Lithuania Sentence Examples

Germany, and containing brown coal and amber, has been met with only in Poland, Courland and Lithuania.

In 1786 he was appointed referendarius of Lithuania, and during the Four Years' Diet (1788-1792) displayed an amazing and many-sided activity as one of the reformers of the constitution.

From the 12th century onward the sect gradually declined, being ultimately restricted mainly to the Crimea and Lithuania, learning disappeared and their literature became merely popular and of little interest.

The Eocene covers wide tracts from Lithuania to Tsaritsyn, and is represented in the Crimea and Caucasus by thick deposits belonging to the same ocean which left its deposits on the Alps and the Himalayas.

They are larger, but still small, in White Russia, Lithuania and the region of the lakes; but in the steppe governments they are very appreciably bigger, some of the Cossack stanitsas or settlements exceeding 20,000, and many of them numbering more than 10,000 inhabitants each.

The chief first-class fortresses of Russia are Warsaw and Novogeorgievsk in Poland, and Brest-Litovsk and Kovno in Lithuania.

The second-class fortresses are Kronstadt and Sveaborg in the Gulf of Finland, Ivangorod in Poland, Libau on the Baltic Sea, Kerch on the Black Sea and Vladivostok on the Pacific. In the third class are Viborg in Finland, Ossovets and Ust Dvinsk (or Dunamunde) in Lithuania, Sevastopol and Ochakov on the Black Sea, and Kars and Batum in Caucasia.

They first entered Poland from Germany during the era of the crusades, and soon spread through Lithuania, Courland, the Ukraine, and, in the 18th century, Bessarabia.

There was no longer within the Russian land any independent principality in which an asylum could be found, and emigration to a principality beyond the frontier, such as Lithuania, was regarded as treason, for which the property of the fugitive would be confiscated and his family might be punished.

Here lay the principality of Lithuania and beyond it the kingdom of Poland, two loosely conglomerated states which had been created by the Piast and Gedymin dynasties in pretty much the same way as the tsardom of Muscovy had been created by the descendants of Rurik.

On the death of Casimir, king of Poland and grand-prince of Lithuania, in 1492, the kingdom and the principality ceased to be united and Ivan III.

His successor, Basil, tried to get himself elected grand-prince of Lithuania when the throne became vacant by the death of his brother-in-law in 1506, but the choice fell on the late prince's brother Sigismund, who was likewise elected king of Poland.

The former had aimed simply at making annexations in Lithuania; 'Ivan' IV.

In the reign of Michael's successor, Alexius (1645-76), the country recovered its strength so rapidly that the tsar was tempted to revive the energetic aggressive policy and put forward claims to Livonia, Lithuania and Little Russia, but he was obliged to moderate his pretensions.

Livonia continued to be under Swedish rule, and Lithuania remained united with Poland.

In that year, when Lithuania and Poland were permanently united, it fell under Polish rule, and the Polish government considered it necessary to tame the wild inhabitants and bring them under regular administration.

He thought of going on the crusade to Barbary; but instead, in July 1390, went to serve with the Teutonic knights in Lithuania.

He strengthened his position by giving his daughter Sophia in marriage to Vasily, grand-duke of Muscovy; but he never felt secure beneath the wing of the Teutonic Order, and when Jagiello removed Skirgiello from the government of Lithuania and offered it to Witowt, the compact of Ostrow (5th of August 1392) settled all differences between them.

Nevertheless, subsequent attempts on the part of Poland to subordinate Lithuania drove Witowt for the third time into the arms of the Order, and by the treaty of Salin in 1398, Witowt, who now styled himself Supremus Dux Lithuaniae, even went so far as to cede his ancestral province of Samogitia to the knights, and to form an alliance with them for the conquest and partition of Pskov and Great Novgorod.

He was now convinced that the true policy of Lithuania was the closest possible alliance with Poland..

Witowt was to reign over Lithuania as an independent grand-duke, but the two states were to be indissolubly united by a common policy.

The result was a whole series of wars with the Teutonic Order, which now acknowledged Swidrygiello, another brother of Jagiello, as grand-duke of Lithuania; and though Swidrygiello was defeated and driven out by Witowt, the Order retained possession of Samogitia, and their barbarous methods of "converting" the wretched inhabitants finally induced Witowt to rescue his fellow-countrymen at any cost from the tender mercies of the knights.

