History of the Germans Podcast

Ep. 137 – The Conversion – Albrecht, Grand Master of the Teutonic Order becomes a protestant duke

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 137 – The Conversion

But before we start a big thank you to our supporters who have signed up on patreon.com/history of the Germans and or have made a generous one-time contribution at historyofthegermans.com/support. And this week I want to acknowledge James H. S., Oliver K., cole P., Flouritz and Dominique who have already signed up!.

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

Last week we left the scene in 1466 when grand master Ludwig von Erlichshausen signed the second peace of Thorn bringing an end to devastating 13 years war. At the end of the conflict Prussia was divided into two parts. Royal Prussia that comprised the old Polish duchy of Pomerelia and Western Prussia and then the order’s state of east Prussia with its capital at Koenigsberg, modern day Kaliningrad. Royal Prussia, as the name indicates was ruled by the king of Poland whilst East Prussia was all that was left of the order’s territory in Prussia.

Eastern Prussia was by far the poorer part. The great centers of Gdansk, Elblag and Torun were lost to the order and with it the trade along the Vistula River that connected the rich agricultural lands and mineral wealth of central Europe to the Baltic.

The agricultural surplus such as it was was exported either via Koenigsberg, or the busy harbors of Gdansk and Elblag. Apart from grain and wood, the other main export was the oldest product of the region, amber on which the order still retained a de-facto monopoly.

The Second peace of Thorn did not only result in a material change in territory, but also in a change in status. Up to 1466 the order in Prussia managed to stay fairly independent. Based on the Golden Bull of Rimini and the papal letter from 1234 the grand master was both an imperial prince and an immediate vassal of the pope. They had also some sort of link to the Polish crown as Konrad of Masovia had given them the Kulmer land on terms that the order argued was full independence and Polish chroniclers claim included some for of vassalage. It is likely that the order liked to keep things vague, because having multiple masters meant they had none.

In 1466 Ludwig von Erlichshausen was forced to swear an oath of allegiance to the king of Poland and he had to further promise that from now on at least half of the new recruits into the order were Poles. This latter provision ended up being unenforceable due to the resistance within the order and the reluctance of the Polish nobility to join. And on the former, the vassalage to the polish crown, each grand master following Ludwig von Erlichshausen tried to wriggle out of.

The war had also brought significant social change to east Prussia. As we said before, the state of the order had tried to hold on to most of the land and castles for itself and restricted the creation of a local aristocracy. And that was particularly the case in east Prussia where the nobles such as they existed were either descendants of the leadership of the Old Prussian tribes or former settlers who made good. During the 13 years war a new nobility appeared in Prussia. These were the mercenary commanders the grand master had been unable to pay. So instead of gold coin, they were given land, either land of the order or land taken from the local nobility that had sided with the Prussian League. Some of the more famous names amongst the East Prussian nobility like the von Dohna, von Eulenburg, von Schlieben, von Lehndorff came into Prussia during this period. These new landowners weren’t tied to the order and its ancient ways of working. In particular they had no qualms pushing the formerly fee peasants into a dependency to the local lord that was on the verge of turning into actual serfdom. Given how weak the grand master had become, there was little he could do to stop them.

And the order itself began to fracture. The Komturs, the senior officers and the heads of the castle convents began to treat their estates as if they were their own. They refused to pass on their profits to the headquarters in Koenigsberg. One of them zeven became a pirate who menaced Hanse shipping and could only be stopped when the Garnd master raised an army and stormed his castle at Memel. Those who did not act so blatantly still demanded to be treated like magnates within the state and get a seat in the Landrat, the representation of the estates of Prussia alongside the bishops, cities and nobles.

The grand master’s income was limited to the manors linked directly to Koenigsberg. Which meant any major investment, war or action of any kind required the consent of the various estates represented in the Landrat.

And then there was the bishopric of Ermland. The bishops of Ermland always had a more independent position than the other three bishoprics and as we heard last week had become neutral in the latter stages of the 13 years war which was another nail in the coffin of the order’s struggle. In the peace of Thorn, the bishop too had accepted vassalage to the King of Poland. But his diocese was made part of Royal Prussia rather than east Prussia. The problem with that was that Ermland sits right in the middle of East Prussia.

