I. The Last Pagans of Europe
By the end of the thirteenth century, Lithuania was the last pagan state in Europe. While the Prussians, Livs, Latvians and Estonians had been conquered by the military orders, as described in the site's pages on the Prussian Crusade and the Livonian Crusade, the Lithuanians had built a powerful state that resisted conquest for over a century and a half. The Lithuanian grand dukes ruled not only the Baltic Lithuanians but also a large part of the Orthodox Russian lands, and their state became one of the largest in Europe.
The war between the Teutonic Order and Lithuania was the longest of the Baltic crusades. It lasted from the 1280s until the early fifteenth century, and it ended not with the conquest of Lithuania but with its voluntary baptism and its alliance with Poland, which defeated the order at Grunwald. The site's page on the Northern Crusades gives an overview of the whole movement.
II. Mindaugas
The first ruler of a unified Lithuania was Mindaugas, who rose to power in the 1230s and 1240s, uniting the Lithuanian lands and expanding into the Russian lands to the east. The Lithuanian victory at Saule in 1236, which destroyed the Sword Brothers, was won before Mindaugas had full control, but it showed the military strength of the Lithuanians.
Facing pressure from the Livonian Order and from his rivals, Mindaugas accepted baptism in 1251, and in 1253 he was crowned king of Lithuania with the approval of Pope Innocent IV, the only king that Lithuania ever had. In return he ceded parts of Samogitia to the Livonian Order. The conversion appears to have been political, and it did not lead to the conversion of the Lithuanian people.
After the Samogitians defeated the order at Durbe in 1260, Mindaugas broke with the order, and according to some sources he returned to paganism. He was murdered in 1263 by his rivals, and Lithuania remained pagan for more than a century.
III. Gediminas
Gediminas, who ruled from about 1316 to 1341, made Lithuania a great power. He founded the dynasty, known as the Gediminids, that ruled Lithuania and later Poland. He expanded into the Russian lands, taking Kiev's region, and he made Vilnius his capital. He invited merchants, craftsmen and clergy from the West, both Franciscans and Dominicans, to settle in Lithuania, and he allowed Orthodox Christians and Catholics to practise their religion.
In 1323 Gediminas wrote letters to the pope and to the cities of the Hanseatic League, inviting settlers and expressing a willingness to accept baptism. The letters caused a sensation, and a papal legation came to Vilnius in 1324. But Gediminas told the legates that he had no intention of being baptised and that the letters had been misunderstood. The reason for his change of mind is unclear, possibly the opposition of his pagan and Orthodox subjects, or the order's hostility. He remained pagan until his death.
IV. The Pagan Religion of Lithuania
The religion of the Lithuanians included gods such as Perkūnas, the god of thunder; Žemyna, the goddess of the earth; and others connected with fire, the forest and the home. The Lithuanians kept sacred fires, tended by priests, and revered sacred groves, oaks and serpents. Their rulers were cremated with their horses, weapons and servants, as at the funeral of Grand Duke Algirdas in 1377 and of Kęstutis in 1382.
The Christian chroniclers described the Lithuanian religion with hostility, and much of what they wrote is unreliable. Lithuanian paganism was not a static tradition but an evolving religion that adapted to the political needs of the state, and some historians have argued that the grand dukes deliberately maintained it as a source of identity against the Christian powers on both sides.
V. The Reisen
From the late thirteenth century the Teutonic Order conducted regular raids into Lithuania, known in German as Reisen, journeys. There were two seasons: in winter, when the frozen rivers and marshes allowed armies to travel, and in late summer, after the harvest. The raids went through the wilderness between Prussia and Lithuania, attacking villages and forts, burning crops and taking captives and cattle. The Lithuanians raided Prussia and Livonia in turn.
The order's raids were joined by knights from western Europe, who came to Prussia for the adventure, the indulgence and the honour. French, English, Scottish, Dutch, German, Bohemian and Austrian nobles took part. The Reisen became a fashionable form of chivalric activity, especially during the Hundred Years' War truces. Among those who went were Henry Bolingbroke, earl of Derby, later Henry IV of England, who took part in a siege of Vilnius in 1390, and the French marshal Jean Boucicaut, who went to Prussia three times. Chaucer's knight had fought in Prussia and Lithuania, and his son the squire had been in Flanders, Artois and Picardy.
