In the course of the eleventh century, the Russian state, like that of Poland, was divided among princes of the reigning family, acknowledging the superiority of the great prince of Kief. ♦of the Northern Vladimir, 1169.♦ In the next century the chief power passed from Kief to the northern Vladimir on the Kiasma. ♦Susdal Russian.♦ Thus the former Finnish land of Susdal on the upper tributaries of the Volga became the cradle of the second Russian power. ♦Commonwealths at Novgorod and Pskof.♦ Novgorod the Great meanwhile, under elective princes, claimed, like its neighbour Pskof, to rank among commonwealths. Its dominion was spread far over the Finnish tribes to the north and east; the White Sea, and, far more precious, the Finnish Gulf, had now a Russian seaboard. It was out of Vladimir and Novgorod that the Russia of the future was to grow. ♦The principalities.♦ Meanwhile a crowd of principalities, Polotsk, Smolensk, the Severian Novgorod, Tchernigof, and others, arose on the Duna and Dnieper. ♦Commonwealth of Viatka. 1174.
Halicz or Galicia. 1186.♦ Far to the east across the commonwealth of Viatka, and on the frontiers of Poland and Hungary arose the principality of Halicz or Galicia, which afterwards grew for a while into a powerful kingdom.

Meanwhile in the lands on the Euxine the old enemies, Patzinaks and Chazars, gave way to the Cumans,[63] known in Russian history as Polovtzi and Parthi. They spread themselves from the Ural river to the borders of Servia and Danubian Bulgaria, cutting off Russia from the Caspian. ♦1223.
Mongol invasion.♦ In the next century Russians and Cumans—momentary allies—fell before the advance of the Mongols, commonly known in European history as Tartars. Known only as ravagers in the lands more to the west, over Russia they become overlords for two hundred and fifty years. ♦Russia tributary to the Mongols.♦ All that escaped absorption by the Lithuanian became tributary to the Mongol. ♦1240.♦ Still the relation was only a tributary one; Russia was never incorporated in the Mongol dominion, as Servia and Bulgaria were incorporated in the Ottoman dominion. ♦Russia represented by Novgorod.♦ But Kief was overthrown; Vladimir became dependent; Novgorod remained the true representative of free Russia in the Baltic lands.

But besides the Slaves of Poland and Russia, our survey takes in also the ancient races by which both Poland and Russia were so largely cut off from the Baltic. Down to the middle of the twelfth century, notwithstanding occasional Polish or Scandinavian occupations, those races still kept their hold of the whole Baltic north-eastwards from the mouth of the Vistula. ♦Fins in Livland and Esthland.♦ The non-Aryan Fins, besides their seats to the north, still kept the coast of Esthland and Lifland, in Latin shape Esthonia and Livonia, from the Finnish Gulf to the Duna and slightly beyond, taking in a small strip of the opposite peninsula. ♦The Lettic nations.♦ The inland part of the later Livland was held by the Letts, the most northern branch of the ancient Aryan settlers in this region. ♦Curland.
Samogitia.
Lithuania.♦ Of this family were the tribes of Curland in their own peninsula, of Samigola or Semigallia, the Samaites of Samogitia to the south, the proper Lithuanians south of them, the Jatwages, Jatwingi—in many spellings—forming a Lithuanian wedge between the Slavonic lands of Mazovia and Black Russia. ♦Prussia.♦ The Lithuanians, strictly so called, reached the coast just north of the Niemen; from the mouth of the Niemen to the mouth of the Vistula the coast was held by the Prussians. Of these nations, Aryan and non-Aryan, the Lithuanians alone founded a national dominion in historic times. The history of the rest is simply the history of their bondage, sometimes of their uprooting.

