The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople was delayed
because Timur and his Mongols defeated
the Ottomans at Ankara in 1402.
Bayezid I (r. 1389-1402) had put his Tatar cavalry
in the front line, but they went over to the Mongols.
Bayezid was captured, displayed in a cage,
and died the next year.
Timur’s Mongols went on to sack the
Knights’ Anatolian town of Smyrna.
The Knights had rebuilt Corinth’s defenses but agreed to leave
when given 43,000 ducats they could use to rebuild Smyrna.
A civil war over the Ottoman throne occupied the Muslims
in Asia Minor, and in 1403 Suleiman made peace with the
Byzantines, Serbian despot Stephen Lazarevich,
Venice, and Genoa.
Byzantium regained Thessalonica.
In 1411 Suleiman was defeated by his brother Musa,
who then besieged Constantinople.
However, Mehmed I (r. 1413-21) emerged as
the new Ottoman Sultan in Asia Minor.
His son Murad II (r. 1421-51) renewed
the aggression in Europe.
Byzantine Emperor Manuel (r. 1391-1425) regained Nesebar,
Varna, and the Marmara coast from the Ottomans in 1403.
His son John VIII was crowned Co-emperor in 1421
and tried to help Mustafa challenge Murad II,
who turned his enmity against Constantinople
with another siege the next year.
The walls held, and Murad had to leave to secure his throne.
In 1423 the Turks plundered Morea until the Byzantines
promised to pay tribute the next year.
Manuel’s son Andronicus tried to save Thessalonica
by giving it to Venice, delaying the
taking of the city by Murad until 1430.
Emperor John VIII (r. 1425-48) reigned over little besides
Constantinople, though his brother Constantine took over
the Latin principality of Achaea in 1432.
Five years later John VIII went west for help.
The humanist Gemistus Plethon explained the philosophies
of Plato and Aristotle; he accompanied John VIII
to Ferrara and urged Cosimo Medici
to found the Platonic Academy in Florence.
In 1439 the reunion of the two great Christian
churches was proclaimed in Florence.
Eastern patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem
rejected this capitulation on behalf of the Orthodox Church,
and Grand Duke Vasily II of Russia had Isidore,
the new Metropolitan of Kiev,
deposed and imprisoned in Moscow in 1441.
John’s brother Demetrius took up the Orthodox
cause and tried to use it to take over the throne
with help from the Turks in 1442,
but he was captured and kept under house arrest.
As part of the agreement on Church unity,
Pope Eugenius IV called for a crusade against the Turks,
who had conquered Serbia in 1439 and were raiding Bosnia.
King Wladyslaw III (Ulaszlo) of Poland and Hungary led
25,000 men with Serbian despot George Brankovich
and Wallachian knight Janos Hunyadi,
who had driven Turks from their region.
Hunyadi won a battle over Turks in Rumelia near Nish,
but cold weather and the Ottomans
defeated them early in 1444.
The Albanian warrior Scanderbeg carried on the struggle,
and Constantine fought in Greece,
winning over the Turkish vassal Nerio II Acciajuoli.
In June 1444 Sultan Murad II made a ten-year truce
with the crusaders at Adrianople.
Brankovich withdrew; but five months later the
Christian army, trying to win back Bulgaria,
was defeated by Murad’s Muslims at Varna,
and Wladyslaw was killed.
Two years later Murad invaded Greece,
plundering and taking more than 60,000 captives;
Constantine agreed to pay tribute.
In 1448 Hunyadi surrendered at Kosovo,
but he was released and fought against
his rival Brankovich in Hungary and Serbia;
Scanderbeg and the Albanians continued
to fight in the mountains for twenty years.
When John VIII died childless in 1448, his brother
Constantine XI Paleologus (r. 1448-53)
became the last Byzantine Emperor.
His brother Demetrius plotted with the Turks
and fought over Morea against another brother Thomas.
Murad II died in 1451 and was succeeded
by his son Mehmed II (r. 1451-81).
His siege of Constantinople began in April 1453 and broke
through the walls using cannons by the end of May.
Venetians stayed to help defend the capital;
Genoese came to fight and defeated the Turkish fleet
before the noble Giovanni Giustiniani died in the battle.
Constantine was killed fighting as a soldier.
The rich city was plundered for three days,
and many people were murdered;
valuable Greek books were removed, sold, or destroyed.
The Muslims soon added to their empire the rest of the
Greek, Latin, and Slav territories in the Balkans.
The Turks captured Athens in 1456, occupied part of
Albania in 1457, and took over Serbia in 1459,
Morea the next year as Thomas fled,
Trebizond in 1461, and Bosnia in 1463.
Many Albanians fled or were captured in 1467,
and Scanderbeg died in January 1468.
Byzantine traditions were carried on in the north
by the Russian empire
as Moscow became the “third Rome.”
Sigismund had ruled Hungary since 1387, and in 1395
he founded a university at Obuda with Bishop Luke Szantoi
as provost; but when Luke revolted in 1403,
the university was closed.
Sigismund restored the university in 1410 and invited
foreign scholars to teach, but it failed again in 1419.
Sigismund broke his promise to dismiss his foreign advisors,
and many of his German and Czech followers
were killed a few years later.
On April 28, 1401 Archbishop Kanizsai and Palatine
Detricus Bebek had the King imprisoned in his castle
at Buda while they administered the realm.
The barons could not agree on a new king;
but Nicholas Garai got Sigismund released on August 31,
and he mediated a compromise that restored
Sigismund to the throne on October 29.
The King granted the rebels amnesty, promised
to remove his foreign followers, and agreed
to marry Barbara of Celje (Cilli),
sister of Garai and daughter of the powerful
Count Hermann II of Celje in Slavonia and Dalmatia.
Garai replaced Bebek as Palatine
and held the position until 1433.
A revolt broke out when Ladislaus of Naples landed
in Dalmatia and was crowned
King on August 5, 1402 by Kanizsai.
Ladislaus tried to claim the throne by gaining the support
of Pope Boniface IX against Sigismund, who recognized
the Avignon Pope Pedro de la Luna (Benedict XIII).
However, the disaffected nobles who joined him
were in a minority and were defeated.
Sigismund’s authority was not restored in Dalmatia,
but the rest of Hungary was pacified
by the spring of 1404.
Sigismund returned from Moravia to Visegrad,
and Ladislaus went back to Naples.
In 1404 Sigismund proclaimed the Hungarian Church
independent by forbidding appeals to Rome.
In 1408 he led an army of 50,000 crusaders against Croats
and Bosnians that resulted in the slaughter of two hundred
noble families, many who had fought the Turks.
After his victory in the battle of Dobor,
Sigismund founded the Order of the Dragon
for his loyal barons.
He decreed new laws on criminal jurisdiction, coinage,
and trade, and he confirmed the right
of tenants to change landlords.
In 1412 Sigismund began campaigning against the Venetians,
and in 1414 he appointed Garai and Kanizsai
his lieutenants with power to pardon.
When the Ottomans threatened Bosnia,
a general levy was proclaimed.
The Palatine’s brother John Garai led a large
army deep into Bosnia in the summer of 1415;
but most of the Hungarians were killed or captured,
and Bosnia was lost for ten years.
Sigismund was influential at the Council of Constance
which met from 1414 to 1418
and managed to reunify the divided papacy.
As Sigismund became king of Germany (1410-37),
he was often more involved in the affairs of Germany
and Bohemia; so the barons governed in Hungary.
In 1417 Sigismund invited Pietro Paolo Vergerio to Buda
to be his secretary, and he taught there until his death in 1444.
Serbia made a treaty with Hungary in May 1426.
After Stephen died on June 16, 1427, Sigismund took
Belgrade in October; but Sultan Murad’s forces drove
Sigismund’s army back across the Danube in June 1428.
Because of the Ottoman threat,
Hungary maintained a large standing army.
Venice regained territory in Dalmatia,
and a truce was signed in 1433.
Sigismund also gave up northern territory to Poland.
In 1435 the Hungarian Diet met
for the first time since 1397.
In his last forty years Sigismund gained 62 castles
through escheat or confiscation.
He died on December 9, 1437 at Znaim in Moravia.
His wife Barbara owned half of the 52 royal castles.
Hungary used its precious metals to increase its annual
trade to about 200,000 gold florins;
four-fifths of this was imports, mostly textiles.
They exported cattle and wine.
Evidence from late in Sigismund’s reign shows that
half the royal revenue came from the salt monopoly
and was about 100,000 florins.
The next largest revenue came from
the annual tax on the peasants.
In 1402 the richer craft guilds overthrew the old
Council of Twelve and elected
a popular assembly from the guilds.
As the Hungarians increased their skills, they came
into conflict with the Germans; but after 1439
half the council was elected from the Hungarian burghers.
Hussite preachers prepared a Hungarian translation
of the Bible, which was banned.
In 1436 the papal inquisitor Giacomo di Marca arrived,
and in less than two years he supervised
the burning of thousands of heretics.
The Hussites in Kamanc fled to Moravia.
In 1437 Bishop Gyorgy Lépes demanded that
tithes be paid in coin and for several years of arrears;
petty noblemen and Romanian settlers,
previously exempted, also had to pay.
The movement of peasants to other landlords
was restricted by these obligations.
Sigismund approved of peasant mobility,
but the landlords had limited labor and resisted.
The poor nobleman Antal Budai Nagy led an armed
revolt in the city of Kolozsvar, and they defeated
the noble troops at Babolna on June 6, 1437.
The peasant leaders negotiated with the bishop
and landlords at the Kolozsmonostor monastery,
and their right to transfer to other lords was guaranteed.
The Hungarian nobles, Szekely guards, and privileged
Saxon settlers reacted by uniting against the peasants
in the Union of Torda that forced the peasants
to accept a less favorable agreement
that was arbitrated by Sigismund.
Albrecht of Hapsburg, the Duke of Austria,
was married to Sigismund’s daughter Elizabeth.
Albrecht was elected King of Hungary
and was crowned on January 1, 1438.
While he was away, Elizabeth and the
Garai-Celje clan governed.
The Diet of 1439 asserted the growing power
of the assembled court nobility, and Albrecht gave away
most of the castles that Sigismund had regained.
When the Ottoman army attacked Serbia,
the Hungarian levy was mobilized;
but Serbia fell, and the despot
Durad Brankovich fled to Hungary.
Albrecht died of dysentery in the camp
on October 27, 1439.
Elizabeth had her new-born posthumous son Ladislaus
crowned Laszlo V on May 15, 1440, but the soldier
barons wanted a king who could fight the Turks.
They recruited King Wladyslaw III of Poland
who was crowned Ulaszlo I on July 17.
Most barons supported Ulaszlo, but a stalemate
developed against the Hapsburg barons in the west.
Janos Hunyadi had studied the art of war in Italy,
and by fighting the Turks he became
Hungary’s outstanding military leader.
In 1441 he helped Ulaszlo win a victory at Bataszek.
Hunyadi confiscated the estates of opposing barons
and soon held about 25 castles, 30 towns,
and more than a thousand villages.
He led successful attacks against the Ottomans on the
borders and restored Brankovich to part of his kingdom.
In 1443 he led an army of 30,000 men that defeated
Ottoman forces in Bosnia, Herzegovina,
Serbia, Bulgaria, and Albania.
