The rule of the Teutonic Knights is fatally weakened

Last week we ended with the famous battle of Tannenberg or as the Poles would call it Grunwald. This battle is not just famous for its outcome but also for the various accounts of what happened. There is a Polish version there is a Lithuanian version and there’s obviously a German version, actually 2 German versions. Though the one German version that blames the defeat on betrayal by Polish vassals is now debunked. With that exception I find it rarely matters who did what during the battle but what the outcome was and what happened afterwards.

The Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen and all his major officers were dead as well as hundreds of Knights brothers and thousands of secular knights, crusaders, squires and mercenaries. What was also lying there prostrate on the battlefield was the notion of the invincibility off the Teutonic Order. As the Polish and Lithuanian troops pursued what remained of the order’s forces, the Prussian cities and castles opened their gates to the winners.

A complete victory? Well as it happened it would take another nearly 60 years before Poland would regain control of Pomerelia and its capital Gdansk. And even that wasn’t the end of the Teutonic Knights. Despite the devastating defeat, the loss of its purpose, and the fundamentally changed political structure inside their state, the Teutonic order soldiered on, how they managed is what we will explore in this episode.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 135 – After Tannenberg

Last week we ended with the famous battle of Tannenberg or as the Poles would call it Grunwald. This battle is not just famous for its outcome but also for the various accounts of what happened. There is a Polish version there is a Lithuanian version and there’s obviously a German version, actually 2 German versions. Though the one German version that blames the defeat on betrayal by Polish vassals is now debunked. With that exception I find it rarely matters who did what during the battle but what the outcome was and what happened afterwards.

The Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen and all his major officers were dead as well as hundreds of Knights brothers and thousands of secular knights, crusaders, squires and mercenaries. What was also lying there prostrate on the battlefield was the notion of the invincibility off the Teutonic Order. As the Polish and Lithuanian troops pursued what remained of the order’s forces, the Prussian cities and castles opened their gates to the winners.

A complete victory? Well as it happened it would take another nearly 60 years before Poland would regain control of Pomerelia and its capital Gdansk. And even that wasn’t the end of the Teutonic Knights. Despite the devastating defeat, the loss of its purpose, and the fundamentally changed political structure inside their state, the Teutonic order soldiered on, how they managed is what we will explore in this episode.

But before we get into this as you all know by now I will have to do my little spiel about my Patreon account at patreon.com/historyofthegermans and the other option to support the  podcast, making a one time contribution at historyofthegermans.com/support. So not much point in going on about the fact that the history of the Germans and all its offshoots are advertising free but what we all should do is thank our generous patrons James A., Jonas B, Caleb R., Technical Tomb King and Matt H. Aka Biff who have kindly signed up already.

And there is some housekeeping to do. As some of you pointed out, the Polish name of the battle is Grunwald, not Grunberg, I also got Lesser and Greater Poland mixed up and finally some of you suggested I use the name Jogaila rather than Jagiello for the first ruler of the Polish Lithuanian commonwealth. First up, thanks a lot for all these comments. It is great to realise you all care a lot about these things and enough about the podcast to comment. And apologies for these errors. They are now corrected in the audio file as well as I the transcript. I did however not change from Jagiello to Jogaila, mainly because Jagiello and the Jagiellonian dynasty is better known in western Europe than the name Jogaila. And as there are already too many names in this podcast, I try to keep it neat where I can. That being said, Jogaila sounds a lot nicer…

And with that we’re going back to the show.

The victory of Jogaila and Vytautas was so clear and comprehensive they did not feel the need to hurry after what was left of the Teutonic Knights’ army. They rested for three days before setting off for Marienburg, the seat of the Grand Master and the administrative heart of Prussia.

 The journey appeared more like a royal progress then a conquering army. Cities all over Prussia sent delegations offering surrender in exchange for confirmation of their privileges. The four bishops albeit members of the order, accepted vassalage to the Polish crown. Where there were still garrisons of Teutonic Knights they either surrendered or fled.

The state of the Teutonic Order was not just defeated but it was collapsing in on itself. Its leadership had perished and the individual commanders weren’t used to taking the initiative. The defeat was a sign from god that he had lost interest in this chivalric order. Many thought there was no point in going on…

But there was one man who disagreed, Heinrich von Plauen. Nothing in von Plauen’s career to date indicated that he was destined to  step up at the most crucial point in the order’s history. A nobleman from the Vogtland he had come to Prussia 40 years earlier as a crusader. But found himself mightily impressed by the warrior-monk’s lifestyle and took the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Given his social rank and solid performance on the battlefield he was given the command of the large garrison of Schwetz between Kulm and Marienburg. Schwetz was an important post that covered Pomerelia against Polish and Brandenburg raids. But he was not seen as significant enough to join the main army at Tannenberg.