Taking a general survey of the lands round the Baltic about the middle of the twelfth century, we see the three Scandinavian kingdoms, the first fully formed states in these regions, all living and vigorous powers, but with fluctuating boundaries. Their western colonies are still Scandinavian. East and south of the Baltic they have not got beyond isolated and temporary enterprises. The Slavonic nations on the middle Elbe have fallen under German dominion; to the south Bohemia and its dependencies keep their Slavonic nationality under German supremacy. Poland, often divided and no longer conquering, still keeps its frontier, and its position as the one independent Slavonic power belonging to the Western Church. Russia, the great Eastern Slavonic power, has risen to unity and greatness under Scandinavian masters, and has again broken up into states connected only by a feeble tie. The submission of Russia to barbarian invaders comes later than our immediate survey; but the weakening of the Russian power both by division and by submission is an essential element in the state of things which now begins. ♦Teutonic advance, German and Scandinavian.♦ This is the spread in different ways of Teutonic dominion, German and Scandinavian, over the southern and eastern coasts of the Baltic, largely at the expense of the Slaves, still more largely at the expense of the primitive nations, Aryan and non-Aryan.

§ 3. The German Dominion on the Baltic.

In the first half of the twelfth century, no Teutonic power, German or Scandinavian, had any lasting hold on any part of the eastern coast of the Baltic or its gulfs, nor had any such power made any great advances on the southern coast. Early in the fourteenth century the whole of these coasts had been brought into different degrees of submission to several Teutonic powers, German and Scandinavian. ♦German influence stronger than Scandinavian.♦ Of the two influences the German has been the more abiding. Scandinavian dominion has now wholly passed away from these coasts, and it is only in the lands north of the Finnish Gulf that it can be said to have ever been really lasting. ♦Extent of German dominion.♦ But German influence has destroyed, assimilated, or brought to submission, the whole of the earlier inhabitants, from Wagria to Esthland. In our own day the whole coast, from the isle of Rügen to the head of the gulf of Bothnia, is in the possession of two powers, one German, one Slavonic. ♦German influence abiding.♦ But German influence abides beyond the bounds of German rule. Not only have Pomerania and Prussia become German in every sense, but Curland, Livland, and Esthland, under the dominion of Russia, are still spoken of as German provinces.

This great change was brought about by a singular union of mercantile, missionary, and military enterprise. ♦Beginning of Swedish conquest in Finland. 1155.♦ The beginning came from Scandinavia, when the Swedish King Saint Eric undertook the conquest and conversion of the proper Finland, east of the Gulf of Bothnia. Here, in the space of about a century, a great province was added to the Swedish kingdom, a province whose eastern boundary greatly shifted, but the greater part of which remained Swedish down to the present century. To the south of the Gulf of Finland the changes of possession have been endless. The settled dominion of Sweden in those lands comes later; Danish occupation, though longer, was only temporary. ♦German conquest in Livland.♦ Soon after the beginning of Swedish conquest in Finland began the work of German mercantile enterprise, followed fifty years later by German conquest and conversion, in Livland and the neighbouring lands. This hindered the growth of any native power on those coasts. ♦Its effect on Lithuania and Russia.♦ Even Lithuania in the days of its greatness was cut off from the sea. Whatever tendencies towards Russian supremacy had arisen in those parts were hindered from growing into Russian dominion. ♦The Military Orders.♦ The Knights of the Sword in Livland were followed by the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, and the two orders became one. ♦Danish advance.♦ Further west, the latter part of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century saw a great, but mostly short-lived, extension of Danish power over both German and Slavonic lands. ♦The Scandinavian kingdoms.♦ While the coasts are thus changing hands, the relations of Scandinavian kingdoms to one another are ever shifting. ♦Polish gains and losses.♦ Poland is ever losing territory to the west, and, still more after the beginning of its connexion with Lithuania, ever gaining it to the east. ♦The Hansa.♦ And, alongside of princes and sovereign orders, this time is marked by the appearance of the first germs of the great German commercial league, which, without becoming a strictly territorial power, exercised the greatest influence on the disposal of power among all its neighbours.

