Louis I the Great

Louis was the son of the Hungarian king Karl Robert (who came from the Neapolitan Anjou dynasty ) and Elizabeth , the daughter of Vladislav Lokot and the sister of Casimir III the Great , the last king of Poland from the Piast dynasty . Louis I received the Hungarian crown after the death of his father in 1342, but in his youth he was guided by the advice of his mother.

In 1347, he undertook a campaign in Naples with the aim of revenge for his brother Andrei of Hungary , who had been killed there, but had no lasting success.

In 1350, he repeated his campaign, subjugated Naples and transferred control of it to his mother, and he himself drew the main attention to Dalmatia, finding that it was more important for Hungary than Italy.

For the possession of Dalmatia, Louis I had to wage a stubborn struggle with the Venetians, but finally he broke them and forced him to recognize Dalmatia in Hungary in 1356.

In 1365, he moved against the Bulgarian Tsar John - Shishman and conquered Vidin , but could not resist here, since Shishman united with the Ottoman Turks. The latter under Louis did not disturb Hungary, as they were engaged in military operations against Byzantium.

After the death of Casimir III the Great in 1370, Louis I, as the son of the sister of a childless Casimir, freely received the Polish crown . Thus, the limits of the united possessions of Louis I extended from the Balkans to the Baltic Sea and from the Black Sea to the Adriatic.

In 1376, the Lithuanian princes brothers Keistut and Lyubart Gediminovich, together with their nephew Yuri Narimuntovich, made a trip to Malopolska , reaching Sandomierz and Tarnuv .

In 1377, as a result of the return campaign of Louis the Great, Yuri Narimuntovich lost his possessions. The fortresses of Grabovets, Helm , Belz , Gorodlo , Vsevolozh were attached to the possessions of Louis the Great ^[3] . Yuri Narimuntovich retained only Lyubachuv .

Louis I issued a number of statutes on both the rights of the crown and the rights of subjects; he was the last to leave local government; for the nobles provided possession of estates; he did much for the peasants, replacing the work on the landlords with natural service in the amount ^of _{1/9 of the} peasant income from the land; He took care of the welfare of cities, giving them privileges, giving them forests and lands, surrounded them with walls and decorated them with buildings.

Buda under Louis I became the capital of the state instead of Visegrad . All this, together with the king’s patronage of the clergy and his concerns about the spread of education among the Hungarians (schools, founding of the 1367 Academy), made him very popular in Hungary.

He was treated differently in Poland, perhaps because Lajos I himself constantly lived in Hungary (or rather, on the territory of modern Slovakia , which was part of the Hungarian kingdom), he cared little about the unrest and disputes that occurred in the Polish kingdom because of power, constantly he demanded money from him and, at last, tore off Red Russia from Poland, annexing it to Hungary.

Louis the Great was married twice (to Margarita of Luxembourg , and after her imminent death - to Elizabeth of Bosnia ), but had no sons. From Elizabeth he had three daughters - Catherine, Mary and Jadwiga .

Trying to preserve the integrity of the state, the king declared his eldest daughter Maria, the only heir, engaged to Sigismund , the son of Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg . But after the death of Louis I in 1382, the struggle for power began, and the huge Anjou monarchy collapsed (Jadwiga became the Queen of Poland, and Maria - Hungary).

• Lipovsky A.L. ,. Louis, Hungarian kings // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.