In June 1444 while Ulaszlo was preparing for war,
envoys of the Serbian ruler Durad Brankovich negotiated
the Peace of Szeged with Sultan Murad II, who withdrew
from Serbia and promised to pay 100,000 florins to Ulaszlo
and support him with 30,000 soldiers in case of war.
Commander-in-chief Hunyadi insisted on accepting the peace;
but Cardinal Cesarini persuaded Ulaszlo and the barons
to swear in public they would invade anyway.
King Ulaszlo swore an oath to keep the peace for ten years
but broke it one month later by invading Bulgaria,
hoping for support from the Venetian navy that did not come.
Murad brought his army back from Anatolia and defeated
the outnumbered Hungarian-Polish army
at the battle of Varna on November 10, 1444.
King Ulaszlo and Cesarini were killed,
and Hunyadi barely escaped.
The Hungarian Diet of 1445 asked Friedrich III to return
Laszlo and the territories occupied by the Hapsburgs.
That year Hunyadi made Janos Vitéz bishop of Oradea,
and he began educating Hunyadi’s son Matthias.
In 1446 thousands of nobles gathered in the field of Rakos,
and the Diet elected Janos Hunyadi regent of Hungary.
He restored peace and made a truce with Ulrich II of Celje.
In the northeast Jiskra resisted, but after several campaigns
a truce was eventually signed in 1452.
In October 1448 Hunyadi led an army against the
Ottomans in the second battle of Kosovo,
but Brankovich and the pretender Dan II of Wallachia
prevented the Albanian reinforcements from arriving.
Brankovich held Hunyadi in a dungeon at Smederevo
until he was ransomed by the Hungarians.
In revenge Hunyadi led a campaign against Brankovich
and forced him to accept a harsh treaty.
Another crusade led by Hunyadi failed at Kosovo Polje.
In 1450 Hunyadi and Ujlaki joined a league with the
Hapsburg party of Laszlo Garai and Friedrich III.
Ulrich of Celje and others accused Hunyadi of trying
to overthrow the King, and so he resigned his regency.
In 1453 King Laszlo named Hunyadi
count of Beszterce and captain general of Hungary.
Jan Hus was born about 1370 at Husinec in southern Bohemia
to poor Czech parents; but he managed to study at
Charles University in Prague by working as a choir boy,
and he began lecturing there in 1396.
He studied and taught Wyclif’s realist philosophy,
and in 1401 Jerome of Prague brought Wyclif’s
Dialogus, Trialogus, and De eucharistia.
Hus preached in Czech at the large Bethlehem chapel in Prague,
and he introduced the singing of old hymns
to the service and wrote new ones.
In 1403 University authorities condemned 24 articles
that had been banned by a London council in 1382,
and then they forbade the teaching or preaching of 45 articles.
Since 1385 Bohemians had been complaining about the
appointment of foreigners to University offices.
In January 1409 Wenceslaus reversed the students’ voting
pattern by decreeing that the Bohemia nation
would have three votes
and the three foreign nations only one vote.
This caused the German professors and about five thousand
German students to leave Prague and go to Leipzig.
The Slavs stayed and joined the Bohemian nation.
After several German professors left Prague in 1409,
the remaining Czechs elected Hus rector of the University.
That year a church council at Pisa deposed Pope Gregory XII
and “anti-pope” Benedict XIII,
and in electing Alexander V Europe now had three popes.
When Alexander prohibited preaching in chapels and ordered
Wyclif’s writings seized and burned, Hus and others appealed
to his successor, Pope John XXIII (r. 1410-15);
but the reformer’s books that included nontheological works
were thrown into the flames.
Two days later Pope John excommunicated Hus for
continuing to preach and for declining a summons to Rome.
On July 16, 1410 Prague’s Archbishop Zbynek Zajic
had the writings of Wyclif burned publicly,
but King Wenceslaus IV ordered the Archbishop
to indemnify the owners of the destroyed manuscripts.
When the Archbishop put Prague under an interdict,
banning religious ceremonies, the King stopped his income
and confiscated church treasures.
Wenceslaus wrote to the Pope that Hus was not a heretic
but that his German accusers stirred up trouble.
Pope John suspended the legal proceedings against Hus,
and Sigismund, while visiting his brother,
persuaded the Archbishop to remove the interdict.
Zbynek did not feel safe and left Prague to go to Hungary,
but he became ill and died on September 28, 1411.
The King’s physician Albik
was chosen as archbishop of Prague.
In 1411 Pope John XXIII was driven out of Rome and
declared a crusade against King Ladislaus of Naples
for his supporting the deposed Gregory.
Those who promised to take up the sword were promised
remission of their sins, and Pope John also ordered the
sale of indulgences to finance the military campaign.
Hus denounced the war and condemned
the Pope’s granting of indulgences.
In Prague people protested the papal bulls
with a mock burning.
Wenceslaus IV forbade anyone in Prague to discuss
papal decrees publicly under penalty of death,
and he had three young men beheaded for opposing the sale
of indulgences and for crying out in church
that the papal bulls were lies, as Hus had proved.
Hus had pleaded that they not be punished because
he was the cause of the opposition.
They were mourned as martyrs.
Hus preached that the Pope’s prerogatives were from the devil,
and the Pope forbade religious services in any town
where the excommunicated Hus preached.
Hus withdrew from Prague and spent two years in exile,
enabling him to write his most important treatise on the Church,
De ecclesia.
In this work he argued that the Roman bishop should be equal
to other bishops but had usurped authority since Constantine.
Alexander’s bull prohibiting preaching was against what Jesus
told his apostles to do, and Hus denied that the Pope
had a right to go to war or to appeal to secular force.
Hus used many of the arguments
he found in the writings of Wyclif.
Hus also wrote Exposition of Belief,
The Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer,
On Simony, and Postilla.
Archbishop Albik resigned
and was replaced by Konrad of Vechta.
King Wenceslaus suggested he call a synod in 1413,
but it did little good.
Hungarian King Sigismund had been elected
King of Germany in 1411, and three years later
he invited Jan Hus to the Council at Constance,
promising him safe conduct
even if he should not submit to the Council.
After a month the Bishop of Litomysl imprisoned Hus
in the dungeon of a Dominican convent in December 1414.
During the spring of 1415 the Archbishop of Constance
held Hus in chains at the Gottlieben castle
until he was moved to a Franciscan friary
for his public hearings that began on June 5.
Shouting did not allow Hus to be heard.
When his statement that no heretic should be put
to death was read, those attending shouted in mockery.
To his argument that kings in mortal sin have no authority,
King Sigismund replied that no one lives without sin.
Hus declared that he would revoke any statement
that could be proved untrue by the scriptures
and good arguments; but this was not done,
and he did not recant on any article.
Finally thirty articles were pronounced
heretical and seditious, and Hus was condemned
for being a disciple of Wyclif.
It was later reported that when Hus reminded
the King of his guarantee of safe conduct,
Sigismund turned red but said nothing.
The Council unfrocked Hus and turned him
over to Sigismund as a heretic.
On July 6, 1415 he was burned at the stake
while he sang a hymn.
In late 1414 in Prague the University master Jakoubek
of Stribro began preaching that according to scripture
laymen as well as priests should take communion with both
bread and wine, and he and his friends began giving this
communion in three of Prague’s churches.
Hus approved of this, and the chalice became the symbol
of the Utraquist movement, which was named after the
Latin words utraque species, meaning “in both kinds.”
All the priests in Prague who opposed
the teaching of Hus were expelled.
Bishop Jan Zelezny of Litomysl was the strongest
adversary of Hus, and his estates were confiscated.
The nobles and knights of Bohemia and Moravia
met in Prague on September 2, 1415.
They wrote a protest of Hus’s execution,
and it was signed by 452 nobles and knights
and sent to the Council of Constance.
They pledged the following: to defend the liberty of preaching,
to submit to no orders from the Council,
to obey the future Pope and bishops of Bohemia
if their commands do not contradict the scriptures,
and to recognize the University in Prague
as the supreme authority on doctrine.
They agreed to act in common
for the six years of the covenant.
King Wenceslaus was invited to be the head, but he declined.
Jerome of Prague had a long trial and recanted
in September 1415;
but he was kept in prison and examined again.
He demanded another hearing, and in May 1416
he championed the doctrines of Wyclif and Hus,
declaring that his greatest sin
was denying that good and holy man.
Jerome was condemned and burned on May 30.
In 1417 Charles University in Prague declared that
communion in both kinds was necessary,
that Hus was a holy martyr,
and that July 6 should be consecrated.
Those calling themselves Taborites met in the town of Austi
and were more radical in that
they followed only the Holy Bible,
not the traditions of the Church
as the more moderate Praguers or Calixtines did.
The Council of Constance deposed all three Popes
and elected Pope Martin V before closing in 1418.
Emperor Sigismund sent a letter to his brother Wenceslaus
in Bohemia, warning him to extirpate
all opinions contrary to the Pope’s.
Wenceslaus ordered all the expelled priests
to resume their functions.
When Nicholas of Hus asked the King for more
Utraquist churches, Wenceslaus ordered him to leave Prague.
Nicholas went to Austi, where more than
42,000 people met on July 22, 1419.
They spent the entire day praying,
confessing, and in communion.
In Prague on July 30 someone threw a rock from the
town-hall at a procession of Calixtines led by Jan Zelivsky.
The royal courtier Jan Zizka of Trocnov and others ran
into the hall and threw several councilors out the
windows to their deaths, those surviving the fall
being killed by the crowd below.
Jan Zizka invented the tactic of using armored wagons
as a fort, and he was also one of the first to employ fire-arms.
One day at court King Wenceslaus had asked Zizka what
could be done to right the execution of Jan Hus
and urged him to do something.
Zizka said he would.
However, news of the burgomasters’ deaths caused
Wenceslaus to have an apoplectic seizure.
He invited his brother Sigismund to come to Prague
to back up his authority, but another seizure
ended his life on August 16, 1419.
The nobles asked Sigismund to come but to give people
permission to receive communion in both kinds.
Sigismund made Queen Sofia regent,
and Cenek of Vartemberk was her primary counselor.
They both sympathized with the Hussites.
The Taborites planned to hold an assembly
in Prague on November 10.
As they were gathering, some Taborites led by Zizka
and Nicholas of Hus attacked the royal troops
and the Mala Strana quarter in Prague.
Many buildings were burned down,
but an armistice was reached on November 13.
The Praguers gave up the castle of Vysehrad to Queen Sofia.
Zizka disapproved of the compromise,
and he led his followers to Plzen (Pilsen).
Sofia resigned as regent, and Sigismund appointed
Cenek to govern Bohemia.
Barricades were removed from Prague,
and many Germans and papists returned.
Utraquists were attacked in several towns, and over the next
few months the miners of Kutna Hora
threw about 1,600 condemned Hussites into a deep pit.
Radical Taborites led by Jan Zelivsky were expecting
the second coming of Christ in February 1420.
Austi was attacked on February 21, and nearby the Taborites
built the castle Hradiste in a town they named Tabor.
When their hopes were disappointed,
they rebelled and murdered Catholic magistrates.
Zizka was besieged at Plzen and surrendered it
on condition that receiving communion in both kinds
would be allowed and that he
and his followers could march to Tabor.