First, however, Charles cleared Livonia of the invader (July 1701), subsequently occupying the duchy of Courland and converting it into a Swedish governor-generalship. In January 1702 Charles established himself at Bielowice in Lithuania, and, after issuing a proclamation declaring that "the elector of Saxony" had forfeited the Polish crown, set out for Warsaw, which he reached on the 14th of May.

In the r3th century the Ponizie was plundered by the Mongols; a hundred years afterwards Olgierd, prince of Lithuania, freed it from their rule, annexing it to his own territories under the name of Podolia, a word which has the same meaning as Ponizie.

After the death (1430) of the Lithuanian prince Vitovt, Podolia was annexed to Poland, with the exception of its eastern part, the province of Bratslav, which remained under Lithuania until its union (1501) with Poland.

He was the only Russian statesman of the day with sufficient foresight to grasp the fact that the Baltic seaboard, or even a part of it, was worth more to Muscovy than ten times the same amount of territory in Lithuania, and, despite ignorant jealousy of his colleagues, succeeded (Dec. 1658) in concluding a three-years' truce whereby the Muscovites were left in possession of all their conquests in Livonia.

In the 14th century it became part of Lithuania, and afterwards of Poland.

Nevertheless, a simultaneous outbreak of a jacquerie in Little-Russia contributed to the extension of the confederation throughout the eastern province of Poland and even in Lithuania.

Rectifications of the frontiers with Lithuania, with regard to the coast of Polangen and the zone near Illuxt, were still in process in 1921.

For the next few years he was employed by Cardinal Hosius, the learned Polish prelate, in his efforts to check the spread of heresy in Poland, Lithuania and Prussia.

The two and thirty years of his reign (1345-1377) were devoted to the development and extension of Lithuania, and he lived to make it one of the greatest states in Europe.

The Teutonic knights in the north and the Tatar hordes in the south were equally bent on the subjection of Lithuania, while Olgierd's eastern and western neighbours, Muscovy and Poland, were far more frequently hostile competitors than serviceable allies.

Nevertheless, Olgierd not only succeeded in holding his own, but acquired influence and territory at the expense of both Muscovy and the Tatars, and extended the borders of Lithuania to the shores of the Black Sea.

Indeed, but for the unceasing simultaneous struggle with the Teutonic knights, the burden of which was heroically borne by Kiejstut, Russian historians frankly admit that Lithuania, not Muscovy, must have become the dominant power of eastern Europe.

The union between the kingdom of Poland and the grand duchy of Lithuania was brought about on Feb.

Thus was established a political combination in which Lithuania in point of territory was three times the size of Poland.

Accordingly the Dual State was involved in a common downfall, and in the three partitions of 1772, 1792 and 1795 to which it was subjected at the hands of Russia, Prussia and Austria, Lithuania fell a prey to Russia and Prussia.

But, while the Tsarist regime, unable to denationalize a homogeneous population of a different religion and language, initially conceded a minimum of rights to the Polish nation, in Lithuania proper from the outset an unrelenting system of tyranny was established which was designed to break by force every non-Russian element in the country.

In the closing years of Alexander's reign events in Poland cast their shadow before them, and in answer to political conspiracies Novosiltsov, formerly adviser to the Grand Duke Constantine as governor of Poland, upon his transfer to Lithuania initiated the persecution of liberal thought.

Under the new Tsar, Nicholas I., the plan of the reunion of the two states was definitely rejected, his ukase of 1839 making of Lithuania the" Sievero-Zapadny Krai "(North-western Province) .

Further, Lithuania was specially excluded from the Zemstvo system which was introduced into Russia in 1864.

In Prussian Lithuania a craftier policy allowed greater outward liberty, though the process of German colonization, seconded by persecution, restricted the Lithuanian language which was once dominant in East Prussia to barely five districts (Tilsit 38%, Heydekrug 61.9%, Memel 47.1%, Ragnit 27%, Labiau 30%).

