A Battle of many Names

This week we look at the reasons the golden age of the Teutonic knights came to an abrupt end at the beginning of the 15^th century. It is a sequence of events that involve some remarkable Polish and Lithuanian princes, the Templars, and  of course – The brothers of the house of St. Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem. Ah, and a very famous battle.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 134 – Tannenberg

This week we look at the reasons the golden age of the Teutonic knights came to an abrupt end at the beginning of the 15^th century. It is a sequence of events that involve some remarkable Polish and Lithuanian princes, the Templars, and  of course – The brothers of the house of St. Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem. Ah, and a very famous battle.

But before we start, in the unlikely event you are unaware of it, the History of the Germans Podcast and all its offshoots are advertising free thanks to the generosity of our patrons and one-time contributors. I know these inserts are irritating to some of you, but would you prefer me espousing the advantages of various crypto coins, a mildly dodgy online mental health service or a meal plan? I wouldn’t and so be so kind to thank George O., CM Bo, Fabian G. and Katie who are valiantly protecting us from these impositions by becoming a patron at patreon.com/historyofthegermans.

Back to the show.

Last week we heard about the great chivalric adventure holidays the Teutonic knights staged for their wealthy aristocratic guests. These were nominally crusades against the pagan Lithuanians, but their military benefit paled into insignificance compared to the economic impact these free spending tourists had on the order’s state.

These Lithuanian crusades or Preussenreisen did serve however another important purpose, a purpose that was even more crucial for the survival of the order than the economic or military benefit. And that has to do with something that happened, not in Northern europe, not in the empire, but way over on the other side, in Paris in 1307. That event was the suppression of the Knights Templars.

For those very few of you who may not have heard about that, the story goes roughly as follows. King Philipp IV of France was short of money due to the incessant wars with the English, or more precisely with his main vassal who also happened to be the king of England.  Not only was he short of money, he was also heavily in debt to Knights Templars.

What he lacked in money he made up for in ruthlessness. Some of you may remember Episode 92 – The Papal Epilogue. That was the story of the slap of Agnani when soldiers in the pay of Philipp IV allegedly slapped Pope Boniface VIII in the face, and with that simple act brought down the whole edifice of the imperial papacy. Under French pressure the popes moved to Avignon and came under de facto French control.

Philip IV used the fact that he had a pet pope in Clement V to get him to issue an order to all monarchs in europe to apprehend the Templars. The biggest hammer fell in Paris where the grand master of the order had his headquarter. He and his main officers were arrested and put on trial. They were accused of satanic rituals and various forms of blasphemy including kissing a black cat’s anus. Once duly condemned they were burned at the stake and most importantly all their assets were confiscated by the crown.

As you probably know, pretty much any wacko conspiracy theory sooner or later traces their story back to the Knights Templar, their link to the Holy grail, the Cathars, rose crucians and ultimately the CIA, albino monks and god knows what other nonsense.

No worries, I will not talk about that. Instead we will look at the truly interesting question at the heart of this story. And that is why Philip IV got away with destroying an organization that only 50 years earlier had literally been drowning in donations from extremely powerful men all across europe and had been seen as a crucial component in Christendom’s most important political project, the reconquest of Jerusalem.

Part of it was that the Templars had become filthy rich. At their peak they owned 870 estates and castles across europe. Moreover they had become bankers who were best placed to transfer money across their vast network of commanderies. They also lent money to royalty and famously accepted the crown of France as collateral for one such loan. As so often with bankers their willingness to lend to unreliable borrowers is regarded as avarice, rendering them evil in the eyes of many people.

But that alone is unlikely to be enough. The Knights Hospitallers too were extremely rich, as were the Teutonic Knights. And the Hospitallers in particular lent money too, admittedly on a more modest scale.

So here is the question, why did the persecution of the Templars not lead to a persecution of the other two orders?

The answer lies in their original purpose. The chivalric orders were founded mainly to protect the Holy Land. The crusader state in Palestine had fallen in 1291. But that did not spell the end of all the Latin states in the region. Cyprus was still standing and that is where the Hospitallers went. They then conquered the island of Rhodes which they turned into a massive fortress. They even maintained a foothold on the mainland at Halicarnassus, modern day Bodrum in Turkey. That way they re-created themselves as the bulwark of Christendom against the advances of Islam. That new purpose was enough to protect them from persecution.

