Chapter 1: A Fateful March
Here goes nothing... Actually, this apparently is now the best Eastern Europe timeline still running, sooo...
The Silver Knight, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Lithuania
Part 1: A Fateful March (1366-1369)
Imagine such a sight. The city of Moscow, bustling with activity. Sure, the same thing could be said about almost every city in Europe in the year of 1366, but the last few months were special. Quite special, indeed. Dozens of peasants and recruited builders from all over the Principality of Moscow, under the orders of the monarch of the realm, Dmitry Ivanovich, were pulling carts upon carts of bricks and blocks of white limestone, slowly moving through the city and towards the oak palisade fort atop a hill nearby. After numerous wars and sieges, the Prince of Muscovy decided to upgrade his capital's Kremlin from a mere wooden castle to a superior, stone one, capable of pushing back even the mightiest invaders.
It was a great cost for the young, only recently crowned Prince, ruler of a poor and feudal realm, but a price he seemed willing to pay.
Seemed. Seemed is the key word.
Moscow and the territories it held produced far too little of the required building material for the grand construction, and the cost of importing it from foreign lands through merchants was very costly. In order to fund the upgrade to the Kremlin, Grand Prince Dmitry Ivanovich decided to take a larger cut from the usual tribute from the Rus' principalities to the Tatars than usual, leaving more to his own treasury and sending just an ever bit less, hoping that due to the chaos ensuing in the Golden Horde during the never-ending succession crisis and pretender revolts, his overlord would not bother with the difference.
A costly mistake.
In the beginning of the year 1367, in a very shocking occurrence, a baskak from Aziz Khan, along with 2500 Tatar mounted soldiers, arrived to Moscow on the question of the tribute. The Khan of the Golden Horde, in the middle of a dynastic struggle against the usurper Mamai and his Blue Horde, needed all the funds he could get for the struggle. As Dmitry could not raise enough money to pay back for the cuts, the baskak and his troops ordered the seizure of the funds raised for the construction of the stone Kremlin. Though reluctant from the start, the Prince of Moscow agreed to this deal, knowing that pleasing the Khan, and thus possibly acquiring a jarlig for the Grand Duchy of Vladimir - one of his main goals - was more worthwhile than rejecting and thus possibly receiving a punishment raid.
---
However, this event was only a minor occurrence compared to what will unveil in the next two years. In the later months of 1367, the new Prince of Tver, Mikhail Alexandrovich, sent an envoy to the Khan, with a great amount of gifts and tribute, and successfully acquired a jarlig for the throne of the Grand Duchy of Vladimir - a move that immediately invoked hostility from Dmitry Ivanovich and his Principality of Moscow, which held the lands of the title in question de facto. Hoping to take Mikhail out of his throne, Moscow organized a few incursions into Tver's territory, in support of the Prince's opponents within the Principality. This undeclared war culminated almost a year later, when the Metropolitan of Moscow, Alexius, and Dmitry Ivanovich invited Mikhail for a "friendly visit", and arrested and imprisoned him immediately upon his arrival.
However, luck was once again not on the Muscovite ruler's side, as news soon arrived that a Tatar baskak was due to arrive to Moscow very soon. Not willing to involve the Golden Horde, however fractured it may be, to the conflict, Dmitry released his opponent from prison, who immediately turned to his brother-in-law - Algirdas, the Grand Duke of Lithuania.
Within the last century, the pagan Lithuanians were making a slow, but successful push into the fractured lands of the Rus. Using marriages, diplomacy, and very often military force, these Baltic invaders subjugated lands from Volhynia to Polotsk to Bryansk, and candidating into one of the successors of the Kievan Rus'. This was all done during a never-ending, life or death defensive war against the Catholic monastic orders in Prussia and Livonia, too. Despite being a pagan empire, Lithuania held friendly relations and even alliances with quite a few Orthodox principalities, Tver being it's major ally, but also with quite a lot of influence in the merchant republics of Novgorod and Pskov. Moscow and Lithuania were major opponents for quite some time now, fighting for dominance over the filler countries in between them, like Smolensk, Ryazan and the Upper Oka principalities, and as soon as Mikhail of Tver arrived to his court to ask for help, Algirdas immediately raised his banners and began to march towards his last major rival in the former Kievan Rus'.
