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 without reason, that he would desire to withdraw, and that in such case broad lands would fall away from the crown; attacks would begin again from the side of Lithuania, and bloody reprisals from the stubborn citizens of the kingdom; the Knights of the Cross would grow more powerful, the Roman Cæsar would increase, and also Hungary; while the Polish kingdom, yesterday one of the strongest on earth, would come to fall and to shame.

Merchants, for whom the extensive regions of Lithuania and Rus had been opened, foreseeing losses, made pious offerings to the end that Yagello might remain in the kingdom, but in such a case again they predicted a sudden war with the Order. It was known that only the queen restrained Yagello. People remembered how once, when indignant at the greed and rapacity of the Knights of the Cross, she said to them in prophetic vision: "While I live, I shall restrain the hand and just wrath of my husband, but remember that after my death punishment will fall on you for your sins."

They in their pride and blindness had no fear of war, it is true, considering that after the death of the queen the charm of her holiness would not stop the influx of volunteers from Western kingdoms. Thousands of warriors from Germany, Burgundy, France, and yet more remote countries, would come to aid them. Still, the death of Yadviga was such a far-reaching event that the envoy Lichtenstein, without waiting for the return of the absent king, hurried away with all speed to Malborg, to lay before the Grand Master and the Chapter the important, and, in some sense, terrible news.

The Hungarian, Austrian, Roman, and Bohemian envoys departed a little later, or sent couriers to their monarchs. Yagello came to Cracow in grievous despair. At the first moment he declared that he had no wish to reign without the queen, and that he would go to his inheritance in Lithuania. Then from grief he fell into torpor; he would not decide any affair nor answer any question; at times he grew terribly angry at himself because he had gone from Cracow, because he had not been present at the death of Yadviga, because he had not taken farewell of her, because he had not heard her last words and advice.

In vain did Stanislav of Skarbimir and the bishop of Cracow explain to him that the queen's illness had happened unexpectedly, that according to human reckoning he had had time to return had the birth taken place in its own proper