The Poles disputed with him for the possession of Volhynia, oppressing the orthodox faith and finally changing the Greek into Latin churches. He even attempted the conquest of Moscow and had it not been that he was unable to shake off the Poles and the two German orders who constantly harassed him he might have made the conquest of Eastern Russia, having in 1368 annihilated the Mongol hordes of the lower Dnieper and completed the ruin of the Crimea. A succession of wars in which Russia was practically powerless was waged up to 1430, during which period the Lithuanian princes were the chief actors and the heads of the rival churches of Rome and Constantinople were participants in the struggle for ecclesiastical supremacy.
With this date Lithuania ceased to be a first-class power and it was by turn governed by a Grand Duke of its own, united with Poland, separated again, and finally placed under Polish rule in 1501. Henceforward it shared the fate of Poland, until, in modern times, its last trance as a political entity has disappeared by being inverted in the partition between Russia, Germany and Austria.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