Now what about our friends, the Teutonic Knights? They too had left the Holy Land, in fact even earlier than the Templars. But they could at least argue that they were engaged in crusading in the North, bringing pagans into the faith.

But that argument was beginning to sound a bit hollow. Once Prussia and Livonia had been conquered and the pagan rebellion were suppressed, there weren’t that many pagans left, except for the Lithuanians.

And there was another problem. One may sometimes get the impression that the medieval theology was monolithic with the pope at the top determining what was right and what was wrong. But that was not at all the case. Even an overbearing figure like Bernhard of Clairvaux had to face stringent opposition from the scholastics at the university of Paris, from Abaelard, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. It was one of them, Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar and all round fascinating individual who took umbrage of Bernhard’s notion that conversion by fire and sword was doing God’s work. And he singled out the Teutonic Knights saying that quote “pagans like the Prussians [..] would become Christians very gladly if the Church would permit them to retain their liberty and enjoy their possessions in peace. But the Christian princes who labor for their conversion, especially the brothers of the Teutonic Order desire to reduce them to slavery” end quote. In 1274 at the Council of Lyon Humbert of Romans, the former general of the Dominican order made the point that quote “the idolators who still live in the northern parts, the Prussians, and those like them may be converted in the same way as their neighbors, the Poles, Danes, Saxons and Bohemians. [meaning by missionary efforts]. In any case [he goes on] they are not in the habit of attacking us, nor can they do much when they attack, ..and so it is quite enough for Christians to defend themselves manfully when they invade.” end quote.

If these arguments were taking hold amongst the members of the Curia, the entire existence of the Teutonic Knights could be in danger.   

Around the time of the suppression of the Templars, these humane voices got support from Livonia itself. Other than in Prussia, in Livonia the bishops, in particular the archbishop of Riga were  powerful, so were the burghers of the great cities, Riga, Dorpat and Reval. These different parties were almost constantly in conflict which occasionally turned into actual fighting. In this struggle the church authorities in Livonia sought support from the pope, after all the direct superior of the order. They accused the Teutonic Knights of all sorts of crimes, waging war against Christians, even the bishop himself, which was true, unwillingness to fight the pagans, burning their dead, killing the wounded and witchcraft, which wasn’t true. But the most damning accusation was that they were hindering the conversion of the pagans by their “savagery, cruelty and tyranny” as the archbishop of Riga wrote.

The Grand Master was summoned to come to the Curia to defend himself and his order. The situation was certainly precarious. But Pope Benedict XI decided that whatever crime the Teutonic Knights may have committed, it was more important to reconcile the parties in order to defend Livonia. So, he replaced the archbishop of Riga and sent a harsh indictment to the order, demanding they sort themselves out.

In response the grand masters ordered a sharp tightening of discipline, moved to Marienburg to be far away from any monarch keen on seizing and burning them, and began constructing a new narrative for the order’s purpose.

Conversion of the pagans was still a major objective. But alongside it stood a new threat to Christendom. These pagans beyond the frontier weren’t peaceful villagers who may be misguided but otherwise harmless. No, they were a terrifying foe who intended to break into the Latin world forcing their faux religion on not just the recently converted Prussians, Estonians, Letts ,Livs and Courlanders, but were intending push all the way west into Poland, the Empire and ultimately Rome itself. These hordes were the Lithuanians, but also the successor states of the Kyivan Rus with their orthodox heresy and behind them their overlords, the Mongol Khans. It was they, the Teutonic Knights who formed the bulwark of the west against this existential threat.

And to make this story stick they needed to make these adversaries sound terrifying. As it happened, that was not that difficult. The Lithuanians had always been a worthy opponent and there was a good reason why the precious crusading tourists never spent too much time in Lithuania itself.

