The Almost Forgotten

The Sengoku period’s disorder seemed to have ended as Oda Nobunaga unified much of Japan. But his murder threatened to return the country back into civil war, until Toyotomi Hideyoshi stepped in and took control, creating an even more unified government and instituting major reforms.

The end of the Sengoku Jidai, or Warring States Period, in Japan, was ushered in by Oda Nobunaga. Nobunaga pulled much of Honshu under his rule, and began the transition to united rule that would lead to the Tokugawa Shogunate.

This episode, we return to eastern Europe to finish up the stories of Jogaila, who had become king of Poland, and Vytautas, who ruled as the Grand Duke of Lithuania. Theoretically Jogaila was Vytautas’s sovereign, and although at times it produced some tension, in 1410, they were in a tight alliance, ready to go to war as allies.

For the next two episodes, we’ll look at Jogaila and Vytautas, two men who helped shaped eastern Europe for centuries to come. Together, they paved a path that would join a rapidly growing Lithuania with Poland, push back threats from the west, hold sway over lands to their east, and create a state that dominated the region for centuries.

Count Amadeus VI of Savoy was from a small mountain county of the Holy Roman Empire in the western Alps, and helped turn it into what would eventually be one of the most important states in early modern Europe.