So unsurprisingly the conflict between the order and Poland resumes with Ermland. When the bishopric becomes vacant in 1467 the chapter elects Nikolaus von Thungen as bishop. King Kasimir of Poland does not like von Thungen, rejects his appointment and puts someone else in place. At which point the pope gets involved and insists on von Thungen. Von Thungen cannot get to Ermland and has to take refuge in Riga, from where he tries to build an alliance in support for his claim. He finds a sponsor in the form of the king of Hungary who pays for an army that captures some of Ermland on the bishop’s behalf. In 1477 the grand master feels that things have moved on sufficiently that he joins the fight. And since he was now at war with Poland anyway, he rescinds his vassalage to the King of Poland. At which point the Poles come down with a sizeable army. The usual burning and pillaging ensue though the Poles fail to take any of the major cities. However, the grand master’s resources are quickly exhausted, and the king of Hungary withdraws his support. So, another war ends with a defeat for the order. Ermland returns under Polish control and the grand master is made to bend the knee again.

The whole ramshackle structure limps on for another 20 years until the Grand Master Johann von Tiefen suggests a way out. So far, the members of the order and its grand masters had been recruited mainly from the lower nobility of the empire. There were the occasional grand masters from the princely houses but all of them had joined the order as simple knights and had worked their way through the ranks. The downside of this process was that none of the magnates of the empire had a personal relationship with the order. And given the lack of resources the order now needed powerful sponsors. The proposed way to acquire one of these sponsors was to offer the role of grand master to a second son of a great magnate who would then provide money and men to help the order.

The person they settled on was Friedrich von Sachsen, youngest son of the duke of Saxony. Friedrich had been destined for a career in the church and had studied in Siena, Bologna and Leipzig. He ticked all the boxes. In 1497 he was admitted to the order and immediately elevated to grand master.

Friedrich von Sachsen set down to restructure the state. Part of the agreement he had made the leaders of the order to sign before joining was that they would materially increase the financial support to the center. Once elevated he pushed through further reforms, very much on the model of the territorial principality he had grown up in. He reintroduced regular visitations to the various castles and towns where he inspected the discipline of the brothers and held court, solving disputes between the people and the order. He restructured the army and established a professional bureaucracy. Basically, he operated like a 15^th century territorial prince. He even held festivities in Koenigsberg palace for the local nobility with music and – shock horror – in the presence of ladies.

As for the main political objective he made some progress. As the senior officers of the order had hoped, Friedrich gathered support in the empire for a secession from the Polish crown. The emperor Maximilian encouraged him to refuse the oath of vassalage to the king of Poland. On e he had declared his intention, Prussia had to expect retaliation from Poland any minute. Though that did not happen, or at least not on the scale feared, Friedrich felt unsafe in Koenigsberg and relocated back home to Rochlitz in Saxony, leaving a governor in his place.

Despite this rather disappointing result, the order continued in his policy and sought another high aristocrat as grand Master when Friedrich died in 1510. This one was a certain Albrecht, who happens to be the very first member of the House of Hohenzollern making an appearance as a story protagonist on this podcast. And little shows how far the order has fallen that they could not even affords a second son, but only one of the 10 sons of margrave Friedrich von Brandenburg Ansbach, an over indebted incompetent ruler of the small county of Ansbach, who himself was only the second son of the elector of Brandenburg, the one with the actual power.

That being said, Albrecht von Brandenburg will leave an indelible mark on the history of the Teutonic order.

He picks up where his predecessor had left off. Like him, he had settled with the leadership of the order on some ground rules. Even more support for the central authority, willingness to accept reforms and granting him the lifestyle of a lord rather than a master of a chivalric order. One request close to his heart was that he should be relieved from the oath of chastity, celibacy he was ok with, just not chastity. As they say, getting a good CEO one has to make some sacrifices. Though it seems his new brothers too had developed a laxer attitude towards the rules of St. Benedict.

The transition to a territorial state continued. Albrecht relied mainly on close associates like the bishop of Pomesania and civil bureaucrats to run the administration and refused to appoint replacements for the senior officers of the order who had retired or died.

