crusades

by on

Alexander Nevsky, Sergei Eisenstein and what really happened

This week we look at the activities of the Teutonic order in Livonia during the 13th century. The situation in Livonia was profoundly different to Prussia and posed a number of new challenges for the brothers. In Livonia there were the powerful bishops of Riga to contend with who had led the crusade there since its inception in the 1180s. The Hanse merchants who have settled in Riga, Reval and Dorpat are no pushovers. Like in Prussia, the Lithuanians are a formidable force able to inflict painful defeats on the brothers as are some of the Baltic peoples who didn’t enjoy conversion at swordpoint as much as the planners back in Bremen, Marburg and Acre had hoped. And let’s not forget some new neighbors, the Danes in Northern Estonia and the great republic of Novgorod.

In 1240 a great effort gets under way to forcibly convert the orthodox Rus’ian states, including Novgorod that are already under pressure from the Mongols. In their distress the boyars of Novgorod make the second son of the grand duke of Vladimir becomes their military leader, a man we know as Alexander Nevsky. On April 5, 1242 Alexander Nevsky and his men stand on the shore of Lake Peipus staring at a squadron of heavily armored cavalry thundering across the ice towards them… Whilst the riders almost certainly weren’t accompanied by Prokofief’s amazing soundtrack, they may have brought an organ, but that, like everything else about the Battle on the Ice is subject to intense debate, a debate we will examine in this episode.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans Episode 132 – The Battle on the Ice – part of Season 7 “The Teutonic Knights”

First up, a happy new year to all of you. 2023 was a great time here on the History of the Germans. I learned an awful lot about the colonization of the east, the Hanse and now the Teutonic Knights and I hope you enjoyed coming along for the journey. The plan for 2024 is to obviously complete the Teutonic Knights and then revert to the broad chronological story, i.e. resume where we left off last January with the death of emperor Frederick II. We will go through the Interregnum, king Rudolf of Habsburg and then spend some time with one of the most glamorous and – outside Czechia sadly largely forgotten emperors, the Luxemburgers, Henry VII, the blind king John of Bohemia, Charles IV and Sigismund to name a few. I have given up making predictions about how long that will take, given how wrong I usually am.

One prediction I can make though is that this week we look at the activities of the Teutonic order in Livonia during the 13th century. The situation in Livonia was profoundly different to Prussia and posed a number of new challenges for the brothers. In Livonia there were the powerful bishops of Riga to contend with who had led the crusade there since its inception in the 1180s. The Hanse merchants who have settled in Riga, Reval and Dorpat are no pushovers. Like in Prussia, the Lithuanians are a formidable force able to inflict painful defeats on the brothers as are some of the Baltic peoples who didn’t enjoy conversion at swordpoint as much as the planners back in Bremen, Marburg and Acre had hoped. And let’s not forget some new neighbors, the Danes in Northern Estonia and the great republic of Novgorod.

In 1240 a great effort gets under way to forcibly convert the orthodox Rus’ian states, including Novgorod that are already under pressure from the Mongols. In their distress the boyars of Novgorod make the second son of the grand duke of Vladimir becomes their military leader, a man we know as Alexander Nevsky. On April 5, 1242 Alexander Nevsky and his men stand on the shore of Lake Peipus staring at a squadron of heavily armored cavalry thundering across the ice towards them… Whilst the riders almost certainly weren’t accompanied by Prokofief’s amazing soundtrack, they may have brought an organ, but that, like everything else about the Battle on the Ice is subject to intense debate, a debate we will examine in this episode.

But before we start just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com/support. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to Adrian V., Brett-Wayne C., Ferando M., and Austin H. who have already signed up.

Support the Show – Become a PAtron

Let’s start with Livonia. Livonia is the name the Teutonic Knights used for what is roughly modern day Latvia and Estonia. It was a misnomer already at the time since Livonia meant the land of the Livs, one of the various peoples that lived in the area, but by no means the only one or even the dominant one. And whilst the Prussians were all Baltic peoples speaking a language related to modern day Latvian and Lithuanian, the inhabitants of Livonia were divided into Baltic peoples, the Semigallians and Curonians to name the largest groups and the Finnic peoples, the Estonians and Livonians who speak Uralic languages related to Finnish. But that is not the only difference between Livonia and Prussia.

We did cover the crusades into Livonia up until the arrival of the Teutonic Knights in some detail in Episode 110 “The Livonian Cities” so I will limit myself to a very brief outline.

First up, the conquest had been led by the bishops and later archbishops of Riga, not by a chivalric order. The man at the centre of this crusade was Albrecht von Buxhoeveden who held the bishopric for 30 years, from 1199 to 1229. I made a terrible mistake in Episode 110 when I called him Albrecht von Buxtehude, following the lead in one of the secondary sources without double checking. Very much my bad and thanks to listener Ulrike C. who pointed this out to me.

Albrecht von Buxhoevden was an excellent organiser, networker and war leader relentlessly travelling between his new capital in Riga and Northern Germany where he was drumming up support. Apparently he did the trip 27 times. His great skill lay in recruiting wave upon wave of crusaders to come to the frozen north to convert the local pagans and then consolidating these gains during the cold winters when ice cut his new diocese off from supplies.

Like Konrad of Masovia would a few decades later, Albrecht realised quite quickly that the second part of that equation was a lot trickier than the first. Lots of men were keen to come on crusade during the years following the death of emperor Henry VI. If you remember, the empire fell into a civil war between the Hohenstaufen and the Welf that lasted for more than a decade. Many imperial noblemen were unsure which side to support. A simple way to avoid that question was to go on crusade. A crusading vow superseded all loyalty as a vassal. And even more important was that a crusader’s land was protected from any attack during his absence. Throw in the absolution for the crimes and violence already committed and going on crusade was an attractive option for many imperial knights and princes. Livonia was a more attractive destination as it was cheaper and less dangerous than the Near East where you may encounter well armed and well trained adversaries, not to mention diseases and foreign food.

The problem with crusaders was that they tended to return home as soon as their promised time on crusade was up.

To create a more stable military presence in Livonia bishop Albrecht pursued three strategies in parallel. The first one was to create his own local force by handing out fiefs to knights who were prepared to stay for good. The second was to establish his own chivalric order, the Livonian Brothers of the Sword. And he had a civil leg to his strategy too. He founded the city of Riga in 1201 and gave the Hanse merchants who settled there the city laws of Hamburg. What he did not do for reasons that I am not sure about was to bring in settlers to colonise the open countryside.

As a consequence of this, Livonia had multiple centres of power. The bishop was at least initially the most important centre. He owned 2/3rds of the land. Then there was the city of Riga that had its own rights and thanks to the trade along the Daugava river became very rich and very powerful very quickly. The vassals the bishop had given the fiefs to were broadly loyal, but like everywhere in medieval europe weren’t necessary always obedient. And there were the Livonian Sword brothers, the chivalric order Albrecht von Bornhoeved had founded.

The challenges the Livonian Swordbrothers were facing

On the one hand they were very efficient and ruthless fighters. They built a string of fortresses along the Daugava from where they could control the Semigallians who lived on the southern shore and protected the trade along the river. They also conquered territory from the Livonians and Estonians on the northern shore of the Daugava as well as expanded further East in the direction of Dorpat – modern day Tartu getting ever closer to Novgorord. There too they erected many new castles, initially in wood and as time went by, in brick. So far so good.

Problems arose because building castles and fighting the Semigallians was expensive. The Sword Brothers needed money, lots of money. The other chivalric orders like the Teutonic Knights could rely on their network of Komturs, of estates and convents back home in Western Europe sending money to cover these costs. The Livonian Sword brothers had very few estates back home in the empire. I have not found a clean description why that was, but part of it may have to do with their attachment to the bishop of Riga. If you remember the way for instance the Teutonic Knights convinced donors to support them was by giving them indulgences in return. Indulgences, just to remind you were “get out of jail free cards” that a sinner could use to wipe out whatever misbehaviour would block their entry into paradise.

The theological argument behind indulgences was that all the saints, apostles and Jesus himself had built up divine grace far in excess of what they needed to get into heaven themselves. That excess divine grace was left back on earth for the church to grant to sinners in exchange for good works. Good works could be going on crusade, paying someone else to go on crusade in one’s stead or just simply giving money or land to the church.

Now here is the rub. The person put on earth to administer this treasure of excess divine grace was the pope and the pope had shared some of it with his bishops and the religious orders, including the chivalric orders, which is why for instance the Teutonic Order could fund itself by issuing indulgences.

Now an order like the Livonian Brothers of the Sword who reported not the pope but to the bishop of Riga had only access to the excess divine grace that the bishop of Riga had at his disposal. And given the so far modest number of martyrs and mystics in Livonia, there wasn’t much indulgence to go around. Donors hence preferred to pass their wealth on to the Templars, the Knights of St. John or the Teutonic Order who had a bigger store of that valuable commodity.

That left the Sword Brothers with a limited set of options. Option 1 was the most prosaic one, trying to improve the financial position by exploiting and gathering more assets in Livonia itself. Option 2 was to try to get out from under the control of the bishop and gain direct recognition by the pope and with that access to his store of divine grace. Option 3 was to build up their own store of divine grace by performing great feats of martyrdom, something they did a lot of but it had the downside of reducing the already moderate number of sword brothers, and finally as last resort, there was option 4, joining an existing chivalric order, specifically the Teutonic Knights.

The Livonian Sword brothers tried all four options in parallel which ended up making their position even worse. They started with option 1 and squeezed their peasants harder and harder which led to a revolt in 1222 which was costly to put down. Then they pressured the bishop to grant them more of the spoils of war. So far the split was 2/3rds of all newly conquered land went to the bishop, 1/3rd to the Sword brothers. They managed to flip that formula in their favour. But that was still not enough.

So they came up with an audacious plan. North of Livonia another great crusader, King Waldemar of Denmark had mounted an attack against the Estonians. That not only granted him the Dannebrog, the iconic Danish flag which had appeared from the heavens during a crucial battle, but also his own crusader state. That colony and its major cities, namely Reval, modern day Tallinn and Narva was thriving which made the Lithuanian sword brothers believe that it would be the solution to all their problems. So when king Waldemar was otherwise engaged (check episode 111 for details), the Sword brothers took over Estonia.

Far from being the solution to their problems, it became the source of all their woes. Bishop Albrecht had made a deal with Waldemar delineating their respective spheres of influence. The attack by the sword brothers who were nominally his men was a major embarrassment for Albrecht and threatened his position back home in Germany. The pope also did not like the idea of two Christian parties on crusade at war with each other. So the papal legate forced the Sword brothers to give Northern Estonia back to the Danes. Their master agreed and withdrew, at which point the other members of the order ousted the master, elected a new one who instantly returned them to Estonia. Now the papal legate is seriously angry and proposes to the pope to suppress the Livonian Sword Brothers. Ouch..

So, option 1 has not yet yielded much benefit and option 2 – becoming an order recognised directly by the pope- is now of the list. That leaves just two, dying a good martyrs death or joining the Teutonic Knights.

In the interest of self preservation, in 1231 master Folkwin of the Swordbrothers proposed a merger with the Teutonic Knights. Hermann von Salza sent two knights to inspect the situation in Livonia. Their advice was unambiguous. No way should we associate with this rabble. They are completely lacking in discipline and are a rough and ready lot. This verdict has been copied over and over by historians and is taken as gospel. I think it is likely that the Livonian Sword brothers, poor and desperate as they were, had to admit people with let’s say less than perfect table manners. But my money is on the emissaries getting a good sense of the complexities of Livonia and deciding that at that point with the Prussian conquest just starting, it was simply a bridge too far.

For the Livonian sword brothers things are pretty wretched by 1236. They are still short of money and the pope’s legate is going on and on about returning Estonia to the Danes.

The end of the Livonian Swordbrothers

To add to their irritation some Holstein knights show up late for the annual crusading season and demand some action and presto. We are now in that transition period where the Northern crusades go from serious military operations to some sort of medieval adventure holiday. Crusaders who come down to Livonia expect to do a sufficient amount of fighting so that they can tell their friends and family back home that they have done their bit to spread the glad tidings.

So late in the season there is no real strategic target that could be pursued, so the Livonian Brothers decided to take their guests on a short raiding and plundering jolly to Semigallia, the area south of the Daugava that’s separates Livonia from Lithuania. This was a wilderness one entered at one’s peril.

As they were hacking their way through the challenging terrain, master Volkwin of the Swordbrothers realised that they were in a bit of a pickle. A Semigallian force had appeared and was blocking a ford across the river Saule. The master ordered the knights to dismount and fight their way across on foot. Time was of the essence since pagan reinforcements might arrive during the night making the crossing almost impossible. The Holsteiners however refused to get off their horses as that would be shameful for a proud knight. The Swordbrothers were too few to go it alone and so the crusaders made camp for the night.

Next morning guess who appears alongside the Semigallians, yes it is Mindaugas, the great leader of the Lithuanians with a large army. The proud Holstein Knights now mount their horses only to experience an unscheduled dismounting courtesy of the Lithuanians followed by a heroic knightly death in the mud of the River Saule. As do the master of the Sword brothers and almost half of the total force of that order.

Now they may have enough martyrs to issue indulgences, but militarily they are finished. They send two knights to pope Honorius III to beg for help. Honorius tells them to kneel, releases them from their vows as Livonian sword brothers, and made them swear the oath of the Teutonic knight, gives them the iconic white mantle with the black cross and with that the Livonian sword brothers no longer exit but are subsumed into the Teutonic Knights.

Hermann von Salza sends his best man, Hermann Balk, the man who had masterminded the first leg of the conquest of Prussia to Livonia to sort it all out. Balk arrives with 60 Teutonic Knight brothers and their retinue, enough to garrison the main castles. He withdraws the Swordbrothers from Northern Estonia and hands it back to the Danes. Now money comes into the chivalric order in Livonia from the vast holdings of the Teutonic Knights in the west. The new garrisons keep the Semigallians and Lithuanians in check and Hermann Balk can start reorganising the Livonian sword brothers

Unsurprisingly many of the Livonian Sword Brothers are upset about the takeover and the abandonment of Estonia. Balk sends the most vocal ones to Palestine, where some of them defect to the Templars. The rest are split up and posted to remote castles well out of the way. Hermann Balk retired in 1238 and passes the baton as Livonian master on to Dietrich von Gruningen.

All good now? Well, not really. The resentment of the remaining sword brothers keeps rumbling below the surface.

The Battle on The Ice

And another, much broader conflict is about to engulf the fragile Livonian colony. And that had to do with Constantinople. In 1204 the fourth crusade had conquered Constantinople and had replaced the Orthodox emperor with a catholic one. In the mind of the popes we are now half way to reunification of the two great Christian churches, the Catholics in the West and the Orthodox in the east under the bishop of Rome. Orthodox Christianity had expanded from Constantinople north and eastwards and had been adopted by amongst others the empire of the Kyivan Rus.  That empire had broken apart into a number of smallish principalities which by 1239 had largely been overrun by the Mongols.

As far as the papacy was concerned, this was certainly a sad thing for the Rus’ians but also a great opportunity. The catholic church offered the various remaining princes support against their Mongol overlords in exchange for conversion from Orthodoxy to Rome. Some took it like Danyl of Galicia, who ruled over what is today western Ukraine. The largest and most attractive of the successor states of the Kievan Rus was Novgorod. If a conversion could be affected there, the political power of the Orthodox faith would be reduced to just some vassals of the Mongols and the Byzantine rebel states that had emerged in the wake of the sack of Constantinople in 1204.

The idea of making Novgorod part of western Christianity did resonate well with some of the expansionist powers along the Baltic. After all the great trading centre of Novgorod was probably the richest city between Lubeck and the North Pole.

The Swedes were particularly ambitious. They marched down the Finnish coast and blocked the mouth of the Neva River. Listeners to the Hanseatic league season will know that the Neva, where modern day Saint Petersburg stands now was at the time the entry point for Baltic merchants going to Novgorod. Closing this vital artery cut Novgorod from not only its main source of money but also from imported salt needed to preserve its food.