In Scandinavia itself the chief strictly geographical change was a temporary transfer to Sweden in the fourteenth century of the Danish lands within the northern peninsula. ♦Union of Calmar. 1396.♦ At the end of that century came the union of Calmar, the principle of which was that the three kingdoms, remaining separate states, should be joined under a common sovereign. But this union was never firmly established, and the arrangements of the three crowns were shifting throughout the fifteenth century; a lasting state of things came only with the final breach of the union in the sixteenth century. ♦Sweden separated, Denmark and Norway united. 1520.♦ From that time, Sweden, under the house of Vasa, forms one power; Denmark and Norway, under the house of Oldenburg, form another.

With regard to the more distant relations of the three kingdoms, this period is marked by the gradual withdrawal of Scandinavian power from the oceanic lands. ♦Iceland and Greenland united to Norway. 1261-1262.♦ The union of Iceland and Greenland with Norway was the union of one Scandinavian land with another. But Greenland, the most distant Scandinavian land, vanishes from history about the time of the Calmar union. The Scandinavian settlements in and about the British Islands all passed away. ♦Ireland.♦ The Ostmen of Ireland were lost in the mass of the Teutonic settlers who passed from England into Ireland. ♦The Western Isles. Man. 1264.♦ The Western Isles were sold to Scotland; Man passed under Scottish and English supremacy. ♦Orkney pledged. 1468.♦ Orkney and Shetland were pledged to the Scottish crown; and, though never formally ceded, they have become incorporated with the British kingdom.

East of the Gulf of Bothnia Swedish rule advanced. Attempts at conquest both in Russia and in Esthland failed, but Finland and Carelia were fully subdued, and the Swedish power reached to Lake Ladoga. ♦Esthland Danish. 1238-1346.♦ Denmark made a more lasting, but still short-lived, settlement in Esthland. ♦Short-lived greatness of Denmark.♦ The growth of Denmark at the other end of the Baltic lands began earlier and was checked sooner. But at the beginning of the thirteenth century things looked as if Denmark was about to become the chief power on all the Baltic coasts.

South of the boundary stream of the Eider the lands which make up the modern Holstein formed three settlements, two Teutonic and one Slavonic. ♦Ditmarschen.♦ To the west lay the free Frisian land of Ditmarschen. ♦Holstein.♦ In the middle were the lands of the Saxons beyond the Elbe—the Holtsætan—with Stormarn immediately on the Elbe. ♦Wagria.♦ On the Baltic side lay the Slavonic land of Wagria, which at the beginning of the twelfth century formed part of the kingdom of Sclavinia, a kingdom stretching from the haven of Kiel to the islands at the mouth of the Oder. ♦Danish conquest of Sclavinia. 1168-1189.♦ In these lands began the eastern advance of Denmark in the latter half of the twelfth century. All Sclavinia was won, with at least a supremacy over the Pomeranian land as far as the Riddow. Thus far the Danish conquests, won mainly over Slaves, continue the chain of occasional Scandinavian occupation on those coasts, from the tenth century to the nineteenth. In another point of view, the Christian advance, the overthrow of the chief centre of Slavonic heathendom in Rügen, carries on the work of the Saxon Dukes. ♦Danish advance in Germany.♦ But in the first years of the next century began a Danish occupation of German ground. Holstein, and Lübeck itself, were won; a claim was set up to the free land of Ditmarschen; and all these conquests were confirmed by an Imperial grant.[64] ♦1214.♦ The Danish kings now took the title of Kings of the Slaves, afterwards of the Vandals or Wends. ♦Fall of the Danish power. 1223-1227.♦ But this dominion was soon broken up by the captivity of the Danish king Waldemar. The Eider became again the boundary. ♦Denmark keeps Rügen, till ceded 1325, 1438.♦ Of her Slavonic dominion Denmark kept only an outlying fragment, the isle of Rügen and the neighbouring coast. This remained Danish for a hundred years longer, nominally for a hundred years longer still.