It was the first modern attempt to define Lithuania ethnographically, to respect national minorities and continue the connexion with Russia upon the federative principle.

As the imperial ukase which followed the dissolution of the second Duma in 1907 conferred more power upon the great landowners, it was modified as regards Lithuania by a nationality clause which provided that the total of electors of each class should be in proportion to the amount of land possessed by the respective nationalities in the district.

This measure, applied by Russian officials, was designed against the Poles and the Lithuanian Nationalists alike, for not even the Progressives who favoured autonomy for Poland contemplated its grant to Lithuania.

On July 11 1918 he accepted under the title of" Mindove II., King of Lithuania,"thus strangely choosing the style of a heathen prince of the 13th century who fiercely resisted the Teutonic order.

Although Kovno itself was evacuated in June 1919, and shortly afterwards southern and eastern Lithuania, the area Mitau - Shavli - Taurogen remained in their hands until Dec. 13 of that year.

Meanwhile the Polish Government's proposal for joint action against the Bolsheviks was rejected pending Lithuania's recognition as an independent state with Vilna for its capital.

The state of war with Soviet Russia, however, continued until the Peace Treaty of July 12 1920, whereunder the Lithuanian claim to Vilna and Grodno was recognized by the Bolsheviks and Lithuania received three million rubles in gold and 100,000 hectares of forest land for exploitation.

In the beginning of March 1921, direct negotiation between Poland and Lithuania under the aus p ices of the League of Nations, to be followed by arbitration on unsettled points, was proposed in lieu of the plebiscite and agreed to by all parties.

The independence of Lithuania de facto was recognized by Sweden, Norway, England, Esthonia, Finland, France and Poland; de jure by Germany on March 23 1918, by Soviet Russia on July 12 1920, by Latvia and Esthonia in Feb.

Lithuania is essentially an agricultural country in which the soil is richest in the old Kovno Government.

In 1913 there were 5,140 industrial establishments in Lithuania with 33,000 workmen and a yearly productive value of 62 million Russian (gold) rubles.

Lithuania requires primarily manufactured fertilizers and agricultural machinery and salt, sugar, herrings, manufactured articles, etc.

Alone among the Baltic states Lithuania had as yet no national currency in 1921.

Legal tender were the "Ostmark" (originally introduced by the German Military Administration of the Army of Occupation, "Militdrisches Verwaltungsgebiet Ober-Ost"), which in Lithuania proper ranked pari passu with the German "Reichsmark," and other German fiduciary currency to a total not less than one milliard marks.

The climate of Lithuania is, on the whole, more moderate than that of other parts of Russia in the same latitude.

C. Propolanis, L'Eglise Polonaise en Lithuanie (1914); Albinas Rimka, Lietuvos ukis pries didji kara (1918); Russian Poland, Lithuania and White Russia, Handbook No.

Nine years later Lubart of Lithuania, who also had claims upon Red Russia, disputed the sway of Poland in that principality.

Hungary coming to the assistance of Poland, Lubart was defeated and taken prisoner; but Casimir, anxious to avoid a bloody war with Lithuania's Tatar allies, came to a compromise with Lubart whereby Poland retained Halicz with Lemberg, while Vladimir, Belz, and Brzesc fell to the share of Lithuania.

Plehve carried out the "russification" of the alien provinces within the Russian Empire, and earned bitter hatred in Poland, in Lithuania and especially in Finland.

The first active interference of Lithuania in the affairs of Livonia took place immediately after the great outbreak of the peasants on Oesel; Olgierd then devastated all southern Livonia.

The order, having purchased the Danish part of Esthonia, in 1347, began a war against the bishop of Riga, as well as against Lithuania, Poland and Russia.

In the 15th century it fell under the dominion of Lithuania, but was retaken by the Russians.

In 1320 it was annexed to Lithuania; and in 1569, after the union of Lithuania with Poland, it was chief town of the province of Brest.

Gedymin still further extended the limits of Lithuania by annexing Kiev, Chernigov and other old Russian principalities.

At the very time when Lithuania was thus becoming a compact, united, powerful state, Poland seemed literally to be dropping to pieces.

