Pola

Wladislaus II. died at Lemberg in 1434, at the age of 83. During his long reign of 49 years Poland had gradually risen to the rank of a great power. The next ten years proved the stability of his work. After the death at Varna, in 1444, of his eldest son and successor, Wladislaus III., the kingdom which he had founded was consolidated by his second son, already grand-duke of Lithuania, who ascended the Polish throne as Casimir IV. in thus reuniting Poland and Lithuania under one monarch.

Casimir IV., 1447-92.

The difficulties which confronted Casimir were great. He instinctively recognized not only the vital necessity of the maintenance of the union between the two States, but also the fact that the chief source of danger to the union lay in Lithuania. For political reasons, during the earlier years of his reign, Casimir was obliged to reside for the most part in Lithuania, and his interest in the grand-duchy was always resented in Poland, where, to the very end of his reign, he was regarded with suspi cion. In particular, he could never rely on adequate Polish support in the struggle which he inherited from his predecessors, with the Teutonic Order.

The struggle assumed a new form in 1454, when Casimir accepted the suzerainty offered to him by the Prussian League, which had ejected the authority of the Order, and needed a pro tector. The acquisition of the Prussian lands was vital to the existence of Poland. It meant the command of the principal rivers of Poland, the Vistula and the Niemen, and the acquisition of a seaboard with its corollaries of sea-power and commerce. Yet, except in the border province of Great Poland, which was inter ested commercially, the king received little support, military or financial, and it was only with his victory at Puck (Sept. 17, 1462) that he obtained any decisive success against the Order. The war was ended in 1466 by the second treaty of Thorn (Oct. 14) by which Poland recovered the provinces of Pomerelia, Kulm and Michalow, with the bishopric of Ermeland, numerous cities and fortresses, including Marienburg, Elbing, Danzig and Thorn. The territory of the Knights was now reduced to Prussia proper, embracing, roughly speaking, the district between the Baltic, the lower Vistula and the lower Niemen, with Königsberg as its capital. For this territory each grand-master within nine months of his election was in future to render homage to the Polish king, who undertook not to make war or engage in any important enter prise without Prussian consent. Prussia had now become a Polish province, and Poland had acquired a seaboard.

The whole foreign policy of Casimir IV. was influenced by the Prussian question. At the beginning of the war both the empire and the pope were against him. He therefore allied himself with George of Podiebrad, whom the Hussites had placed on the throne of Bohemia. On the death of George (1471), Casimir's eldest son Wladislaus was elected king of Bohemia by the Utraquist party, despite the determined opposition of Matthias Corvinus, the king of Hungary, who thenceforward deliberately set about traversing all the plans of Casimir. He encouraged the Teutonic Order to rebel against Poland; he entertained at his court anti Polish embassies from Moscow ; he encouraged the Tatars to ravage Lithuania; he thwarted Casimir's policy in Moldavia. His death in 1490 came therefore as a distinct relief to Poland, and all danger from the side of Hungary was removed when Casimir's son Wladislaus, already king of Bohemia, was elected king of Hungary also.

Poland and the Turks.—It was in the reign of Casimir IV. that Poland first came into direct collision with the Turks. The Jagiellos, as a rule, prudently avoided committing themselves to any political system which might irritate the still distant but much-dreaded Turk, but when their dominions extended so far southwards as to embrace Moldavia, the observance of a strict neutrality became exceedingly difficult. Poland had established a sort of suzerainty over Moldavia as early as the end of the 14th century; but at best it was a loose and vague overlordship which the Hospodars repudiated whenever they were strong enough to do so. The Turks themselves were too much occupied elsewhere to pay much attention to the Danubian principalities till the mid dle of the 15th century, and it was not till 1484 that they became inconvenient neighbours to Poland. In that year a Turkish fleet captured the strongholds of Kilia and Akkerman, commanding respectively the mouths of the Danube and Dniester. This aggres sion seriously threatened the trade of Poland, and induced Casimir IV. to accede to a general league against the Porte. In 1485, after driving the Turks out of Moldavia, the Polish king, at the head of 20,000 men, proceeded to Kolomea on the Pruth, where Bayezid II., then embarrassed by an Egyptian war, offered peace, but as no agreement concerning the captured fortresses could be arrived at, hostilities were suspended by a truce. During the remainder of his reign the Turks gave no trouble.