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ter to the king in favour of his son, a natural child. It concluded, "I say nothing of the Indies; they will speak for themselves and for me." His son, who lived to attain some of the highest posts of the kingdom of Portugal, published memoirs of his father's actions, printed at Lisbon in 1576.

POLAND.

CASIMIR IV., the second son of Jagello, was grand duke of Lithuania, when, in 1445, his brother Ladislaus was killed in the battle of Varna, against the Turks; after which he was crowned king of Poland, in 1447.

The first operations of his reign were directed against Bogdan, who usurped the vaivodeship of Moldavia, whom he obliged to sue for peace. He afterwards undertook the protection of the Prussians, against the tyranny of the Teutonic knights, whom he expelled from many of their cities. But whilst his army covered the siege of Mariemburg, the knights attacked his camp with great impetuosity, and constrained him to save himself by an ignominious flight, after 4000 of his troops had been slain or taken prisoners. In consequence of this defeat, he returned to Poland, and having recruited his forces, he resumed the siege of Mariemburg, and took it; and thus humbled the knights to such a degree, that, by a treaty of peace concluded at Thorn, they ceded the territories of Coulin, Mistlow, and the whole duchy of Pomerania, together with the towns of Elbing, Mariemburg, Falkmith, Sehut, and Christburg, to the crown of Poland. The king, in return, restored all his other conquests in Prussia; granted a seat in the Polish senate, to the grand-master; and indulged him with other privileges, on condition, that six months after his accession, he should do homage to Prussia, and take an oath of fidelity to the king and republic. Such were the conditions on which Casimir terminated the war, and humbled an order which had given perpetual disturbance to the northern hemisphere for nearly the space of two centuries. Moldavia was also made tributary to Poland; and when the crown of Bohemia became vacant, the barons bestowed it upon Uladislaus, the eldest son of Casimir, in opposition to the intrigues of Matthius Corvinus, the king of Hungary, whom Uladislaus pursued into his own country, and defeated. Thus the three crowns of Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia, were united in the same family, and Casimir's power was greatly augmented, though the felicity of his people, oppressed by grievous taxes, and diminished in number by a variety of bloody engagements, did by no means increase in the same proportion. Casimir wished to retrieve his domestic affairs by the arts of peace; but before he could ac

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complish his purpose, he died, at the age of 64, in the 1492, more admired than beloved or regretted. In this reign the deputies of the provinces first appeared at the diet, and assumed to themselves the legislative power; all laws at this period having been framed by the king, in conjunction with the senate, Casimir is also said to have published an edict, enjoining the study of the Latin tongue, in which both he and his subjects were before grossly ignorant, and thus he rendered their language ever since almost vernacular among the gentry of Poland. He was succeeded by his son Albert.

ALEXANDER, king of Poland, son of Casimir IV., succeeded his brother Albert in 1501, married Helen, the daughter of John, grand duke of Muscovy, and died in 1507.

ERASMUS CIOLEK, in Latin Vitellius, an eminent statesmen and ecclesiastic, bishop of Ploczko in Poland, was a native of Cracovia, of low and mean extraction. What was wanting to him in birth, however, was abundantly made up to him by a penetrating mind, by his wisdom, his learning, and his eloquence. He was in great favour with Alexander king of Poland; and that prince, from the time he was made duke of Lithuania, admitted him to an intimate friendship with him, and was chiefly governed by his counsels. Alexander, ascending the throne of Poland, after the death of his brother John, Albert was resolved to reward his faithful minister Ciolek, and gave him the bishopric of Ploczko in 1504. He is charged by some with instilling into his master principles of tyranny. Otherwise he gave many proofs of his fidelity in the good services he did in several embassies to the emperor Maximilian I., and at the court of Rome. His patron, who advanced him, died two years after, and his brother, Sigismund I., succeeded him in the government, who also employed Ciolek, and found him, as his brother had done, faithful and diligent. He sent him several times to the emperor, and the pope, but his chief negociation was at the celebrated diet of Augsburg, in 1518, where he appeared as ambassador of the king of Poland, together with Raphael Castellan of Lenden, and Boguslao marshal of Lithuania. It was in this place, where all the great men of Germany, and many ambassadors, and persons of distinction from foreign parts, were met, that Ciolek displayed his great capacity. He made a speech in the most considerable assembly to the emperor, and the states of the empire, with so much life and energy, that many of the illustrious auditors wept. He died at Rome in 1521.

SIGISMUND I., king of Poland, surnamed the Great, was the son of Casimir IV. He succeeded his brother Alexander in 1507, and immediately applied himself to the remedying of abuses that had crept into the administration of public affairs. In this arduous task he was assisted by the able and faithful VOL. IV.

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minister, John Bonner, whose name is still held in veneration by the Poles. A rebellion in Lithuania, abetted by the Czar of Muscovy, joined to an incursion of the Walachians and Moldavians, obliged him to put himself at the head of the troops, and he completely succeeded against his enemies. The next antagonist with whom he had to contend, was the marquis of Brandenburg, grand master of the Teutonic order, who had refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of Poland over the province of Prussia; in this dispute he was also successful, and obliged the marquis to grant him half the province of Prussia, as a barrier against the Teutonic knights. Sigismund sat down the peaceful sovereign of Poland, Lithuania, the duchies of Smolensko and Severia, and considerable territories on the Euxine and Baltic, while his nephew Lewis was king of Hungary and Bohemia. This accumulation of power gave umbrage to the house of Austria, which, by its intrigues, incited the Walachians, Tartars, and Muscovites, to make new inroads. These, however, were soon driven back with great loss to their own countries, and Sigismund left again in peace. He died, after a wise, fortunate, and long reign, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, in the year 1548.

