Wladyslaw II Jagiello, King of Poland

Wladyslaw II Jagiello, King of Poland

The Lithuanian-Polish monarch Jogaila (c. 1351-1434), known in Polish as Wladyslaw II Jagiello, was a key figure in the history of both Lithuania and Poland during the medieval period.

Geopolitically speaking, the most significant aspect of Jogaila's 57-year reign as Lithuania's monarch was that it inaugurated a union between Lithuania and Poland, known as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, that would last for centuries, even though the two countries shared little in terms of linguistic or cultural heritage. He brought Christianity to Lithuania, which had been Europe's last pagan state. In Poland he maintained the growth in power and influence that had begun under the Piast dynasty, and, with the assistance of his sainted bride, Jadwiga, reestablished a university that exists today as one of Europe's oldest. In a part of the world long marked by intense national rivalries, perspectives on Jogaila (pronounced “yo-GUY-la”) and his legacy have varied according to the locations of those who hold them, but few doubt his overall importance in European history.

Born Into Complex Political Situation

Jogaila's early life has remained elusive to historians. He is generally thought to have been born in the early 1350s in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, with Norman Davies, author of God's Playground: A History of Poland, suggesting a date of 1351 (some Polish historians have argued in favor of a later date, which would help to explain Jogaila's record of fathering children in late life). His father was Lithuania's grand duke (really a king) named Algirdas, and his mother was a Russian princess. Lithuania in Jogaila's youth was a large kingdom, but one beset by enemies on all sides. These enemies included Russians and Central Asian Tatars to the east, a powerful German religious-military order known as the Teutonic knights to the northwest, and Poland itself, which was growing and unifying.

In 1377 Jogaila ascended to the Lithuanian throne as co-regent with his uncle, Kestutis, but this situation, with agents of the Teutonic Knights doing their best to foment discord, was unstable from the beginning. In 1382 Kestutis was imprisoned on Jogaila's orders, and a few days later he was killed—by whom is not definitively known, but Jogaila himself remains a primary candidate. Kestutis's son Vytautas escaped to German lands and later emerged as Jogaila's rival. External threats, however, kept the lid on Lithuanian internal rivalries.

Jogaila had joined his father in carrying out plundering raids on Polish territory, and he had no particular love for the Polish people, who worshiped what he called the German god and whom he regarded as uncouth (Polish chroniclers would later express surprise that Jogaila bathed and shaved daily). However, the young king realized he was in serious need of allies, and Poland seemed the least expansionist among the possible candidates. Lithuania and Poland had a common enemy in the Teutonic Knights, who occupied prime real estate on the Baltic seacoast and tended when possible to obliterate local governments in the areas they conquered. Although Jogaila's mother was Russian and urged him to make peace with the Russians and marry a Russian princess, his father had been sworn to recover Lithuanian lands lost to the growing Orthodox power to the east.

Another attraction of a Polish alliance from Jogaila's point of view was the availability of the young Polish princess Jadwiga (herself of a varied ethnic background produced by earlier political marriages). For Poland, chartered by the Pope to bring Catholicism to the lands to its east, an alliance also made sense. Negotiations between the two countries began (probably at Poland's initiative), and the Kreva Union Act was signed by Jogaila and a group of Polish barons on August 14, 1385.

Formed Dual State

The agreement (whose text has never surfaced but has been pieced together by historians) made Jogaila King of Poland and specified that Lithuania and Poland would henceforth operate as separate states under a common crown. The Machiavellian instability of political life at the time made both parties feel that the arrangement might well be temporary, as did the lack of cultural continuity between the two countries. The Lithuanian and Polish languages are only slightly related, and Jogaila never learned to speak Polish well (although Latin would have been a language common to some in both courts). Jogaila, now known in Poland as Wladyslaw (or Ladislaus) II Jagiello (pronounced “ya-GYAY-wo,” the Polish form of the name Jogaila), would marry Jadwiga, and Christianity would be imposed in Lithuania. Jogaila upheld this part of the deal, translating the Lord's Prayer and the Credo of the Catholic mass into Lithuanian himself. The ancient Lithuanian pagan religion (which, among other beliefs, worshiped pigs as harbingers of the afterlife) went underground and persisted for several centuries.

The effect of these developments on Jadwiga (or Hedwig), who was about 12 years old, can only be guessed. She probably could not even converse with her new husband, with whom she had no language in common, and the marriage remained childless for some years. She threw herself into charitable works, spawning a body of legends that eventually led to her canonization in 1997 by Pope John Paul II. The couple worked to re-establish the University of Krakow, which had fallen into decline after the death of its founder, Poland's King Casimir III. The university flourished after it reopened in 1400, offering courses to both Poles and Lithuanians (in Latin); Jogaila was the first student registered. It is known today as the Jagiellonian University in honor of Jogaila and Jadwiga, who died in 1399 after the birth of a daughter, Elizabeth, who also died.

