Władysław II Jagiełło

Early life

Family

Little is known of Jogaila's early life, and even his year of birth is uncertain. Previously, historians assumed he was born around 1352, but some recent research suggests a later date — about 1362. He was the son of Algirdas, Grand Duke of Lithuania of the Gediminid dynasty, and his second wife, Uliana of Tver, who was the daughter of the Yaroslavichi prince Aleksandr of Tver. Joagaila's name had a meaning of more courageous and superior than others. The young Prince spent most of his early time in Vilnius, at his father's manor.

Jogaila was designated by his father to be his heir (replacing his older half-brother Fiodor in that role) and ascended the Lithuanian throne after Algirdas's death in 1377. Depending on which year he was born with, he was either around 14 or 24 years old at the time of becoming the Grand Duke. The former possibility is supported by the fact during Jogaila's early reign his mother Uliana of Tver acted as regent; additionally, Vytautas the Great in his Memorial noted that his father Kęstutis (Algirdas's brother) ruled over Lithuania "until he [Jogaila] grew up and people get used to him", which suggests Jogaila would have been very young and presumably underaged – therefore in his teens rather than 20s – when he had come to the throne.

First years as Grand Duke

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, over which Jogaila ruled, was a political entity composed of two leading, but very different nationalities and two political systems: ethnic Lithuania in the northwest and the vast Ruthenian territories of former Kievan Rus', comprising the lands of modern Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of western Russia. At first, the young Grand Duke — like his father — based his rule in the southern and eastern territories of Lithuania, while his uncle, Kęstutis, the Duke of Trakai, continued to rule the north-western region. Jagiełło's succession, however, soon placed this system of dual rule under strain.

At the start of his reign, Jogaila was preoccupied with unrest in the Lithuanian Rus' lands. In 1377–1378, Andrei of Polotsk, the eldest son of Algirdas, challenged Władysław II Jagiełło's authority and sought to become Grand Duke. In 1380, Andrei and another brother, Demetrius I Starshy, sided with Prince Dmitri Donskoi against Jogaila's alliance with emir Mamai, de facto khan of the Golden Horde. Jagiełło failed to support Mamai, lingering in the vicinity of the battlefield, which led to Mamai's army's significant defeat at the hands of Prince Dmitri in the Battle of Kulikovo. The Muscovites' Pyrrhic victory over the Golden Horde, in the long term, signified, however, the beginning of a slow climb to power by the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which became within a century the most serious rival and threat to the integrity, well-being and survival of Lithuania. However, in 1380, Muscovy was greatly weakened by tremendous losses suffered during the battle and thus, in the same year, Jagiełło was free to begin a struggle for supremacy with Kęstutis.

In the northwest, Lithuania faced constant armed incursions from the Teutonic Knights — founded after 1226 to fight and convert the pagan Baltic tribes of Prussians, Yotvingians and Lithuanians. In 1380, Jagiełło concluded the secret Treaty of Dovydiškės, directed against Kęstutis. When Kęstutis discovered the plan, the Lithuanian Civil War began. He seized Vilnius, overthrew Jogaila, and pronounced himself the Grand Duke in his place. In 1382, Jogaila raised an army from his father's vassals and confronted Kęstutis near Trakai. Kęstutis and his son Vytautas entered Jagiełło's encampment for negotiations but were tricked and imprisoned in the Kreva Castle, where Kęstutis was found dead, probably murdered, a week later. Vytautas escaped to the Teutonic fortress of Marienburg and was baptised there under the name Wigand.

Jogaila formulated the Treaty of Dubysa, which rewarded the Knights for their aid in defeating Kęstutis and Vytautas by promising Christianisation and granting them Samogitia west of the Dubysa river. However, when Jagiełło failed to ratify the treaty, the Knights invaded Lithuania in the summer of 1383. In 1384, Jogaila reconciled with Vytautas, promising to return his patrimony in Trakai. Vytautas then turned against the Knights, attacking and looting several Prussian castles.

