The LEague of Prussian cities and Nobles Rejects the rule of the Teutonic Knights

The theocratic state of the Teutonic Knights had survived the devastating defeat at Tannenberg with most of its territory intact. But underneath the foundations of the edifice are crumbling. The economy is in tatters, the theological justification for their existence has disappeared and their power as a military force has failed to keep up with the changing times. The order needs a new business model for absence of a suitable term. How well or badly it did in this attempt is what we will be looking at in this episode.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 136 – 13 Years of War

The theocratic state of the Teutonic Knights had survived the devastating defeat at Tannenberg with most of its territory intact. But underneath the foundations of the edifice are crumbling. The economy is in tatters, the theological justification for their existence has disappeared and their power as a military force has failed to keep up with the changing times. The order needs a new business model for absence of a suitable term. How well or badly it did in this attempt is what we will be looking at in this episode.

But before we start the usual plea for support. As you know the History of the Germans and all its offshoots have remained resolutely advertising free despite some rather flattering offers. I do not know how much time you spent following news about the podcasting industry, but if you do, you would notice that something rather unpleasant is afoot. It is not only that some major listening platforms like Stitcher and Google podcasts have or will soon be shut down, but several production firms and with it some well known shows have closed shop. In part these firms were overly optimistic about the economics of the medium, but a big part is this overstuffing of the advertising channel. Shows sold more and more advertising space that compelled listeners to skip the clips so that advertisers reduced pay per views, which in turn forced podcasters to put even more slots into their shows. That puts off listeners and the economics deteriorate even more until the show has to shut down. That is a fate I would very much like to avoid. As someone posted on twitter, there are still 7,000 episodes to go before we reach 1991. And if we want to get there, the show needs patrons who make a contribution either on patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on historyofthegermans.com/support. And thanks a lot to Johann O., Lorie, Alessandro, Gary A. and Verity C. who have already signed up.

Last week we ended on the death of Paul von Rusdorf who had been grand master from 1422 to 1441. During his rule the situation had gone from bad to worse. The order had suffered two major defeats in 1422 and 1435 and was forced to recognize Lithuanian sovereignty over Samogitia and hand over a number of border fortresses. The wars had devastated the land and thereby further reduced the income of the order. In general the economic situation was difficult and became worse as time went by.

One great income stream had completely disappeared by 1413, and that were the Reisen, the adventure trips where members of Europe’s aristocracy could come up to Prussia and play at crusading.

And finally Poland Lithuania had expanded into what is today Ukraine. Then as now these lands were extraordinarily fertile, producing in particular grain that could now be exported more easily down the Vistula to Danzig and from there to the densely populated cities in England and Flanders. This competition pushed down prices for the grain produced on the estates of the order.

When Konrad von Erlichshausen took over as grand master in 1441, he was focused on stabilizing the situation. The first and paramount order of the day was to keep the peace and rebuild financial firepower. In the age of mercenary armies, money was what counted.

Konrad avoided war with Poland throughout his tenure. That was made easier by the fact that royal power in Poland was severely constrained by the Sejm, the council of nobleman and bishops. This forerunner of the Polish parliament had been created as far back as 1180 and had gained strength throughout the time of Polish fragmentation. Under the new king, Casimir IV it had control over taxation and hence was able to curtail the ability of the king to wage war. As it happened the Sejm was not too excited about the idea of war against the Teutonic order, mainly because a victory in Prussia would only strengthen the authority of the king at the expense of the nobles. Hence even though Casimir saw the weakness of the order and his realm had the resources to take Prussia any time, the political situation prevented him from doing anything about that, at least for now.

The other problem Konrad dealt with more successfully were the internal tensions inside the order that had been created by his predecessor’s nepotism.  Paul von Rusfeld had placed relatives and friends from back home into key positions in the order. Many of the Knights brothers had become disaffected and were at the edge of revolt. Konrad von Erlichhausen fired many of the old officers and considered the precarious balance between the various factions in his own appointments. He also tightened discipline in the various convents of the order which had become lax, as it did in all religious orders. The rule of St. Benedict, even in its altered version as it applied to the members of the Teutonic order was very hard to comply with. Waking up every 3 hours for prayer or exercise is not a sustainable way to live, and that is before the vows of obedience, poverty and chastity.

