silver and of gold. During her seven-month-long stay in Italy, she was only able to persuade her daughter-in-law and the pope to promise that Andrew would be crowned as Joanna's husband. According to the nearly contemporaneous chronicle of John of Küküllő, Louis launched his first campaign against a group of Transylvanian Saxons, who had refused to pay taxes, and forced them to yield in the summer of 1344. During his stay in Transylvania, Nicholas Alexanderwho was the son of Basarab, the ruling prince of Wallachiaswore loyalty to Louis on his father's behalf in Brassó (now Brașov in Romania); thus the suzerainty of the Hungarian monarchs over Wallachia was, at least outwardly, restored. Louis joined a crusade against the pagan Lithuanians in December 1344. The crusadersincluding John of Bohemia, Charles of Moravia, Peter of Bourbon, and William of Hainaut and Holland laid siege to Vilnius. However, a Lithuanian invasion of the lands of the Teutonic Knights forced them to lift the siege. Louis returned to Hungary in late February 1345. He dispatched Andrew Lackfi, Count of the Székelys to invade the lands of the Golden Horde in retaliation for the Tatars' earlier plundering raids against Transylvania and the Szepesség (now Spiš in Slovakia). Lackfi and his army of mainly Székely warriors inflicted a defeat on a large Tatar army on 2 February 1345. Hungarian warriors were victorious in their campaign, decapitating the local Tatar leader, the brother-in-law of the Khan, Atlamïş, and making the Tatars flee toward the coastal area. The Golden Horde was pushed back behind the Dniester River, thereafter the Golden Horde's control of the lands between the Eastern Carpathians and the Black Sea weakened. A conflict between Louis's uncle and father-in-law (Casimir III of Poland and Charles of Moravia) led to a war between Poland and Bohemia in April. In this war Louis supported his uncle with reinforcements in accordance with the agreement of 1339. While Louis's armies were fighting in Poland and against the Tatars, Louis marched to Croatia in June 1345 and besieged Knin, the former seat of the late Ivan Nelipac, who had successfully resisted Louis's father, forcing his widow and son to surrender. The counts of Corbavia and other Croatian noblemen also yielded to him during his stay in Croatia. The citizens of Zadar rebelled against the Republic of Venice and accepted his suzerainty. Louis meanwhile returned to Visegrád. He dispatched Stephen II, Ban