After Mindaugas had united the various Lithuanian tribes, the entity remained coherent, even though Mindaugas himself was murdered in a coup. The incessant warfare with the Teutonic knights  helped the Lithuanians to become an advanced military. They did however not copy the model of the armored knight. Their cavalry tended to be lightly armed which made them more maneuverable in the challenging terrain they inhabited. They took some inspiration from the Mongol horse archers, though they preferred spears to bows and arrows. Their infantry adopted the crossbow from the Latins but they were mostly free men and held in much higher esteem than infantry in the west which was sometimes times ridden down by their own side.  This military prowess left them in good stead to acquire some of the successor states of the former empire of the Kyivan Rus. In 1321 the Grand Prince Gedimas captured Kyiv itself and as his successors kept pushing on, in 1430 the grand principality of Lithuania extended all the way from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

As this went on, defeating and forcibly converting the Lithuanians became an ever more improbable prospect for the Teutonic Knights. And in a perverse way, that was to their benefit. Had they been successful in converting the Lithuanians, they would have lost their raison d’etre. There would not have been any more pagans to convert or to defend Christendom against. They could have directed their forces against the Principalities of Novgorod and Moscow, though these were less impressive at the time, Christian, if orthodox, and given to the Swedes as their special crusading task.

That event, the conversion of the Lithuanians to Christianity did happen, though not thanks to the efforts of the Teutonic Knights. For that story we have to go back again to the beginning of the 14^th century and take a look at the other neighbor of Prussia, Poland.

Before I do that I have to ask my Lithuanian and Polish listeners for forgiveness. I am trying to get all these events right, but as I do not speak either Lithuanian nor Polish, I am reduced to German and English language sources. That means I may not get many of the subtleties and I will end up blanking out quite important events that do not directly affect the story of the Teutonic knights. There are some excellent podcasts that dive a lot deeper into these stories and are done by people much more knowledgeable than myself. I will put links to those in the show notes.

With that caveat, lets take a look at Poland in the 13^th and 14^th century.

Poland has been founded by the Piast dynasty,  Miesco and Boleslaw the Brave in the 10^th century, and in particular under the latter  became a hugely powerful entity that amongst other things defeated the emperor Henry II as we talked about in episode 18. But after that Poland, like so many other medieval kingdoms, went through waves of fragmentation and unification as possessions were split amongst sons who then vied for supremacy. One of the most momentous fragmentations happened after the death of King Bolelsaw Wrymouth in 1138. Wrymouth had five sons, each of whom were given a duchy. These sons in turn split their lands upon their death, creating even more and smaller entities. In principle the dukes of Maropolska (Lesser Poland), based in Krakow were supposed to have some sort of overlordship over the others, though that was rarely of any practical relevance. The fragmentation of Poland left them extremely vulnerable to external threats. Some came from the west, namely from the Margraves of Brandenburg who expanded eastwards and northwards into Pomerania and even took Gdansk in 1271. Another were the Bohemians who targeted Silesia and on occasion took Krakow. Then there were the pagan neighbors, the Prussians and Lithuanians who became increasingly hostile to the point that the duke of Mazovia called in the Teutonic Knights in 1226, a story you are now quite familiar with.

The real shock to the system came when the Mongols invaded in 1241. Though several of the dukes tried to mount some resistance, they were comprehensively defeated at the battle of Legnica/Liegnitz in April 1241. Though the Mongol invasion did not continue into western europe, Poland was not so lucky. They were attacked again in 1259 and 1287, sacking Lublin, Sandomierz, Bytom and even Krakow.

By the end of the 13^th century the various Piast dukes realized that their existing structure was not sustainable. None of them was able to fend off any of these invaders on their own. Calling in the Teutonic Knights had resulted in replacing the hostile but ultimately not life threatening Prussians with the well ordered powerful militarized state of the Teutonic Knights. The defeats of the Pomerelian dukes who had supported the Prussian uprisings brought home to them the relative superiority of the Knight brothers.

What then followed was a protracted process of reunification. It was in part driven by simply military success as ambitious dukes managed to eject the rulers of rival duchies. Then there was a lot of luck involved as several of the dynasties died out and the last of their line took the enlightened decision to pass their lands to the most powerful of the dukes at the time. And one has to assume that to a degree the ruling families decided that they would rather submit to one of their own family than to some foreigner. I will not go through all of them, but it is certainly worth to mention some.

Przemysl II had already achieved some consolidation by bringing together Wielkopolska (Greater Poland around Gniezno) and Pomerelia. He was the first ruler in a while who was crowned king of Poland in 1295. His successor Wladislaw the Short from the line of the dukes of Mazovia was off to a difficult start. The king of Bohemia invaded, took Krakow and threw Wladislaw out. When King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia was crowned King of Poland in Gniezno in 1300, the cause of the Piast dukes seemed to be at its lowest point.

