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

The last Jagiellonian kings, Alexander (1501-6), Sigisntund (Zygmunt) I (1506-48) and Sigismund II (1.548-72) all sought good relations with the Turks. Conscious of dynastic over-stretch, they resigned themselves to letting the Habsburgs take over their position in southern Europe. Sigismund I sent no help to his nephew, Louis II of Hungary, in the ill-fated Mohacs campaign: not only was Poland exhausted by its recent campaigning in Prussia, but, in 1524, Turkey had fired a warning shot against any such involvement when Turkish (as opposed to merely Tatar) forces had raided Polish territory, penetrating as far as L’viv. When Louis II, Wtadyslaw/Vladislav/UlaszlcVs son and successor, was killed at Mohacs in February 1526 and the Hungarian army annihilated, it was the Habsburgs who scooped up the Jagiellonian inheritance south of the Carpathians. Under the terms of the treaty of Prague of г 5 15, Louis’ sister, Anna, married to the emperor Charles V’s brother, Ferdinand, was to inherit Louis’ lands if, as he did, he remained childless. The Czechs duly elected Ferdinand, the Hungarians split between him and a native contender, John Zapolya. Though Sigismund kept up a residual interest in Hungary - in 1529 his daughter, Isabella, married Zapolya - the once ambitious Jagiellonian policy was reduced to a delicate balancing act between the Zapolyas, the Habsburgs and the Turks. It was Turkish protection, not Polish influence, which allowed John Zapolyas and Isabella’s son, John Sigismund, to hang on in Transylvania as an Ottoman client after 1547.

In Lithuania, the adoption of Latin Christianity drove a wedge between native Lithuanians - who gravitated towards Catholicism - and the majority of their Rus’ subjects. The gradual percolation of Polish-stvle rights and privileges ought to have had its own attractions for the Rus’ nobility; however, the Union of Horodlo of 14т у had barred non-Catholics from the leading dignities of state. This was part of a deliberate policy, especially on Vytautas’ part, to assert the rule of a Catholicized, Lithuanian elite, over the lands of Rus'. The only Orthodox, russified nobles to whom he was prepared to entrust major responsibility were close Gediminid relatives. This policy of favouring Catholic Lithuanians was pursued even more intensively after his death. When in 1470, for the first time in its history, a non-princely, Catholic official was named governor of Kiev, he had to be imposed by force on the city and its inhabitants. To Orthodox nobles, especially in the distant eastern borderlands, taking service with Moscow often seemed to offer a more promising path of advancement, even if many more preferred to argue for an extension of the rights and liberties of their Catholic counterparts to themselves. To the grand princes of Moscow, Catholic rule in Lithuania provided the perfect pretext for seeking to ‘recover’ the Rus’ lands ruled from Vilnius. Casimir IV managed, by and large, to preserve good relations with Muscovy, but, towards the end of his reign, this was only by turning a blind eye to repeated border violations, and to the constant encouragement by Moscow of Tatar raids. On Casimir’s death in 1492, Ivan III unleashed open war.

The comparatively loose military organization of the Grand Duchy, composed of the retinues of great magnates and princes, the pospolite ruszeme and all too few mercenaries, could not cope with the forces the much more centralized Muscovite state could mobilize. A series of dogged conflicts (1492-4; 1498-1503; r 507-8; 1.512-22; 1534-7) left Lithuania on the ropes. In 1 503, it had to cede about a third of its territory to Moscow. These were, admittedly, lands over which the Grand Duchy had always exercised very loose control; and in subsequent campaigns, the distances involved made military operations much more difficult for the Russian tsars. But this was of little consolation to the Lithuanian elite, not least because it only served to indicate to others, notably the Tatars (and, for that matter, the Poles), the extent of their military weaknesses. Lithuania’s eastern border in L492 was less than 100 miles from Moscow, but some 400 from Vilnius; after the catastrophic loss of Smolensk in July 1 514, it was pushed back to around half that distance. While Polish volunteers and mercenaries fought in the Lithuanian ranks, it was not until 1508 that king Sigismund I was able to persuade the Polish

Parliament to vote any funding for the nebulously remote fighting in the east. Polish troops and money helped the Lithuanians to victory on the river Orsha in September 1514 and to contain further Russian gains, but Smolensk remained in Russian hands for almost another century. The lands around Homel, restored by Moscow in March 1537, were little more than a fleabite in Lithuania’s losses. Respite came largely as a result of Ivan IV’s internal preoccupations and his distractions against the Tatar Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan.