Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/608

 552 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE tries again had separate rulers, the Duchy of Silesia went with Bohemia. On the other hand, when the native line of princes came to an end in Galicia, that region was annexed to Poland. King Casimir the Great (i 333-1 370) collected and published the laws, favored the growth of cities, yet was known as "The Peasants' King" because of his care for their welfare, and laid the foundations of the later (1400) university at Cracow. From 1370 to 1382 Poland was ruled by Louis, King of Hungary, but upon his death the nobility offered the crown Union with to Jagello, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, upon Lithuania tfe condition that he marry Louis's daughter, Hedwig, and that the Lithuanians accept Christianity. The principality of Lithuania, with its capital at Vilna, had ex- panded to cover much of western Russia. It even included Kiev and stretched to the Black Sea. Thus the union with Lithuania in 1386 under the dynasty of the Jagellons greatly increased the extent of Poland. It acquired more territory and access to the Baltic as well as to the Black Sea by its conquests during the fifteenth century at the expense of the Teutonic Knights, who finally lost all their other pos- sessions and continued to hold East Prussia only as a fief from the Polish King. From 1 3 10 to 1437 Bohemia was ruled by the House of Luxemburg, many of whom were Emperors of Germany as . well as Kings of Bohemia. Charles IV furthered the prosperity of the land and founded the Uni- versity of Prague (1348), where the students formed four nations of Bohemians and Poles, Bavarians and Saxons. He encouraged the Czech language and the native merchants, although he continued, like Ottocar II and other previous princes, to call in German colonists, and although his chan- cery at Prague did much to fix a written form of Middle German which marks an important step in the development toward a common German tongue. Charles IV, indeed, prob- ably hoped, like Ottocar, to make Bohemia the center from which his dynasty should rule Germany or at least large portions of it. Thus, while his university was the first one j