Novgorod at the time was a Boyar republic meaning that the leading families would administer the city. Most of the time the city acknowledged a feudal prince as its overlord, usually whichever Rurik prince was most powerful in the region. In 1236 the chosen prince was Alexander Yaroslavich, second son of the grand prince of Vladimir. This Alexander recruited an army to confront the Swedes and on July 15th defeated them on the Neva river. The Swedish force withdrew and the shipping route reopened for trade. The success was so unexpected and complete that Alexander got two things. For one he received the sobriquet Nevsky by which we still now him today, Alexander Nevsky. And he was immediately exiled from the city of Novgorod. Seriously who wants a war hero swanning about in a boyar republic.

Up until this point all that I have said is largely consensual, though some argue the Mongols played a lesser role in the papal plans and that coordination lay with the papal legate in Livonia.

Everything that I tell you from this point forward is my best guess based on the various accounts I have read, which in turn is only a small section of the libraries and libraries written on the subject. And that subject – you may have guessed – is the famous Battle on the Ice, made immortal by Sergej Eisenstein’s epic 1938 movie.

We have two sources for all this, one being the Novgorod chronicle reflecting the perspective of the rulers of Novgorod and the Livonian Rhymed chronicle written by an unnamed member of the Teutonic order.  Both have been written not long after the events described making them both valid sources. The problem is that they do not quite match sparking endless debates.

Here is what I think happened. Parallel to the Swedish effort and maybe or maybe not coordinated by the papal legate William of St. Sabina another crusade set off from Livonia in the direction of Novgorod. Participants in this crusade were crusaders from western europe, likely the Empire and Poland, local Estonian auxiliaries and some Teutonic Knights. Whether these were former Livonian sword brothers operating against instruction by the Livonian master or actual Teutonic Knights operating under the auspices of an agreement between the order, the Danish king and the papal legate is heavily disputed, as is the question how many there were and who was in charge of the operation.  

What is not disputed was that this push was successful. The crusader army drove into Novgorod territory and got as far as within 20 miles of the city itself, raided and plundered in the hope of reducing its food supplies. They also managed to place a friendly new governor into the city of Pskov which lies south of Novgorod.

At that point the aristocrats ruling Novgorod became more concerned about the invaders than about a military commander becoming an autocrat in their city and hence recalled Alexander Nevsky. They I am sure apologised profusely for last year’s decision to exile him and offered him god knows what if only he would defeat these westerners.

In autumn 1241 Alexander Nevsky led his troops against the forts the invaders had erected east of Narva and drove them out. Then he moved southwards towards Pskov and took it, again without much difficulty. The Livonian Rhyme chronicle said that the garrison consisted of just 2 brothers and their retinue, in total maybe 30 men making that conquest a little less heroic than it appeared.

After some raiding in Livonian territory, Nevsky then led his army to lake Peipus, a large inland water that still today marks the border between Estonia and Russia. It is April the 5th in the Julian calendar, the 12th in ours, still fairly cold and the lake is still frozen.

Nevsky arrives on the shore of Lake Peipus with an army usually estimated at about 6,000 men, mostly professional soldiers from Novgorod. On the opposite shore the crusader army is gathered. They are often estimated at 2,000 men led by the bishop of Dorpat, Hermann von Boxhoeved, a brother of bishop Albrecht of Riga. They comprise roughly 1,000 Estonian auxiliaries whilst the rest is split into Danish knights, crusaders and Teutonic Knights, at least some of them former Livonian Swordbrothers.

The battle begins with that famous charge across the ice that is one of the most captivating moments of Sergej Eisenstein’s famous movie. As usual in medieval cavalry charges the idea is to break the centre of the enemy by fear and momentum and drive them to flight. If that fails battles turn into hand to hand combat until one or other side gives up exhausted. And so it happened here too. The centre of Alexander Nevsky’s army held and the crusaders were forced into combat on the slippery surface of lake Peipus. The Novgorod chronicle reports that there was a “great slaughter of Germans and Estonians” after which the remains of the army fled. Nevsky’s men caught up with them 7 km from the Estonian shore and surrounded them where according to the chronicle of Novgorod “fell a countless number of Estonians and 400 of the Germans.” The Knights own chronicler seems to have very different numbers. He says that quote “then the brother’s army was completely surrounded, for the Russians had had so many troops that there were easily sixty men for every German knight. The brothers fought well enough, but they were nonetheless cut down. Some of those from Dorpat escaped..20 brothers lay dead and six were captured” end quote.

This discrepancy between the chronicles has caused endless debates about the scale and significance of the defeat. Sure the numbers look far apart, 20 brothers according to the German chronicle and 400 in the Russian telling. But there is a way to reconcile those. When we talk about the Teutonic Knights forces, each knight would usually have about 10 additional fighters with them, some squires helping the knight, other acting as infantry covering the rider. So 20 dead brothers would equate to 200 dead men from the Teutonic Order. If you then take into account that there were also Danish knights and other crusaders on the field that the Russians counted as Germans, an estimated loss of 400 “Germans” in inverted commas seems reasonable.

Death toll in battle is one thing, but the even bigger dispute is about the significance of the battle. In Russia the anniversary of the Battle on the Ice is one of the 20 days of military honour commemorating major military successes. In other words the Russians believe this event to be of a significance on par with the victory over Napoleon at Borodino in 1812 and over Nazi Germany at Stalingrad. In the Russian narrative this was the moment that stopped the attack on the orthodox faith and in consequence on Russian culture. If we assume that the attack on Novgorod was at least in part aimed at converting them to Roman Catholicism, there is certain logic here. This the same logic that has elevated the equally modestly sized battle of Tours in 732 to the decisive moment where western europe refuted the imposition of Islam.

If you take the view that the papal involvement in the planning was modest and the main aim of the effort to be simple plunder, then the battle could be classed as just another border skirmish, maybe a larger than usual one, but in the end a border skirmish.

In either case, the battle had no material military consequences. Nevsky did not pursue the crusaders into Livonia. The two sides signed an agreement in 1243 guaranteeing the old borders from before 1240 and these borders held for at least a century.

And what is also true is that Sergej Eisenstein’s movie explains more about Soviet views of Nazi Germany in 1938 than it does about medieval warfare. The Teutonic Knights despite their undeniable brutality weren’t gigantic blonde proto nazis who burned babies, nor were the Estonian and Latvians enslaved little people as the film suggests or were the Russian forces pre-Lenin communist peasants. The Livonian master was not in the battle  and he was not taken prisoner. Alexander Nevsky did not stand up to the Mongols, au contraire he became one of their loyal vassals. Here is also no mention in either Russian or German sources that the heavily armoured Teutonic Knights and their huge warhorses broke through the ice to die a cold and miserable death. The ice there is strong enough to carry a man on horseback, and if you do not believe it google Lake Peipus trucks.

Still the film is a masterpiece and Prokofiev score underlying the attack of the Teutonic Knights is a most haunting experience. Therefore , when you watch it you can understand that one of the conditions in the Hitler Stalin pact was to shelve the film.

Another reason why hostilities between Livonia and Novgorod never resumed in earnest was that one of the main constituencies in Livonia was fundamentally opposed to such a venture, the merchants of Riga, Reval, Dorpat and Narva  who all traded extensively with Novgorod where they maintained the Hanse Kontor. They transported their wares across the rivers and roads on which such a campaign would be fought. And other than in Prussia the merchants in Livonia were powerful and independent.

After the Battle on the Ice the military powers in Livonia, i.e., the bishop of Riga and the Teutonic Order could return to the job at hand, converting the locals to Christianity. One thing that helped the crusaders was that the different peoples in Livonia were even more disunited than the Prussians. The knight brothers could muster fairly large forces by recruiting the archenemies of whichever group they were attacking at any particular point. Semigallians against Curonians, Livonians against Estonians and so forth. The flipside of these arrangement was that the peace agreement octroyed on the defeated party were usually quite mild. The demands were usually an at least formal conversion, a ban on pagan customs like polygamy and the rather cruel tradition of infanticide of girls, the imposition of taxes and tithes and other more generic legal rules. In return they would be recognised as free men on their own land and their leaders co-opted into the Christian aristocracy.

Part of the reason this system was introduced must have to do with the fact that there was no large colonisation programs for the open countryside as had been introduced in Prussia and before in the Burzenland. Why that did not happen I am not sure. Maybe it was just a bit too far north, even for intrepid colonists or the land was not sufficiently fertile to sustain another population alongside the existing peoples. The only immigration by German speaking peoples was into the cities, and that included the cities that were under Danish control, namely Reval and Narva.  

This policy found its high point in 1252 when the grand duke of Lithuania, the great Mindaugas accepted Roman Catholicism and was crowned as king of Lithuania by a German bishop and in the presence of the Livonian master. That plus a broadly favourable modus operandi with the Danish administration of Estonia meant the province now seemed all at ease. Business was flourishing and the Teutonic Knights could entertain their Crusader guests with regular raids into some parts of Semigallia or Curonia that had no yet sufficiently embraced the new religion.

The system collapsed in 1259 when Mindaugas patience ran out. We already talked about the battle of Durbe last week, so I will not repeat the story. But the net effect was the same in Livonia as it had been in Prussia. Within a short period of time the order found itself pushed back into its core positions, the main forts along the Daugava and in Southern Estonia.

What made things even more difficult than in Prussia was that the Bishop, now archbishop of Riga regarded the knight brothers as much more threatening than the pagans. The bishop formed an alliance with the now pagan Lithuanians against the order and hired a German adventurer, Gunzelin von Schwerin to lead his armies.

I will spare you the detail of the process but just imagine a repeat of what we had last week, just worse. The net result too was similar. Riga fell and Gunzelin fled back home. With the help of crusaders the open countryside north of the Daugava was cleared of rebels. The land south of the Daugava was turned into a buffer zone, an uninhabited wilderness. The Semigallians and Selonians who survived the conflict went into exile in Lithuania. The Curonians were indeed defeated and a line of forts and castles protected the core of Livonia and the trade along the Daugava.

As for Estonia, they had a quieter time apart from an attack from Novgorod that again was probably less significant than chroniclers made it out. The province was technically part of the Danish kingdom, but the actual power of the Danish monarch extended not much beyond the walls of the big cities, Reval and Narva. In the countryside they left the administration to the Danes who had now formed their own aristocracy and the Teutonic Knights. As absentee landlords their interest dwindled to the point that in 1365 the Danish king sold its holdings to the Teutonic knights for 10,000 mark of silver.

By the last decade of the 13th century the Teutonic Order was the undisputed power in Prussia and the dominant force in Livonia. This hard won success was however not mirrored in the lands the order was initially set up to defend for Christendom, the Holy Land. Their main fortress, the Starkenburg, north east of Haifa had been besieged first in 1266 and then in 1271, when it fell to the Mamluks. After that debacle the grand master relocated the order’s headquarters from Acre to Venice. Acre fell in 1291 which ended the crusader sate in Palestine. The order continued in Venice for a little longer but in 1309 when no new crusading effort in Palestina seemed likely, the grand master relocated to Prussia, to the magnificent castle of Marienburg.

Next time we will talk about what is often described as the golden age of the Teutonic Knights when they ran one of the most stringently organised polities in medieval europe, excelled both as politicians and merchants as well as organisers of the greatest chivalric adventure holidays that attracted counts, princes and even a future king of England. I hope you will join us again.

Bibliography

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

by on

The second, third and n-th Prussian uprising

Last week we left the action after the Teutonic Knights had signed the peace of Christburg in 1249 to put an end to the first Prussian revolt. The local population had risen up with the help of duke Swantopolk of Pomerelia who feared for the commercial success of his main city, the city of Danzig/Gdansk. After 7 years of war and devastation the pope had forced both sides to the negotiating table and made them sign a peace agreement intended to be a long term settlement. It constrained the Teutonic Order and gave the converted Prussians civil rights on par with the settlers who had come from the German lands.

Things should therefore be calm and peaceful from here – well they weren’t. The fighting continued as the order expanded further north and inland and soon the Prussians and Pomerelains rose up again, and again…

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 131 – The Conquest of Prussia (Part II)

Last week we left the action after the Teutonic Knights had signed the peace of Christburg in 1249 to put an end to the first Prussian revolt. The local population had risen up with the help of duke Swantopolk of Pomerelia who feared for the commercial success of his main city, the city of Danzig/Gdansk. After 7 years of war and devastation the pope had forced both sides to the negotiating table and made them sign a peace agreement intended to be a long term settlement. It constrained the Teutonic Order and gave the converted Prussians civil rights on par with the settlers who had come from the German lands.

Things should therefore be calm and peaceful from here – well they weren’t. The fighting continued as the order expanded further north and inland and soon the Prussians and Pomerelains rose up again, and again…

But before we start just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com/support. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to our generous one-time contributors, Simon W., Nina R., Junie H and Edmund H.

Support the Show – Become a PAtron

Back to the show.

When the peace of Christburg was signed in 1249, the order had regained most of its previous territory. They held an L-shaped position along the Vistula from Kulm to Elbing and from there along the Vistula Lagoon up to their main fortress at Balga. North of there and inland was still held by  those Prussian tribes that had not yet been defeated and converted.

The territory that was highest up in the mind of the Teutonic Knights at that point was the Samland or sometimes called Sambia with an s, not a Z. The Samland is a peninsula that divided the two great lagoons, the Frisches Haff or Vistula Lagoon from the Kurische Haff or Curonian Lagoon. This area was of the utmost strategic importance as it controlled the main entrance to the Vistula Lagoon. To understand how significant this is, just look at what happens today when this area is part of Russia. To get to the harbour of the modern day Polish city of Elblag/Elbing, ships would have to go through the Russian controlled entrance to the Vistula Lagoon. Poland is now building a canal cutting through the sandspit to give Elblag direct access to the Baltic Sea.  

The concern for the Teutonic knight was that Samland could be conquered by another crusading force. We have not mentioned this, but at the time the Teutonic Knights were busy subjugating Prussia, other forces were going around claiming land for themselves as crusader colonies. The Swedes had expanded into Finland since the middle of the 12th century, the Danes went into Estonia at the end of the 12th century and the Livonian Sword Brothers’ helped the bishops of Riga to conquer Latvia. In the peace of Christburg the Teutonic Knights had to promise not to interfere with a planned crusade by king Haakon of Norway into Samland.

That was a bit on an ambiguous clause. It did not explicitly ban the Teutonic knights from going to Samland, it only gave king Haakon IV first dips. But Haakon IV was a busy man involved in a dazzling number of foreign adventures whilst also held hostage by the Hanse cities which supplied most of the grain and controlled Norway’s main export, stockfish. To cut a long story short, King Haakon and his crusade never showed up, or more precisely did not show up on time.

In 1254 the Teutonic Knights felt both legally and logistically able to take the Samland. They had secured the support of one of Europe’s most powerful princes, King Ottokar II of Bohemia. We will spend a lot of time with Ottokar next season, so I will be brief here. Ottokar was not only king of Bohemia but also duke of Austria, Styria, Carinthia extending his domain all the way down to the Mediterranean. He was an extremely ambitious man who had his eye on the imperial crown which brought him into conflict with another extremely ambitious man, Rudolf of Habsburg. But that conflict is still in the future when the King arrives in Prussia in 1254.

Here is Nicolaus von Jeroschin, truly impressed by the man and his army:

Quote “King Ottokar of Bohemia marched into Prussia. He was skilled in warfare and laudably pious. Margrave Otto of Brandenburg came with him as his marshal on this campaign, a man of great courage, and also that bold, daring man, the prince of Austria and margrave of Moravia. These princes had many fighting men in their retinues. Bishops also arrived, very praiseworthy men: Bishop Heinrich of Kulm and a bishop of Warmia called Lord Anselm. Bishop Bruno of Olmütz arrived too. By their preaching these three good bishops had persuaded many men to become pilgrims for the honour of God. Many bold warriors, counts, knights and their squires arrived from the Rhineland, Saxony, Thuringia, Meissen and from many different lands. They all wanted to fight the heathens in God’s name and avenge the suffering of our Lord who was crucified for us. When all the battalions were assembled into one army you could estimate there were about sixty thousand fighting men there. I do not know how many wagons of weaponry and supplies there were; I can only guess there must have been a lot of them.” End quote

This army was put to good use. First Ottokar burned and pillaged the lands of a Sambian chieftain who had actually come across to the crusaders. Oops, so sorry for killing your people including your whole family, but next time make sure you have the right banner flying when we come down. Then the mighty Bohemian king quote “launched a surprise attack into Sambia, in the region of Medenau and killed many of the people there. He also took some prisoners and burned everything that flames could consume….. On the following day he departed for the region of Rudau, captured a castle there from the Sambians and persecuted and killed so many of the Sambian people that they offered hostages and begged the king graciously to accept them and not to wipe out their entire people in this terrible way….. After this the king handed the hostages over to the brothers and marched on to the hill where Königsberg now stands and advised the brothers to build a castle there for their own security and to protect the Christians….. With this he came to the end of the duties of his pilgrimage and the noble, merciful king marched joyfully back to his kingdom.” END QUOTE. So a jolly good time had been had by all, or almost all.