The next changes tended to draw the lands immediately on each side of the Eider into close connexion with one another. ♦Duchy of South Jutland. 1232.♦ The southern part of the Danish peninsula, from the Eider to the Aa, became a distinct fief of the Danish crown, held by a Danish prince under the name of the duchy of South-Jutland—Jutia or Sunder-Jutia. ♦United with Holstein. 1325.♦ In the next century this duchy and the county of Holstein are found in the hands of the same prince, and it is held that his grant of the Danish duchy contained a promise that it should never be united with the Danish crown. ♦Duchy of Sleswick.♦ Henceforth South-Jutland begins to be spoken of as the duchy of Sleswick. But of the lands held together, Sleswick remained a fief of Denmark, while Holstein remained a fief of the Empire. ♦Fluctuations of Sleswick and Holstein.♦ The duchy was several times united to the crown and again granted out. ♦1424.♦ At one moment of union the Roman King Sigismund expressly confirmed the union, and acknowledged Sleswick as a Danish land. ♦1448.♦ At the next grant of the duchy, its perpetual separation from the crown is alleged to have been again confirmed by Christian the First. ♦1460.♦ Yet Christian himself, already king of the three kingdoms, was afterwards elected Duke of Sleswick and Count of Holstein. The election was accompanied by a declaration that the two principalities, though the one was held of the Empire and the other of the Danish crown, should never be separated. ♦Duchy of Holstein. 1474.♦ In the same reign an Imperial grant raised the counties of Holstein and Stormarn with the land of Ditmarsh to the rank of a duchy. But the dominions of its duke were not a continuous territory stretching from sea to sea. ♦Freedom in Ditmarschen.
Bishopric of Lübeck.♦ To the west, Ditmarschen—notwithstanding a renewed Imperial grant—remained free; to the east, some districts of the old Wagria formed the bishopric of Lübeck. ♦Denmark, Sleswick, and Holstein under Christian.♦ But now for the first time the same prince reigned in the threefold character of King of Denmark, Duke of the Danish fief of Sleswick, and Duke of the Imperial fief of Holstein. Endless shiftings, divisions, and reunions of various parts of the two duchies followed. ♦Royal and Ducal lines. 1580.♦ In the partitions between the royal and ducal lines of the house of Oldenburg, the several portions of the Kings of Denmark and of the Dukes of Gottorp paid no regard to the boundary of the Eider, but each was made up of detached parts of both duchies. ♦Conquest of Ditmarschen. 1559.♦ Meanwhile the freedom of Ditmarschen came to an end, and the old Frisian land became part of the royal share of the duchy of Holstein. ♦Acquisition of Dago and Oesel.♦ And, as we began our story of Danish advance with the settlement in Esthland, we have to end it for the present with the acquisition of the islands of Dago and Oesel off the same coasts.

After the loss of Rügen, Denmark had little to do with the Slavonic lands, except so far as the possession of Holstein carried with it the possession of the old Slavonic land of Wagria. Still the advance of Denmark at the end of the twelfth century had a lasting effect on the Slavonic lands by altogether shaking the Polish dominion on the Baltic. But it shook it to the advantage, not of Scandinavia, but of Germany. Between the twelfth century and the fourteenth Poland lost all its western dominions. Pomore, Pommern, Pomerania, the seaboard of the Lechish Slaves, is strictly the land between the mouth of the Vistula and the mouth of the Oder; but the name had already spread further to the West. ♦Pomerania falls away from Poland.♦ After the fall of the Danish power on this coast, Pomerania west of the Riddow altogether fell away from Poland. ♦Duchy of Slavia.♦ As the duchy of Slavia, it became, like Mecklenburg, a land of the Empire, though ruled by Slavonic princes. ♦1298-1305. Loss of western territory by Poland.♦ But the eastern part of Pomerania, Cassubia and the mark of Gdansk or Danzig, remained under Polish superiority till the beginning of the fourteenth century. Then the greater part fell away, partly for ever, to the Pomeranian duchy of Wolgast, partly, for a season only, to the Teutonic Knights. ♦1220-1260.♦ To the south Barnim and Custrin passed, after some shiftings, to the mark of Brandenburg. ♦Silesia. 1289-1327.♦ Further to the south, Silesia, divided among princes of the house of Piast, gradually fell under Bohemian supremacy. Thus the whole western part of the Polish kingdom passed into the hands of princes of the Empire, and was included within the bounds of the German realm.

