Algirdas

Algirdas (born c. 1296—died 1377) was the grand duke of Lithuania from 1345 to 1377, who made Lithuania one of the largest European states of his day. His son Jogaila became Władysław II Jagiełło, king of united Poland and Lithuania.

Algirdas was one of the sons of the country’s ruler, Gediminas, and he began his long political career when he married, at his father’s request, the daughter of the prince of Vitebsk and succeeded to the prince’s lands. Together with his father he fought against the Teutonic Knights and attempted to subjugate the Russian territories of Novgorod and Pskov, which had sought Lithuanian protection both from the knights and from the Golden Horde (the Tatar overlords of Russia since the middle of the 13th century). From 1341 to 1345 he was prince of Krevo and Vitebsk and a vassal of his younger brother, Grand Duke Jaunutis, whom he removed in collusion with another brother, Kęstutis, with whose consent he became grand duke.

Defense of Lithuanian Ponemune and Podvine against the knights and their allies, invasion of the Russian and Ukrainian lands subject to the Horde, and the desire to achieve Lithuanian hegemony in the province of Volhynia were the goals of Algirdas’ foreign policy. In the pursuit of these aims he relied on dynastic support and especially on his coruler Kęstutis. The brothers shared both their losses and their many acquisitions of fortified posts in Russia. They were supported by the princes and boyars who sat in the grand-ducal council and who, along with their feudal-dependent peasants, took the field under them.

But though he was the leader of the Lithuanian-Slavic armies against the Teutonic Knights, Algirdas was a stranger to the lower social orders. When, during the anti-German “Uprising of the Night of Yury” in Livonia (1345), one of its leaders, a peasant, told him that he had been chosen king by the rebels and that if Algirdas followed his advice the Germans would be driven out, Algirdas had him decapitated. To the feudal prince, a peasant as king seemed a more terrible threat than the German usurpers.

Although pagan to the core, Algirdas allowed his Orthodox subjects of Vilnius to build a church where formerly the gallows had stood. For political reasons he appointed many Orthodox vice-regents in the Slavic territories of Lithuania, consistently married Orthodox princesses himself, and prevailed on the patriarch of Constantinople to found a Lithuanian Orthodox metropolitan see in the city of Kiev.

Algirdas saw far beyond the boundaries of his country. When the Polish king Casimir III the Great, Pope Clement VI, and the Holy Roman emperor Charles IV proposed to him that he accept Catholicism, he replied (1358) that he was ready to do so if they returned to him the lands between the Pregolya and Daugava rivers, liquidated the Teutonic Knights, and left him the

empty lands between the Tatars and the Russians for their protection from the Tatars, leaving the Knights no rights whatever over the Russians but instead granting all Rus [Russia] to the Lithuanians.

But Algirdas’ goals were not destined to be realized.

Get Unlimited Access

Try Britannica Premium for free and discover more.

Subscribe

Early in his reign the Teutonic Knights and their allies conducted annual raids from their bases in Prussia and Livonia, ruining Lithuanian lands and subjugating White Russia as far south as Grodno. Aided by their supporters to the east and south, Algirdas and Kęstutis repelled these attacks. Yet, despite the expenditure of so much energy, Algirdas left the resolution of this historic struggle with the Teutonic Knights to his heirs.

The rivalry with Poland over Volhynia was intensified when, in 1349, Casimir tricked Algirdas’ brother Lubart out of one of the principal Volhynian cities. By the treaty of 1352 Lithuania took possession of Volhynia, but in 1366, preoccupied with his struggle with the Teutonic Knights, Algirdas had to yield most of Volhynia once again to his ally Casimir. After Casimir’s death in 1370, however, he managed to recover part of the province by a treaty (1377) with King Louis of Hungary-Poland.

Algirdas’ relations with Russia were characterized by his unsuccessful attempts to claim Pskov and Novgorod. Having met with Muscovite resistance, he concluded peace with Grand Duke Simeon of Moscow (1349). But with the decline of the Golden Horde after 1357, he extended his influence eastward approximately as far as Mstislavl’ and Bryansk. In 1362–63 he campaigned in the territories of the Tatars, defeating three of their governors in the battle at the River Siniye Vody. He secured the principality of Kiev, which he gave to his son Vladimir, and freed Little Podolia from the power of the Golden Horde.

In 1349 Algirdas married Yuliana, daughter of the prince of Tver. Together with Tver and Smolensk he undertook three campaigns against Moscow (1368, 1370, 1372). They were, however, unsuccessful because of an increase in Moscow’s prestige among the other Slavic lands.

Algirdas died in the middle of a war with the Knights. He was apparently cremated, along with 18 of his warhorses and other effects. He left his lands to his 12 sons. According to a contemporary chronicle, he

drank not beer nor mead, nor wine nor fermented kvass. He was temperate and thus found wisdom. And by his cunning he conquered many lands and countries, subjugated many towns and principalities, and achieved great power.