The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

200 EUSSIA IN EUEOrB.Lithuanian and Polish Ascendancy.After the fall of Kiev and Galicia, White Russia emerged from her obscurityas the centre of a new Slav empire, under the sceptre of Lithuanian princes,kinsmen and heirs of the old Russian Polotzk dynasty. During the thirteenthand fourteenth centuries the Lithuanian princes successively absorbed all WhiteRussia, Volhynia, Podolia, Kiev, Severia (Chernigov), partly by force, partly bytreaty or happy alliances, and henceforth they bear the title of " Princes ofRussia." By a singular coincidence the King of Poland, after occupying Galicia,also takes the same title, while the ruler of Moscow, as if in energetic protest forthe lands that escape his grasp, designates himself " Prince of all Russia." Butin his relations with the Lithuanian sovereigns he at first avoids the use of thishigh-flown title, the official recognition of which is first secured in the treaty of1503 by John III. In the fourteenth century Lithuania was too powerful to bethreatened by the Muscovite prince. She had subdued all the Dnieper, and evena portion of the Oka basin, where the river Ugra formed the limit of her domain,90 miles south-west of Mpscow.About the commencement of the fifteenth century the Tatars began to retireeastwards, the steppes between the Dnieper and Dniester were thrown open tocolonisation, and the river populations could now freely ship their corn forConstantinople at the little port of Haji-Bey, on the site of the present Odessa.The princes of Tver, Razan, and Novgorod itself turned towards Lithuaniathrough fear of the Muscovite autocrats, who thus felt themselves threatened withthe loss of empire. Lithuania now became the real Western Russia, a state atonce Russian and European, though the name given to the principality was appliedto a small part only of its domain. The national laws were never drawn up inLithuanian, and nearly all are in Russian, and especially in the White Russiandialect.But the normal development of Lithuania was arrested by its political unionwith Poland. The rulers of this country, already masters of Galicia, wished tojustify the title of "Princes of Russia" which they had assumed. In 1386 aPolish queen married the Lithuanian Prince Jagello, who on this occasion adoptedthe Roman Catholic religion. A union at first purely personal was in due coursefollowed by that of the states, notwithstanding the protests of the Lithuaniansand White Russians, who, to preserve their independence, even threatened to joinMuscovy. Aided by the lesser nobility of the southern provinces, envious of theprivileges of the great Lithuanian vassals, and aspiring to equal rights withthe Polish gentry, the kings at last succeeded in attaching Volhynia and Kiev toPoland, and the rest of Lithuania was finally united in 15G9. But the internaldissensions flowing from this forced union became a permanent source of weaknessto this double empire, whose vast extent promised at one time to secure for it thehegemony of the Slav peoples. Lying nearer to Europe proper, enjoying a moreadvanced culture than the eastern Slavs, and commanding more abundant materialresources, it had also the advantage of occupying the region traversed by the