The account of his expedition and death is given by Henry of Latvia, an early thirteenth-century German chronicler of Latvian history, spanning the years 1186-1227.
In 1205, Žvelgaitis led several thousand horsemen northward, from Lithuania through Riga, on the way to attack and plunder Estonia.
Returning from Estonia mid-winter, with booty and Estonian slaves, his troops were caught unaware and attacked while crossing through waist-high snowdrifts.
1,200 Lithuanian soldiers perished; the Estonian slaves were slaughtered as well, in retribution for "past crimes" against the Livonians.
In Lithuania, the return of Žvelgaitis was missed, and it is said that as many as fifty wives of the Lithuanian soldiers killed themselves in grief, hoping to be all the sooner at the sides of their slain husbands.