14 Švitrigaila

The coronation tempest was not driven, as is often supposed, by a desire to establish Lithuanian independence and sovereignty.¹ In a Europe of composite monarchies there were many unions of kingdoms; the raising of Lithuania to a monarchy would have secured its equal status within the union, not its independent statehood. Vytautas defended his position and Lithuania’s autonomy with gusto; what he opposed—as did Jagiełło—was the Polish conception of an accessory union: the cousins had a common interest in defending the grand duchy as a Gediminid patrimony within a union of equals: aeque principaliter. From 1401, and certainly from 1413, when he helped draft Horodło, Vytautas worked with the grain of the union to encourage the development of a genuine political community along Polish lines among the Lithuanian boyars, through opening up the Lithuanian elites to Polish influences, through the extension to Catholic nobles of the rights and privileges enjoyed by their Polish counterparts, through the Horodło adoption, and through his challenge to the extended Gediminid dynasty. He realized that Lithuania could not establish itself as an equal partner within the union unless its political elite developed into a genuine political community. His Lithuanian protégés, by acting as envoys negotiating with Poles—and with other European powers alongside Poles—and by attending assemblies with Poles, as at Horodło in 1413—became acquainted with a new political reality, a new political language, and a new politics: Błaszczyk identifies fifty examples of Polish-Lithuanian cooperation in foreign relations between 1389 and 1427, many involving Lithuanian participation in joint missions.² This did not mean that Lithuanians meekly accepted the Polish view of the union: far from it. The years after Vytautas’s death, however, showed how much they had absorbed. By 1430 the clock could not be turned back. While the Lithuanian boyars had by no means been passive tools of their prince before 1386, Vytautas established institutional structures that gave them an increasingly influential voice. They were now ready to take a more active role in shaping the union. This change owed much to Vytautas; it was his most important legacy.

Vytautas was not even buried before conflict erupted over Lithuania’s government. Jagiełło faced a dilemma which he discussed with the dying Vytautas. Horodło allowed for the election of a new grand duke after Vytautas’s death; it did not require it—a point that is often overlooked.³ The office of grand duke was not made permanent as is often assumed: Horodło stated that if the Lithuanians elected a grand duke, they should not do so without consultation, although the form this should take was left vague. The Lithuanian boyars promised to elect as grand duke a candidate nominated by Jagiełło or his successors and the Polish council.⁴ Yet the wording of the main document issued by Jagiełło and Vytautas was subtly different: if the Lithuanian version suggested that the Lithuanians could only choose a candidate presented to them by the Poles, the main document stipulated that the selection of the candidate required consultation between Poles and Lithuanians: the phrase ‘and of the lands of Lithuania’ was inserted immediately after the formula referring to the Polish council.⁵ Likewise, if in the Lithuanian document it was promised that if Jagiełło were to die without heirs, no successor would be elected in Poland without Vytautas’s consent, in the main document the phrase ‘baronumque et nobilium terrarum Littwanie’ was inserted.⁶

Yet if Horodło created an expectation that the Lithuanian community of the realm would have its say in the election of Vytautas’s successor, there was no requirement for Jagiełło to permit such an election. This was convenient for him, since there was no obvious candidate with whom it would be easy to establish the close working relationship that he had enjoyed with Vytautas. The prospects were not enticing. If Vytautas really did spend the last decade of his life working to ensure that Žygimantas succeeded him, as Nikodem argues, there was no sign that Jagiełło had listened, or evidence that Žygimantas had showed any interest in becoming grand duke on his brother’s death. Only two of Jagiełło’s brothers were still alive. The elderly Lengvenis was Orthodox and rarely left Mstislau, where he was soon to die. The volatile Švitrigaila, however, was not yet sixty. He had long nursed his smouldering resentment over his treatment. He was bequeathed nothing by Algirdas and received no reward for his 1386 baptism. He developed a profound hatred for Vytautas after being sent to Cracow in chains in 1393. Jagiełło granted him Novhorod-Siversky and western Podolia in 1400, but he lost it in 1402 after rebelling in protest at Vilnius-Radom.⁷ Following a brief Prussian exile, when he took part in raids on Lithuania, he returned in 1404, served in Vytautas’s 1405 Smolensk expedition, and was granted lands on the Dnieper. In 1408 he rebelled again, fleeing to Moscow, then to the Tatars. By September 1409 he was back at Vytautas’s court, where he was treated with contempt: Vytautas refused to let him dine at his table, keeping him under house arrest after uncovering his contacts with the Order. Švitrigaila fled in 1418, and was reconciled with Jagiełło in 1419. He struck an uneasy peace with Vytautas in 1420, when he was granted Chernihiv, Briansk, Trubchevsk, and Novhorod-Siversky.⁸

