Poland is the center of Eastern Europe in 1461-1462, the years in which the novel is set. In 1461, under King Kazimir IV, Poland embarked upon its Golden Age. United with Lithuania, the Polish kingdom stretches from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. The Germans along the Baltic, known as the Teutonic Knights, were defeated forty years earlier at the Battle of Tannenberg and are now sworn subjects of the Polish Crown. To the south, Polish control extends into Moldavia (the northeast portion of present-day Romania); to the east, the Poles and their Lithuanian allies control most of the Ukraine and present-day Byelorussia. The Tartars, who swept across the Ukraine and Poland a century before, have lost most of their power and are gradually retreating toward the area north of the Caspian Sea and central Asia. The Russian state, under Ivan the...