By an agreement with the queen mother of Hungary at Kassa in 1383, the Poles finally accepted Jadwiga as their queen, and, on the 18th of February 1386, greatly against her will, the young princess, already betrothed to William of Austria, was wedded to Jagiello, grand duke of Lithuania, who had been crowned king of Poland at Cracow, three days previously, under the title of Wladislaus II.

The union of Poland and Lithuania as separate states under one king had been brought about by their common fear of the Teutonic Order.

Five years after the death of Gedymin, Olgierd, the most capable of his seven sons, had been placed upon the throne of Lithuania by his devoted brother Kiejstut, and for the next two-and-thirty years (1345-1377) the two princes still further extended the sway of Lithuania, principally at the expense of Muscovy and the Tatars.

During Olgierd's reign the southern boundaries of Lithuania touched the Black Sea, including the whole tract of land between the mouth of the Bug and the mouth of the Dnieper.

Olgierd was succeeded by his son Jagiello as grand duke in 1377, while Kiejstut was left in possession of Samogitia, Troki and Grodno; but the Teutonic Order, alarmed at the growth of Lithuania, succeeded in estranging uncle and nephew, and Kiejstut was treacherously assassinated by Jagiello's orders, at Krewo, on the 15th of August 1382.

The eyes of Jagiello were now opened to the fact that the machiavellian policy of the Knights aimed at subjugating Lithuania by dividing it.

He at once made peace with his cousin; restored him his patrimony; and, to secure Lithuania against the future vengeance of the Knights, Jagiello made overtures to Poland for the hand of Jadwiga, and received the Polish crown along with it, as already mentioned Before proceeding to describe the Jagiellonic period of Polish history, it is necessary to cast a rapid glance at the social and political condition of the country in the preceding Piast period.

The conversion of Lithuania menaced the very existence of the Teutonic Knights.

Ziemo Union of vit aimed at the Polish crown, proposing to marry Poland and the infant princess Jadwiga of Hungary, who, as Lithuania.

Skilfully taking advantage of the jealousies of Poland and Lithuania, as they were accentuated by the personal antagonism of Jagiello and Witowt (q.v.), with the latter of whom the Knights more than once contracted profitable alliances, they even contrived (Treaty of Salin, 1378) to extend their territory by getting possession of the province of Samogitia, the original seat of the Lithuanians, where paganism still persisted, and where their inhuman cruelties finally excited the horror and indignation of Christian Europe.

By this time, however, the prudent Jagiello had become convinced that Lithuania was too strong to be ruled by or from Poland, and yet not strong enough to stand alone, and by the compact of Vilna (January 18, 1401,1401, confirmed by the compact of Radowo, March 10) he surrendered the whole grand duchy to Witowt, on the understanding that the two states should have a common policy, and that neither of them should elect a new prince without the consent of the other.

But the excessive caution of Jagiello gave the Knights time to recover from the blow; the Polish levies proved unruly and incompetent; Witowt was suddenly recalled to Lithuania by a Tatar invasion, and thus it came about that, when peace was concluded at Thorn, on the 1st of February 1411, Samogitia (which was to revert to the Order on the death of Jagiello and Witowt), Dobrzyn, and a war indemnity of 10o,000 marks payable in four instalments, were the best terms Poland could obtain from the Knights, whose territory practically remained intact.

Jagiello's signal for the attack at the battle of Griinewald, "Cracow and Vilna" (the respective capitals of Poland and Lithuania) had 'eloquently demonstrated the solidarity of the two states.

This solidarity was still further strengthened by the Union of Horodlo (October 2, 1413) which enacted that henceforth Lithuania was to have the same order of dignitaries' as Poland, as well as a council of state, or senate, similar to the Polish senate.

He was now declared to be the equal of the Polish king, and his successor could be elected only by the senates of Poland and Lithuania in conjunction.

The Union of Horodlo also established absolute parity between the nobility of Poland and Lithuania, but the privileges of the latter were made conditional upon their profession of the Roman Catholic faith, experience having shown that difference of religion in Lithuania meant difference of politics, and a tendency Moscow-wards, the majority of the Lithuanian boyars being of the Greek Orthodox Confession.

