PART III
13
On Sunday 5 March 1424 Jagiełło’s fourth wife, Sophia (Sonka) Holshanska, was crowned and anointed queen of Poland by primate Wojciech Jastrzębiec in St Stanisław’s Cathedral in Cracow. It was a magnificent occasion that bore eloquent testimony to the prestige enjoyed by Jagiełło and his united realms. The guests included Sigismund of Luxembourg and Erik of Pomerania, King of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Ludwig of Bavaria, brother of Isabeau, the dowager queen of France, turned up uninvited, attracted by rumours of the magnificence of the planned ceremony. Cardinal Placenta Branda de Castiglione, representing Martin V, and the auditor of the Holy See, Julian Cesarini were there, as was an ambassador from the Byzantine co-emperor John VIII Palaeologus, whose wife was Vytautas’s granddaughter. There was a swarm of Piast princes: the Mazovian dukes Siemowit V, Władysław I, Casimir II, and Trojden II; and the Silesians: Bernard of Oppeln; Boleslaus of Teschen; Johann of Ratibor; Casimir of Oświęcim; Wenzel of Troppau; Konrad IX, ‘the Black’, of Oels-Kosel; Konrad VII, ‘the White’, of Beuthen-Kosel; and Wenzel of Sagan. Paul von Rusdorf, the Order’s grand master, was represented by the komturs of Elbing and Thorn. The horde of Polish nobles was augmented by an impressive array of Lithuanian and Ruthenian princes. At the sumptuous coronation banquet guests feasted on mountains of game slaughtered by Jagiełło during his Christmas sojourn in Lithuania. Sigismund presided as King of the Romans, with Jagiełło on his right, and Erik of Pomerania on his left. Feasting, tournaments, and dancing lasted three days until the start of Lent initiated a no doubt necessary period of sobriety.1
There was one notable absentee. Vytautas declined his invitation. This was odd, for Długosz states that it was his idea that Jagiełło marry Sonka, granddaughter of his half-brother Dmitry and of Vytautas’s brother-in-law Ivan Holshansky.2 Between the wedding, celebrated in Navahrudak in February 1422, and the coronation, however, Vytautas fell out with Sonka. Długosz gives no reason, although he made his own feelings clear, sneering at the ‘decrepit’ Jagiełło marrying such a young girl and observing that she brought no dowry, that she had been raised Orthodox, that she was related to Jagiełło in the third and fourth degree, and that her appearance was more beautiful than her manners. Presumably Vytautas knew all of this when he suggested her; he may have taken umbrage at the spirited Sonka’s refusal to act as his obedient tool.3
Długosz’s uncharitable view reflects the marriage’s unpopularity. It was not the first time Jagiełło had upset people with his choice of bride. After Anna of Celje’s death in 1416 he spurned suggestions for a diplomatically advantageous marriage to wed Elizabeth Pilecka-Granowska, widow of Wincenty Granowski, castellan of Nakło, in what was a love match. The thrice-married Elizabeth had a racy past. Famed for her wealth and beauty, she was over forty when Jagiełło proposed in 1417. Her first husband, Višel Čambor, a Bohemian-Moravian nobleman had abducted her, only to be promptly murdered by Jenčik of Hičina, a Moravian rival for her hand, who married her, but died shortly thereafter. Following Wincenty’s death in 1410 she ran her estates in southern Poland with consummate shrewdness on behalf of her five children by him, before Jagiełło, who had known her for years, pressed his suit during a visit to Sanok in a matchmaking exercise engineered by his favourite sister Alexandra, duchess of Mazovia.4
This was Jagiełło’s happiest marriage, although it lasted barely three years until Elizabeth’s unexpected death in 1420. It came at a price. It was opposed by the Polish council and Vytautas, outraged that he had not been consulted. Jagiełło dashed off to mollify him in a meeting at Dobrotwór on the Bug. Vytautas accepted his decision, but observed that the marriage shamed the Gediminids, since Jagiełło could have secured a more advantageous and seemly match. Resistance to Elizabeth’s coronation was widespread, and it was only when Jagiełło threatened to return to Lithuania that permission was grudgingly given. She was crowned in Cracow on 19 September 1417 not by Trąba, the primate, but by Jan of Rzeszów, archbishop of Lwów. Only three Wielkopolskan dignitaries turned up, begging Jagiełło to postpone the ceremony. When Elizabeth died, Długosz maliciously observed that the court rejoiced along with the whole country: ‘the ovation at her funeral was greater than at her coronation’.5
Although Sonka was to prove a more adept political operator than Elizabeth, Jagiełło’s choice upset many. She was not only his subject, as Elizabeth had been; she was also of Lithuanian-Ruthenian descent, only converting to Catholicism on the eve of the wedding. Most of Jagiełło’s Polish advisers favoured a marriage to another Sophia (Ofka), widow of Sigismund of Luxembourg’s brother Wenzel. Jagiełło refused. Ofka was past childbearing age, and he yearned for an heir. A suggestion that he marry Sigismund’s eleven-year-old daughter Elizabeth held no appeal for a seventy-year-old who had already wed one child bride. Jagiełło took Vytautas’s advice and settled upon Sonka, who was seventeen when he married her. It proved an inspired choice. To the consternation of those who thought him decrepit, Sonka gave birth on 31 October 1424 to a healthy son, named Władysław after his father. Another son, Casimir, did not long survive, but in 1427 Sonka bore Jagiełło another, also christened Casimir, who did. All that winter hunting was clearly invigorating (see Fig. 6. Genealogy 4).
The birth of the first male heirs to the Polish throne in over a century constituted a minor political earthquake, and Sonka had to endure suspicion that her sons were not Jagiełło’s: in 1427 seven alleged lovers, including the royal marshal, Wawrzyniec of Kalinowa, and Piotr Kurowski, brother of Mikołaj, archbishop of Gniezno, were accused on the basis of evidence obtained by torture from two of Sonka’s attendants. Four were arrested; three fled to Hungary, and it took strenuous denials on Sonka's part and the public support of Zbigniew Oleśnicki, bishop of Cracow, to clear her name. Długosz blamed Vytautas for the accusations, although it was to Vytautas that Sonka appealed, and he wrote a letter defending her honour. The interventions of two such prominent individuals proved decisive, and the charges were dropped. Although accusations resurfaced in 1431, several of the accused, including Jan Koniecpolski and Jan Hincza of Rogów went on to enjoy distinguished careers in royal service.6
Fig. 6. Genealogy 4: The Piasts, the Angevins, and the Jagiellons.
Vytautas’s absence from Sonka’s coronation and Długosz’s allegation that he was behind the 1427 accusations have been presented as evidence that his relationship with Jagiełło was cooling around the time of the 1422 Melno treaty.7 Yet Melno was the expression of a new sense of unity. Vytautas’s commitment to the war had occasionally been lukewarm, but Sigismund of Luxembourg’s arbitration verdict, delivered in Breslau on 6 January 1420, which stipulated that Samogitia should return to the Order on Vytautas’s death in accordance with the 1411 Thorn peace, restored his ardour.8 The verdict was a shock: Jagiełło had urged Sigismund to act as arbiter, and expected a favourable outcome. According to Długosz when the cousins learned of it in Lithuania their weeping and angry cries were audible outside the room.9 Vytautas regained his enthusiasm for war, participating energetically in the 1422 campaign.