Especially after Jadwiga's death, Jogaila's status as a foreign king was an ambiguous one. He was naturally treated with suspicion by powerful Poles, who dispatched spies to keep tabs on his activities. Zbigniew Olesnicki, the Catholic Bishop and later Cardinal of Krakow, emerged as a major antagonist who did what he could to frustrate Jogaila's initiatives, including the recognition of Vytautas, with whom Jogaila had been reconciled, as Lithuania's king. Jogaila's personal life was not particularly happy. He married again at the behest of the Polish nobles, but his second wife, Anna, was unattractive, and Jogaila refused to live with her. She, too, died after bearing a daughter, and Jogaila, to intense local criticism, married a woman named Elizabeth Pilecua whom he chose himself.

In spite of all these factors Jogaila gained a reputation as a linchpin of the Polish state (and when he thought of abdicating and returning to Lithuania, the Poles asked him to stay on). He increased the powers of the Polish nobility. But the most important factor working in his favor was his skill as a diplomat and military leader. Conflicts between the Teutonic Knights and the Slavic peoples intensified in the early 1400s, culminating in 1410 as Jogaila raised a vast army of Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Tatar, Czech, and Hungarian troops for a surprise invasion of Prussian lands. At the German town of Grünwald, on July 15, 1410, these motley forces faced those of the Germans.

Defeated Teutonic Knights

According to Davies, the Bishop of Pomerania, the Teutonic leader, sent Jogaila a pair of swords with a note stating that it was “for your assistance.” Jogaila replied, “We accept the swords you send us, and in the name of Christ, before whom all stiff-necked pride must bow, we do battle.” At the battle's end, the technically sophisticated German forces were routed, and the Polish army was credited with technical brilliance, moving men and machinery across the Vistula River on pontoon bridges. Poland obtained rights to free trade along the length of the Vistula, and German national pride received a blow that smarted until the outbreak of World War I more than five centuries later, even though Jogaila was noted as a leader who was merciful to vanquished enemies.

That battle proved to be Jogaila's greatest accomplishment. In later years he tried to undo what he had done and restore Lithuania's full sovereignty, even making common cause with the hated Teutonic Order and other German groups in attempts to install first Vytautas and then his younger brother Svitrigaila on the Lithuanian throne against Polish wishes. In the words of an early historian quoted by Vanda Sruogiene of the Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences, “old Jogaila was a Lithuanian, and he remained one. Such an action [support of Vytautas], in spite of the consequences, was an idea close to his heart.” Ironically, Jogaila is often viewed as a negative figure in Lithuanian historical accounts: he is seen as a leader who helped Poland but set back the cause of Lithuanian identity.

His situation was made more troublesome by the fact that, although he had been married three times and had several children, he had not yet produced a male heir. In 1422, over 70 years old according to most accounts, he married for a fourth time. His new wife was the Lithuanian princess Sofia, known as Sonka, a niece of his second wife. She bore him two sons, although there were rumors that the children were not Jogaila's own. The sons were too young to take part in the political maneuvering that accompanied the approaching death of the aging Jogaila, however.

The last few years of Jogaila's life were chaotic. Lithuanians who supported the union with Poland managed to deny Svitrigaila the Lithuanian throne and to install one of their own, Zygimantas, as king. Jogaila tried to forestall these developments but no longer had much power. In late May of 1434, Poland suffered through a return of winter weather after spring crops had already begun to sprout. The Polish chronicler Dlugosz, quoted by Sruogiene, told what happened next: “The king, oblivious to the bitter cold, went out into the woods as was his habit, a remnant of his pagan days, to listen to the nightingale and to rejoice in her sweet songs … but he caught cold and … was taken ill. Finally, fully conscious … he fell asleep in the arms of the clergy.” He died on June 1, 1434, and was buried in Krakow Cathedral, having fundamentally altered the histories of both the countries he called home.

Books

Biskupski, M.B., The History of Poland, Greenwood, 2000.

Davies, Norman, God's Playground: A History of Poland, rev. ed., Columbia University Press, 2005.

Lukowski, Jerzy, and Hubert Zawadzki, A Concise History of Poland, Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Rowell, S.C., Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire Within East-Central Europe, 1295-1345, Cambridge, 1994.

Online

“Jogaila (1350-1434),” Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences (Winter 1987), http://www.lituanus.org/1987/87_4_04.htm (February 5, 2008).