In 1306 Wladislaw the short was back in Krakow. He had become a key beneficiary of a grand papal strategy to bring the kingdoms of central europe, Hungary, Bohemia and Poland under new management. In Hungary the dynasty of the Premislids was replaced by the Anjou, the French dynasty that had already taken the kingdom of Sicily from the Hohenstaufen. The plan was to also replace the king Wenceslaus III in Bohemia and in Poland. The Bohemian project did not work, but with Hungarian help Wladislaus the short was able to throw the Bohemians out of Poland. In 1320 he was solemnly crowned king of Poland in Krakow.

His son, Kazimierz the Great (1333 to 1370) took over. Under his long and successful rule, Poland staged a tremendous recovery. He consolidated all these now almost unnumerable Piast duchies with the exception of Silesia, Pomerania and Pomerelia.

Kazimierz was an able administrator and forward thinking politician. To rebuild his depopulated lands he encouraged the immigration of foreigners, in particular of jews who had faced persecution in the wake of the Black Death. He codified the corpus of the existing laws and granted city rights under Magdeburg law. He launched a building program which, along with the cathedrals of Gniesno and Krakow and churches all across the land gave rise to 65 new fortified towns, the fortification of 27 existing ones and 53 new royal castles . He also rerouted the Vistula at Krakow and constructed a canal linking the salt mines at Wieliczka with the capital. He reformed a fiscal system with a central chancellery allowing the kingdom to raise taxes. He introduced new coinage accepted across the kingdom, dramatically facilitating trade. That trade was also supported by the banking skills of the Jewish immigrants who were given a significant degree of fiscal and legal autonomy which was the beginning of the Jewish culture that thrived for so long in the country.

The country was booming. It also benefitted from a dramatic improvement in agricultural production. In the series about the Hanseatic League we did talk about the Hinterland of Danzig as a source of grain that fed western europe all the way to Spain and even at times Italy. Importing vast amounts of grain became necessary for the major cities across western europe because the changing climate during the Little ice Age that began around 1300 had reduced crops to the point that the land surrounding the cities could no longer feed the populations. Some argue that Poland, Prussia and Lithuania had benefitted from a climate quirk that resulted in a warming of this region whilst the rest of Europe became cooler. I find the evidence for that inconclusive. What is however quite likely is that the import of agricultural techniques from the west, the use of horse-driven ploughs, the three field system etc. led to a material growth in productivity alongside the conversion of forest and fallow land into fields.

Kazimierz also pushed for education. The university of Krakow was founded in 1364, after Prague but before Heidelberg and Vienna.

All this prosperity also translated into increased military capability. Kazimierz did wage war against the traditional enemies of the Piasts, namely the Bohemians over Silesia and did score a major victory in 1345. But his main interest lay to his south-east. The disintegration of the Kyivan Rus had left a number of small principalities that looked extremely attractive. These were nominally under overlordship of the Mongols, but they too were on the retreat. Kazimierz took over the duchy of halicz, which is roughly modern day western Ukraine including Lviv and lands south east from there. The kingdom of Poland under Kazimierz therefore ended up looking very different to today. It was a roughly 450km wide and 900km long stretch from Prussia to Moldova.

Kazimierz died in 1370. Though married four times he had no children. So he gave his kingdom to his nephew, King Louis of Hungary. Louis himself came up to Krakow to be crowned but left the country to be run by Elisabeth, his mother, the sister of Kazimierz.

The Hungarian-Polish alliance lasted until the death of Louis who in turn also had no male heir. His two daughters became Europe’s most desirable heiresses. When Louis died his older daughter Maria who had married Sigismund of Luxemburg was to inherit Poland, whilst the younger one, Hedwig was to marry Wilhem of Habsburg who would then become king of Hungary.

The Polish lords did however not agree to this. They did not want to be tied to the Luxemburgers who ruled Bohemia. So they brought her sister, Hedwig or better known by her polish name, Jadwiga to Krakow and in an act of inspired gender bending crowned her king, not queen, of Poland in 1384. The Habsburg prince she was initially betrothed to and who she liked a lot came to claim her, but the Polish lords locked up, first her and then him. After some toing and froing, the dejected Austrian prince gave up and returned home.

