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Raid On Brandenburg
The Raid on Brandenburg was a Polish–Lithuanian raid on the Margraviate of Brandenburg in February–March 1326. With papal approval and encouragement, King Władysław I of Poland allied with Gediminas of Lithuania and organized the raid against Louis V of Germany. Pope John XXII opposed Louis' ambitions to become the Holy Roman Emperor, King Władysław regarded Neumark (East Brandenburg) as Polish territory, while Lithuanians sought loot. The Teutonic Knights, under papal pressure, observed its peace treaties with Poland and Lithuania and did not interfere. The Polish–Lithuanian army raided Brandenburg for a month, reaching Frankfurt and Berlin, and took 6,000 prisoners. Background After the death of Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor, in August 1313, a war erupted between cousins Louis V of Germany and Frederick the Fair of Austria for the imperial crown. Ambitious Pope John XXII saw himself as the ultimate judge and arbiter in the conflict. When Louis V ignored papal de ...
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Neumark
The Neumark (), also known as the New March ( pl, Nowa Marchia) or as East Brandenburg (), was a region of the Margraviate of Brandenburg and its successors located east of the Oder River in territory which became part of Poland in 1945. Called the Lubusz Land while part of medieval Poland, the territory later known as the Neumark gradually became part of the German Margraviate of Brandenburg from the mid-13th century. As Brandenburg-Küstrin the Neumark formed an independent state of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation from 1535 to 1571; after the death of the margrave John, a younger son of Joachim I Nestor, Elector of Brandenburg, it returned to Elector John George, the margrave's nephew and Joachim I Nestor's grandson. With the rest of the Electorate of Brandenburg, it became part of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701 and part of the German Empire in 1871 when each of those states first formed. After World War I the entirely ethnic German Neumark remained within the Fre ...
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House Of Ascania
The House of Ascania (german: Askanier) was a dynasty of German rulers. It is also known as the House of Anhalt, which refers to its longest-held possession, Anhalt. The Ascanians are named after Ascania (or Ascaria) Castle, known as ''Schloss Askanien'' in German, which was located near and named after Aschersleben. The castle was the seat of the County of Ascania, a title that was later subsumed into the titles of the princes of Anhalt. History The earliest known member of the house, Esiko, Count of Ballenstedt, first appears in a document of 1036. He is assumed to have been a grandson (through his mother) of Odo I, Margrave of the Saxon Ostmark. From Odo, the Ascanians inherited large properties in the Saxon Eastern March. Esiko's grandson was Otto, Count of Ballenstedt, who died in 1123. By Otto's marriage to Eilika, daughter of Magnus, Duke of Saxony, the Ascanians became heirs to half of the property of the House of Billung, former dukes of Saxony. Otto's son, Alber ...
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Christianization Of Lithuania
The Christianization of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos krikštas) occurred in 1387, initiated by King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Władysław II Jagiełło and his cousin Vytautas the Great. It signified the official adoption of Christianity by Lithuania, the last pagan country in Europe. This event ended one of the most complicated and lengthiest processes of Christianization in European history. History Early contacts with Eastern Orthodox Christianity Lithuanians' contacts with the Christian religion predated the establishment of the Duchy of Lithuania in the 13th century. The first known record of the name Lithuania (''Litua''), recorded in the Annals of Quedlinburg in 1009, relates to Chalcedonian missionaries led by Bruno of Querfurt, who baptised several rulers of the Yotvingians, a nearby Baltic tribe. However, Lithuanians had more active contacts with the Kievan Rus' and subsequent Eastern Slavic states, which had adopted Eastern Orthodox Christianity follo ...