The fate of Silesia brings us again to the history of the inland Slavonic land of the Czechs. Bohemia went on, as duchy and kingdom,[65] ruled by native princes as vassals of the Empire. Moravia was a fief of Bohemia. In the end Bohemia passed to German kings, but not till it had become again the centre of a dominion which recalls the fleeting powers of Samo and Sviatopluk. ♦Bohemia and Ottocar. 1269-1278.♦ Ottocar the Second united the long-severed branches of the Slavonic race by annexing the German lands which lay between them. ♦His German dominion.♦ Lord of Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, the Czech king reigned on the upper Oder and the middle Danube as far as the Hadriatic. The same lands were in after times to be again united, but from the opposite side.

The successors of Ottocar reigned only over Bohemia and Moravia. Early in the next century the Bohemian crown passed to the house of Luxemburg. Under them Bohemia became a powerful state, but a state becoming more and more German, less and less Slavonic. ♦Silesia, 1355.♦ The gradual extension of Bohemian superiority over Silesia led to its formal incorporation. ♦Lusatia. 1320-1370.♦ In the same century Lusatia, High and Low, was won from Brandenburg. ♦Brandenburg. 1373-1417.♦ The mark of Brandenburg itself became for a while a Bohemian possession, before it passed to the burgraves of Nürnberg. ♦1353.♦ The Bohemian possession of the Upper Palatinate lies out of our Slavonic range. Among the revolutions of the fifteenth century, we find the Bohemian crown at one time held conjointly with that of Hungary, at another time held by a Polish prince. ♦Conquests of Matthias Corvinus, 1478-1490.♦ Later in the century the victories of Matthias Corvinus took away Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia, from the Bohemian crown. ♦Bohemia and Austria.
Its losses. 1635.
1740.♦ But it was the fourfold dominion of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia, which finally passed to the House of Austria, to be shorn of its northern and eastern lands to the profit, first of Saxony, and then of Brandenburg or Prussia.

Thus far the Teutonic advance, both on the actual Baltic coast and on the inland Slavonic region, had been made to the profit, partly of the Scandinavian kingdoms, partly of the princes of the Empire. ♦German corporations.♦ But there were two other forms of Teutonic influence and dominion, which fell to the share, not of princes, but of corporate bodies, mercantile and military or religious. ♦The Hansa.♦ The Hanseatic League was indeed a power in these regions, but it hardly has a place on the map. ♦Second foundation of Lübeck. 1158.♦ Even before the second foundation of Lübeck by Henry the Lion, German mercantile settlements had begun at Novgorod, in Gotland, and in London. ♦Extent of the League.♦ Gradually, in the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the League into which the union of the merchant towns of Germany grew spread itself over the Baltic, the Westfalian, and the Netherlandish lands. A specially close tie bound together the five Wendish towns, Lübeck, Rostock, Wismar, Stralsund, and Greifswald. ♦Nature of the union.♦ But the union of a town with the Hansa did not necessarily affect its political position. It might, at least in the later stages of the League, be a free city of the Empire, a town subject to some prince of the Empire, or a town subject to a prince beyond its bounds. Not only the Pomeranian and Prussian cities under the rule of the Knights, but Revel in Esthland under Danish rule formed part of the League. ♦The Hansa not a territorial power.♦ The League waged wars, made peace, overthrew and set up kings, as suited its interests; but territorial dominion, strictly so called, was not its object. Still in some cases privileges grew into something like dominion; in others military occupation might pass for temporary dominion. ♦The Hansa in Gotland and Scania.
1361.
1368-1385.♦ Thus in the isle of Gotland the Hansa had an ascendency which was overthrown by the conquest of the island by the Danish king Waldemar, a conquest avenged by a temporary Hanseatic occupation of Scania. In fact the nature of the League, the relations of the cities to one another, geographical as well as political, hindered the Hansa from ever becoming a territorial power like Switzerland and the United Provinces. In the history of the Baltic lands it takes for some ages a position at least equal to that of any kingdom. But it is only casually and occasionally that its triumphs can be marked on the map.