At which point the question was, who Jadwiga should marry, if not the Habsburg. The Poles had come up with a most unexpected idea. Jadwiga was to marry Jogaila, the Grand Prince of Lithuania. From a Polish perspective this made a lot of sense. After the South-east expansion of both Poland and Lithuania, the two realms shared a nearly 900 km long border. Having rejected Sigimund and the Bohemians who stood along the other end of that same border meant they were vulnerable to attack with no-one there to help.

The main problem was that Jagielo was still a pagan. The only way this marriage could go ahead was if Jagielo would get baptized.

As it happened Jagielo was prepared to make that transition. Though the Lithuanians had spent the last 200 plus years defending their religion against the incursions of the Teutonic Knights, they had also expanded far and wide into lands that had already become Christian. Their principality included not just pagans but also orthodox Christians, Latin Christians and Jews. As part of an astute policy of playing one enemy against the other, the Lithuanians had often promised conversions or at least allowed missionaries to come in and proselytize. Hence at the time Jogaila was made the offer of the hand of Jadwiga, Lithuania was no longer fully pagan.

And Poland was an incredibly attractive opportunity. Thanks to Kazimierz success as a ruler, Poland was incredibly rich and cultured as well as militarily capable. All he had to do was to get his head wet and build a cathedral, and all of that was his.

No wonder he went for it. On February 12^th Jogaila arrived in Krakow. Three days later he was baptized, on the 18^th he married Jadwiga and on March 4 he was crowned king of Poland.

This is the beginning of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, at times the largest state in Europe that at its height stretched all the way from the Baltic to the Black Sea and from Krakow almost all the way to Moscow.  

For the Teutonic Knights this was a major calamity. Their territory in Prussia was now surrounded on all sides by one hugely powerful neighbor. And not only that, the Lithuanians were no longer officially pagans bringing down the whole edifice of the Bulwark of Christianity that justified their existence.

And with at least one side, the Lithuanians, the order was already in a state of continued low intensity war.

Relations with Poland weren’t that great either. Initially the Teutonic Knights and the Piast dukes had a good relationship. After all it was the duke of Mazovia who had called them in for help. Many of the crusaders who came to conquer Prussia and suppress the revolts had come from Poland and many Polish settlers had helped cultivating the Prussian lands. Sure there was occasional conflict, in particular with the dukes of Pomerelia, Swentopolk and Mestwin who had played a major role in the Prussian uprisings.

But all in, it was in the Teutonic Knights interest that Poland was supportive as the crusaders had to travel through Polish lands or into Danzig to get to Prussia. At the same time the Polish dukes relied on Teutonic Knight support in keeping their Northern border safe from Lithuanian and Russian attacks.

Things went pear shaped when Mestwin II, the last duke of Pomerelia died in 1294. Mestwin had no heirs and made the king of Poland his heir. That meant the land became part of the conflict between the Bohemian pretenders and Wladislaw the Short. When Wladislaw the short came back from exile in 1306 with Hungarian help he also took Pomerelia with its capital Danzig back under his control. He placed a garrison into Danzig and then moved on to deal with other problems further south. In 1308 the margraves of Brandenburg thought they had an opportunity to take the territory on some of the usual dynastic pretenses. They were successful and occupied almost all of the territory. The Hanse merchants of Danzig opened their gates and the royal presence was now limited to the Danzig castle. The garrison asked Wladislaw the short for help but he could not do much at this point in time. He suggested they ask the Teutonic Knights for help.

In 1308 the grand master Heinrich von Ploetzke took his army to Danzig and drove the Brandenburgers out. He did this in part out of the generally friendly relationship with the king but also in the expectation to get paid 10,000 mark for his services.

The Teutonic Knights in Danzig were waiting for the money to arrive, but somehow the cheque got lost in the post. The citizens of Danzig, most of whom were German speaking traders and artisans did not like their new occupiers very much. They had got used to a much higher level of autonomy than the Knight brothers would allow them. A revolt broke out that was brutally suppressed. How brutal is a big debate, though the claims of 10,000 dead made by later Polish rulers is highly improbable.

The suppression of the revolt did not resolve the problem. King Wladislaw the Short was still not prepared to pay. It wasn’t just the lack of payment that irritated the knights, it was the assumption on the side of the king that he could call upon the Teutonic knights whenever he wanted, as if they were his vassals.

