Boleslaus I of Poland : Boleslaw I Chrobry 

Boleslaus's Career

In 984 Boleslaus married Rikdaga, the daughter of the margrave of Meissen, followed by the Judith, the daughter of Geza the Great Prince of Hungary , then Enmilda, the daughter of one Dobromir, a Lusatian prince; and Oda, daughter of the margrave of Meissen. His wives bore him sons including Bezprym, Mieszko II and Otton, and a daughter, Mathilde.

In 997 Boleslaus sent St. Adalbert of Prague to Prussia on the Baltic Sea to attempt to convert the Prussians to Christianity. In 990 he conquered Silesia. By this time he was already in possession of Pomerania with its main city of Danzig, and of Little Poland with its main city of Cracow, and of Slovakia.

In A.D. 1000, while on a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Adalbert at Gniezno, the emperor Otto III invested Boleslaus with the title Frater et Cooperator Imperii ("Brother and Partner of the Empire"). On the same visit Otto III raised Gnesen/Gniezno to the rank of an archbishopric[?].

After the untimely death of Otto III in 1002 at the age of 22, Boleslaus conquered Meissen and Lusatia (German Lausitz), in an attempt to wrest imperial territory for himself during the disputes over the throne; he and his father had both backed Henry the Quarrelsome against Otto earlier, and he accepted the accession of Henry II of Germany, the earlier Henry's son.

Boleslaus conquered and made himself duke of Bohemia and Moravia in 1003-1004; he defeated the Russians and stormed Kiev in 1018, annexing Grody Czerwienskie[?] and making prince Sviatopelk[?] his vassal there. The intermittent wars with Germany were terminated with the Peace of Bautzen, Budziszyn[?] in 1018, which left Meissen and Lausitz temporarily in Polish hands.

Boleslaus was forced by the next emperor, Henry II, to give a pledge of allegiance again for the lands he held in fief. When Henry died in 1024, Boleslaus made himself king, passing the title to his successors.

It's on a small scale, and you can see.html">see the whole _[See Map A]_ 'Here's this huge empire, stretching half over central wealth, and everything. They've licked the French, and the Austrians, about all that, but what I'm concerned with is their sea.html">sea.html">sea.html">sea-power. It's theirs is running it for all it's worth. He's a splendid chap, and _must_ have them, like us. They can't get them and keep them, and command of the sea is _the_ thing nowadays, isn't it? I say, don't and those fellows. Well, the Germans have got a small fleet at There's the--and the--.' He broke off into a digression on armaments ship.html">ship by heart. I had to recall him to the point. 'Well, think of her coast-line? It's a very queer one, as you know, split clean in Baltic, which is practically an inland sea, with its entrance blocked ship canal from Kiel to the Elbe, but that could be easily smashed in _west_ of Denmark and looks on the North Sea. It's there that Germany fronts us and France, the two great sea-powers of Western Europe, and with the huge country behind it. From Borkum to the Elbe, as the crow Schleswig, say 120 miles. Total, say, two hundred. Compare that with every inch of it is important? Now what _sort_ of coast is it? Even shoals and sand everywhere, blocking nine-tenths of the land great rivers run in. Now let's take it bit.html">bit by bit. You see it divides Borkum to Wangeroog--fifty odd miles. What's that like? A string of the Dutch border, leading to Emden--not much of a.

 On wordlookup.net  

All is still licensed under the GNU FDL.
It uses material from the wikipedia.