Great War of 1409-11

(Polish, Wielka woina), a war between the Teutonic Order, which wanted to capture the lands of Lithuania (Zemaitia) and of Poland (Dobrzyn land), and the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. During the Great War the order received considerable aid from the Holy Roman Empire and several other states; Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and Czech-Poles fought in the ranks of the Polish-Lithuanian Army. The forces of the Teutonic Order were defeated in the Battle of Grunwald of 1410. Although the conditions of the Peace of Toruń of 1411 did not correspond to the scale of the victory, the Great War did put an end to the order’s expansion. A liberation struggle began against the order, a struggle that eventually became the Thirteen Years’ War of 1454-66.