Those of you with a sharp eye for geography and chronology will have noticed that I quite obviously have jumped a Prussian tribe. Between the castle of Balga that formed the furthermost outpost of the Order in 1249 and the Samland lay the land of the Natangians.

The story of this conquest is one of the most convoluted but also quite insightful ones. The first contact between the order and the Natangians was in 1239 when the crusaders established the fort of Balga on the Vistula lagoon, roughly halfway between modern day Elblag and Kaliningrad. The Natangians, together with the neighbouring Warmians and Barthians attacked the fort. As Nicolaus von Jeroschin recounts gleefully the brothers used a double agent to lure the Prussian army into a trap where they quote “so completely…..drown them in their own blood that they brought everlasting honour to the good Lord” end quote. Following that battle the Teutonic Knights erected the castle of Kreuzburg in the land of the Natangians, Bartenstein, Wiesenburg and Rösselin in the land of the Barthians and Braunsberg and Heilsberg in Warmia.

The Natangians took brutal revenge in 1249. A contingent of 54 brothers, which including squires would suggest a force of about 500 men, had laid waste by fire and looting and had killed many people in Natangia. The Natangians tracked them down and surrounded them on one of the burned-down villages. All of them were killed. They had honourably surrendered but still the savage Natangians subjected them to some unheard-of form of martyrdom and “left their flesh on the battlefield to be eaten by birds and animals” or so claimed Nicolaus von Jerioschin – but then he would, wouldn’t he.

The fighting continued after the peace of Christburg. In 1250 the margrave of Brandenburg came up on Crusade and in 1251 Heinrich III, count of Schwarzburg fighting the length and breadth of the Prussian lands that still remained pagan. Quote “They did this repeatedly, taking prisoners, killing, plundering until they subdued the people in all parts of the land and compelled them to submit themselves to the brothers again and live according to their will. From this time the Pomesanians, Warmians, Barthians and Natangians completely gave up their insolence and fighting and submitted to the commands of the faith, as ordained by God, Christ our saviour, in whose divine hand is all power and the justice of all kingdoms.” end quote

That was why the Natangians did not stop king Ottokar of Bohemia from moving along the coast to the Samland. And they presumably had to let him pass on his way back home too. The Teutonic brothers then went about building a new castle on that hill in Samland king Ottokar had indicated and in his honour called it Königsberg, literally the King’s mount.

And here is a very important albeit brief comment from Nicolaus von Jeroschin that helps understanding what happens next: quote “When everything was ready, a great army was assembled, including all the Prussians who were loyal to the brothers, and they built a strong fortress on the hill where the old castle can still be seen.” end quote

This is the first mention of Prussian auxiliaries in the army of the Teutonic Knights. The occupation has now moved into a stage where the lands conquered in the first round, the Pogesanians and Pomesanians have reached the point where they have either embraced the Christian faith sufficiently or have been subjugated enough, or hated their neighbours enough that they were ready to serve in the order’s forces.

For the remaining pagan groups this was a very worrying development. As long as the invaders had remained largely foreigners, most of whom returned home after a year or less, there was hope that the Teutonic Knights would someday disappear to where they had come from. But if they established control of some tribes to the point that they supplied them with warriors and kept bringing in settlers, their disappearance became an ever diminishing hope.

This did not just concern the three Prussian tribes expecting to be next on the list, the Nadrovians, Scalovians and Sudovians, but also their neighbour to the North East, the Lithuanians. The Lithuanians were Balts like the Prussians and they shared many cultural traits as well as speaking related languages. But what made the main difference between Lithuanians and Prussians was that the Lithuanians had been united by their King, Mindaugas. Mindaugas is first mentioned in 1219 as an elder duke of the Lithuanians but by 1250s he had become recognised as the ruler of a territory roughly the size of modern Lithuania, though different shape. Mindaugas had to deal with crusaders on two sides, in the south the Teutonic knights in Prussia and in the North the Livonian Sword Brothers who by now are integrated into the Teutonic Order. Then he had to contend with what was left of the empire of the Kyivan Rus and their overlords, the Mongols.

Mindaugas pursued a complex strategy of alliances and religious conversions aimed at preserving his kingdom. In 1250 he had converted to Roman Catholicism which dramatically reduced the military pressure from the chivalric orders who weren’t allowed to attack Christians. This appeasement policy did work in as much that the order would not attack the Lithuanians directly.

But what it did not stop was the encroachment. In Prussia the knights kept flipping one tribe after another making it just a question of time before they would appear on the Lithuanian border, reinforced by auxiliaries from all over Prussia. Meanwhile the Livonian sword brothers also too kept expanding. In 1259 the Livonian and Prussian knights decided to establish a new castle at Karšuva, deep inside Lithuanian territory, whilst the Livonian Knights also erected Dunaburg which cut Lithuania off from Novgorod, the main regional trading centre.

If left unchallenged, these castles would allow the order to establish a land bridge between its Prussian and Livonian territories, at which point Lithuania would not only be cut of from the sea but surrounded by the order on three sides.

Conflict was inevitable. In 1260 the Lithuanians attacked a force of 150 brothers, so probably 1,500 men in total who had come to reinforce the castle at Karšuva. That entire army was wiped out at the battle of Durbe. Nicolaus von Jeroschin blames the defeat on the cowardice of the Prussian auxiliaries, but then he would do that too, wouldn’t he.

This defeat added to fear amongst the castle commanders that the converted Prussians weren’t quite as loyal as they had thought. Things got a bit out of hand when the commander of Natangia and Warmia invited the leaders of the neighbouring tribes to his castle at Lenzenburg for a meeting followed by a feast.  Something triggered a bout of paranoia in this man so undeservedly called Volrad Mirabilis that he had his guests locked inside the dining hall and set fire to it.  

Either or both of these events triggered the second Prussian uprising in 1260. The first uprising had lasted 7 years, this time it lasts almost twice as long, 13 years. And this time the Prussians are better organised. Each of the tribes, the Sambians, the Warmians, the Pogesanians, the Barthians and the Natangians each chose one amongst them as their military leader. The Natangian chose Henry Monte who became throughout this campaign.

And given they had served as auxiliaries in the Teutonic Knights’ armies these men were now well trained in Western European warfare and had the necessary modern equipment. And two more things worked in their favour. Firstly, they could count on the support from Mindaugas, the powerful ruler of the Lithuanians, and secondly, the Teutonic Knights had another theatre of war to worry about.

Back in the Holy Land the peace between the crusaders and the rulers of Egypt had collapsed. Jerusalem had fallen in 1244 and by the 1260s the Mamluk Sultan Baibars was rampaging through what was left of the crusader states. The order’s main fortress in the Holy land, the Starkenburg needed reinforcements and despite the difficult military situation, forces were withdrawn from Prussia and redeployed in Palestine.

Here is Nicolaus von Jeroschin describing what the newly elected leaders of the Prussian tribes did quote “they agreed that they would meet, ready for battle, on an agreed day, and that they would destroy and brutally kill anyone who called themselves a Christian and acknowledged their faith. Sadly, that was what happened. They campaigned ferociously the length and breadth of the country, killing all the Christians they found outside the fortresses. Some they bound and took off into life-long slavery. In their frenzied hatred they also desecrated and burned down churches and chapels, consecrated or not.” End quote.

The Natangians did not just burn and plunder, they also faced the Knights in open battle and inflicted a serious defeat on the order at Pokarwen in 1261.

Thing went from bad to worse. One stronghold after the other fell.  First Heilsberg was abandoned after its garrison had eaten all the food, including the meat of their horses. When that had run out they ate the horse leather which made their teeth fall out, at which point they fled. Then the garrison of Roessel decided to burn the castle and retreat before they get attacked. The same at Waistotepila. Balga was captured and looted, so were the castle and city of Braunsberg. In Wiesenburg the Prussians scored a full scale victory and destroyed the castle. Then they went after the big ones. Kreuzburg fell in 1263. The city of Christburg too was burned and the outer fortifications of the castle fell.

Bartenstein held a garrison of 400 knights and squires. The Barthians attacked with 1,300 men and built three huge siege engines. By now the Prussians had all the skills to build those as well as trebuchets and other equipment. There was one of the defenders, a man called Miligedo who was regarded as worth as much as half of the whole garrison. So the Prussians challenged him to come out for a duel. He was allowed to go to fight and stepped before the fort. The challenger instead of attacking, gave chase and Miligedo followed him into a pre-prepared trap. Multiple men jumped out of the bushes to kill him. But Miligedo was still running after the challenger, killed him and then outran his attackers, made a large turn to the left and ran back to the castle.

Miligedo however was killed in the end and the Prussians celebrated. The knights’ reaction was to hang 30 hostages on the gallows above the walls of Bartenstein to dampen the mood of the besiegers. After four years the garrison gave up and fled in the middle of the night, leaving one man behind to ring the bells every day, pretending the garrison was still there until the Prussians clocked it, came in, killed the man and burned the castle.

Koenigsberg was the only one of the new forts built since 1249 that withstood a Prussian siege thanks to a crusader army led by the count of Julich.

In 1264 an army of the Teutonic knights was again defeated and the Prussian master and his marshal died.

In 1266, ‘67 and ‘68 crusading forces came to Prussia to support the Teutonic Knights, but the winters turned out to be too warm for the heavily armoured knights to be of any use beyond temporarily clearing the countryside.

The following year things got even worse. Duke Swantopulk of Pomerelia had died and was succeeded by his son Mestwin. And Mestwin resumed his father’s previous policies and allied with the Prussians. Together they attacked the long pacified regions of Pomesania and even the Kulmerland. Marienwerder fell and even Rehden could not hold out. Kulm was besieged but held.

By now the situation was even worse than during the previous revolt. The Teutonic Knights held only a handful of castles, castles that were far away from each other and that the Prussians had proven they could take with their siege engines.

Things turned around when in 1272 a large crusade led by the margrave of Meissen hit better weather and devastated the lands of the Warmians and Narangians. Then the great Narangian leader Henry Monte died, followed shortly after by the betrayal and murder of the leader of the Warmians.  

That turned the tide. Quote “In the year of our Lord 1273 the Sambians, Natangians, Warmians and Barthians wanted to submit and return to the faith.”

Of the previously subjugated and converted Prussians only the Pogesanians had appetite for revenge and cruelty left. In a skirmish with a force from Elbing, they pushed the Christians back until they had to take refuge in a mill. That mill they set on fire and burned them to death.

But by now the Pogesanians were on their own. Quote “The master and the brothers.….wanted to avenge this wrongdoing and the terrible anguish it had caused or die in the attempt. With this in mind they gathered together all the manpower they could and launched an attack on Pogesania, devastating the whole country, burning and looting, killing all the men they encountered and taking away horses, cattle, children and women as prisoners. During this campaign they also captured the castle at Heilsberg, which at that time had been under the control of the Pogesanians, and put all the men there to the sword; everything else was driven off. After this the threat of warfare was removed and Prussia remained at peace”.

What kind of peace though? This had been a brutal war, even by medieval standards. The chronicles describe literally dozens and dozens of sieges and battles and in none did I find the mention of any form of mercy. Prussians who were caught and refused to convert were killed. Christians caught by Prussians, were killed or sold as slaves.

There is a debate about whether the conquest of Prussia and the cruelty that followed led to the extinction of the original population and their replacement with German speaking settlers. That is probably not quite the case. It is true that the conquest of Prussia resulted in the killing of a horrifically large number of Prussians. Juergen Sarnovsky talks about a reduction in the Prussian population by almost 50%, which includes an element of emigration and assimilation. I am not sure what to make of this. Yes, they weren’t completely wiped out and had somewhat recovered by the 15th century. But on the other hand I am still horrified not only by the scale of the destruction but also by the attitude of the Teutonic Knights towards the Prussians.  

Here are some things that Nicolaus von Jeroschin wrote and do not forget he is a priest member of the Teutonic Order who writes a hundred years later to instruct the brothers in what it means to be a member of a chivalric order:

Quote: “When the castles mentioned earlier were built and equipped with the help of Christ our Lord and in His praise and honour, and the peoples in the vicinity had bent their stiff necks to the yoke of faith and the brothers’ dominion, to which point they could not have been brought without slaughtering many”

Here is another one

“He caused them such misery and harried them, night and day, so ferociously that he reduced them to the point where they had to submit themselves to God and the brothers and receive Christianity”

And:

“So completely did they drown them in their own blood that they brought everlasting honour to the good Lord.” End quotes

We still have a few more episodes to get to know the Teutonic Knights a bit better so we do not have to make up our minds about them just yet. But hey…

Just to not end this section on this super distressing note. Here is another story about how the Teutonic nights convinced some Prussians in this case a chieftain from Samland of the superiority of their faith:

Quote:This same Sambian had also seen the brothers eating cabbage, which was something the Prussians did not do at that time. For that reason he thought it was grass. ‘I also saw them eating grass for nourishment, like horses,’ he said. ‘Who could stand up against men who can survive in the wilderness in this way and eat grass as food?

To complete the story of the conquest we have to go a bit further beyond 1273. By the end of the second Prussian rebellion the Teutonic Knights were back in control of the territory they had acquired up until 1260. The lands north and east of the Pregel river were still settled by pagans, the Nadrovian, Sclavian and Sudovian. The Nadrovians were the first to fall. In 1274 the brothers took their main castles and killed the men, took the women and children prisonerand quote “took a great deal of plunder with them, so much it would be pointless to speculate how much, burned down the castle and then departed joyfully” end quote. The Nadrovians surrendered and took up the Christian religion.

At the same time the order also conquered Scalovia, the territory north of Nadrovia, around modern day Kleipeda. Their main castle was Ragnit that featured a large fishpond within its walls that fed the garrison during sieges. That did not help though since according to our friend the chronicler, god changed all the fish into frogs, presumably the inedible kind. More castles were burned, women enslaved and fields devastated until the Scalovians saw how benign the new religion was. As the chronicler wrote, the land of Scalovia remained deserted for many years thereafter.

That leaves the Sudovians who under their leader Skumantas kept up their resistance. Most of their warfare was guerilla tactics, but at times they mustered large armies that pushed as far as the order’s heartlands around Kulm and Thorn. According to von Jeroschin, the Sudovian were the most powerful of the Prussian tribes. This war against the Sudovian lasted for almost a decade. There were rarely any open battles; it was mostly a series of raids, destroying villages and killing civilians. At that stage the Teutonic Knights barely used any more crusaders. Instead they employed Old Prussians from other tribes to attack and plunder the Sudovians.

Still the Sudovians prove to be hard to overcome, in part because they could retreat into Lithuania where they could rest, get fresh equipment and support. The order therefore resorted to a total scorched earth tactic, destroying every village that they came across, killing the men and taking away the women and children as per usual.

Finally the Sudovian leader, Skumantas gave up and converted. That broke the Sudovian resistance and many joined him. Those who did not want to give up their traditional beliefs and culture saw quote “that all the land around had been totally devastated and destroyed and realised beyond a shadow of doubt that [they] could no longer resist the brothers or endure such frequent attacks.” end quote. And so the remaining Sudovians took what was left of their possessions and emigrated to Lithuania.

The land of Sudovia was turned into an uninhabited wilderness that acted as a buffer zone against the Lithuanians.

The Old Prussians made two more forlorn attempts to overthrow the Teutonic Knights in 1286 and 1295, but it was all over. The order was now in undisputed control of the Prussian lands imposing Christianity on all its inhabitants. Those who could not bear it emigrated to Lithuania, the rest settled into an existence as second class citizens or assimilated into a German-speaking majority.