So to make clear what was what the Teutonic Knights decided to stay. They bought the rights to Pomerelia from the margraves of Brandenburg and formed an alliance. With that they now had a direct land bridge into the empire via the duchy of Pomerania and Brandenburg making them less dependent upon the Poles.  

This as it turn out was not just a crime, it was worse, it was a mistake. The disagreement over Pomeralia and the city of Danzig poisoned the relationship between the Poles and the Teutonic Knight that when reading the comments on my Facebook page continues to this day.

It also added to the pressure on the order in Rome and their general reputation. In 1320 and in 1339 the Poles accused the order of unlawfully waging war against Christians. And quite frankly, the facts of the matter were quite clear. Taking a Christian land was not what a chivalric order was meant to do. The order lost both cases and was required to hand back Pomerelia. The grand master refused and was excommunicated. But as it happened pretty much all of the empire was at the time under interdict and the moral suasion of the Avignon popes had nowhere near the weight of an Innocent IV, so nothing much came of it.

Strategically Pomerelia and Danzig in particular were extremely important to Poland. It was their access to the Baltic Sea. Danzig stands at the mouth of the great Polish river, the Vistula where grain wood, salt and metals were shipped to the markets of Flanders, England and Norway.

The loss of Pomerelia pushed the Polish rulers into a closer relationship with the Lithuanians. Poles and Lithuanians realised they had common enemies, the Mongols and the Teutonic Knights. The very beginnings of that alliance lay here in 1326 when Wladislaw’s successor, Kazimierz the great married Aldena a famously beautiful Lithuanian princess.

In response the Teutonic Knights began a PR campaign against king Wladislaw the Short, encouraging both external and internal enemies to topple him. One of them was king John of Bohemia, the famous blind knight whose ostrich feathers and motto still grace the Prince of Wales arms.

War broke out in 1328 when Wladislaw the short attacked Kulm whilst the Teutonic Orders were distracted by a large operation against the Lithuanians. In 1329 the order struck back supported by forces of the king John of Bohemia. Wladislaw the short now allied with the Hungarians and Lithuanians which led to the battle of Plowce in 1331. That battle everyone agreed was unusually fierce even for a period that was used to violence. Technically Wladislaw did win the battle and had 65 knight brothers executed. But when Teutonic Knight reinforcements arrived on the battlefield  the Poles fled back home. Wladislaw died shortly after in 1333 opening the room for negotiations. It took until 1343 before all parties involved, the Knights, the kings of Poland, Hungary and Bohemia and the grand Prince of Lithuania could come to a solution. That solution was a complex structure that maintained the notion that Pomerelia was still part of the Polish Kingdom but that the Teutonic Knights were in charge.

After that things calmed down until the marriage of Jadwiga and Jogaila in 1386. That was a double blow. A catholic Lithuania meant no more crusades and hence no more tourists and even worse no purpose to the organisation. A combined Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth meant it was only a matter of time before they would came for the Teutonic Knights militarily.

The Knights pursued a twofold strategy to counter this threat. One was to claim that the Lithuanian conversion was a scam. Jogaila they said continued to worship his pagan gods and had not suppressed the pagan temples, which is probably true. The other part of the strategy was to exploit internal conflict in Lithuania. Jogaila had a rival for the role of Grand Prince, Vytautas, the son of the previous grand prince who had been murdered by Jogaila. Vytautas had strong following in Lithuania with the order’s support threw out many of Jogaila’s vassals. Jogaila was reduced to his capital Vilnius and surrounding lands. In 1390 the Teutonic Knights supported by Vytautas attacked Vilnius. That was one of the few Rhyse that were actual proper military undertakings. It was also the fight that henry Bolingbroke the future king Henry IV of England took part in. Vilnius held out for five weeks and after  the weather turned the crusaders returned. There were further major operations in the three years that followed but it took until 1398 that both sides were making peace. By this time it was Vytautas, not Jogaila who was in control of Lithuania. Jogaila was king of Poland together with his wife and resided there. When Jadwiga died in 1399 he became the sole ruler of Poland. Jogaila and Vytautas reconciled but given their backstory were believed to mistrust each other profoundly.

