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The state language (to some extent even down to theearly seventeenth century) was a variety of Russianapproximating to White Russian, and Orthodoxy thereligion of the bulk of the people. The culture, institutions,and law of the old western Russian principalitiesremained until about 1450 little affected by the formationof the new state, the capital of which was Vilna.Relations with the other Russian principalities to theeast, at any rate as regards the princes, the militarylandowners, and the upper clergy, were constant andnot always bellicose. There was much intermarriage,and individuals were ready enough to pass from Muscoviteto Lithuanian service or vice versa, and back again.At the very time, however, when this predominantlyWest Russian state of Lithuania was at its height and wasexpanding eastward at the expense of the other Russianlands, it was being drawn westward into the orbit ofPoland. The common danger on the north from theGerman knights in East Prussia and Livonia (see p. 257)brought the ' union' of 1385 with Poland and Catholicismfor the Lithuanians (cf. p. 182). The first-fruits of the' union' were the decisive common victory of Griinwaldor Tannenberg over the German knights (1410). Theconstitutional relations of Lithuania with Poland sincethen were a thorny ground of controversy, but, althoughit took a number of further ' unions' before the final oneat Lublin (1569), the results of that of 1385 proved to beof as great final consequence as the contemporaneousUnion of Kalmar (1397) for Norway and Denmark(though not for Sweden).The joint, elective, Jagellon dynasty, given by Lithuaniato Poland—justly the most renowned of Polish dynasties—and above all Catholicism, given by Poland to theLithuanians, resulted in the eventual polonizing of theupper class in most of the grand-duchy and the gradualconfinement of Russian and Orthodox influence to theunlettered peasant masses and the frontier lands. Thisprocess of acquiring the privileges, institutions, andoutlook of the Polish magnates and country gentry wasexceedingly slow. Until 1569 Lithuania preserved itsseparate institutions and administration: then, faced by204