The peace of Christburg in 1249 had guaranteed converted Prussians the same legal rights the German settlers enjoyed under the Kulmer Handfeste, the laws that Hermann Balk had issued in 1233 to attract colonists. But now after their rebellions, the Prussians were declared apostates and these rights were taken away from them. They lived under a separate and much less attractive legal framework in their villages. To escape these constrains, many adopted the German language and customs fully assimilating into the new society. Some held out into the early modern period and as late as 1700 a bible in the Prussian language was published.

We will come back to the way Prussia was organised and managed by the Teutonic Knights two episodes from now. Next time we will talk about the other lands the Teutonic Knights were active in, the Holy Land, Germany and most significantly, Livonia. That episode will feature the Battle on the Ice made famous in Sergej Eisenstein’s propaganda movie and that may have not been quite what Stalinist propaganda was making it out to be. I hope you will join us again.

And since it is this time of the year, let me wish you all a lovely Christmas remembering that much of what you heard here today has nothing to do with the content of the New Testament. And to all of you who observe different traditions or no traditions at all, enjoy the holidays and come back for more History of the Germans afterwards!

Bibliography

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

by on

from Konrad of Masovia’s offer to the first Prussian revolts

Last week we heard about Konrad of Masovia’s offer of the Kulmer Land to the Teutonic knight. This week we will talk about what they did once they had accepted the offer. The first knights arrived in 1226 but it would take almost 6o years before their new principality of Prussia was fully established.

The Prussians, despite initially being lightly armed and disunited were no pushover. Rarely successful in open battle they disappeared into the dense forest or swampy marches before they could be routed. Again and again they rose up, reclaiming their freedom and again and again did the Teutonic Knights and the German and Polish crusaders pushed them back into submission.

Do not worry, this will not be an endless litany of battles and raids, but we will look at the relative military strength, the political structure they established and as you would expect, the economic underpinnings of the effort. Lets dive in..

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 130 – The Conquest of Prussia Part 1

Last week we heard about Konrad of Masovia’s offer of the Kulmer Land to the Teutonic knight. This week we will talk about what they did once they had accepted the offer. The first knights arrived in 1226 but it would take almost 6o years before their new principality of Prussia was fully established.

The Prussians, despite initially being lightly armed and disunited were no pushover. Rarely successful in open battle they disappeared into the dense forest or swampy marches before they could be routed. Again and again they rose up, reclaiming their freedom and again and again did the Teutonic Knights and the German and Polish crusaders pushed them back into submission.

Do not worry, this will not be an endless litany of battles and raids, but we will look at the relative military strength, the political structure they established and as you would expect, the economic underpinnings of the effort. Lets dive in..

But before we start just a reminder. The History of the Germans Podcast is advertising free thanks to the generous support from patrons. And you can become a patron too and enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and other privileges from the price of a latte per month. All you have to do is sign up at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website historyofthegermans.com/support. You find all the links in the show notes. And thanks a lot to our generous one-time contributors, Michal B., Carsten S-H, Margreatha H. and James B.

Support the Show – Become a PAtron

Let’s start with the obvious question, where is Prussia, or more precisely Old Prussia, the land where the Pruzzi lived?

If you look on a modern map, it may be easiest if you start looking for the Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic shore. This territory is however a lot smaller than the territory of the ancient Prussians.

In 1225 when the story of the conquest begins, the Prussians are settling the land on the eastern shore of the Vistula or Weichsel River from Torun/Thorn to the Neman or Memel River in the east. Beyond the Neman lived the Curonians who some count amongst the Prussians and others amongst the Lithuanians or Latvians. This area is today part of Lithuania with its regional capital at Klaipeda or Memel in German. To the south a system of forests, lakes and swamps separate the Prussians from the Poles of Masovia. In the North the Prussian lands stretched to the shoreline of the Baltic. This shoreline is dominated by two enormous lagoons, the Vistula Lagoon or Frisches Haff in German that stretches almost from Gdansk to Kaliningrad, i.e., from Danzig to Konigsberg and further east the Curonian Lagoon or Kurisches Haff that goes up to the city of Klaipeda or Memel.

This land was densely forested and still is interspersed with sheer innumerable lakes and rivers. At the time of the arrival of the Teutonic knights the total population of Prussia was estimated at 200,000 to 300,000. The best comparison may be Scotland, which is roughly twice the size and had a population of roughly half a million to a million in this period. So not exactly densely populated, but by no means empty.

The Prussians were Balts, members of the same linguistic and cultural group as the Lithuanians and Latvians. These groups had once settled across a large chunk of North-Eastern Europe but had been pushed toward the Baltic shore as the Great Migration of the 4th, 5th and 6th century sucked Slavic peoples into Eastern Europe, all the way to the Elbe River.

Of their religion the chronicler Peter von Duisburg said: quote: “Because they did not know God, they took erroneously all creation for gods, such as the sun, the moon, and the stars, thunder, birds and even animals and so on, rights down to the toads.” I leave it to you to decide how much you want to believe a catholic priest in a military order in the 14th century when it comes to 12th century pagan religion. I personally doubt that they did indeed worship toads. Though I do have a soft spot for toads and I find the idea of worshipping a toad god quite appealing. I did a quick internet check on whether there are any cultures that worship toads and all I found was a Chinese Internet meme spoofing Jiang Zemin, the general secretory of the Chinese communist party until 2002. I fear I digress.

Leaving out the thing about the toads, it seems the Old Prussians were pagans who believed in a set of gods not dissimilar to the pantheon of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans who all had their sun, moon and thunder gods. Prussian religion came with a compliment of sacred springs and forests but apparently no temples or similar structures. Some historians suggest that during a period of very loose Viking overlordship of the Prussian lands, their beliefs became infused with elements of Scandinavian pantheon resulting in the dominance of a warrior god similar to the Lithuanian god of Thunder called Perkunas (please forgive my pronunciation).

Peter von Duisburg further claims that there was a senior priest figure, a sort of mirror image of the pope who exercised ultimate religious authority over Prussians, Lithuanians and Livonians, called the Criwe. There is however no corroborating evidence of his existence in other chronicles which suggests it is another figment of the writer’s imagination.

What also did not exist was any sort of common secular authority, a king or duke of any kind. The Prussians were divided into roughly a dozen tribes, each of which were centred on a particular territory. I will not rattle down the names now as you are likely to forget them as soon as I have called them out. But we will encounter most of them as we go through this story.

Within these individual tribes there was an aristocratic leadership class who led the tribe in war. They fought on horseback carrying light armour, whilst the free men of the tribe made up a poorly equipped infantry. Whilst the ideal was that of the heroic fighter who would not hesitate to instantly  charge a vastly superior force on his own, Berserker style, the reality was that most Prussian military encounters ended with the losing side disappearing into the dense forest before they could be routed to regroup and then fight another day.

Economically the free Prussians were mainly subsistence farmers. Aristocrats would not work but use slaves acquired in war to till their fields and serve as household help and concubines. Generally slave taking and trading was one of the ways Prussian nobility boosted their income. The scale of this slave trade is probably exaggerated by Christian chroniclers trying to paint the Prussians as backward barbarians.

The Prussians did however have one important export product everyone acknowledged, Amber. Amber is a fossilised tree resin that has a deep yellow colour and had been appreciated since antiquity. Though it can be found in multiple locations on the planet, by all accounts Prussian amber is the by far most superior product. Pliny the Elder, always a reliable source – not, already mentioned a trade route from Prussia to Hungary by which amber was brought down to the mediterranean. The most valuable ambers were and are pieces that have inclusions, i.e., little insects or plant material that had been trapped in the resin when it fossilised. One containing an insect 20 million years old had come up for sale recently fetching . The most valuable amber works was however the Amber Room, the Bernsteinzimmer, a whole room decorated with 6 tons of the most precious pieces of amber, initially created for King Frederick I of Prussia. His successor the much the less blingy king Frederick Wilhelm gave this masterpiece by the court architect Andreas Schluter to Zsar Peter the Great of Russia  who installed it in the Tsarskoye Selo palace near St. Petersburg. There it remained until the Nazis got hold of it during the siege of Leningrad and had the whole thing packed into crates and sent back to Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad where they stored it in cellars underneath the castle. The castle was heavily bombed in 1944 and then burned down. After that no trace of the Bernstein Zimmer has ever been found. A replica was installed in the palace of Tsarskoye Selo in 2003 that had taken almost forty years to create.

Now back to the 13th century. The Prussians, disunited as they were had been living in their homeland for centuries and exported their amber without bothering their neighbours in any unduly fashion, apart from their obstinate refusal to convert to Christianity. Their peaceful nature is even attested by the Teutonic chroniclers themselves.

Here is our friend Nicolaus von Jeroschin again:

Quote: “Their evil, sinful wickedness had made them so stubborn that no teaching or exhortation or blessing could move them from their error or take away their false belief. Although their minds were so set, there was one praiseworthy thing about them, because even if they themselves were inured to the faith and practised the worship of all manner of idols, nonetheless they lived at peace with the Christians who had settled alongside them during these years and allowed them to worship the living God without any interference.

This upset the evil enemy who always opposes true peace and is jealous of all good things, so he did not suffer this state of affairs for long. He threw the seeds of hate among them, precipitating a violent feud between them, during which the Christians suffered great anguish and distress. Some of them were killed and some driven off into slavery among the Prussians.” Unquote.

Just replace the devil with the Konrad, the duke of Masovia and we get closer to the truth. What had provoked the Prussians into a brutal border conflict with the Polish duchies of Masovia to the south and Pomerelia to the East was a crusade the Piast dukes had called in 1222 and 1223. These crusades were spectacularly unsuccessful and only disrupted the peaceful missionary efforts that had been going on since 1206.

The Prussians realised that the only way to prevent further attacks was to take the war into the land of their enemies. Nicolaus von Jeroschin again: quote “They inflicted great damage on the country. They looted and burned; they put all the men they came across to the sword and drove the women and children away into perpetual captivity. If there was a pregnant woman, so heavy with child that she could not keep up with them, they became angry with her and killed her and her child. They roughly wrenched the children out of the arms of their mothers and impaled them here and there on stakes, where they struggled and screamed in pain, and writhed in agony until they died. They devastated the duke’s land so completely that of all of the fortresses large and small through which he imposed his control, only one on the Vistula, known as Płock, was left under his command.” End quote

Surely Jeroschin is exaggerating here in order to justify the subsequent conquest of Prussia by the Teutonic Order. Remember that the order was not just a military force, but also a monastic community that had to adhere to the teachings of the bible, even though in a rather twisted way. That meant they had to prove that they were defending Christians from imminent danger, not just attacking otherwise harmless pagans who should be converted peacefully.

Exaggeration or not, the fact that Prussians had taken many of his forward defences, including the fortifications at Kulm and could raid into his core territory was a major problem for Konrad of Masovia. Despite all his efforts, including the creation of his own chivalric order, the Prussians kept coming across the Vistula River and burned amongst others, the great Cistercian abbey of Oliva. Konrad was quite simply desperate.

Here is Nicolaus von Jeroschin again:

Quote “Before Poland was completely devastated by the Prussians, as I have read, and while there was still something left in the country, Duke Conrad was so hard pressed by them and so afraid of them that whenever they sent emissaries demanding horses or fine clothing he had to give in and did not dare refuse them anything. Therefore when he had nothing more to offer them to satisfy their demands, his lack of resources compelled him to adopt this strategy: he invited his nobles and their wives and others to a social gathering and when the guests were seated and eating and drinking cheerfully he sent the Prussian emissaries what they demanded: he secretly gave them his guests’ clothes and horses and let them escape.” End quote.

When the first calls for help came in, the Teutonic order had no capacity to send meaningful relief. They had their hands full with the crusades of Frederick II, the one that was abandoned in 1226 and the successful one in 1227-1228. All Hermann von Salza was able to do for now was to send just 7 knights with 70 to 100 squires. These knights were likely raw recruits and older warriors, too ill or infirm to journey to the Holy Land. Konrad of Masovia gave them a border fortress on the Polish side of the Vistula River. Here is how Nicolaus von Jeroschin described the next few years:

Quote: “They called the castle Vogelsang and here the brothers began the long war, establishing themselves without hesitation with just a few ill-equipped armed men against the heathen horde (which was innumerable). In their many tribulations they did not sing the song of the nightingale but songs like the songs of grief the swan sings as it dies…. They had left well-established, fruitful, calm and peaceful lands and come to a land of horrors and wildernesses, which no-one tended. It was completely joyless and full of hard fighting, and to put it bluntly: for God’s sake they had abandoned freedom, honour, family and all the joys of the world, and given themselves up to a miserable existence. Their humble lives were beset with hunger, hardship, poverty and abasement.” End quote

Three years later the crusade in the Holy Land is finally over. The treaty with the sultan stipulated a 10-year truce between the crusaders and the Saracens that freed the Teutonic Knights to relieve their fellow brothers in Vogelsang.

Hermann von Salza dispatched one of his brothers, a man called Hermann Balk and a much more sizeable force to Prussia. Hermann Balk became the first master of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia and would lead the war here and in Livonia for the next 12 years.

Under Hermann Balk the crusaders’ strategy in Prussia changed fundamentally.

Until he arrived, crusaders had gathered their armies in Spring and then driven straight into the interior of Prussia. They fought the occasional open battle which ended in an inconclusive victory as the Prussian forces disappeared into the forest before they could be routed. The rest of the time they spent burning villages and devastating crops until the season changed. As autumn approached they  established multiple forts in the conquered territory and put a small garrison in each of them to hold out until next spring and left. During the winter the Prussians recaptured the forts that were too far away from any reinforcements and massacred the garrisons. The following year the crusaders had to conquer the same area again and rebuilt the forts but the previous year’s experience dramatically reduced the already slim number of volunteers who were prepared to stay behind. So the forts were taken again and everything reverted back to zero.

Balk’s concept was to build the conquest slow and steady, rather than haring in and out of the enemy lands. So instead of overstretching his forces, Balk built only one or two forts after each campaign, put in sizeable garrisons of Teutonic knights who were willing to take the winter’s cold and misery. And alongside the military effort ran a civilian effort. Balk invited settlers, mainly from central Germany, Thuringia, Saxony and Franconia to settle in the shadow of these forts. These settlers naturally stayed over the winter as well and were prepared to defend their new homes alongside the Teutonic Knights. The settlements grew rapidly and fortifications could be improved from wooden forts to brick-built castles and finally towns and cities.

Another sensible decision was not to go straight to the interior but to build defensive positions along the Vistula and the Baltic shore, thereby cutting the Prussians off from access to supplies, in particular from the supply of advanced western weaponry whilst at the same time keeping them from their most valuable export, amber.

Campaigns had a very seasonal pattern. During the summer the Teutonic Knights forces were supported by contingents of German and Polish crusaders. The popes would call up Christian knights to fight in the North almost every year and preachers mainly in Northern Germany and Poland would offer volunteers to have their slate wiped clean if they took the cross.

As before, these large forces would seek an open battle with one of the Prussian tribes which they would usually win, and as before the lightly armed Prussians would flee into the woods and swamps where the armoured riders struggled to follow. Their main deed done the crusaders would then help erect a fort before heading back home. In the winter the Teutonic Knights garrison of the fort would not just sit around the campfire shivering. They would go out and now that the rivers were frozen and the swamps hardened, they could seek out and harass the hidden Prussian villages and forts. It is during this period that the Teutonic knights acquired the skills in winter warfare they would become so famous for. If you are a Game of Thrones fan and you have read that the Night’s Watch is based on  the Templars, think again. Templars fought mainly around the mediterranean, not in the frozen lands of Eastern Europe. If you are looking for an order of knights fighting in snow and ice, the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Sword Brothers are your go to place. That being said, this is where the similarity ends since the Knight Watch sincerely lacks in spirituality.

