The rapid expansion of Lithuania in 13th - 14th centuries

[Domen]

I have wondered what were the reasons of the rapid expansion of Lithuanians into Ruthenian territories in 13th - 14th centuries?

Did the devastation of Ruthenian territories by the Mongol invasion play any role? Or maybe the political fragmentation of Rus was more important?

Lithuanians - having problems with repulsing the increasing pressure of the Teutonic Order and crusaders supporting it on "Lithuania proper" (i.e. ethnic Lithuanian territories) and also torn by some internal conflicts and civil wars, especially in 14th century, were at the same time able to expand into and control vast ethnic Ruthenian territories. Pagan, tribal society / tribal state managed to conquer and hold areas inhabited by people with developed culture and developed statehood, as well as superior (according to those people at least) religion.

What enabled a relatively small (at the beginning of 13th century comparable in size - both of territory and population - to Prussians) and relatively primitive Baltic tribal society to conduct such an expansion and to transform into a territorially large state?

 

[Phrossack]

I just read a thread on this yesterday.
http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=24302

 

[Lone Wolf]

I'd also point out that Lithuania was pretty decentralized. During the Russian-Lithuanian wars of Ivan III, the region of Severschina (Chernigov, Novgorod-Seversky) switched sides pretty much wilfully (Smolensk, on the contrary, was a relatively hard obstacle for the Russians/Moscovites).

 

[Veles]

...What enabled a relatively small (at the beginning of 13th century comparable in size - both of territory and population - to Prussians) and relatively primitive Baltic tribal society to conduct such an expansion and to transform into a territorially large state?

In short: an alliance with ruling elites of Pskov, Novgorod and Tver. Several Gedimin's daughters was married to Russian knyazi, namely a Tverian and Muscovite ones, so Gedimin wasn't considered a outsider for ruling dynasties. It seems a foreign de-jure ruler who wouldn't meddle in their business was prefferable to them than lawful (and traditionally authoritarian) Rurikid knyaz of Moscow, or the Tartars.

The overwhelming majority of the former Rus' territory that was included in Lithuania wasn't taken by force, it joined volutionary and through influence of the above-mentioned city-states' elites in exchange for guarantees and increased privileges for local boyars.

 

[warpus]

Can someone confirm that Poland and Lithuania weren't really that friendly and that there were frequent border skirmishes, before the personal union?

 

[Lone Wolf]

There were minor conflicts and skirmishes, yeah. In fact, an observer looking at 14th century Lithuania could say that the chances of Lithuanians proper converting to Orthodoxy as opposed to Catholicism are high.

 

[Veles]

Can someone confirm that Poland and Lithuania weren't really that friendly and that there were frequent border skirmishes, before the personal union?

Broski, Jan Długosz is your friend. Very interesting (thought at times not very objective) storytelling.

 

[Domen]

Can someone confirm that Poland and Lithuania weren't really that friendly and that there were frequent border skirmishes, before the personal union?

There were quite frequent border skirmishes (mainly between Lithuania and dukes of Mazovia) but also some bigger conflicts.

Bigger conflicts were in 1262 (when Lithuanians & Ruthenians raided Mazovia, besieged & captured the castle of Jazdow), then in 1282 - 1283 (when in the battles of the Narew and of Rowiny the supreme duke of Poland Leszek Czarny defeated combined forces of pagan invaders - Lithuanians & Yotvingans), then in years 1291 - 1306 (6 raids of Vitenes against Mazovia - in the battle of Trojanowo duke of Leczyca Casimir lost his life), then in years 1340 - 1366 and 1370 - 1377 when Poland competed with Lithuania for control over the declining state of Halych-Volhynia (aka Galicia-Volhynia) - in the end most of Halych-Volhynia was seized by Poland (Poland gained the Lands of Przemysl, Halych with Lvov, Chelm, Belz, Kremenets and Volodymyr, as well as the region of Podolia).

On the other hand, between those conflicts there were also times when Poland and Lithuania were friendly.

For example they were friendly to each other - even though there was no real help from Lithuanian side to Poland - during the Polish-Brandenburgian war of 1326 - 1329 and the war of Poland vs Teutonic Order & Bohemia in years 1327 - 1332. Then Poland supported Jogaila against Vytautas (who was supported by the Teutonic Order) during the Lithuanian Civil War in 1390 - 1392 (since Jogaila won that war, we can say that Poland supported "proper" Lithuania).

But that last war was already after the Union of Krewo (which was signed in 1385).

