Samogitian

The Samogitians, whose name means the Lowlanders, are the western branch of the Lithuanians, formed in the lowlands of central and western Lithuania as early as the fifth and sixth centuries. They absorbed the southern remnants of the Semigallians and Curonians between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries.

They stood against the crusading orders, destroying the Brothers of the Sword at Saule in 1236 and crushing the Teutonic and Livonian armies at Durbe in 1260. Vytautas surrendered Samogitia to the Order in 1398, but its people rose in 1401 and 1409, and Samogitian regiments fought at Grunwald in 1410.

The last people in Europe to accept Christianity, they were baptised in 1413; the Treaty of Melno in 1422 settled their border with the Order. The Duchy of Samogitia within Lithuania passed to Russia with the partitions of the late eighteenth century.