in the field than in the council
chamber; they were defeated again and again by the knights, and showed
themselves utterly incapable of taking fortresses. No wonder then if in
the earlier years of the war the Order recovered its lost ground, and
the king, irritated beyond endurance by the suicidal parsimony of the
estates, threatened to retire to the forests of Lithuania. But manlier
counsels prevailed, the struggle was resumed, and after the bloody
victory of Puck (September 17, 1462) the scales of fortune inclined
decisively to the side of Poland. Finally the Holy See intervened, and
by the second peace of Thorn (October 14, 1466) all West Prussia, as it
is now called, was ceded to Poland, while East Prussia was left in the
hands of the knights, who held it as a fief of the Polish crown.

The intervention of the Curia, which hitherto had been hostile to
Casimir because of his steady and patriotic resistance to papal
aggression, was due to the permutations of European politics. The pope
was anxious to get rid of the Hussite king of Bohemia, George
Podebrad, as the first step towards the formation of a league against
the Turk. Casimir was to be a leading factor in this combination, and he
took advantage of it to procure the election of his son Wladislaus as
king of Bohemia. But he would not commit himself too far, and his
ulterior plans were frustrated by the rivalry of Matthias Corvinus, king
of Hungary, who even went so far as to stimulate the Teutonic Order to
rise against Casimir. The death of Matthias in 1490 was a great relief
to Poland, and Casimir employed the two remaining years of his reign in
consolidating his position still further. He expired rather suddenly
while hunting at Troki in Lithuania in June 1492.

The feature of Casimir's character which most impressed his
contemporaries was his extraordinary simplicity and sobriety. He, one of
the greatest monarchs in Europe, habitually wore plain Cracow cloth,
drank nothing but water, and kept the most austere of tables. His one
passion was the chase. Yet his liberality to his ministers and servants
was proverbial, and his vanquished enemies he always treated with
magnificent generosity. Casimir's married life was singularly happy. His
consort, Elizabeth of Austria, "the mother of the Jagiellos," bore him
six sons and seven daughters, and by her affection and good counsel
materially relieved the constant anxieties and grievous burdens of his
long and arduous