Zizka had only four hundred warriors, and on March 25
they were attacked by two thousand knights on horses.
Zizka’s men and women used their wagons
and fought off the knights.
Pope Martin had declared a crusade against Bohemia
on March 1, and Zizka began training an army at Tabor.
Cenek of Vartemberk sided with the Praguers and warned
all Bohemians and Moravians not to obey Sigismund,
the enemy of Bohemia.
Bohemians rose up and began plundering and burning
churches and convents, killing many priests and monks.
These cruelties alienated others,
and Cenek secretly made a treaty with Sigismund.
Cenek’s troops held Vysehrad castle
for Sigismund against the attacks by Praguers.
Citizens asked for peace,
but Sigismund demanded complete surrender.
Zizka marched his army of 9,000 from Tabor to Prague,
and about a thousand Utraquist knights led by
Bradaty and Obrovec also arrived to defend the capital.
Sigismund gathered more than 100,000 crusaders
from all over Europe, and they camped
outside of Prague on June 30.
Two weeks later his army attacked Prague,
but Zizka’s warriors defended the Vitkov hill
and drove off the Germans.
Sigismund’s army included Utraquist Bohemians who
resented the Germans for burning any Bohemian for heresy.
The Utraquist nobles mediated between the King
and the citizens of Prague.
Conservative Utraquists were led by Jan of Pribram.
The Praguers and Taborites met and agreed on the following
four principles: preaching the word of God without interference
in Bohemia, communion in two kinds to all faithful Christians
(allowing the laity the cup), confiscating secular possessions
held by priests and monks, and punishing all mortal sins
including simony and suppressing untruthful rumors.
The Taborites’ leading theologian Jakoubek of Stribro argued
that a war could be just and cited Wyclif for this belief.
Sigismund abandoned the siege, dismissed his allies,
had himself crowned king of Bohemia,
and then left Prague on August 2, 1420.
The Praguers kept Vysehrad under siege, and Sigismund
came back with an army of 20,000
who were mostly Hungarians.
This stimulated more Bohemian lords to oppose him,
and Hynek Krusina of Lichtenburg commanded those forces.
On November 1, 1420 Sigismund attacked the entrenched
men of Prague and was defeated, losing many Bohemians
and Moravians he had placed in the front lines.
After the battle the Vysehrad castle surrendered.
Unlike many of the Taborites,
Jan Zizka agreed with the Praguers,
and they subdued western Bohemia,
taking Kutna Hora in February 1421.
The Hussite revolution had become a Bohemian national cause,
and Prague’s Archbishop Konrad of Vechta announced
his acceptance of the four articles of Prague.
The Estates of Bohemia and Moravia met at Caslav
in June 1421, and the leaders Zizka, Konrad, Cenek, Krusina,
Victorin of Podebrady, and Ulrich of Rosenberg attended.
The assembly chose twenty regents.
The Hradcany Hill castle of Prague surrendered.
The fanatical monk Jan Zelivsky caused trouble in the city,
and Zizka had fifty men and women who denied
the real presence of Christ in the sacrament burned.
While besieging the Rabi castle, the one-eyed Zizka
was wounded in his good eye by an arrow.
Doctors in Prague saved his life, but he was blind.
Germans organized a second crusade, and 200,000 men
invaded western Bohemia in September 1421
and besieged Zatec, which was bravely
defended by 6,000 Bohemians.
News of an approaching army from Prague and
Sigismund’s failure to invade eastern Bohemia
persuaded the Germans to retreat.
Sigismund’s 23,000 soldiers invaded Moravia in October
and were led by the Italian condottiere Pipa of Ozora.
His victories won over some Bohemians to support Sigismund
again because they were upset by fanatics such as Cenek.
Zizka’s army resented the atrocities of the Hungarians
and attacked Nebovid on January 6, 1422.
Sigismund’s soldiers retreated, and nearly 12,000 were killed.
Some tried to make a stand at Nemecky Brod,
but Zizka’s army against his orders killed the defenders
and pillaged and destroyed the town.
Poland’s King Jogaila declined the Bohemian crown,
but his brother Alexander Vytautas of Lithuani
accepted the Bohemians’ offer.
His nephew Zygmunt Korybutowicz led an army
of 5,000 men to make good his claim.
They invaded Moravia as Emperor Sigismund was leaving.
Korybutowicz entered Prague on May 16, 1422
and began to govern the disordered country.
He was supported by the Utraquist nobles
and their aristocratic party who filled the municipal offices.
They besieged the Karlstein castle and agreed
to a one-year truce.
Sigismund persuaded Prince Vytautas to recall his nephew,
and on December 24 Korybutowicz reluctantly left Prague.
The aristocratic Utraquists came into conflict with the more
democratic Taborites, and Zizka’s forces defeated
Cenek’s men at Horic on April 27, 1423;
but violence was sublimated into argument when the Calixtine
and Taborite priests debated at Konopist castle.
Meanwhile the Slavs of Poland refused to join
another crusade against Bohemia.
In July the Praguers aided the Utraquists in Moravia.
Korybutowicz had appointed Borek of Miletinck to govern,
and he led the Utraquists; but a democratic movement
challenged his lordship and appealed to Zizka.
Borek led the army of Praguers back to Bohemia
against the Taborites, who defeated them
in a bloody battle near Kralové Hradec.
Zizka’s army then went to Moravia and invaded Hungary.
The Praguers and Utraquist lords negotiated with the papists,
and in 1424 Zizka returned and fought a civil war against them.
Prince Korybutowicz mediated a truce between them,
and they joined together to fight Albrecht’s army in Moravia.
During the siege of the Pribislav castle
Zizka died of the plague on October 11, 1424.
His innovative military methods
were imitated throughout Europe.
Some of his Taborite followers called themselves Orphans
in loyalty to Zizka, but together they fought against the
Praguers and nobles in 1425.
Taborite leaders were killed,
and Prokop the Great emerged as the Taborite chief.
In 1426 a German army of 70,000 invaded Bohemia,
and 25,000 Bohemians were led by Korybutowicz,
Victorin of Podebrady, and Prokop the Great.
On June 16 near Usti the Bohemians using guns killed
more than 15,000 Germans with very few losses.
Usti surrendered and was burned by the Bohemians.
The Taborites drove Albrecht’s army out of Moravia,
killing 9,000 at Zwettl on March 12, 1427.
Korybutowicz was captured at Waldstein castle on April 17,
and he was eventually allowed to return to Poland.
The Hussites regained their unity, and, led by Prokop
the Great and Prokop the Lesser (Prokupek),
they invaded Lusatia and Silesia.
Pope Martin V made Henry Beaufort a cardinal and
chose him to lead the fourth crusade against the Hussites.
His army was estimated to have at least
80,000 cavalry as well as 80,000 infantry.
They besieged the town of Stribro, which was defended
by Pribik of Kelnau and a garrison of only 200 men.
On August 27, 1427 when the crusaders learned that the
Bohemian army was approaching, they panicked and fled.
The Bohemians killed thousands of Germans.
Prokop the Great led a Hussite army into Hungary
in December and met little resistance.
In Silesia the Bishop of Breslau led an attack against
the Bohemians at Neisse on March 18, 1428,
but 9,000 Germans were killed.
Jindrichuv Hradec tried to arrange a meeting between
Prokop the Great and Emperor Sigismund,
but the Diet at Prague on May 23, 1429 offered conditions
that Sigismund would not accept.
Pope Martin V persuaded Henry Beaufort to lead another
crusade from England in July, but he was diverted
to fight against Jeanne d'Arc in France.
Prokop the Great led another invasion deep into Germany,
and Friedrich of Hohenzollern agreed to a treaty
at Kulmback on February 6, 1430.
For a large sum of money the Bohemians
promised to leave the country.
News of so many Hussite victories persuaded many
throughout Europe that God was on their side,
and their ideas spread.
However, the Bohemians were now relying
on more mercenaries, who were after booty.
Hussite leaders suggested that a General Council include
the Eastern Orthodox Church, but Pope Martin
opposed subordinating his authority to a General Council.
Instead another council at Basel in March 1431
appointed Cardinal Julian Cesarini to lead the
fifth German crusade against the heretics.
The Bohemians met at Kutna Hora and organized
a provisional government with twelve regents.
Prokop the Great led the army of
50,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry.
Margrave Friedrich of Brandenburg led
the crusaders into Bohemia on August 1
with 90,000 infantry and 40,000 horsemen.
They met the Hussites by Dormazlice.
Once again the Germans fled,
and Cardinal Cesarini escaped disguised as a soldier.
The Bohemian cavalry pursued them
and inflicted heavy losses.
Cesarini became an advocate for peace.
The Bohemians also repelled invasions by Silesian princes
in the north and by Duke Albrecht of Austria in the east.
The regents convened a Diet at Prague,
and they sent envoys to Cheb.
After two envoys returned safely from Basel,
a larger embassy arrived on January 4, 1433,
led by Prokop the Great, Jan Rokycana,
and the English master Peter Payne.
The Bohemians negotiated
based on the four Articles of Prague,
but Cardinal Cesarini put forth 28 points on Hussite beliefs.
The negotiations moved to Prague,
where the Estates met in June.
The papal representatives left without agreeing.
Only the town of Plzen still resisted Hussite communion,
and Prokop the Great’s army besieged it in July.
Jan Rokycana opposed optional communion
because he considered it divisive.
Taborite soldiers ravaged the area around Plzen.
When Prokop the Great tried to restore discipline,
he was attacked by soldiers and retired to Prague.
During the war Utraquist Hussites made compacts with
the Catholics in 1433; but when the Taborites rejected
the Four Articles, their socialist experiment
was overthrown the next year.
The nobles formed a league to restore peace.
Prokop the Great and the priest Prokupek joined together
and marched the troops from Plzen toward Prague.
Borek of Miletinek led the nobles and their army of 25,000.
On May 25, 1434 at Lipany they used a tactic that lured
the Taborites out of their entrenchments and defeated them.
The Taborites lost 13,000 in the battle including
Prokop the Great and Prokupek,
and hundreds of prisoners were burned in huts.
Taborite warriors left the country to be mercenaries
in Hungary and other places, and the peaceful Taborites
retired into pious seclusion.
Sigismund was invited to return to Bohemia.
In September 1435 the Diet at Prague
elected Jan Rokycana archbishop.
After Sigismund and the Roman Church accepted him
as archbishop, the Bohemian deputies
accepted the modified Compacts.
The papal representatives rescinded the excommunication
of Bohemians, and Sigismund confirmed the rights of Bohemia.
The regent Ales of Riesenburg resigned.
All the Estates recognized Sigismund as King of Bohemia,
and he was welcomed back to Prague on August 23, 1436.
Jan Rohac of Duba refused to submit,
but after a siege he capitulated.
He and his followers were executed at Prague,
and this cruelty provoked more troubles.
After Sigismund died on December 9, 1437,
Albrecht of Austria became King of Bohemia
and was crowned on June 29, 1438.
He died on October 27, 1439, and Queen Elizabeth
gave birth to his son Ladislaus on February 22, 1440;
but the child remained with Friedrich of Hapsburg,
King of Germany.
The moderate Utraquists made peace with the more zealous
Hussites who were led by Hynek Ptacek of Pirkstein,
and they governed the twelve counties of Bohemia.