VI. The Honour Table
The order entertained its guests lavishly. The most distinguished knights were invited to an honour table, the Ehrentisch, a feast at which the best knights were seated and given badges with the motto Honneur vainc tout, Honour conquers all. The custom drew on the Arthurian romances and the ideal of the Round Table. The order used the feasts to attract knights and to maintain its prestige.
The contrast between the chivalric splendour of the honour table and the reality of the raids, which consisted mainly of burning villages and killing or capturing peasants, was noticed by some contemporaries. The French writer Philippe de Mézières, who had urged a new crusade to the east, criticised the order for its pride and its cruelty.
VII. Algirdas and Kęstutis
After the death of Gediminas, Lithuania was ruled by two of his sons, Algirdas, who ruled from Vilnius and directed the expansion into the Russian lands, and Kęstutis, who ruled from Trakai and defended the west against the Teutonic Order. The two brothers cooperated closely. Algirdas expanded Lithuania to the Black Sea and fought the Golden Horde and Moscow, and in 1362 he defeated the Tatars at the Blue Waters, taking Kiev and Podolia.
Kęstutis fought the order in dozens of campaigns. He was captured by the order in 1361, imprisoned at Marienburg, and escaped with the help of a Lithuanian servant. In 1370 he was defeated by the order at Rudau in Sambia, a battle in which both sides suffered heavy losses. The war devastated the borderlands, but neither side could conquer the other.
VIII. Jogaila and Kęstutis
Algirdas died in 1377 and was succeeded by his son Jogaila. Conflict broke out between Jogaila and his uncle Kęstutis. Jogaila made a secret treaty with the Teutonic Order, the Treaty of Dovydiškės in 1380, which threatened Kęstutis. Kęstutis seized Vilnius in 1381, but Jogaila retook it, and in 1382 Kęstutis was captured and died in prison at Krėva, probably murdered on Jogaila's orders. His son Vytautas escaped, dressed in his wife's maid's clothes, and fled to the Teutonic Order.
Vytautas accepted baptism from the order and joined it against Jogaila. The order hoped to use him to gain Samogitia and to control Lithuania. The civil war allowed the order to intervene in Lithuanian politics, and Samogitia was ceded to it by both sides at different times.
IX. The Union of Krewo
In 1384 Jadwiga, the young daughter of Louis the Great of Hungary and Poland, was crowned king of Poland, using the title king because there was no provision for a ruling queen. The Polish nobles sought a husband for her who would strengthen Poland against the Teutonic Order. They chose Jogaila. In the Union of Krewo, signed on 14 August 1385, Jogaila agreed to accept Catholic baptism with his family and all the Lithuanians who were still pagan, to unite Lithuania with Poland, and to recover the lands lost by Poland.
Jadwiga was betrothed to William of Habsburg, and there was a story that she loved him and was unwilling to marry Jogaila. But she agreed for the good of the church and of Poland. In February 1386 Jogaila came to Kraków, was baptised with the name Władysław, married Jadwiga and was crowned king of Poland as Władysław II. The site's page on Bible Scholarship in Kraków describes the city and the university that Jadwiga and Władysław refounded in 1400.
X. The Baptism of Lithuania
In 1387 Władysław Jagiełło returned to Lithuania with Polish clergy to baptise the Lithuanians. According to the chronicler Jan Długosz, the sacred fire in Vilnius was extinguished, the sacred groves cut down and the sacred serpents killed. The people were baptised in groups, each group receiving the same Christian name, and those who accepted baptism received a woollen shirt as a gift. The bishopric of Vilnius was founded, and the king granted privileges to the Catholic nobles.
The conversion was superficial at first. The clergy were Polish and did not speak Lithuanian, and pagan practices continued for centuries. The baptism of Samogitia, which was still contested with the order, took place only in 1413, when Jogaila and Vytautas themselves preached to the Samogitians. The Greek Scriptures describe the Ethiopian official who was baptised after understanding the Scriptures, which Philip explained to him (Acts 8:30-38). The baptism of a whole people at the command of their ruler was a different thing.
XI. The Order's Response
The baptism of Lithuania removed the justification for the Teutonic Order's wars. The order claimed that the conversion was false, that the Lithuanians were still pagans and that its war was still a holy war. It continued its raids and supported Vytautas in his conflicts with Jogaila. In 1392 Jogaila and Vytautas were reconciled, and Vytautas became grand duke of Lithuania under the Polish crown.
