ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces two Central European political entities that in the end of the fourteenth and in the beginning of the fifteenth century were competing with one another. It illustrates the tensions within the Lithuanian dynasty were a very handy political tool to employ for the Teutonic Knights in their competition with Lithuania and Poland before 1409. The chapter discusses what were the reasons that for almost the quarter of a century (until 1409) prevented two local empires of the late medieval Central Europe (the Teutonic State and the unified Lithuania and Poland) from waging a full-scale war. On the whole, the Teutonic lordship embraced almost the entire Southeastern Baltic coast, from Leba in the west to Narva in the East. It controlled the river mouths of all great Central European rivers flowing into the Baltic Sea (outside Oder): Vistula, Neman and Daugava.