Ptacek organized four eastern counties, and they were
joined by Boleslav, which was led by Victorin’s son
George (Jiri) of Podebrady.
He became the leader after Ptacek died in 1444.
The Bohemian Estates were divided into the three
chambers of lords, knights, and citizens.
Cardinal Carvajal came to Prague in May 1448
and made it clear that Pope Nicholas V did not accept
Archbishop Jan Rokycana or the Hussite communion.
After he left, George of Podebrady gathered
an army of 9,000 and marched on Prague.
The people chose new magistrates, and the conservative
Menhard of Jindrichuv Hradec was imprisoned.
His son Ulrich and Ulrich of Rozmberk (Rosenberg) refused
to negotiate as the Austrian party opposed Podebrady.
In October 1451 Friedrich assigned Podebrady to
administer Bohemia, and the following spring the
Diet at Prague made George of Podebrady
regent for two years.
George had some resisting priests imprisoned in his castles.
In July 1452 he besieged Ulrich of Rozmberk in a castle,
and he capitulated.
Many Bohemians wanted to join the Eastern Orthodox Church,
and the Consistory of Prague sent a letter to
Emperor Constantine Paleologus, the Patriarch,
and the entire Greek Church; but the fall of Constantinople
to the Ottomans in 1453 ended this negotiation.
The Bohemian Estates elected young Ladislaus king,
and after meeting George of Podebrady at Vienna
he accepted their terms.
Finally on October 28, 1453 young Ladislaus
was crowned King of Bohemia,
and he extended George’s regency for six years.
Peter Chelcicky was born about 1380 in southern Bohemia
and was either a peasant or chose to live like one.
He read the Bible in Czech. Chelcicky disagreed
with Jakoubek and continued to renounce all violence,
referring to the New Testament and complaining that
Jakoubek had given up his conscience to shed blood.
Like the Waldenses, Chelcicky cited the parable of the
wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30),
that both should be allowed to live until the harvest.
Thus it is wrong to kill, even the sinful.
Christians should refuse to perform military service
and accept the consequences.
If many refused, the lords would have
no one to go to war with them.
Chelcicky taught that those who think they can arm themselves
with weapons to destroy the devil are deluded because
when they use their war machines to smash the walls
and destroy the evil people, the devil goes out from those
walls and into them, dwelling in their cruel hearts.
Thus no physical power can destroy evil.
He wrote, “Whoever is not of God cannot truly enjoy or hold
anything belonging to God, except as the man of violence
unlawfully enjoys and holds what is not his own.”
Chelcicky left Prague in 1420 and resided for the rest
of his life in his native village of Chelcic.
In probably his first and most important work,
On Spiritual Warfare, Chelcicky argued that the Taborites
had been deceived by the devil into participating in violence
through lust for the world’s glamorous rewards.
He criticized the absurd prophecies of the chiliasts,
who tried to terrify people into believing strange things.
Chelcicky opposed all warfare, even that which claimed
to be defensive, because he believed in the example
of Jesus and the gospel of peace.
Chelcicky noted that the Taborites abolished their common
treasury and equal distribution of wealth after they adopted
violence, and then they retracted their democratic methods
and reimposed rents and dues on the peasants.
Chelcicky criticized the obligations of debts and trade
which gave some men power over others,
castigating those who bind with rents and fees on those
for whom they show no mercy in their burdens,
but extort from them the most they can, exacting
by the day or the year to earn their money
by such rates, never valuing their strength of life,
but only their increase in profits.1
Chelcicky complained that they no longer served
their flock like a shepherd but used people to
“serve their bellies and elevate their pride.”
Chelcicky believed they had no Christian prerogative
to either subject people or to tax them.
Chelcicky believed that Christians in following the law of love
should be removed from the compulsion of state authority
as had been the case with the early Church before Constantine.
The way to convert people is by loving God and one’s neighbor,
and conversion must come from free will
and not from any compulsion.
If persecution comes,
Christians should suffer without retaliating.
One may obey authorities only so long
as that is not contrary to God’s law.
Chelcicky was concerned about anarchy in which the wicked
try to reign over the honest and take the fruits of others’ labor,
but still he did not believe that a Christian should rule as a king.
He wrote that God did not set up magistrates,
and he argued that violent punishments are wrong and that
no Christian could apply them; he was particularly
critical of capital punishment and cruel mutilations.
Chelcicky wrote, “The executioner who kills is as much
a wrong-doer as the criminal who is killed.”2
He suggested that Christians could
expel evil ones from their company.
The sixteen years of war he witnessed convinced Chelcicky
that his views about violence being wrong were correct
as he saw people robbed, imprisoned,
and killed with want and fear on every side.
Working people were stripped of everything as they were
taxed by both sides, and their living was eaten up by armies.
Jesus commanded his followers not to take life,
and he did not even defend himself;
but all people are to be brothers and sisters.
Chelcicky complained that in war the nobles did
not do the fighting themselves but sent the peasants
to fight for them like sheep to the slaughter.
When princes and prelates command such evil things,
they should not be obeyed.
He said that it is our Christian duty to help with love
anyone in need, whether they be a Jew
or a heathen or a heretic or an enemy.
He objected to tithes which were
based on robbery and violence.
Chelcicky condemned their refined luxuries, sophisticated
pride, loose morals, contempt for work,
and oppression of workers.
He advised people to avoid profit-making occupations
so as not to harm their souls.
He encouraged people to understand the Bible for themselves,
and the first complete Bible in Czech was published.
In his book On the Triple Division of Society Chelcicky
riticized the nobility, clergy, and the middle class,
believing that only the poor were genuine Christians.
He wrote that they consider themselves better members
of the body of Christ than the common people
whom they subject and ride as if they were beasts.
Chelcicky wrote Net of the Faith in 1440.
In this work he noted that the apostles treated each other
and people as equals, and they considered Christ as the head.
Chelcicky found that the teaching of the Christ does not
coerce in any way nor does it recommend any kind of
vengeance against the wicked; but they should be improved
only through brotherly goodwill so that
they can be led to penitence.
Chelcicky aimed his diatribes at the religious orders of monks
and friars, the priests, the nobility, the cliques of
university professors, and the growing business class.
He argued that these evils resulted from the two great whales
that burst the net of faith, namely the Emperor and the Pope.
He complained that to see the Church in a material way
led to concepts of the priests as eyes, nobles as arms,
and peasants as legs such that in this body the first is to pray,
the second is to fight, and the third is to work,
resulting in two insatiable gluttons riding around on the
peasants living in debauchery from their sweat and misery.
This he concluded was the Antichrist’s
explanation of the body of Christ.
Chelcicky’s friends and disciples became the nucleus for the
Unity of Brethren that eventually was formed into a church
in 1467 by those who held to nonviolence and followed the
teachings of Christ as interpreted by Chelcicky.
As educated men from the University in Prague joined the
new sect, those holding to the original ideas of Chelcicky
came to be called the Old Brethren or the “Small” party
compared to the “Great” party that reconciled itself to the
world by abandoning some of the
early principles to secure unity.
After the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453,
the Hungarian Diet called up more soldiers
and approved extraordinary war taxes.
Serbia fell to the Ottoman empire in 1455 as only
Brankovich’s Smederevo held out against a siege.
In July 1456 Mehmed II’s army of about 65,000 besieged
Belgrade which was defended by the 7,000 men of
General Hunyadi and Ujlaki.
Hunyadi mobilized about 10,000 soldiers, and the Inquisitor
Giovanni di Capestrano announced
a crusade in Austria and Hungary.
About 30,000 peasants from southern Hungary joined the
crusade and marched toward Belgrade to relieve the castle.
They helped Hunyadi cut the Ottoman supply lines
and fight off a Turkish attack.
The crusaders relieved the fortress on July 22,
and the Ottoman army left that night.
An epidemic broke out in the Hungarian camp,
and Hunyadi died on August 11;
Capestrano died in October.
Sixteen-year-old King Ladislaus (Laszlo) V appointed
Ulrich Cillei chief captain, but on November 9, the men
under Hunyadi’s oldest son Laszlo killed Cillei in Belgrade.
At first the captivated King proclaimed amnesty for the
Hunyadis; but his allies led by Ujlaki turned against them,
and Ladislaus had the late Hunyadi’s sons,
Laszlo and Matthias, arrested on March 14, 1457.
Two days later after a quick trial
23-year-old Laszlo was beheaded.
Hunyadi’s widow, Erzébet Szilagyi and her brother
Mihaly and their supporters opposed the King,
who fled to Prague with Matthias.
Before his 18th birthday Ladislaus died on November 23,
and rumor spread that George of Podébrady
had him poisoned.
The Szilagyi family made an alliance with Laszlo Garai,
and on January 24, 1458 the Hungarian nobles elected
Matthias Hunyadi king; he was called Corvinus
for the raven on his family crest.
Matthias I Corvinus was only 18 years old
and would rule Hungary until 1490.
He suppressed elections for bishops and selected them himself.
The Bohemian Diet met at Prague and on March 2
unanimously elected George of Podébrad King of Bohemia.
Moravia and Silesia accepted George, though with some
German opposition because of religion.
George formed an alliance with Matthias, who sent the
Bishop of Waitzen and Raab to Prague
to crown George on May 7.
The day before that George pledged to obey the Church
and preserve its unity by extirpating heresy in Bohemia.
Romanists believed he had renounced
the special privileges of the Bohemian Church.
Brankovich had died in 1456, and the Ottomans
took over Smederevo by 1459.
Jan Jiskra led Czech mercenaries in upper Hungary,
and Matthias began attacking them in April 1458
but could not pacify the counties until the end of 1461.
That year Count Vlad III the Impaler of Wallachia
stopped paying tribute to Sultan Mehmed II
and crossed the Danube to fight the Turks.
In 1462 his forces defeated Mehmed, but Matthias
did not respond to his requests for assistance.
Vlad was probably named for having
impaled Saxon settlers in 1459.
After Mehmed invaded Bosnia in 1463,
Matthias went to war and recaptured Jajce.
He arrested Vlad and imprisoned him
in Hungary for a dozen years.
Matthias promoted a pamphlet that accused
Vlad of mass murders and torture.
In 1463 Janus Pannonius wrote the poem,
The imprisonment of the Transalpine vojvode Dracula.
In 1459 the barons in the Garai party nominated
Emperor Friedrich III to be king of Hungary,
and in 1463 a compromise treaty allowed him to keep
the title along with Matthias, whom he adopted as his son.
Matthias married Catherine Podebrady in 1461.
She died in childbirth, and Garai also died
before Matthias was crowned on March 29, 1464.
He reformed the finances of Hungary by canceling
the exceptions and immunities to the regular tax.
In 1476 the state took in 250,000 florins from the portal tax,
80,000 from the salt monopoly, 60,000 from coinage,
50,000 from the customs thirtieth that was called the duty
of the Crown, and 47,000 from the towns.
Heir of the Hunyadi family fortune, Matthias thus doubled
the royal revenue to nearly a million gold florins
per year by the end of his reign.
In February 1461 Bohemia’s King George invited German
princes to meet at Cheb to organize a force to fight the Turks.
His councilor Martin Mayer hoped that this would lead
to George becoming emperor of Germany.