The other great German corporation was not commercial, but military and religious. ♦The Swordbearers and the Teutonic Order.♦ The conquests of the Order of Christ and of the Order of Saint Mary—better known as the Sword-brothers and the Teutonic Order—were essentially territorial. These orders became masters of a great part of the Baltic coast, and wherever they spread their dominion, Christianity and German national life were, by whatever means, established. ♦Their connexion with the Empire.♦ As both the chiefs of the Order and the Livonian prelates ranked as princes of the Empire, the conquests of the Knights were in some sort an extension of the bounds of the Empire. Yet we can hardly look on Livonia and Prussia as coming geographically within the Empire in the same sense as Pomerania and Silesia. ♦Effects of their rule.♦ But whether strictly an extension of the Western Empire or not, the conquests of the Knights were an extension of the Western Church, the Western world, and the German nation, as against both heathendom and Eastern Christianity, as against all the other Baltic nationalities, non-Aryan and Aryan.

The first settlement began in Livland. In the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Knights of the Order of Christ were called in as temporal helpers by Bishop Albert of Riga, and they gradually won the dominion of the lands on the gulf called from his city. ♦The Danes in Esthland.♦ For a while they had a partner in the Danish crown, which held part of Esthland. ♦Extent of their dominion.
Dago and Oesel.♦ But the rest of Esthland, Livland in the narrower sense, Curland, Semigola, the special Lettish land, and the Russian territory on the Duna, made up this Livonian dominion, which was afterwards enlarged by the isles of Dago and Oesel and by the Danish portion of Esthland. ♦Esthland. 1346.♦ Riga and Revel became great commercial cities, and Riga became an ecclesiastical metropolis under a prince-archbishop. The natives were reduced to bondage, and the Russian powers of Novgorod and Polotsk were effectually kept away from the gulf.

The dominion of the Knights of Saint Mary, the Teutonic Order, in Prussia and in a small part of Lithuania, began a little later than that of the Sword-brothers in Livland. Invited by a Polish prince, Conrad of Mazovia, they received from him their first Polish possession, the palatinate of Culm. ♦Union of the Orders. 1237.♦ Eleven years later the Prussian and Livonian orders were united. Their dominion grew. ♦Purchase of Pomerelia. 1311.♦ The acquisition of Pomerelia, the eastern part of the old Pomore, immediately west of the lower Vistula, cut off Poland from the sea. ♦Conquest of Samogitia. 1384.♦ Later in the century, Lithuania was equally cut off by the cession of Samogitia. ♦Occupation of Gotland. 1398-1408.
The New Mark pledged to the Order. 1402.♦ The isle of Gotland was held for a while; the New Mark of Brandenburg was pledged by King Sigismund. ♦Their coast line.♦ The whole coast from Narva on the Finnish gulf to the point where the Pomeranian coast trends south-west formed the unbroken sea-board of the Order.

Of the two seats of the Order the northern one proved the stronger and more lasting. Livland remained untouched long after Poland had won back her lost ground from the Prussian Knights. ♦Samogitia restored to Lithuania. 1410.♦ The battle of Tannenberg won back Samogitia for Lithuania, and again parted the Livonian and Prussian lands of the Order. ♦Peace of Thorn. 1646.♦ By the peace of Thorn its Prussian dominion was altogether cut short. ♦Cessions of the Order to Poland.♦ Culm and Pomerelia, with the cities of Danzig and Thorn, went back to Poland. And a large part of Prussia itself, the bishopric of Ermeland, a district running deep into the land still left to the knights, was added to Poland. ♦Vassalage of the Order.♦ The rest of Prussia was left to the Order as a Polish fief.