Nikodem nevertheless argues that the Breslau verdict marked the end of close cooperation between the cousins, suggesting that thereafter Vytautas, motivated primarily by his dynastic interests, consistently sought to undermine Jagiełło with greater subtlety than in the 1390s, directing his intrigues not so much against the Poles, or the union which—so Nikodem argues—Vytautas never challenged, but directly against Jagiełło, with a view to establishing his unrivalled control over an autonomous Lithuania, and the succession to it for the Kęstutids. Thus, when Vytautas’s first wife Anna died in July 1418, he took a second wife, the widowed Juliana, granddaughter of Anna’s sister, who was young enough to bear him an heir. Although the marriage remained childless, Nikodem argues that Vytautas still pursued his vision, intending that he should be succeeded by his brother Žygimantas.10
Nikodem’s attack on the traditional Polish view that from the 1390s Jagiełło and Vytautas worked closely together with common aims and largely in harmony is robust, and his close attention to the sources clearly demonstrates the extent to which historians have allowed this assumption to colour their interpretations of the evidence. In many instances his criticisms are justified. Yet his attack on received wisdom goes too far, and his view on the nature of the relationship colours his approach to the sources: he is as guilty as those whom he attacks of reading the sources according to his assumptions, and of dismissing or overlooking evidence that does not suit his case.11
The simple truth is that Melno’s recognition of Lithuanian rule over Samogitia in perpetuity removed the common purpose that had bound the cousins and their realms since 1409. In its aftermath Polish and Lithuanian interests diverged, and differences of opinion with regard to political strategy and aims emerged; heightened tension was the inevitable result. Yet if one discards the assumption that all Vytautas’s actions were driven by a burning commitment to Kęstudid domination, the evidence suggests not that Vytautas embarked on a Machiavellian campaign to undermine Jagiełło while pretending to cooperate with him, but that a common purpose and willingness to compromise survived for much of the decade, until the spectacular conflagration that flared up in 1429.
The problem was that Vytautas and Lithuania secured far more from Melno than the Poles, to whom Samogitia meant little.12 They received scant reward for abandoning the stable peace they had enjoyed with the Order since 1343, despite considerable investment in thirteen years of warfare. Melno left numerous minor issues unresolved, most of them concerning the border between Poland and the Ordensstaat, and the treaty was not ratified until June 1424. Border disputes still festered on, however, in particular over the fortified mill at Lübitsch near Thorn, on the Order’s side of the river Drwęnca, the border agreed at Melno. The mill had caused friction since 1292. Destroyed and rebuilt on several occasions, its demolition was ordered in the only clause of the Breslau verdict favourable to Poland. It was rebuilt, but Melno again decreed its destruction, although Vytautas unexpectedly supported the Order over the issue during the negotiations. In 1423–4 he backed it over the border between Poland and the Neumark, and in November 1425 he raised the matter following intensive lobbying from Rusdorf. In 1426 he even suggested that if the Poles insisted on the mill’s demolition he would return Palanga to the Order.13
Melno did not so much drive a wedge between Vytautas and Jagiełło as indicate that Polish and Lithuanian interests were diverging. Vytautas supported the Order over its border with Poland not out of spite, but because he needed peace in the west to pursue his ambitions in the east, where the opportunity afforded by Vasilii I’s death in 1425 and the succession of Vytautas’s grandson and ward, the infant Vasilii II, was too good to miss. With Muscovy neutralized, he launched campaigns to subdue Pskov (1426) and Novgorod (1428).14 Far from indicating a Machiavellian policy to undermine Jagiełło, the Lübitsch dispute reflected Vytautas’s impatience at Polish wrangles over the border, which delayed Melno’s ratification and threatened stable relations with the Order. It was Polish politicians, not Jagiełło, who proved obstinate; far from being obstructive, Jagiełło supported the Pskov and Novgorod campaigns, in which many Poles fought.
Vytautas and Jagiełło cooperated on another front. Sigismund faced a serious challenge to Luxembourg authority in Bohemia after the 1415 execution of Jan Hus following his condemnation for heresy at Constance. In August 1419 Wenzel, King of Bohemia, died with characteristic bad timing at the height of a rebellion that erupted in Prague in July. Although Sigismund’s rights to the throne were not initially questioned despite the fact that Hus had travelled to Constance under a safe-conduct he had issued, his aggressive response united moderate and radical Hussites. Sigismund managed to have himself crowned in July but was already losing control. Outmanoeuvred and defeated in battle, on 7 July 1421 he was deposed by the Bohemian estates. The throne remained vacant until 1436, which stimulated intrigue and instability across central Europe.
The Hussite challenge enabled Jagiełło and Vytautas to force Sigismund to abandon his support for the Order during the last years of the war. They had to tread carefully, however. Support for Hussitism after the declaration of a crusade against it by Martin V in January 1420 risked squandering the political capital amassed at Constance. Yet there was considerable sympathy for Hussitism in Poland: many Poles had studied in Prague, and knew Hus and his circle, while Hussite resistance to the dominance of German culture struck a chord. The danger that Hussitism would seep into Poland worried authorities in church and state alike.15
Jagiełło’s dilemma was exposed in May 1420 when the Hussites offered him the Bohemian crown. He played for time, replying that he could not accept without consulting his advisors. An assembly in Łęczyca in July rejected the idea, although it allowed Jagiełło to give an equivocal answer to put pressure on Sigismund.16 A second Bohemian delegation informed Jagiełło of Sigismund’s misdeeds; it was told he could not respond without consulting Vytautas and an assembly was called to Niepołomice in November, which again rejected the offer.17 The Bohemians, however, received hints from Jagiełło and the anti-Luxembourg Szafraniec brothers that they should persevere. Another embassy travelled to Lithuania, where Jagiełło was wintering. When the Bohemians arrived in February, Jagiełło refused to accept the crown; they responded by offering it to Vytautas.
It was difficult for Jagiełło to accept the offer given the hostility to Hussitism of most of his councillors. For Vytautas to explore the possibility was another matter, and his envoys travelled to Bohemia in the autumn. Sigismund, aware of the danger, suggested that Jagiełło marry his daughter or sister-in-law, with Silesia as the dowry. The Polish council, keen to recover Silesia, accepted the offer, and Zawisza the Black was despatched to negotiate arrangements. If Jagiełło was to avoid a marriage he did not desire, he needed Vytautas’s support. At their annual meeting, following a papal declaration of neutrality, they seized the opportunity afforded by the Hussite victory at Kutná Hora (21–22 December 1421), where Zawisza was captured. They agreed that Jagiełło should marry Sonka, and that Vytautas should accept the Hussite offer. Vytautas sensibly refused to go to Prague himself; Jagiełło’s nephew Sigismund Korybutovych, duke of Novhorod-Siversky, was despatched to secure Bohemia in his name.18
Thus for all the subsequent cooling of Vytautas’s relationship with Sonka, the marriage resulted from the cousins working in their common dynastic interest against a powerful group on the Polish council. There is no reason to doubt Długosz’s view that Korybutovich’s mission had Jagiełło’s approval. Nikodem’s attempt to demonstrate that Vytautas’s acceptance of the Bohemian offer was intended to undermine Jagiełło and stress Vytautas’s position as an independent prince is convoluted and as unconvincing as Halecki’s suggestion that his acceptance was due not to ambition, but an attachment to the idea of union as a general political principle, or Jučas’s view that his main aim was to assert Lithuanian sovereignty.19 Although the expedition was officially Lithuanian, and Jagiełło repeatedly denied that he had sanctioned it to the German electors and the Polish episcopate, the majority of Korybutovich’s 2,500 troops were Poles recruited from the Cracow palatinate. It is implausible to suppose that Jagiełło did not know or approve.20
Although Prague gave Korybutovich a hero’s welcome in May 1422, his expedition failed. His force was too small; in early 1423, as the Hussite radicals under Jan Žižka seized control, the perils of Polish-Lithuanian involvement became evident. Korybutovich navigated the rough waters of Bohemian politics skilfully enough, but if the intention was to force Sigismund of Luxembourg to settle, as seems likely, the ploy was successful. In March 1423 the 1412 Lubowla treaty was renewed at Kežmarok, where Sigismund promised not to aid the Order.21 Jagiełło and Vytautas officially turned against the Hussites, and Korybutovich was forced to withdraw, although he returned to Bohemia between 1424 and 1427 on his own account, probably with tacit support from Jagiełło and Vytautas: the pro-Hussite Szafraniec brothers, the cornerstones of the court party, assisted his preparations.22 Despite Kežmarok, the crushing of the Hussites was not necessarily in the Gediminid interest.