However, Cardinal Piccolomini known as Aeneas Silvius
had become Pope Pius II in 1458, and he opposed that.
George persecuted the Bohemian Brethren,
imprisoning Brother Gregory, who founded
the Kunwald community, and even had him put on the rack.
Pope Pius demanded that Bohemia return
to the ritual of the Roman Church.
However, King George declared he would
remain true to communion in both kinds.
In 1462 King Matthias hired the last of the
ex-Hussite Czechs in northern Hungary’s castles.
He made Jan Vitovec the Count of Zagorje in 1463
and so consolidated Slavonia.
In the summer of 1463 the Ottomans led by Mehmed
captured and beheaded Bosnia’s King Stephen Tomasevich,
but in the fall Matthias regained Jajce.
In 1464 the Turks also made
Hercegovina an Ottoman province.
Nobles of the Roman party disavowed the oath
they had sworn to King George, and at Zelena Hora
on November 28, 1465 they formed an alliance
against the King, complaining especially about his taxes.
George sent a letter to Rome that upset Pope Paul II so much
that he excommunicated and deposed him
on December 23, 1466, forbidding Catholics to obey him.
In September 1467 Matthias put down a revolt
by three barons in Transylvania, but on December 15
he was defeated near Baia in Moldavia.
That month King George attacked Emperor Friedrich III
in Lower Austria, and in early 1468 his son Victorin
Podebrad, the Governor of Moravia, invaded Austria.
On March 31 Matthias declared war on him.
After his success in Austria
he invaded Moravia and then Silesia.
On May 3, 1469 Matthias was elected King of Bohemia.
He captured Victorin in June
and stabilized Moravia within a year.
George made a treaty with Poland recognizing
King Casimir’s son Vladislaus as his successor in Bohemia,
and this was ratified by the Estates of Bohemia.
In late 1470 George’s army drove
the Hungarians out of most of Moravia.
By the 1470s Hungary had 20,000 mercenaries and
thousands of banderial soldiers from Moldavia,
Wallachia, and other vassal territories.
Matthias wanted to expel the Ottoman Turks from Europe.
He was also concerned about the Hussite King George
in the south, and in 1468 he began a crusade supported
by Catholic barons against heretical Bohemia.
The war in the north and south bogged down,
and in 1470 aristocratic rebellions
broke out in Hungary and Transylvania.
King George suffered from edema
and died on March 22, 1471.
His will was followed, and on May 27 Casimir IV’s
15-year-old son Vladislaus was elected
to succeed him as Vladislav Jagellonsky.
He was welcomed at Prague in August.
After being Bishop of Nagyvarad (Oradea) for twenty years,
in 1465 Janos Vitéz was made archbishop of Esztergom.
After attending the imperial Diet at Ratisbon
he and his humanist nephew, Bishop Janus Pannonius of Pécs,
led a conspiracy of barons who offered
the Hungarian crown to Casimir IV’s son Casimir.
The prince led an army into Hungary in October,
but Matthias forced him to leave in December.
Janus died while fleeing, and Vitéz submitted.
Matthias contended for the Bohemian crown,
but in February 1475 he and Bohemia’s King
Vladislaus Jagellonsky made peace at Breslau.
An agreement was finally ratified in July 1479,
dividing the lands of Saint Wenceslas.
Vladislaus retained Bohemia while Matthias claimed
Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia (Lausitz).
Both were called “King of Bohemia.”
Also in 1479 Hungary and Poland made peace.
Matthias managed to be at peace with the Ottoman empire
most of the time and allowed their troops to pass
through his lands on their way to Austria.
Mehmed did not renew the peace at the end of 1473,
and in early 1474 Bey Ali of Smederevo invaded Hungary
and took away 16,000 prisoners.
Matthias sent troops to Stephen of Moldavia,
and in January 1475 the Christian army defeated
the Beylerbey of Rumelia at Vaslui in Moldavia.
Matthias captured the castle of Sabac
on the lower Danube in February 1476.
An Ottoman army raided Transylvania in 1479,
but on October 13 Count Pal Kinizsi of Timis and Stephen
Batori led forces that defeated them at Breadfield.
In 1480 Turks returning from Styria ravaged Croatia.
In retaliation Kinizsi attacked Serbia,
and Matthias invaded Bosnia to Sarajevo in November.
Sultan Mehmed died in 1481,
and Bayezid II made peace with Hungary in 1483.
Matthias Corvinus patronized the arts
and learning of the humanists.
Chancellery clerk and Archbishop Vitéz also supported
the new learning and taught Matthias.
In 1476 Matthias married Beatrice, daughter of King Ferrante
of Naples, and their court at Buda
became a center for humanist scholars.
Vitéz sent his nephew, Janus Pannonius, to study in Ferrara.
He returned to fill a high position in Hungary’s government
and became an envoy to Rome.
Neither the university founded at Pressburg in 1467
nor the printing press started at Buda in 1472 lasted long,
but Matthias did acquire a library larger
than the Vatican’s 3,500 volumes.
In 1477 Archbishop John Beckensloer of Esztergom
fled to Austria, and Friedrich declared
Vladislav king of Bohemia in June.
So Matthias attacked Austria and besieged Vienna.
Friedrich recognized Matthias as king of Bohemia
in December and agreed to pay 100,000 florins.
The Hungarian armies occupied most of Styria in 1480.
Beckensloer became the archbishop of Salzburg.
In January 1482 Matthias besieged Hainburg
on the border and declared war on Friedrich in April.
They captured Vienna in June 1485, and in the next two years
the Hungarians took over most of lower Austria and Styria.
The Hungarian army had grown to 28,000 men
and had 9,000 war wagons.
During his reign Matthias became more autocratic.
In 1484 he imprisoned his arch-chancellor,
Archbishop Peter Varadi, and in 1487 he arrested
and took away the estates of
Count Nicholas Banfi of Pressburg.
Matthias tried to establish uniform laws and personally
went incognito among his subjects to discover corruption.
In 1486 he sanctioned a long law-code
that gave more power to comital courts.
After his death in 1490 some began saying
that justice had been lost.
Vladislaus supported the papal party,
and religious conflict continued in Bohemia.
Lord Jan Tovacovsky of Cimburg led the Utraquist nobles
and knights who formed a confederacy.
When magistrates in Prague threatened to punish
some of them, people stormed three town halls
and murdered several magistrates.
In the disorder Germans and Jews were killed.
The King did not dare punish anyone for the murders.
In 1485 the Roman and Utraquist parties compromised
at Kutna Hora and obtained a truce that
was renewed in 1512 and lasted until 1516.
Vladislaus developed Bohemian law in favor of aristocratic
privileges that made the peasants dependent on their lords.
The Diet of 1487 practically established bondage.
Matthias wanted his illegitimate son Janos Corvin
to succeed him, but the powerful lords elected
the Bohemian Vladislaus, who was crowned
Vladislaus II (Ulaszlo II) on September 18, 1490.
Corvin was given rich properties and titles
but took up arms against the Diet and was
defeated by Stephen Batori and Paul Kinizsi.
Corvin was allowed to keep thirty castles in Hungary
and his duchies in Silesia,
and he was named Duke of Slavonia.
Vladislaus married Queen Beatrice
but later divorced her and took her lands.
He was challenged by Maximilian of Hapsburg
who regained the Austrian land conquered
by Matthias and occupied western Hungary.
The Hungarian army stopped him, and in November 1491
Maximilian and Vladislaus signed an inheritance treaty
which eventually led to the Hapsburgs
gaining the throne of Hungary in 1526.
The monarchy was weakened in Bohemia during
the reign of Vladislaus and his young successor, Louis,
as the nobles increased their power.
While Vladislaus was reigning in Hungary (1490-1516),
the nobles governed Bohemia,
especially Lord Zdenek Lev of Rozmittal.
The Jagiello King Vladislaus II accepted advice easily
and was called “Good” for his usual response to petitions.
The Royal Council made decisions,
and the Hungarian Diet met 43 times from 1491 to 1526.
The Diet had an upper house of prelates, barons,
and notables, and a lower house of the county nobility.
His royal income declined from an
annual 500,000 florins to 200,000.
Vladislaus resided at Buda and spent only two
of his 26 years as Hungarian King in Bohemia.
The mercenary army dispersed in robber bands,
and Kinizsi destroyed them in 1492.
The army was officially dissolved in January 1493.
That year the Italian noble Nicholas Cola de Castro
came to Prague and tried to mediate a religious reconciliation,
but the declaration of the Bohemian Diet
on December 20, 1494 insisted on the Compacts.
Later Pope Alexander VI appointed a Dominican friar
as censor of all books in Bohemia and Moravia with orders
to burn all heretical books, and he was established
at the Catholic stronghold of Olomone.
Garrisons on the Ottoman frontier were costing
170,000 florins a year, making the King poor.
Mercenaries who could not be paid lived off plunder
and the ransoming of prisoners.
In 1492 Vladislaus made an alliance with Poland
which was renewed in 1498.
Their alliance included France in August 1500,
and Vladislaus married Anne of Foix in 1502.
On February 22, 1503 the Ottomans signed
a peace treaty with Hungary that was renewed
until Bayezid’s death in 1512.
Sultan Selim was more aggressive,
and the Ottomans took Srebrenik in October 1512.
Seigneurs in Hungary exploited the food of their serfs,
controlled the marketplace, and collected local taxes.
In 1492 the Diet prohibited peasants from transferring
to another lord or from a village to a market town.
In 1495 Duke Lawrence Ujlaki offended King Vladislaus
and was defeated in a civil war.
In 1500 a law was enacted that prevented a peasant
from leaving his lord without mediation of a noble magistrate.
When Archbishop Bakocz came back from Rome
in 1514 and was authorized to call for a crusade
against the Ottomans, the Observant Franciscan friars
were put in charge of the preaching.
In April thousands of peasants gathered in Buda
and were commanded by Gyorgy Székely (Dozsa).
In May about 20,000 crusaders moved south
while increasing their numbers.
The peasants rebelled against the lords.
On May 15 Bakocz ordered the friars to stop preaching,
and on May 24 the King and he told the peasants to go home.
However, the peasants refused to disperse
and defeated a seigneurial force in late May.
For two months they burned manors and looted castles.
Others rebelled in the north as well.
The peasants believed that the lords were unwilling to defend
the realm and fight against the infidels and so turned on them.
King Vladislaus sent for the Vajda Zapolyai of Transylvania,
and his force subdued some of the rebels.
Dozsa and his followers were captured
and brutally executed on July 15.
The Hungarian Diet met in October and passed laws
to control the peasants that lasted more than three centuries.
Istvan Werboczy became the judge royal’s protonotary in 1502
and compiled customary Hungarian law by 1514 in the
Tripartitum, which strengthened the privileges of the nobles
and became the law of the land.
He had it printed at Vienna in 1517,
and it had fifty editions after 1545.
Based on the Golden Bull, he summarized the aristocratic
privileges in the following four points:
1. Nobles cannot be arrested by anyone
without a formal summons and a lawful sentence.
2. Nobles are not subjected to anyone
with the exception of the lawful ruler.
3. Nobles cannot be impeded in the free use
of their rights and revenues that are found
within the boundaries of their estate.
4. Nobles have the right to oppose the ruler
without being guilty of infidelity
if the ruler encroaches on their privileges.