With the issues of Polish hostility and internal division if not resolved but largely mitigated, the other and most complex issue became the focus of the grand master’s politics, the Prussian League.

The Prussian league was founded in 1440. It brought the great trading cities such as Danzig, Elbing and Thorn together with the secular nobility in Prussia. Its purpose was to reign in the power of the order. To understand the reason why they formed the league, we have to take a closer look at its members.

One part of the Prussian League were the local aristocracy. There were broadly three groups. One were Polish knights who had lived in the Culmer Land or in Pomerelia since before the conquest by the Teutonic Knight and had become its vassals. Then there are the former leaders of the Prussian tribes who had been made noblemen as part of the various peace settlements during the conquest. And finally there are German-speaking immigrants who have been successful, either as merchants or as farmers and had amassed enough land and property to fund the knightly lifestyle.

But the financially most significant members were the cities, many of which were members of the Hanse. Like most Hanse cities they were ruled by a patrician class of successful merchants. These men usually spoke low German and had commercial and family ties across the Hanse network. I did a whole series about the Hanseatic League, so I will not repeat all of it here. But the way the Hanse operated was as a network of merchants who facilitated trade based on effectively just trust, trust that their commercial partners would honor their obligations and that they would provide them with reliable information about what was going on in the various markets they operated in. The political system was simply an extension of this commercial network. The most successful merchants were members of the city council and steered city policy in the commercial interest of its merchants. And at the level of the Hanse, the various cities again operated on a basis of mutual trust and a common interest in expanding their trading operations.

Both cities and aristocrats felt that the rule of the Teutonic Knights had become cruel and overbearing. In 1453, the Prussian League wrote up a list of 66 specific complaints against the order and sent it to the emperor Frederick III.

Many of these relate to arbitrary decision making by the order and his officers. They quote cases where members of the orders simply took away property, assumed ownership of land, charged new taxes, devalued coins, took away goods stranded following a disaster at sea, closed the city mills and so forth.

Justice they claim was no longer possible to obtain since the grand master refused to hold an annual public court day where important legal cases could be discussed and adjudicated. Instead decisions were taken behind closed doors and were arbitrary.

Beyond the breaking of the law, they also accused individual members of the order of brutality and even murder. One we already know about, the murder of the Danzig Burgermeisters in 1411, but they also mention violence against common people. A man called Rabensteiner had tortured and robbed a man who had dared criticizing his conduct. There is the Komtur of Thorn, Wilhelm vom Steine who is accused to have drowned some honorable citizens so that he could have his way with their wives

The order’s discipline had broken down, in particular the warrior monks had taken leave of the vow of chastity, it was was split and had lost its way as a spiritual organization.

These are quite common complaints you can find about most late medieval rulers. What gave it its specific flavor were the complaints of the cities against the order’s interference in their affairs. The cases they quote here and many times before and after are the replacement of the city councilors in Thorn and the execution of the Burgomeisters of Danzig, both events having happened way back in 1411. Though they happened long ago, they remained a source of concern. Interference by the city overlord, in particular the replacement of city councilors was a major problem for two reasons.

One was that the position as councilor had direct financial benefits for the incumbent. His standing made him a more sought after partner for other merchants within the Hanse network, effectively bringing business his way. As councillor he also had better information about what was going on in the various markets he was operating in, such as where a king was imposing new taxes, where the pirates are operating etc.  

The second point is that the Hanse cities had to balance their responsibility towards the other Hanse cities with their obligations to the city overlord. That was a difficult tightrope to walk even in the good times before 1410. After 1410 the pressure from the order forced the cities, in particular the city of Danzig to decide between the two. And given the Hanse provided opportunities to get rich whilst the Teutonic Order offered only blood sweat and tears, it wasn’t difficult to figure out where they were leaning to.

