The Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the beginning of the union with Poland: the background to Grunwald

ENThe great battle took place almost a quarter of a century after the day in late summer 1385 when Grand Duke Jogaila confirmed in Krėva to the representatives of the Polish Queen Mother along with certain of his kinsmen, boyars and other subjects that he would wed Queen Jadwiga of Poland and become king regnant of that country (by marriage, election and adoption); he pledged to compensate the young queen's Austrian betrothed for causing the cancellation of the planned Habsburg-Angevin marriage contract, to accept baptism in the Roman Catholic rite along with his heathen kin and subjects, regain through his own efforts and at his own expense lands which had been lost by the Polish Crown (primarily to the Teutonic Order) and join Lithuanian lands for ever to the Polish Crown (the infamous perpetuum applicare clause). We may accept Jan Tęgowski's arguments that (more or less) Jogaila fulfilled his vows, wherever possible.1 Although arguments over the exact meaning of the deliberately-chosen inexact term applicare will no doubt continue and the Grand Duchy never became a province of the Polish Kingdom (Kingdom and Crown are not the same thing), by the time of the battle of Grunwald Poles and Lithuanians and their two Lithuanian rulers, Jogaila-Wladyslaw II and Vytautas-Alexander collaborated closely on a whole range of shared interests. [...].

• Monarcha i wasal: Witold a unia horodelska. Prace historyczne. 2014, 141, z. 2, p. 221-233.
• Romanian lands and Lithuania. Evolution of relations from 14th to 16th century. From neighbourhood to partnership: highlights of Lithuania's relations with Romania and Moldova. Târgovişte : Cetatea de Scaun, 2013. P. 27-71.