Władysław II Jagiełło and Jadwiga

King of Poland (r. 1386-1434) and Queen of Poland (r. 1384-1399)

• Jadwiga
• Born: 1373 or 1374
• Birthplace: Unknown
• Died: July 17, 1399
• Place of death: Unknown

• Władysław II Jagiełło
• Born: c. 1351
• Birthplace: Unknown
• Died: June 1, 1434
• Place of death: Gródek Jagielloński, near Lwów, Poland (now Gorodok, near Lviv, Ukraine)

Jagiełło and Jadwiga’s marriage brought about the unification of Lithuania and Poland and the conversion of the Lithuanian people from paganism to the Roman Catholic faith.

Early Lives

Władysław II Jagiełło (LAD-ihs-lahs or vlah-DIH-slahf yah-GEHL-oh) was the eldest son of Algirdas (also known as Olgierd), the grand duke of Lithuania, by his second marriage. Though Jagiełło’s mother, Juliana of Tver, taught him Ukrainian and pushed him toward her Russian Orthodox Church and a Russian marriage, Jagiełło took after his cautious pagan father in most respects, even in the unusual practice of refusing to drink alcoholic beverages. Algirdas had shared power in Lithuania with his brother, Kęstutis, who had governed the western half of the country and fended off the eastern march of the Teutonic Knights and Kings Casimir the Great (r. 1333-1370) and Louis the Great, king of Hungary and Poland (r. 1342-1382 and 1370-1382). Algirdas had ruled over central Lithuania and the Russian dependencies.

Algirdas’s death in 1377 precipitated a struggle between the sons of the two marriages. Jagiełło and his brothers overcame those rivals and, in 1382, they fought their uncle, Kęstutis, through secret alliances with the Teutonic Knights in which the brothers promised to convert the Lithuanians to the Roman Catholic Church. They found themselves in trouble, however, when Kęstutis’s son, Vytautas, escaped to the Teutonic Knights and persuaded the Crusaders that he would be more likely to carry out his promises than Jagiełło. Soon, the baptized Vytautas threatened Jagiełło’s hold on Lithuania so seriously that in 1385 Jagiełło looked abroad for help.

The kingdom of Poland was undergoing a serious crisis. Casimir the Great had expanded its frontiers to the east, but after his death in 1370 he left the country without a legitimate male heir. The crown had gone to Louis the Great, who was not in a position to defend Poland well. Confronted by the Turkish advance into the Balkans and in poor health, Louis ruled Poland through Hungarian and Silesian favorites. When Louis died in 1382, it appeared that foreigners would continue to dominate Poland, because his two young daughters were promised to prominent German princes.

Jadwiga (yahd-VEE-gah), the daughter who became queen in 1384, had been married while still a child to Wilhelm von Habsburg. In 1385, young Wilhelm came to Kraków to urge his childhood playmate to consummate their marriage before the Polish bishops could arrange an annulment. The Polish nobles and clergy meanwhile looked hurriedly for an alternative bridegroom. The austere, clean-shaven, seemingly compliant Lithuanian grand duke was their choice.

Lives’ Work

The Treaty of Krewo, August 14, 1385, provided for Jagiełło to marry Jadwiga, for the conversion of the Lithuanian people, and for a dynastic union of the two states. Jadwiga was persuaded by the Polish bishops to marry the short, quiet, balding stranger, who would be known as her consort. She held the title “rex,” and her advisers saw to it that Jagiełło’s powers were strictly limited. The marriage does not seem to have been a love match (despite what has been written in nineteenth century Romantic novels), and only one child, a daughter, was born, in 1399. (Jadwiga died in childbirth, and the baby girl died three days later.)