Thereafter Švitrigaila waited as Jagiełło and Vytautas aged. The birth of Jagiełło’s sons affected his prospects more than it affected Vytautas, and his support for Vytautas during the coronation tempest after years of rancid hostility indicated that he was capable of subordinating his feelings to his ambition. Immediately after the storm broke, he wrote to Sigismund offering his support; he turned up for the coronation; and as Vytautas lay dying, he pestered him to support his elevation to the grand ducal throne.⁹ When Vytautas died, he was ready.

Švitrigaila had more to offer than frustrated ambition. Długosz dismisses him as weak, unstable, and prone to bouts of rage, but as Hrushevsky observes, the only surviving characterizations of him are from hostile Polish sources.¹⁰ Švitrigaila had charisma. He was capable of attracting followers among the disaffected; this cannot entirely have been due to the fondness for drunken revelry to which Długosz attributes his popularity. Długosz grudgingly admits that he had military skills, but condemns his love of intrigue.¹¹ His political ability was demonstrated in 1430, as he adeptly positioned himself to lead those dissatisfied with the status quo.

After Vytautas’s death events moved quickly. According to Długosz, because of his love for his brother Jagiełło decided that Švitrigaila should succeed Vytautas. There is reason to doubt this version of events: Długosz’s mentor Oleśnicki left for Poland before Vytautas died, and did not observe events at first hand. Długosz claims this was a deliberate ploy by Jagiełło to prevent opposition to Švitrigaila’s elevation.¹² It is more likely that Jagiełło wished to remove individuals who might complicate negotiations with the Lithuanians: Oleśnicki’s incorporationist stance during the coronation tempest had been unhelpful, and twelve Polish councillors remained in Vilnius.¹³ Jagiełło faced an acute dilemma. Oleśnicki urged him to honour the promise he made at Jedlnia in 1430, and to announce Lithuania’s incorporation into Poland. He demanded that Podolia should return to Polish rule now that Vytautas was dead, in accordance with the agreements of 1401 and 1413. Jagiełło refused, however, to endorse the Polish view of an accessory union, which might call into question the hereditary rights of his sons to Lithuania. Yet to grant Švitrigaila the powers exercised by Vytautas was an unenticing prospect. Jagiełło had trusted Vytautas to look after his sons after his death; Švitrigaila was still young enough to marry and have sons of his own. To leave his infant sons in Švitrigaila’s care would be risky indeed.

Jagiełło was no fool, whatever Długosz affected to believe. A natural prevaricator, he made no immediate announcement, playing for time by transporting Vytautas’s body from Trakai to Vilnius and insisting that the funerary ceremonies should last several days. Far from rushing to elevate Švitrigaila as Długosz maintains, other sources suggest that Jagiełło decided to govern Lithuania himself. A 1432 memorial prepared by the Order for Erik of Pomerania stated that Jagiełło did not wish Švitrigaila to succeed Vytautas; three other sources—a bull from Eugene IV, a letter from Rusdorf, and one from Jagiełło to Rusdorf—confirm his reluctance.¹⁴ In his 1431 letter to Rusdorf Jagiełło stressed that he was Lithuania’s legitimate, natural, and hereditary ruler, having been nominated by his father with the unanimous consent of the Lithuanian boyars. He had appointed Vytautas grand duke for life on account of his zeal and loyalty. He recounted how Vytautas had returned his lands and the grand duchy to him on his deathbed in accordance with their agreements, apart from his second wife Juliana’s dower. He made no mention of any arrangement with Švitrigaila, merely stressing the favours and lands he had granted him and his anger at Švitrigaila’s ingratitude.¹⁵ For Švitrigaila, with his burning sense of entitlement, refused to accept Jagiełło’s decision. While Jagiełło was organizing Vytautas’s funeral Švitrigaila’s supporters occupied vital strongpoints, including Vilnius and Trakai castles. At some point—it is not clear when—he was elected grand duke by a substantial number of Lithuanian and Ruthenian boyars and placed Jagiełło under house arrest.¹⁶

Švitrigaila’s bid for power was far more than the act of a disgruntled Gediminid with a corrosive sense of resentment. He was dangerous because, as his election revealed, he enjoyed substantial support. For the first time since 1386, after being whipped up by Vytautas during the coronation tempest, the boyar elites—both Lithuanian and Ruthenian—played a decisive political role. According to the Order’s memorial for Erik, when Jagiełło announced his intention of ruling Lithuania himself, the Lithuanian and Ruthenian lords told him that they no longer wished to have him as their ruler, as he had neglected them since becoming king of Poland.¹⁷ Annoyed by Oleśnicki tactlessly dusting off the old documents of union as Vytautas lay dying, they sought to shape their own political future.

How did they envisage that future? Rusdorf reported that feelings were running so high after the coronation tempest that the Poles and Lithuanians wanted to separate from each other.¹⁸ That the union had reached a critical point is not in doubt. Yet it should not be assumed that it was on the verge of collapse, even if Halecki’s claim that neither Švitrigaila nor his supporters wished to break the union pushes optimism to its limits.¹⁹ Sources produced by the Order need to be used with care: since Tannenberg it had desired the collapse of the union more fervently than ever. Its agents, always on the lookout for sparks of separatist feeling, sought to fan any they found into flames. Rusdorf reported that feeling was running high among both Poles and Lithuanians, and that both sides wished to separate. While his testimony reveals the heightened emotions after the coronation tempest, whatever individuals said in anger, the Poles did not want to end the union. As for Švitrigaila, he trod carefully. He stressed to the Order that separation could only be achieved with its help. If this was not forthcoming, he would have no choice but to remain bound to the Poles.

As events were to demonstrate, what Švitrigaila could achieve depended crucially on the Lithuanian elites, who were by no means united. Resentment of haughty Polish demands for Lithuania’s reincorporation on Vytautas’s death was widespread, and the desire to uphold Lithuanian territorial and political integrity was strong. This should not necessarily be taken as evidence of support for destruction of the union. Jagiełło was detained by Švitrigaila but he was neither deposed—as Jaunutis had been deposed and as Jagiełło himself had been deposed by Kęstutis—nor was he murdered, as Mindaugas and, probably, Kęstutis had been murdered. This suggests that his position as supreme duke and his hereditary rights were not challenged; when the Lithuanians said they no longer wished to be ruled by him, what they meant was that they did not wish to be ruled directly, but preferred the Vytautan system of a separate grand duke governing in Vilnius, as allowed for in the Horodło treaty. Švitrigaila seemed to many to be a better option than rule from Cracow by a supreme duke whose health was visibly failing. When Jagiełło died, Lithuanians had no intention of being governed from afar by the Polish council.

Švitrigaila’s election is frequently presented as a breach of Horodło, or even a declaration of independence and the establishment of a sovereign Lithuanian state.²⁰ Błaszczyk argues that for Jagiełło to recognize Švitrigaila, as grand duke would entail his resignation from his hereditary rights, and the claims of his sons to Lithuania, stressing that Švitrigaila ‘stood on the platform of his hereditary and natural rights in justifying his rule, thus rejecting the Horodło model’.²¹ Yet if Švitrigaila had a claim, as a son of Algirdas, to succeed Vytautas and—since the succession in Lithuania was not governed by primogeniture—to succeed Jagiełło himself, he owed his position as grand duke to an election that challenged the traditional Gediminid practice of dynastic nomination: Švitrigaila had publicly challenged Jagiełło’s right to dispose of the grand duchy as he saw fit. Horodło reaffirmed the supreme duke’s right to nominate his successor, but crucially limited it by stressing the need for consultation with the Polish and Lithuanian elites. Thus regardless of Švitrigaila’s motives his election did not constitute a direct challenge to Horodło, but an affirmation of it. For it was from Horodło that the Lithuanians derived their right to participate in the election of their grand duke. In 1413 the Poles had planted a seed; they should not have been surprised at the flower that blossomed seventeen years later. The Lithuanians thoroughly understood the idea of election; what they objected to was Jagiełło’s decision to decide the future form of Lithuania’s government without consulting them, in breach of his promise at Horodło. Faced with the threat that there might be no election at all, the Lithuanians chose for themselves, just as the Poles had rejected the candidate selected for them in 1382 by Louis of Anjou. While Hrushevsky and Błaszczyk go too far in asserting that Švitrigaila’s election was ‘completely legal’—it was not under the terms of Horodło owing to the lack of Polish consent—the confusion in the Horodło documents produced deadlock, which the boyars broke by their election of Švitrigaila.²²

