Grand Duke Gediminas of Lithuania, while on his guard against his northern foes, has from 1316 to 1340 aggrandized himself at the expense of the numerous Slavonic principalities in the south and east, whose incessant conflicts with each other have wrought the ruin of them all.

Here, Gediminas’s triumphal progress is irresistible; but the various stages of it are impossible to follow, the sources of its history being few and conflicting, and the date of every salient event exceedingly doubtful.

The grand duchy has in any case greatly expanded it territory, taking control of the rest of the Polatsk principality, as well as …