This woman was one of the most vivid and interesting figures of the 14th-15th centuries, a time that the well-known Belarusian poet of the Renaissance, Mikołaj Husowski, called the “Time of Vytautas.” History has preserved the image of the great Lithuanian duchess Anna. Sviatoslavna, the second wife of Vytautas, bright and pure.
Princess Anna was born around 1365 in Smolensk, which is why she is often referred to in chronicles as Anna of Smolensk. She became the wife of the widowed Vytautas, the prince of Hrodna, the son of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Kęstutis, at the age of thirteen. The prince himself was twenty-seven at that time. Vytautas was passionate and fiery. A lover of female beauty, he quickly became enamored and was even ready to leave his army for a few days during a campaign for the sake of another beauty. He did not remain faithful to his first wife Maria Lukomska and, of course, betrayed Anna as well. However, from the moment the young blue-eyed and fair-haired Smolensk princess was named his wife at the holy altar, his reckless bravado transformed into a steadfast attachment to his spouse.
Fate granted Vytautas and Anna only five years of relatively peaceful life. During this time, they had two sons – Ivan and Yuri. The husband and wife found particular joy in personally raising their children. Vytautas had a daughter, Sophia, from his first marriage. Anna did everything possible to become for the girl not a stepmother, but a second mother. Kindness and sensitivity helped her in this.
Anna Sviatoslavna of Smolensk
But the family of Vytautas was destined for heavy trials… Vytautas’s father, Kęstutis, ruled the Grand Duchy together with his brother Algirdas. Before his death, Algirdas appointed his son Jogaila as his successor. However, the understanding that Kęstutis had with his brother did not arise with his nephew. Jogaila brought close to him the adventurer Vytautas, who began to incite the young grand duke against his uncle in every way. Eventually, it came to the point where Jogaila appealed to the Crusaders for help to deprive Kęstutis of power. Kęstutis, learning of the conspiracy, quickly gathered an army and, together with Vytautas, led it against Jogaila. The moment of surprise worked in their favor. The entire family of Jogaila, he himself, as well as Vytautas, fell into captivity. Not wishing to shed the blood of their relatives, Kęstutis and Vytautas executed only Vytautas, while demanding oaths from the others that they would no longer harm them and released them in peace.
However, Jogaila soon broke the oath. At the most inopportune moment for Kęstutis, the nephew, together with the Crusaders, rose against him. Kęstutis and Vytautas wanted to negotiate with Jogaila peacefully, so as not to lose the best warriors of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in a civil war. They appeared unarmed in Jogaila’s camp for negotiations. There, they were treacherously captured. Father and son were immediately separated. The gray-haired Kęstutis was locked in Kreva Castle, while Vytautas was thrown into the Vilnius prison. This happened in August 1382.
When the news reached Anna, her father-in-law was already dead – by Jogaila’s order, Kęstutis was strangled by the jailers on the fifth day after his captivity. And then Vytautas was also transferred to the prison tower of Kreva.
From the constant expectation of death, Vytautas had a nervous breakdown, and this allowed Anna to obtain from Jogaila permission to visit her husband in prison and care for the sick man. For several days she was allowed to see Vytautas alone; after that, Jogaila took pity and allowed Anna’s maidservants to accompany her to the prison.
Then a bold plan arose in her mind. Assuming that the beardless and clean-shaven Vytautas, dressed as a maidservant, could leave his prison and avoid inevitable death, Anna began to search for a volunteer sacrifice, a woman who would agree to exchange clothes with the captive prince and stay in his place in the tower. And such a woman was found.
On the day of the murder of the old Kęstutis, his faithful servant Ryhor Amulich also perished, who defended his master to the last. Amulich had a fiancée, the inconsolable Alena. It was she who wanted to save Vytautas. Perhaps Alena believed that, having gained freedom, the prince would avenge Jogaila, who had also ruined her life.
Vytautas hesitated for a long time before deciding to exchange clothes with Alena and leave the girl in his place for certain death. The thirst for revenge and the sense of chivalric dignity fought within his soul. But Alena managed to find the right words. “I know what awaits me,” she said, “but no one will feel my death, while your death would be a misfortune for Lithuania…”
When the moon shone in the sky, the guards saw two women, sadly bowing their heads and hiding their faces under the brims of their cloaks, leaving the prison tower. Their figures embodied sorrow and despair. And, already knowing about the imminent and inevitable death of Vytautas, the Kreva warriors sighed sympathetically, watching Princess Anna Sviatoslavna leave Kreva with her maidservants and a detachment of the Ashmyany nobility that protected her on the road…
And what about the prisoner? For three days and three nights he lay on the bed, wrapped in a blanket and turned to the wall. On the fourth day, the jailers suspected something was amiss. They threw back the blanket from the face of the one who was in prison. And saw Anna’s maidservant.