The election challenged Oleśnicki’s incorporationist view of union and Jagiełło’s decision to govern Lithuania directly; it did not challenge Jagiełło’s position as supreme duke, or his hereditary rights and those of his sons; it cannot therefore be seen as an affirmation of Lithuania’s sovereign, independent statehood. Jagiełło’s response suggests that he grasped this fact, and understood the importance of affirming his suzerainty before the situation ran out of control. He acted quickly to contain the damage by recognizing the election. Having sent Švitrigaila a ring as a symbol of his elevation, on 7 November he formally agreed to keep the peace between Poland and Lithuania and summoned a joint assembly for 15 August 1431 to discuss disputed matters. The document enshrining this agreement stressed his status as supreme prince while addressing Švitrigaila as grand duke. Halecki cites it as evidence that Švitrigaila did not wish to break the union, since the phraseology suggests that the assembly would discuss ‘all the articles necessary and useful for the establishment of friendship, unity and concord’ between the brothers and their realms, taking this to mean the negotiation of a new union, but that is to read too much into conventional diplomatic courtesies. It is probable that Švitrigaila did not wish to burn his bridges until he had sufficient foreign support to mount a real challenge to the status quo.²³ He seems not to have paid much attention to the wording: the phrase recognizing him as grand duke states that he would ‘govern in peace and tranquillity [these] lands of our kingdom of Poland’, which neatly emphasized both his subordinate status and the incorporationist Polish position.²⁴ This suggests he did not intend to keep his promises, and too much weight should not be placed on this document, or another agreement on 29 November between Jagiełło, Švitrigaila, and several Lithuanian lords, in which Jagiełło agreed to hand over four castles in western Podolia seized by Poles after Vytautas’s death, which Švitrigaila would return to him and his heirs if the Poles did not recognize the 7 November agreement, if the Poles and Lithuanians failed to reach an agreement, or if Jagiełło should die.²⁵

Conflict was inevitable. On 6 December the Polish council deplored Jagiełło’s detention and declared his confirmation of Švitrigaila’s election illegal. While radical solutions were discussed and provision was made to use force to free Jagiełło if necessary, moderate influences prevailed: an embassy led by Oleśnicki was despatched to negotiate.²⁶ It never reached Lithuania, for Švitrigaila released Jagiełło, although he was briefly detained again when Švitrigaila learned that the Poles had refused to return the Podolian castles, and Jagiełło did not return to Poland until February, where, at a council meeting in Sandomierz, he was attacked for recognizing Švitrigaila without Polish consent.²⁷

It was not just Jagiełło who was playing for time. Immediately after settling with Jagiełło, Švitrigaila wrote to Sigismund of Luxembourg and Rusdorf proposing an alliance. He suggested that Jagiełło be included in the pact, offering to act as mediator in the disputes between Jagiełło and Sigismund, but the proposal was not serious: Švitrigaila asked Sigismund to send him the crown intended for Vytautas, while Sigismund, who agreed with alacrity, brusquely rejected negotiations with Jagiełło.²⁸

Švitrigaila’s approach to the Order was crowned with a defensive alliance signed at Christmemel on 19 June 1431, guaranteeing him military support in the event of a Polish attack.²⁹ Later that year he gave a clear indication of his intentions by marrying Anna of Tver, who bore him a son in December 1432.³⁰ Although it is unclear how long he lived—the fact that his name is unknown suggests it was not long—the fact that Anna was fertile was significant. Švitrigaila intended to found his own dynasty; the threat to Jagiełło’s sons was evident.