Lithuania ascending

From 1250 to 1795 Lithuania covered a vast area of eastern and central Europe. Until 1387 the country was pagan. How this huge state came to expand, defend itself against western European crusaders and play a conspicuous part in European life are the main subjects of this book. The emergence of pagan Lithuania is presented against the background of the political and religious crises of fourteenth-century Byzantine and Catholic Christendom. An attempt is made to show how the Lithuanians manipulated their position on the commercial, denominational and colonial frontier to maintain an expanding…