Grand Duchy of Lithuania

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a state in north-eastern Europe that lasted from the thirteenth century until the partitions of 1795. Founded by pagan Baltic Lithuanians, it expanded across much of the former lands of Kievan Rus' and by the fifteenth century was one of the largest states in Europe, reaching from the Baltic towards the Black Sea. Its lands covered today's Lithuania and Belarus, much of Ukraine, and parts of Latvia, Poland and Russia.

Lithuanian tribes first appear in a written source in 1009. In the late twelfth century they began large raids on Polotsk, Pskov and Novgorod, a sign of growing unity. The crusading Livonian Order and Teutonic Knights, settled on the Baltic coast in the early 1200s, gave the Lithuanians a common enemy. A 1219 treaty with Galicia–Volhynia names 21 Lithuanian dukes, among them Mindaugas, who by the mid-1230s had won supreme power. To end a civil war he accepted baptism and was crowned King of Lithuania on 6 July 1253, but he later broke with the Christian orders and was assassinated in 1263.

After years of turmoil, Vytenis became grand duke in 1295 as the first ruler of the Gediminid dynasty, and under Gediminas the state gained a strong central government. By 1320 most western Rus' principalities had been annexed or made vassals, Kiev was captured in 1321, and Vilnius became the permanent capital in the 1320s. The Mongol conquest had left the Rus' lands weakened, and Lithuania expanded into the gap, defeating the Golden Horde at Blue Waters in 1362. Gediminas's sons Algirdas and Kęstutis shared power and carried expansion further. A long war with the military orders went on throughout.

In 1386 Jogaila, a son of Algirdas, signed the Union of Krewo, which created a dynastic union with Poland, and he became King of Poland the same year. Lithuania, the last pagan state in Europe, was officially converted to Catholicism in 1387, though most Ruthenian lands remained Orthodox. Under Jogaila's cousin Vytautas the Great, grand duke from 1401 to 1430, the state reached its greatest size, and in 1410 Polish and Lithuanian armies crushed the Teutonic Order at the Battle of Grunwald. Vytautas also settled Muslim Tatars and Karaites in Lithuania.

The grand duchy was a multi-ethnic country. Ethnic Lithuanians were a minority once the Ruthenian lands were added, and Chancery Ruthenian, not Lithuanian, became the main written language of government; Latin and later Polish were also used. Catholics, Orthodox, Calvinists, Jews and Tatar Muslims all lived under its rule. Stephen Báthory founded Vilnius University in 1579, and the Statutes of Lithuania codified its law, the third and final version appearing in 1588.

The rise of the Grand Principality of Moscow cost Lithuania much territory, despite victories such as Orsha in 1514. Under that pressure, the Union of Lublin in 1569 joined Lithuania and Poland in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, in which the grand duchy kept its own laws, army and treasury. The Constitution of 3 May 1791 aimed at a more unitary state, but Russia invaded in 1792, and in the partitions that followed the grand duchy's lands were divided, most going to the Russian Empire by 1795. Napoleon briefly revived a provisional Lithuanian government in 1812.

Our 1279 and 1300 maps label the grand duchy "Lithuania", centred on Vilnius; by 1400 it is shown as part of the Polish–Lithuanian union. The modern republic has its own page, Lithuania.