by dint of propaganda and persuasion succeeded in building up a pro-French party among the Polish nobles

  • He became the first “elected” king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

  • He was elected by some 40K Polish nobles and gentry, who assembled for the election on the Warsaw plain

  • He was considered devious, egotistical, and effeminate

  • His election by the Polish nobles and coronation was precipitated by the death of his predecessor, who had no heir

• During his reign,

  • He had to face a hostile nobility which wanted to keep effective power

  • The powers of the Polish-Lithuanian crown were being drastically reduced, as Poland-Lithuania was going to be governed by its Senate, rather than the crown head on

• He eventually lost interest in Polish power as a result of the aforementioned developments

1576 - 1586 - Stephen Bathory, of Transylvania (All Facts)

• Grand Duke of Lithuania

  • He was initially the Prince of Transylvania

  • His rule was supported by the Ottoman Empire

  • He was “elected” Grand Duke of Lithuania

  • He ruled for ten years

  • He had a forceful personality and was an experienced soldier

• He created a big Christian empire in eastern Europe which prevented Tsar Ivan IV and Russia from overtaking those territories

  • However, the Poles did not support the almost limitless personal ambitions he had

• He had the same problem as his predecessors, which was failing to banish from his mind the thought of his native country (Transylvania) which had a fear-reaching effect on both his domestic and foreign policy

• He died suddenly and was succeeded

1587 - 1632 - Sigismund III Vasa (All Facts)

• Grand Duke of Lithuania

  • He was the son of King John III of Sweden

  • He was “elected” by some 15K voters who preferred him to Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II

• He and his Polish-Lithuanian forces

  • defeated

    • Tsar Vasily IV and his Russian and Swedish forces in the First Russo-Polish War

      • He had his son Ladislaus IV installed as the succeeding Tsar of Russia

  • were defeated by

    • Gustavus Adolphus and his Swedish forces in the Fourth Polish-Swedish War

    • Gustavus Adolphus and his Swedish forces in the Fifth Polish-Swedish War

• Under his reign,

  • The Confederation of Vilna made it so that various branches of the church in Poland unite against the power of the Roman (Catholic) Church

  • The Truce of Altmark was made (with Sweden)

1632 - 1648 - Ladislaus IV (All Facts)

• Grand Duke of Lithuania

• He and his Polish-Lithuanian forces

  • defeated the Russian forces in the Siege and War of Smolensk

    • Upon his arrival, the town was relieved

    • He obtained support of the Dnieper Cossacks, who had been disillusioned by Russia’s failure to come to their aid previously

    • He offered an armistice to the leader of the Russian forces, which he accepted and permitted the remaining 8K Russian forces to retire

1648 - 1668 - John II Casimir Vasa (All Facts)

• Grand Duke of Lithuania

• He failed to reach an agreement with the Cossacks (Cossack Hetmanate / Ukraine), who then swore an oath of allegiance to Tsar Alexis of Russia and their armies promptly invaded Poland on two fronts

• During his reign,

  • He oversaw the Counter-Reformation triumph, and thus excluded Protestants from office

• He led Poland in the Northern War

• He and his Polish forces were defeated by Tsar Alexis and the Russian forces and Bohdan Khmelnytsky and his Cossack forces in the Second Russo-Polish War

  • He renounced his claim to Smolensk, Kiev, and a large part of the Ukraine on the left bank of the Dneiper River

  • Ukraine was thus handed over to Russia

• Under his reign,

  • The “Deluge” took place throughout Poland-Lithuania

    • During this period he was in continual conflict with the Sejm over money and constitutional issues

    • During this period his reign covered one of the darkest periods in Poland’s history, with multiple foreign powers threatening partition and internal strife amongst aristocratic factions

  • The Treaty of Oliva was signed, which ended the Northern War

    • He eventually renounced his claim to the Swedish throne via this treaty

• He abdicated the throne

1615 - 1672 - Władysław Siciński (All Facts)

• He was a deputy of the General Sejm (Polish-Lithuanian Parliament) who exercised his veto power for the first time, voicing his disagreement with the prolongation to Sejm

  • after a vote on increased taxes

  • because he wanted to go home

1669 - 1673 - Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki (All Facts)