Until 1424 the relationship between Jagiełło and Vytautas functioned much as before. They by no means agreed on everything, and their winter meetings could be stormy, but they used them to thrash out a common position on important matters. It was Władysław’s birth, not geopolitics, that radically changed the assumptions upon which relations between the cousins, and between Poland and Lithuania, had been based since 1413. For the rest of his life, Jagiełło fought to secure his sons’ hereditary rights in both Poland and Lithuania. His campaign had serious implications for Vytautas and for Jadwiga, recognized as Jagiełło’s natural heir in 1413. Yet despite Nikodem’s assumption of a natural clash of interests between the new Jagiellon dynasty and the interests of the Kęstutids, there is no indication that 1424 changed much.
There is plenty of evidence that Jagiełło still trusted Vytautas. When Jadwiga reached marriageable age in 1420, Jagiełło approached Frederick von Hohenzollern, margrave of Brandenburg, supporter of the Order, and Sigismund’s ally. In April 1421, in return for signing an alliance against the Order, Frederick secured the betrothal of his infant son Frederick to Jadwiga. Vytautas was to be his guardian, with every prospect of dominating the union after Jagiełło’s death. Nothing changed on Jagiełło’s side after the birth of his sons. Given his advanced age, Jagiełło needed Vytautas to protect their interests after his death, which was bound to occur before they reached their majority. Sonka was energetic and capable, but she lacked Vytautas’s experience and the respect he enjoyed among Polish politicians. There was no compelling dynastic reason for Vytautas to scheme against Jagiełło’s sons: he had no son of his own, and, despite Nikodem’s assertions to the contrary, there is no evidence that he showed any interest in the claims of his brother and nephew: they were not mentioned in Horodło, and he subsequently gave no indication that he was grooming them to succeed him. His dynastic hopes were invested in his grandson, whose position in Moscow was precarious. Vytautas’s campaigns against Pskov and Novgorod were expensive failures, however. Several Ruthenian princes paid him homage, but such acts were cheap, and Muscovy energetically resisted his bid for control of Pskov and Novgorod.
To pursue his eastern ambitions Vytautas needed Jagiełło’s support, while Jagiełło needed Vytautas’s backing to secure recognition of his sons’ rights to the Polish throne ahead of Jadwiga. For if Horodło stipulated that an election would only be held if Jagiełło lacked heirs, it was agreed when Anna of Celje was still alive. The position of sons born of a commoner he had married against council advice was unclear. Jagiełło used a lavish christening in February 1425, to assert Władysław’s hereditary right to the throne, but it was by no means obvious that his birth eclipsed Jadwiga’s claim.23 As in 1370 and 1382, it was likely that the community of the realm would insist on having its say. Far from falling out over the succession, Jagiełło and Vytautas appear to have worked closely together, and Jagiełło was well aware of the importance of keeping Vytautas’s trust: on hearing of Władysław’s birth, instead of rushing to Sonka’s side, he headed for Lithuania to consult with his cousin. It was not until early 1425 that he returned to Poland to see his son.24
Jagiełło now seized the initiative. He began collecting oaths of loyalty from towns across Poland to Władysław as verus dominus et heres, who would inherit the throne ahead of Jadwiga. Starting in Cracow on 28 February, he travelled to Wielkopolska gathering declarations; twenty-five have survived. Initially, Sonka was made protector of her sons’ interests, but with the agreement of the Polish council, Vytautas was appointed their guardian in the event of Jagiełło’s death. He would thus play a central role in maintaining their natural rights to the throne. Given his dominance in Lithuania and Polish support for the union, his position on Jagiełło’s death would be powerful indeed.25
Jagiełło certainly needed Vytautas’s support. The success of his oath-gathering in the cities encouraged him to extend it to the nobility, with leaseholders on royal estates targeted first.26 Yet if most starostas promised to surrender royal castles under their control to Władysław on Jagiełło’s death, resistance soon flared. Jagiełło therefore summoned a general assembly in Brześć, hoping to secure an agreement. It proved willing to recognize Władysław as Jagiełło’s heir, but there was a price to pay. On 30 April it presented its terms. Władysław was to be accepted as hereditary successor to the Polish throne, but the provisional nature of that acceptance was stressed. Before being crowned he was to swear to uphold all rights and privileges conferred by previous monarchs, and to a new set of privileges. If he did not, the community of the realm would consider itself free of any commitment to him.27 A general privilege giving Jagiełło’s consent was prepared by the royal chancery and sealed on 1 May.28 Yet it was not issued, and was retained in the royal archive. Without Jagiełło’s formal ratification, the assembly declared that its own document, sealed by all who publicly assented to it, should be consigned for safekeeping to Zbigniew Oleśnicki, to be presented to Jagiełło when he issued his formal consent.29
Why did Jagiełło not ratify the privilege? It was traditionally argued that he had second thoughts, and wished to consider the matter at greater length before committing himself.30 His reluctance to accept the offer, however, is evident in the privilege’s text, which differs from the document presented to him the day before. While some differences were minor, those concerning the throne were not. Władysław had been designated the ‘true and legitimate successor’, whereas the assembly’s document omitted the term ‘legitimus’, and distinguished between the hereditary princes of the Piast line, and ‘natural and elected’ rulers. Finally, Jagiełło’s privilege did not contain the crucial clause requiring his heirs to confirm the rights and privileges granted by his predecessors before their coronation.31 The assembly’s formulation reminded Jagiełło that he held the throne not by hereditary right, but by his 1386 election, which had been reconfirmed on Jadwiga’s death. Jagiełło countered by inserting ‘legittimus’, thereby suggesting that Władysław had a natural right to succeed his father, and denying that Polish kings held their thrones conditionally by election.
The stakes were high. A victory for Jagiełło would secure his dynasty’s hereditary right to the Polish throne; to accept the assembly’s demands would constitute a public concession of the right of the community of the realm to select its rulers from within the dynasty, a principle that Jagiełło had never publicly accepted. Thus the suggestion that it was Jagiełło who, after reaching agreement with the assembly, had second thoughts is wide of the mark. It is more likely that the privilege was drafted to indicate the limits of what he was willing to concede, and was rejected by the assembly: Długosz observes that the reason for Oleśnicki retaining the assembly’s document was to hold it until Jagiełło issued a document identical in its wording.32 The privilege languishing in the royal archive was not, and Jagiełło left to ponder and consult with Vytautas.