 

[Pangur Bán]

Essentially, Rus political culture had alienated most of the population from access to top level political and military power. The princes claiming descent from Rurik took power from others and kept it to themselves, with polities fragmenting in order to provide all the Rurikid children with holdings as each generation provided more Rurikids. The Mongol yoke removed much Rurikid power, and most of the Rurikids, without providing a replacement. Although the Mongols exacted tribute from Rus and were its overlords, Mongols were alien to Rus and did and could not rule it directly.

Meanwhile, Germans expanded into the Baltic. The coastal Prussians, Livonians and so on got hit by German technology and military power without having time to adapt. The Lithuanians, who lived further away and were protected from the Germans to some extent by geography, but being subject to constant attacks without being turned into a race of slave-peasants, became more militaristic, adapted, and generated more and more lineages of pure professional warriors.

These warriors and their leading lineages found that without much difficulty they could expand into the fat juicy Rus cities at the other side of their territory. The Rus cities found they could gain the easiest and least burdensome military protection by importing ready-made Lithuanian warrior-princes with their own retinues.

In the 14th century the Gedimids took came to become utterly dominant within this world and took control of the process. A good analogy might be the nationalization of the East India Company. This was the worst thing to happen to the movement, since it was the very independence of these warrior lineages that made them successful. And since Lithuania had insignificant value for anything other than warriors, Lithuanian rulers were drawn to richer territories and the main beneficiary of the process ended up being the Rus principalities and, above all, Poland; not Lithuania.

 

[Dachs]

let's hear it for toynbee's frontier-state thesis

 

[Domen]

Sorry for reviving after long time, but (for some reason I had not commented this before):

These warriors and their leading lineages found that without much difficulty they could expand into the fat juicy Rus cities

To my knowledge, "the fat juicy Rus cities" were pretty much razed to the ground by the Mongols in the 13th to 14th centuries. Among exceptions was Novgorod and some cities located in actual Russia. But those of Ukraine and Belarus were hit very hard. For example Kiev in year 1400 was just a miserable shadow of the city of Kiev from year 1200 (there are figures from written sources and from archaeological data on the size of settled area and numbers of houses in Kiev). Areas of Ukraine-Belarus were even more devastated by the Mongols than was Hungary, and Hungary's population vastly declined.

Areas mostly spared by Mongol devastation were some regions in the north-east, such as Vladimir-Suzdal, as well as Halych-Volhynia in the south-west. But in the middle between those areas there was a relative vacuum created by Mongol conquest and subsequent Tatar raids.

The decline of Kiev was so hard, that the head of the Orthodox Church of Rus, Metropolitan Maximus, moved his seat in 1299 to Vladimir on the Kliazma River. It was his successor Metropolitan Peter who then moved the centre of the Church to Moscow in year 1325, which signalled the beginning of the long-lasting ascendancy of the Moscovite Principality, as the nucleus of the modern Russian realm, during the post-Mongol recovery.

Meanwhile the realm of Halych-Volhynia was conquered and mostly annexed by the Kingdom of Poland in year 1340, while the other western Rus principalities were gradually annexed by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in a contest with the declining Khanate of the Golden Horde.

Here is an amateur but still good documentary about the Mongol conquest of Kievan Rus:


Link to video.

 

[daft]

Did the marriage of Polish princess Jadwiga to prince Jogaila of Lithuania (and his adoption of Catholicism) cement the union between Poland and Lithuania?
In their time Mongol hordes devastated so many civilized regions of Asia and Europe, sad but true.

 

[Pangur Bán]

FYI Domen, no, the fat juicy Rus cities had not been raised to the ground; and indeed Lithuania grows almost as a protection racket for these cities.

 

[Domen]

FYI Domen, no, the fat juicy Rus cities had not been raised to the ground

But do you have some more specific estimates on the degree of depopulation and destruction (or lack of such) caused by the Mongols?

For my part, I can provide reasonable estimates for the city of Kiev - population of the city of Kiev declined from at least 50,000 in 1230 (and the urban area of Kiev at that time was as large as 380 hectares - compared to 430 hectares for Florence 50 years later, in 1285 - but population of Florence was most certainly higher due to denser building placement) to only 808 households and around 5,000 inhabitants in year 1570 (first Polish census of households in Kiev - one year after the city became part of Poland). Kiev was destroyed by foreign invaders not only in 1240 during the Mongol conquest of Rus, but also several times later. When Kiev was under Lithuanian rules (since 1363 until 1569), it was captured and plundered few more times (in 1416 Kipchaks under Emir Edygey burned the city and slaughtered most of its inhabitants; in 1449 Tatars plundered Kiev; in 1482 Khan Megli Girey captured Kiev and enslaved entire population).

