alternatehistory.com

The joy of victory against the Westerners in Sweden and Visegrad spread across almost all estates of the Lithuanian nation. All but the poorest serfs and those living in conquered territories overjoyed at the news of the victories in Nowy Sacz, Keila and Antrea, the reacquisition of lost Volhynian territories, and even the conquest of new lands in Livonia and Galicia. The city of Reval began building a monument to the King, on the orders of stationed Lithuanian soldiers, to celebrate their "liberation from the German and Livonian oppressors and their Swedish allies". Similar monuments were to be built in Riga and Lvov, both acquired from Livonia and Visegrad respectively. The people themselves weren't too happy with their new Lithuanian overlords, but what can they do? Resist? Don't make me laugh!

This post-war joy resulted in some barbaric acts as well, unfortunately. During the conflict, the tolerance for Catholics dropped to an all-time low. Even though the Concordate of Brest hadn't been officially cancelled, there were numerous recorded instances of Catholic communities in Lithuania being shunned, attacked or even kicked out, they were seen as potential traitors or even spies for Visegrad and Sweden. You'd be lucky if they small church your community built over the years got seized and turned into an Orthodox temple - in many cases, Catholic churches even got raided by soldiers or locals. Numerous works of art were getting destroyed in such anti-Catholic attacks, and casualties were in the hundreds. This persecution turned official in 1625, when Albertas Jogaila I gave an official order to seize the Catholic Church of Saint Bartholomew in Vilnius, built in 1503, kick out the Catholic priesthood, and turn it into an Orthodox church, named the Church of the Holy Trinity and All Saints. Catholic book burnings took place as well. This all was not good news for the inhabitants of East Prussia, Livonia and Galicia, many of whom were Catholic, though they were pretty safe, so far.

Albertas Jogaila I began to stylize himself as the "defender of the Orthodox faith", the ruler of the last independent Orthodox nation standing, successor to the Byzantine Empire, and so on, which prompted much of this violence. And speaking of that - the Ottomans. Lithuania officially declared war on the Ottoman Empire on September of 1625, around the same time when the Turks and what remained of Visegrad were fighting for supremacy across the Hungarian plain. The Crimean and Ruthenian steppes were a much different environment from the plains and forests of Northern and Eastern Europe, thus the composition of the royal army was much different from the one he employed in the Galician or Livonian campaigns. Albertas's army contained little artillery, and had a much higher percentage of cavalry. While it still had some infantry, the army in general was much faster, more mobile both in and out of the battlefield and thus quite fit for steppe warfare. Most of the soldiers were veterans of the Catholic-Reformist War, too.

Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire, while feared by Westerners as as some sort of "reincarnation" of the Muslim armies that ravaged Anatolia and conquered Spain in the Early Middle Ages, was far from the unstoppable giant that they were portrayed as. While the empire was massive, one of the largest in the world, and stretched from Algiers to Baluchistan and from Crimea to the Gulf of Aden, the many ethnicities within the empire and it's massive size required a huge administrative apparatus that ate up a big portion of the Sultan's resources. The recently conquered Persia alone required dozens of thousands of soldiers to be permanently based there to enforce Ottoman rule and squash revolts. To alleviate some of the worst problems by all this overextension, the Empire surrounded it's peripheries with loyal puppets and protectorates, and the border with Lithuania was no different - despite being at war, the two countries had no direct border, the Ottoman protectorates of Crimea, Moldavia and Circassia were in the way. They had to be defeated before Albertas could even hope of marching across the Balkans like he wanted.

Before the winter of 1625-1626, Albertas Jogaila I reached the port of Khadjibey, formerly a Lithuanian stronghold, and after captuing it, rode to the Black Sea and got his horse to drink there. At least that's what the Lithuanian Chronicle says. It is no secret that the idea of a powerful Lithuanian nation stretching from sea to sea, from the cold and calm shores of the Baltic to the dark and salty Mediterranean-esque Black Sea, has been a heavy part of the romantic image of Lithuania ever since Jogaila the Great conquered the Black Sea shore in the 1390s, and Albertas knew it. After all, his second name is borrowed from the great ancestor of his. Taking over Khadjibey yielded a strategic victory, too, as Crimea was now successfully cut off from their land route to the rest of the Ottoman Empire.

During the first half of the year 1626, the 25 000 men large Lithuanian army stormed into the Crimean peninsula itself, dealing a heavy blow to the outdated and already cracked tactics and technology of the Tatars in the Battle of Chufut-Kale in March. Menli Giray, the khan of the Crimean Khanate, as well as a bunch of his courtiers and generals, were captured during the fight, and the resulting internal chaos led to Albertas Jogaila I marching into Bakhisaray with no resistance. The captured Khan received a list of demands, including surrendering his throne and agreeing to a partial annexation of the Crimean Khanate, turning it into a dependent, though partially autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Lithuania. Major monetary concessions and reparations were also included. Those were outrageous demands, but placed at gunpoint, the Tatar lord was forced to accept. Around the same time, the Turkish ports of Caffa and Cherson, defeating the small garrisons of both cities within a few weeks.