What became the bone of contention was the Pfundzoll, an excise duty on the weight carried by every ship entering or leaving the harbor. This specific duty was originally created by the Hanse as a way to fund military actions agreed by the Hansetag diet. When the Grand Master demanded the Pfundzoll for himself, the cities were pushed into a corner. They had to decide where the proceeds were to go, funding the Hanse wars and embargoes or to the wars of the Teutonic Order. What made it even more difficult was that the Pfundzoll was levied not just on Danzig merchants but on anyone going in or out of Danzig harbor, including fellow Hanse merchants from other cities.

All these are good reasons to be upset and whilst Konrad von Erlichshausen had tried to rein in on some of these excesses he could not remedy all complaints. Parts of this conflict was structural.

Before 1410 the Knights could allow the cities and the local nobility to live pretty much as they pleased. The order had enough income streams to cover its operations and thanks to the crusaders, had a huge supply of free military support. Now the revenues are down and, as knights on horseback were replaced by cannon and mercenaries, the cost of warfare had gone up dramatically.

Like most political entities in europe in the 15^th century, the Knights were looking for a new way to run things that made their rule sustainable. We have come to the end of the middle ages and the beginning of the early modern period. The political structures are shifting from the old self-funded model of rule built on personal relationships, vows of allegiance and inheritable positions to tax-funded territorial states run by a paid bureaucracy that decides on the basis of written laws rather than personal affiliation.

The Knights Brothers were members of a chivalric order steeped in the logic and traditions of the crusades. It is hard to be more medieval than these guys. So I doubt they had sat down at any point and decided they wanted to transition to an absolutist state. But what they realized was that they were in precipitous decline and something fundamental needed to happen. They needed to be able to raise money from all their subjects, including merchants and noblemen. And for that to happen, all these special privileges the Prussian League insisted upon needed to go.

Konrad von Erlichshausen was not the man to push this to its ultimate conclusion. When he died in 1449 his conciliatory approach left behind a better managed and more financially sound Prussia, but it was still a long way from being sustainable. His successor was his brother Ludwig von Erlichshausen

Ludwig was ready to take the next step and face down the Prussian League. He was not alone in this ambition. Many of the senior officers of the order wanted a resolution. The Prussian League’s demands to remove taxes had become more and more persistent. At some point they even demanded that the lawyers the order retained as advisors would leave the room during negotiations, something even modern negotiators would regard as an outrage.

As the order insisted on taxes and tariffs to be paid and the League claimed freedoms and privileges, the situation gradually developed into a crisis. This crisis even concerned the pope in Rome who was trying to put together a grand coalition of central European powers to fight back the Ottoman Turks. Remember, we are just three years from the fall of Constantinople. He sent a papal legate to mediate but without success.

Erlichshausen tried to solve the issue by legal means. He put a petition to the emperor and the pope demanding they order the dissolution of the Prussian League. He argued that Prussia had been given to the order by the pope and the emperor and his lawyers produce copies of the golden bull of Rimini and the letter from pope Gregory IX in 1234.  Therefore the mere existence of the Prussian League was an affront against the divine order.

The league responded by issuing the list of complaints I have mentioned before. It was a question between formal legality and actual justice. And unsurprisingly, emperor Frederick III came down on the side of formal legality. In 1454 he declared the Prussian League illegal.

For some reason Grand Master Erlichshausen believed that the cities and nobles of Prussia would simply accept an imperial or papal ruling. That was obviously totally naïve. Neither the cities nor the nobles could tolerate unconstrained rule by the Teutonic Order, divinely ordained or not. 

The league had been under no illusion what the outcome of such arbitration would be and had prepared for war as soon as the summons had arrived. Once the imperial order to dissolve was issued, they reacted without hesitation, making a move, unprecedented in pre-modern times. They sent a letter of secession to the grand master, declaring they were no longer his subjects. Instead they informed him that they had taken an oath as vassals of the king of Poland, whose ancient rights to Pomerelia they acknowledged.

