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the laws for these forest-dwellers, who were lacking in
resources and arms—are conquered one after the other,[1]
and the kings of Lithuania in a few decades found a
State which extends from the Baltic to the banks of the
Dniester. At once a great preponderance of the Russian
language and civilisation, of the Orthodox faith even,
becomes apparent in Lithuania, who in spite of that—or
rather on account of it—is in a perpetual state of war
with Moscow. This intermittent conflict, which lasts for
more than a hundred years, assumes the character of an
intestine war—that between Eastern Russia, the Russia
of Moscow, deeply tinged with Tartar influence and the
Byzantine autocratic ideal, and Western Russia, in which
still lives the memory of the independence of the towns,
and of princely raids, and where elements of a new
European civilisation are being introduced. It is a fine
and glorious time for the kings of Lithuania (still
heathens), who at last stop the conquests of the Teutons,
treacherously installed in Prussia, and who on the famous
day of Tannenwald defeat the knights in armour by
bringing against them, besides the Lithuanians and the
Polish allies, a whole Russian army recruited even from
within the old walls of Smolensk.[2] Then a great change
occurs in the fate of Lithuania. Jagellon, her King,
espouses Queen Hedwig, and with her Poland also and
the Roman Catholic Faith. A union becoming closer
and closer is formed between Cracow and Vilna. Vilna
gradually gives the precedence to the capital of Poland,
whereas Kieff, jealous at taking the third place, offended
in her religious faith, sulks at first at the new state of
affairs, then champs her bit and finally seeks to detach
herself from the “Republic of the magnates,” and ends
by uniting herself, with the whole of Little Russia, to
the great Russian Empire of the North, foreshadowing
thereby the disaggregation of Poland.
Meanwhile there is less and less mention of the
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