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previous: Chapter 8 This webpage reproduces a chapter of The Story of Lithuania By Thomas G. Chase printed by Stratford House, Inc. New York, 1946 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 10

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 p71  Chapter IX
Grand Duke Alexander

(The numbers link directly to the sections.)

During the last three years of his reign, Casimir was represented in Lithuania by his son, Alexander, who, however, did not act in any official capacity nor possessed any official title. When Casimir died at Gardinas in 1492, the Lithuanian magnates were presented with an opportunity to realize the objective they had been seeking since 1446. They immediately summoned an assembly of the gentry and elected Alexander (1492‑1505) as the Grand Duke of Lithuania. Furthermore, they claimed that in his last will and testament Casimir had ordered the installation of Alexander in Lithuania and the coronation of John Albert in Poland, thereby once again destroying the personal union which existed between the two countries.

Alexander's fourteen-year rule was marked by the recognition accorded the growing political power of the gentry and by the first Muscovite invasions of Lithuania.

1. The Grand Ducal Council

It was customary for the Lithuanian Grand Duke, especially since the days of Vytautas the Great, to consult on occasion the more outstanding leaders of the Lithuanian gentry concerning various state matters. This was a prudent policy for the ruler to pursue simply because a great deal of the success of his administration depended on the support and loyalty of the upper classes. Through the privileges of 1387, 1413 and 1434, the latter had attained  p72 a rather high degree of prominence in the life of the Grand Duchy. Again, Casimir's regency and his subsequent departure for Cracow had entrusted to them an increasingly greater responsibility for the proper functioning of the government in Lithuania. The wealthier and the more influential boyars, therefore, soon found themselves more secure in the official positions they occupied and even began to consider themselves as the indispensable assistants of the Grand Duke, constituting the Grand Ducal Council. Member­ship in this Council was, of course, limited to bishops, princes and the higher state dignitaries.

So greatly had the prestige of this Council grown, that upon Alexander's accession it unequivocally demanded that its competency in national affairs be clearly defined. By the Act of 1492, Alexander bestowed a legal status on this Council. He made it the custodian of the national treasury, committing the economic problems and the budget of the country to its care; he promised to make no appointments without first referring the matters in question to the Council. In spite of all these concessions on the part of Alexander, the Grand Ducal Council still retained the character of a mere advisory board. The Grand Duke was at perfect liberty to accept or reject its suggestions and proposals. However, once he had accepted them the decision was irrevocable. In this fashion, Alexander laid the basic foundations for the development of an enormous political power which was later exercised by the Lithuanian aristocracy. This movement seemed to follow very closely the lines drawn by the upper classes in Poland, where the nobility and the gentry had wrested such tremendous concessions from their King that his role was reduced practically to that of president of the Diet.

National assemblies, which embraced representatives from every level of the landlord class, began to be summoned more frequently with the gradual rise of the Grand Ducal Council. These conventions possessed no authority whatsoever to enact laws or to control the policies of the government; they could only hope to influence the Grand Duke through the public expression of their opinions. In reality, these assemblies formed the earliest National Diets of Lithuania. Although every member of the gentry could participate  p73 in their activities, yet they were dominated almost exclusively by the Lithuanian magnates and the members of the Council.

2. The First Muscovite Invasions

Shortly after Alexander's installation at Vilnius, Ivan III proceeded to annex strips of the Grand Duchy's territories on the Ugra and Oka Rivers in the vicinities of Dorogobuzh and Mtsensk. In an effort to conciliate Muscovy and to forestall Ivan's plans to occupy Lithuania's easternmost provinces, Alexander dispatched his legates to Moscow to ask for the hand of Ivan's daughter Helen. After protracted negotiations a peace treaty was concluded between the two parties in 1494. Alexander ceded the small areas, which had already been lost; Ivan agreed to maintain a perpetual peace with Lithuania and gave his daughter to him in marriage, with the understanding that she would remain free to practice her Orthodox religion at the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.

This arrangement did not put an end to Ivan's expansionist dreams, but rather served as a convenient means for further action. Helen arrived at Vilnius the following year. Her attendants, a number of Muscovite boyars and Orthodox clergy­men, were looked upon with disfavor by the Lithuanian gentry from the very beginning. Ivan manifested no intentions at all of discouraging Khan Mengli Girai from molesting Lithuania's southern possessions. For this latter reason and for the purpose of aiding his brother's, John Albert's troops, who had been crushed by Stephen of Moldavia (1497), Alexander marched southward to repel, with some success, the advance of the Crimean Tatars. Finally, in 1499, while Alexander's brothers, John Albert of Poland and Ladislas of Bohemia and Hungary, were trying to cope with the Turkish peril in Moldavia, Ivan opened war on Lithuania. He accused Alexander of endeavoring to regulate Helen's spiritual affairs and of persecuting the adherents of the Orthodox church.