I am in no position to check this claim, but I understand that this is the first time in European history that a particular region or group decides they want to leave a political entity and move to another one.

The letter of secession took Erlichshausen by surprise. He was expecting some resistance, but not instantly and not on this scale or in this form. His preparations for war, if there had been any, weren’t far advanced. So he could only look on as the burghers of the cities stormed the castles of the Teutonic Knights in Danzig, Thorn and Elbing and took the buildings down brick by brick, until nothing was left, well except for the Dantzker of Thorn, the toilet tower of this once mighty fortress.

The letter of secession had been sent on March 6, 1454. Throughout the summer the rebels took most of Pomerelia except for the largest fortresses of the order, in particular Marienburg. Shaken out of his shock, the grand master recruited troops all across Bohemia and Germany as fast as he could using whatever money he could get his hands on, including pawning land.

The rebels focused their efforts in two places. One was Marienburg they besieged from late march onwards, the other was Konitz. Konitz lies south of Marienburg and was the point where the mercenaries were most likely to enter Prussia.

King Kasimir of Poland was clearly pleased about this sudden influx of loyal subjects and joined the effort with his own levies in September. He took his troops to that strategically important city of Konitz. The city was defended by another of the von Plauen family that had played such an important role in the immediate aftermath of Tannenberg. He commanded a smallish garrison of about 200 Knight brothers, waiting for the mercenary reinforcements.

Kasimir had brought 12,000 cavalry and 6,000 infantry which should be enough to take the town. The king knew that an army of mercenaries, slightly smaller than the Polish contingent was on its way to Konitz. But he was convinced his army could push them back should they show up.

Well, the Bohemian mercenaries did show up the next day. Casimir ordered his army to immediately attack the enemy who should be exhausted from marching for days. It nevertheless took a long time for the Poles to get into position, enough time for the Bohemian mercenaries to turn their carts into a wagenburg, a technique that they had perfected in the long Hussite wars in Bohemia. King Casimir’s attack finally got under way late in the afternoon and scored some initial successes, capturing the enemy commanders. But they could not break the circle of wagons. And then the garrison in Konitz, just 200 knights with their retinue made an unexpected sortie attacking the back of the Polish army. This and the fading light caused utter confusion in the Polish ranks, the mercenaries counterattacked and the Poles fled in panic. King Kasimir escaped only by a whisker.

The war that then follows is often described in nationalistic terms, a fight between the Poles to regain their ancient territory from the cruel and murderous Germans. That is however not quite what happened. Few of the members of the Prussian league were Poles, namely just the aristocrats from Culm and Pomerellia. As for the kingdom of Poland, after the disaster of Konitz their support for the effort became haphazard. The Sejm remained unwilling to fund large mercenary operations and the levies were often unwilling to heed the king’s call, arrived late, under strength and/or were ineffective. The burden of the war effort fell on the cities, mainly on Danzig, which was ruled by patrician merchants who spoke low German and were fully culturally integrated into the Hanse network.

Konitz may have largely kicked the Poles out of the conflict, but it did not decide it. This was after all a civil war within Prussia. Neither side could give in. For the cities submitting to the Teutonic Knights would mean that city rights and privileges would be rescinded, they would be subjected to taxation and could in the worst case lose full membership in the Hanseatic league. For the Teutonic Knights, ending the war at this point would mean losing the by far richest part of their territory, a truly bitter pill to swallow.

Militarily, the war was at a stalemate. After their initial effort at Konitz the Teutonic Knights were unable to raise a large enough mercenary army to break places like Thorn or Elbing, let alone the huge city of Danzig. Likewise the Prussian League was unable to drive the order out of its great castles, in particular their new headquarters at Koenigsberg.