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Letters Of Gediminas
There are 6 surviving transcripts of letters of Gediminas written in 1323–1324 by Grand Duke Gediminas. These letters are one of the first surviving documents from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Since they were sent to Western Europe, the pope, merchants, and craftspeople, they were written in Latin. The first letter was written to Pope John XXII. Gediminas claimed that the Teutonic Knights did not act in the interest of the Catholic faith. Instead, they brutally devastated the land. The people were forced into resistance. Gediminas enumerated many crimes and damages done by the knights; for example, he claimed that his predecessor Vytenis sent a letter to the Franciscan friars asking for two brothers who could come to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to look after a local church. When the Teutonic Knights learned about the letter, they sent their army and destroyed the church. In the last sentence Gediminas vaguely promised to accept Christianity and obey the pope. The second letter ...
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Casimir III The Great
Casimir III the Great ( pl, Kazimierz III Wielki; 30 April 1310 – 5 November 1370) reigned as the King of Poland from 1333 to 1370. He also later became King of Ruthenia in 1340, and fought to retain the title in the Galicia-Volhynia Wars. He was the last Polish king from the Piast dynasty. Casimir inherited a kingdom weakened by war and made it prosperous and wealthy. He reformed the Polish army and doubled the size of the kingdom. He reformed the judicial system and introduced a legal code, gaining the title "the Polish Justinian". Casimir built extensively and founded the Jagiellonian University (back then simply called the University of Krakow),Saxton, 1851, p. 535 the oldest Polish university and one of the oldest in the world. He also confirmed privileges and protections previously granted to Jews and encouraged them to settle in Poland in great numbers. Casimir left no sons. When he died in 1370 from an injury received while hunting, his nephew, King Louis I of Hunga ...
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Aldona Of Lithuania
Aldona (baptized ''Ona'' or ''Anna''; her pagan name, Aldona, is known only from the writings of Maciej Stryjkowski; – 26 May 1339) was Queen consort of Piast Poland, Poland (1333–1339), and a princess of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. She was the daughter of Gediminas, Grand Duke of Lithuania. Biography Aldona married Casimir III of Poland, when he was 15 or 16 years old. The bride was probably of about the same age. The marriage took place on 30 April or 16 October 1325 and was a purely Political marriage, political maneuver to strengthen the first Polish–Lithuanian coalition against the Teutonic Knights. Casimir was seeking allies in the dispute over Pomerania with the Order. Gediminas had just undertaken an unsuccessful attempt to Christianize Lithuania. This coalition was a prelude to the Union of Krewo in 1385, and the Union of Lublin in 1569, which resulted in the creation of a new state, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The details of the agreement are not know ...
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Military Order (society)
A military order ( la, militaris ordo) is a Christian religious society of knights. The original military orders were the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller, the Order of Saint James, the Order of Calatrava, and the Teutonic Knights. They arose in the Middle Ages in association with the Crusades, both in the Holy Land, the Baltics, and the Iberian peninsula; their members being dedicated to the protection of pilgrims and the defence of the Crusader states. They are the predecessors of chivalric orders. Most members of military orders were laymen who took religious vows, such as of poverty, chastity, and obedience, according to monastic ideals. The orders owned houses called commanderies all across Europe and had a hierarchical structure of leadership with the grand master at the top. The Knights Templar, the largest and most influential of the military orders, was suppressed in the early fourteenth century; only a handful of orders were established and recognized aft ...
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Gediminas
Gediminas ( la, Gedeminne, ; – December 1341) was the king or Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1315 or 1316 until his death. He is credited with founding this political entity and expanding its territory which later spanned the area ranging from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Also seen as one of the most significant individuals in early Lithuanian history, he was responsible for both building Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, and establishing a dynasty that later came to rule other European countries such as Poland, Hungary and Bohemia. As part of his legacy, he gained a reputation for being a champion of paganism, who successfully diverted attempts to Christianize his country by skillful negotiations with the Pope and other Christian rulers. Biography Origin Gediminas was born in about 1275. Because written sources of the era are scarce, Gediminas' ancestry, early life, and assumption of the title of Grand Duke in ca. 1316 are obscure and continue to be the subject of sc ...
