Vytautas switched sides three times and still became Lithuania's hero
Vytautas watched his father die in captivity at Kreva Castle, escaped, and allied with the Teutonic Knights against his cousin Jogaila. He changed sides again and again, converting between faiths along the way, yet in 1410 he led Lithuanian forces to a decisive victory over those same knights at Grunwald.
Born around 1350, Vytautas was the son of Kęstutis, who shared rule of Lithuania with his brother Algirdas, guarding the west against the Teutonic Order. When Algirdas died in 1377, his son Jogaila secretly allied with the Order against Kęstutis. Kęstutis seized Vilnius in 1381 and imprisoned Jogaila, but Jogaila escaped, and during talks Kęstutis and Vytautas were arrested and taken to Kreva. A week later Kęstutis was found dead; whether he was murdered is still debated.
Vytautas escaped in 1382 and turned to the Order, taking baptism as a Catholic under the name Wigand and raiding Jogaila's lands, then reconciled with his cousin and burned three Teutonic castles. In 1385 Jogaila married Jadwiga of Poland and became its king. Frustrated by the unpopular regent Skirgaila, Vytautas allied with the Order again in 1390, until in 1392 Jogaila offered him the regency. A third alliance with the knights, the Treaty of Salynas of 1398, gave them his ancestral Samogitia.
Ambition in the east brought disaster: backing the ousted khan Tokhtamysh, he was crushed by Timur's forces at the Vorskla River in 1399, where over twenty princes died and he barely escaped. Samogitia rebelled against the knights with his support, and in 1410 Vytautas commanded the Grand Duchy's army at Grunwald. The Order never fully recovered, and Poland-Lithuania came to be seen in the west as a great power. The Peace of Thorn in 1411 gave him Samogitia for life.
The unions of 1401 and of Horodło in 1413 kept Lithuania's own Grand Duke and parliament while binding it closer to Poland. Vytautas died on 27 October 1430. Nineteenth-century Lithuanians made him a national hero, and a university bears his name.
Source: Vytautas the Great
