Principality of Jersika

The Principality of Jersika was a medieval Latgalian state in the east of present-day Latvia, one of the largest polities in the region before the Northern Crusades. Its capital stood on a hill fort on the right bank of the Daugava, about 165 kilometres southeast of Riga, and its territory covered much of Latgale and Vidzeme. Medieval documents called its western part Lettia and its eastern part Lotygola. The principality emerges in the Livonian Chronicle of Henry in 1203, when its ruler Visvaldis raided near newly founded Riga together with Lithuanians. In 1209 Bishop Albert of Riga and the Livonian Brothers of the Sword defeated Visvaldis, took his Lithuanian wife prisoner and forced him to surrender his lands to the Bishopric of Riga, receiving part back as a fief. He lost Autine and Cesvaine but kept Jersika, Makonkalns and Naujiene; his charter is the oldest surviving feudal document in Latvia. In 1214 the Germans sacked the castle. After Visvaldis died in 1239 his fief passed to the Livonian Order, though Lithuania and Novgorod repeatedly contested the region.