Baptism and marriage

Jogaila's Russian mother Uliana of Tver urged him to marry Sofia, daughter of Prince Dmitri of Moscow, who required him first to convert to Orthodoxy. That option, however, was unlikely to halt the crusades against Lithuania by the Teutonic Knights, who regarded Orthodox Christians as schismatics and little better than heathens. Władysław II Jagiełło chose therefore to accept a Polish proposal to become a Catholic and marry then-eleven-year-old Queen Jadwiga of Poland. The nobles of Lesser Poland made this offer to Władysław II Jagiełło for many reasons. They wanted to neutralise the dangers posed by Lithuania itself and to secure the fertile territories of Galicia–Volhynia. The Polish nobles saw the offer as an opportunity for increasing their privileges and avoiding Austrian influence, brought by Jadwiga's previous fiancé William, Duke of Austria.

On 14 August 1385 in Kreva Castle, Jagiełło confirmed his prenuptial promises in the Union of Krewo (Union of Kreva). The promises included the adoption of Christianity, repatriation of lands "stolen" from Poland by its neighbours, and terras suas Lithuaniae et Russiae Coronae Regni Poloniae perpetuo applicare, a clause interpreted by historians to mean anything from a personal union between Lithuania and Poland to a complete incorporation of Lithuania into Poland. The agreement at Kreva has been described both as far-sighted and as a desperate gamble.

Jogaila was officially elected as King on 2 February 1386 in Lublin. He was duly baptised at the Wawel Cathedral in Kraków on 15 February 1386 and from then on formally used the name "Władysław" or Latin versions of it. The marriage took place three days later, and on 4 March 1386, Władysław II Jagiełło was crowned the King of Poland by archbishop de Gniezno Bodzanta. He was the first Lithuanian to be crowned Polish monarch. The royal baptism triggered the conversion of most of Jogaila's court and noblemen, as well as mass baptisms in Lithuanian rivers, a beginning of the final Christianization of Lithuania. Though the ethnic Lithuanian nobility were the main converts to Catholicism — both paganism and the Orthodox rite remained strong among the peasants — the king's conversion and its political implications created lasting repercussions for the history of both Lithuania and Poland. On 22 February 1387, he banned Catholics from marriages with Orthodox and demanded those Orthodox who previously married with the Catholics to convert to Catholicism.

Ruler of Lithuania and Poland

Co-ruler with Jadwiga

Władysław II Jagiełło reigned in Poland as co-monarch with his wife, whose role was not degraded following their marriage. After matured, Jadwiga took an active part in Poland's cultural and political life, and is described as having been "hardheaded politician" who was engaging in diplomacy with the Teutonic Order as well as Sigismund of Luxembourg (her brother-in-law) and Vytautas. In 1387, she led two successful military expeditions to Red Ruthenia, recovered lands her father, Louis I of Hungary, had transferred from Poland to Hungary, and secured the homage of Voivode Peter I of Moldavia. Most political responsibilities, however, fell to Jagiello, with Jadwiga attending to the cultural and charitable activities for which she is still revered.

Soon after Jagiello acceded to the Polish throne, Jagiello granted Vilnius a city charter like that of Kraków, modelled on the Magdeburg Law; and Vytautas issued a privilege to a Jewish commune of Trakai on almost the same terms as privileges issued to the Jews of Poland in the reigns of Bolesław the Pious and Casimir the Great. Władysław II's policy of unifying the two legal systems was partial and uneven at first but achieved a lasting influence. By the time of the Union of Lublin in 1569, there was not much difference between the administrative and judicial systems in force in Lithuania and Poland.

One effect of Jagiello's measures was to be the advancement of Catholics in Lithuania at the expense of Orthodox elements; in 1387 and 1413, for example, Lithuanian Catholic boyars were granted special judicial and political privileges denied to the Orthodox boyars. As this process gained momentum, it was accompanied by the rise of both Rus' and Lithuanian identity in the fifteenth century.

Jagiełło's baptism failed to end the crusade of the Teutonic Knights, who claimed his conversion was a sham, perhaps even heresy, and renewed their incursions on the pretext that pagans remained in Lithuania. From then on, however, the Order found it harder to sustain the cause of a crusade and faced the growing threat to its existence posed by the Kingdom of Poland and a genuinely Christian Lithuania alliance. Władysław II sponsored the creation of the diocese of Vilnius under bishop Andrzej Wasilko, the former confessor of Elizabeth of Poland. The bishopric, which included Samogitia, then largely controlled by the Teutonic Order, was subordinated to the see of Gniezno and not to that of Teutonic Königsberg. The decision may not have improved Władysław's relations with the Order, but it served to introduce closer ties between Lithuania and Poland, enabling the Polish church to freely assist its Lithuanian counterpart.