The other main political project he continued was the attempt to get out from under the Polish vassalage. So he went on a public relations campaign in the empire arguing that east Prussia, or all of Prussia in his mind, was part of the Teutsche Lande, the German Lands. And he had some success. The Reichstag in Augsburg in 1512 declared the second peace of Thorn invalid. The Polish king then went to the pope, who ordered Albrecht to do as he was ordered and swear allegiance to his uncle, king Sigismund of Poland. In 1515 emperor Charles V changed his mind and withdrew his support. Albrecht found a new supporter though, grand duke Vasili III of Moscow who had been at war with Poland Lithuania for a while. What that was worth is unclear because when Albrecht kicked off hostilities in 1519, not a lot of Muscovy soldiers were seen in his army. This war lasted just 18 months and though Albrecht was in fact ill equipped for such an endeavour, the |Polish army that inevitably showed up failed to take any of the major strongholds, and in particular failed in its siege of Koenigsberg. Abrecht rustled up some Danish mercenaries from Livonia when the Livonian master refused to aid him who were expensive but effective, pushing the Poles back to the Vistula…and then the money ran out, the Danes went home and thanks to mediation by the emperor and the pope the two sides agreed a 4 year truce.

It is now 1522 and Albrecht von Brandenburg travels to the empire to find out why nobody came up to help him and whether they would be coming when the truce runs out in 1525. But everywhere he went, he hit a brick wall. Even his brother in Christ the German Master of the Teutonic Order outright refused to spend any more money on futile, expensive wars in Prussia. Most of the German princes took their lead from that and withheld support safe for their best wishes.

But he did meet someone who was offering a solution. Whilst Albrecht was busy fighting the Poles, a professor at the university of Wittenberg had printed a list of 95 theses and distributed them widely, including having them posted on the door of All Saints church. That professor you obviously know was Martin Luther.

Luther’s demands for reform had spread rapidly. In 1521 he had defended them before the Reichstag in Worms which had made them a topic of discussion all over Europe. Already in that same year one of Albrecht’s associates had proposed to consult with Luther about possible ways to reform the order. But that attempt failed as the elector of Saxony, who protected Luther on the Wartburg was unwilling to act as middleman.

In June 1523 Luther is back in Wittenberg receiving visitors, and Albrecht sends his associate in a secret mission to discuss possible changes in the structure of the order. In November Albrecht himself goes to Wittenberg and meets with Luther and Melanchthon. The reformers are blunt. Quote “Monks are nothing but wizards and associates of the devil who have fooled the world with their bogus tricks and artifice” end quote. He has some more choice words about monasticism that I will refrain from mentioning here, but let’s just say, only a ex-monk can be so harsh on his former vocation. And if monks should leave the monasteries to become useful members of society, that is what chivalric brothers should do too. Their proposal: Make yourself the duke of a secular state and cast the order into the dustbin of history.

And, as is Luther’s habit, he follows the meeting up by writing a public proclamation suggesting that the quote “lords of the Teutonic Order, give up false chastity and seek the true chastity of the marriage bed”. End quote

Albrecht meanwhile returns to Prussia where he finds many of his close associates thrilled by Luther’s proposals. So are the estates of Prussia, the cities and nobles who would much rather have a secular duke as overlord than a corporation of monkish warriors. Some of the bishops had picked up the protestant faith as well, whilst preachers have come to Prussia proclaiming the time for fundamental change had come.

Whilst all this is going on, the timeline of the truce has been running down. Albrecht explores one more time whether there is anyone willing to give him the funds to continue the fight, but has to conclude that this is no longer a viable option.

He meets up with king Sigismund who suggests that Albrecht dissolves the order and becomes a duke and vassal to the Polish king.

With options running out, Grand Master Albrecht von Brandenburg signs on the dotted line, puts his hand in the hands of the Polish Monarch and rises again as duke Albrecht of Prussia. That was on April 10, 1525.

It is only 2 months later that Albrecht then formally declares for the Lutheran faith.

Are these things connected? The historian Jurgen Sarnowski argues that these two events, the creation of ducal Prussia and the conversion to Protestantism had been independent events. The emperor Charles V, Pope Clement VII and King Sigismund supported the creation of the duchy and dissolution of the order in the belief that a duke Albrecht would remain a faithful son of the church. If so, it was quite naïve. Luther’s pamphlet and Albrecht’s visit to Wittenberg cannot have gone unnoticed and many observers in Germany had already voiced concerns that the grand master was at least tilting towards the Reformation.