When von Plauen hears about the disaster at Tannenberg, he, unlike his remaining peers, takes action. It was obvious that the Poles would head for Marienburg next. And if they were to take the mighty castle the order would be finished. Therefore the defence of Marienburg was paramount. Von Plauen took his entire garrison, 3,000 men in total, to Marienburg and he got there before the enemy.

At this point von Plauen did not know whether any more senior officers had survived the defeat. Most Teutonic Knight’s commanders were so accustomed to the strict discipline and obedience, that they would now have waited for further instructions or a grand chapter of the order to set a new course. But von Plauen realised there was no time for that.

He issues orders to nearby garrisons to abandon their castles and join him in Marienburg. He writes to the Livonian master, a man far more senior to him quote “send troops as quickly as possible”. And as so often in moments of crisis rank does not matter as much as initiative, and soldiers trickle into Marienburg. They stock the castle with food, drink, canons and ammunition for a siege of 8 to 10 weeks. And, to deprive the besiegers of shelter and food, they burn down the city of Marienburg.

Then he writes to quote “all princes, barons, knights and men at arms and all other loyal Christians , whomever this letter reaches. We brother Heinrich von Plauen, castellan of Schwetz, acting in the place of the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order in Prussia notify you that the king of Poland and duke Vytautas with a great force and Saracen infidels have besieged Marienburg. In this siege truly all the Order’s forces and power are being engaged. Therefore we ask you illustrious and noble lords, to allow your subjects who wish to assist and defend us  for the love of Christ and all of Christendom either for salvation or for money , to come to our aid as quickly as possible so that we can drive them away”. End quote. That stirs the order in Germany into action and new forces are gathering in the Neumark.

Meanwhile the Polish-Lithuanian army continues its leisurely progress to Marienburg. Having seen every single castle along the way surrendering without much, if any resistance, Jogaila and Vytautas have no reason to expect anything different from the great brick fortress on the Nogat river. Hence they did not bring the canon and siege equipment they had initially gathered for the campaign. 

When they arrived, and realised that they were facing stiff resistance, they had only limited options. A frontal assault across the wide moat and up the mighty walls of the largest fortress in the region would have been exceedingly costly to men and material. And we should not forget that the Polish Lithuanian army too had suffered severe losses at Tannenberg. That left a prolonged siege as the only option.

The Polish Lithuanian army was large enough to completely surround the castle, but its weakness was supplies. They did raid the countryside around Marienburg, but the garrisons of the surrounding castles had raided their stores before leaving to support von Plauen. The town of Marienburg was no more and we are heading into the cold autumn. Dysentery breaks out in the besiegers camp which convinces the Lithuanians under Vytautas that this is a hopeless enterprise and so they head home. Jogaila keeps going despite the ever more precarious situation and he even rejects initial offers of a truce.

What forces his hand in the end is the approach of relief forces from Livonia and from the empire. The Livonian master and the German princes have heeded the call of Heinrich von Plauen and have come to rescue the Teutonic Order.

Once again a medieval fortress with a small, but determined garrison has proven impossible to take, unless the besieger can sustain a prolonged and hugely expensive siege.

After 8 weeks of siege Jogaila gives the order to strike camp and his army returns to Poland. They place large garrisons in some of the castles they had taken after Tannenberg and even erected a new fortification at Stuhm.

Once Jogaila is gone von Plauen begins the arduous work of recapturing all the cities and castles that had been lost. Again, nobody is too keen to fight and within a month all of Prussia is back in the hands of the Teutonic Knights.

Von Plauen who had meanwhile formally been elected as the new Grand Master,  uses the recently arrived troops to stage a revenge campaign into Poland and Lithuania which, apart from some serious devastation of the land, does not achieve much.

The following year the two sides sign a peace agreement, the first peace of Thorn. The conditions were extremely benign for the Teutonic Knights. They maintain pretty much the status quo from before the war, in particular they retain Pomerelia and Danzig. The order also agrees to pay 100,000 Bohemian Groschen in compensation to the Poles and Lithuanians.

That is an outcome not many would have bet on in the aftermath of the battle of Tannenberg. On the face of it, the Teutonic Order is back to where it was before. The Poles and Lithuianians despite their huge effort have not been able to achieve any of their main objectives, in particular they did not regain Pomerelia.

But still, there were material consequences of the battle of Tannenberg. For one, the Teutonic Knights were no longer the invincible military force they had appeared to be for so long. Sure, there had been setbacks and lost battles before. But like the roman legions, every time such a defeat occurred, the knights had dusted themselves off, rebuilt their forces and regained their prestige.

This time, that is not going to happen. And the reason is, as ever so often in these premodern states, money.