The marriage took place on February 14, 1386, in Kraków. The following year, on February 1, Jagiełło established a bishopric in Vilnius, his Lithuanian capital, and possibly wrote the “Our Father and the Apostles’ Creed” in Lithuanian and led the converts in their first recitation. There were too few Lithuanian-speaking priests to make a great impact on the mass of the population, but that was perhaps just as well: The sincere pagans and the many Russian Orthodox believers were consequently left in peace until the new church was well established.

Jagiełło, meanwhile, had made his peace with Vytautas by promising to give him Kęstutis’s lands. Failing to live up to that promise, he later had to fight Vytautas and the Teutonic Knights again but without Polish help. Poland had lived in almost unbroken peace with the Teutonic Knights since the Treaty of Kalisz in 1343, and Jadwiga (supported strongly by her advisers) did not want war with them. Consequently, Jagiełło ultimately gave Vytautas all Lithuania, rescuing only a claim to ultimate sovereignty and a promise of help against the Mongols in the Ukraine, where Jadwiga’s advisers had wanted Jagiełło to employ his talents all along.

The turning point in all Jagiełło’s relationships came in 1399. Jadwiga’s strong, independent personality had expressed itself largely in acts of piety and in curbing her husband’s ambitions. Her death in childbirth made Jagiełło king in name and in fact. Vytautas, routed by the Mongols in pitched battle, pled for Polish help and two years later formally acknowledged Jagiełło as his overlord.

In all these endeavors, Jagiełło had not demonstrated outstanding military skill. Instead, he was a master diplomat, a cautious but skillful politician, and a clever manipulator of personal and national weaknesses. Slowly, he made himself master of Poland, favoring that section of Polish nobility that had encouraged him to take the formal title of Władysław II, thus linking himself to Władysław I’s lifelong efforts to recover Pomerelia (West Prussia) from the Teutonic Knights.

War with the Teutonic Knights came in 1410. On the battlefield of Tannenberg (Stębark), Jagiełło and Vytautas thoroughly crushed the grand master’s army. Afterward, Jagiełło’s brilliant statecraft isolated his enemy and, by forcing the knights to hire mercenaries year after year, drained their strength. In 1422, his armies laid Prussia to waste so thoroughly that the grand master renounced his last claims on Lithuanian territory. Jagiełło failed to recover Pomerelia, but his successors did so in the Thirteen Years’ War (from 1454 to 1466), with the aid of West Prussian burghers and secular nobles.

Jagiełło restored royal authority over Masovia, reestablished control over the southeastern provinces, and worked closely with the Hussites in Bohemia to weaken German power along the Polish border. In 1433, Jagiełło and Vytautas confirmed the dynastic union of their states and defined the constitutional rights of the nobles of Poland and Lithuania, a major step toward limiting royal authority. Further steps came through concessions to Archbishop Oleś;nicki.

Last, when Jagiełło’s fourth wife produced two long-awaited sons (Władysław and Casimir), the king was unable to secure their succession without sacrificing more royal prerogatives. His authority over Lithuania was even weaker. Even though he frustrated Vytautas’s ambitions to become king, Jagiełło was unable to secure the country for his own brother on Vytautas’s death in 1430. After Jagiełło died, Vytautas’s brother, Sigismund, won the struggle for power, and regents ruled in Poland on behalf of the nobility and clergy.

Significance

When Władysław II Jagiełło defeated the Teutonic Knights, it was the most brilliant moment in Polish military history between 1200 and the victory of John III Sobieski (r. 1674-1696) over the Turks in 1683 at least from the point of view that prevailed after Poland had been divided among its neighbors. There is a tendency among an oppressed and divided people to simplify history and to remember and honor those moments when the country was militarily triumphant. This tradition has been a disservice to other glorious periods of Polish history and culture, and it has led to considerable distortion and romanticizing of the activities of Jagiełło and Jadwiga. Nationalist historians and novelists gave these figures all the virtues, their enemies all possible vices.

