Henry at the Siege of Vilna 197 



9, 1 39 1. On Feb. 15 he was at Dantzic, and about April i set 

 sail for home. 



As it is the reyse which most concerns the student of Chaucer, 

 from its bearing upon Prol. 54, the subjoined translations from 

 chroniclers of the period have been chosen for their illustration 

 of this part of Henry's journey. 



I 



[Walsingham, Hist. Aug!., Rolls ed., 2. 197-8 (D. A., p. cvi), tr. in 



Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1903, i. 395.] 



About the same time^ L. Henry the Earle of Derbie travailed into 



Prussia [Le Pruys], where, with the helpe of the MarshalP of the 



same Province, and of a certaine king called Wytot,' hee vanquished 



' Actually July 19, 1390, from Boston. 



" Engelhard Rabe. 



* Or Vitovt. who has been called 'the most imposing personality of 

 his day in Eastern Europe' (Encyc. Brit., nth ed., 28. 762). He was the 

 cousin of Jagiello (Yagiello), at this time King of both Poland and 

 Lithuania. The relationships of certain important Lithuanian rulers may 

 be seen from this diagram : 



Gedymin (ruled 1315-42) 



Olgierd (ruled 1345-77) Keistut 



I I 



Jagiello (1350-1434) Vitovt (1350-1430) 



Throughout this general period, Poland, Lithuania, and the Teutonic 

 Order (whose territory corresponded broadly to East Prussia) were 

 in constant rivalry. Of these, Lithuania had remained most persistently 

 pagan, notwithstanding a succession of efforts to Christianize it, or at 

 least to bring it under the domination of professedly Christian powers. 

 Poland had invited in the Teutonic Order (1208) — which had been 

 founded in Palestine as a Crusading organization — for its protection 

 against the savage Prussians, who were akin to the Lithuanians ; but 

 mutual jealousy had since arisen. Lithuania began to be a powerful 

 state under Gedymin, at a time when Poland was in an anarchic condi- 

 tion. Poland grew much stronger during the reign of Casimir the Great 

 0333-'^37o), who had married Gedymin's daughter. During Olgierd's 

 reign Lithuania grew at the expense of Muscovy and the Tatars, until 

 it finally touched the Black Sea between the Bug and the Dnieper. 

 Meanwhile Keistut, who ruled in Samogitia (now the government of 

 Kovno),- Troki, and Grodno, maintained a border warfare with the 

 Teutonic Order, not unlike that carried on for several centuries between 

 Scotland and England. Shortly before his death in 1377, Olgierd accepted 