Comprehending the desperateness of his position, Alexander immediately allied himself with Livonia and Sich Ahmed's Tatars of the Volga, neither of which could any longer be regarded as  p74 strong military powers. And on July 14, 1500, near Dorogobuzh, the Muscovites defeated an army, which Prince Constantine Ostrogski, a descendant of Kaributas, had hurriedly assembled in the Grand Duchy's border regions. Walter von Plettenberg, the Grand Master of the Order of the Sword, cooperated heroically with the Lithuanians and twice routed Ivan's numerically superior forces; yet receiving no reenforcements from Alexander, he had no other alternative, but to withdraw to Livonia. Similarly, Khan Sich Ahmed arrived with his troops at Novgorod-Severski; due to the lack of supplies and the constant opposition offered him by the Crimean Tatars, he was compelled to seek refuge at Kiev. There the majority of his men surrendered to Mengli Girai; and when he himself began to negotiate with the Turks, he was seized and transferred to a prison at Kaunas, where he eventually died.

When John Albert died in Poland in 1501, Alexander, in the hope of winning Polish aid in the struggle against Muscovy, sought and gained election to the Polish throne. But no assistance of any kind was obtained from the Kingdom of Poland. In fact, the Muscovite forces had even succeeded in besieging the fortress of Smolensk on some three occasions, in occupying Orsha, and in burning down Vitebsk. It is then that Alexander sued for peace. He was able to obtain only a six-year truce from Ivan III in 1503; he was required to renounce his friendly relations with the Knights of the Sword, who were excluded from the terms of the treaty; he was obliged to abandon to Ivan the Donets River areas, Kursk, Novgorod-Severski, Chernigov, Starodub, Bryansk, Dorogobuzh, and Velikie Luki. In other words, practically one‑third of Lithuania's Ruthenian provinces in the East passed to Moscow; and Muscovy's borders then reached the Dvina, Desna and Dnieper Rivers.

These vast concessions made by the Grand Duchy in exchange for a temporary respite from armed hostilities did not lead to any peace with Muscovy. Ivan III continued to pose as the defender of the Ruthenian Orthodox believers in the eastern section of the Lithuanian state and as the guardian of his daughter's well-being at Vilnius. He also exacted from Alexander a promise that Helen, although she may desire it of her own free will, would never be  p75 received into the Catholic Church. His messengers were constantly entering the Lithuanian capital, supposedly to visit his daughter. At the same time, it was impossible for Alexander to pacify the Crimean Tatars, who were supported by Muscovy. They repeatedly terrorized Kiev, Podolia, Volhynia and Polish Galicia. In 1506, they invaded Lithuania as far as Naugardukas and Lyda; yet, just before Alexander's premature death, Michael Glinski gained an overwhelming victory over them at Kleck.

3. The Pact of Mielnik

During the fifteenth century Lithuania and Poland had been brought together by reason of various external circumstances which were unfavorable to both, so early in the sixteenth century, after a brief separation of nine years, they again attempted to merge their resources in the person of a common ruler in order to resist the aggressive tactics of foreign foes more effectively. Since the representatives of the House of Gediminas, Jogaila's grandsons, still clung most tenaciously to the notion that Lithuania was a part of their heritage, Alexander and John Albert met at Vilnius in 1495 to discuss Lithuanian-Polish relations; no positive results were produced at this conference. Four years later, however, as the Poles were involved in a serious conflict with the Tatars and the Turks, and as the Lithuanians were harassed by the same Tatars and by the Muscovites, they formulated the pact of 1499, renewing their century-old political alliance and agreeing that neither state was to choose its ruler without consulting the other.

The stipulations of this pact were fulfilled immediately after the death of John Albert. Alexander and the Lithuanian magnates sent their delegates to the Polish Election Diet at Piotrkow and success­fully upheld the Grand Duke's candidacy for the Polish Crown. These individuals then entered into another covenant with the Poles. This covenant aimed to create a greater degree of intimacy between the two countries than had ever been attained through any of the previous Lithuanian-Polish contracts. It called for common Lithuanian-Polish Diets, a common defense, a common  p76 currency, and a common ruler. It neglected, however, to determine the mode in which this program was to be realized. Although the compact was confirmed by Alexander at Mielnik, it was never ratified by the Lithuanian National Diet according to the conditions laid down at Piotrkow. True, the Diet assembled in 1505, but avoided all reference to these events. Alexander's brothers, Sigismund and Ladislas of Hungary and Bohemia, protested most violently against the proposed union of Lithuania and Poland. They insisted that as descendants of Gediminas they were eligible heirs to the Grand Duchy⁠1 and that the pact of Mielnik violated and totally disregarded their rights by making the Grand Ducal throne elective. Consequently, Lithuania and Poland continued to exist as two separate, distinct and sovereign states governed by the same ruler.

---

The Author's Note:

1 In spite of the fact that the Lithuanians had rendered the Grand Ducal throne elective for all practical purposes after the death of Vytautas.

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