Vytautas ruled Lithuania until his death in 1430 and made it a great power. In 1398, by the Treaty of Salynas, he ceded Samogitia to the order in order to secure his western frontier while he campaigned against the Tatars. In 1399 he was defeated by the Tatars at the river Vorskla, a defeat that ended his ambitions in the east. In 1401 the Samogitians rebelled against the order, and the conflict over Samogitia led to the Great War.
XII. The Great War
In 1409 the Samogitians rebelled again with Vytautas's support. The grand master of the Teutonic Order, Ulrich von Jungingen, declared war on Poland and Lithuania in August 1409. After a truce, both sides prepared for a decisive campaign in 1410. Władysław Jagiełło and Vytautas assembled a large army, including Polish, Lithuanian, Ruthenian and Tatar troops, with Czech and Moravian mercenaries. The Polish and Lithuanian armies joined at Czerwińsk on the Vistula, crossing on a pontoon bridge, and marched toward Marienburg.
The order assembled its own army, including the brothers of the order, its vassals, the townsmen of Prussia, mercenaries and guests from the empire and elsewhere. The two armies met on 15 July 1410 near the villages of Grunwald and Tannenberg in Prussia.
XIII. The Battle of Grunwald
The size of the armies at Grunwald is uncertain. Modern estimates range from about 20,000 to 30,000 for the Polish-Lithuanian army and 15,000 to 25,000 for the order. The order's army waited in the morning while Jogaila heard Mass. According to Długosz, Ulrich sent two swords to Jogaila as a challenge, an act that became a famous symbol in Polish memory.
The battle began around midday. The Lithuanian cavalry on the right wing attacked first, then retreated, possibly as a feigned retreat in the Tatar manner, or possibly in a genuine rout. The order's knights pursued them, and the Polish forces bore the brunt of the fighting. The Polish royal banner fell at one point and was recovered. Ulrich von Jungingen led a charge of reserve squadrons against the Polish line, and at one point a knight named Lupold or Diepold von Köckeritz attacked Jogaila himself, but he was killed by the king's secretary, Zbigniew Oleśnicki.
The Lithuanians returned to the field, and the order's army was surrounded. Ulrich von Jungingen was killed, along with most of the order's leaders, including the grand marshal and grand commander. About two hundred brothers of the order were killed, and thousands of others. The order's camp was taken. The battle was one of the largest of medieval Europe and a crushing defeat for the order.
XIV. The Siege of Marienburg
After the battle the Polish-Lithuanian army marched to Marienburg, the order's capital, but it arrived only on 26 July. The castle was defended by Heinrich von Plauen, a commander who had not been at the battle, and who had organised the defence. The siege lasted two months, but the castle held. Disease spread in the besieging army, and Vytautas withdrew. In September Jogaila lifted the siege. Heinrich von Plauen was elected grand master.
XV. The Peace of Thorn
The First Peace of Thorn was concluded on 1 February 1411. The order kept most of its lands, but it ceded Samogitia to Lithuania for the lifetimes of Jogaila and Vytautas and returned Dobrzyń to Poland. It also agreed to pay a large indemnity for the release of prisoners. The terms were mild considering the scale of the defeat, but the indemnity and the cost of the war ruined the order's finances. The order's power began a long decline, and its subjects in Prussia became increasingly discontented.
XVI. The Council of Constance
The conflict between Poland and the Teutonic Order was taken to the Council of Constance, which met from 1414 to 1418 to end the Great Schism and to deal with heresy. The council also tried and burned Jan Hus in 1415. The Polish delegation, led by the rector of Kraków University, Paulus Vladimiri, argued that the order's wars against Lithuania were unjust, since pagans had the right to their lands and could not be attacked merely for their religion, and that conversion must be voluntary. He also argued that the emperor and pope had no authority to give pagan lands to the order.
The order's defenders, including the Dominican John Falkenberg, argued the contrary. Falkenberg's treatise, which called for the killing of the Polish king and his subjects, was condemned. The council did not give a formal judgement on the main issue. A delegation of Samogitians came to the council to ask for baptism and to complain of the order's mistreatment.
Vladimiri's arguments were an important contribution to the development of ideas about the rights of non-Christians and the limits of holy war, later developed by the Spanish theologians of the sixteenth century in debates over the conquest of the Americas.
