Ehstland and Esshland, Esthonian Eestimaa and Meie-maa, also Viroma and Rahvama; Lettish Iggaun Senna), a Baltic province of Russia, stretching along the south coast of the Gulf of Finland, and having Lake Peipus and Livonia on the S.
During a halt of a few days in Poland on his way back from Vienna, King Augustus had explained to him a project for partitioning the transBaltic provinces of Sweden, by which Poland should recover Livonia and annex Esthonia, Russia should obtain Ingria and Karelia, and Denmark should take possession of Holstein.
The first active interference of Lithuania in the affairs of Livonia took place immediately after the great outbreak of the peasants on Oesel; Olgierd then devastated all southern Livonia.
In 1186 the emissaries of the archbishop of Bremen began to preach Christianity among the Ehsts and Letts, and in 1201 the bishop of Livonia established his residence at Riga.
He also felt the necessity of a Baltic seaboard, and attempted to obtain Livonia by diplomatic means.
From Sjaelland Charles now hastened to Livonia with 8000 men.
An intermittent and desultory war, with Sweden and Poland simultaneously, for the possession of Livonia and Esthonia, went on from 1560 to 1582.
His opportunity seemed to have come when, in the middle of the 16th century, the Order of the Sword broke up, and the possession of Livonia was fiercely contested between Sweden, Poland and Denmark.
By this pactur subjectionis, as the Polish patriots called it, Russia got all the eastern provinces of Poland, extending from Livonia to Moldavia, comprising a quarter of a million of square miles, while Prussia got Dobrzyn, Kujavia and the greater part of Great Poland, with Thorn and Danzig.
But in 1237 the Knights of the Sword were merged into the Teutonic Order, and Livonia became a province of the Order, with a master of its own under the grand master's control, just as, two years before, the Order had also absorbed the Knights of Dobrzin.