The Ottoman sultan, Mahmud I, was furious, but there wasn't much he could do. Transylvania was overrun and an advance detachment was besieging Buda, but he couldn't spare any more troops in light of fierce Visegradian resistance to fight off the invading Lithuanians. He did try to rally the vassals of Moldavia and Wallachia to war, though. Both of these small principalities were Orthodox, and could only rally small forces to defend their lands. Meanwhile, in autumn of 1626, Albertas I's Lithuanian army left the pacified and annexed Crimea and headed west, along the Black Sea. Arriving to Moldavia, the king was greeted as a liberator from the Turkish yoke - the Moldavians were well aware of Albertas's reputation as the leader of the Lithuanian Orthodox and a defender of the faith. As a sign of good will, the Moldavian forces were ordered put down their weapons when they saw the approaching Lithuanian army in sight. Albertas Jogaila I, knowing that, once this war is done with, he'll need a buffer between Lithuania and the Ottomans, decided to play along and promised the Moldavians independence, though with "eternal ties to Mother Lithuania".

Now this was a big threat to Ottoman positions. Mahmud I still wasn't sure whether Lithuania and Visegrad were allies or just at war with his nation at the same time, and he had real fears of the Lithuanians crossing the Carpathians and saving Buda from the siege. Even if that wasn't the case, Albertas Jogaila I was now only a few weeks away from arriving to Constantinople, or Konstantiniyye as the Turks called it, and a Lithuanian Constantinople would mean a practical decapitation of the Ottoman Empire. In addition, the insulting and rebellious Moldavian attitude made him even more furious, and the Sultan led the 35 000 men strong Turkish army in Transylvania east to intercept the Lithuanians before it was too late, defeat them in battle, pillage Moldavia and Crimea for their betrayal, and make the foolish Lithuanian youngling never step foot in the Empire again.

However, what he didn't know was that there was a reason for why Albertas didn't attempt to cross the Carpathians neither during his war with Visegrad, nor here - the mountains. The logistics of moving across wide mountain ranges, especially during cold weather, have been a huge problem to generals and soldiers ever since the invention of warfare. After all, even Hannibal had to face and cross the Alps when attacking Rome, and coupled with cold weather, marches across mountains can be disastrous. It was already late autumn by the time that Mahmud I's army reached the Carpathians, the famous Buzău Pass, and while the crossing was not a complete disaster, it did lead to the loss of a major portion of the Turkish army's horses and food supplies. Fatigue and attrition are also counted as a major result. And only three days after crossing and entering Moldavia, the Turks faced off against the Lithuanians in the Battle of Buzău. This was the first Lithuanian experience with the Janissaries - elite Ottoman infantry soldiers, used as bodyguards and household troops, famous for their discipline and often traumatizing past - former Christian boys, taken to slavery to serve for the Turks. Mahmud I brought 6000 of them to the battle, and, for some time, Albertas Jogaila I wasn't sure on how to deal with this force. He was too used to Northern-Central European battlefields and armies, and some of the things Mahmud brought - like camel cavalry, and the Sipahi, elite Ottoman cavalry - were foreign to him.

But he eventually learned how to crack the code.

Because of the large dieoff of horses, the Turkish army advanced slowly, skirmishing with the Lithuanians over a distance with cannons and muskets. The Turks had much more infantry than the Lithuanians, who, as was said before, brought a cavalry-focused army. The Ottoman long-range superiority was a problem, but their slow speed made them vulnerable to cavalry flanking - this is what Albertas Jogaila ordered to do after a short skirmish. Mahmud I responded with moving his own cavalry. The Turkish horses were tired, many of the best animals had died or were wounded, and thus after a few cavalry skirmishes across the Moldavian plains, the Lithuanian cavalry gained superiority. One interesting factor that helped turn the tide in cavalry clashes was the Lithuanian usage of the cavalry pistol - introduced during the 1610 military reforms, it was used as a response to the mass introduction of musket weaponry to infantry forces. Lithuanian light cavalry were equipped with both a sword for close-range combat and with a pistol for longer range suppression fire, and this gave an advantage to the Lithuanians compared to the Turkish sipahi and akinji. After Lithuanian domination in the flanks, the Turkish infantry found itself surrounded, it was unable to flee from the fast Lithuanian cavalry charges, and eventually began a mass retreat.

Buzău was a victory for the Lithuanians, but the Ottoman army had reserves. However, a second blow to their war effort came in the north.