Neither a turbulent minority, nor the neglect of an absentee king; neither the revival of separatist tendencies in Lithuania, nor the outbreaks of aristocratic lawlessness in Poland, could do more than shake the superstructure of the imposing edifice.

This was Wladislaus's second son, already grandduke of Lithuania, who ascended the Polish throne as Casimir IV.

He instinctively recognized not only the vital necessity of the maintenance of the union between the two states, but also the fact that the chief source of danger to the union lay Gas;m11 IV., g y in Lithuania, in those days a maelstrom of conflicting political currents.

Moreover, during the earlier years of his reign, he was obliged to reside for the most part in Lithuania, where his tranquilizing influence was needed.

Thus Prussia was now confederated with Poland, but she occupied a subordinate position as compared with Lithuania, inasmuch as the grand-master, though filling the first place in the royal council, was still a subject of the Polish crown.

He encouraged the Teutonic Order to rebel against Poland; he entertained at his court antiPolish embassies from Moscow; he encouraged the Tatars to ravage Lithuania; he thwarted Casimir's policy in Moldavia.

The first symptom of this lawlessness was the separation of Poland and Lithuania, the Lithuanians proceeding to elect Alexander, Casimir's fourth son, as their grand-duke, without even consulting the Polish senate, in flagrant violation of the union of Horodlo.

In Lithuania the increasing pressure of the Muscovite was the chief danger.

But since the death of Witowt (1430) the military efficiency of Lithuania had sensibly declined; single-handed she was no longer a match for her ancient rival.

During the reign of Alexander, who was too poor to maintain any adequate standing army in Lithuania, the Muscovites and Tatars ravaged the whole country at will, and were prevented from conquering it altogether only by their inability to capture the chief fortresses.

All the Baltic powers were more or less interested in the apportionment of this vast tract of land, whose geographical position made it not only the chief commercial link between east and west, but also the emporium whence the English, Dutch, Swedes, Danes and Germans obtained their corn, timber and most of the raw products of Lithuania and Muscovy.

But the diet, with almost incredible short-sightedness, refused to waste a penny on an undertaking which, they argued, concerned only Lithuania, and it was not as king of Poland, but as grand-duke of Lithuania, and with purely Lithuanian troops, that Sigismund, in 1561, occupied Livonia.

Ketteler, who had adopted Lutheranism during a visit to Germany in 1553, now professed the Augsburg Confession, and became the first duke of a new Protestant duchy, which he was to hold as a fief of the Polish crown, with local autonomy and absolute freedom of worship. The southern provinces of the ancient territory of the Order, Courland and Semgallen, had first been ceded on the 24th of June 1559 to Lithuania on similar conditions, the matter being finally adjusted by the compact of March 1562.

When things came to a deadlock the king tactfully intervened and voluntarily relinquished his hereditary title to Lithuania, thus placing the two countries on a constitutional equality and preparing the way for fresh negotiations in the future.

Henceforth the kingdom of Poland and the grand duchy of Lithuania were to constitute one inseparable and indivisible body politic, under one1569.

All dependencies and colonies, including Prussia and Livonia, were to belong to Poland and Lithuania in common.

The Union of Lublin, barely three years old, was anything but consolidated, and in Lithuania it continued to be extremely unpopular.

Lithuania favoured Ivan IV.

The union of Lublin, which led to the polonization of Lithuania, was the immediate occasion of a considerable exodus to the lowlands of the Dnieper of those serfs who desired to escape from the taxes of the Polish government and the tyranny of the Polish landlords.

But, at the beginning of the 17th century, when the current of the Catholic reaction was running very strongly and the Jesuits, after subduing the Protestants, began to undermine the position of the Orthodox Church in Lithuania, a more intolerant spirit 1 Cf.

The old Calvinist nobility of Lithuania were speedily reconverted; a Uniate Church in connexion with Rome was established; Greek Orthodox congregations, if not generally persecuted, were at least depressed and straitened; and the Cossacks began to hate the Pans, or Polish lords, not merely as tyrants, but as heretics.

By the compact of Zborow (Aug 21, 1649) Chmielnicki was recognized as hetman of the Zaporozhians, whose registered number was now raised from 6000 to 40,000; a general amnesty was also granted, and it was agreed that all official dignities in the Orthodox palatinates of Lithuania should henceforth be held solely by the Orthodox gentry.

