JOHN ALBERT (1459-1501)

This article appears in Volume V15, Page 458 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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JOHN ALBERT (1459-1501) , king of Poland, third son of Casimir IV. king of Poland and Elizabeth of Austria. As crown prince he distinguished himself by his brilliant victory over the

Tatars

TATARS (the common form Tartars is less correct)

at Kopersztyn in 1487. He succeeded his father in 1492. The loss of revenue consequent upon the secession of Lithuania placed John Albert at the mercy of the Polish Sejmiki or local diets, where the szlachta, or country gentry, made their subsidies dependent upon the' king's subservience. Primarily a warrior with a strong

taste

TASTE (from Lat. taxare, to touch sharply; tangere, to touch)

for heroic adventure, John Albert desired to pose as the champion of Christendom against the Turks. Circumstances seemed, moreover, to favour him. In his brother Wladislaus, who as king of

Hungary

HUNGARY
HUNGARY (Hungarian Magyarorszdg)

and Bohemia possessed a dominant influence in Central hurope, he found a counterpoise to the machinations of the emperor

Maximilian

MAXIMILIAN
MAXIMILIAN (1832—1867)

, who in 1492 had concluded an alliance against him with Ivan III. of Muscovy, while, as suzerain of Moldavia, John Albert was favourably situated for attacking the Turks. At the conference of Leutschau in 1494 the details of the expedition were arranged between the kings of Poland and

Hungary

HUNGARY
HUNGARY (Hungarian Magyarorszdg)

and the elector Frederick of Brandenburg, with the co-operation of Stephen, hospodar of Moldavia, who had appealed to John Albert for assistance. In the course of 1496 John Albert with

great

GREAT

difficulty collected an army of 8o,000 men in Poland, but the crusade was deflected from its proper course by the sudden invasion of

Galicia

by the hospodar, who apparentlyfor the whole subject is still very obscurehad been misled by reports from Hungary that John Albert was bent upon placing his younger brother

Sigismund

SIGISMUND (1368-1437)

on the throne of Moldavia. Be that as it may, the Poles entered Moldavia not as friends, but as foes, and, after the abortive siege of Suczawa, were compelled to

retreat

RETREAT (O. Fr. retrete, mod. retraite, from Lat. retrahere, to draw back)

through the Bukowina to Sniatyn, harassed all the way by the forces of the hospodar. The insubordination of the szlachta seems to have been one cause of this disgraceful collapse, for John Albert confiscated hundreds of their estates after his return; in spite of which, to the end of his life he retained his extraordinary popularity. When the new grand master of the Teutonic order, Frederic of Saxony, refused to render homage to the Polish crown, John Albert compelled him to do so. His intention of still further humiliating the Teutonic order was frustrated by his sudden death in 1501. A valiant soldier and a man of much enlightenment, John Albert was a poor politician, recklessly sacrificing the future to the present.
See V. Czerny, The Reigns of John Albert and Alexander Jagiello (Pol.) (Cracow, 1882).

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