Every nobleman was considered
a part of the Holy Crown of Hungary.
Many of the nobles could not read, but prelates
and those involved in administration were literate.
Lords collected a ninth of the crops as the seigneurial tax,
and the Church received a tenth of the remainder.
Werboczy was a magistrate in Buda,
and in 1516 he was ordained the Personal.
The truce between Buda and Istanbul was often
renewed while the Turks continued annual
pillaging and slave-taking expeditions.
On July 22, 1515 Hungary’s heir Louis married
Emperor Maximilian’s granddaughter Mary.
King Vladislaus II died on March 13, 1516,
and he was succeeded by his ten-year-old son
Louis in Bohemia and as Lajos II in Hungary.
In 1400 Poland’s King Wladyslaw II Jagiello (r. 1386-1434)
reorganized the Jagiellon University at Krakow based on the
University of Paris using the fortune his Queen Jadwiga left
for that purpose at her death in 1399.
The Polish-Lithuanian alliance ended the need for crusades
by the Teutonic Order of Knights into Lithuania,
but conflicts rose between the alliance and the Order.
The Grand-master took over the island of Gotland
from pirates in 1398, Neumark of Brandenburg in 1402,
and Samogitia in 1404.
Grand Duke Witold instigated a rebellion in Samogitia in 1409,
and Polish envoys told Grand-master Ulrich von Jungingen
that Lithuania and Poland were united.
So the Teutonic Knights invaded and occupied Dobrzyn again.
The Order gained the Luxembourg kings Wenceslaus
and Sigismund as allies, and so Wladyslaw II Jagiello
had to defend the Hungarian frontier also.
In the battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg) in Prussia
on July 15, 1410 the alliance of 39,000 Poles, Czechs,
Lithuanians, Samogitians, Ruthenians, Tatars, and Wallachians
killed about 8,000 of the 27,000 Teutonic Knights including
the Grand-master, and 14,000 prisoners were held for ransom.
Marienberg was besieged, and the new Grand-master
moved the headquarters to Konigsberg.
The Polish army had to give up the siege,
and the Treaty of Thorn signed on February 1, 1411
returned Samogitia to Lithuania
and assured free trade on the Vistula River.
In the treaty signed at Horodlo in Volhynia on October 2, 1413
the szlachta and the Lithuanian boyars agreed to settle their
differences in joint assemblies, and the szlachta adopted the
Lithuanians as brothers in chivalry,
giving them their own coats of arms.
The Preamble of the Act of Horodlo stated:
Whoever is unsupported by the mystery of Love
shall not achieve the grace of salvation….
For by Love laws are made, kingdoms governed,
cities ordered, and the state of the commonwealth
is brought to its proper goal.
Whoever shall cast Love aside,
shall lose everything.3
Jagiello and Witold went from Horodlo to convert
the pagans in conquered Samogitia.
Archbishop Nicholas Traba of Gniezno led the
Polish delegation at the Council of Constance.
Andrew Laskarz had been elected Bishop of Poznan,
and he favored the conciliar movement
that put the Council above the Pope.
In 1415 Krakow University’s Rector
Paulus Vladmiri in his treatise
De potestate papae et imperatoris respectu infidelium
advocated tolerance rather than the
forced conversion used by the Teutonic Knights.
They presented Samogitians as witnesses to the Council,
which then entrusted the conversion of Samogitia
to the King and Church of Poland.
In February 1418 the Orthodox Archbishop Gregory
Camblak of Kiev came to Constance and
advocated uniting the Greek and Roman Churches.
In 1420 the arbitrator Sigismund confirmed the
Thorn treaty that gave Samogitia back to
the Teutonic Order after the deaths of Jagiello and Witold.
In the spring of 1422 Jagiello’s nephew, Sigismund (Zygmunt)
Korybutowicz, went to Prague to act as King in Witold’s name.
On September 27 in the Treaty of Melno the Teutonic
grand-masters ceded Samogitia to Lithuania,
and Poland renounced Pomerelia and Culmerland.
Jagiello met Sigismund at Kassa, and on March 30, 1423
they renewed their alliance and planned
a campaign against the Hussites.
The Hussite revolution had spread into Silesia and Poland,
but Jagiello’s Edict of Wielun condemned the Hussites in 1424.
Poland’s provinces were developing representative
assemblies that were often convoked by the kings.
At the Diet of Brzesc in 1425 Jagiello claimed
his oldest son’s right to the succession,
but the estates demanded a new charter of liberty.
The Neminem captivabimus nisi iure victum
protected people from imprisonment without a trial.
Witold wanted to be crowned king of Lithuania;
but before this could be arranged,
he died on October 27, 1430.
He was succeeded by Jagiello’s brother Svitrigaila,
who resented Poland reclaiming Podolia
and made an alliance with the Teutonic Order.
In 1431 Poles went into Volhynia and besieged Luck,
but an armistice was declared.
When the Teutonic Knights invaded northern Poland,
Svitrigaila renewed his alliance with the Order.
The Poles supported a coup d’etat by his enemies on
September 1, 1432, but Svitrigaila escaped.
Witold’s brother Zygimantas Kestutaitis became Grand Duke
at Vilnius, and at Grodno on October 15 he made a treaty
with Poland settling the Podolia frontier dispute.
Poland defeated the Prussian branch
of the Teutonic Order in 1433.
Jagiello liked to listen to nightingales; doing so
he caught a cold and died on June 1, 1434 at the age of 86.
Poland’s first Cardinal Zbigniew Olesnicki managed to have
the ten-year-old prince crowned as Wladyslaw III
on July 25 under a regency council.
The Livonian Order began aiding Svitrigaila,
and their armies joined at Braslaw.
Jakob Kobylanski led 15,000 horsemen who supported
the Lithuanian army of Zygimantas.
On September 1, 1435 the Lithuanian-Polish alliance
won the battle, killing Master von Kerksdorff,
Marshal von Nesselrode, and many
German commanders and Russian princes.
Sigismund Korybutowicz also fought
on the losing side and died of his wounds.
Cardinal Olesnicki negotiated a peace with the
Grand-master at Brzesc Kuyavia in December.
At Grodno in 1437 Zygimantas agreed to rule Volhynia
until his death, when it would revert to Poland.
When Hussites offered the Bohemian crown to
Zygimantas’s brother Kazimierz, Polish public opinion
and the Queen-mother supported the idea.
When the Bohemian nobles chose Albrecht,
Poland’s army invaded Silesia.
The expedition failed,
and Olesnicki had to negotiate peace with Hungary.
Spytek of Melstztyn led a revolt in Poland,
but he was killed in its defeat on May 4, 1439.
Bishop Bninski of Poznan hunted down the Hussites,
and their last Polish protector,
Abraham of Zbaszyn, died in 1442.
Zygimantas wanted to become more independent
and negotiated with Emperor Albrecht II, but supporters
of Svitrigaila murdered Zygimantas on March 20, 1440.
The Lithuanians invited Jagiello’s young son Wladyslaw III
to rule Lithuania, but he sent his 13-year-old brother
Casimir (Kazimierz), who was elected
Grand Prince by the Lithuanians.
Wladyslaw III was on his way to Hungary,
where he was crowned King Ulaszlo.
He led the Hungarians against the Ottomans
and was killed in the battle of Varna in 1444.
The oligarchs led by Cardinal Olesnicki
were governing Poland.
In 1445 Lithuania’s Grand Duke Casimir declined
their conditions for ruling Poland; but in 1447
they accepted his terms, and he was crowned.
In the Privilege of 1447 he granted the Lithuanian
nobles the same rights as the Polish szlachta had.
During his first six years Casimir IV removed Olesnicki’s
group and replaced them with younger nobles.
In August 1449 he made an alliance with Vasily (Basil)
of Moscow, and he secured peace with Hungary
by marrying Elizabeth, daughter of the Hapsburg
Emperor Albrecht and sister of young King Ladislaus
Smolensk became independent until
the Lithuanians reconquered it in 1404.
Lithuania’s Grand Duke Vytautas (r. 1392-1430) helped
the Samogitians revolt against the Teutonic Knights in 1401,
but three years later another treaty
gave Samogitia back to the Teutonic Order.
Vytautas fought his son-in-law Vasily I of Moscow
from 1406 to 1408.
Lithuania and Poland joined together to drive the
Teutonic Knights out of Samogitia, and Vytautas himself
led the army in the decisive battle
of Grunwald (Tannenberg) in 1410.
Samogitia was given to Vytautas in the Peace of Thorn in 1411.
A dispute over the border led to another war in 1414.
After more mediation and one more war in 1422
Samogitia became part of Lithuania for the next five centuries.
In 1413 the Union of Horodlo gave the Lithuanian nobles,
who were Catholics, the same rights as the Polish nobles.
Vytautas presided over economic progress and centralized
the state by appointing governors loyal to himself.
In 1423 he led a campaign that included Muscovite and Tver
detachments against the Germans, and the next year
they helped him fight off a Tatar raid.
In 1428 he marched on Novgorod
and compelled them to pay a large tribute.
Vytautas died on October 27, 1430 just days
before a royal crown reached his castle.
Vytautas was succeeded by Jagiello’s troublesome brother
Svitrigaila, who made an alliance with the Teutonic Order.
He rejected Jagiello’s proposals, and the Poles supported
a coup d’etat by his enemies
on September 1, 1432 as Svitrigaila escaped.
Witold’s brother Zygimantas Kestutaitis became Grand Duke
at Vilnius, but Svitrigaila still controlled Ruthenia.
At Grodno on October 15 Zygimantas made a treaty
with Poland settling the Podolia frontier dispute;
Lithuania’s alliance with the Teutonic Order was canceled;
and Ruthenian princes were given the same privileges
as Lithuanians without religious restrictions.
Casimir (Kazimierz) IV Jagiellon became Grand Duke
in 1440 and maintained his title to Lithuania
when he became king of Poland in 1447.
Casimir IV (r. 1447-92) won over Chancellor
Jan Koniecpolski and gave friends of the
Queen-mother positions, especially in Little Poland.
In 1454 Casimir granted the Privilege of Nieszawa
requiring the approval of district diets
before he could raise troops or taxes.
In 1455 he ordered the Bible translated into Polish
or his father’s last wife Sophia.
In Pomerania the University of Greifswald
was founded in 1456.
In 1454 the cities of Danzig (Gdansk), Torun,
and Elblag (Elbing) in West Prussia revolted against the
Order of Teutonic Knights and formed the Prussian League,
and Casimir took Poland into the
Thirteen Years’ War against the Knights.
Denmark intervened on the side of the Order, but in 1456
Danzig’s fleet defeated a Danish-Livonian squadron
near the island of Bornholm.
Casimir found mercenaries more effective than conscripts
and began requiring more taxes rather than
service in order to hire professional soldiers.
In 1462 General Peter Dunin relieved Danzig
and defeated the Knights in Pomorze.
The next year the Poles defeated a fleet off Elblag,
and Dunin took Gniew.
Bernard Szumborski led the Teutonic mercenaries
and told Casimir he would be neutral.
In 1464 Bishop Langendorff of Warmia
renounced the Order, splitting Prussia.
In 1466 Dunin captured Stargard and Chojnice,
and the partitioned Order gave up its independence
in the Peace of Torun on October 19.