The Lithuanian-Muscovite War has begun. Or, at least, it was about to. While the forces of the Grand Duchy were preparing in secret, Tver and Moscow went into an all-out war, both hoping to take down the other. But, by then, it was already too late.
In autumn of 1368, an army of 15 000 Lithuanian and Ruthenian soldiers crossed the border between Lithuania and Moscow through Bryansk and began their march towards the capital of Dmitry Ivanovich. Unlike most other marches to the East and North, this was not just a raiding trip - this was, indeed, an entire military campaign with the target being the city of Moscow. Algirdas's brother Kęstutis was also present in the war, along with numerous vassal Ruthenian princes and their armies. The first victim of the march was the pro-Muscovite Prince of Starodub, Semion Dmitriyevich Krapiva, whose lands were looted in early October. About a week later, the same fate happened to the Principality of Obolensk. After this march through the Upper Oka, Lithuanian forces finally engaged the first Muscovite troops near the Trotsna River in November - a small unit, detached to patrol the southeast border of the Principality. From the captured soldiers, the Lithuanian leadership learned that Dmitry Ivanovich hasn't yet organized a strong force from his levy yet and is in his Kremlin.
This was followed by a fast march towards the city of Moscow, where the only major battle of the war commenced. The Lithuanian army, led by Algirdas, engaged a small Muscovite force, about 4000 troops strong, on the outskirts of Moscow, led by the Prince of Muscovy himself. Information on this battle from second-hand sources differs. According to Jan Dlugosz, the battle between the two forces took less than an hour, and "upon witnessing the power of the pagans, the Russian forces quickly scattered". The Bychowiec Chronicle paints a different version of the battle - the battle was close and hard, and only the wit of Algirdas saved the Lithuanians from impending doom. Nevertheless, the Lithuanian forces won the battle, Dmitry fled Moscow and moved north, to Vladimir, while about 300 defenders locked themselves in the Kremlin. This was one of the first instances of Lithuanian usage of the arbalest, this time in the siege - likely taken or at least copied from the Teutons.
After a siege of about 11 days, the wooden palisade fell, and the city of Moscow and it's surroundings were looted. Contemporary chroniclers and witnesses compared the scale of the looting and burning to that of the Tatar general Fedorchuk in an anti-rebellion march against Tver in 1327 - "houses and farms were seen burning and devoid of people from Bryansk to Kovrov". Algirdas's forces marched eastward, towards Vladimir, soon joined by the raised army of the Principality of Tver, but not far from the burning Moscow they were greeted by an another Muscovite unit, about 5000 soldier strong. This time, Dmitry arrived to sue for peace - acknowledging the superiority of the Lithuanian lord, he even kneeled down in front of him, begging for an armistice.
Signed by Algirdas, Grand Duke of Lithuania, Dmitry, Prince of Moscow, and Mikhail, Prince of Tver, in January of 1369, the Treaty of Kirzhach (named after the town where the treaty was signed) included these points:
Modern historians agree that the Muscovite-Lithuanian War of 1368 and 1369 was a definite success to the Baltic nation. In a single war, the Grand Duchy successfully curbed the power and influence of the Muscovites. The city of Moscow was looted so harshly that it took it a few decades to recover back to it's original capacity and size, and with the added requirement of paying tribute to Lithuania as well as the Golden Horde, the power and it's projection of Dmitry and his Principality fell far down. However, the war was both not decisive neither minor enough to empower Tver or to leave Muscovy still strong enough to challenge Algirdas. In fact, Tver's reliance on Lithuanian armies only left it more and more deeper in Lithuanian sphere of influence as time went on...
It is safe to say that 1369 was a turning year - a turning year when Lithuania finalized it's conquest of the former Kievan Rus', leaving all of it's former principalities either governed by it directly or under it's influence. Not much has changed yet, though. The Russian principalities both in and out of Lithuania still pay tribute to the Mongols. The Teutons still pillage Lithuanian lands. It will take many, many decades for this to change...
---
Now OOC.
Hey. I noticed that none of you are posting about Lithuania. Lithuania is one of those countries which have a lot of alternate history potential, so I decided to make a timeline.
A timeline where the point of divergence is that Moscow didn't build it's stone Kremlin in time, leaving Algirdas victorious in the Muscovite-Lithuanian War that followed it. I took some liberties here, like making Mikhail II obtain a jarlik for Vladimir before the first march to Moscow rather than after it, but for the most part I tried to keep the AH stuff small.