ALBERT of Brandenburg, a prince of the house of Brandenburg, born in 1490, was chosen grand-master of the Teutonic order in 1511, and maintained a war with Sigismund king of Poland, in support of the independence of that body. This was concluded by a treaty in 1525, in which he obtained the investiture of the duchy of Prussia as a secular and hereditary fief of Poland, and immediately after made public profession of Lutheranism, and married a princess of Denmark. This treachery to his order caused him to be put under the ban of the empire; but he maintained possession of the duchy, and transmitted it to his son. He died in 1568. After his son's decease the dukedom of Prussia became united to the electorate of Brandenburg.

RUSSIA.

JOHN BASILOWITZ IVAN I., Vassilievitch, czar of Russia, was born in 1438, and succeeded to the throne in 1462. At this period Russia was divided into a number of petty principalities; some of them were subject to the czar or great duke, and all, together with him, tributary to the Tartars, who assumed a superiority over that prince. The following is given as an instance of the servitude of the great duke. It is recorded by Cromer the Polish historian, and quoted by Coxe in his travels: "Whenever the Tartar ambassadors were sent to Moscow to collect tribute, the great duke used to meet them,

and offer, as a mark of his respect, a cup of mare's milk; and if a drop chanced to fall upon the mane of the horse on which the Tartar ambassador was sat, he would himself lick it up. When they reached the hall of audience, the ambassadors read the khan's letter, seated upon a carpet of the choicest furs, while the great duke with his nobles knelt, and listened in respectful silence." Ivan, who may be justly esteemed the founder of Russian greatness, was a man of gigantic stature, and of correspondent resolution and vigour, accompanied with the ferocity of a barbarian despot. In the course, however, of a prosperous reign of above 40 years, he gave a new aspect to the Russian affairs; he annexed to his dominions several neighbouring principal duchies, subdued Novogorod, and rescued his country from the Tartar yoke. He had no sooner delivered Russia from this dependence, than his alliance was courted by many European sovereigns, and during his reign, for the first time, the emperor of Germany, the pope, the grand seignior, the kings of Poland and Denmark, and the republic of Venice, felt it their interest to send ambassadors to the Russian court. The talents of Ivan were not confined to military affairs. Russia was indebted to him for the improvement of her commerce, and for opening a more ready communication with European nations. Under his auspices, the knowledge of gunpowder, and the art of casting cannon were first brought into Russia by Aristotle of Bologna; he employed the same artist, and some other foreigners, to recoin Russian money, which had hitherto been disfigured by Tartar inscriptions; he engaged, at a vast expense, Italian artists to inclose the citadels of Moscow and Novogorod, with walls of brick, and to erect several churches and other public structures with the same materials. For his various services he obtained the title of Great. It should be observed that the manners of Ivan were softened and polished in some degree by the example of his second wife Sophia, a Grecian princess, daughter of Thomas Palæologus, a lady of consummate beauty, and winning address, who, to all the softer graces of her sex, added a vigorous and manly spirit, and who, while she infused into her husband a taste for the arts of peace, animated him to those glorious enterprises which occasioned the aggrandizement of his country. He is represented as being stern and unfeeling, given to ebriety, though he punished it severely in others, and an object of dread to all who approached him. He died in 1505, in the 67th year of his age, and the 43rd of his reign. On one side of his remains were deposited those of his father Vassili Vassilievitch, and afterwards those of his son Vassili Ivanovitch, who succeeded him on his throne, and expired in 1533.

DENMARK.

ADOLPHUS, duke of Sleswick, refused the crown of Denmark after the death of Christopher III. and placed it on the head of his nephew Christian I. He died in 1459.

CHRISTIAN, or CHRISTIERN I., king of Denmark, second son of Theodoric count of Oldenburg, on the death of Christopher III. without issue, was elected to the throne of Denmark, in 1448, and was the founder of the royal house of Oldenburg, still wearing the Danish crown. Eric the deposed king of Sweden, was at this time besieged by his subjects at Wisby. He put the citadel in the hands of the Danes, and was himself afterwards conveyed to a place of safety by their fleet. Christian was in hopes that the union of the crowns of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, according to the treaty of Calmer, might be renewed in his person, but the throne of Sweden was occupied by Charles Canutson, who also invaded Norway, and was crowned king of that country at Drontheim. Christian then endeavoured, by harassing the coasts of Sweden with his fleet, and making occasional descents, to render the people disgusted with the government of Charles, and effect a revolution in his own favour. A long series of hostilities ensued, with various success, and to the mutual destruction of the people of both countries, all by the intrigues of the archbishop of Upsal, Charles was deposed in 1458, and Christian elected king of Sweden and Norway in his stead. About the same time the duchy of Sleswick reverted to the crown of Denmark, and Christian obtained possession of the counties of Holstein and Hormar. In process of time, the Swedes grew discontented with their Danish governor. Christian suddenly went to Stockholm, seized the archbishop of Upsal, whom he suspected, and sent him prisoner to Denmark. An open revolt ensued in which the deposed king Charles was restored, He was soon obliged again to abdicate; but Christian could not again obtain a footing in Sweden. Resigning at length all ambitious projects, he attended to the domestic concerns of his own kingdom, and distinguished himself by many charitable endowments and liberal donations to the clergy. In 1473 he made a pilgrimage to Rome, where he was received with extraordinary honours. By the way he visited the emperor Frederic III., from whom he obtained the right of uniting Dithmarsh with Holstein, and raising them to the rank of a duchy. On his return he founded the university of Copenhagen. He died in the year 1481.

JOHN, king of Denmark, born in 1455, succeeded his father Christian I., in 1481. He had been acknowledged king

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