Grand Duchy of Lithuania

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the Baltic empire from 1236 to 1795, Europe's last pagans ruling its largest state. Lithuanian dukes united against the Livonian swords in the 1200s; Mindaugas, first to call himself grand duke, took a crown from the Pope in 1253 and kept his old gods underneath. Gediminas built Vilnius from nothing and wrote to the Pope's cities inviting craftsmen; his son Algirdas smashed the Tatars at Blue Waters in 1362 and carried Lithuania from the Baltic to the Black Sea, ruling more Slavs than Lithuanians in their own tongue. Jogaila married Hedwig of Poland in 1385 at Krewo, baptising the nation to win a crown, and his cousin Vytautas, uncrowned but greater than kings, crushed the Teutonic Order at Grunwald in 1410 with Polish help. The 1569 Lublin Union joined the Duchy to Poland as the Commonwealth's junior half, but Vilnius kept its laws, its treasury and its army for two more centuries. The partitions undid it: Russia took the east in 1772, Prussia and Austria the rest, and in 1795 the Third Partition struck the Grand Duchy from the roll, leaving the language, the forests and the Gediminas tower to wait for 1918.