The Potoccy, whose possessions in south Poland and the Ukraine covered thousands of square miles, the Radziwillowie, who were omnipotent in Lithuania and included half a dozen millionaires`' amongst them, the Lubomirscy and their fellows, hated the Czartoryscy because they were too eminent, and successfully obstructed all their well-meant efforts.

Half of these were the Protestants of the towns of Polish Prussia and Great Poland, the other half was composed of the Orthodox population of Lithuania.

The Russians were defeated in more than one pitched battle; three-quarters of the ancient territory was recovered, and Warsaw and Vilna, the capitals of Poland and Lithuania respectively, were liberated.

Lithuania and the Ruthenian Palatinates, the spoil of former partitions, continued to be incorporated with Russia.

Lithuania and the Ruthenian Palatinates continued to be incorporated with Russia as the Western Provinces and were divided from the Congress Kingdom by a customs barrier till the reign of -Nicholas I.

The customs barrier between Lithuania and the former Congress Kingdom was removed, in the hope that the influence of Russia would spread more easily over Poland.

It even spread to Lithuania.

The peasants were freed in Lithuania, and in Poland proper much was done to improve their position.

The soundest history of Lithuania, before its union with Poland, is still Lelewel's History of Lithuania (Pol., Leipzig, 1839), of which a French translation was published at Paris in 1861.

Karol Szajnocha's great monograph, justly described as "a pearl of historical literature," Jadwiga and Jagiello (4 vols., Lemberg, 1861), the result of twelve years of exhaustive study, is our best authority on the first union between Poland and Lithuania.

Besides extirpating the various sects of Protestants, they also busied themselves with destroying the Greek Church in Lithuania.

Poland and Lithuania, however, abounded with superstitions and legends which only awaited the coming poet to put them into verse.

One of his most remarkable poems is his Jan Deborog, in which, like Mickiewicz, he has well described the scenery of his native Lithuania.

In 1868 Count Constantine Tyszkiewicz published a valuable monograph on the Tombs of Lithuania and Western Ruthenia.

The loss of revenue consequent upon the secession of Lithuania placed John Albert at the mercy of the Polish Sejmiki or local diets, where the szlachta, or country gentry, made their subsidies dependent upon the king's subservience.

In 1599 he was appointed starosta of Samogitia, and in 1600 acting commander-in-chief of Lithuania.

In 1604 he captured Dorpat, twice defeated the Swedish generals at Bialy Kamien, and was rewarded with the grand baton of Lithuania.

In the middle ages the Teutonic Order established a frontier belt on the side of Lithuania.

He lacked, moreover, the tact and bonhomie of the Jagiellos; but in fairness it should be added that the Jagiellos were natives of the soil, that they had practically made the monarchy, and that they could always play Lithuania off against Poland.

Personally a devout Catholic and opposed in principle to the spread of sectarianism in Poland, Sigismund was nevertheless too wise and just to permit the persecution of non-Catholics;' and in Lithuania, where a fanatical Catholic minority of magnates dominated the senate, he resolutely upheld the rights of his Orthodox subjects.

By his tact, equity, and Christian charity, Sigismund endeared himself even to those who differed most from him, as witness the readiness of the Lithuanians to elect his infant son grand-duke of Lithuania in 1522, and to crown him in 1529.

As late as 1230 human sacrifices were still being offered up in Prussia and Lithuania, and, in spite of all the efforts of the Teutonic Knights, idolatrous practices still lingered amongst the people, while amongst the Lapps, though successful missions had been inaugurated as early as 1335, Christianity cannot be said to have become the dominant religion till at least two centuries later.

The Memel flows along the north-east frontier of Poland, from Grodno to Yurburg, separating it from Lithuania.

The reindeer now occurs only as a fossil; the sable, mentioned in the annals, has migrated eastwards; the wild horse, described by the annals as intermediate between the horse and the ass - probably similar to the Equus przewalskii of central Asia - is reputed to have been met with in the 13th century in the basin of the Warta, and two centuries later in the forests of Lithuania.

