page_title: History of Lithuania
section_title: Vytenis, Lithuania's great expansion under Gediminas
hierarchical_section_title: History of Lithuania / Grand Duchy of Lithuania (13th century–1569) / 13th–14th century Lithuanian state / Vytenis, Lithuania's great expansion under Gediminas
caption_attribution_description: Lithuanian state in the 13-15th centuries
context_page_description: The history of Lithuania dates back to settlements founded many thousands of years ago, but the first written record of the name for the country dates back to 1009 AD. Lithuanians, one of the Baltic peoples, later conquered neighboring lands and established the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 13th century. The Grand Duchy was a successful and lasting warrior state. It remained fiercely independent and was one of the last areas of Europe to adopt Christianity. A formidable power, it became the largest state in Europe in the 15th century through the conquest of large groups of East Slavs who resided in Ruthenia. In 1385, the Grand Duchy formed a dynastic union with Poland through the Union of Krewo. Later, the Union of Lublin created the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that lasted until 1795, when the last of the Partitions of Poland erased both Lithuania and Poland from the political map. Afterward, the Lithuanians lived under the rule of the Russian Empire until the 20th century.
  On February 16, 1918, Lithuania was re-established as a democratic state.
context_section_description: The family of Gediminas, whose members were about to form Lithuania's great native dynasty, took over the rule of the Grand Duchy in 1285 under Butigeidis. Vytenis (r. 1295–1315) and Gediminas (r. 1315–1341), after whom the Gediminid dynasty is named, had to deal with constant raids and incursions from the Teutonic orders that were costly to repulse. Vytenis fought them effectively around 1298 and at about the same time was able to ally Lithuania with the German burghers of Riga. For their part, the Prussian Knights instigated a rebellion in Samogitia against the Lithuanian ruler in 1299–1300, followed by twenty incursions there in 1300–15. Gediminas also fought the Teutonic Kights, and besides that made shrewd diplomatic moves by cooperating with the government of Riga in 1322–23 and taking advantage of the conflict between the Knights and Archbishop Friedrich von Pernstein of Riga.
  Gediminas expanded Lithuania's international connections by conducting correspondence with Pope John XXII as well as with rulers and other centers of power in Western Europe, and he invited German colonists to settle in Lithuania. Responding to Gediminas' complaints about the aggression from the Teutonic Order, the pope forced the Knights to observe a four-year peace with Lithuania in 1324–1327. Opportunities for the Christianization of Lithuania were investigated by the pope's legates, but they met with no success. From the time of Mindaugas, the country's rulers attempted to break Lithuania's cultural isolation, join Western Christendom and thus be protected from the Knights, but the Knights and other interests had been able to block the process. In the 14th century, Gediminas' attempts to become baptized (1323–1324) and establish Catholic Christianity in his country were thwarted by the Samogitians and Gediminas' Orthodox courtiers. In 1325, Casimir, the son of the Polish king Władysław I, married Gediminas' daughter Aldona, who became queen of Poland when Casimir ascended the Polish throne in 1333. The marriage confirmed the prestige of the Lithuanian state under Gediminas, and a defensive alliance with Poland was concluded the same year. Yearly incursions of the Knights resumed in 1328–1340, to which the Lithuanians responded with raids into Prussia and Latvia.
  The reign of Grand Duke Gediminas constituted the first period in Lithuanian history in which the country was recognized as a great power, mainly due to the extent of its territorial expansion into Ruthenia. Lithuania was unique in Europe as a pagan-ruled "kingdom" and fast-growing military power suspended between the worlds of Byzantine and Latin Christianity. To be able to afford the extremely costly defense against the Teutonic Knights, it had to expand to the east. Gediminas accomplished Lithuania's eastern expansion by challenging the Mongols, who from the 1230s sponsored a Mongol invasion of Rus'. The collapse of the political structure of Kievan Rus' created a partial regional power vacuum that Lithuania was able to exploit. Through alliances and conquest, in competition with the Principality of Moscow, the Lithuanians eventually gained control of vast expanses of the western and southern portions of the former Kievan Rus'. Gediminas' conquests included the western Smolensk region, southern Polesia and (temporarily) Kiev, which was ruled around 1330 by Gediminas' brother Fiodor. The Lithuanian-controlled area of Ruthenia grew to include most of modern Belarus and Ukraine (the Dnieper River basin) and comprised a massive state that stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea in the 14th and 15th centuries.
  In the 14th century, many Lithuanian princes installed to govern the Ruthenia lands accepted Eastern Christianity and assumed Ruthenian custom and names in order to appeal to the culture of their subjects. Through this means, integration into the Lithuanian state structure was accomplished without disturbing local ways of life. The Ruthenian territories acquired were vastly larger, more densely populated and more highly developed in terms of church organization and lit
caption: Expansion of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 13–15th centuries
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