Meanwhile Prince Vitowda, despairing of assistance and pressed on all sides, after much hesitation joined the Teutonic Knights in an incursion against Lithuania. The country was invaded by a numerous army, the capital taken by storm, abandoned to pillage, and finally destroyed by fire; no less than fourteen thousand of the inhabitants perishing in the flames, beside numbers who were massacred without distinction of sex or age. Fortunately the upper city was garrisoned by Poles, who determined to hold out to the last. The slight fortifications were speedily destroyed; but, being immediately repaired, the siege continued so long that Skirgello had time to assemble an army before which the besiegers were eventually obliged to retreat. Vitowda, now too deeply compromised to draw back, though thwarted in his designs on Upper Wilna, gained possession of many of the frontier towns, and, encouraged by success, aimed at nothing less than the independent sovereignty of Lithuania. He was, however, opposed during {154} two or three campaigns by Wladislas person, until, wearied of the war, the king had the weakness not only to sue for peace, but to invest Vitowda with the government of the duchy. This, as might be expected, gave great umbrage to Skirgello, and to another brother, Swidrigal, so that Lithuania, owing to the ambition of the rival princes, became for some time the theatre of civil discord. Among her other titles to admiration, we must not omit to mention that Hedwige was a munificent patroness of learning. She hastened to re-establish the college built by Casimir II., founded and endowed a magnificent university at Prague for the education of the Lithuanian youth, and superintended the translation of the Holy Scriptures into Polish, writing with her own hands the greater part of the New Testament. Her work was interrupted during her husband's absence by the attack of the Hungarians on the frontiers of Poland; and it was then that, laying aside the weakness of her sex, she felt herself called upon to supply his place. A powerful army was levied, of which this youthful heroine assumed the command, directing the councils of the generals, and sharing the privations of the meanest soldier. When she appeared on horseback in the midst of the troops, nothing could exceed the enthusiasm of these hardy warriors; and the simplicity with which they obeyed the slightest order of their queen was touching in the extreme. Hedwige led her forces into Russia Nigra, and, partly by force of arms, partly by skilful negotiations, succeeded in reconquering the whole of that vast province, which her father Lewis had detached from the Polish crown in order to unite it to that of his beloved Hungary. This act of injustice was repaired by his daughter, who thus endeared her name to the memory of succeeding generations. The conquering army proceeded to Silesia, then usurped by the Duke of Oppelen, where they were equally successful; so that Wladislas was