Poland got Danzig-Pomerania and part of West Prussia,
and the Grand-master retained Konigsberg and eastern
and southern Prussia but became a vassal of Poland.
This treaty also removed the Order’s heavy duties
on Polish grain, and exports greatly increased.
In 1459 Casimir used force to overcome
a revolt at the Diet of Piotrkow.
Adversaries were won over,
and Little Poland became peaceful.
When Pope Paul II excommunicated George as a Hussite,
Casimir objected to an anointed king being dethroned
and refused to join the crusade against him.
In 1468 representatives of the districts assembled
at Piotrkow as the national Diet (Seym).
When the German Catholics in Bohemia persuaded
Hungary’s Matthias to invade in 1469, Casimir allied
with Emperor Friedrich and prepared for war.
When George died in 1471, the Bohemian Diet elected
Casimir’s oldest son Vladislaus as their king.
He went to Prague with one Polish army while
his brother Casimir invaded Hungary with another.
The war against Matthias went on for eight years
before the Peace of Olomouc was ratified in 1479.
Historian Jan Dlugosz began writing his
Annales seu Cronicae Incliti Regni Poloniae
from primary sources in 1455, and he took the
history all the way up to his death in 1480.
Krakow got a printing press in 1473, and two years later
the first book printed in Polish came out at Wroclaw.
In 1479 King Casimir went to stabilize Lithuania for four years.
Attempts to form alliances failed when Moscow
tried to take Kiev in 1481; but the conspiring princes
were beheaded on August 30.
However, one year later Ivan III’s Mongol ally
Mengli-Girey pillaged and burned Kiev.
Lithuanian forces were marshaled
and fortified Kiev in 1483-84.
The Jews at Warsaw in independent Mazovia
were forced to move outside the town walls in 1483.
In 1485 the Poles drove Turks from Moldavia
at Kolomea to protect Ruthenia,
and Prince Stephen became Casimir’s vassal.
However, in 1487 Prince Jan Olbracht’s expedition
was diverted from Moldavia to fight
invading Transvolgan Tatars in Podolia.
He had to spend three years defending Ruthenia
while King Casimir made a two-year truce
with Sultan Bayezid II in 1489.
This enabled the armies of Poland and Lithuania
to defeat the Tatars at Zaslaw on January 25, 1491.
Olbracht’s siege of Kosice (Kassa) the next month failed,
but envoys managed to obtain Glogow
and half of Silesia for Vladislaus.
Olbracht then attacked the invading imperial forces of
Maximilian in Upper Hungary, but the larger army of Zapolya
defeated the Polish prince on January 1, 1492 near Presov.
Olbracht was criticized and lost support for the succession.
His brother Vladislaus made peace with Maximilian at
Pressburg on November 7, 1491 but had to acknowledge
the Hapsburgs as successors to the Jagiellons.
During Casimir’s 45-year reign about 15,000 students
passed through the Jagiellon University.
Casimir IV died at Grodno on June 7, 1492
while traveling to the Diet at Radom.
His body was buried at Krakow.
Though he never learned to read or write, he left behind
well educated sons and two kingdoms administered by clergy.
Casimir’s last will was that Jan Olbracht would be
king of Poland and his brother
Alexander grand duke of Lithuania.
So Vladislaus, who was already king
of Hungary and Bohemia, yielded.
Jan Olbracht was crowned at Krakow on September 23,
and he made a secret treaty
with his brother Vladislaus on December 5.
In January 1493 King Jan Olbracht attended a district Diet
at Korczyn in Little Poland, and he accepted
the demands of the nobles.
In the constitution of Piotrkow on February 27 the rights
of burghers and peasants were limited.
The Diet divided into chambers with the Privy Council
becoming the Senate of 81 bishops and dignitaries
while the lower house of 54 deputies
was called the House of Legates.
The Diet increased taxes for defense and bought the
principality of Zator from Prince Janusz for 80,000 ducats.
The Jagiellon brothers met at Lewocza in Upper Hungary,
and on May 5, 1494 they agreed on a secret treaty
to protect Vladislaus in Hungary.
In 1496 the Diet restricted the peasants’ freedom
of movement by requiring them to pay off dues
and sow the crops before leaving.
Many Jews expelled from Spain in 1492
and Portugal in 1496 came to Poland.
In 1497 Poland mobilized an army of 80,000 men for a
Turkish expedition to the Black Sea;
but after Stephen of Moldavia withdrew
and accused them of being “a Turkish subject and an enemy,”
King Jan ordered Stephen arrested.
Jan continued to march through Moldavia.
On October 26 they were attacked in Bukovina
and were defeated, and they agreed to a truce at Suczawa.
In early 1498 the Turks attacked them twice in retaliation,
and Jan had to give up Glogow.
When Vladislaus married Anne of Foix on July 14, 1500,
Jan married her sister Germaine.
Jan Olbracht died on June 17, 1501.
He had been taught and counseled by the humanist
Filippo Buonaccorsi who used the pen-name Callimachus.
Grand Duke Alexander of Lithuania
became King of Poland also.
He had made peace with Moscow on February 5, 1494,
and on July 15, 1495 he married Ivan III’s daughter Helena.
Alexander favored western culture.
On October 23, 1501 the gentry who elected Alexander
issued a new act of union with a joint election
of the Polish King and the Grand Duke of Lithuania.
They increased the power of the magnates
in the Senate where the King presided.
Alexander was crowned in Krakow on December 12,
and the Diet voted for taxes and a general levy.
Alexander appointed Cardinal Frederick regent and gave
viceregal powers to the Senate before leaving for Lithuania.
In 1502 Ivan III attacked Smolensk; but von Plettenberg
defeated the Muscovites there,
and Grand Duke Vasily gave up the siege in October.
Ivan agreed to a six-year truce on March 28, 1503
and returned six villages they had taken.
In 1505 the Diet of Radom enacted the Nihil novi
which required debate and approval by both chambers
before the King could take any new action.
Jan Laski published Poland’s Statutes in 1506.
That year Mengli-Girey sent his sons and an army of
10,000 to invade Lithuania; but Alexander sent an army
led by Michal Glinski that routed the Tatars.
Alexander became ill and died on August 19, 1506.
Alexander’s brother Sigismund (Zygmunt) was born
on January 1, 1467, and he became Duke of Glogow
in 1499, Duke of Opawa in 1501,
and Viceroy of Silesia and Lusatia in 1504.
After Alexander’s death Sigismund was made Grand Duke
of Lithuania on September 13, 1506 and then
on December 8 the Diet of Piotrkow confirmed that
and elected him King of Poland.
During that fall delegates from the Crimea and Kazan
at Vilnius had offered an alliance against Moscow.
In March 1507 King Sigismund sent his ambassador
to Moscow to demand the return of territories
conquered by the late Ivan III.
Sigismund went to Lithuania,
and its armies resisted a Muscovite invasion.
Poland made an alliance with Hungary at Buda on May 31
and recognized Hungarian sovereignty over Moldavia.
Sigismund began negotiating with Moscow
in December and returned to Poland.
The Tatar Glinski, who had become a Catholic,
led a revolt to regain his position at court.
He complained that Jan Zabrzezinski had accused him
of treason unjustly, and he had him murdered
on February 2, 1508 near Grodno.
Muscovites helped Glinski besiege Orsza; but on July 13
they retreated when the Polish army arrived.
Sigismund ordered a punitive expedition.
Moscow agreed to a perpetual peace treaty on October 8
and gave up Lubecz on the Dnieper in exchange
for recognition of Ivan’s conquests.
Bogdan of Moldavia had taken Pokucie in 1506,
and in June 1509 he invaded it again and defeated
a garrison of Kamieniec, moving toward Lwow.
Bogdan retreated, and on October 4, 1509 Kamieniecki
led 4,000 territorial troops who destroyed
the Moldavian army at the Dniester ford.
Hungary mediated a peace on January 23, 1510 that
gave Pokucie back to Poland and returned prisoners.
In 1509 Sigismund extended the treaty with the
Ottoman empire for five years,
and in 1511 Swierczowski extended it five more years.
The Teutonic Order’s Grand-master Friedrich
died on December 14, 1510, and the Order elected
Margrave Albrecht of Hohenzollern-Ansbach to succeed him
over the objection of Sigismund;
but Hungary’s Vladislaus persuaded Sigismund to accept him.
At the Congress of Torun in 1511 the Primate Jan Laski’s
plan to unite the office of the Grand-master
with the King of Poland became the basis for negotiation.
In December 1512 Grand Duke Vasily (Basil) III of Moscow
went to conquer Smolensk, but he had to retreat to Moscow.
In revenge for the siege of Smolensk the Wojewoda of Kijow
ravaged Seversk in June 1513 and destroyed
a Muscovite army of 6,000 soldiers.
Vasily reacted by invading Lithuania in September
with all his forces and besieged Smolensk again.
Ostrogski led an army that drove the Muscovites
from Vitebsk and Polock before
defeating 14,000 Muscovites at Orsza.
During peace negotiations in early 1514 Emperor Maximilian
offered to intervene against Poland and Lithuania,
and in the spring Vasily sent another army
to Smolensk, which surrendered.
Finally on September 8 the Polish-Lithuanian army led
by Ostrogski defeated the Muscovite army
of 80,000 at Orsza, killing 30,000.
Yet Ostrogski failed to take back Smolensk,
which remained under Muscovite control until 1611.
In 1512 King Sigismund had married Barbara Zapolya
and made a secret treaty with the Zapolya brothers
in Krakow against the Hapsburgs.
However, Sigismund negotiated with the Hapsburgs
and signed a treaty on July 22, 1515 in Vienna.
Archbishop Laski became a hereditary legate
and rejected the Pope’s plans for war against the Turks.
Muscovites could not take Vitebsk in 1516.
On March 10, 1517 Teutonic Grand-master Albrecht made
an alliance against Sigismund, and the Polish-Lithuanian army
besieging Opoczka in Pskov was defeated in 1517.
In 1400 Vasily I (r. 1389-1425) and the Muscovites
devastated the land of the Volga Bulgars
and captured their capital Great Bulgar.
In 1401 Ryazan’s Feodor Olegovich (r. 1402-27)
made a treaty with Vasily.
Feodor was succeeded in Ryazan by his son
Ivan Fyodorovich (r. 1427-56), who in 1447
made treaties with Vasily II and Lithuania.
To punish Vasily I for having disobeyed, Khan Edigei
and his White Horde ravaged the Muscovite principality,
besieging Moscow for a month in 1408
and leaving with an indemnity of 3,000 rubles.
Vasily had married Sofia, the daughter of Lithuania’s
Grand Prince Vytautas (r. 1392-1430), who won
some victories over the Russian Grand Prince.
After Vytautas (Vitovt) seized Smolensk,
Vasily invaded Lithuania.
In 1397 Vasily and Vytautas sent envoys to Novgorod
demanding that they break off their relationship
with the Germans, but the Novgorodians refused.
In 1406 Vytautas counter-attacked and accepted
a truce and in 1408 a treaty, which gave
Moscow some western borderlands.
Vasily did not have to visit the Mongol court,
but his investiture was brought to him by ambassadors.