Up until 1411 the Teutonic state wasn’t as much a state but an estate. Large parts of the land was owned directly by the order or was paying rent or dues to the order. The orders’ treasurers were extremely adept in generating large export incomes from shipping their excess agricultural production to Flanders, England, Norway or wherever the highest prices could be achieved.

And on top of that there were the huge incomes from the crusading tourists who made a material contribution to the economy of the land.

These incomes had been enough to fund all the military and secular needs of the Teutonic Order, including the construction and maintenance of its enormous castles. And these riches allowed the order to maintain a special relationship with its main trading cities, in particular Danzig, Elbing and Thorn. The cities were relieved from paying significant taxes, but in exchange did not have as much autonomy as other Hanseatic cities enjoyed.

The other constituency that was kept sweet by not taxing them was the gentry. As I said before, the Teutonic Knights tried to avoid the emergence of a class of aristocratic knights with their own castles. But as time went by, they could not completely prevent the emergence of secular knights. Successful free farmers could over generations build up major landholdings that allowed them to build manors and equip their sons with knightly gear. The same goes for prosperous merchants eying up the social status of noblemen. Then there was the original gentry in the lands the order had taken over from Christian rulers, i.e., in Pomerelia, the Kulmerland, Livonia and the Neumark.

In 1411 the land of Prussia is devastated and so are the estates of the order. The treasure chest is empty as Heinrich von Plauen had to pay all these mercenaries he had asked to come in from Germany and Bohemia to relieve Marienburg. And on top of that there were the 100,000 groschen they had promised Jogaila. Ah, and let us not forget, now that the Lithuanians are no longer pagans and both Jogaila and Vytautas have got in the habit of kneeling before every cross along their routes, the crusading gap years, the Rhysen have comprehensively stopped.

Heinrich von Plauen needs money, and lots of it. So, for the first time, the order institutes general taxes to be paid by everyone. This finds strong resistance in particular in the big cities. When Thorn refuses, the grand master replaces several city councillors. Danzig is even more reluctant. The city relents only after the commander of Danzig castle apprehends two of the Burgermeisters and ultimately kills them.

Having learned from the challenging first attempt to raise taxes, Heinrich von Plauen uses a more cooperative tack the next time, which was already in 1413. He gives the Landrat, the Prussian parliament that had been in existence for a long time already some more teeth. The cities and some of the nobility are invited to discuss the state of affairs and to vote on the next round of taxes. This system has a similar outcome as in 1411, taxes are raised, but with a lot less strife and spilling of blood. And once he has established the Landraete as an institution, the cat is out of the bag. From now on the other forces in Prussia, the cities and the nobility will demand more and more rights. The days when Prussia wasn’t a state that had an army, but an army that had a state were numbered. I know that this quote relates to Prussia under Frederick the great, but I find it fits even better to the theocratic state the Knights brothers had established in Prussia.

The reason that Heinrich von Plauen needed money again in 1413 was that he wanted to go after Poland again. Even though the peace of Thorn had restored the territorial integrity of Teutonic Prussia, the defeat at Tannenberg was still not reversed. If they wanted to really get back to the world pre 1410, they needed a comprehensive victory over Poland -Lithuania.

As it happened, neither the German princes nor his own brothers agreed with this strategy. In October 1413 Heinrich von Plauen was deposed as Grand Master and put in jail in Danzig castle, together with his brother who had killed the burgermeisters. He would remain there for 16 years. He was rehabilitated in 1429 and made bailiff of a small estate where he lived out his remaining years.

The man the brothers chose to pursue a more conciliatory policy vis-a-vs Poland was marshall Michael Kuchmeister. The new grand Master did however not fulfil the expectations his allies had placed in him. Despite his efforts, he could not prevent military confrontations with Poland Lithuania. These were relatively low key events where the neighbours came into Prussia in 1414, 1416 and 1419, mainly just devastating the open countryside whilst being unable to take any of the major cities or larger castles.

These conflicts ended not with peace agreements but with just temporary truces. The emperor Sigismund who was interested in a closer relationship with Poland invited both parties to come to the council of Constance for peace negotiation. The Council of Constance that lasted 1414 to 1418, was one of the great gatherings of the Catholic Church brought together to find ways to end the papal schism that had split the church between Rome and Avignon since 1387.

The emperor hoped that a negotiated solution could be found, but had not counted on a leading Polish scholastic, Paulus Vladimir. Vladimir was a professor at the recently founded university of Krakow and by all accounts the intellectual superior of the Teutonic Knights’ delegation. He hit the brothers on their Achilles heel, their purpose as a chivalric order. Some were well known arguments such as the question what their purpose in Prussia was now that Lithuania had been converted? Would it not be much more in line with their statutes to move to the Balkans and help fending off the oncoming wave of the Ottomans, protecting Constantinople and Belgrade? But he also stated that true conversion required free will. A forced conversion was therefore invalid. Moreover, even pagans he asserted had some natural rights that the brutal acts of the order had violated.