The success of the Lithuanian campaign and the split between Vytautas and Jogaila gave the Grand master of the Teutonic Knights, Ulrich von Jungingen the impression that he was in a very strong position. Yes, the crusades as such were over and support from travelling knights could no longer be relied upon, but all in the Knight brothers were a superior force, easily able to take on the Poles and Lithuanians.

This is when we go from mistake to catastrophic mistake.

What ended the 10 years of relative calm was an uprising in Samogitia that the Teutonic Knights blamed on Vytautas. Ulrich von Jungingen demanded that Vytautas and Jogaila immediately ceased any further support to the Samogitians. That demand was seen as deeply insulting by both Poles and Lithuanians. In particular the Poles had come to trust Jogaila over the past 10 years and – contrary to expectations in Prussia – were willing to go to war for him.

Things weren’t improved when the matter was brought before king Wenceslaus of Bohemia who was asked to act as arbiter. Wenceslaus sided fully with the order, adding more fuel to the flames. One -on- one meetings between Jogaila and Jungingen also failed to resolve issues.

War was coming again.

Jogaila gathered his army at Plock, south of Kulm. One estimate said he gathered 18,000 Polish fighters and Vytautas brought him 11,000 men.  These included not just Poles and Lithuanians, but also Bohemian and Moravian mercenaries, tartars, Rus’ians and Moldovans.

Ulrich von Jungingen relied on only about 10,000 cavalry from the order plus some support from the king of Bohemia and the last contingent of crusaders, roughly 15,000 in total.

These numbers are as always inexact. What most estimates have in common though was that the Poles and Lithuanians outnumbered the order’s forces 2 to one. That being said, the order operated as a close unit of men who had trained and fought together for a long time, whilst Jogaila’s forces were a wild mixture who had little coherence, not even in weapons, training, tactics or even language.

This was not a slam dunk.

On July 2, 1410 Jogaila’s forces crossed the Vistula river and began an invasion of Prussia. His army followed along the Drewenz river, burning and plundering as was the habit of medieval armies.

Ulrich von Jungingen who had split his forces across the length of the frontier now brought his men together in pursuit. When they came to the burning ruins of the town of Gilgenberg the grand master lost his cool. The destruction he had witnessed along the way and he feared would be inflicted on his lands if he did not bring this to an end quickly urged him to double the pace and catch up with the Polish-Lithuanian forces.

At a place the Germans call Tannenberg, the Poles Grunwald and the Lithuanians Zalgiris the two armies came together. As you would expect from a confrontation that has mythical status in Polish, Lithuanian and in the past, German consciousness, quite a lot of it is disputed.

What seems to have happened is that the Teutonic Knights went for an all out attack on the position where they assumed Jogaila was standing. This may have been triggered by a feigned retreat or some other misunderstanding. What we know is that the Teutonic Knights, led by the grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen charged at the Polish centre driving a wedge into the Polish-Lithuanian forces. This charge came as far as the royal bodyguard but was held off. Meanwhile forces commanded by Vytautas attacked the knights’ flank. The result was a massacre. The grand master and his chief officers lay dead. His army fled along the narrow paths through the forest and were killed one by one. 8,000 soldiers died that day on either side, which suggests almost half the entire force of the Teutonic Knights had perished. Those who survived sought shelter in whichever castle they could find.

News of the defeat spread through europe and left people aghast. The mighty Teutonic Knights who many of the Europe’s aristocrats had met on their gap year and admired for their military skills had been all but wiped out. How was that possible? And what is going to happen next? Will the order collapse?

That is a story for another time, next week to be precise. I hope you will join us again.

Ah, and by the way, just in case you cannot remember, my Patreon account is at patreon.com/historyofthegermans and for one-time donations, go to historyofthegermans.com/support

Bibliography

Werner Paravicini Die Preußenreisen des europäischen Adels: Die Preußenreisen des europäischen Adels (perspectivia.net)

William Urban: The Teutonic Knights – A Military History

Eric Christiansen: The Nordic Crusades, Penguin Books, 1997

Klaus Militzer: Die Geschichte des deutsche Ordens, 2.Aufl, 2012

Jurgen Sarnowsky: der Deutsche Orden, 2.Aufl, 2012

A History of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia 1190-1331: The Kronike Von Pruzinlant by Nicolaus Von Jeroschin