This first conversion of a spiritual principality not only changed the status of the Grand Master. It also had a huge impact on the remaining Knight Brothers. Some were unwilling to accept the Reformation and left for the order’s convents in Germany that had stayed faithful to the Pope. But the majority were happy to leave their convents, marry and make babies. And they did not leave empty handed. Many of the possessions of the order were handed over to the knights brothers as private property. The former knight brothers were now nobles or as the east Prussians were often called, Junker. They followed in the footsteps of the mercenary Junkers who had come into land 50 years earlier and established large estates with dependent peasants tilling the land.

A lasting peace, the secularisation of the bishoprics and other monastic lands and the establishment of a tax gathering bureaucracy provided Albrecht finally with the funds to rebuild his battered state. And he did that fairly successfully. He invested in particular in education, founded schools in the major cities and the university of Koenigsberg, the future alma mater of Immanuel Kant. He reigned a solid 43 years as duke and passed away in 1568 from the plague. He was succeeded by his son, Albrecht Friedrich who was deposed due to severe mental illness. Then the duchy went through a number of regents from the Hohenzollern family until they almost all died out and Prussia became part of the states of the elector of Brandenburg one of whose descendants crowned himself and his wife as king in Prussia in Koenigsberg in 1701. King in Prussia because Prussia was still under Polish overlordship.

We will no doubt spend a lot of time talking about Prussia on this podcast, so we can leave this story here.

But as for the Teutonic order, this was not the end.

When Albrecht unveiled his shock announcement that he was to convert to the Lutheran faith, the other two masters, the Livonian master and the German master were aghast. Both were men in their seventies and deeply loyal to the papacy. Now they saw the man they had regarded as the leader of their order become a secular prince and immediately excommunicated.

The Livland Master, Wolter von Plettenberg saw himself as a bulwark against the expanding orthodox grand duchy of Moscow. But Livonia wasn’t Prussia. In Livonia there had aways been other powers present, the cities of Riga, Dorpat and Narva the bishops and the local aristocracy. The cities as members of the Hanse saw their brethren in Luebeck, Hamburg and Danzig pick up Lutheranism and followed suit. Plettenberg had to allow Protestant preachers into the land and even inside the order the new religion gained support. Under his successors the order kept shifting more and more away from Catholicism. When Muscovy under Ivan the terrible invaded the order sought help from abroad, mostly from protestant Denmark and Sweden. This help did not come for free and the state of the order crumbled quickly. The last Livonian Master, Gotthard Kettler swore allegiance to King Sigismund II of Poland in 1561, dissolved the order in Livonia and became duke of Courland. As in Prussia the lands of the order were distributed amongst the brothers who became part of the already sizeable German-speaking aristocracy that dominated these lands until the Bolshevik revolution.

The German branch of the order did hold out longer. They too had to balance the religious differences. In the interest of keeping the organisation going brothers were allowed to convert to Lutheranism if they so chose. In the 17^th century they also admitted Calvinists which turned the order into a multi-confessional community. There was however a major problem. The Lutheran and Calvinist brothers wanted the property they had been administering, or more precisely, enjoying, to pass to their descendants. And in that they often found support from protestant territorial princes, who they served as officers or administrators. As the children of former warrior monks inherited these estates, the property of the order quickly eroded.

Only in Southern Germany was the order able to retain or even expand its territory. The German Master moved his seat to Mergentheim in 1527 where he established one of these statelets the Holy Roman empire had hundreds of. In 1590 the order elected Maximilian of Habsburg as its German and now also grand master. From 1641 onwards all grand masters were members of the Habsburg family as a sinecure for younger sons. And when I say younger, I mean younger. The youngest was just 13 years old when he entered the order and became instantly elected as a successor to Hermann von Salza.

As for the members of the order, an element of the martial tradition remained. Members were required to serve at least three years in the wars against the Ottoman empire as officers.

When Napoleon did away with all these little statelets to create more efficient entities to furnish him with soldiers, the last remaining properties of the Teutonic Knights, including Mergentheim were secularised.

But still the order continued to exist. The Habsburgs kept supporting it, making it a honorary chivalric order. Its activities, sponsored by the honourees reverted back to its roots, hospitals and schools. When the Habsburg monarchy fell in 1918, the order had its final crisis. They had lost their sponsor and as far as the public were concerned they were just a part of the now defunct monarchy. The last Habsburg Grand master resigned and in 1929 the pope gave the order a new rule. Under this new rule only priest and nuns were full members of the order and they should solely focus on religious tasks, in particular caring for the sick and the elderly and in education. The order has its headquarter in Vienna and has about 200 priests and 100 nuns today.