The thirteenth century was the special time when Teutonic dominion spread itself over the Baltic lands. ♦Advance of Christianity.♦ It was also the time when heathendom gave way to Christianity at nearly every point of those lands where it still held out. But, while the old creeds and the old races were giving way, a single one among them stood forth for a while as an independent and conquering state, the last heathen power in Europe. ♦Lithuania the last heathen power.♦ While all their kinsfolk and neighbours were passing under the yoke, the Lithuanians, strictly so called, showed themselves the mightiest of conquerors in all lands from the Baltic to the Euxine. ♦Advance of Lithuania. c. 1220.♦ From their own land on the Niemen they began, under their prince Mendog, to advance at the expense of the Russian lands to the south. ♦Mendog king. 1252.♦ Mendog embraced Christianity, and was crowned King of Lithuania, a realm which now stretched from the Duna to beyond the Priepetz. But heathendom again won the upper hand, and the next century saw the great advance of the Lithuanian power, the momentary rule of old Aryan heathendom alike over Christendom and over Islam. ♦Conquests from Russia. 1315-1340. 1345-1377.♦ Under two conquering princes, Gedymin and Olgierd, further conquests were made from the surrounding Russian lands. ♦1315-1360.♦ The Lithuanian dominion was extended at the expense of Novgorod and Smolensk; the Lithuanian frontier stretched far beyond both the Duna and the Dnieper; Kief was a Lithuanian possession. ♦Volhynia and Podolia.♦ The kingdom of Galicia lost Volhynia and Podolia, which became a land disputed between Lithuania and Poland. These last conquests carried the Lithuanian frontier to the Dniester, and opened a wholly new set of relations among the powers on the Euxine. ♦Perekop. 1363.♦ By the conquest of the Tartar dominion of Perekop, Lithuania, cut off from the Baltic, reached to the Euxine.

Meanwhile Poland, from a collection of duchies under a nominal head, had again grown into a consolidated and powerful kingdom. The western frontier had been cut short by various German powers, and the Teutonic Order shut off the kingdom from the sea. Mazovia and Cujavia remained separate duchies; but Great and Little Poland remained firmly united, and were ready to enlarge their borders to the eastward. ♦Conquests of Casimir the Great. 1333-1370.
Red Russia. 1340.♦ Casimir the Great added Podlachia, the land of the Jatvingi, and in the break-up of the Galician kingdom, he incorporated Red Russia as being a former possession of Poland. ♦Annexed to Hungary. 1377.♦ But, as it had also been a former possession of Hungary,[66] Lewis the Great, the common sovereign of Hungary and Poland, annexed it to his southern kingdom.

The two powers which had thus grown up were now to be gradually fused into one. ♦1386.♦ The heathen Lithuanian prince Jagiello became, by marriage and conversion, a Christian King of Poland. ♦Volhynia and Podolia added to Poland.♦ He enlarged the kingdom at the expense of the duchy, by incorporating Podolia and Volhynia with Poland, making Poland as well as Lithuania the possessor of a large extent of Russian soil. ♦Recovery of Red Russia. 1392.
Moldavia.
Pledge of Zips. 1412.♦ The older Russian territory of Poland, Red Russia, was won back from Hungary; Moldavia began to transfer its fleeting allegiance from Hungary to Poland; within Hungary itself part of the county of Zips was pledged to the Polish crown. ♦Recovery of the Polish duchies. 1401.♦ The Polish duchies now began to fall back to the kingdom. ♦1463-1476.♦ Cujavia came in early in the fifteenth century, and parts of Mazovia in its course. Of the relation of the kingdom to the Teutonic order we have already spoken. Lithuania meanwhile, as part of Western Christendom, remained, under its separate grand dukes of the now royal house, the rival both of Islam and of Eastern Christendom. ♦Conquests of Witold. 1392-1430.♦ Under Witold the advance on Russian ground was greater than ever. Smolensk and all Severia became Lithuanian; Kief was in the heart of the grand duchy; Moscow did not seem far from its borders. ♦Loss of Perekop, 1474.♦ Lithuania was presently cut short further to the south by the loss of its Euxine dominion. ♦Closer union of Poland and Lithuania. 1501.♦ At the beginning of the sixteenth century Poland and Lithuania were united as distinct states under a common sovereign. But by that time a new state of things had begun in the lands on the Duna and the Dnieper.