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Lubusz Land
Lubusz Land ( pl, Ziemia lubuska; german: Land Lebus) is a historical region and cultural landscape in Poland and Germany on both sides of the Oder river. Originally the settlement area of the Lechites, the swampy area was located east of Margraviate of Brandenburg, Brandenburg and west of Greater Poland, south of Pomerania and north of Silesia and Lower Lusatia. Presently its eastern part lies within the Polish Lubusz Voivodeship, the western part with its historical capital Lebus (Lubusz) in the German state of Brandenburg. History Kingdom of Poland When in 928 King Henry the Fowler, Henry I of Germany crossed the Elbe river to conquer the lands of the Veleti, he did not subdue the Leubuzzi people settling beyond the Spree (river), Spree. Their territory was either already inherited by the first Polish ruler Mieszko I of Poland, Mieszko I (~960-992) or conquered by him in the early period of his rule. After Mieszkos' death the whole country was inherited by his son Duke, an ...
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Duchy Of Silesia
The Duchy of Silesia ( pl, Księstwo śląskie, german: Herzogtum Schlesien, cs, Slezské knížectví) with its capital at Wrocław was a medieval duchy located in the historic Silesian region of Poland. Soon after it was formed under the Piast dynasty in 1138, it fragmented into various Silesian duchies. In 1327, the remaining Duchy of Wrocław as well as most other duchies ruled by the Silesian Piasts passed to the Kingdom of Bohemia as Duchies of Silesia. The acquisition was completed when King Casimir III the Great of Poland renounced his rights to Silesia in the 1335 Treaty of Trentschin. Geography During the time of its establishment, the Silesian lands covered the basin of the upper and middle Oder river. In the south the Sudetes mountain range up to the Moravian Gate formed the border with the lands of Bohemia - including Kłodzko Land - and Moravia. After a more than century-long struggle, the boundary had just been determined by an 1137 agreement with the Bohemian ...
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Margrave Of Brandenburg
This article lists the Margraves and Electors of Margraviate of Brandenburg, Brandenburg during the period of time that Brandenburg was a constituent state of the Holy Roman Empire. The Mark, or ''March'', of Brandenburg was one of the primary constituent states of the Holy Roman Empire. It was created in 1157 as the Margraviate of Brandenburg by Albert the Bear, Margrave of the Northern March. In 1356, by the terms of the Golden Bull of 1356, Golden Bull of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV, the Margrave of Brandenburg was given the permanent right to participate in the Imperial election, election of the Holy Roman Emperor with the title of Prince-elector, Elector (german: Kurfürst). The early rulers came from several different dynasties, but from 1415 Brandenburg and its successor states were ruled by the House of Hohenzollern for over 500 years. From 1618 onward, Brandenburg was ruled in personal union with the Duchy of Prussia. The Hohenzollerns raised Prussia t ...
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Louis V, Duke Of Bavaria
Louis V, called the Brandenburger (May 1315 – 18 September 1361), a member of the House of Wittelsbach, ruled as Margrave of Brandenburg from 1323 to 1351 and as Duke of Bavaria from 1347 until his death. From 1342 he also was co-ruling Count of Tyrol by his marriage with the Meinhardiner countess Margaret. Family history Louis V was the eldest son of King Louis IV of Germany and his first wife, Beatrice of Świdnica. His father, Duke of Bavaria since 1294, had been elected king in 1314, rivalled by the Habsburg anti-king Frederick the Fair. He had to defend his rights in a lengthy throne quarrel, finally defeated Frederick's forces in the 1322 Battle of Mühldorf, and in 1328 received the Imperial crown; though not by the pope but by the "Roman people" led by Sciarra Colonna. Margrave of Brandenburg Upon his victory at Mühldorf, the king took the occasion to seize the princeless Margraviate of Brandenburg, where the last Ascanian ruler Henry the Child had died without h ...
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