Hermann Balk arrived in 1230. During his first summer campaign in 1231 he established a fort at Thorn at a place where the Drewenz river flows into the Vistula. This was the legendary castle in a tree. According to the knights chronicles the original castle of Thorn was built inside an enormous oak tree. There are multiple depictions of a battle of the Teutonic knights against the Prussians defending the oak tree. Most historians believe this to be a legend, though it is unclear what the legend of the oak tree was to signify. There is no archaeological evidence since the oak tree castle was finally abandoned as the site was too prone to flooding and the new and still existing castle of Thorn was built in a more traditional manner.

The following year Hermann Balk has enough forces to pursue two campaigns. One 100km along the Vistula where he founds the fort of Marienwerder, the other following the Drewenz for about half the distance where he put the next fort at Reden. With these three strategic positions, Balk had secured the Kulmerland, the territory the order had been offered by duke Konrad of Masovia and had its ownership confirmed by the emperor Frederick II.

Control of the Kulmerland was what had been promised to the order and he had now achieved this objective. The question was what next. Going further down the Vistula would be a move into territory that no Polish duke had conquered before. In the eyes of Christian noblemen of the 13th century, this was no-man’s land. At which point the question arises, who should own this land?

In hindsight it feels entirely natural that the Teutonic Knights would get all of it, finders, keepers and such things. But hang on a minute. The Teutonic Knights did not conquer Prussia all by themselves. There were the crusaders that provided the majority of the attack force in the summer. They hadn’t come to fight for the Teutonic Knights but for God and whoever God chose to rule these lands. Some were Germans but many were Poles, vassals of duke Konrad or one of his cousins who had at least interest in if not claims on Prussia.

Duke Konrad had called the Teutonic knights to defend the border and may or may not have given them the Kulmerland in unencumbered ownership, but that does not automatically mean he would give up all rights to the rest of Prussia. The Teutonic Knights claimed they had a treaty with Konrad that gave them full control, but that is disputed by some Polish historians and more significantly was refuted once the Polish Kingdom was restored in the 14th century.

And finally, there was someone called Christian, the bishop of Prussia. This cleric had been appointed as the missionary bishop to the Prussians by Pope Honorius in the 1220s. Bishop Christian surely believed he had a solid claim on at least parts of Prussia. In Livonia, where the situation was similar the deal had been that the bishop of Riga got 2/3rds of the land and the Livonian Sword brothers 1/3rd, even though the Livonian brothers did most of the heavy lifting.

By all accounts a similar deal would have been the natural outcome of any further negotiations between the parties involved. But the Teutonic Orders had two aces up their sleeve, one was pure luck and the other was Hermann von Salza.

The luck was twofold.

Part one was that bishop Christian was conveniently captured by the Prussians in 1233. Despite the bishops entreaties, neither the Teutonic Order nor anyone else made an effort to get him released which cut him out of the crucial negotiations until his release 5 years later, when it was all over. Meanwhile, Conrad of Masovia found himself in another squabble with his cousins that diverted his attention away from Prussia.

With two main contenders out of the picture, Hermann von Salza could dominate the diplomatic battlefield. In 1234 he persuaded pope Gregory IX to confirm the Order’s rights in the Kulmer Land and granted it ownership of all territory in Prussia still to be conquered. The Pope also put the Order and its territory in Prussia under his direct control and protection. The following year 1235 Hermann got Frederick II to do the same. He re-issued the Golden Bulle of Rimini that guaranteed the order the ownership of all conquered lands and making them imperial princes with all the rights and protection that entailed.

Both Pope and emperor have confirmed their ownership of the lands that the crusades were to conquer. Nothing the bishop and the duke could do about it any more. And best of all, the order now had two bosses, the pope and the emperor, which meant it had no boss.    

Weirdly, only once all the legal stuff was out of the way, did the conquest continue with renewed energy. In 1236, Hermann Balk and his Teutonic Knights, supported by the margrave of Meissen and his army of crusaders pushed further along the Vistula beyond Marienwerder. That campaign was even more successful than the previous two. They force the Pomesanian Prussians to provide them with large river boats that brought them down to the mouth of the Vistula where they founded Elbing. From there they moved further inland and established Christburg. That cut the next tribe, the Pogesanians off from the amber on the coast at which point they too submitted to the order.

This period was followed by a period of lull where the overall situation was so calm, Hermann Balk could send some of his forces north to Riga to support the Livonian Sword Brothers who had just been integrated into the Teutonic order.

This period of calm was also when the second leg of Hermann Balk’s strategy gained traction. As they had shown in Transylvania, the Teutonic Knights were not only a strong military force, they were also great at economic development. The German settlers who had started trickling into Prussia right from the beginning were becoming a wave of immigration as the Teutonic Order’s hold on the territory strengthened. These settlers not only set up villages as they had done in the lands east of the Elbe since the 12th centuries, the Order also encouraged the establishment of towns and cities. The ink on the capitulation of the Prussian warriors at Kulm wasn’t yet dry in 1233 when Hermann Balk issued the Kulmer Handfeste, granting city rights to Kulm and Thorn based on Magdeburg Law. The conditions for the new citizens were in some respects very generous, namely on taxes, tolls, fines and the regular devaluations medieval rulers implemented as a way of funding themselves. On the flipside though, the order’s control over the city’s institutions was much tighter than for example in other Hanse cities founded around that time, like for instance Danzig.

What amazes me is how quickly these settlements become wealthy in the 13th century. In 1231 Kulm was allegedly a broken fort, but by 1242 Kulm, Rheden and Thorn had brick walls. Trade was flourishing, flourishing to a degree that it caused concern for duke Swantopolk of Pomerania whose capital and main trading centre was Gdansk/Danzig and it was feeling the heat from the competition.

Meanwhile the conquest of the coastal areas continued. In 1239 the crusaders established Balga on the Vistula Lagoon as a fortress to suppress the Warmier, another one of the 11 Prussian tribes. Things moved forward as planned, slow and steady, or should have done so, had it not been for the arrival of a new kid on the block, the Mongols.

The Mongols had their eye on Hungary, having conquered most of the former empire of the Rus. The direct route into Hungary was through the Carpathian mountain passes that could be defended by even relatively small force. Therefore, the Mongol Khan sent two armies, one directly to Hungary and one to go around the Pannonian basin aiming to get to Hungary through Poland, Saxony and Bohemia. This invasion was extremely successful. The Mongol army pushed rapidly into Poland and found little resistance on the mountain passes into Hungary.

In April 1241, at two separate battles they wiped out the Polish forces of duke Henry the Pious of Silesia at the battle of Liegnitz and the forces of king Bela of Hungary at the battle of Mohi. For some still not completely understood reason the Mongols did not exploit their victory beyond some light plundering and massacring. They withdrew as quickly as they had come.  The net result was that europe remained in the grip of fear of another Mongol invasion for decades and the Polish dukes blamed each other for the disaster which made them even weaker and even more disunited than they had been before.

At the same time the Teutonic Knights in Livonia got into conflict with the republic of Novgorod, a story we will look at in more detail in two weeks. What is important here is that this conflict led to the famous Battle on the Ice in which Alexander Nevsky leading the forces of the Republic defeated an army of the Teutonic Knights.

News of a defeat of the seemingly invincible Teutonic Knights spread like wildfire across Prussia. The Prussians also sensed that duke Konrad of Masovia and the other Polish dukes were too weak to come to the aid of the order. What swung them into action was that duke Swantopolk of Pomerelia had had enough of his cousins, the Teutonic knights and the competition from the citizens of Thorn, Kulm and Elbing and so he allied with the Prussians.

What turned the situation from challenging to existential for the Teutonic Knights in Prussia was that Swantopolk and maybe others provided the Prussians with modern, western military equipment, armour, swords and the like. Suddenly the knights’ superiority even in open battle wasn’t assured. In 1244 the knights suffered a defeat at Rheden and in 1249 at Krücken. Within a short period the order was reduced to just the three brick-built castles and cities, Kulm, Thorn and Rheden.

The war ground down to a stalemate. The Teutonic Knights were unable to hold the open countryside and even where they built wooden forts, they were often overrun. On the other hand the Prussians and Swantopolk were unable to take the three strong castles.

This could have easily been the end of the story, had it not been for papal support

It is now the year 1249, Hermann von Salza is long dead and the struggle between emperor and pope has moved into its final stages. Either side is convinced that only a complete destruction of the other could bring a resolution. This last decade the Teutonic Order outside Prussia had cycled through a number of Grand masters, was split internally and had been yoyoing between the papal and imperial side. The order was rich and had an immense moral authority, making it a coveted ally in this struggle. Hence the new Grand Mster was able to convince pope Innocent IV to call a crusade against Swantopolk and the Prussians. Now the Teutonic Knights were able to clear the Kulmer Land and regained Marienwerder, whilst the other Polish dukes threatened to take Gdansk and dislodge Swantopolk from the mouth of the Vistula.

 Swantopolk was ready to negotiate, which forced the Prussians to the table as well. The pope had sent a legate to balance the various interests of the church, the Polish dukes, the order and indeed the Prussians.

The complex negotiations ended with the treaty of Christburg in 1249. The Teutonic Knights were confirmed in their control of the Prussian lands they had conquered previously. But they had to accept the creation of three independent bishoprics in their territory, they had to tolerate a crusade by the King of Norway against the Samland, the Prussian territory north of their recent acquisitions. They had to agree to give the citizens of Lubeck and the Polish princes shares in any further conquests depending on their level of participation.

And finally, they were obliged to grant converted Prussians full citizens’ rights equal to those of the Christian settlers, including the right to become knights.

These were tough conditions that if permanent would have prevented the Teutonic Knights from creating the theocratic state Prussia would eventually become.

The peace of Christburg puts an end to the first Prussian revolt. As you can gather from the name first Prussian revolt, there may be another one. In fact there will be two more. But time is up. As usual I have spent too much time with digressions and descriptions of long lost civilisations. Next week I will try to be crisper and fail again. But I should get through the remaining 40 years of the conquest of Prussia. I hope you will join us again.

If you want to read ahead, there are some book recommendations in the show notes and a link to the excellent translation of Nicolaus von Jeroschin’s chronicle by Mary Fisher, well worth a read.

Before I go, let me thank all of you who are supporting the show, in particular the Patrons who have kindly signed up on patron.com/historyofthegermans. It is thanks to you this show does not have to start with me endorsing mattresses or meal kits. If Patreon isn’t for you, another way to help the show is sharing the podcast directly or boosting its recognition on social media. If you share, comment or retweet a post from the History of the Germans it is more likely to be seen by others, hence bringing in more listeners. My most active places are Twitter @germanshistory and my Facebook page History of the Germans Podcast. As always, all the links are in the show notes.   

Bibliography

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

by on

Diplomat and Grand Master of the Teutonic Order

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 129 – Hermann von Salza

“.. the far-sighted planning of Grand Master Brother Hermann von Salza had so strengthened the Teutonic Order that it had many members and such power, riches and honour that word of its fame and good reputation had spread the length and breadth of the empire.” So describes the chronicler Nicolaus von Jeroschin the role of the fourth and arguably most influential of the grand Masters of the Teutonic Knights. His role in promoting and expanding the order is hard to exaggerate. Without his skill and energy, the Teutonic Knights would have ended up like the Order of the Knights of St. Thomas. Have you have never heard of the Knights of St. Thomas, a English chivalric military order founded as a field hospital during the siege of the city of Acre in 1191? Well, that is the difference one man can make, at least very occasionally.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 129 – Hermann von Salza

“.. the far-sighted planning of Grand Master Brother Hermann von Salza had so strengthened the Teutonic Order that it had many members and such power, riches and honour that word of its fame and good reputation had spread the length and breadth of the empire.” So describes the chronicler Nicolaus von Jeroschin the role of the fourth and arguably most influential of the grand Masters of the Teutonic Knights. His role in promoting and expanding the order is hard to exaggerate. Without his skill and energy, the Teutonic Knights would have ended up like the Order of the Knights of St. Thomas. Have you have never heard of the Knights of St. Thomas, a English chivalric military order founded as a field hospital during the siege of the city of Acre in 1191? Well, that is the difference one man can make, at least very occasionally.

Before we get into the story let me briefly reiterate that the History of the Germans podcast and all its offshoots, including the recently launched separate podcast on the Teutonic Knights are advertising free thanks to the generosity of our patrons. And you can become a patron too by signing up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans or by making a one-time donation at historyofthegermans.com/support. And thanks a lot to Thomas E. O., Joseph L., Ales T. and the ghost of Wayne Knight from Jurassic Park who have already signed up.

Support the Show – Become a PAtron

The Early Years

The very first time we hear of the existence of Hermann von Salza is in the year 1210 when he is present at the coronation of John of Brienne as King of Jerusalem. At that point he is already the master of the Knights of the Hospital of St. Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem, which suggests he must already be a man of some maturity.

His family were Ministeriales to the Landgraves of Thuringia. Ministeriales were a uniquely German institution. They had originally been unfree men, serfs, who had been trained in the use of knightly weapons. As unfree men they were the property of their master and could -at least in theory- be sent to do whatever the master demanded. In practice they lived a lifestyle almost indistinguishable from the lower aristocracy, they held castles and were sometimes exceedingly wealthy. But they did not have the freedoms of a true aristocrat to choose their master and refuse orders incompatible with their honour. All that resulted in a social inferiority complex for many Ministeriales families. One way to get elevated from serf knight to true knight was to join a chivalric order, which explains the attraction of the Teutonic Knights to this class and presumably to Hermann von Salza.

We do not know when he joined but even by 1210 the Teutonic Order was still a very modest affair. They had started off as a field hospital during the siege of Acre and had set up a more permanent structure inside the city once it had been taken. They had some property in the Holy Land as well as  a monastery and some castles in Sicily given to them by emperor Henry VI. Henry VI had planned a crusade in 1197 that would presumably have involved a role for the Teutonic Order, but the emperor had died before he could get going. All we know about this period is that the order is so insignificant that we know nothing about the first three grand masters apart from their names.

In 1210 when Hermann von Salza takes over the outlook is especially bleak. The early sponsors of the Teutonic knights had been the Hohenstaufen family, namely duke Frederick of Swabia and his brother, the emperor Henry VI. By 1210 the power of the Hohenstaufen seemed irretrievably lost. Philipp of Swabia the last of Henry VI’ brothers had fought an endless civil war for the Imperial crown against Otto IV from the House of Welf. Though he had won the war, he was murdered in 1208 on an unrelated matter. At that point Hohenstaufen power in the German lands collapsed. The empire went to Otto IV, archenemy of the Hohenstaufen and presumably uninterested in the tiny hospital in Acre, assuming he even knew about its existence.

There was still the baby boy Henry VI had left behind, the then last male member of the House of Waiblingen. He had by now turned 15 but watched powerless as Otto IV’s army was coming down to Sicily to link up with the rebels who wanted to remove him from his throne.

The new grandmaster urgently needed a new sponsor.

The Financing of the Chivalric Orders

All of the chivalric orders were heavily dependent upon financial support from Europe. Building these enormous castles and manning them with highly trained knights was extraordinarily expensive. Just google the Krak des Chevaliers, the stronghold of the Knights Hospitallers. It covered 6 hectares and was continuously garrisoned by 2000 men. There was no way such a structure could be built, maintained and staffed with the resources available in the Holy Land. And on top of that there are the hospitals, some of which are quite large and the churches the orders maintained.

To fund all that, the chivalric orders, like other religious orders, received donations from lay people who were keen to benefit from the spiritual wealth their activities generated. That was initially quite easy since enthusiasm for crusading was huge and the momentum of the First Crusade pushed vast amounts of resources towards the Holy Land. But by the end of the 12th century the news from the Holy Land had been relentlessly bleak. The armies of the second crusade had been routed before even the first pilgrim set foot in Palestine. Jerusalem had fallen in 1187 and the various attempts to regain it had failed. The fourth crusade had turned into a travesty when the Venetian doge demanded the crusaders attack Christian Constantinople in lieu of payment for transport to the Holy Land.