XVII. The Peace of Melno
The war resumed in 1414 and in 1422. The Peace of Melno, concluded on 27 September 1422, fixed the border between Prussia and Lithuania, which remained largely unchanged until 1919. The order renounced Samogitia permanently. The Samogitians were baptised, and the bishopric of Medininkai was founded in 1417. The crusade against Lithuania had come to an end.
XVIII. The Memory of Grunwald
The battle of Grunwald became a central event in the national memory of Poland, Lithuania and Germany. In Poland it was celebrated as a great national victory over German aggression, painted by Jan Matejko in 1878 and described by Henryk Sienkiewicz in his novel The Knights of the Cross in 1900. In Lithuania the battle, called Žalgiris, became a symbol of Lithuanian strength under Vytautas. In Germany it was remembered as a defeat to be avenged.
In August 1914 the German army defeated the Russians near the same site, and Paul von Hindenburg named the victory the battle of Tannenberg as revenge for 1410. A great memorial was built there, where Hindenburg was buried in 1934. The Germans blew up the memorial in 1945 as they retreated. In 1960 the Polish government held a great celebration at Grunwald for the 550th anniversary of the battle, and a monument was erected on the field.
XIX. War and the Christian Faith
The Lithuanian Crusade shows how the crusade could continue even after its stated purpose had been fulfilled. The order fought the Lithuanians as pagans, but when they were baptised, it continued to fight them, claiming their conversion was false. The war was driven by territorial and political interests as much as by religion. And at Grunwald, Christians fought Christians, each side praying for victory, each side singing hymns, the Poles singing the hymn Bogurodzica, Mother of God, as they went into battle.
The Greek Scriptures teach that the fruitage of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23), and that the disciples of Jesus would be known by their love for one another (John 13:35). They are to be peaceable with all men, as far as it depends on them (Romans 12:18).
XX. Samogitia
Samogitia, the lowland region of western Lithuania between Prussia and Livonia, was the key to the whole conflict. Its possession would link the order's two territories by land, and the order sought it for over a century. The Samogitians were the most persistent pagans and the fiercest opponents of the order. They had their own nobles and were often independent of the grand dukes, who were willing to cede Samogitia to the order when it suited their interests elsewhere.
The Samogitians repeatedly rebelled against the order, in 1401 and in 1409, appealing to Vytautas for help. Their rebellions were the immediate cause of the Great War. They complained of the order's heavy demands, its taking of their children as hostages and its failure to bring them true Christianity. At Constance they presented their complaints in writing, describing how the order had burned their villages and taken their people captive while claiming to convert them.
The Samogitians were the last people in Europe to be converted to Christianity. Their baptism in 1413 and the foundation of their bishopric in 1417 marked the end of European paganism as an organised religion, though pagan practices survived among the peasants for centuries.
XXI. Vytautas the Great
Vytautas, who ruled Lithuania from 1392 to 1430, is remembered in Lithuania as Vytautas the Great. He was a skilful politician and general who changed sides several times in his struggle for power, allying with the Teutonic Order against his cousin Jogaila and then with Jogaila against the order. He expanded Lithuania to the Black Sea, settled Tatars and Karaites in Lithuania, and made the grand duchy a great power.
Vytautas brought a group of Karaites, a Jewish community that accepted only the Hebrew Scriptures and rejected the rabbinic tradition, from the Crimea to Trakai, near Vilnius, where their descendants still live. He also granted privileges to the Jews of Lithuania in 1388, giving them protection and the right to trade. The Karaites of Trakai kept their own language, a Turkic tongue written in Hebrew script, and their own houses of prayer, called kenesas, one of which still stands beside the lake in the town.
At the end of his life Vytautas sought a royal crown, and the emperor Sigismund agreed to send one, but the Poles intercepted it, and Vytautas died in 1430 without being crowned. His death led to a civil war in Lithuania.
XXII. The Tradition of Jan Žižka at Grunwald
According to later tradition, Jan Žižka, the future leader of the Hussite armies, fought at Grunwald on the Polish side as a mercenary. No contemporary source names him, and the story should be treated as tradition rather than established fact, but Czech and Moravian troops did fight in the Polish-Lithuanian army, and many of them later took part in the Hussite wars. The connection between Grunwald and the Hussites was significant, since the Hussites would later fight a series of crusades launched against them by the papacy and the emperor. Polish nobles had sympathy for the Hussites, and some fought with them.