Since last year, Buda, one of the primary cities of the Union of Visegrad, had been besieged by a Turkish army of 40 000 men. Stephen Bathory, with the orders of Charles IV, scrambled all forces that he could - men from all of Visegrad were conscripted, thousands of Western mercenaries were hired, almost the entire treasury was spent on outfitting the army - and on March of 1627, the Army of the Union of Visegrad arrived in the outskirts of the city, beginning the Battle of Buda. The city of Buda was near capitulation. Only 3000 defenders were left in the city, many of them starving, left to die and rot, and the walls of the fortress were near breaking. The Ottoman forces had dug tunnels under the walls and left explosive charges to finish the job, for the city to fear. And then the Winged Hussars arrived!

...Literally. It was one of the greatest and most terrifying cavalry charges in not just modern history, or even Hungarian, Czech or Polish history, but world history. Coming down from countryside, led by the determined Transylvanian general, the Visegradian cavalry forces practically rode over the Turkish infantry, rode over the Janissaries and the Turkish cavalry opposition, It turned the tide of the conflict, becoming one of the most crushing military victories in the entire 17th century, and on par with Czestochowa in the Polish Succession War. Even today, it holds a special place in the national identity of the nations that made up Visegrad at the time. However, throughout the years, the Battle of Buda had been severely overhyped - a nationalist would be quick to tell you that Bathory's Winged Hussars were the deciding factor of the war, even though the army defeated by them was only the secondary force of the Ottoman army in the conflict, and the conditions for the end of the conflict were rooted in something else.

Whatever was the case, Mahmud I decided to sue for peace with both Visegrad and Lithuania. In the Treaty of Varna, the Ottoman Empire recognized Lithuania's annexation of Crimea and let go of Moldavia - which eventually turned into a Lithuanian vassal state. The peace with Visegrad was sided differently, however. Despite the massive victory at Buda, Bathory was the first to realize that Visegrad was unable to wage war for any longer. The Catholic Crusade and the war with the Ottomans drained the nation's budget, Hungary was heavily looted by the Turkish invasion, and the country was becoming unstable. Mahmud I sent his peace demands on October of 1627, which demanded a concession of the border regions between Ottoman Bosnia and Visegradian Croatia, as well as the acquisition of Transylvania as a Turkish vassal. Even though Charles IV disapproved, Stephen Bathory agreed, ending the second worst chapter in the history of Visegrad. The first was yet to come, and Bathory wouldn't live to see it, but that is a story for another time.

Lithuania, on the other hand, left the war victorious, and the prestige of King Albertas Jogaila I rose to tremendous new heights. He was no longer just the King of Lithuania, he was now the defender of the Orthodox Faith, the vanquisher of the Turks, a powerful and talented conqueror from the East who defeated great, already established Western countries with his wit, skills and Westernized army. He successfully turned Lithuania into a juggernaut, a member of the Western world and yet at the same time it's competitor, and it was during his reign that Lithuania was finally accepted into the ranks of the great powers of Europe, alongside France, Spain and the Ottomans. It was not just a great power, but it expressed and projected it's power outwards - this was no longer just a simple kingdom. This was something else.

Ever since the end of the millenarian Eastern Roman Empire in 1450, one of the primary goals of the grand dukes, later kings, of Lithuania was to invoke translatio imperii and declare their nation to be the successor to the Byzantines, a "Third Rome", if you might. This was the reason for Algirdas II's marriage to Angela Palaiologos, to secure a bloodline related to the Roman Emperors and solidify this claim. This was also the reason for the fabrication of the Myth of Palemon - if Lithuanians are descendants of Romans, surely they must be the successors to Rome, right? And yet, the world did not approve of such claims - they used to see Lithuania as a country of barbarians, Sarmatians, untouched by Western culture and technology, living in forests, secretly worshipping their pagan gods, what claim to the ultimate Christian state do they have? And yet, here we are - Lithuania is now the fourth great power of Europe, and as far as the Europeans knew, the whole world.

It is thus no surprise that, not long after the Treaty of Varna that ended the Ottoman-Lithuanian War, the Metropolitan of Vilnius openly expressed his desire to see Albertas Jogaila I crowned as the first Lithuanian Emperor. And the King, prideful and glory-thirsty as he always is, approved of such an idea. The preparations for the coronation took over a year - after all, Lithuania had just fought through over a decade of war, it was obviously drained - but they finally happened. On October 22nd, 1629, in the Cathedral of the Theotokos in Vilnius, Albertas Jogaila I was crowned as the first Emperor of Lithuania.

The Empire of Lithuania has risen. The Silver Knight rides strong. And as it turns back to Europe, it realized that there is a lot to catch up to...

Next week will be about what we missed - the end of the Twenty Years' War.

Also, something something winged hussars arrived