Lietuva-Tevyne Musu!

I've read some posts here recently that have been about places or about history.  Generally I'm in to asking questions when I'm interacting on Gather, but it has struck my fancy to engage in a little storytelling/history lesson about a place that is dear to my heart: Lithuania!

I know that many of you will not even read this next paragraph after seeing that this is about Lithuania thinking that it is surely a boring place with nothing interesting about it.  You couldn't be more wrong, and if you've read this much further hopefully I can prove it to you.  I'm thinking that I will end up putting up several of these posts to cover the depth of Lithuania.  I will start with some history about the place, history that has fascinated me since the day I discovered it.

The name Lithuania was first mentioned in written history as far back as the 11th Century in a German manuscript known as the Quedlinburg Chronicle.  Following this first mention Lithuania really came into its own place in history about two hundred years later when Mindaugas (1203-1263) managed to unite the many varied groups that composed the area of Lithuania in about 1236.  He was not officially recognized as the king of the Kingdom of Lithuania until almost twenty years later in 1253.

Following Mindaugas by about a century or so came the greatest of all figures in Lithuanian history: Vytautas the Great, or Vytautas Didysis in the native tongue.  Born in 1350 to his father Kestutis, who was the Prince of Trakai at the time, Vytautas rose from there to eventually become the ruler over the largest nation in Europe in the fourteenth century.  Many are not aware that at one time The Grand Duchy of Lithuania covered all of the present day Belarus and Ukraine, along with parts of Poland and Russia.

Vytautas was not actually in line to be the Grand Duke of Lithuania, that was given to his cousin Jogaila, the son of his father's brother Algirdas.  When, however, Poland offered its crown to Jogaila in 1386, not only did Lithuanians en masse 'convert' to Christianity they also became a part of Poland.  Less than twenty years later, in 1401, disputes arose between the two states and Vytautas officially became the Grand Duke of Lithuania, while his cousin Jogaila remained King of Poland.

Vytautas engaged in warfare and conquest both in politics and in actual battle on the field.  His father's vision was one of conquest and he followed that vision as he spent much of his life in various different treaties and betrayals, at one point going as far as the gates of Moscow in conquest before being turned away.  Few people realize that but for this history could have been turned completely from the dominance of Russia in Eastern Europe to that of Lithuania.  But Vytautas' greatest victory on the battlefront came in the famous Battle of Grunwald (known in the native tongue as the Battle of Zhalgiris).  This battle consisted of the Polish and Lithuanian army joining forces against the Teutonic Knights.  The decisive victory in this battle greatly reduced the threat of the Teutonic Knights for both Poland and Lithuania going forward.

Much can be said about the influence that Lithuania had on the entire history of the nations of Eastern Europe, and very little of it is known by the majority of those of us outside of the region (or at least that has been my experience).  I've gone on long enough for this post, but I've had so much fun writing it that I'm sure I'll be back for more.