There was much to ponder. The consequences of accepting the conditional basis of royal authority had been demonstrated in 1422, when, at the climax of the war against the Order, the noble levy refused to leave its Czerwińsk camp unless Jagiełło confirmed the szlachta’s existing privileges and granted new ones. Most were economic in nature, but several clauses placed new restrictions on the monarch. The most significant stipulated that he would no longer have the power to confiscate noble estates without previously securing a judgement in a court of law. Court verdicts were to be based on written law, and the king himself was to be subject to the law in boundary disputes with nobles. He was no longer to mint coins without council permission. Even more damaging was the stipulation that the office of starosta, the monarch’s main official at the local level, could no longer be held together with that of land judge. Equally worrying was the 1423 Warta statute, agreed at an assembly held there in Jagiełło’s absence, which adjusted Polish land law in the light of the new privileges.33
Jagiełło ratified the Warta statute, but after Władysław’s birth he was unwilling to accept further limitations on the authority he hoped to bequeath him. He did not intend to leave his heirs open to the sort of blackmail he had faced at Czerwińsk. He responded immediately, issuing an edict in Wieluń in 1424 which decreed that any Poles fighting for the Hussites who did not obey the call to return from Bohemia by Ascension Sunday would have their moveable and immoveable property confiscated in a direct challenge to a central clause in the Czerwińsk privileges.34
Jagiełło’s backbone was stiffened by Vytautas and Sigismund of Luxembourg. Sigismund advised him to hold firm, maintaining that his subjects were required to accept Władysław by divine law, and urged him to gather oaths individually from office-holders. Jagiełło decided to make a stand. On 19 May 1426 at an assembly in Łęczyca he hurled down the gauntlet by formally refusing his consent to the Brześć terms. It was adroitly picked up by Oleśnicki, who took the document entrusted to him in 1425 and, with an exquisite sense of political theatre, returned it to the floor of the house, declaring that Jagiełło had failed to keep his promise. Outraged nobles slashed it to pieces with their sabres before Jagiełło’s eyes.35
Oleśnicki was a formidable opponent. He knew Jagiełło well and had an insider’s knowledge of the workings of his government. Born in 1389 into a middling noble family—his father was land judge of Cracow from 1405—he had studied in Cracow and Breslau, where he had learned German and obtained a perspective on life and politics outside Poland that served him well. Family connections brought him to court; while serving as a royal secretary he performed the feat that earned him fame and favour: as part of Jagiełło’s entourage at Tannenberg he shattered the lance of the Meissen knight Dypold von Kökeritz, who had penetrated the royal bodyguard and was bearing down on the king.36
Saving Jagiełło’s life was a useful career move, but it was Oleśnicki’s intelligence and talent that propelled him up the ladder. In 1411 he was among the envoys sent to John XXIII and began the work in the royal chancery that engaged him until his unexpected elevation in 1423 to the bishopric of Cracow, the wealthiest and most powerful Polish see, a remarkable advance for a man of only thirty-four who, although a canon of Cracow, had not previously held any church office higher than the—admittedly prestigious—provostry of St Florian granted as compensation when Jan Szafraniec was preferred to him for the vice-chancellorship in 1418. This suggests that Oleśnicki, who opposed Jagiełło’s third marriage, was already seen as less tractable than Szafraniec, who became a pillar of the court party.
Oleśnicki’s revenge came in 1423, when Jastrzębiec was unceremoniously and unwillingly shunted out of Cracow to become archbishop of Gniezno after taking the blame for the 1420 Breslau fiasco. Jagiełło intended to replace him with Szafraniec, but the intervention of a group of Małopolskan lords led by Jan Tarnowski, palatine of Cracow, whose influence had waned, and who had family links with Jastrzębiec, caused a last-minute change of heart. Szafraniec had to content himself with the chancellorship, while Oleśnicki was unexpectedly elevated to a see that was, because of its proximity to the royal court, more politically influential than Gniezno.37
Assessment of Oleśnicki as a politician is difficult because of the influence of Długosz’s Annals. Długosz worked for Oleśnicki for nearly twenty-five years; it was Oleśnicki who suggested that he write his great work; and it was from Oleśnicki that Długosz derived first-hand knowledge of recent political events and a substantial cache of documents, the foundations on which his great history rested, although he did not begin writing it until after Oleśnicki’s death in 1455.38 While Długosz placed a high value on historical accuracy, his presentation of Oleśnicki’s life and career served a different end. It is not that he simply acted as Oleśnicki’s mouthpiece, as many have assumed, but the way in which his account is arranged round Oleśnicki that distorts. Although Długosz treated Oleśnicki as a historical figure, he also symbolized Długosz’s conception of Polish patriotism, spearheaded by the church, and was represented as the modern equivalent of St Stanisław, bishop of Cracow, who died a martyr’s death on the orders of Bolesław the Bold in 1079.39
Oleśnicki’s dramatic gesture at Łęczyca in 1426 ensured deadlock in the dispute over the succession, but it was his commitment to the union that put him at the heart of the crisis in Polish-Lithuanian relations that blew up out of a seemingly clear blue sky in 1429, and which has gone down in history as the burza koronacyjna: the coronation tempest. It erupted during a meeting of Jagiełło, Vytautas, and Sigismund of Luxembourg at Lutsk in January 1429. Vytautas’s grandson, Vasilii II, was present, as was Boris, Grand Duke of Tver, the papal legate, Andrea de Palatio, one of the Mazovian dukes—probably Janusz I—several Silesian, Lithuanian, and Ruthenian princes, and a host of Polish and Hungarian nobles. Ambassadors from John VIII Palaeologus, Erik of Pomerania, Alexander, the hospodar of Moldavia, the Teutonic and Livonian grand masters, and the Tatar khan of Perekop also attended.40 The summit’s ostensible purpose was to settle various disputes between Jagiełło and Sigismund, in particular over Jagiełło’s failure to aid Sigismund against the Ottomans, who had crushed the Hungarians at Golubac in Serbia in June 1428.41 Vytautas mediated, and the assembly discussed Polish-Lithuanian relations with the Order and the Hussite challenge, while Sigismund floated a bold plan to relocate the Order to the Danube to spearhead resistance to the Ottomans.42
After days of inconclusive talks Sigismund lobbed a carefully prepared grenade into the proceedings by reviving a suggestion he had first made in 1410, that Vytautas should be crowned king of Lithuania. According to Długosz, when Sigismund raised the matter privately, Vytautas replied that he could not agree without first receiving Jagiełło’s consent. Sigismund said that this should not be a problem, promising to take care of the matter. Early the next morning Sigismund, accompanied by Vytautas and Sigismund’s wife Barbara, burst into Jagiełło’s bedchamber. Chasing out the royal secretaries, Sigismund presented the plan to Jagiełło, who replied that he considered his cousin worthy not just of a royal, but of an imperial crown, scoring a neat point against Sigismund, who had as yet failed to be elected Emperor. He added that he could not agree to such an important proposal without consulting his council. When Sigismund said this was unnecessary, Długosz recounts that Jagiełło, beguiled by Sigismund and welcoming any increase in the power of his Lithuanian fatherland, ‘apparently and unexpectedly gave his secret agreement, or rather he neither resisted nor rejected that which was requested’. Vytautas, encouraged by Sigismund, by his friends, ‘and even by . . . [ Jagiełło] himself, who did not appreciate the danger threatening him and his kingdom’, informed the Lithuanian council, which welcomed the plan. Vytautas then took the fatal step of sending his secretary, Mikołaj Sepieński, to address the Polish council. Sepieński outlined the proposal, stating that Jagiełło had agreed, but thought it appropriate to consult before announcing it. Vytautas now entered the chamber with his ‘prelates and boyars, in the conviction that the Poles, surprised by his presence, could be persuaded to agree’.43
If Vytautas believed this, he was swiftly disappointed. Although Jastrzębiec gave no firm opinion on the matter despite rambling on at length, Oleśnicki was brutally dismissive. Observing that a quick decision could not be expected on such a complex matter, he immediately mentioned the union, stating that on marrying Jadwiga, Jagiełło had promised that Lithuania would convert to Catholicism, and would be ‘incorporated into Poland and subjected to it’.44 He stressed that Jagiełło, Vytautas, and other Lithuanian princes had sworn to respect this agreement, which had been renewed at Horodło, where, on Sigismund’s advice, Lithuanian nobles had been welcomed into Polish clans. Now, however, Sigismund wished to tear this union apart, and foment war between Poles and Lithuanians.45 Oleśnicki was supported by Tarnowski and most of the Polish council. After a turbulent discussion in which Jagiełło agreed to withdraw his consent, they returned to Poland, probably leaving Lutsk on 25 January; Jagiełło followed shortly afterwards. Although, according to Vytautas, the cousins spoke before he left, with Jagiełło again expressing his support for the coronation, back in Poland, he was forced to oppose the plan.46