To keep the cash flowing the church resorted to a system of indulgences, Ablaesse in German. I guess you have all heard about those in the context of the Reformation. In the 13th century they were still new and relatively reasonable. So for instance someone got convicted of a crime and ordered to go on crusade as penance, but was elderly or infirm. In that case he could pay someone else to go in his stead. To find such a person he could go to a chivalric order who would send one of their brothers in exchange for a sizeable contribution. Things got a bit more edgy when the papacy developed the theory of excess grace or “the treasury of merit”. The idea was that all the saints and martyrs had been so holy and worshipful that they had generated much more divine grace than they needed for the ticket to heaven. This excess divine grace was now administered by the church who would allocate it to those penitent sinners much in need of that elusive balm that wiped off their sins. To gain an indulgence a sinner had to perform a good deed, such as make a number of prayers, go on pilgrimage, serve the poor or infirm etc. One qualifying act was making a donation to a good cause, a hospital or orphanage.

As crusading euphoria died down and financing needs escalated in the 13th century, the popes passed some of that excess divine grace to the chivalric orders to pass out as indulgences to those who were willing to repent and support the crusading effort by making a donation.

These donations ranged from tangible items, like foodstuff or clothes to whole estates, castles and even entire counties. To manage the flow of donations and the estates, the chivalric orders established networks of administrative centres across Europe. These were usually run by a member of the military wing or the order who would be called a commander or a Komtur in German. So when you travel through Germany and find an estate or vineyard is called a Komtur or in France a Commanderie, that would usually mean it was once owned by a chivalric order.

A chivalric order operated very much like a modern charity, except for a slightly different attitude to the locals. Only a small number of knights were in the Holy land actually fighting Muslims in the same way as only a few Medicins sans Frontier are actually on the frontier. Like Oxfam, where a lot more people work in their high street shops than drill wells in Sahel, behind any Templar riding out to face up to Saladin’s noble fighters stood not just his squires but also a whole centurion of administrators and fundraisers in their commanderies way back home.

The Teutonic Knights in Transylvania

The Teutonic Knights in 1210 had no network of Commanderies across Western Europe and after the demise of the Hohenstaufen little prospect of that happening any time soon. They needed new sponsors. And so, like any good charity boss, Hermann von Salza went on a journey to find donors. In 1211 he sets out to visit the kingdom of Armenia and the island of Cyprus, both Christian states in the region. He strikes up a friendship with king Leo of Armenia who promptly makes a generous donation. At the next staging post in Cyprus his efforts did not yield quite the results he intended. But whilst on the journey he made a very lucrative acquaintance. He met some senior Hungarian noblemen, envoys of king Andreas to the kingdom of Jerusalem.

Andreas may already be familiar with the order since his influential wife Gertrud is from Bavaria and many of his advisers are German. But when king Andreas hears of the ambitious and industrious new master of the order he comes up with an idea.

Hungary had been the entry point for central Asians invaders since Attila the Hun. The early 13th century version of these attackers were the Cumans. As per usual, the Cumans were a pagan people who had conquered a large territory east of Hungary thanks to exceptional horsemanship and archery. Their constant attacks on the Hungarian border had resulted in a depopulated wasteland on the easters side of the kingdom. Inviting these Teutonic Knights to take over one of these buffer zones would be a great way to improve Hungary’s defences. And as an added benefit, King Andreas could claim to have supported the crusaders which would gain him some valuable excess divine grace.

So in 1211 the Teutonic Knights are offered to become Hungarian vassals in the Burzenland, a region in Transylvania, modern day Romania. The king grants them almost complete independence. Only the right to mint coins and any claim on minerals and precious metals remains with the crown. They are allowed to erect castles, found cities, establish markets, lay roads, build mills, pretty much whatever medieval colonists desire. In exchange they are to defend the Kingdom against invasions by the pagan Cumans

It is likely that there were already some hardy German colonists there when the Teutonic knights arrived, but after they had established themselves more and more arrived from Germany, mainly from Saxony and Franconia. The abandoned farmland is brought under the plough, villages are established, the new province flourished and the Teutonic Knights gained a reputation as competent managers. And it wasn’t only a commercial adventure. Because the Cumans were pagans with little intention to convert, the Teutonic Knights were allowed fight them under they order’s rule. It was here, rather than the Holy Land where the Teutonic Knights first displayed their impressive military skill. They built strong castles, including Kronberg, modern day Brasov and the first Marienburg (Feldioara in Romanian). The castles protected the new settlements and formed bases for increasingly successful operations against the Cumans.  

The development was so rapid that by the 1220s this territory had become a major contributor to the Teutonic Knights coffers. And it had become a recruitment tool for new knights who wanted to serve in crusades but preferred central European climate and the momentum that the Holy Land so sadly lacked.

All these successes did however not last. The Hungarian nobles became increasingly concerned about the rising power and wealth of a well organised, coherent monastic state inside their kingdom. One of the issues with the Teutonic Knights was that they had vowed chastity and poverty, like monks. They had no children and did not own the land they administered personally. Therefore every little strip of land they had acquired would stay with the order for ever. As the order expanded, more and more land would be swallowed up and taken out of circulation. That was similar to normal monasteries, but those could be bullied to hand things over or appoint the nobles as bailiffs. But Teutonic Knights, not easy to bully.

The Hungarian nobles conclude that they need to get rid of these interlopers before it was too late. And they find an ally in Bela, the crown prince who is very much not a dutiful son of king Andreas. One story is that this aristocratic and filial opposition twists Andreas arm until he revokes the Teutonic Knight’s privileges. Another is that Andreas had become closer to the Templars and Hospitallers during his time in the fifth Crusade, preferring them to the scruffier Teutonic Knights. In any event an order is issued for them to leave.

The Knights protest to the pope and are reinstated, but that opens another can of worms. Being unsure about their position relative to the current and even more the future Hungarian king Bela, they seek Papal protection. They go as far as offering pope Honorius III sovereignty over their new province and chuck out the local bishop. At that point all of Hungary, including Andreas, unites against the order and they are trown out. The pope protests but to no avail.

As for the German colonists, they stay and live there until after the fall of the Berlin Wall. These are the famous Siebenburger Sachsen, the Transsylvanian Saxons who maintained their own culture and traditions for hundreds of years, creating a cultural landscape that is  very high up on my bucket list to visit.

The friendship between Hermann von Salza and emperor Frederick II

Whilst all this is going on, our friend Hermann von Salza continues his search for more patrons. In 1215 he might have gone to Sicily where the order had some important possessions. By now the fortune of the house of Hohenstaufen had completely changed. Henry VI’ baby son had grown up and – with the support of pope Innocent III – had gone to Germany and, thanks to Otto IV’s defeat at the battle of Bouvines, had become King of the Romans.

This baby son is none other than the emperor Frederick II. Hermann von Salza meets Frederick II in 1216 in Germany and the two men formed one of these rare political friendships that benefitted both sides equally. Hermann von Salza was Frederick II’s foreign secretary, his main interlocutor with the papacy. Despite the almost insurmountable political differences, Hermann von Salza’s was able to bring pope and emperor back to the negotiating table, again and again. Only after the grand master had died in 1239 did the true fight to the death between the two heads of Christendom break out.

These developments from Henry VI’s acquisition of Sicily in 1194 to the beheading of Konradin, the last of the Hohenstaufen in 1268 was subject of an entire series of the History of the Germans. I will not go through all of the fascinating ups and downs in this podcast. It is a brilliant story and if you want to get in full or want to refresh your memory, listen to the episodes 70 to 92. I have actually just listened to them again myself, and some of the stories are just great.

But back to Hermann. The deal he got was that in exchange for all his advice, his help in keeping the papacy from going all out for him was that Frederick II would promote the Teutonic order at every opportunity. Whether that was a deal they agreed at their very first meeting in 1216 or at a later stage is unclear, but that is how it went down. Frederick handed over estates, castles and lands in Alsace, Thuringia, Franconia and Tyrol on top of generous donations in Sicily and Puglia. The Hohenstaufen supporters followed suit. For example the powerful Ministeriales of Munzenberg gave the order the hospital in Sachsenhausen today part of Frankfurt. And then there are the lords of Hohenlohe, a noble family from Franconia who claim to be loosely related to the Hohenstaufen. Their ancestral castle was Weikersheim, today one of Germany’s most remarkable Renaissance palaces and just 4 miles from my family home. More importantly for our story, the Hohenlohes were avid crusaders and upon return from the fifth crusade in 1219 they give the estate of Mergentheim to the order. Mergentheim would later become the administrative centre of the order in the German lands and after the loss of Prussia the seat of the Grand Master.

The Fifth Crusade

Talking about the fifth crusade, this is the first time the Teutonic Knights play a significant military role in the Holy Land. During the fifth crusade the Latins try something new. Instead of going straight for Jerusalem, they instead attack Egypt, which is more vulnerable. Hermann von Salza manages to recruit 700 crusaders for the undertaking which gives him a seat at the commanders’ table. The Fifth Crusade is in many ways a well-run operation led by locals, the king of Jerusalem and the masters of the chivalric orders, which may explain their initial success. They take the key trading city of Damietta after a long and difficult siege.

That cuts Cairo off from the mediterranean, which would end its hegemony in the east west trade. The sultan is prepared to offer the crusaders a great deal. They get Jerusalem back, minus the Al Aqsa Mosque, a lasting peace and the fragments of the Holy cross lost in the battle of Hattin. All that in exchange for just Damietta. Hermann von Salza and the king of Jerusalem, John of Brienna want to take the deal but some of the foreign crusaders led by the papal legate feel momentum is with them plus they have evidence that the mythical prester John will come to their aid. The Templars tip the balance to rejecting the offer and go off to take Cairo, at this point only the largest city west of India. The reason? The Templars cannot accept the sultan’s condition to keep the Al Aqsa Mosque as that meant losing their home on top of the Temple Mount, a home they haven’t had for decades, but still.  

Hermann is sent home to bring more reinforcements and indeed convinces Frederick to send more troops, even though the emperor is tied up with various rebellions. When Hermann gets back ahead of the reinforcements, he is told that everyone is restless and they will get going now. He counsels against a move before the imperial reinforcements are there but is overruled. The usual crusading disaster follows. A Gung Ho attack in unsuitable terrain and the army is wiped out, everyone is captured. Meanwhile the imperial troops arrived in Damietta and wondered how the hack everyone had left without them. In the peace agreement, Damietta was returned to the sultan of Egypt and everybody went home having achieved precisely nothing. Everybody blames emperor Frederick II.

The crusade of Frederick II

After that Frederick is constantly made to promise another crusade and for one or other reason had to cancel last minute. Several times it is Hermann von Salza’s diplomatic skill that stops the pope from excommunicating the emperor. To make crusading more attractive, Hermann organises for the emperor to marry Isabella, heiress of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Frederick uses this to immediately assume the title of king of Jerusalem, pushing aside his father in law, John of Brienne.

One side effect of these diplomatic missions is that Hermann can negotiate changes to the status of the Teutonic Order. A chivalric order, like any other monastic order had a rule, usually based on some adaptation of an existing rule, such as the rule of St. Benedict. In 1199 the Teutonic Order was given a mixed rule whereby they had to follow the rule of the Knights Hospitallers for their caritative side and the rule of the Templars for their military branch. In it it wasn’t quite clear whether they were subservient to the other two orders and/or had to take orders from the bishops.

Throughout the 1220’s Hermann von Salza obtained various papal privileges that elevated the Teutonic Knights to the same status that the other two orders enjoyed. That is the moment when they were officially allowed to wear their iconic white cloak with the black cross, something they had done for a while already. There were multiple revisions to their rule and by the 1250s they had acquired the right to alter their rule themselves, without requiring papal permission.

In 1225 Frederick II cancels his crusade one too many times. At that point even the resourceful von Salza cannot stop the pope from excommunicating the emperor. Which was really unfair, because this time it really wasn’t the emperor’s fault.

In 1226 Frederick tries to rehabilitate himself by eventually going on crusade. He and Hermann set off for the Holy Land with a sizeable but not overwhelmingly powerful army. This turns out to be both the most effective and least successful crusade.

News of the emperor’s excommunication had reached Jerusalem and the Franciscans, always opposed to Frederick II, have been agitating against him. When the crusaders arrive, the local powers, the patriarch, the nobility and the masters of the other two orders and above all the ex-king and imperial father-in-law John of Brienne shun the emperor. Still Frederick II ploughs on. But, rather than wasting his men and treasure in another futile attempt to dislodge the Saracens, he negotiates with the sultan and gets pretty much the same deal the crusaders had negotiated before Damietta. For the first time in 40 years Christians were again in control of Jerusalem and most of its holy sites -excluding the Al Aqsa Mosque.

But despite or maybe because of this astounding success the reaction is not just muted, but hostile. The patriarch of Jerusalem instead of rejoicing that he got back into his nominal seat not only refuses to crown Frederick king of Jerusalem in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, but instead reiterates the excommunication and places the whole city under interdict. Frederick II still insists on a coronation in church though. Hermann von Salza can convince him that forcing a pliant bishop to do it would make a reconciliation with the papacy almost impossible. So Frederick II crowns himself in a secular ceremony in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, something quite rare until Napoleon does it again in 1804.

With the local population and leadership so hostile Frederick II and his men had to withdraw in haste. This adventure yielded little benefit for the emperor and his trusted advisor the grand master. Frederick II came back to his kingdom of Sicily that had been overrun by papal mercenaries whilst the Teutonic Knights position in the Holy Land had changed. The close association with the emperor materially increased the possessions the order held in the Holy Land, gaining them their new headquarters, the Starkenburg or Montfort just outside Haifa. But at the same time they found themselves ostracised by the local leaders, a situation that got worse as the struggle between pope and emperor escalated.

It is likely around this time that the order became more and more German. So far they had received donations from across Europe and the crusader states, having established houses in Armenia, Greece, the kingdom of Sicily, Central Italy, France and Spain. Some of the brothers had been French or Italian. But that is now gradually coming to an end.

Konrad of Masovia invites the Teutonic Knights to Prussia

Whilst all this unfolds, a letter had arrived in the Teutonic Knights headquarters that will have much larger consequences than any of the crusades in the Holy Land.

In 1225/1226 the Polish duke Konrad of Masovia asked the Teutonic Knights whether they would be interested in defending Christendom against the heathen Prussians on his border. This was bad timing on Konrad’s part since the order was in the midst of organising the crusade of Frederick II and directed all their resources there. But Konrad insisted and negotiations continued and intensified after Hermann’s return from that crusade.

This is not the first time we encounter the Prussians, the Baltic people who lived between Poland and Lithuania. Those of you with good memory will recall St. Adalbert the friend of emperor Otto III who had set out to convert the Prussians in the 10th century; without much success. His slain body was bought back by the duke of Poland Boleslav the Brave and Otto III came to Gniesno to pray at his grave. The next missionary, Bruno von Querfurth was no more successful, gaining martyrdom within days of crossing into Prussian land. That was in 1009. After that local monasteries occasionally sent out missionaries into the Prussian lands, and some even returned alive, but not many. As for the Prussians, they remained obstinately pagan.

Tensions between Prussians and Poles escalated during the early 13th century. As the peaceful missionary attempts had failed, the Polish dukes called for a crusade against these pagans, hoping to incorporate them into their principalities. The crusade was given papal blessing and took place in 1222/23 involving the dukes of Masovia, Silesia and Pomerelia. Prussian resistance was strong and the crusaders got defeated. And worse for the Poles, namely Konrad of Masovia, the Prussians sensed their weakness and attacked, plundering and burning the duke’s lands. Amongst others the great Cistercian abbey of Oliwa was burned down twice.

One of the fundamental problems was the fragmentation of the Polish rulers, the Piast dynasty. Ever since the death of Boleslaw III Wrymouth in 1138 the kingdom had split into multiple duchies, each ruled by a different branch of the Piast family. One of them was usually chosen as the “high duke” and nominal ruler of Poland, though his control over his cousins was very limited. The duchy of Masovia that Konrad ruled did not have the resources to defeat the Prussians and the other dukes were happy to come for a period of fighting, but had enough other problems that stopped them from running sustained campaigns.

In that situation the duke of Masovia put his hope into the concept of chivalric orders. And of those there were many, not just the Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights. He negotiated with these three as well as with the Spanish order of Calatrava before founding his own order, the order of Dobrin or Milites Christi in Prussia. They attracted some 15 knights from Northern Germany who took over the border castle at Dobrin. But this new order had limited resources and was less successful in attracting colonists as their colleagues in Transylvania so that they could barely hold out in Dobrin.

