29.3 Europe: a.d. 1401 to 1500  (Page 16/16)

It is of some interest that what might be called the first Swedish Riksdag, or Parliament, resulted when Engelbrektson, mentioned above, called a meeting of the Estates (nobles, clergy, burghers and peasants) which then elected him Regent, in 1435. He was murdered in a year and the regime collapsed, in part due to the attitude of the Swedish bishops.

Finland

Finland remained a province of Sweden, although the Finns, themselves, were little affected by neighboring civilizations. (Ref. 260 )

Overseas scandivavian centers

An example of the extensive use of various materials for money, in Europe, can be found in a market price list from Iceland, where one dried fish would purchase a horse-shoe, three would buy a pair of women's shoes and one hundred a barrel of wine. (Ref. 260 )

Eastern europe

At the beginning of the century the political boundaries were not greatly different than after the Peace of Stralsund.

Southern baltic area

Some 200 years of struggle in this area between German, Slav and Balt culminated in the battle of Tannenberg of 1411, where the Teutonic Knights were vanquished by the Polish-Lithuanian army. Lithuania, as a Grand Duchy, was part of the Polish State. Prussia, although partially still under control of the Knights, continued to decline until the Peace of Torun of 1466, under which Pomerelia, Danzig, etc. went under Polish rule. (Ref. 8 ) In East Prussia, where the Teutonic Knights still held power, the bonds of serfdom were increased and in 1494 Prussian land owners were given the right to have runaway fugitive serfs handed back to them.

NOTE: Insert Map 44. The Hanseatic League and the Political Situation in Northern Europe after the Peace of Stralsund in 1370

Casimir IV, previously Grand Duke of Lithuania, was one of the great rulers of Poland with its Lithuanian Duchy. When his son Vladislav assumed the throne he became king of Bohemia also. As noted previously, the union of Poland and Lithuania had its problems, basically arising from the fact that eastern Lithuania was orthodox in faith and Russian in language. The Polish ascendance thus brought aggravation of issues arising from the religious and ethnic differences. Mazour says: "The religious disagreement held the conflicting interest of Poland and Russia even further apart and made deep imprints upon the course of political development in eastern Europe for centuries to come."

Russia (see map in section on russia in 19th century c.e.)

It should be noted that the entire region, which we have just discussed as Lithuania, as well as part of Poland, is today part of the U.S.S.R., so that in a sense we could have transferred the last paragraphs to this heading of "RUSSIA", but we have preferred to keep the old historical regions separated. The Times Atlas of World History (Ref. 8 ) calls the Lithuanian-Polish area "West Russia" and the Moscovy area "East Russia"

Five years before Constantinople fell to the Turks, the Russian Church had declared her independence from Byzantium . This church was the sole patron of letters and arts in Russia. Occasionally the Mongol Khan still mustered attacks and Basil II was captured in 1445 in a serious Russian defeat. Still, the Muscovite rulers managed to hold on to the title of Grand Prince and gradually suzerainty over Novgorod was established and tribute exacted. Although at the beginning of the century the people of Novgorod were still using small Tartar coins, scraps of martens' skins and bits of stamped leather for exchange, by 1425 they began to mint very coarse, silver money. The population of that area continued to increase and commerce developed to the point that almost compelled the unification of the country.

Ivan III the Great, of Moscow, began unification by conquering neighboring Novgorod and then extended his rule to part of Finland, the Arctic and the Urals. He then took some of Lithuania and played the Mongol groups in the east against each other so that in warfare they gradually melted away. Ivan assumed the title of Caesar or Czar, and claimed inheritance to all the religious and political authority of the now defunct Byzantium. Toynbee (Ref. 220 ) calls this the founding of the Universal State of the Russian branch of the Orthodox Christian Society. The type of Christianity was the eastern, "orthodox", court-ruled form, which had reached Russia long before, through Bulgarian missionaries. The divine right philosophy of absolute power began to be put into practical form. The Assumption Cathedral in the fortress Kremlin, the largest in Russia, was built in 1479 by Ridolfo Fioravanti of Bologna, Italy. Ivan the Great commissioned the first stone palace of the Kremlin, the Palace of Facets, in 1487 and his actual living quarters, Terem Palace, was built in 1499. It was a dark and dreary place, with only candles for light. The first Code of Laws for Russia was compiled by Sudebnik in 1497. (Ref. 135 , 9 , 131 , 220 )

Russia's most noteworthy international position in the last 40 years of this 1 5th century was its isolation, cut off from almost all contact with the outside world by the hostility of adjacent Swedes, Livonians, Poles and Turks. It had no access to the sea in any direction, a feature which remained one of its great concerns for centuries to come. Even the Black Sea remained unattainable. The Ottoman Mehemmed II established a bridgehead by capturing Caffa from the Genoese and brought the Khanate of the Crimea under his control, this being the most significant successor of the Golden Horde. A land route to the Crimea was finally established via Constantinople in 1484. By mid-century, in addition to the Crimean Khanate just mentioned, the original Golden Horde had broken up into the Khanate of Kazan in the north, the Khanate of Astrakhan in the southeast on the northwest shore of the Caspian and a Khanate retaining the old Golden Horde name in the southwest. (Ref. 8 , 137 )

NOTE: Insert Map: 15TH Century Poland, Lithuania and Russia

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