 The Teutonic Knights responded with the usual accusations, that the Lithuanians weren’t true Christians and that hence they were still needed. But that sounded increasingly hollow. The only reason the order could avoid condemnation by the council, after all the highest conceivable church authority, was that the emperor Sigismund and the German princes weren’t yet prepared to drop the order.

Fighting continued at a low level throughout this period which left the country devastated and the order’s coffers depleted. The 15^th century sees the end of the knight as the most effective military unit. Cannon are now  commonplace as are professional mercenaries. The system of the condottiere, the armies for hire is gaining traction. And with that the military function of the Teutonic Knights themselves is diminishing rapidly. To fight a war it is no longer sufficient to call up the different Komtureis and gather at a convenient location. Now mercenaries need to be hired, and since the best are coming from the German lands or Bohemia, the grand master will have to pay not just for the time they are actually fighting but also for the journey. And as everyone knows who ever had a plumber come to the house, the call-out charge is almost as much as the cost of the actual work.

The economics of war are reversed. When previously German and Bohemian knights came up to reinforce the order, they did that on their own cost and even paid for all their equipment, accommodation and supplies, now all of that had to be paid for:the Grand Masters account.

That meant demands for money kept going up and up, whilst income from the land kept going down.

Kuchmeister needed to call the Landraete again and again and beg for money, which they granted him, but only in exchange for more independence and rights to participate in the major decisions.

In 1422 Kuchmeister had enough and retired. Hs successor is Paul von Rusdorf. He inherits all the existing conflicts but then adds a few more. Like other grand masters before him he places members of his family and people he knows from back home into crucial positions. This used to be tolerated when the grand Masters presided over a thriving community and state. But that is no longer the case. Those outside the inner circle are increasingly frustrated. Disciplinary issues appear and general discontent with the leadership is rife. Rusdorf therefore limited his circle of advisors to an ever closer group, the inner council, which – guess what – irritated the others even more. These internal conflicts together with the increasingly apparent weakness of the order became serious problem in recruitment. The order was dependent on a regular flow of young men willing to join and accept a pretty harsh lifestyle of poverty, chastity and obedience.  To convince someone to make that move required the order to remain an attractive place to be, and by 1440 it wasn’t that any more.

Politically Rusdorf tried to bring the war with Poland to an end and signed the peace of Melnoose in 1422 in which the order handed back several fortresses on the Lithuanian border and gave up the claims to Samigatia whilst it handed Kujava and Nessau to the Poles.

But that did not last long. Rusdorf got himself sucked into the politics of emperor Sigismund and restarted the war with Lithuania which prompted the Poles to ally with the Hussites in Bohemia who devastated Pomerelia all the way up to Danzig. After that debacle Rusdorf had to sign the peace of Brest which forced the order to return the gains in Lithuania bringing everything back to the level of 1422 only with Prussia even poorer and even more devastated.

For the cities and the civilian population in the countryside, i.e., the major landowners, this was the moment where they could no longer see any point in the Teutonic Knights. Before 1410 the order had guaranteed safety and security as well as low taxation and all it wanted in return was obedience. But now it was no longer safe or secure, taxes were sky high and the grand master still insisted on obedience.

In 1440, the large cities and the gentry of the Kulmer Land formed the Prussian League which was explicitly designed to protect its members against the tyranny of the order. The Prussian League insisted on a constitutional reform that would give the Landraete additional powers, in particular on taxation and foreign policy.

As Rusdorf contemplated giving in on these demands, he found himself in another conflict. The two other main branches of the order, the Livonians and the Germans were increasingly frustrated with their Prussian brethren. The constant demands for money and materials were wearing and clearly did not result in any discernible success. So they chose the subject of the grating of rights to the Landraete as a decision that was incompatible with the statutes of the order.

Rusdorf could not balance these two pressures in any other way than by granting the Livonian Master and the German Master even more autonomy, to the point that these branches could choose their own officers and pursue their own policies almost completely independent from the Grand Master.

Again that happened in 1441, the same year the internal conflict between Rusdorf’s friends and family and the rest of the order was about to turn into outright hostilities.

To avoid a civil war Paul von Rusdorf too resigned, probably already very ill, broken by external and internal conflicts that only grew worse during his 13 years at the helm.

His successor was Konrad von Erlichshausen who will make one more attempt to right the ship. Whether he will be successful is something we will discuss next week. I hope you will join us again.

And if you do, remember that you can support the podcast either by becoming a patron on Patreon.com/historyofthegermans or by making a one-time donation at 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