♦Consolidation of Poland. 1295-1320.♦
Meanwhile Poland, from a collection of duchies under a nominal head, had again grown into a consolidated and powerful kingdom. The western frontier had been cut short by various German powers, and the Teutonic Order shut off the kingdom from the sea. Mazovia and Cujavia remained separate duchies; but Great and Little Poland remained firmly united, and were ready to enlarge their borders to the eastward. ♦Conquests of Casimir the Great. 1333-1370.
Red Russia. 1340.♦ Casimir the Great added Podlachia, the land of the Jatvingi, and in the break-up of the Galician kingdom, he incorporated Red Russia as being a former possession of Poland. ♦Annexed to Hungary. 1377.♦ But, as it had also been a former possession of Hungary,[66] Lewis the Great, the common sovereign of Hungary and Poland, annexed it to his southern kingdom.
♦Union of Poland and Lithuania.♦
The two powers which had thus grown up were now to be gradually fused into one. ♦1386.♦ The heathen Lithuanian prince Jagiello became, by marriage and conversion, a Christian King of Poland. ♦Volhynia and Podolia added to Poland.♦ He enlarged the kingdom at the expense of the duchy, by incorporating Podolia and Volhynia with Poland, making Poland as well as Lithuania the possessor of a large extent of Russian soil. ♦Recovery of Red Russia. 1392.
Moldavia.
Pledge of Zips. 1412.♦ The older Russian territory of Poland, Red Russia, was won back from Hungary; Moldavia began to transfer its fleeting allegiance from Hungary to Poland; within Hungary itself part of the county of Zips was pledged to the Polish crown. ♦Recovery of the Polish duchies. 1401.♦ The Polish duchies now began to fall back to the kingdom. ♦1463-1476.♦ Cujavia came in early in the fifteenth century, and parts of Mazovia in its course. Of the relation of the kingdom to the Teutonic order we have already spoken. Lithuania meanwhile, as part of Western Christendom, remained, under its separate grand dukes of the now royal house, the rival both of Islam and of Eastern Christendom. ♦Conquests of Witold. 1392-1430.♦ Under Witold the advance on Russian ground was greater than ever. Smolensk and all Severia became Lithuanian; Kief was in the heart of the grand duchy; Moscow did not seem far from its borders. ♦Loss of Perekop, 1474.♦ Lithuania was presently cut short further to the south by the loss of its Euxine dominion. ♦Closer union of Poland and Lithuania. 1501.♦ At the beginning of the sixteenth century Poland and Lithuania were united as distinct states under a common sovereign. But by that time a new state of things had begun in the lands on the Duna and the Dnieper.
♦Revival of Russia.♦
While the military orders had thus established themselves on the Baltic coast, and had already largely given way to the combined Polish and Lithuanian power behind them, a new Russia was growing up behind them all. ♦Power of Moscow.♦ Cut off from all dealings with Western Europe, save with its immediate western neighbours, cut off from its own ecclesiastical centre by the advance of Mussulman dominion, the new power of Moscow was schooling itself to take in course of time a greater place than had ever been held by the elder power of Kief. The Mongol conquest had placed the Russian principalities in much the same position as that through which most of the south-eastern lands passed before they were finally swallowed up by the Ottoman. ♦The Russian princes dependent on the Golden Horde.♦ The princes of Russia were dependent on the Tartar dominion of Kiptchak, which stretched from the Dniester north-eastwards over boundless barbarian lands as far as the lower course of the Jenisei. Its capital, the centre of the Golden Horde, was at Sarai on the lower course of the Volga. ♦Homage of Novgorod. 1252-1263.♦ Even Novgorod, under its great prince Alexander Nevsky, did homage to the Khan. But this dependent relation did not, like the Lithuanian conquests to the west, affect the geographical frontiers of Russia. The Russian centre at the time of the Mongol conquest was the northern Vladimir. ♦Moscow the new centre, c. 1328.♦ Towards the end of the thirteenth century, Moskva, on the river of that name, grew into importance, and early in the next century it became the centre of Russian life. ♦Name of Muscovy.♦ From Moskva or Moscow comes the old name of Muscovy, a name which historically describes the growth of the second Russian power. Muscovy was to Russia what France in the older sense was to the whole land which came to bear that name. Moscow was to Russia all, and more than all, that Paris was to France. It was to Moscow as the centre that the separate Russian principalities fell in; it was from Moscow as the centre that the lost Russian lands were won back. ♦Other Russian states.♦ Besides Novgorod, there still were the separate states of Viatka, Pskof, Tver, and Riazan. Disunion and dependence lasted till late in the fifteenth century. ♦Decline of the Mongol power.♦ But the Tartar power had already begun to grow weaker before the end of the fourteenth, and the invasion of Timour, while making Russia for a moment more completely subject, led to the dissolution of the dominion of the older Khans.
♦Break-up of the Mongol power.♦
In the course of the fifteenth century the great power of the Golden Horde broke up into a number of smaller khanats. ♦Khanat of Crim;♦ The khanat of Crim—the old Tauric Chersonêsos—stretched from its peninsula inwards along the greater part of the course of the Don. ♦of Kazan, 1438;♦ The khanat of Kazan on the Volga supplanted the old kingdom of White Bulgaria. ♦of Siberia;♦ Far to the east, on the lower course of the Obi, was the khanat of Siberia. ♦of Astrakhan.♦ The Golden Horde itself was represented by the khanat of Astrakhan on the lower Volga, with its capital at the mouth of that river. Of these Crim and Kasan were immediate neighbours of the Muscovite state. ♦Deliverance of Russia. 1480.♦ The yoke was at last broken by Ivan the Great. ♦1487.♦ Seven years later he placed a tributary prince on the throne of Kazan, and himself took the title of Prince of Bulgaria. ♦Crim dependent on the Ottoman.♦ By this time the khans of Crim had become dependents of the Ottoman Sultans, the beginning of the long strife between Russia and the Turk in Europe.
♦Advance of Moscow in Russia.♦