This is a bit of a test, to see if anyone notices this... I'll be sure to continue it, though!
---
The Silver Knight, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Lithuania
Part 1: A Fateful March (1366-1369)
It was a great cost for the young, only recently crowned Prince, ruler of a poor and feudal realm, but a price he seemed willing to pay.
Seemed. Seemed is the key word.
Moscow and the territories it held produced far too little of the required building material for the grand construction, and the cost of importing it from foreign lands through merchants was very costly. In order to fund the upgrade to the Kremlin, Grand Prince Dmitry Ivanovich decided to take a larger cut from the usual tribute from the Rus' principalities to the Tatars than usual, leaving more to his own treasury and sending just an ever bit less, hoping that due to the chaos ensuing in the Golden Horde during the never-ending succession crisis and pretender revolts, his overlord would not bother with the difference.
A costly mistake.
In the beginning of the year 1367, in a very shocking occurrence, a baskak from Aziz Khan, along with 2500 Tatar mounted soldiers, arrived to Moscow on the question of the tribute. The Khan of the Golden Horde, in the middle of a dynastic struggle against the usurper Mamai and his Blue Horde, needed all the funds he could get for the struggle. As Dmitry could not raise enough money to pay back for the cuts, the baskak and his troops ordered the seizure of the funds raised for the construction of the stone Kremlin. Though reluctant from the start, the Prince of Moscow agreed to this deal, knowing that pleasing the Khan, and thus possibly acquiring a jarlig for the Grand Duchy of Vladimir - one of his main goals - was more worthwhile than rejecting and thus possibly receiving a punishment raid.
---
However, this event was only a minor occurrence compared to what will unveil in the next two years. In the later months of 1367, the new Prince of Tver, Mikhail Alexandrovich, sent an envoy to the Khan, with a great amount of gifts and tribute, and successfully acquired a jarlig for the throne of the Grand Duchy of Vladimir - a move that immediately invoked hostility from Dmitry Ivanovich and his Principality of Moscow, which held the lands of the title in question de facto. Hoping to take Mikhail out of his throne, Moscow organized a few incursions into Tver's territory, in support of the Prince's opponents within the Principality. This undeclared war culminated almost a year later, when the Metropolitan of Moscow, Alexius, and Dmitry Ivanovich invited Mikhail for a "friendly visit", and arrested and imprisoned him immediately upon his arrival.
However, luck was once again not on the Muscovite ruler's side, as news soon arrived that a Tatar baskak was due to arrive to Moscow very soon. Not willing to involve the Golden Horde, however fractured it may be, to the conflict, Dmitry released his opponent from prison, who immediately turned to his brother-in-law - Algirdas, the Grand Duke of Lithuania.
Within the last century, the pagan Lithuanians were making a slow, but successful push into the fractured lands of the Rus. Using marriages, diplomacy, and very often military force, these Baltic invaders subjugated lands from Volhynia to Polotsk to Bryansk, and candidating into one of the successors of the Kievan Rus'. This was all done during a never-ending, life or death defensive war against the Catholic monastic orders in Prussia and Livonia, too. Despite being a pagan empire, Lithuania held friendly relations and even alliances with quite a few Orthodox principalities, Tver being it's major ally, but also with quite a lot of influence in the merchant republics of Novgorod and Pskov. Moscow and Lithuania were major opponents for quite some time now, fighting for dominance over the filler countries in between them, like Smolensk, Ryazan and the Upper Oka principalities, and as soon as Mikhail of Tver arrived to his court to ask for help, Algirdas immediately raised his banners and began to march towards his last major rival in the former Kievan Rus'.
The Lithuanian-Muscovite War has begun. Or, at least, it was about to. While the forces of the Grand Duchy were preparing in secret, Tver and Moscow went into an all-out war, both hoping to take down the other. But, by then, it was already too late.