While the military orders had thus established themselves on the Baltic coast, and had already largely given way to the combined Polish and Lithuanian power behind them, a new Russia was growing up behind them all. ♦Power of Moscow.♦ Cut off from all dealings with Western Europe, save with its immediate western neighbours, cut off from its own ecclesiastical centre by the advance of Mussulman dominion, the new power of Moscow was schooling itself to take in course of time a greater place than had ever been held by the elder power of Kief. The Mongol conquest had placed the Russian principalities in much the same position as that through which most of the south-eastern lands passed before they were finally swallowed up by the Ottoman. ♦The Russian princes dependent on the Golden Horde.♦ The princes of Russia were dependent on the Tartar dominion of Kiptchak, which stretched from the Dniester north-eastwards over boundless barbarian lands as far as the lower course of the Jenisei. Its capital, the centre of the Golden Horde, was at Sarai on the lower course of the Volga. ♦Homage of Novgorod. 1252-1263.♦ Even Novgorod, under its great prince Alexander Nevsky, did homage to the Khan. But this dependent relation did not, like the Lithuanian conquests to the west, affect the geographical frontiers of Russia. The Russian centre at the time of the Mongol conquest was the northern Vladimir. ♦Moscow the new centre, c. 1328.♦ Towards the end of the thirteenth century, Moskva, on the river of that name, grew into importance, and early in the next century it became the centre of Russian life. ♦Name of Muscovy.♦ From Moskva or Moscow comes the old name of Muscovy, a name which historically describes the growth of the second Russian power. Muscovy was to Russia what France in the older sense was to the whole land which came to bear that name. Moscow was to Russia all, and more than all, that Paris was to France. It was to Moscow as the centre that the separate Russian principalities fell in; it was from Moscow as the centre that the lost Russian lands were won back. ♦Other Russian states.♦ Besides Novgorod, there still were the separate states of Viatka, Pskof, Tver, and Riazan. Disunion and dependence lasted till late in the fifteenth century. ♦Decline of the Mongol power.♦ But the Tartar power had already begun to grow weaker before the end of the fourteenth, and the invasion of Timour, while making Russia for a moment more completely subject, led to the dissolution of the dominion of the older Khans.

In the course of the fifteenth century the great power of the Golden Horde broke up into a number of smaller khanats. ♦Khanat of Crim;♦ The khanat of Crim—the old Tauric Chersonêsos—stretched from its peninsula inwards along the greater part of the course of the Don. ♦of Kazan, 1438;♦ The khanat of Kazan on the Volga supplanted the old kingdom of White Bulgaria. ♦of Siberia;♦ Far to the east, on the lower course of the Obi, was the khanat of Siberia. ♦of Astrakhan.♦ The Golden Horde itself was represented by the khanat of Astrakhan on the lower Volga, with its capital at the mouth of that river. Of these Crim and Kasan were immediate neighbours of the Muscovite state. ♦Deliverance of Russia. 1480.♦ The yoke was at last broken by Ivan the Great. ♦1487.♦ Seven years later he placed a tributary prince on the throne of Kazan, and himself took the title of Prince of Bulgaria. ♦Crim dependent on the Ottoman.♦ By this time the khans of Crim had become dependents of the Ottoman Sultans, the beginning of the long strife between Russia and the Turk in Europe.