(Cambridge Concise Histories) Jerzy Lukowski, Hubert Zawadzki - A Concise History of Poland-Cambridge University Press (2006)

Embracing Catholicism at least offered the prospect of containing the threat from the Teutonic Knights; and union with Poland the prospect of a firm alliance against them. Catholicization -which was aimed not at Orthodox Rus’ subjects, but at pagan Lithuanians - also offered the prospect of preserving Lithuanian identity - provided, of course, it did not come at the price of polonization. But prospects were all that at first could be offered. Jogaila’s nobles went along because they were promised that they would have a share in ruling Poland, just as they ruled Rus’. In February 1387, Jagiello promised his boyars the same rights and privileges as his Polish nobles enjoyed. The reality was very different. Jogaila/Jagiello saw in the Poles allies as much against the machinations of his cousin Vytautas and his supporters, as against the Knights. No Polish office went to a Lithuanian; but a series of plum Lithuanian offices went to the leading nobles of Malopolska; and a series of Lithuanian strongholds were garrisoned by Polish forces. The 1387 concession of rights was meaningless - Lithuania lacked the machinery of local assemblies, judicial institutions and cultural traditions which alone could give life to such a measure.

The man most frustrated by this was Vytautas. He was much more than a proud and ambitious princeling. Deeply imbued with the destiny of the House of Gediminas, determined to preserve and even extend its mastery over the Kievan inheritance, he was as conscious as Jagiello of Lithuania’s many dilemmas. He accepted that paganism was unsustainable. He was indifferent as to which form of Christianity he adopted (he had ‘converted’ to Catholicism in 1383, when aligned with the Teutonic Knights; to Orthodoxy in 1384, once more to Catholicism in 1386; and in later life, showed an unhealthy interest in Bohemian Hussitism), provided it helped wrong-foot his enemies, preserve the rule of his dynasty and the dominance of Lithuania over Rus’. His political choice in 1385-6 was Catholicism - but not at the cost of subordination to Poland. It is this which explains the twists and turns of his policies, which drove friend and foe alike (the two were often indistinguishable) to a mixture of fury, despair and dazzled admiration. The same fear of subordination to Poland also helps explain the tangled relationship between the two states over the subsequent centuries of their relationship.

The decision by the barons of Malopolska to offer the throne to a pagan ruler was one of the most remarkable in the annals of medieval Europe. While the agreement of Krėva of 14 August 1385 obliged Jagiello, in very general terms, to undertake the recovery of ‘all the lands stolen from . . . the kingdom of Poland’, the territories annexed by the Ordensstaat were a secondary issue. The lords of Malopolska were more concerned to neutralize the dangers from Lithuania itself and to secure the fertile territories of Halych-Rus’ subdued by Casimir the Great, to which not only Lithuania, but also Hungary laid claim. As recently as 1376, Jogaila himself had participated in a savage raid which had laid waste the rich lands between the San and the Vistula. The Krėva Act seemingly promised that he would incorporate Lithuania into Poland. For over T50 years the Poles were to insist on this. A series of further enactments (the so-called ‘unions’ of Vilnius, 1401; Horodto, 1413; Grodno, 1432; and Vilnius, 1499) continued to stress

Lithuania’s incorporation or subordination. The term used for ‘incorporate’ in 1385 - ‘applicare’ - has given rise to much acrimonious discussion between Polish and Lithuanian historians, but the Poles had no doubt of what it meant at the time. On the other hand, Jagietlo and his successors had no intention of implementing these purely tactical promises.