XXIII. Jan Długosz
The main narrative source for the battle of Grunwald is the history of Poland by Jan Długosz, a canon of Kraków and tutor to the sons of King Casimir IV, written in the 1460s and 1470s. Długosz's father fought at Grunwald, and Długosz had access to eyewitness accounts and to documents. He also compiled a list of the order's banners captured in the battle, the Banderia Prutenorum, with paintings of each banner, which were hung in Wawel Cathedral.
Długosz's account is detailed and vivid, but it was written more than fifty years after the battle, and it reflects a Polish perspective and the political concerns of his own time. He emphasised the Polish role and minimised the Lithuanian contribution, and his account of the Lithuanian retreat as a flight has been challenged by Lithuanian historians, who argue that it was a planned manoeuvre. Other sources, including the chronicle of the order and a letter of the Livonian Order, provide additional evidence.
XXV. The Order's Guests in 1410
The order's army at Grunwald included many guests from the empire and elsewhere, who had come to fight in what they believed was a crusade. Some came from Germany, Switzerland, Silesia and Pomerania, and there were mercenaries from Bohemia and elsewhere. The duke of Stettin, Casimir V, and Konrad VII the White, duke of Oels in Silesia, were captured in the battle. The presence of these guests showed that the order could still appeal to the crusading ideal, even against a Christian king.
Yet many of the order's subjects were reluctant to fight. The knights of Kulmerland, organised in the Lizard Union, a society of nobles, were accused of fleeing the battle, and their leader Nikolaus von Renys was executed by the order in 1411 for treason. The order's harsh treatment of its own subjects after the battle contributed to the growing discontent that would lead to the Prussian Confederation and the Thirteen Years' War.
XXVI. Heinrich von Plauen
Heinrich von Plauen, the defender of Marienburg, was elected grand master in November 1410. He sought to restore the order's power by raising taxes and preparing for a new war, but his policies were unpopular. He executed opponents and quarrelled with the order's officials. In 1413 he was deposed by the order's chapter, accused of planning a war against the will of the order, and imprisoned. He died in 1429. His fate showed the internal crisis of the order after Grunwald.
XXVII. Orthodox Lithuania
Much of the population of the grand duchy of Lithuania was Orthodox Christian, living in the Russian lands that the Lithuanian rulers had conquered. Many members of the Gediminid dynasty were baptised Orthodox, and Algirdas married two Orthodox princesses. The Ruthenian language, an East Slavic language, was used in the grand duchy's administration, and Orthodox churches stood in Vilnius alongside the sacred fires of the pagans.
The baptism of Lithuania in 1387 brought it into the Latin church, but the Orthodox population remained, and the relationship between the two churches was a source of tension. The privileges granted to Catholic nobles in 1387 and 1413 excluded the Orthodox from some offices, and the Union of Brest in 1596, which brought part of the Orthodox church into union with Rome, divided the Ruthenian Christians. The order had used the presence of Orthodox Christians in Lithuania as another argument against the grand duchy's sincerity.
XXVIII. The Hundred Years' War and the Reisen
The popularity of the Reisen among the western nobility was closely linked to the Hundred Years' War between England and France. During truces, knights of both nations, who had been fighting each other, went to Prussia to fight together against the Lithuanians. The order sometimes had to keep English and French knights apart to avoid quarrels. In 1391 a Scottish knight, William Douglas, was killed in a brawl with English knights at Königsberg.
When the war resumed in the fifteenth century, the flow of western knights to Prussia declined. The baptism of Lithuania also reduced the appeal of the Reisen. By the time of Grunwald, the age of the chivalric expeditions to Prussia was over, though the order still found guests for its wars.
XXIX. The Last Crusades in the Baltic
After Melno, the Teutonic Order fought Poland again in 1431–1435, and the Livonian Order fought Lithuania, but these were no longer crusades against pagans. The Livonian Order was defeated by the Lithuanians at the battle of Pabaiskas in 1435. The order's last great war was the Thirteen Years' War of 1454–1466, which ended with the loss of western Prussia. The idea of the Baltic crusade survived in the order's propaganda, but the reality was a conflict between Christian states.
The site's page on the Swedish Crusades in Finland describes another front of the northern crusades, where Sweden and Novgorod fought for control of Finland and Karelia in the same period.
XXX. Grunwald in Art and Literature
Jan Matejko's painting of the battle of Grunwald, completed in 1878, is one of the most famous works of Polish art. The huge canvas, nearly ten metres wide, shows the moment of Ulrich von Jungingen's death, with Vytautas in the centre and Jogaila watching from a hill. The painting was made when Poland was partitioned between Russia, Prussia and Austria, and it was meant to inspire Polish national feeling. During the Second World War the Germans searched for it to destroy it, but it was hidden and survived.