In autumn of 1368, an army of 15 000 Lithuanian and Ruthenian soldiers crossed the border between Lithuania and Moscow through Bryansk and began their march towards the capital of Dmitry Ivanovich. Unlike most other marches to the East and North, this was not just a raiding trip - this was, indeed, an entire military campaign with the target being the city of Moscow. Algirdas's brother Kęstutis was also present in the war, along with numerous vassal Ruthenian princes and their armies. The first victim of the march was the pro-Muscovite Prince of Starodub, Semion Dmitriyevich Krapiva, whose lands were looted in early October. About a week later, the same fate happened to the Principality of Obolensk. After this march through the Upper Oka, Lithuanian forces finally engaged the first Muscovite troops near the Trotsna River in November - a small unit, detached to patrol the southeast border of the Principality. From the captured soldiers, the Lithuanian leadership learned that Dmitry Ivanovich hasn't yet organized a strong force from his levy yet and is in his Kremlin.
This was followed by a fast march towards the city of Moscow, where the only major battle of the war commenced. The Lithuanian army, led by Algirdas, engaged a small Muscovite force, about 4000 troops strong, on the outskirts of Moscow, led by the Prince of Muscovy himself. Information on this battle from second-hand sources differs. According to Jan Dlugosz, the battle between the two forces took less than an hour, and "upon witnessing the power of the pagans, the Russian forces quickly scattered". The Bychowiec Chronicle paints a different version of the battle - the battle was close and hard, and only the wit of Algirdas saved the Lithuanians from impending doom. Nevertheless, the Lithuanian forces won the battle, Dmitry fled Moscow and moved north, to Vladimir, while about 300 defenders locked themselves in the Kremlin. This was one of the first instances of Lithuanian usage of the arbalest, this time in the siege - likely taken or at least copied from the Teutons.
After a siege of about 11 days, the wooden palisade fell, and the city of Moscow and it's surroundings were looted. Contemporary chroniclers and witnesses compared the scale of the looting and burning to that of the Tatar general Fedorchuk in an anti-rebellion march against Tver in 1327 - "houses and farms were seen burning and devoid of people from Bryansk to Kovrov". Algirdas's forces marched eastward, towards Vladimir, soon joined by the raised army of the Principality of Tver, but not far from the burning Moscow they were greeted by an another Muscovite unit, about 5000 soldier strong. This time, Dmitry arrived to sue for peace - acknowledging the superiority of the Lithuanian lord, he even kneeled down in front of him, begging for an armistice.
Signed by Algirdas, Grand Duke of Lithuania, Dmitry, Prince of Moscow, and Mikhail, Prince of Tver, in January of 1369, the Treaty of Kirzhach (named after the town where the treaty was signed) included these points:
- The Grand Duchy of Vladimir and all territories under it are transferred to the Prince of Tver.
- The Grand Duchy of Lithuania gains the right to vassalizing the Principalities of Upper Oka (establishing of overlordship is to be left for the Grand Duke to achieve on his own), and Moscow relinquishes it's right to them as well as the Principality of Smolensk.
- The Principality of Moscow is required to pay tribute to Lithuania every year from 1369 onward, with no defined end date.
Modern historians agree that the Muscovite-Lithuanian War of 1368 and 1369 was a definite success to the Baltic nation. In a single war, the Grand Duchy successfully curbed the power and influence of the Muscovites. The city of Moscow was looted so harshly that it took it a few decades to recover back to it's original capacity and size, and with the added requirement of paying tribute to Lithuania as well as the Golden Horde, the power and it's projection of Dmitry and his Principality fell far down. However, the war was both not decisive neither minor enough to empower Tver or to leave Muscovy still strong enough to challenge Algirdas. In fact, Tver's reliance on Lithuanian armies only left it more and more deeper in Lithuanian sphere of influence as time went on...
It is safe to say that 1369 was a turning year - a turning year when Lithuania finalized it's conquest of the former Kievan Rus', leaving all of it's former principalities either governed by it directly or under it's influence. Not much has changed yet, though. The Russian principalities both in and out of Lithuania still pay tribute to the Mongols. The Teutons still pillage Lithuanian lands. It will take many, many decades for this to change...
---
Now OOC.
Hey. I noticed that none of you are posting about Lithuania. Lithuania is one of those countries which have a lot of alternate history potential, so I decided to make a timeline.
A timeline where the point of divergence is that Moscow didn't build it's stone Kremlin in time, leaving Algirdas victorious in the Muscovite-Lithuanian War that followed it. I took some liberties here, like making Mikhail II obtain a jarlik for Vladimir before the first march to Moscow rather than after it, but for the most part I tried to keep the AH stuff small.
This is a bit of a test, to see if anyone notices this... I'll be sure to continue it, though!
---
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