people; and, to their shame be it spoken, the Teutonic Knights (whose order was first established to defend the Christian faith against the assaults of infidels) scrupled not to adopt a crooked policy, and, by inciting the Lithuanians against their sovereign, threw every impediment in the way of their conversion. Before the king had any suspicion of his intentions, the grand-master had crossed the frontiers, the duchy was laid waste, and many important fortresses were already in the hands of the order. Wladislas, then absent in Upper Poland, despatched Skirgello into Lithuania, who, though haughty, licentious, and revengeful, was a brave and skilful general. Duke Andrew fled before the forces of his brother, and the latter attacked the Knights with an impetuosity that compelled them speedily to evacuate their conquests. The arrival of the king, with a number of learned prelates, and a large body of clergy, proved he was quite in earnest regarding the conversion of his subjects, hitherto immersed in the grossest and most degrading idolatry. Trees, serpents, vipers, were the inferior objects of their adoration; gloomy forests and damp caverns their temples; and the most disgusting and venomous reptiles were cherished in every family as household gods. But, as with the eastern Magi, fire was the principal object of the Lithuanian worship; priests were appointed whose office it was to tend the sacred flame, their lives paying the penalty if it were allowed to expire. At Wilna, the capital of the duchy, was a temple of the sun; and should that luminary chance to be eclipsed, or even clouded, the people fled thither in the utmost terror, eager to appease the deity by rivers of human blood, which poured forth at the command of the Ziutz, or high priest, the victims vying with each other in the severity of their self-inflicted torments.