“Why did you do that?” Jogaila asked.
“Remember Amulich!” Alena replied.
These were her last words. The brave girl was brutally dealt with. But by that time, Vytautas was already beyond the borders of the duchy with his faithful Anna. They found refuge in Mazovia, where Vytautas’s sister Dainita was married to a local prince.
The feat of Alena, who sacrificed herself to save Vytautas, was sung and glorified by many writers. The feat of Anna of Smolensk, who survived and shared her husband’s difficult fate, turned out to be no less glorious. For the next thirty years, Anna was next to her husband, lived his restless life, participated with him in political struggles, and sacrificed her personal “I” for him. She truly loved Vytautas. But how great can a woman’s love be?
Some ancient philosopher suggested testing it in the following cruel way: to place before a woman her husband and her child and offer her to choose between them, declaring that the other would be immediately sacrificed to the gods. A barbaric test, unworthy of even being described by the pen of an educated Hellen. But this was precisely what fate had prepared for Anna Sviatoslavna…
After Vytautas’s return to his homeland, Anna supported him in the struggle with Jogaila for the right to the grand ducal crown. In 1390, in order to obtain military and financial assistance from the Crusaders (it was difficult to resist Jogaila with their own forces), the princess voluntarily agreed to become a hostage of Master Konrad von Zollern and also left her sons Ivan and Yuri as hostages in the Order. She was separated from her children and imprisoned by the knights in the Krementyn Castle.
In 1392, Anna Sviatoslavna received, thanks to Bishop Henry of Płock, a gracious permission from the master to reunite with her husband, whom she had previously not been allowed even to see. But the meeting, after the first moments of joy, brought Anna sorrow. Vytautas informed his wife that he had decided to renounce the alliance with the Crusaders, stop fighting Jogaila, and return to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Jogaila, who by this time had become the King of Poland, promised peace, love, and power in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to his cousin brother through Henry of Płock. To do this, he would have to break the oath of allegiance to the Order that he had taken before the master.
Anna could not help but understand what this meant. The Crusaders, having given her the opportunity to live next to her husband, nevertheless did not return her sons to her. Perhaps Vytautas himself naively hoped for the “chivalric honor” of his former ally, but Anna, with a mother’s heart, felt the inevitability of retribution against her innocent children. Fate placed her before a difficult choice. Anna understood that for her husband, the main thing was to regain the parental throne. Refusing the peace offered by Jogaila, Vytautas would deprive himself forever of such an opportunity, as the King of Poland was too strong an opponent for the Crusaders to reclaim the grand ducal throne for the exiled prince. The only thing that could save her children was an appeal to the master demanding the return of her sons in exchange for delivering her husband’s plans. But then inevitable death would threaten Vytautas.
The chroniclers left us no account of the woman’s torments, whose soul resisted such a choice until the last moment. We only know that in the end, Anna Sviatoslavna chose her husband…
During the pagan holiday of Kupala, Vytautas’s loyal warriors captured the Crusaders’ arsenal from Rittersswerder, set the castle itself on fire, and headed to Hrodna, where the Crusaders were also located at that time. After a brief skirmish, the city was taken. Vytautas replenished his detachment with townspeople who welcomed him. With them, the rebellious prince went to Metemburg and Neiharten and seized them. This was to become a kind of rehabilitation for Vytautas before his people, who perceived him, the ally of the Crusaders, almost as an enemy. And the Lithuanians indeed forgave the prince. And loved him.
In August of that same year, Anna attended the reconciliation of Vytautas with Jogaila in Astravets, and then at the solemn coronation of her husband in Vilnius on the grand ducal throne. And just a few weeks after this, messengers brought her sad news: the Crusaders had poisoned her sons. God did not send her more children…
Anna Sviatoslavna died at the age of 53. Until the end of her life, she remained a faithful companion to her husband, sharing with him the dangers of ruling in conditions of constant raids by the Crusaders, participating in political decisions and diplomatic meetings, and dreaming of finally ending the brutal Teutonic Order. All the best that was in Vytautas’s character was revealed and developed by Princess Anna. This was understood by Vytautas himself, his allies, and even his enemies. “What a woman!” the Crusaders exclaimed in sincere admiration. “A rarity and a great rarity among the daughters of Eve… He found in her a guardian angel…”
The dream of Princess Anna came true in 1410 when Vytautas and Jogaila led their armies to the field of Grunwald, returning from there with triumph and great glory. Eight years later, she was gone. Vytautas bitterly mourned his Anna. He bequeathed that after his death, he be buried next to the woman who dedicated her entire life to him.
And now they lie together in stone sarcophagi in the Vilnius Cathedral of St. Stanislaus.