And that brings the story of the Teutonic Knights to its end.

I recognise that this part of history plays a huge role in the national narratives of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and even Russia and Romania. A role much more significant than it played in the German National story, even in the 19^th century. That did not mean we did not develop the usual mix of fact and fiction that described the order as a bit tough round the edges but ultimately a bringer of civilisation to a savage land. And the Nazis picked up some of the iconography building Ordensburgen as school buildings for the Nazi elite, whilst suppressing the actual order. And for those Germans who trace their roots to Danzig or East Prussia these stories have certainly great importance.

Given these sensitivities I was even more focused on painting an accurate and balanced picture of events in these episodes than usual. I tried to stick close to primary sources and recent scholarship. Should I have made mistakes, and I almost certainly have made many, I apologise. It was not out of malice but lack of attention. And as we are on the topic a quick shout out to all of you who posted interesting and informative comments on the Facebook posts I put out on these topics. And in particular a big thanks to listener Mariusc G. for his kind message the other day.

So, what will be next? The next series will pick up where we left off nearly a year ago, the death of emperor Frederick II. We will go through the chaos of the so-called interregnum before we alight in the reign of the Luxemburg emperors starting with Henry VII. Forgive me if it will take a me a few weeks to get started. As usual I need to get my bearings before we dive in… I hope you will come along for that adventure.

Bibliography

William Urban: The Teutonic Knights – A Military History

Eric Christiansen: The Nordic Crusades, Penguin Books, 1997

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

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

Adam Zamosyski: Poland – A History

Episode 136– 13 years of war

by History of the Germans Podcast on 1st February 202410th March 2024

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

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

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Ep. 136 – 13 Years of War – The Prussian League shifts allegiance

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bibliography

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

William Urban: The Teutonic Knights – A Military History

Eric Christiansen: The Nordic Crusades, Penguin Books, 1997

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

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

Episode 135– After Tannenberg

by History of the Germans Podcast on 25th January 202410th March 2024

The rule of the Teutonic Knights is fatally weakened

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

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

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

History of the Germans

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

With that exception I find it rarely matters who did what during the battle but what the outcome was and what happened afterwards.

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

Episode Website with transcript, maps and lots more: Episode 135– After Tannenberg • History of the Germans Podcast

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TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bibliography

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

William Urban: The Teutonic Knights – A Military History

Eric Christiansen: The Nordic Crusades, Penguin Books, 1997

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

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

Episode 134– Tannenberg / Grunwald / Zalgiris

by History of the Germans Podcast on 18th January 202410th March 2024

A Battle of many Names

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

History of the Germans

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

Episode Website with transcript, maps and lots more: Episode 134– Tannenberg • History of the Germans Podcast

As always:

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So far I have:

BBC Radio 4 – In Our Time, The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Podcasts on Poland:

Poland Is Not Yet Lost — WDFpodcast.com

The History of Poland Podcast (libsyn.com)

Ep. 134 – Tannenberg / Grunwald / Žalgiris – A battle of many names

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

Back to the show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is when we go from mistake to catastrophic mistake.

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

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

War was coming again.

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

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

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

This was not a slam dunk.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bibliography

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

William Urban: The Teutonic Knights – A Military History

Eric Christiansen: The Nordic Crusades, Penguin Books, 1997

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

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

Episode 133– The Order of the Order

by History of the Germans Podcast on 11th January 202410th March 2024

The Organisational structure of the Teutonic Knights

In the century that followed the last of the Prussian and Livonian uprisings the states of the Teutonic Order in the Baltic experienced a period of economic growth and internal and external stability that is almost unique in the chaotic 14^th century. Whilst Europe was in the grip of the Hundred-Years War, an incessant merry go round of internecine feuds, the Black Death, Papal Schisms and a deteriorating climate, this theocracy on the Northern Baltic shore became a beacon of prosperity and peace.

How was it possible that a religious order became an astute manager of its estates, a de-facto member, if not by its own claim head of the Hanseatic League and the organizer of the greatest chivalric adventure holidays for Europe’s aristocracy? That is what we try to find out in this episode.

