The position of the king was unenviable. At first he was under the influence of Gashtold and others, and also of his own feelings, but as king he was powerless to counteract the demands of Polish nobles, who, besides the union of Russo-Lithuanian provinces, asked for confirmation of certain rights granted by Yagello, and demanded still others restricting royal action. There were two Polish parties at this time, those of Great and Little Poland. Great Poland formed what is now Poznan, Little Poland that part of the present Austrian Poland which has its center at Cracow. The men of Great Poland were mainly indifferent to questions [[446]]in the Grand Principality, because they were distant. Little Poland, on the contrary, turned every effort toward those questions. Immense lands, great careers, and much power were to be won through getting Lithuania and Russia. The head of the Little Poland party was Olesnitski, the chancellor. He held the first place in all councils; behind him stood the party in Cracow. The queen mother supported the chancellor. The young king yielded much to Olesnitski, who had made Sigismund Grand Prince, and was now working ardently for Michael, and urging the king to give him lands in Lithuania and be reconciled. The king would not listen to this; he did not forget that this same Michael had striven to kill him.
Michael, after fleeing from Gashtold, had tarried in Moscow for some time, and, with help of the Mongols, had endeavored to seize lands from Lithuania. Vassili the Blind had supported him, while Kazimir had upheld the opponents of Vassili. Failing at last, Michael went to Moldavia, then to Silesia, and afterward back to Moscow. But by this time Vassili of Moscow had agreed with Lithuania, consequently he refused to help Michael further. At last Michael died, it is stated through poison given by some abbot,—poison of such power that the prince died immediately. Then the abbot, terrified by the thought of vengeance from Michael’s cousin, Sophia, the daughter of Vitold, also drank of the poison and died.
That same year, 1450, died Svidrigello at Lutsk. Persecuted by the Poles all his life, he had hated them thoroughly, and had taken from his boyars an oath to give the land only to agents of the Grand Prince of Moscow. After his death all places were occupied by Russo-Lithuanian garrisons in the name of the Grand Prince. The Poles were incensed, and announced a campaign to recover those places. But the opposition of the king, and the unwillingness of Great Poland to take part in a struggle, cooled Cracow statesmen, who were forced to be satisfied for the moment with verbal attacks on the king, and hot quarrels with the Russo-Lithuanian contingent of the Commonwealth. The quarrels at last became so savage that all save Poles left the Diet, and went from the place secretly in the night-time.
After that the king had great trouble in allaying the bitter hatred and rancor of parties, and in the next Diet, formed of Poles only, he yielded, confirming all the rights demanded, and taking an [[447]]oath never to alienate from Poland any lands which had ever belonged to it, among others the lands of Lithuania, Moldavia, and Russia. More important still, the king bound himself to keep near his person at all times a council made up of four Poles, and to remove the Lithuanians who were hostile to Poland.
In 1455 Olesnitski, the cardinal, died, at a time when the Poles were beginning a war which proved most serious.
In Prussia there had long been a dull and stubborn conflict between towns and lay landholders on one side, and the Order, composed of Knights of the Cross, on the other. The Order, retaining all authority, burdened the people with great dues and taxes, and hampered the Hanse towns in their traffic. Certain landholders had formed against the Order a league called the Brotherhood. To this Brotherhood almost all the large trading towns joined themselves. In the struggle which followed, the Pope and the Emperor inclined toward the Order. The league turned to Kazimir, and signed a pact making the Prussian lands subject to Poland, reserving for itself various privileges as to trade, taxes, and government.
But now the need came to defend this position. The German Order, notwithstanding its fall, had much force still left, as well as the energy to resist for a long time, and even in 1454 it inflicted on Kazimir a notable defeat on the field of Choinitsi. After that the war lasted with changing results for twelve years. Then the Order, having exhausted its forces, sued for peace, and in 1466 received it at Thorn through the aid of the papal legate.
By this peace the lands of Culm and Pomerania, with the cities Marienburg, Dantzig and Elbing, went to Poland, but Eastern Prussia, with Königsberg, its capital, remained with the Order, which assumed certain feudal relations to Poland. The main reason why the war was so long and ended without conquering the Order completely, is found in the quarrels and struggles between the Poles and the Russo-Lithuanians. The latter refrained almost entirely from taking part in the conflict, and the whole weight of it fell upon Poland. Though the same sovereign was both king and Grand Prince, he had so little authority in Poland, and was so hampered by parties that he had no power to make the three countries act as one body. Dlugosh, the Polish historian, declares that in the Grand Principality Russians and Lithuanians [[448]]opposed to the Poles had secret relations with the Order, against which the Poles were then warring.
The first prince in Kief descended from Gedimin, and under a Grand Prince of that descent also, was Gedimin’s grandson, Vladimir, son of Olgerd. In his long rule of thirty years, from 1362 to 1392, the old city rested to a certain extent, and recovered considerably from the terrible destruction wrought by Batu and other Mongol khans.
Orthodox in religion, and Russian externally, Vladimir cared for the Orthodox Church of Kief regions, and wished the metropolitan to reside in that ancient city; hence he supported Cyprian when Dmitri would not admit him to Moscow. When Vitold became Grand Prince of Lithuania, he drove out Vladimir, and put him in Kopyl, a small district. Kief he gave to Vladimir’s brother, Skirgello, in 1392. Vladimir tried hard to get the aid of Vassili of Moscow, but he met with no success, and spent the last years of his life in Kopyl. Skirgello, who in action was much like his brother, lived only four years. After his death Vitold, who wished to break up the old system, put no prince in Kief; he governed the city through agents, the first of whom was his confidant, Prince Olshanski.