Alexander Jagiellon – Poor King of Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

So here we have the Grand Duchy of Lithuanian penny, nominal – 1/2. The year of issue of this coin is 1501 - 1506, Mint: Vilnius, Lithuania.

Alexander was born 5 August in 1461 – died 19 August in 1506. He was represented of the House of Jagiellon was the Grand Duke of Lithuania and later also King of Poland. He was the fourth son of Casimir IV Jagiellon. Alexander was elected grand duke of Lithuania on the death of his father in 1492 and king of Poland on the death of his brother John I Albert in 1501.

The greatest challenge that Alexander faced upon assuming control of the grand duchy was an attack on Lithuania by Grand Duke Ivan III of Russia and his allies, the Tatars of the Crimean Khanate, which commenced shortly after his accession. Ivan III considered himself the heir to the lands of Kievan Rus', and was striving to take back the territory previously gained by Lithuania. Unable to successfully stop the incursions, Alexander sent a delegation to Moscow to make a peace settlement, which was signed in 1494 and ceded extensive land over to Ivan. In an additional effort to instill a peace between the two countries, Alexander was betrothed to Helena, the daughter of Ivan III, they were married in Vilnius on 15 February 1495. The peace did not last long, however, as Ivan III resumed hostilities in 1500.

The most Alexander could do was to garrison Smolensk and other strongholds and employ his wife Helena to mediate another truce between him and her father after the disastrous Battle of Vedrosha (1500). In the terms of this truce, Lithuania had to surrender about a third of its territory to the nascent expansionist Russian state.