Horodło (on the Bug)¶

In the 1380s [Historical record]¶

Horodło on the Bug, where the union was signed on 2 Oct 1413 (event).

Horodło (on the Bug)


Type	place
Note	Union of 2 Oct 1413. On the Bug, west of Volhynia; not Lutsk.

Sensory sketch¶

A river town on the Bug in mid-autumn: wet meadows beside the water, tents standing in rows by the castle, the smell of damp wool, woodsmoke, horses and cooked game for hundreds of guests. Rain, mud, and a thin autumn light. The ceremony is built of sound as much as sight: heralds calling Polish noble houses by name, the clank of coats-of-arms being hung, Latin Masses, and the dry rustle of charters. A wooden royal manor, a church, and a modest hill castle are the only buildings; nothing is large enough to hold the crowd, so the union is sworn half in the open.

In the saga¶

A heraldry ceremony that is a declaration of civil war twenty years early.

Getting there¶

Horodło stands on the western bank of the Bug, the frontier between Lesser Poland (Lublin land) and Lithuanian Volhynia. From Lutsk it is about 100 km in a straight line, roughly two and a half days on horseback; from Brest-Litovsk (Brasta) about a day and a half. From Kraków the route is 420-450 km (ten to twelve days for a court), from Lublin about three days. From Vilnius it is 550-600 km by road, two to three weeks. Because the Bug is a navigable border river, boat traffic could carry baggage down toward the Vistula. The place was chosen precisely because it is neither Polish nor Lithuanian ground in the mind of either side: it is where the two courts could meet halfway.

Scenes set here¶

Book IV ch. 2.

Relations

Events here: Union of Horodło; Samogitian baptism begins — Horodło on the Bug, 2 Oct 1413.

Timeline¶

Year	Event	Book
1413-10-02	Union of Horodło; Samogitian baptism begins	IV · The Invisible Crown

Connections¶

graph LR
  ev_horodlo["Union of Horodło; Samogitian baptism begins"]
  horodlo["Horodło (on the Bug)"]
  ev_horodlo -->|Location| horodlo
  style horodlo stroke-width:3px