LITHUANIA’S WAR MASTER
The ideal leader had to possess substantial diplomatic and military skills. Moreover, he had to be aggressive. This was important because the Lithuanians had a golden opportunity to capitalize on the political vacuum that existed in the Tartar-ruled Rus’ principalities that bordered Lithuania to the south and east. Only by acquiring new territory, and hence new wealth, could the Lithuanians amass wealth sufficient to wage war against the determined German crusaders.
Mindaugus, the first Lithuanian grand duke, had initiated the Lithuanian expansion to the southeast in the mid-thirteenth century, but his unpopular conversion to Christianity resulted in his assassination after a ten-year reign. Two decades after his assassination in 1263, the Teutonic Order completed its subjugation of the pagan Prussians after 60 years of sustained warfare against the Western Baltic tribe. The military order then turned the full force of its might against the Lithuanians.
By the turn of the fourteenth century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania covered an area only slightly larger than its size today. Gediminas, the fourth ruler of the Gediminid dynasty, reigned from 1316 to 1341. He undertook many economic and military initiatives similar to those of Mindaugus, but with a far greater degree of success. At the time