The most important ecclesiastical event of the reign was the elevation of the Bulgarian, Gregory Tsamblak, to the metropolitan see of Kiev (1425) by Vitovt, grand-duke of Lithuania; the immediate political consequence of which was the weakening of the hold of Muscovy on the south-western Russian states.

It remained an independent principality until the 12th century, resisting the repeated attacks of the princes of Kiev; those of Pskov, Lithuania, and the Livonian Knights, however, proved more effective, and Polotsk fell under Lithuanian rule in 1320.

Owing to its position between Galician Russia and Lithuania it often changed hands, until it was conquered by the Lithuanians in the 14th century.

During a subsequent mission to Lithuania he converted numerous noble families, including the Radziwills, and held for some years the rectorship of the Jesuit Academy at Wilna, where he composed his Lives of the Saints.

From that time Kremenets was under the dominion alternately of Lithuania and Poland, till 1648, when it was taken by the Zaporogian Cossacks.

Here you find articles in the encyclopedia on topics related to the history of Poland and Lithuania.

In 1704 it began to spread through Poland, and later to Silesia, Lithuania, Prussia and a great part of Germany and Scandinavia.

In Prussia and Lithuania 283,000 persons perished; Dantzig, Hamburg and other northern cities suffered severely.

While travelling with the grand-duke Lithold of Lithuania Jerome took part in the religious services of the Greek Orthodox Church.

In Scandinavia, in Lithuania, in Russia, according to Gaston Paris (Histoire poetique de Charlemagne, p. 9), the national songs have been arrested in a form which may be called intermediate between contemporary poetry and the epic. The true epics are those of India, Persia, Greece, Germany, Britain and France.

By far the most important interest of the town, however, is its transit trade in timber and the grain and other agricultural products of Lithuania, and also herrings and other kinds of fish.

From the 9th century the towns of Volhynia-Vladimir, Ovruch, Lutsk and Dubno were ruled by descendants of the Scandinavian or Varangian chief Rurik, and the land of Volhynia remained independent until the 14th century, when it fell under Lithuania.

Most of his life was spent in other lands, his campaigns ranging from Italy in the south to Lithuania in the north.

Jagiello, was appointed while still a lad grandduke of Lithuania by his father, and crowned king of Poland at Cracow in June 1447, three years after the death of his elder brother, Wladislaus III., at the battle of Varna.

Throughout life he steadily followed two guiding principles - the preservation of the political union between Poland and Lithuania at whatever cost, and the recovery of the lost lands of old Poland.

No wonder then if in the earlier years of the war the Order recovered its lost ground, and the king, irritated beyond endurance by the suicidal parsimony of the estates, threatened to retire to the forests of Lithuania.

He expired rather suddenly while hunting at Troki in Lithuania in June 1492.

In the 14th century this region belonged to the Lithuanians, and in 1396 Olgerd, prince of Lithuania, defeated in battle three Tatar chiefs, one of whom, Khaji Beg or Bey, had recently founded, at the place now occupied by Odessa, a fort which received his name.

Gedymin inherited a vast domain, comprising Lithuania proper, Samogitia, Red Russia, Polotsk and Minsk; but these possessions were environed by powerful and greedy foes, the most dangerous of them being the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian knights of the Sword.

The systematic raiding of Lithuania by the knights under the pretext of converting it had long since united all the Lithuanian tribes against the common enemy; but Gedymin aimed at establishing a dynasty which should make Lithuania not merely secure but mighty, and for this purpose he entered into direct diplomatic negotiations with the Holy See.

But the christianizing of Lithuania was by no means to the liking of the Teutonic Knights, and they used every effort to nullify Gedymin's far-reaching design.

Gedymin's chief object was to save Lithuania from destruction at the hands of the Germans.

These apparently retrogressive measures simply amounted to a statesmanlike recognition of the fact that the pagan element was still the strongest force in Lithuania, and could not yet be dispensed with in the coming struggle for nationality.

At the same time Gedymin through his ambassadors privately informed the papal legates at Riga that his difficult position compelled him for a time to postpone his steadfast resolve of being baptized, and the legates showed their confidence in him by forbidding the neighbouring states to war against Lithuania for the next four years, besides ratifying the treaty made between Gedymin and the archbishop of Riga.