Sole king

On 22 June 1399, Jadwiga gave birth to a daughter, baptised Elizabeth Bonifacia, but within a month the mother and daughter died, leaving Władysław II sole ruler of the Kingdom of Poland, with no heir or much legitimacy to rule the kingdom. Jadwiga's death undermined Władysław II's right to the throne, and as a result, old conflicts between the nobility of Lesser Poland, generally sympathetic to Władysław II, and the gentry of Greater Poland began to surface. In 1402, Władysław II answered the rumblings against his rule by marrying Anna of Cilli, a granddaughter of Casimir III of Poland, a political match that re-legitimised his reign, said to be suggested by the late Queen Jadwiga herself.

The Union of Vilnius and Radom of 1401 officially declared Vytautas the Grand Duke as co-ruler under Władysław II's overlordship while assuring the succession of the Lithuanian throne to the heirs of Władysław II rather than those of Vytautas: should Władysław II die without heirs, the Lithuanian boyars were to elect a new monarch. Since no heir had yet been produced by either monarch, the implications of the union were unforeseeable, but it forged bonds between the Polish and Lithuanian nobility and a permanent defensive alliance between the two states, strengthening Lithuania's hand for a new war against the Teutonic Order in which Poland officially took no part. While the document left the liberties of the Polish nobles untouched, it granted increased power to the boyars of Lithuania, whose grand dukes had till then been unencumbered by checks and balances of the sort attached to the Polish monarchy. The Union of Vilnius and Radom, therefore, earned Władysław II a measure of support in Lithuania.

In late 1401, the new war against the Order overstretched the resources of the Lithuanians, who found themselves fighting on two fronts after uprisings in the eastern provinces. Another of Władysław II's brothers, the malcontent Švitrigaila, chose this moment to stir up revolts behind the lines and declare himself grand duke. On 31 January 1402, he presented himself in Marienburg, where he won the backing of the Knights with concessions similar to those made by Władysław II and Vytautas during earlier leadership contests in the Grand Duchy.

The war ended in the Treaty of Raciąż on 22 May 1404. Władysław II acceded to the formal cession of Samogitia and agreed to support the Order's designs on Pskov; in return, Konrad von Jungingen undertook to sell Poland the disputed Dobrzyń Land and the town of Złotoryja, once pawned to the Order by Władysław Opolski, and to support Vytautas in a revived attempt on Novgorod.

Marriages and issue

Władysław married Polish queen regnant Jadwiga Anjou on 18 February 1386. They had one child, before Jadwiga's death on 17 July 1399:

Elizabeth Bonifacia (22 June 1399 – 13 July 1399). Unlike Władysław's younger children, whose succession rights in Poland needed to be asserted given he was an elected ruler, Elizabeth – whose mother was a hereditary monarch – was viewed as the heir to the Polish throne by virtue of birth alone.

On 29 January 1402 Władysław took as his wife Anna of Cilli. They had one daughter:

Jadwiga (8 April 1408 – 8 December 1431)

Anna died on 21 March 1416 and Jagiełło remarried on 2 May of the next year to Elizabeth of Pilica, who died on 12 May 1420. They were childless.

On 24 February 1422, Władysław wedded Sophia of Halshany, his probable grand-half-niece, by whom he had three children:

Władysław III (31 October 1424 – disappeared 10 November 1444), King of Poland and Supreme Duke of Lithuania (1434 – 1444), as well as King of Hungary (1440 – 1444).

Casimir (16 May 1426 – 2 March 1427)

Casimir Andrew (30 November 1427 – 7 June 1492), Grand Duke of Lithuania (1440 – 1492) and King of Poland (1447 – 1492)

Legacy

Władysław is depicted on the obverse of the modernized 100 Polish złoty banknote.

The Jagiełło Oak, an ancient tree in Białowieża Forest, is named in honour of the fact that he initiated the tradition of royal hunting in the area.

In 2021, asteroid (202093) 2004 TP17 was officially named as Jogaila (the Lithuanian language variant of his name).