Henryk Sienkiewicz's novel The Knights of the Cross, published in 1900, described the order as cruel and treacherous and the Poles as noble. It was filmed by Aleksander Ford in 1960, for the 550th anniversary of the battle, and the film was one of the most popular in Polish history. The image of the Teutonic Knights as the enemies of Poland, formed by these works, shaped Polish attitudes toward Germany.
XXXI. Reenactment
Since 1998 a large reenactment of the battle has been held each July on the battlefield at Grunwald, attracting thousands of participants from many countries and tens of thousands of spectators. The reenactment has become one of the largest events of its kind in Europe, and it reflects the continuing place of the battle in Polish and Lithuanian memory.
XXXII. Jadwiga
Jadwiga, the queen whose marriage made the union of Poland and Lithuania possible, was only about twelve when she was crowned in 1384. She was devout and generous, and she supported the church and the poor. She gave her jewels to refound the university of Kraków, which was restored in 1400 after her death. She was also involved in diplomacy with the Teutonic Order, meeting the grand master Konrad von Jungingen in 1397 to negotiate over Dobrzyń. According to Długosz she warned the order that after her death it would face the wrath of her husband, a prophecy fulfilled at Grunwald.
Jadwiga died in 1399, shortly after giving birth to a daughter who also died. She was venerated in Poland for centuries and was canonised in 1997. A Psalter in three languages, Latin, Polish and German, associated with her, the Florian Psalter, is one of the earliest monuments of the Polish language and an important witness to the early translation of the Scriptures into Polish.
XXXIII. The Cost of the War
The long war between the order and Lithuania devastated the borderlands. The raids destroyed villages, killed or enslaved thousands of people and turned large areas into wilderness. Captives were taken to Prussia and Livonia, where they were settled as unfree peasants. The Lithuanians in turn took captives from Prussia and Livonia. The human cost of the war, borne mostly by the peasants of both sides, is rarely recorded in the chronicles, which focus on the deeds of knights and princes.
XXXIV. A Note on Numbers and Sources
The figures given on this page for the size of the armies and the number of the dead are estimates. The medieval chroniclers, writing to glorify one side or the other, often exaggerated, and modern historians differ widely. The association of the Florian Psalter with Jadwiga is likewise a tradition rather than a certainty.
XXXV. Chronology
In 1236 the battle of Saule was fought. In 1253 Mindaugas was crowned. In 1260 the battle of Durbe was fought. In 1263 Mindaugas was murdered. In about 1316 Gediminas came to power. In 1323 Gediminas sent his letters. In 1341 Gediminas died. In 1362 the battle of the Blue Waters was fought. In 1370 the battle of Rudau was fought. In 1377 Algirdas died. In 1382 Kęstutis died. In 1385 the Union of Krewo was signed. In 1386 Jogaila was baptised and crowned. In 1387 Lithuania was baptised.
In 1390 Henry Bolingbroke went to Prussia. In 1392 Jogaila and Vytautas were reconciled. In 1398 the Treaty of Salynas was concluded. In 1399 the battle of the Vorskla was fought. In 1409 the Great War began. On 15 July 1410 the battle of Grunwald was fought. In 1411 the First Peace of Thorn was concluded. In 1413 the Samogitians were baptised. In 1414–1418 the Council of Constance met. In 1422 the Peace of Melno was concluded.
XXXVI. Bibliography
The following studies, editions and reference works underlie this account.
Christiansen, Eric. The Northern Crusades. 2nd ed. London: Penguin, 1997.
Rowell, S. C. Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-Central Europe, 1295–1345. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Paravicini, Werner. Die Preussenreisen des europäischen Adels. 2 vols. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1989–1995.
Ekdahl, Sven. Die Schlacht bei Tannenberg 1410. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1982.
Turnbull, Stephen. Tannenberg 1410. Oxford: Osprey, 2003.
Urban, William. Tannenberg and After. Chicago: Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, 2002.
Russell, Frederick H. "Paulus Vladimiri's Attack on the Just War." In Authority and Power, ed. B. Tierney and P. Linehan, 237–254. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Grokipedia. Battle of Grunwald.
Grokipedia. Lithuanian Crusade.