Poland is Not Yet Lost – 1183-1209
When Illiya passed into Crusader Poland with an army 18,000 strong, the Latins were stunned. Following the Crusade it had been believed that the Slavs were a broken people, destined to fall alongside their Hebrew religion. The Christian King Guntram, even reinforced by his allies in the Teutonic Order, struggled to field half of the Bloodhound’s force – and faced a crushing defeat at the Battle of Plock in the first weeks of the invasion. With that, the strength of the Crusader realm was gravely undermined. The Knights withdrew to the Baltic coastline – attempting to protect their fortresses at Memel, and the key city of Gdansk, while Guntram himself gathered what few men he had left at his capital in Krakow. Following his victory, Illiya was greeted as a liberator by much of the population in central Poland with cities like Plock and Warsaw throwing their gates open to his armies.
However, the war was far from over. The Latins, although badly beaten, were not wholly broken and their foreign allies were starting to take notice. Hoping to bring a swift end to the war, Illiya pursued Guntram to Krakow – laying siege to the southern city. Despite his numerical superiority, Illiya struggled to take the city, whose fortifications had been significantly improved by the technologically more advanced Catholics, and instead settled in for a lengthy siege. Guntram then sent out a request for aid to the west – appealing strongly to his uncle, the Holy Roman Emperor. The Germans would send aid, with a large army deployed to relieve the siege at Krakow in 1185.
Unaware of the approach of the Imperial army, Illiya had maintained his siege of Krakow until it was too late to withdraw back to Warsaw. Instead he would be forced to stand and fight. As the Germans engaged his army, Guntram sallied out of Krakow – leaving the Jewish forced badly outnumbered and encircled on all sides. There was a grave risk that their entire army might be destroyed. Legends are told to this day of King Illiya’s glorious charge into the ranks of the innumerable Germans, cutting them down in their droves, he forced them into retreat despite their greatly superior numbers before turning on the Crusaders themselves. In personal combat, he met King Guntram in battle and slew him – causing his army to lose heart in the battle and take the opportunity to flee alongside the Germans. Krakow was won, and another great Christian army utterly beaten.
At this stage, the Slavs had high hopes of reconquering all of Old Poland. Illiya turned northwards with his army and marched on Gdansk. Yet the Germans, with their seemingly limitless resources, were able to easily replace the men lost at Krakow with reinforcements from the heartlands of their Empire while the Kings of Denmark and Sweden sent armies to defend the fortresses in the north. With this strength, Illiya found himself unable to press his advantage further – with the Christians holding firm in the north against his every attack. With the coffers of Minsk running empty and many in his army growing weary of the endless conflict, Illiya would agree to peace in 1189, four years after his great triumph at Krakow.
After six years of warfare, Illiya had reconquered the heartland of Old Poland – ruling over the first two capitals of the Polish Kingdom in Plock and Warsaw, as well as the seat of Crusader power in Krakow. The area was very different to the Poland that had been lost a decade and a half before. Endless bloodshed and religious repression at seen much of the land depopulated. Although the majority of the area had remained Jewish – substantial Catholic communities had emerged, especially in the south around Krakow. Much of the region’s old nobility that had been exiled to the east following the Crusade was able to return to their old lands, while other territories were awarded to the King’s allies and veterans from his Reconquest.
After the draining conflict, many within the Kingdom of Galicia and Ruthenia were eager for a period of peace. However, the King appeared unable to resist the lure of the saddle – waging border wars against the Khazars in 1191 and liberating Smolensk, home to the Great Synagogue constructed by King Gleb half a century before, from the Tatars in 1192.
While there was a strong lobby for peace in Minsk, many of the nobles who had missed out on lands following the First War of Reconquest ceaselessly pressured the King to raise his banner once again and march on Crusader Poland. This group was led by King’s second cousin Mstislav, a trusted military commander, who asserted a personal claim to much of the old Principality of Prussia and sought to convince Illiya that Galicia needed to control a Baltic coastline if it was to survive as a major force in the region.
Illiya headed his cousin’s urging in 1194 as he went to war with Crusader Poland for a second time. Now ruled by a regency council and having lost many of its richest lands during the last war, Latin Poland had little hope of defending itself on its own and once again appealed to the west. While Illiya quickly overran Prussia, recaptured Gdansk and destroyed the Teutonic fortress at Memel over the course of 1194 and 1195, the Crusaders struggled to rally the level of support they had amassed the previous decade. The Holy Roman Empire did send aid, albeit in lesser numbers than before, while the largest interventions came from the Swedes and Danes. The Swedes were particularly successful, as instead of directly engaging the invading Slavs, they marched through Crusader Lithuania to attack the Galician capital at Minsk directly. Illiya was then forced to backtrack from the Baltic to see off this threat – relieving a significant amount of pressure on that key front.
Just as the first conflict had been, the Second War of Reconquest was a costly and bloody affair that sapped Galicia of its manpower and sent the crown into debt. With this in mind, Illiya’s council called upon their King to make peace with the Latins, securing new lands that could be divided among the nobility and allowing the state to recover. However, urged on by Mstislav and his faction, Illiya rejected this advice in the belief the reconquest of all of Old Poland was within his sight. Fearing that the King was descending in tyrannical behaviour that would tip the realm into popular revolt, a large coalition of the most powerful magnates of the east rose in rebellion in 1197. Ironically, their very act of revolt forced Illiya into the action they had hoped for – as he agreed to peace with the Latins shortly after the start of the revolt, gaining Prussia and the former Teutonic lands of Sclavonia around Memel, although the Christians regained the Gdansk.
While focus on Illiya’s stature as the unifier of the Jewish Slavs, and liberator of Old Poland, might obscure domestic affairs – the civil war that broke out in 1197 was among the gravest threats he faced in his entire reign. Through much of the Kingdom, his heavy taxes, demand for young men to feed his war machine and intolerance of religious difference in a very diverse realm, had given him the reputation of a tyrant. Just as a wide swathe of his nobility rebelled against him, ethnic and religious minorities across the east of his Kingdom rose in a series of popular revolts as the Khazars, Muslims, pagans and Orthodox Jews all launched rebellions of varying sizes. Through all this chaos, Illiya, by now almost 60 years old, climbed back on his warhorse and went into battle. He met the nobles in decisive battle at Peremshyl in 1198 – and won a great military victory. However, with Minsk under threat from Muslim rebels, he was unable to press his advantage immediately and had to ride to protect his capital. Further victories were secured against the noble rebels through 1199 and 1200 – with this coalition finally surrendering in that year. The King was then forced to spend most of the following year defeating that last of the peasant armies roving across his Kingdom.
The exhausted Second Polish State was finally at peace. In the west, the Polish Crusaders sought to gain a measure of protection from future incursions by swearing to serve the Holy Roman Emperor as his direct vassals, dissuading Illiya from attempting to launch another campaign of reconquest. In the east, the splintering of the once mighty Bashkirian Empire saw a number of independent Emirates emerge. Illiya took advantage of this to launch the final military campaign of his life, winning new lands on his north-eastern border from the Emirs of Moskva in 1208.
In 1209 the Bloodhound, now 68 years old, finally breathed his last. King Illiya had been a remarkable figure – unifying the shattered successor states of the First Polish State, gaining the loyalty of the independent Russian Princes, winning wars against the Khazars and Tatars and most importantly reconquering much of Old Poland. He would go down in Polish history has a legendary figure without equals – descent from his bloodline in itself being a source of immense prestige. He was succeeded by his 40 year old son Iziaslav, who hoped to take advantage of his father’s prestige and build on his legacy.