History of the Germans

In the century that followed the last of the Prussian and Livonian uprisings the states of the Teutonic Order in the Baltic experienced a period of economic growth and internal and external stability that is almost unique in the chaotic 14th century. Whilst Europe was in the grip of the Hundred-Years War, an incessant merry go round of internecine feuds, the Black Death, Papal Schisms and a deteriorating climate, this theocracy on the Northern Baltic shore became a beacon of prosperity and peace.

That is what we try to find out in this episode..

You can find the transcript for this episode as well as maps and lots more here: Episode 134– Tannenberg • History of the Germans Podcast

As always:

Homepage with maps, photos, transcripts and blog: www.historyofthegermans.com

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So far I have:

Bibliography:

Werner Paravicini Die Preußenreisen des europäischen Adels : https://perspectivia.net/receive/ploneimport_mods_00009997

Eric Christiansen: The Northern Crusades

Ep. 133 – The Order of the Order – The organisational structure of the Teutonic Knights

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 133 – The Order of the Order

But, as you know, there will now be 20 seconds of me blabbing on about the Patreon account and how eternally grateful I am for all your support. If you want to skip it, you should hit the 15 second button…now! Great, now that we are amongst friends, let me tell you what these skipper dippers miss. The chance to feel good about themselves. As it says in the Acts of the Apostles: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ So here I am, ready to receive either on my Patreon account at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website at historyofthegermans.com/support so that you all can enjoy the act of supporting the show. Just ask Adam M., MSG, Andreas and John A. who are already indulging in the delights of giving.

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

Now back to the show

When the embers of the last burned down Prussian village had cooled off in 1283 a new society was emerging in Prussia. By the end of the next century the population of Prussia, according to Juergen Sarnowski was comprised of about 140,000 old Prussians, 100,000 Germans and 26,000 Poles. For reference, in his calculation this would have been an increase in the population by about 60% versus the time before the conquest. Note that he estimated the original population at 170,000, quite a bit lower than the estimate of 200-300,000 I used in episode 130. As we are in the Middle Ages, these estimates all have a huge range of error embedded in them.

What is however quite clear is that the late medieval Prussian society was split between Germans and non-Germans. This distinction was however not necessary ethnic but linguistic and most significantly legal.

There were effectively two sets of legal frameworks people lived in Prussia.

The Germans had come as part of a large scale economic development program. These initial settlers came from Brandenburg, Pomerania and Silesia and were themselves descendants of the 12^th century first wave of settlers we discussed in season 5. As the Teutonic Knights moved further east and expanded cultivation deeper and deeper into the forests, settlers were recruited not just from the empire, but more and more from the population of the territories that had already been settled. And that included Prussians, Lithuanians and Poles who were granted the status of “German” settlers.

These “German” settlers -in inverted commas- were typically given a plot of land, usually about 33 hectares. Their leader, the Locator who had organized the convoy and had negotiated the deal with the brothers would get twice that, as would the local church. The Locator would then become the Schulze, the village mayor with the right to administer the so-called lower justice, petty crime and civil disputes. The mayor would often also get the fishing and game rights. In exchange the Mayor was obliged to fight for the order in light armor on top of the annual rent he had to pay like all the other free peasants. Once the village was established, the villagers had the right to choose their mayor.

These were the so-called “German villages”. As for the old Prussian villages life was quite a bit harder. A Prussian peasant would usually have about 20 hectares, i.e., 2/3rds of the German peasant. They had to provide not rent but services and a percentage of their crop to the Knights. They did have a foreman, a “Starost” who represented them but who was supervised by a separate administrative structure supported by the Witingers, a sort of Prussian minor nobility.

Effectively the Prussian and German villages lived completely separate lives and there are regular mentions of priests or brothers needing translators to communicate with the leaders of the Prussian villages next door.

The administrative entity above the village was Vogt or Pfleger, usually a knight brother based in a smaller castle or estate. The Vogts then reported to the Komtur. In Prussia a Komtur was usually a whole convent of Teutonic Knights. Based on the arithmetic of the New Testament, each Komtur was supposed to contain at least 12 brothers who lived in a large fortified convent. The Komtur would collect the rents paid by the villagers as well as their share of the crops of the unfree peasants. That was first used by the brothers in the Komtur for their needs, such as food and military equipment. Any surplus was then sent up to the Prussian Master.

