Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/17

 TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.

period embraced in "The Knights of the Cross" is one of the most dramatic and fruitful of results in European annals,—a period remarkable for work and endeavor, especially in the Slav world.

Among Western Slavs the great events were the Hussite wars and the union of Lithuania and Poland. The Hussite wars were caused by ideas of race and religion which were born in Bohemia. These ideas produced results which, beyond doubt, were among the most striking in European experience. The period of Bohemian activity began in 1403 and ended in 1434, the year of the battle of Lipan, which closed the Bohemian epoch.

The marriage in 1386 of Queen Yadviga to Yagello, Grand Prince of Lithuania, brought Poland into intimate relations with all the regions owing allegiance to the Lithuanian dynasty, and made it possible to crush at Tannenberg the Knights of the Cross, whose object was the subjection of Poland and Lithuania, and a boundless extension of German influence in eastern Europe.

Bohemian struggles made the religious movement of the next century possible in Germany. The Polish victory at Tannenburg called forth that same movement. Had the Knights of the Cross been victorious at Tannenburg and found the East open to conquest and their apostolic labor, it is not conceivable that the German princes would have taken action against Rome, for such action would not have been what we call practical politics, and the German princes were pre-eminently vii