The situation was pretty dire when Konrad of Masovia and his bishops put their last hope into the Teutonic Order. They offered them the Kulmerland, the land around the city of Kulm or Chelmno in Polish. The exact terms of this transaction are disputed between German and Polish historians. The Polish argue that it was given as a fief whilst the Germans argue that it had been handed over as unencumbered property. What both sides agree is that in 1230 the city and the land was in the hands of the Prussians.

If the Polish duke thought that the Teutonic Knights would be blown away by the generosity of the offer and would immediately saddle their horses to come to the rescue of his duchy, he was sorly mistaken.

For one, the Teutonic Knights saw their main purpose in the conquest and defence of the Holy Land. All this activity in Eastern Europe, including the activity in Hungary were always only ancillary to the main job.

Moreover, the debacle in the Burzenland had made them weary of princely promises, in particular from princes whose position wasn’t very stable. If they were going to do something like that again, they would only go with all belts and braces.

Therefore Hermann von Salza got the emperor Frederick II issue the Golden Bull of Rimini in which the Teutonic Knights are granted full ownership of the land of Chelmno and all future acquisitions in Prussia. Not only that but the head of Teutonic Order was elevated to the rank of imperial prince. As an imperial principality the emperor was obliged to help them in case they get attacked by an enemy. Moreover they were also granted all imperial regalia in Prussia, the right to raise taxes, levies, tolls, mint coins, build castles, found cities and exploit natural resources. What is unclear is the date of the Golden Bull. On the document it says 1226 so immediately after the first time Konrad of Masovia had made contact. Modern scholars put the date at 1234/5 at a time when the conquest of Prussia had already gained traction.

The problem with the Golden Bull is whether the emperor had jurisdiction over this territory. The basic argument for is that pagan lands were considered no-man’s land which therefore was the purvey of the heads of Christendom, the emperor and the pope. The counterargument would be that Poland had already built a presence in Kulm/Chelmno so that it was Christian land temporarily occupied by pagans, hence Polish and not Imperial. This debate about whether Prussia was part of the empire or not keeps rumbling on in the background and is the reason the elector Frederick of Brandenburg was crowned king in Prussia in Koenigsberg in 1701 rather than king of Prussia or king of Brandenburg.

In any event the Teutonic Order will conquer Prussia and rule it without paying homage to the king of Poland for most of its existence.

Now we will not talk about the conquest of Prussia this week. That will be in the next episode.

Elisabeth of Hungary and Hermann’s last years

What I would like to do instead is bringing the story of Hermann von Salza to its conclusion. Hermann remained instrumental in all of Frederick II’s policies. He keeps travelling relentlessly between Germany, Italy, Sicily and the Holy Land, an astounding feat for a man who must be in his fifties or early sixties by now. He negotiates the reconciliation between Frederick II and pope Honorius III that keeps a lid on things for nearly a decade. He gets sent to negotiate the release of King Waldemar II of Denmark, a story we heard in the context of the foundation of Lubeck, episode 105.

His greatest moment came at the canonisation of Saint Elisabeth of Thuringia in Marburg in 1235. Elisabeth had become one of the most influential saints in the high Middle Ages as the stories of her deep faith and devotion to the poor and infirm spread across the empire. She had become so revered that the ceremony of her canonisation was attended by the emperor Frederick II himself. The ruling landgrave of Thuringia at the time, Konrad, gave the hospital Elizabeth had founded in Marburg to the Teutonic Knights and allowed them to build and maintain the church where her body would be kept in a splendid golden reliquary. This association with Saint Elisabeth hugely improved the order’s standing, not to speak of the financial benefit the management of such an important pilgrimage site generated. The church they built, the Elizabethkirche is still there and Marburg became a main centre for the Teutonic Order, site of the meetings of the grand Chapter.

To what extent Saint Elisabeth was coerced into sometimes cruel acts of self-harm and harm to her children by her spiritual guardian, the unquestionably vile inquisitor Konrad of Marburg is something I did discuss in one of the bonus episodes for patrons.

1235 also saw the negotiations about the incorporation of the Livonian sword brothers into the Teutonic Knights something we have already looked at in episode 110.  

Hermann of Salza is literally everywhere where anything happens between 1216 and 1239. And he has to be. Frederick II’s attempts to bring Northern Italy under his control pushes him into an ever more difficult position vis-à-vis the pope who fears to be surrounded by imperial territory on all sides. Hermann von Salza is the man who enjoys the trust of both sides and can stop small issues from blowing up into outright hostilities.

He keeps going to almost his very last day. On March 20th, 1239 Hermann von Salza succumbed to an unknown illness. In the following 11 years Frederick II and pope Innocent IV find themselves in a military and spiritual struggle that ends with the fall of the House of Hohenstaufen and 50 years later the removal of the papacy from Rome to Avignon.

As the fortunes of their great benefactor dims, the order’s path lies ahead sparkling in bright sunshine. As you may know, I am not an adherent of the Great Man view of history, but occasionally there are individuals who have an impact that goes beyond just managing the main political and economic currents well. And Hermann von Salza is one of them. Without his energy and skill the Teutonic Knight would have ended up like so many minor chivalric orders, the order of Saint Thomas, the Order of Calatrava, the Livonian word brothers etc., etc.

Now next week we will see what Hermann’s successors do with his legacy. We will move our focus to the North and take a look at how the Teutonic Knights gained Prussia, how they organised themselves and their territory and what made them so special. I hope you will join us again.

by on

The beginnings of the Teutonic Knights

Hello and welcome to a new season of the History of the Germans, the Teutonic Knights or to give them their full title, the knights of the hospital of St. Mary of the House of the Germans in Jerusalem. Even though the state they had created in Prussia has been wiped off the map with all its cultural markers, the Teutonic Knights are not forgotten. Less shrouded in nonsense than the Templars, less devoted to social causes than the Knights of St. John  they still loom large not just in German history but even more so in Polish and Russian history. Both of these nations have placed victories over the Teutonic Knights at key junctions of their national narrative.

But were the Teutonic knights these near invincible, cruel faceless war machines that Sergei Eisenstein had charging over the ice to the sound of Prokofiev brilliant score? That is what we will try to find out over the next few episodes. Expect your fair share of heroic battles, chivalric entertainment all intermingled with twisted theology and astute commercial activity. I hope you will enjoy it.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to a new season of the History of the Germans, the Teutonic Knights or to give them their full title, the knights of the hospital of St. Mary of the House of the Germans in Jerusalem. Even though the state they had created in Prussia has been wiped off the map with all its cultural markers, the Teutonic Knights are not forgotten. Less shrouded in nonsense than the Templars, less devoted to social causes than the Knights of St. John  they still loom large not just in German history but even more so in Polish and Russian history. Both of these nations have placed victories over the Teutonic Knights at key junctions of their national narrative.

But were the Teutonic knights these near invincible, cruel faceless war machines that Sergei Eisenstein had charging over the ice to the sound of Prokofiev brilliant score? That is what we will try to find out over the next few episodes. Expect your fair share of heroic battles, chivalric entertainment all intermingled with twisted theology and astute commercial activity. I hope you will enjoy it.

But before we start let me tell you again that the History of the Germans and its offshoot podcasts are all advertising free. And that is more important than ever. Even if I look at just the last 12 months, podcast advertising has become more and more irritating. Publishers who have spent excessive amounts on hosts and production are forced to cram in more and more advertising to make back their investments. Podcasting networks who by the way take a cool 50% of all advertising revenues, convince independent podcasters to have their shows interrupted mid-sentence to push some crypto currency or the ubiquitous online mental health services. I find this worrying as it will drive people away from listening to openly available podcasts like this one. The author and journalist Cory Doctorow had described this process as follows: quote “Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.” This is a family podcast so I will not use the term he coined for this, but if you are interested there is a link to his blogpost in the show notes.

Therefore, if you care about independent podcasting please support not just the History of the Germans but other independent podcasters who either commit to an advertising free model or at least constrain themselves to one or two advertising inserts. That is why we should all be thankful to  Sir Mustard, Chuck T, Michael R., and Eric F. and all the others who have already signed up on patreon.com/History of the Germans or have made a one-time donation at historyofthegermans.com.

Support the Show – Become a PAtron

Back to the show.

And we start at the beginning: 

Quote: “In the year of His incarnation 1190 at a time when the city of Acre was besieged by Christians and was recovered from the hands of the infidels by favor of divine grace, there were in the army of the Christians certain devoted men from the cities of Bremen and Lübeck, who, as men of mercy who looked with eyes of compassion upon the diverse and intolerable shortages and discomforts of the sick staying in the said army, founded a hospital in a tent of theirs made from the sail of a certain ship, which in German is called a “cog”. Gathering the infirm there, they served them humbly and devotedly and, looking after them lovingly out of the goods conferred upon them by God, they treated them mercifully, attending to the fact that in the person of any sick or poor man they received Christ himself.” End quote. This is how Peter von Duisburg a priest-brother of the Teutonic Knight described the foundation of the order in the chronicle he put together in 1326-1330.

It is a long way from Bremen and Lubeck merchants rigging a shelter for the sick and wounded to armed men clad in white robes embroidered with black crosses charging their enormous warhorses at lightly armed peasants across a frozen Baltic landscape.

To understand why in the medieval mind these two activities were just two sides of the same medal, we need to go back a few more centuries further and talk about the values and behaviours of the medieval ruling elite that goes by the term of chivalry.

The Teutonic Knights were a chivalric military order and the reason they and the other chivalric orders like the Templar and the Knights Hospitallers came to into existence is down to this rather convoluted and contradictory worldview.

Chivalry traces back to three sources. One were older Germanic and Scandinavian ideas about what it meant to be a warrior. Then there are the core teachings of the church and we have the concepts of courtly love and behaviour that emerge out of nothing during the 12th and 13th century.

In Germanic tribal culture, being a warrior was seen as the pinnacle of human achievement that required lifelong training that started in early childhood. But fighting skills wasn’t all. They differentiated between honourable warriors and well-trained thugs. And the key difference between the two was loyalty, meaning loyalty to the tribe, to the leader and to the warriors under ones command. So loyalty went both ways. The warrior would defend the king, earl or chieftain with his life. In return the leader would ensure the warrior gets an opportunity to become rich. Plunder had to be divided justly between the leader and his men and sometimes women. And if the leader was either unable or unwilling to provide the opportunities for enrichment, that leader could and would be replaced.

This warrior culture relished fighting almost as fighting for fighting’s sake. They embraced not just the physical challenge, but also the inevitable consequence, i.e., lots of fighting means lots of death. But falling in battle held little threat for Norsemen, Goths, Franks, Lombards and Burgundians since an honourable death led straight to a seat at the feasts in Valhalla, where one could continue straight away with the fighting and drinking, presumably now without the risk of actual death.

If one had the misfortune of being defeated and not dying in the battle, there were two potential outcomes. If one had fought valiantly and the lack of dying was down to simply being unlucky, the warrior would be executed in a way that was considered a honourable death that got him safely into Valhalla. If he had behaved cowardly, for instance had surrendered, the warrior was refused such honour and was sold into slavery instead.

That changed around the 9th century. Warriors that were captured were now neither executed nor sold but ransomed back to their families. Why that happened isn’t quite clear.

It may be that the emergence of a Carolingian empire fostered some notion of unity amongst the Frankish aristocrats. Even when fighting over a plot of land, a girl or an insult, both sides in the conflict were members of the same elite, the Frankish nobility. And this elite mingled across ever larger distances, made friends and married each other’s sisters.

Another component was that the church had banned Christians from keeping or enslaving fellow Christians. Enslaving pagans was perfectly fine, just not Christians. And that meant any enemy who was captured could not be turned into profit any other way than by sending him back for ransom.

And lastly, that dying business had become a lot less fun now that the gates of Valhalla had been shut for good. A ruthless warrior was now going straight to hell unless he had done penance before it was all over. Seeing the pearly gates vanishing in the distance a defeated knight was better off to yield, pay ransom and have another go at either the same enemy or eternal salvation. And in turn the victor was now expected to accept the submission of his fellow knight and treat him with respect whilst they were waiting for the cash to arrive.

This practice of capturing and ransoming enemies sounds like a material improvement to the violent nature of the early medieval world. But unfortunately it had unintended consequences that led to more, rather than less violence.

As we get into the 10th and 11th century feuding became more and more common in particular in France. The reason for that was that the risk involved in feuding had reduced dramatically. Advances in armour had reduced the risk of getting killed in fighting, and that would only be a risk where the feuding lords did indeed meet in open battle rather than just burning down each other’s villages. The higher survival rate and the practice of releasing fellow aristocrats for ransom meant they would be back in their castle a few months later once a cash had been exchanged.

At that point the downside of armed conflict with your neighbour became solely financial. And proud knights were trained not to look after the pennies, so that feuds proliferated. In particular in areas where the central authority was weak or even non-existent like France from the 10th century and the empire after the death of Henry III in the 11th century. More feuds meant more dead peasants, more burned down villages, churches and even monasteries.

The latter is where the strain of chivalry comes in, the Christian religion. The way this is usually told is that the church was seeking ways to restrain the amount of violence by making the chevaliers swear an oath not to fight from Thursday to Sunday, to spare women, children, unarmed prelates, and even merchants etc., etc. And, yes, it is true that many bishops and abbots called large gatherings where the knights present were made to swear solemn oaths before holy relics to keep the peace sanctioned by eternal damnation.

But to claim there was a huge standoff between the bellicose warrior aristocrats and the peace-loving churchmen is just plain wrong. The bishops and abbots were the brothers and cousins of the knights and counts. They had grown up together and often shared the same upbringing, education and training.

And not just that. These thuggish plunderers were as devoted Christians as everybody else in medieval western Europe. These men cared deeply about their souls and struggled quite profoundly with the chasm that existed between their profession and lifestyle on one side and the teachings of the bible, not only the new testament’s turning the other cheek, but even the Old Testament’s, though shalt not kill and though shalt not covet your neighbours house, wife, servants, ox, donkey or anything.

We hear of knights wholeheartedly repenting their sins. That usually meant donating land or rights to monasteries. In some cases knights would end their years as monks relentlessly praying for forgiveness. 

One of these repentant sinners was an early grand masters of the Teutonic Knights, Konrad, the Landgrave of Thuringia. Konrad had captured and completely destroyed the city of Fritzlar in some feud or war. After that he was so wrecked by guilt for what he had done, he went to Fritzlar to do penance. Here is what happened according to the chronicle by Nicolaus of Jeroschin, quote: “Bareheaded and barefoot he walked around the churchyard at the head of a procession and then he lay down at the door of the churchyard in that town and offered to allow himself to be beaten by the people there with a rod which he was carrying as recompense for the humiliation and the crimes he had inflicted on them. When no-one hit him he did not give up: he went from house to house through the town falling on his knees at every door. He pleaded with the occupants to come out and beat him as much as they wished for his sins. He shed many tears begging them to forgive him for the guilt he had incurred and that is what happened. Many people wept with him out of sympathy for the violent emotions called forth by his penitence. The prince went right through the city and was not beaten at all except by an old woman who struck him so hard on the body with the sharp rod that she drew blood, taking revenge for his sin. The lord suffered this patiently.”

We do not know whether or not that was indeed what happened and whether he did this voluntarily may be debated. But this was a story the Teutonic Knights told each other about their venerable forebearers as an example of knightly behaviour.  We can assume that a high aristocrat, cousin of the emperor humiliating himself in such a fashion shows that penance for acts of violence was something the knights had to and were willing to accept.

And it also shows the fundamental contradiction at the centre of chivalry.

On the one hand knights have been trained and conditioned to be warriors. That was the way to gain the respect of your fellow men, to defend your family and to become wealthy. It wasn’t just a skill, but a way of life, a way of life every male in their family had lived since time immemorial and that chivalric literature celebrated.

But on the other hand the knights realised that all this violence was in total contravention of their religious beliefs. Jesus had preached about peace, about turning the other cheek, had steadied Paul’s sword and let’s not forget accepted the state’s violence against the son of god. And even the more warlike old testament is full of suggestions to turn swords into ploughshares.

This is an unsustainable situation. The elites of western europe are told every Sunday at mass that their main raison d’etre will land them in hell. And the people who told the warriors that they should cut the fighting were the bishops and abbots, who in turn were their own brothers, sons and cousins.