The origins and significance of the coronation tempest are controversial, as the sources contain much that is unclear. Although most Polish historians accept Długosz’s testimony that Sigismund was the plan’s author, Kolankowski maintained that it was Jagiełło’s idea: frustrated in his desire to secure recognition for Władysław’s unconditional hereditary claim to the Polish throne, Jagiełło saw Lithuania’s elevation to the status of a kingdom as a means to put pressure on the Poles over the succession. Since Vytautas had no sons, he would be succeeded by Władysław, who would, by inheriting Lithuania, be well placed to secure the Polish throne, assuming that the Poles wished to continue the union.47 This interpretation is certainly plausible: Jagiełło had supported a similar plan in 1392, and there had been rumours before, notably in 1398, that he intended to pursue the matter.48 It is not, however, confirmed in contemporary sources, resting on a passage in the Bychowiec chronicle, compiled in Lithuania in the early sixteenth century and now largely dismissed as a reliable source for earlier periods.49 The older chronicles suggest that it was Vytautas, not Jagiełło, who instigated the affair.50 Lithuanian historians have tended to accept this view. Jučas cites in support an unpublished letter to the Order of 5 December 1428 and summarized by the nineteenth-century historian of Prussia Johannes Voigt, in which Vytautas stated that he intended to strike at his dependence on Poland, which grew day by day, completely break Lithuania’s ‘increasingly loose’ ties to Poland, and found his own realm (Reich) so that in the twilight of his days he might set a royal crown on his head.51 Błaszczyk has demolished this claim: Voigt, not known for Prussian exactitude, was not summarizing an unknown letter, but adding his own interpretation of Vytautas’s behaviour after citing Vytautas’s letter of the same date, which has been published and which merely provided credentials for one of his envoys.52 Jučas attempts to brush aside Błaszczyk’s objections, but does not engage with his critique. Without this letter, however, there is no corroboration for the much later Bychowiec account, while there is considerable support for Długosz’s version: a letter from Rusdorf indicates that the Poles were convinced—and implies that the Order itself believed—that Sigismund was responsible, while if Vytautas had offered Lutsk as a venue, the meeting was Sigismund’s idea.53 Sigismund had form: he had attempted to interest Vytautas in a crown in 1410, but Vytautas had rebuffed the approach.54 Długosz had no doubts. He entered Oleśnicki’s service a mere two years later, and was the bishop’s chancellor by 1433, so it is likely he heard his mentor’s version of the affair at first hand shortly after the event.
Nikodem, who dismisses much of Długosz’s account, since it does not fit his interpretation of the relationship between Jagiełło and Vytautas, accepts that Sigismund was the plan’s instigator, but argues that Vytautas must have known of the idea before the Lutsk summit. He dismisses Vytautas’s denials as disingenuous, but can produce no evidence that he did know, arguing that Sigismund must have told him because it would have been stupid of him not to.55 Yet if one looks at the evidence that does exist, such speculation seems wide of the mark. When Sigismund proposed in Lutsk that he meet with Vytautas alone, Vytautas insisted on Jagiełło’s presence.56 This demand fits with the way events developed, which suggest that Vytautas genuinely wished to secure Jagiełło’s backing.
Although Kolankowski was undoubtedly wrong to see Jagiełło as the plan’s initiator, his contention that Jagiełło’s attitude to it was formed by the dispute over the Polish succession is plausible. Vytautas’s insistence on Jagiełło’s presence at his meeting with Sigismund, however, suggests that it may have been he who first saw its potential to break the sour stalemate following the dramatic events at Łęczyca in 1426. Vytautas had shown no inclination since 1424 to challenge the rights of Jagiełło’s sons in either Poland or Lithuania, and had been closely consulted at all stages by Jagiełło over the succession. In the context of the failure of his campaigns against Pskov and Novgorod it would have been strange suddenly to alienate Jagiełło, who had supported them, while the Order was unable in its weakened state to provide effective military aid. Support for his ambitious eastern policy from Jagiełło or Władysław, for whom Vytautas would be guardian, was far more likely if the Polish monarchy strengthened its position and therefore its ability to act decisively.
Whether or not Vytautas saw the plan in this light, Jagiełło’s initial response was favourable. The picture given by Długosz of a startled, naive, and inept monarch torn rudely from his slumbers and giving his consent without realizing its consequences is unconvincing.57 According to Vytautas’s account, written shortly after the events—which on this point there is no reason to question—Sigismund, having discussed the plan with Vytautas, then spoke with Jagiełło alone—a circumstance omitted by Długosz—and secured Jagiełło’s provisional consent. The following morning Sigismund staged the dramatic scene in Jagiełło’s bedchamber, which was not designed to catch him unawares, but to persuade him to repeat his agreement before Vytautas. According to Vytautas—and again there is no reason to doubt him, since Jagiełło, the recipient of the letter, must have known it was true—Vytautas then spoke to his cousin in Lithuanian, which Sigismund did not understand—discussions were being conducted in Ruthenian, which he did—suggesting that he consult with the Polish council before giving his assent. Jagiełło, however, ignored the warning, reiterating his support for the idea.58
Thus Jagiełło knew of the plan, and had slept on it. Yet if he calculated that he could thereby put pressure on the Poles, Oleśnicki’s intervention and the council’s dismissal of the idea disabused him of any such notion. If Vytautas hoped that Jagiełło’s support would be enough to persuade the Poles to accept the plan, he was rudely and publicly disappointed. It was the public nature of that humiliation that is the key to understanding the subsequent course of events. For it was Vytautas’s precipitate actions in telling the Lithuanians of Jagiełło’s consent, and sending Siepieński to address the Polish council, that unleashed the tempest. Perhaps he hoped that he could bounce the Poles into accepting the plan, but once the idea had been rejected in his presence and before the Lithuanian council, the matter became one of honour. He could not back down without loss of face.
Whatever the true story—and the surviving accounts paint an all-too-plausible picture of misunderstandings, hasty decisions, and injured pride—a vicious cat had escaped from the capacious bag in which it had long been confined. As Jagiełło wrote to Sigismund in January, the plan raised fundamental questions about the nature of the relationship between Poland and Lithuania. He asked Sigismund to abandon it, since it risked bringing conflict and even war between Poles and Lithuanians, and threatened to dissolve or break the ‘agreements, unions and alliances’ they had made. The raising of Vytautas to royal status would call into question the hereditary rights of Jagiełło’s sons in Lithuania: he pointed out that Vytautas possessed ‘many of our lands’ only for his lifetime, and that if he were crowned, these lands could be lost to Jagiełło and his heirs.59
This letter suggests that Jagiełło’s support for the plan had indeed been a ploy to put pressure on the Poles, but a tactic that had worked well in 1398 had backfired badly, and he had no choice but to withdraw his support at the risk of destroying his patiently nurtured relationship with Vytautas. Sigismund, stirring the pot with conspicuous enthusiasm, promptly sent a copy to Vytautas, who complained to Jagiełło that he had internationalized the matter without attempting to settle it privately, as the cousins had always done.60 Jagiełło squirmed, implausibly claiming that the letter had been sent without his permission by Vytautas’s bête noire, the vice-chancellor, Oporowski.61 Whether or not this was true, it did not help. The problem could no longer be resolved by a cosy chat. Vytautas had already turned to the Lithuanian boyars. On 13 February, four days before he wrote his blistering response to Jagiełło, the letter to Sigismund was read out at an assembly in Eišiškės. Vytautas asked the Lithuanians if they wished to be subjects of the Poles and pay them tribute. They replied that they and their forebears had always been free; that they had never paid tribute to the Poles; that they did not wish to; and that they wished to preserve their ancient liberty.62
The involvement of the Polish and Lithuanian elites in the quarrel was more significant than the breakdown of relations between the cousins, although the collapse of trust was spectacular enough. The problem was not one of Polish incorporationism confronting Lithuanian separatism, as which it is frequently portrayed.63 As Oleśnicki recognized, the key issue was the status of Lithuania within the union. Vytautas’s testimony demonstrates that what he and the Lithuanians challenged was the idea that Lithuania was subordinate to Poland. Nowhere did Vytautas assert a claim to independent statehood; the coronation plan was more to establish that Lithuania was Poland’s equal than a separatist demand for the destruction of the union.