A truce was thereupon concluded and hostilities were suspended till the summer of 1625, in the course of which Gustavus took Kokenhusen and invaded Lithuania.

Like most of this community, his own forbears had origins in Latvia and Lithuania.

Basketball Watching the US team slip to a late defeat against Lithuania was a wholly unexpected pleasure.

Though there had been no open insurrection, he caused many boyars and humbler persons to be executed, and when some of the great nobles, fearing a similar fate, fled across the frontier and tendered their allegiance to the prince of Lithuania, his suspicion and indignation increased and he determined to adopt still more drastic measures.

In no sense could it be considered a homogeneous political unit, for in Lithuania the majority of the population were Russian in nationality, language and religion, whereas in Poland the great majority of the inhabitants were Polish and Roman Catholic. Gradually, it is true, the Lithuanian nobles, who possessed all the land and held the peasantry in a state of serfage, adopted Polish nationality and culture, but this change did not secure homogeneity, because the masses clung obstinately to their old nationality and religion, and all the efforts of the Church of Rome to bring them under papal authority proved fruitless.

Nominally it was an hereditary monarchy, but the warlike, turbulent nobles systematically encroached on the sovereign power till they reduced it to a mere shadow and made it elective, with the result that the kingdom of Poland, including the principality of Lithuania, was at last, politically speaking, the most anarchical country in Europe.

In the 16th century it was a thinly populated region inhabited chiefly by Cossacks, speaking the so-called Little Russian dialect, and until 1569 it formed nominally part of Lithuania, but was practically independent.

The particular danger from the Sla y s of the north-east arose from the conversion of Lithuania, and the union of converted Lithuania to Poland.

His rapid return from Spain early in 1809, and now again from Lithuania at the close of 1812, gives an instructive glimpse into the anxiety which haunted the mind of the autocrat.

From the autumn of 1705 to the spring of 1706, Charles was occupied in pursuing the Russian auxiliary army under Ogilvie through the forests of Lithuania.

In spite of the endeavours of their rulers, the Sla y s of Poland and Lithuania did not wish to attack the kindred Bohemians; the Germans were prevented by internal discord from taking joint action against the Hussites; and the king of Denmark, who had landed in Germany with a large force intending to take part in the crusade, soon returned to his own country.

The Tsarist policy was henceforth perfectly consistent in that it strove to make Lithuania a genuine part of Russia and sought to extirpate Polish culture beyond the frontiers of the kingdom.

By way of reprisal land was taken from Polish owners and given to Russians, and settlements were established for colonization purposes - a measure of this kind taking place as late as 1913 - so that proportionately more convicts and political exiles were sent into Lithuania than even into Siberia.

To further their own purpose, which was the lasting hold over Lithuania, the Germans after the military collapse of Russia allowed the phantom existence of a State.

Including the Memel area, to which the people aspire as an outlet to the sea, it may be said that 4,295,000 souls inhabit ethnographical Lithuania.

A still greater prince was Gedymin (1315-1342) who did his utmost to civilize Lithuania by building towns, introducing foreigners, and tolerating all religions, though he himself remained a pagan for political reasons.

To begin with, Lithuania was a far less composite state than Poland.

His supposed preference for Lithuania was the real cause of his unpopularity in Poland, where, to the very end of his reign, he was regarded xxi.

In his later years Lithuania was in a state of chronic revolt, while Poland was bankrupt both morally and materially.

Without consulting his ordinary advisers, his majesty ordered the minister of the interior to send a circular to the provincial governors of European Russia, containing a copy of the instructions forwarded to the governor-general of Lithuania, praising the supposed generous,.

But the most striking memorial of his greatness was the union of Lublin, which finally made of Poland and Lithuania one body politic, and put an end to the jealousies and discords of centuries (see Poland, History).

Alex Sepkus is a native of the former Soviet republic of Lithuania, where he refined his jewelry design art under strict controls and material shortages that inspired him to turn even small rings into stunning works of art.

I've also tried to move East Prussian cities that are now in Russia or Lithuania, but I'm not sure I found them all.