Michal Glinski

Michał Gliński (also known as Mikhail Lvovich Glinsky), ca. 1470-1534) was a powerful Lithuanian prince of distant Tatar extraction. He was Court Marshal of Lithuania from 1500 until 1506.

Member of the Gliński family which claimed descent from khan Mamai and owned Poltava, Turov, and other cities, he was brought up at the court of Emperor Maximilian. In the service of Albrecht of Saxony during the Italian Wars, he converted to Roman Catholicism. In the 1490s he returned to Lithuania, where he assumed the most powerful position at the court of Alexander the Jagiellonian. Appointed Court Marshal of Lithuania, he took part in numerous battles against the Tatars and in 1506 achieved a spectacular victory against them in the Battle of Klecko.

His secret ambition, however, was to carve out for himself a separate state composed of ancient lands of Kievan Rus. This intention was made public by his rival Janusz Zabrzeziński, a voivod of Troki. On ascending the Lithuanian throne, Sigismund I dismissed him from his posts. Having heard about the news, Glinski procured Zabrzeziński's assassination and started an armed rebellion against the king. In 1508, Michał and his two brothers defected with their army to Muscovy, where Grand Duke Vasily III made him a boyar and married his niece, Helena Glinska.

Michał served with distinction in various conflicts of Russia with Lithuania and the Tatars, particularly in the taking of Smolensk in 1514. He still hoped that Vasily would make him an appanage duke, with all semblance of an independant sovereign. Upon realising that this could not be, he entered secret negotiations with Sigismund in order to return to Lithuania. The conspiracy was disclosed, and Michał taken to prison, where, waiting for execution, he returned to the Orthodox faith of his forefathers.

Upon Vasily's death in 1533, Helena Glińska became the regent of Muscovy for her son Ivan. She delivered her uncle from prison and made him her counsellor. But Gliński, jealous of the influence acquired on Helena by her lover Prince Obolensky, started to conspire against him. In August 1534 he was again taken to prison, where he died on September 24.