In light of that these Truces of God take on a very different meaning. If the rule is that one isn’t allowed to kill peasants  from Thursday to Sunday, it implies it is perfectly ok to kill them on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. If the murder and rape of women, children and prelates is banned, it implies that slaughtering adult males must be acceptable, provided it is a Tuesday.

This inverse interpretation of the Truce of God provided relief from spiritual torment for many, but the more thoughtful souls realised that this was a mere fig leaf.

And by the 11th century the third pillar of chivalry was erected. This one does not trace back to an ancient cultural notion but is a genuine invention of the Middle Ages, the idea of courtly love. Courtly love is the concept that a good knight would become an even better knight through the devotion to a woman, ideally a lady of much higher social standing who was completely unobtainable.

This concept of male devotion is a very European cultural ideal that you will not find to the same degree in other cultures and that has also largely disappeared in the modern world. Imagine a first  class footballer like Ronaldo, Messi, Tony Kroos or Sergio Agüero would declare on television that his unrequited love for Kate Middleton is what had made him so great.

The place where all these different strains of chivalry come together is the tournament. A tournament provided the opportunity to display one’s skill as a warrior by competing with fellow aristocrats who all had willingly accepted the risk of getting maimed or killed in the process. No women, orphans and prelates anywhere in sight. A victor could display knightly magnanimity towards his defeated opponent by letting him live and gain riches by accepting the other’s weapons and horse as ransom for his release. And finally a knight could dedicate his performance to a lady of his choosing, thereby declaring his devotion. Ut despite all its advantages in bridging the inherent contradictions in chivalry, the church still banned them as frivolous wastes of blood and money.

This is the situation on the verge of the crusades. The social elite, the warrior class of Europe had developed a code of conduct that was sending them to hell and all attempts at finding a compromise with the church had failed.

That may explain the tremendous and unforeseen success of Urban II’s call for the first crusade in 1095. Crusades offered the opportunity to apply all the skills a knight had learned over the years and apply it to a purpose that was pleasing to God. Instead of being condemned to eternal domination for killing people, in the crusade he would gain heaven for doing the same thing, just to non-Christians. Knights from all over Europe joined the crusades, many truly seeking salvation, others looking to find a way through the maze of conflicting expectations.

The first crusade had been a truly unbelievable success. Sending out an army for thousands of miles without functioning supply lines to take on an enemy that was economically and militarily far superior would normally be called a suicide mission. And for many that is what it turned out to be. But some made it to Jerusalem and even conquered the city. And that is where the problems began.

The kingdom of Jerusalem had a serious security problem. Once the city was taken and the pilgrims had prayed at all the holy sites, most of the crusaders returned home. After all they had not come to settle in the Holy Land, just to free the sites.

At the same time as the military leaders and their retinue shipped in for France and England, the arriving ships brought new, mostly unarmed pilgrims keen to pray not just at the Holy Sepulchre but in Bethlehem, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee and Jericho to name a few. Travelling there was extremely dangerous. The Muslim neighbours of the crusader state had remained unsurprisingly hostile, but more importantly, the kingdom of Jerusalem lacked the resources to clear the roads of thieves and brigands. Pilgrims tell of bodies of murdered travellers lining the roads as it was too dangerous to stop and bury them.

It is in that situation that a French knight from Champagne, Hugh de Paynes vowed in 1119 to set up a pilgrim protection service. Together with some of his friends he undertook to accompany pilgrims on their journeys. The king of Jerusalem, Baldwin II was delighted and gave them quarters in a wing of the royal place that stood near the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, which is why this band of knights became known as the Templars. They initially set up convoys protected by knights but later set up permanently manned castles that controlled and secured key pilgrim routes.

This new religious confraternity were a huge success. Whilst a crusade was by definition a temporary endeavour, the Templars were a permanent outlet for young men seeking to combine their training as efficient killing machines with piety. More and more of these joined. At the same time, the pilgrims who had enjoyed the protection of the Templars, their friends and family back home and after a while anyone who wanted to make a contribution to the crusading effort donated whatever they could. That could range from ones best cloak, to a horse, a small plot of land to the king of Aragon who wanted to grant the Templars a third of his kingdom.

There was however one major problem with all this. The Templars had quite early on decided they wanted to be a religious community. A broadly sensible thing to do as the idea was to create a lasting organisation and nothing in the medieval world was more built for eternity than monasteries. The issue was that there had been a longstanding rule that clerics were not allowed to yield swords. And this rule had generally been observed. Even though there were many a warlike bishop, they would go to some lengths to remain at least within the letter of the law, if not the spirit. Some bishops would just act as generals directing operations without taking up a sword themselves, others would get into the melee with axes, clubs and maces, as long as these weren’t swords.

That is where our least favourite saint, St. Bernhard of Clairvaux comes in. He is well aware of the sound theological basis for the ban on violence (you know stuff like turn the other cheek, thou shalt not kill, love thy enemy, swords to ploughshare). But that cannot hold back this fervent warrior of Christ. He fully embraces this new Knighthood exclaiming (quote):

“What a glory to return in victory from such a battle! How blessed to die there as a martyr! Rejoice, brave athlete, if you live and conquer in the Lord; but glory and exult even more if you die and join your Lord. Life indeed is a fruitful thing and victory is glorious, but a holy death is more important than either. If they are blessed who die in the Lord, how much more are they who die for the Lord!”(end quote)

I am pretty sure I have heard something similar not too long ago.

As we know, Saint Bernhard of Clairvaux is the most powerful man in europe, more powerful than either pope or emperor. Two years after Bernhard publishes his praise of the Templars, pope Innocent II recognises them as a military religious order, a religious community that is allowed to kill heathens, pagans and all other sorts of misguided souls. Moreover he allowed them to build their own oratories, relieved them from paying the tithe and freed from the authority of any bishop, being subject to the pope alone.

That was in 1139. In the meantime the Templars had grown dramatically, both in number and in wealth. Their activity had expanded from the protection of pilgrims to the manning of outlying castles to being defenders of the crusader states. Templars take on significant military roles in particular during and following the second crusade.

But as you probably know, the Templars weren’t the only early military order. There were also the Knights of St. John or Knights Hospitaller as they are known too.

Their origin is too driven by the practicalities of medieval Palestine. It wasn’t only the roads that were dangerous in the Holy Land. There was also the heat and diseases the pilgrims bodies weren’t used to. Many travellers set out for the Holy Lands were already elderly, doing penance for a long life of contraventions against the rules of the church. A lot of them died there.

Hence there was a need for hospitals. There had been Christian hospitals in Jerusalem since the 7th century and all throughout the time of Muslim rule. In 1023, 75 years before the First crusade, merchants from Amalfi obtained the right to rebuild the hospital and Benedictine monastery of St. John next to the church of the Holy Sepulchre to care for Christian pilgrims. Once Jerusalem had fallen to the Latins, the kings gave land to the hospital and they opened daughter hospitals across the Holy Land.  In 1113 the hospital congregation was given a new rule by pope Paschalis II. That rule was designed for a congregation of monks who intended to care for the sick and wounded. Their order stood very much in the established ecclesiastical tradition of St. Benedict and the Augustin friars.  

And they would have remained just another pious order had it not been for the leadership of a French knight, Raymon de Puy. It is during his tenure as Grand master that the Hospitallers gradually transformed into a military order, offering support to the pilgrims en route, manning castles and ultimately sending 500 knights and retinue into a campaign in Egypt. Knights were admitted as brothers since 1150 but it took until 1204 before the statutes were formally turning the Knights Hospitallers into a military order.

By 1190 the Templars and the Hospitallers are the only important military orders in the Holy Land. Their founders, leaders and members were mainly French, Spanish and English. The reason so few Germans got involved had nothing to do with nationalism, but mostly with the fact that very few Germans made it to the Holy Land in the first and second crusade.

The first crusade took place in 1195 to 1199, a period which is still dominated by the Investiture Controversy. Henry IV is still emperor and he is not inclined to help the hateful pope Urban II. Many of the great imperial princes fear that if they leave on crusade, the emperor or his enemies will seize their lands.

That being said, there are many people of the lower classes who catch the crusading fever and set off barefoot to walk to Jerusalem, the vast majority of them perishing en route or sre finally routed by the Turks in Anatolia.

Of the few nobles who set out for Jerusalem, most see their endeavour descending into an orgy of blood and horror when they brutally ransacked the Jewish communities in the Rhineland. They find their route blocked at the Hungarian border and made to return home. If you want to hear that again, it was in episode 38 – The First Crusade.

The first time an emperor tried his hand at crusading was the Second crusade. The county of Edessa had fallen and the crusader states were feeling the heat from the recovering Muslim states in the region. Konrad III – encouraged by the inevitable Bernhard of Clairvaux – set off in 1147 with a huge army to recapture Edessa. That was another epic failure. Konrad had refused to coordinate with the other Western monarchs, trying to get to Edessa first and win all the glory. On the way there he alienated the Byzantine emperor mainly by burning and plundering his lands. Once he had got into Anatolia, things went from bad to worse. Refusing advice from the Byzantines about the route, he retraced the way the first crusade had taken. That journey ended in Dorylaeum. Worn down by the lack of supplies, the heat and the constant attacks the imperial army stood no chance against the Sultan of Konya and his vast army of swift horsemen. Konrad III barely escaped alive and had to seek refuge with Louis VII, the king of France who had travelled a few days behind him. He and some of the imperial princes made it to Jerusalem in the end, never even attempted to retake Edessa, instead made the stupid decision to attack Damascus and then returned home, leaving the kingdom of Jerusalem in an even more precarious situation than before. Episode 49 – Conrad’s Catastrophe if you want to go through that shocking sequence of errors and arrogance again.

One young prince who had been with Konrad during the Second Crusade, will make his own go at it some 40 years later. Frederick I, Barbarossa led an army much larger than his uncle Konrad’s through Hungary, Bulgaria, the Byzantine empire and through Anatolia without severe losses. He even conquered the city of Konya the place Konrad III had so desperately hoped he could get to before his supplies ran out. But just as the army was descending the Cilician gates heading into the safety of Armenia the aged emperor took a dip in the river Saleph, a dip from which he did not resurface. This was a clear sign of God’s displeasure with the whole enterprise and the enormous army rapidly dissolved. Only a rump entity led by Barbarossa’s son, duke Frederick of Swabia pressed on further to Acre. If you want to hear that story again, it was in Episode 65 – The Third Crusade

Acre is where the armies of the Third Crusade, those of king Philipp Augustus Of France, Richard the Lionheart of England and the remainder of the great imperial host had gathered. Jerusalem and the rest of the crusader state had fallen to Saladin a few years earlier. The Latins were clinging on to a small stretch of land along the coast. Acre was a great fortress that once taken would make a suitable temporary capital of the kingdom.

This is the year 1190, the first time we see a material involvement of imperial forces in the crusades and it is also the year the Teutonic Order is founded, as a field hospital during that famous siege of Acre.

According to the chronicler Peter of Duisburg this modest hospital under a sail from a cog was a hit with all the great princes assembled before Acre. He lists them all, from Lord Eymar of Caesaria to Bishop Conrad of Wurzburg, all praising the good work being done here. And urging duke Frederic of Swabia to write to his brother, the emperor Henry VI to endorse this new order and compel the pope to grant them a charter that puts them on par with the Templars and Hospitallers.

If that had been true, it would have been truly remarkable. Just remember who founded the field hospital of the Germans before Acre? It wasn’t some great prince, not even a lord, a knight, an aristocrat as well connected as Hugh de Paynes of the Templars or Raymond de Puy of the Hospitallers. No none of the above. At least some other kind of important crusader, a bishop, abbot, the patriarch maybe. All the sources are unanimous, it was some unnamed merchants from Bremen and Lubeck who set up the hospital, cared for the sick and thereby  founded the Teutonic Knights. And they had come here, not on the hard route through the Balkans and Turkey, no, these guys had come by ship. They had taken their cogs and sailed them through the Channel, across the bay of Biscay, down the Spanish coast, through the straits of Gibraltar via Sicily and Cyprus to Palestine. And now their old worn-out sail protects exhausted and delirious wounded men from the unrelenting sun.

This is a modest start. These guys may well get some sponsorship from Frederick of Swabia who was an able commander and surely recognised how important it was to have a hospital staffed with personnel who spoke his soldiers native tongue. So he may well have given them support and advised his brother of their existence and that it would be worth to give them imperial endorsement.

But that suddenly the crème de la crème of Europe would have gathered around a field hospital to give them a leg up into the big league, that sounds a bit far-fetched.

Still, Pope Celestin takes the new hospital under its protection in 1191. Once the city of Acre had fallen in Latin hands, the hospital receives land and income from King Guy so that the field hospital can become a permanent institution. In 1196 they receive another set of privileges from pope Celestine III like the right to burial, which opened new sources of income. When and how the transformation from a hospital congregation to a military order took place is a bit unclear. That was probably around 1198 when another contingent of German crusaders arrived in Acre. Barbarossa’s son, emperor Henry VI had taken the cross in 1195 but died before he could set sail. These German guys arriving in 1198 were the advance guard of a crusade that never happened.

It seems as if the Hospital of St. Mary of the Germans as it was called had played a role in Henry VI. plans for his crusade. At least the hospital received generous donations from the emperor. He may have also suggested to those men who set out for Acre to join this new order.

This sponsorship by the Hohenstaufen family was crucial for the rise of the Teutonic Knights from relative obscurity. But it cannot explain what would make a German knight in search of redemption for his sins and looking for a chance of guilt-free killing choose to join a humble hospital rather than the glamorous Templars or Hospitallers.

Was it the language issue. Sure that matters when you are lying in agony on a blood splattered mattress and want to hear some reassuring words, but does it matter what language they speak when you are feasting, hunting and fighting with the finest knights in Christendom.

Was there a major rift between the French and English crusaders on one side and the Imperial Germans on the other? Well, it was the siege of Acre where Richard the Lionheart insulted the duke of Austria which led to his imprisonment and final ransom by emperor Henry VI. That story had surely made its way to Palestine. But it is unlikely to have led to resentment. Richard the Lionheart may be an English hero in the eyes of 19th century British historians, his contemporaries disliked him profoundly. The reason he was captured in Austria was purely down to the fact that he travelled via Vienna. He would have been apprehended pretty much anywhere he would have tried to get home. He chose this detour via the Alps to avoid the kingdom of France where his arch-enemy Philipp Augustus would have never released him.

To understand the appeal of the Teutonic Knights, we have to get back to the whole theme of chivalry. The code of conduct of chivalry applied only to noble knights, noble ladies and presumably noble orphans and prelates. Non-aristocrats were neither protected by it nor invited to participate. Only warriors who had been born free and had received the elevation to true knight could join the club.

Now in Germany there were many men who looked like knights, who lived in castles and had armour and warhorses. But what they weren’t knights. They were the Ministeriales, these serf knights who were at least originally not fee men. Even though many of them had been living an aristocratic lifestyle for several generations had married into true aristocratic families, they could not quite shake their servile origins.

It is likely that true aristocratic orders like the Templars and the Hospitallers were reluctant to take on the great- grandson of a slave. The Teutonic knights were free of such snobbish behaviour. After all their founders were some merchants who may well have been from ministeriale families tehmselves. Becoming a Teutonic knight elevated someone from serf knight to true knight. We will see that throughout its history the Teutonic Knights – with few exceptions – recruited mainly from the lower nobility and even their masters, including their greatest master, Hermann von Salza, had been Ministeriales.

And that is who we are going to talk about next week, Hermann von Salza, the man who put the Teutonic Knights on the map. Thanks to Hermann von Salza, the difference between the Teutonic Knights and the other orders is not limited to their recruitment policy. Expect us zipping across the map from Palestine to Egypt, Sicily, Rome, Greece, Armenia, Transylvania and finally Prussia. I hope you will join us again.

Before I go, there are two last items on the agenda. First, I want to again thank those amongst you who have signed up on Patreon at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or who have made a generous one-time donation at historyofthegermans.com. I really, really appreciate your generosity.

And lastly you can find a bibliography in the show notes and in historyofthegermans/resources/bookrecommendations. Check it out. There are a few more English language ones available.