The war continued without any major battles, decisive or otherwise. Either side would gather the funds to hire some mercenaries who would burn and pillage the opponents lands until such time the defenders had gathered sufficient forces to kick them out. And there is a thing about mercenaries. They are entrepreneurs and they know when to take risks and when to get out of the way. Hence as soon as the enemy forces are gathered, the initial attackers disappear back to where they have come from. The initial defenders now have a mercenary force they have already paid for, so they need to make use of them. Which means this force now invades the other side, rapes and pillages there, until they in turn have reassembled a force. And this game goes back and forth for a dissolute, miserable 13 years. Either side watched helplessly from the ramparts as their lands burned. The councils of the big cities had to levy taxes far higher than any grand master would have ever dared to ask for which brought the lower classes out in revolt. More people died.

Money was the perennial problem, and it was a bigger problem for the order than for the league. Assets outside Prussia like the Neumark were pawned or sold. In 1257 Erlichshausen was so short of cash he gave one of the mercenary troops the great castle of Marienburg as collateral for payment. When he failed to pay them in full, they got the right to sell it to the highest bidder. And that bidder was, guess what, the city of Danzig. Not that it was easy. Danzig had to borrow, beg and steal to raise the funds, but it turned into an investment that was worth every penny. Formally the bid came from king Kasimir, but in exchange for the money Danzig gave him to buy the Marienburg, the city was given a status not dissimilar of that of a free imperial city. They were given the right to choose their city council as they wished, the Pfundzoll was abolished, the king promised that all positions in the lands conquered from the order would be filled with local people, rather than Poles or Lithuanians and that all decisions. Moreover, with the impregnable castle on the Nogat the league now controlled the whole of the Vistula river and the trade that came up to the Baltic.

Grand Master Erlichshausen was again surprised by the resourcefulness of the Prussian League. He had not thought it possible that the money could be found and hence had not left the Marienburg. The mercenaries apprehended him upon receipt of the cash and the Poles imprisoned him at Konitz.

Even though Erlichhausen escaped from prison shortly afterwards, the fortunes of the Teutonic orders kept falling. The bishop of Ermland who had supported the order in this struggle died and his see was given to Silvio Aeneas Piccolomini, the great humanist and future pope Pius II. Piccolomini wanted a lever to force an end to the war so that Poles and the Order could be directed against the Ottoman Turks. Though this strategy ultimately failed, Piccolomini stuck to his neutral position which meant the order still lost the resources of Ermland. They tried to bribe him and were genuinely surprised when the Italian prelate refused, what had the world come to when you can no longer grease the palm of a churchman.

Still the war still kept going. Both side called in Mercenaries but more often than not, they could not pay them. So these armed men raided the land on their own account, spreading even more misery. In many way this foreshadowed the 30-years war.

In 1462 the Teutonic order made a last ditch effort to hire a force they believed large enough to defeat the now also much diminished forces of the League. When the two small armies got together, the league prove to be marginally more effective and won the battle. In 1463 the order’s navy was destroyed.

By 1464 Erlichshausen recognized that he had lost and was ready to negotiate.  The war was over. The order had to accept the status quo. They had to hand over not just Pomerellia but also western Prussia, including giving up claims to Marienburg, Elbling, Christburg and many other places they had founded. The bishop of Ermland became a Polish vassal.  And to top up the humiliation, Erlichhausen had to swear allegiance to the Polish crown. The conditions were so severe the negotiations lasted all the way until 1466 and involved the pope and the Hanseatic League as mediators.

After the war the old Prussian state was divided into the rich part, Royal Prussia with its main center in Danzig and the poor cousin, the order’s Prussia with its capital in the smallish city of Koenigsberg. Erlichshausen survived the peace of Thorn by one year. His successors were left with the smoldering ruins of what was once an incredibly powerful theocratic state. Only radical action could get them to a sustainable position. What this action was we will find out next week. I hope I will see you again.

And until then, please consider supporting the show, either by becoming a patron at patreaon.com/historyofthegermans or by making a one-time contribution 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