The problem was the ambiguous formulation of the union treaties. The Lithuanian claim to equal status was a perfectly valid interpretation of the union as set out in the various agreements from Krewo to Horodło. The use of terms such as unire and confoedere implied a relationship of equals within an association of peoples or of political communities. Yet it was possible to read the treaties in a different way, for they were equally concerned with the question of lordship—rather than sovereignty, the anachronistic term that dominates much of the historiography—and therefore with royal and dynastic power and the locus of authority within the kingdom and the political community: the regnum and the corona regni. With regard to lordship, as the Poles made clear during the coronation tempest, Jagiełło held supreme power in his capacity as the head of the Polish regnum, into which the grand duchy had been incorporated, although within Lithuania he had, in his capacity as supremus princeps, delegated practical authority to his cousin.
The controversy reveals much about the Polish interpretation of the union treaties. In April 1429, the Poles circumvented Sigismund and addressed the Nuremberg Reichstag directly in a document drawn up in the royal chancery, almost certainly by Oporowski. It appealed to the community of a different realm, arguing that Sigismund, as elected king of the Romans, who had no hereditary right to his position, and who was not yet Emperor, did not have the authority to create new kingdoms. In stark contrast, the ruler of Lithuania by hereditary right was Jagiełło.64 At first sight, this document is relentlessly incorporationist. The grand duchy’s Lithuanian and Ruthenian territories, it declared, belonged to the kingdom and corona regni Poloniae by agreement, and had been joined to Poland in perpetuity. Vytautas, who was termed a ‘lesser prince’ (ducem Lithwanie minus principalem) had been granted them for his lifetime as a governor. His relationship to Jagiełło was defined in the same canon law terms used in Vilnius-Radom: ‘in partem solicitudinis assumpsit’.65 His authority was thus contingent, limited, and only granted for his lifetime.
This interpretation was also entirely consistent with the union treaties. As the appeal stressed, Vytautas and the Lithuanians had accepted these terms on several occasions.66 Yet the Poles also stressed to an international audience that they fully upheld the absolute and unconditional hereditary rights in Lithuania for Jagiełło and his successors that they had denied them in Poland in 1425.67 This recognition rather undermined the idea that Lithuania had been incorporated in 1386 into an accessory union. For if the Poles did not believe that Jagiełło or his sons possessed natural rights to the Polish throne—as was made crystal clear in 1425—how could they possess those rights in Lithuania, which, so they maintained, had been incorporated into the Polish regnum, and was, therefore, presumably subject to Polish succession law?
This public recognition of Jagiełło’s hereditary rights to Lithuania reflected the realization by the Poles that the coronation tempest was threatening to blow the union apart. Should Vytautas die before Jagiełło, there was nothing to stop Jagiełło returning to Lithuania, as he had in 1399 and had threatened to in 1417, to secure the throne for his son. Should Jagiełło die before Vytautas, there was nothing to stop Vytautas accepting Sigismund’s offer and crowning himself king, which would constitute the clearest possible demonstration that the ‘incorporation’ of Lithuania depended on nothing more substantial than a particular interpretation of certain phrases in elegant lawyers’ Latin. The success of the working relationship between Jagiełło and Vytautas had been based on Jagiełło’s restraint and willingness not to assert his superior position in public. His willingness to seek Vytautas’s views on matters of state ensured the success not only of the personal relationship, but of the union itself: Jagiełło would routinely say with regard to substantive matters that he could not decide without consulting Vytautas; he used this excuse to buy time over difficult decisions, and to circumvent opposition among his councillors. As for Lithuania, he largely left Vytautas to his own devices. The partnership worked; it was the breach of these principles that Vytautas complained about over Jagiełło’s marriage to Elizabeth Granowska, and, much more vociferously, after the Lutsk assembly. It was the public trumpeting of Lithuania’s subordinate status that unleashed his rage.
He stubbornly sought to bring the coronation plan to fruition. The Poles sent three embassies to Vilnius in an attempt to secure an agreement; in one of them they even proposed—clearly with Jagiełło’s approval—that Jagiełło should abdicate, and Vytautas should be crowned king not of Lithuania, but of Poland. This attempt to allow Vytautas to save face by granting him the status he craved without conceding on the central issue failed. Vytautas had staked too much on maintaining Lithuania’s status; acceptance would have betrayed the Lithuanian elites he had whipped up to support him. Otherwise the Poles remained implacable.
Sigismund was better at launching intrigues than seeing them through. The Poles neatly outflanked him by securing papal support. In such circumstances, Vytautas had little chance of succeeding. He invited a glittering array of guests to Vilnius for the coronation, planned for August 1430, but it turned into a humiliating fiasco. Some came, but despite Vytautas’s frantic appeals, Sigismund did not send the crown he had promised, and the Poles ensured that the coronation would have to be postponed by holding Sigismund’s embassy to Vytautas at the Polish border in August. Contrary to the claims of some Lithuanian historians, it was not carrying a crown: the Poles merely confiscated documents sent by Sigismund. They made it abundantly clear, however, that they would do everything in their power to prevent the crown reaching Vilnius.