• Grand Duke of Lithuania

  • He defeated Louis II de Bourbon of France in the bid for the Polish throne

  • He was Lithuanian

• He was forced to sign the Treaty of Buchach by Sultan Mehmed IV and the Ottoman Empire during the Fourth Polish-Ottoman War

1674 - 1696 - John III Sobeiski (All Facts)

• Grand Duke of Lithuania

  • Prior to his rule, he

    • helped Poland-Lithuania fight off Sweden during “The Deluge”

    • and his Polish-Lithuanian forces defeated Petro Doroshenko and his Cossack forces and Sultan Mehmed IV and his Ottoman forces and their combined Crimean forces in the Polish-Cossack-Tatar War

    • and his Polish-Lithuanian forces defeated the Ottoman forces in the Battle of Khotyn during the Fourth Polish-Ottoman War

      • This made him a Polish war hero, and, as a result, he was bestowed the title of “Defender of the Faith” by the Papacy, which catapulted him into winning the election to the Polish-Lithuanian throne

  • He was “elected”

    • He had to defeat three other candidates for the Polish-Lithuanian throne, none of whom were Poles (Polish) and whom favored either France or Austria

    • His kingship became a concern for all of the major European powers vying for influence at the time

    • His kingship, despite being a Pole, had external sponsors include King Louis XIV of France

      • This was because the namesake married Marie Casimire d'Arquien

      • This was also because King Louis XIV sought to use Poland for his own purposes in his military campaigns against Austria

    • He was determined to resist any possibility of selling out Poland-Lithuania

    • He overtook Poland-Lithuania’s foreign ambassadors, subordinating each of their own country’s interests for that of Poland-Lithuania

  • He and his Polish-Lithuanian forces and Charles V of Lorraine and his Holy Roman and Austrian forces defeated Kara Mustafa Pasha and his Ottoman forces in the Battle of Vienna during the Great Turkish War / Eighth Ottoman-Habsburg War

1674 - 1696 - Marie Casimire d'Arquien (All Facts)

• Grand Duchess of Lithuania and Wife of John III Sobieski

• Her marriage to John III of Sobieski increased King Louis XIV and France’s influence over Poland and allowed the king and France to use Poland against Austria

1704 - 1709 - Stanisław Leszczyński (All Facts)

• Grand Duke of Lithuania

• He led Lithuania in the Great Northern War, where he allied with King Charles XII of Sweden, betraying the anti-Swedish coalition of the war

  • He was appointed to replace his predecessor by King Charles XII of Sweden

• He ruled until the Russians occupied Lithuania during the Great Northern War and deposed him, returning his predecessor to the throne to succeed the namesake

• He became the father-in-law of King Louis XV of France when his daughter Marie married the French king

• He fought in the War of the Polish Succession

  • He and his Polish and French forces were defeated by Russian and Holy Roman (Saxon) forces in the Siege of Danzig

• Under his reign,

  • The Poles rose up against him and he fled as a result, making the way for the return of his predecessor

• He fled to Danzig following the War of the Polish Succession

1697 - 1706 / 1709 - 1733 - Augustus II (All Facts)

• Grand Duke of Lithuania

  • He was elected

    • against the interests of France, who preferred François Louis (the Prince of Conti) to rule Poland in place of the namesake

    • in support of the interests of Germany (the Holy Roman Empire), whose sovereigns backed him

• He led Lithuania in the Great Northern War

  • He and his Lithuanian forces re-joined the anti-Swedish coalition

• He showed little to no interest in Poland-Lithuania, spending most of his time at the sumptuous electoral court of Dresden (in Germany / the Holy Roman Empire)

  • In response to his absence, Sweden forced the election of his namesake successor to rule in his place

• During his reign,

  • He and his Lithuanian forces were defeated by King Charles XII and his Swedish forces in the Swedish invasion of Lithuania and the Duchy of Courland during the Great Northern War

• Under his reign,

  • Lithuanian forces were defeated by King Charles XII and his Swedish forces in the Battle of Putulsk during the Great Northern War

• He was deposed by King Charles XII of Sweden, who replaced him with his successor

1733 - 1763 - Augustus III (All Facts)

• Grand Duke of Lithuania

  • He was elected grand duke upon emerging victorious from the War of the Polish Succession