Lithuanians have always had an ambiguous attitude toward Jagiełło. They gave their real love to Vytautas, whose relationship with Jagiełło was rarely warmer than cautious mistrust. The Lithuanian attitude is most evident in nationalist analyses of the Battle of Tannenberg. The extreme Lithuanian point of view is that Jagiełło merely attended masses and prayed for victory, while Vytautas devised the brilliant feigned retreat that caused the Teutonic Knights to break their lines and open the way for the Polish attack. The extreme Polish view is that the Germans drove the Lithuanians from the field, so that victory was a result of Jagiełło’s inspiring leadership and Polish courage alone. Germans have traditionally disliked Jagiełło, because his victory in Prussia dimmed the only brightness in their declining Holy Roman Empire. A recent change in this attitude reflects the disappearance of the generations that expected historical interpretations to support nationalistic aspirations.

Jadwiga was a strong figure in her lifetime, but she made only a small impression on the historical record. In contrast, no one questions that Jagiełło was one of the great Polish monarchs. Although he was unable to reverse the decline of royal authority, for a short period he restored the unity of the kingdom and defeated or frustrated all enemies. Moreover, he extended Roman Christianity to Lithuania, founded the Jagiellonian University in Kraków (with a legacy from Jadwiga), and established a dynasty that lasted until 1572.

Rulers of Poland, 1333-1516

Reign

• Ruler

1333-1370

• Casimir III the Great

1370

• End of the Piast Dynasty

1370-1382

• Ludvik I the Great (Louis of Anjou)

1382-1384

• Confederation of Radom and civil war

1384-1399

• Queen Jadwiga

1385

• Treaty of Krewo

1386-1434

• Władysław II Jagiełło and Jadwiga

1410-1411

• War with Teutonic Knights, Battle of Tannenberg and Peace of Thorn

1433

• Charter of Kraków (grants rights to nobles)

1434-1444

• Władysław (Vladislav) III

1444-1447

• Instability; Poland united with Lithuania

1447-1492

• Casimir IV

1454-1466

• Thirteen Years War: Poles defeat Teutonic Order, gain access to the Baltic in the Second Peace of Thorn

1471-1516

• Vladislav Jagiełło (son of Casimir IV) king of Bohemia and then Hungary

1492-1501

• John Albert I

1496

• Statute of Piotrkow (Poland’s Magna Carta)

Bibliography

Christiansen, Eric. The Northern Crusades: The Baltic and the Catholic Frontier, 1100-1525. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980. The description of the Crusades of the Teutonic Knights from Prussia and Livonia provides helpful background to Jagiełło’s conversion. Concise, witty, and well-written.

Davies, Norman. God’s Playground: A History of Poland. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. A well-written, scholarly account of medieval Polish history.

Evans, Geoffrey Charles. Tannenberg: 1410-1914. London: Hamilton, 1970. This volume, which describes Jagiełło’s great victory, is strictly focused on military concerns. It predates archaeological work on the battlefield, thus providing important scholarship.

Halecki, Oskar. Borderlands of Western Europe: A History of East Central Europe. New York: Ronald Press, 1952. This work is the standard English-language survey of medieval Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. It has particularly strong coverage of the religious controversies.

Jasienica, Pawel. Jagiellonian Poland. Translated by Alexander Jordan. Miami, Fla.: American Institute of Polish Culture, 1978. A well-recommended history of the dynasty that covers Jagiełło. This work is a translation from a standard text used in Poland.

Longworth, Philip. The Making of Eastern Europe: From Prehistory to Postcommunism. 2d ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. This comprehensive history begins with contemporary times and moves backward in time in each successive chapter. The Jagiellons are discussed in the chapter on the cultural and religious tensions of 1352-1526.

Lukowski, Jerzy, and Hubert Zawadski. A Concise History of Poland. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. A general introduction to Polish history. Includes a chapter on Jagiellonian Poland.

Reddaway, W. F., et al., eds. The Cambridge History of Poland. 2 vols. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1950. This set remains a solid, useful work on the history of Poland.