The documents were compromising enough. They revealed that Sigismund intended that Vytautas’s heirs should have hereditary rights to his new kingdom, thus guaranteeing Jagiełło’s opposition. There was a proposal for a perpetual alliance between Sigismund, both branches of the Order, and Lithuania that would surround Poland. Finally, Sigismund sent a judgement from legal experts at the University of Vienna seeking to allay Vytautas’s doubts about the legality of any coronation: his specific concern was over the potential lack of anointment and therefore consecration. Since the Lithuanian church was subject to the archbishopric of Gniezno, it was not clear that the bishop of Vilnius had the right to perform the ritual of anointment. The Vienna professors argued that examples including Sicily, Castile, and Scotland indicated that consecration was not necessary to render a coronation legal.68
Sigismund was challenging the whole system of power in eastern Europe established since Krewo, a system that Vytautas himself had done much to construct. For all the political capital that he had invested in the coronation plan, it is clear that Vytautas’s approach was not essentially anti-Polish; nor does it seem that—unlike Sigismund—he wished to destroy the links with Poland that had transformed Lithuania since 1386. For all that, one should not take his protestations at face value; there is much truth in his letter to the Polish lords of June 1430, in which he assured them that he had never undertaken any actions detrimental to Poland, and emphasized that he had taken his stance on the coronation because Jagiełło had broken his promise to support the idea, and on account of the harm done to Lithuania’s honour.69 When Jagiełło led another Polish delegation to Vilnius in October 1430, Vytautas, by this time gravely ill with a malignant growth between his shoulder blades, accepted defeat following the failure of one last attempt to bribe and bully Oleśnicki into changing his mind. Vytautas, facing the implacable opposition of the Polish council, reached a compromise with Jagiełło that would have allowed both him and the Lithuanians to preserve their honour. The details are not known, and suggestions that it involved Vytautas being crowned king of Lithuania with a papal, not an imperial crown, which would then be inherited by Jagiełło’s sons to create a true union of the crowns, are speculative. Meanwhile Vytautas wrote to Sigismund, swearing that he would never renounce the coronation idea, and complaining that Sigismund had broken his promise to send a crown.70 The worsening of his condition en route to Trakai on 16 October brought a final resolution. The next day, with Vytautas’s health ebbing fast, Jagiełło sent home several Polish councillors, including Oleśnicki and Oporowski, ostensibly to secure council agreement to the proposed compromise, although in all probability it was to remove them from the scene while Jagiełło spoke directly to Vytautas. Whatever the truth, in the days before Vytautas’s death on 27 October, the two cousins were reconciled, with Vytautas renouncing his plans, even if the touching picture painted by Długosz owes much to literary imagination.71
Although the coronation tempest blew itself out on Vytautas’s death, the underlying problems were far from resolved. The crisis forced Jagiełło reluctantly to reach agreement over the Polish succession. At an assembly in Jedlnia in March 1430, a new document was sealed to replace the one sabre-shredded at Łęczyca, on which it was closely based. Jagiełło accepted most of the conditions for the recognition of his heirs presented in Brześć in 1425, with the significant omission of the clause in which the community of the realm claimed the right to withdraw its obedience from the monarch if he did not keep his promises: the principle that in the future would be known as de non praestanda oboedientia.72 Jagiełło did not achieve the unconditional recognition of the natural, hereditary rights of his heirs to the Polish throne that he had sought, but the birth of a second son opened the way to a compromise: the assembly emphasized that the community of the realm retained the right to decide which of his sons should succeed him.73 Thus there would be an election after his death, and the new king would only be crowned, once he had sworn to uphold the privileges granted by his father and all his predecessors.74 Nevertheless, Jagiełło had not conceded over the issue of the natural, hereditary rights of his heirs, and it was promised that Vytautas would be consulted over the election, demonstrating that even at the height of the coronation tempest, the Poles were adhering to the Horodło agreement: the privileges stressed that on Vytautas’s death, the lands that Jagiełło had granted him for his lifetime would return to Jagiełło, his sons, and the corona regni with full hereditary rights.75 While minor amendments were made to the Jedlnia documents in Cracow in 1433 to reflect changed circumstances following Vytautas’s death, they did not affect the main agreement.76
The Jedlnia privileges failed to avert a crisis over the succession to Vytautas in Lithuania. For the new Lithuanian assertiveness had revealed fundamental problems with the incorporationist model of union that they upheld. Oleśnicki and the Polish council had displayed considerable flexibility in their attempt to give Vytautas a dignified route out of the coronation imbroglio, but if Jedlnia settled the question of the Polish succession, it was by no means clear what would replace the system maintained so effectively in the grand duchy by Jagiełło and Vytautas from 1401 to 1429. The union’s future depended upon the successful resolution of that problem.
1 Annales xi, 194–8; Franciszek Sikora, ‘Uroczystości koronacyjne królowej Zofii w 1424 r.’, in Stanisław Bylina et al. (eds), Kościół—Kultura—Społeczeństwo (Warsaw, 2000), 161–79.
2 Annales, xi, 151–2. Jagiełło stressed Vytautas’s consent to the match: CEV no. 1128, 619. Maleczyńska questions Vytautas’s matchmaking role: Rola polityczna królowej Zofii Holszańskiej na tle walki stronnictw w Polsce w latach 1422–1434 (Lwów, 1936), 25–6; Sonka’s latest biographer has no such doubts: Bożena Czwojdrak, Zofia Holszańska (Warsaw, 2012), 19.
3 Annales, xi, 157–8; 194–5; Halecki, Dzieje, i, 236–7.
4 Annales, xi, 69–73; Krzyżaniakowa and Ochmański, Jagiełło, 248–9.
5 Annales, xi, 74, 131; Halecki, Dzieje, i, 236, 238; Wioletta Zawitkowska, W służbie pierwszych Jagiellonów: Życie i działalność kanclerza Jana Taszki Koniecpolskiego (Cracow, 2005), 91.
6 Annales, xi, 226–8; Liber cancellariae Stanislai Ciołek, ed. Jacob Caro (Vienna, 1874), no, 83; Krzyżaniakowa and Ochmański, Jagiełło, 292–3; Zawitkowska, W służbie, 123–4; Czwojdrak, Zofia, 30–2.
7 Błaszczyk, Dzieje, ii/i, 507–9; Dundulis, Kova, 53–7; Gudevičius, ‘Vytautas kaip Europos dinastas’, in Vytautas Didysis ir Lietuva, ed. Brigita Balčtienė (Vilnius, 1996), 66–71; Carl Lückerath, Paul von Rusdorf, Hochmeister des Deutschen Ordens 1422–1441 (Bad Godesberg, 1969), 57–60.
8 Zenon Nowak, ‘Materiały żródłowe do sprawy wyroku wrocławskiego Zygmunta Luksemburskiego w procesie polsko-krzyżackim z 1420 r.’, ZH, 41/3 (1976), 149–65.
9 Annales, xi, 117.
10 For the latest summary of his case, see Nikodem, Witold, 423–49.
11 See the critical review by Sperka and Kurtyka of Polska i Litwa wobec husyckich Czech, and their reply to Nikodem’s objections to it: RH, 70 (2004), 245–50; 71 (2005), 309–19.
12 Halecki, Dzieje, i, 222–4.
13 Lückerath, Rusdorf, 58–67; Błaszczyk, Dzieje, ii/i, 467–70.
14 Błaszczyk, Dzieje, ii/i, 494–502.
15 Stanisław Bylina, ‘Oddźwięki husytyzmu w królestwie polskim’, in Bylina, Hussitica: Studia (Warsaw, 2007), 163–79.
16 Annales, xi, 133–6; Sperka, Szafrańcowie, 132–3; Krzyżaniakowa and Ochmański, Jagiełło, 273–6.
17 Annales, xi, 142. Długosz confuses the timing of the embassies: Jerzy Grygiel, Życie i działalność Zygmunta Korybutowicza (Cracow, 1988); 16–21.
18 Annales, xi, 164–5. Długosz’s account is confused: Sperka, Szafrańcowie, 141–2; Grygiel, Życie, 25–31, 39–53.
19 Nikodem, Polska, 218–39, 265–73; Nikodem, Witold, 333–9; Halecki, Dzieje, i, 225–6; Jučas, ‘Vytautas ir Čeku husitai’, in Vytautas Didysis ir Lietuva, 43–53.
20 Grygiel, Życie, 56–8.
21 Grygiel, Życie, 113–14; Sperka, Szafrańcowie, 145.
22 Błaszczyk Dzieje, ii/i, 492–3; Grygiel, Życie, 77–104. Nikodem has problems explaining Vytautas’s volte-face: Witold, 349–51.
23 Wojciech Fałkowski, ‘Król i biskup: Spór o rację stanu Królestwa Polskiego w latach 1424–1426’, in Kiryk and Noga (eds), Oleśnicki, 126–7; Stanisław Roman, ‘Konflikt prawno-polityczny 1425–1430 r. a przywilej brzeski’, CPH, 14/2 (1962), 64–5.