The Mongol invasion in the 13th century and subsequent "occupation" (or rather extracting high tribute), followed by Tatar slave-hunting raids during the next centuries, caused very severe depopulation ("population bottleneck") of the territory of modern Central and Eastern Ukraine.

Only after the Polish takeover of Kiev (1569), population of the city started to grow again, reaching over 15,000 by year 1648 - soon before the Khmelnytsky Uprising. Under Polish rules population of entire Ukraine was growing very quickly, because Polish nobles and magnates were colonizing it, establishing hundreds of new villages and towns. Settlers were being recruited mostly from areas which are today Western Ukraine and parts of Poland.

Those Polish magnates and nobles (or rather local Rurikid princes & boyars who became Polonized by adopting Polish culture & language; as well as immigrant Polish nobles who started to settle in newly acquired lands) promoted also Jewish settlement in Ukraine, and founded many new towns.

Jews served mostly as tax collectors & administrators for those magnates / nobles, which is the reason why Ruthenian peasants hated them.

 

[Pangur Bán]

The two Rus cities most important initially were Grodno and Novgorodok, then Vitebsk and Polotsk, only establishing protectorates over more famous and southerly Rus cities later (indeed Pskov in the north was one of these too). Remember urbanism in Rus had been expanding since the 900s and Kiev was not particularly important by the time of the Mongols.

 

[Domen]

Kiev was not particularly important by the time of the Mongols.

Chernigov and Kiev were by far the largest cities in all of Rus by the time when the Mongols came, AFAIK.

In terms of urban area (area with buildings), Chernigov was 400-450 hectares and Kiev 350-380 hectares. I really very much doubt that Grodno or any other city in Belarus was larger than 350 hectares, but I can agree that compared to Lithuanian forests those towns still looked like metropolies.

Perhaps Pskov was the largest of the cities and towns that you mentioned, and maybe close in size to Kiev.

By the way - here is a very nice reconstruction of 13th century (1200s) Kernavė, the first "capital city" of Lithuania:


Link to video.

By comparison, 11th century (1000s) Cracow (it was more "cohesive" than Kernavė, which looks more "dispersed"):


Link to video.

 

[Pangur Bán]

I don't know what you are trying to argue, but if you want to find out about the Lithuanian expansion I recommend Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-Central Europe. This will fill you in on these Rus cities as well as other important details.

 

[Domen]

Well I've checked the free Google preview of the book, in order to see what does the author write about Grodno:

https://books.google.pl/books?id=i4...BA&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Grodno&f=false

The author calls it a major trade centre located near the border, but I wouldn't exaggerate with its "juiciness" based on what he writes. The author also writes that in 1324 Grodno was destroyed by the Teutonic Knights, and rebuilt one year later, but then regularly raided by the Knights (e.g. in 1328 again).

It's population size and urban area size couldn't be too high, among other things due to those numerous raids.

 

[Pangur Bán]

Is your idea that Belarus is backward land of hairy-backed barbarians living in mudhuts, and needed the beneficent rule of their superior Polish brothers to be otherwise? I sense this is what is going on. I'm not eastern European and don't care about that. Just read the book if you want to understand the actual history of the topic.

 

[Domen]

Is your idea that Belarus is backward land of hairy-backed barbarians living in mudhuts

Nope. Why would you even suggest so?

I fear that you are just projecting your own image of ekhm... , <another country>, on my alleged image of Rus.

I'm not calling them barbarians, but I think that their golden age was already gone by the time when Lithuania incorporated them.

And you seem to argue that it was not the case and that the region was still very advanced, populous, etc.

Just read the book if you want to understand the actual history of the topic.

I'm sure the book is nice, and I will check it, but I strongly suspect that it just doesn't contain what you suggested that it does.

I.e. it doesn't contain any economic or demographic data on Belarusian cities, or comparisons between levels of urbanism in that part of Europe.

and needed the beneficent rule of their superior Polish brothers to be otherwise? I sense this is what is going on

I'm not sure if they needed the rule of their Polish brothers (or rather continued rule of their own superior boyars who just got Polonized).

But they definitely didn't need those destructive invasions by their superior Mongol and Teutonic brothers.