In 1418 Stepanka led an uprising against the
boyars in Novgorod, and the boyars
increased the mayors (posadniki) to 24.
In 1431 Novgorod made a treaty
with Lithuania’s ruler Svidrigailo.
Moscow’s worst war of succession began in 1425 between
Vasily’s ten-year-old son Vasily II and his uncle Prince Yuri.
Vytautas was the guardian of Vasily II, and from 1426 to 1428
he intervened on his behalf in Novgorod and Pskov,
enabling Tver and Ryazan to assert their independence.
Archbishop Evfirmii II (1428-54) of Novgorod
led the opposition to Moscow.
Yuri went to the Mongol court in 1431.
Disagreements about weddings insulted Yuri’s two sons,
and in the fighting Vasily was taken prisoner.
Yuri tried to reign in Moscow, but the Russian nobles (boyars)
supported Vasily, who in June 1432 was given the yarlik
as Grand Prince of Vladimir by Mongol Ulu Mehmet.
When Vasily refused to cede Dmitrov,
a civil war began involving Yuri’s older sons.
Yuri attacked Moscow, defeated Vasily II, and took his throne.
Yuri pardoned Vasily and let him rule the town of Kolomna.
When Yuri died in 1434, his son Vasily Kosoi (the Squint-eyed)
took over the Kremlin in Moscow.
Yuri’s son Dmitry Shemyaka quarreled with his brother
and formed an alliance with Vasily II which enabled them
to banish the ambitious Vasily Kosoi in 1435.
Vasily II regained his position and Dmitrov
and made an agreement with the two brothers.
Vasily Kosoi attacked Galich, Ustiug, and Vologda,
but he was captured in 1436, blinded,
and sent to Kolomna, where he died in 1448.
Vasily II led an attack on Novgorod in 1441.
Novgorod also went to war against the Teutonic order
and the Hanseatic League which imposed
a trade embargo on Novgorod from 1443 to 1448.
In 1437 Ulu Mehmet was expelled by the Golden Horde,
and he founded the independent principality of Kazan in 1445.
That year his Tatars captured Vasily II, and his release for a
ransom of 25,000 rubles and his returning
with Tatar princes caused resentment.
In 1446 Shemyaka seized Vasily in a Moscow church
and blinded him, but the Metropolitan Ionas persuaded him
to release Vasily and to give him the principality of Vologda.
Boyars, princes, and Bishop Iona of Ryazan
supported Vasily II, and in February 1447
the blind Grand Prince recaptured Moscow.
That summer the rivals made a peace agreement;
but when Vasily took over Galich in 1450,
Shemyaka fled to Novgorod and renewed the war.
Vasily II also expanded Moscow’s domain.
In 1452 he rewarded for his support against
Dmitry Shemyaka the fleeing Mongol noble Kasim
with the principality of Kasimov.
Moscow developed its independence from the Mongols.
In less than two centuries since Prince Daniel
the Muscovite realm had expanded from
five hundred square miles to fifteen thousand.
In July 1453 the blind Vasily II had Dmitry Shemyaka
poisoned and led a military expedition against Novgorod,
which in the Treaty of Iazhelbitsi paid an indemnity
and agreed to pay taxes, collect tribute from the Tatars,
and submit its foreign policy to Moscow for approval.
In 1437 Byzantine Emperor John VIII appointed the
Greek Isidore to be Metropolitan of Kiev and Moscow.
Isidore attended the Council of Florence in 1439
and signed an agreement recognizing papal supremacy;
but when he proclaimed this back in Moscow,
the Grand Prince had him imprisoned in a
monastery from which he escaped six months later.
In 1443 the Council of Russian bishops condemned
the agreement and deposed Isidore.
In 1448 the Russian bishops became independent
of the Patriarch of Constantinople by electing
Archbishop Iona of Riazan the Metropolitan.
When Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453,
the Patriarch of Moscow became the
head of the Russian Orthodox church.
The blind Vasily II was assisted by his son Ivan until
his death in 1462 when Ivan III became Grand Prince
of Moscow and all Russia until 1505.
Ivan sent gifts but refused to pay tribute to the Mongols
who sent punitive expeditions across
the borders in 1465 and 1472.
In 1478 Khan Achmed sent ambassadors
to Ivan with his image to collect tribute.
Ivan stomped on the image and executed all the envoys
but one whom he sent back with a message for the Horde.
Finally in 1480 Ivan renounced
all allegiance to the Golden Horde.
Ivan’s first wife Maria of Tver died in 1467, and in 1472
he married Sofia (Zoe) Palaeologa,
niece of the last Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI.
Many Greeks, who had been in Italy, came with her,
and she bore eight children.
Also in 1472 Ivan’s older brother Yuri died childless
and he took his entire estate, angering his older brothers,
Andrei and Boris.
The next year Ivan made treaties with his brothers
Boris and Andrei the Elder in which they acknowledged
him and his son Ivan as “elder brothers.”
In 1474 Ivan sent to Venice for architects.
Fieravanti designed the Cathedral of the Assumption
that was built from 1475 to 1479.
The Cathedral of the Annunciation was finished in 1490,
and Alevisio supervised the construction of a
new Cathedral of the Archangel from 1505 to 1509.
In 1470 Novgorod independently declared
Mikhail Olelkovich of Lithuania their prince.
That year the Jewish Zechariah came to Novgorod
and began spreading the Judaizer doctrine that accepted
only the Old Testament and denounced the Church.
In 1471 Ivan led a campaign against Novgorod
and defeated them by the River Shelon.
In 1475 he used diplomacy and responded to the complaints
of the Novgorodians, but he seized the estates of six boyars
who objected to his subordination of Novgorod.
Then in 1477 Ivan had soldiers occupy Novgorod,
ending its independence the following January by
confiscating its veche bell which had been used
to call people to the assembly (veche).
The people of Novgorod had been allowed to hear
their leaders’ discussions in the open-air market.
In 1480 Moscow arrested Novgorod’s archbishop
and years later replaced him with an unpopular prelate.
During the summer of 1480 Boris and Andrei the Elder
withdrew to Lithuania, but they were persuaded
to come back and help defend Moscow.
In 1481 Andrei the Younger died,
and Ivan III inherited his property.
Ivan sent Muscovite forces into Livonian territory
to attack three towns.
In 1487 fifty merchants from Novgorod were expelled
to Vladimir and replaced by merchants from Moscow.
The next year 7,000 of Novgorod’s gentry
were removed to Moscow.
During Ivan’s reign Moscow’s domains expanded greatly
by annexing Iaroslavl in 1471, Perm in 1472,
Rostov in 1473, Tver in 1485, and Viatka in 1489.
He ended their independence by preventing them
from receiving the patent (iarlyk) from the Tatar khans.
Uniting a loose confederation, Ivan III governed
with a council like a European monarch.
Muscovite mounted archers used a composite bow
that was better than the cross-bow and the English longbow.
By 1480 they were also using arquebuses
with gunpowder against the invading Great Horde.
In 1486 Ivan sent forces to intervene
in Kazan’s succession struggle.
He had to have the boyars present when he met with the
Holy Roman Emperor’s ambassador Nicholaus Poppel in 1489.
After his oldest son Ivan’s death in 1490 Ivan III
had Andrei the Elder arrested in 1491 for misdemeanors
and not supplying troops during an invasion
by the Great Horde.
When he died in prison two years later,
Ivan took over his estates.
The Metropolitan Simon imposed
penance on the Grand Prince.
In 1487 Archbishop Gennadius of Novgorod began
a campaign against heresy using an inquisition with torture.
In 1490 the new Metropolitan Zosima convened a council
that found nine Novgorodian Judaizers guilty of opposing
icons, monasteries, and the trinity
and of observing the Sabbath on Saturday.
They were sent to Gennadius who humiliated them.
Many Byzantines and Russians believed that the world
might end after 7,000 years, which was in 1492.
Negotiations between the Livonian Order, Pskov and Dorpat,
and Novgorod led to a treaty in 1493.
The next year Ivan arrested and seized the property
of 49 merchants in Novgorod, which he closed
to Hanseatic trade for the next twenty years.
In 1495 Ivan formed an alliance with Denmark
and invaded the Finnish territory occupied
by Sweden, Denmark’s adversary.
In 1494 Lithuania ceded Viaz’ma to Moscow, and Ivan’
daughter Elena married Grand Duke Alexander the next year.
In 1496 Muscovite merchants were allowed to travel into
the Ottoman empire as far as Tokat, Bursa, and Istanbul.
Moscow promulgated its first law code (sudebnik)
for the wider region in 1497 based mainly
on the Russian Justice and the Pskov Sudebnik.
Peasants were only allowed to move in late November
after the harvest and if they had paid all debts.
Also in 1497 six courtiers were executed for conspiring
to assassinate the King’s six-year-old grandson Dmitry,
and the next February the boy was crowned co-ruler
in an elaborate ceremony in the Cathedral of the Assumption.
Yet Ivan’s son Vasily was restored to favor in 1499,
and Dmitry was arrested in 1502 and died in 1509.
From 1500 to 1503 Moscow fought a war against Lithuania
which was supported by Livonian knights and the
Great Horde
while Muscovy was aided by the Crimean khanate.
Ivan suffered a stroke that incapacitated him in 1503.
In 1503 a Church council approved the doctrine of the
Possessors who supported Church rituals and authority
while condemning the Non-possessors who believed that
monks should be poor and “dead to the world.”
Nil Sorskii was a spiritual leader of the Non-possessors
who objected to ecclesiastical wealth.
Ivan tolerated heretics until 1504 when Abbot Iosif (Joseph)
of the prosperous Volotsk monastery he founded in 1479
persuaded him to have heretical leaders burned.
Iosif taught that the power of the ruler
came from the will of God;
but if the king is unjust,
all the servants around become bad.
On June 24, 1505 Khan Muhammad Emin of Kazan
arrested Muscovite merchants in Kazan.
When he executed some and sold others into slavery,
this provoked a war with Moscow.
Ivan III died on October 27.
Ivan III’s oldest son Vasily III was
Grand Prince of Moscow 1505-33.
The Kazanian prince Kudai Kul had been in custody
since 1487, but by the end of 1505 Vasily had converted
him to Christianity as Peter Ibraimov.
Then Peter married Vasily’s sister Evdokhiia
and served as Vasily’s advisor until his death in 1523.
Moscow fought Lithuania again 1507-08.
Vasily annexed Pskov in 1510.
That year the Abbot Filofei from Pskov sent a letter
to Vasily in which he described Moscow as the
successor to Constantinople and the “third Rome.”
The Muscovite rulers did not endorse this view,
though they did claim to be the successors of the Kiev princes.
Vasily appointed Sheikh-Aliyar the Khan of Kasimov in 1512.
Muscovites fought a long war against Lithuania 1512-22
during which they regained Smolensk in 1514.
Moscow annexed the appanage of Volok in 1513.
1. Drobné spisy by Petr Chelcicky, tr. Eduard Petru 75/1690
quoted in Petr Chelcicky by Murray L. Wagner, p. 89.
2. Postilla I by Petr Chelcicky, p. 131-2
quoted in Political and Social Doctrines of the Unity of Czech Brethren
by Peter Brock p. 55.
3. Quoted in God’s Playground: A History of Poland,
Volume 1 by Norman Davies, p. 119.