24 Fałkowski, ‘Król’, 124–7.
25 Halecki, Dzieje, i, 238–9; Šležas, ‘Vytauto’, 192–3. Nikodem’s suggestion that Jagiełło, having appointed Vytautas as guardian, suddenly lost faith in him and attempted to appoint Rusdorf in his place rests on a slender source-base and several questionable assumptions: Witold, 375–6.
26 Fałkowski, ‘Król’, 127–9.
27 Liber, no. 51, 118–19; Fałkowski, ‘Król’, 133–6.
28 CESXV, ii, no. 149, 187–92.
29 Roman, ‘Konflikt’, 64–91.
30 For example Halecki, Dzieje, i, 238.
31 CESXV, ii, no. 149, 187. ‘quas a predicto patre suo et aliis regibus principibus ducibus heredibus et dominis regni Polonie tam naturalibus quam electis’: Liber, 119; Fałkowski, ‘Król’, 134–5.
32 Annales, xi, 211.
33 VL, i, 36–8; Stanisław Roman, ‘Zagadnienie prawomocności przywileju czerwińskiego z 1422 r.’, CPH, 11/2 (1959), 73–93; Krzyżaniakowa and Ochmański, Jagiełło, 338.
34 VL, i, 38.
35 Annales, xi, 216–17.
36 PSB, 23, 776; Annales, x/xi, 111.
37 Sperka, ‘Zmiany na arcybiskupstwie gnieźnieńskim, biskupstwie krakowskim i urzędach kancelaryjnych na przełomie lat 1422 i 1423’, TK, 5 (1997), 139–46.
38 Stanisław Gawęda, ‘Ocena niektórych problemów historii ojczystej w “Rocznikach” Jana Długosza’, in Gawęda (ed.), Dlugossiana: Studia historyczne w pięćsetlecie śmierci Jana Długosza (Warsaw, 1980), 187–8; Agnieszka Nalewajek, Dokument w Rocznikach Jana Długosza (Lublin, 2006), 14.
39 Nikodem, Zbigniew Oleśnicki w historiografii polskiej (Cracow, 2001), 14–23.
40 Skarbiec, no. 1465, 99; Annales, xi, 240–1, 260–1; PSRL xxxv, cols 35, 59; Nikodem, ‘Spory o koronację Wielkiego Księcia Litwy Witolda w latach 1429–1430, i: ‘“Burza koronacyjna” w relacji Jana Długosza’, LSP, 6 (1994), 60.
41 Błaszczyk, Burza koronacyjna: Polska-Litwa 1429–1430 (Poznań, 1998), 44.
42 Jučas, Unija, 155; Krzyżaniakowa and Ochmański, Jagiełło, 295.
43 Annales, xi, 252.
44 Błaszczyk, Burza, 50–1, 54–5.
45 Annales, xi, 253.
46 Vytautas to Jagiełło, Trakai (?), 17 February 1429, CEV no. 1345, 816; Błaszczyk, Burza, 56. Nikodem airily dismisses Długosz’s testimony, arguing on specious grounds that Oleśnicki ‘could not’ have spoken so sharply: Witold, 403.
47 Kolankowski, ‘O litewską koronę’, KH, 40 (1926), 386–99; Kolankowski, Dzieje, i, 150–3.
48 Любавский, Сеймъ, 24. See Ch. 8, 89–90.
49 PSRL xxxii, col. 153. For the Bychowiec chronicle, see Ch. 33, 413–17.
50 PSRL xxxv, cols. 58, 141; cf. PSRL xxxii, col. 64.
51 Jučas, ‘Neįvykęs Vytauto vainikavimas’, in Vytautas Didysis ir Lietuva, 54–65; Johannes Voigt, Geschichte Preussens von den ältesten Zeiten bis zum Untergange der Herrschaft des Deutschen Ordens, vii (Königsberg, 1836), 511. The impression that Voigt was summarizing the letter’s content was strengthened when Daniłowicz translated the passage into Polish in his register of diplomatic correspondence: Skarbiec, ii, no. 1458, 98.
52 Błaszczyk, Burza, 29–30. Voigt ‘war kein kritischer und ordnender Geist’: Kurt Forstreuter, Das Preußische Staatsarchiv in Königsberg: Ein geschichtlicher Rückblick mit einer Übersicht über seine Bestände (Göttingen, 1955), 55. For Vytautas’s letter of 5 December 1428 see CEV no. 1335, 805–6 and Regesta historico-diplomatica Ordinis S. Mariae Theutonicorum i: Regesten zum Ordensbriefarchiv, ed. Walther Hubatsch (Göttingen, 1948–1950) no. 5013, 313.
53 Jučas, Unija, 149–52; Skarbiec, ii, no. 1481, 103; Nikodem, ‘Spory’, ii, 157, 164. Vytautas to Sigismund, November 1428, CEV no. 1333, 804.
54 Любавский, Сеймъ, 32.
55 ‘de qua deo teste ante nihil scivimus nec cogitavimus, neque aliquod verbum premisimus’: Vytautas to Jagiełło, Troki (?), 17.II.1429, CEV no. 1358, 815; cf. Vytautas to the Polish lords, June 1429, CEV no. 1358, 836–9; Nikodem, Witold, 386–7. Cf. Halecki, Dzieje, i, 240.
56 Błaszczyk, Burza, 42.
57 Halecki, Dzieje, i, 242.
58 ‘Nos vero in lithwanico diximus ad vos: domine rex, non festinetis in isto facto, consiliamur prius desuper cum prelatis et baronibus vestris, et nos similiter facturi sumus. Ad quod vos iterum dixistis: quomodo vobis placeret et gauderetis, immo ad hoc nimium essetis affecti’: CEV no. 1345, 816. Nikodem, typically, dismisses Vytautas’s account, though he fails to explain why he would lie to Jagiełło, to whom he had spoken: Witold, 387.
59 CEV no. 1341, 810–11.
60 Vytautas to Jagiełło, Trakai (?), 17 February 1429, CEV no. 1345, 816.
61 Historians previously accepted Jagiełło’s claim, but Nikodem’s cogent reasons for rejecting it are accepted by Błaszczyk: Nikodem, ‘Spory’, ii, 165; Błaszczyk, Dzieje, ii/i, 523.
62 Vytautas to Sigismund, Eišiškės, 13 February 1429, CEV no. 1344, 815.
63 For example Błaszczyk, Dzieje, ii/i, 526–30.
64 CESXV, ii, no. 179, 237; no. 239, 240.
65 CESXV, ii, no. 238.
66 CESXV, ii, no. 239.
67 ‘quod, licet prefata terra Lithwanie cum dominiis ipsius necnon suppremus ducatus Lithwanie terrarum ad ipsum dominum Wladyslaum regem Polonie ex successione paterna pleno iure et totali dominio pertineant et pertinent ac pertinere debent, ad ipsum dominum Wladislaum regem eiusque successores et heredes legittimos’: CESXV, ii, no. 237.
68 Błaszczyk, Dzieje, ii/i, 556, 560.
69 Vytautas to the Polish lords, Maladzechna, June 1430, CEV no. 1358, 837. The published version is erroneously dated 1429.
70 Vytautas to Sigismund, Trakai, 13 October 1430, CEV no. 1456, 944–6.
71 Annales, xi, 300–3; Błaszczyk, Dzieje, ii/i, 572–6.
72 Fałkowski, ‘Król’, 134–5, 138; Roman ‘Konflikt’, 78–80.
73 CESXV, ii, no. 178, 234; Roman, ‘Konflikt’, 82–90.
74 CESXV, ii, no. 178, 234–5.
75 CESXV, ii, no. 177, 229; Anatol Lewicki, Powstanie Świdrygiełły (Cracow, 1892), 67.
76 CESXV, ii, no. 212, 308–13; VL, i, 40–2.