The Prussian Master, alongside the Livonian master and the German Master was one of the central roles within the Teutonic Knights. These institutions had become necessary when the order expanded geographically to a point where the grand master could not be present in all important centers. And that was fairly early on. Hermann von Salza never went to Prussia which meant that he appointed Hermann Balk as his representative on the Baltic, making him the first Prussian Master. And since Livonia was separated from Prussia by Lithuania and they still had the Sword Brother tradition, there was the need for a Livonian Master. The office of the German master, in charge of many of the order’s possessions in the empire and hence in charge of recruitment and supply to the fighting outposts was another necessary management function. When the grand Masters moved to Prussia the office of the Prussian master was abolished and its functions integrated with the grand Master.

And finally, at the top of the pyramid stood the Grand Master. But he did not stand there on his own. He had a number of senior officer in charge of different aspects of the order. There was the Grand Komtur, who was the grand Master’s deputy and in charge of operations during peace time. The Grand Marshall was in charge of the military capabilities of the order, he made sure there were enough horses, armor and siege engines available and led the forces in war, unless the grand master did that himself. The Spitaller was in charge of the hospitals. We should not forget that the Teutonic order was initially set up to run a hospital in Acre and they did maintain several hospitals throughout their existence, one of which was in Elbing in Prussia. Then we have the Trappier, in charge of clothing, though he quickly became an important figure in the brother’s trading operations. And finally the Tressler, the treasurer who looked after the order’s finances.

All of these senior officers were with very few exceptions recruited from the knight brothers of the order. However, the order consisted not just of knight brothers. There were the priest brothers whose role it was to conduct the religious ceremonies. They were the only members of the order who were ordained priests. Each Komtur would almost always have at least one priest brother so that the members could observe their religious duties as monks, namely to pray every three hours.

As the order became more and more exclusive, blocking out commoners, those who wanted to join were admitted as Sarjents or grey cloaks. They would wear not the white cloak with black cross of the full brothers, but a grey one still with a black cross. Their jobs varied from administration and commerce to fighting alongside the knights. Below them were the half brothers, men who had not made the sacred vows but still dedicated themselves to the order. These could be just servants or farmhands Sometimes these could be donors who use the Teutonic Knight’s convent as a retirement home to live there sometimes even with their wives. Even more surprising there were even half-sisters and even sisters in the Teutonic order. These were very few and concentrated in specific houses in Alsace and Switzerland, effectively not connected to the main order.

All this sounds a bit as if it was a strictly hierarchical organization with a grand master at the top sending orders down the chain of command. But that wasn’t really the case.

All major decisions had to be taken by the grand chapter of the order, not the grand master. The grand master could not even get his hands on the order’s treasury. It was kept in a strongbox that had three keys, one for the Grand Master, one for the Grand Komtur and one for the Tressler.

And when the grand master policies did not meet with approval of the Knights, he could be deposed and often was. After the fall of Acre the order was divided on the question whether to hold out in Venice in the hope of another crusade into Palestine or a permanent move to Prussia. Most of the Grand Masters between 1297 and 1330 were deposed or at least partially denied their power and one of them, Werner von Orselen was even murdered by one of the brothers.

The Grand Master election also reflected the significance of the various senior members of the order. The tradition was that the dying grand master would hand the seal of the order to his deputy who would then organize the election. Knights from all over Europe would come to the election that often took place in Marburg and after 1309 in Marienburg in Prussia. It kicked off with a solemn mass. Then the deputy would propose an election officer to the knights present. Once an election officer was approved the officer in turn would propose 13 electors, 8 knights brothers, one priest brother and 4 Grey Cloaks. These had to be chosen carefully to reflect the different large administrative entities, like Livonia, Prussia, Germany and originally Palestine as well as the different branches and ranks. The electors would then debate in private and choose a new Grand Master.

As for the various offices, it was the grand master who appointed them and in principle every one of the major offices was re-appointed every year at the annual grand chapter. This became a little bit cumbersome given distances and the like, so that it became an event happening every 6 years. But even outside the grand chapter the grand master could at any time recall or redeploy brothers from one post to the next. And he very often did. We also hear that brothers would retire from senior positions as they reached an age where they were no longer able to discharge their duties.

The Teutonic Knights operated much closer to the way a modern bureaucracy works than a medieval kingdom. Though there was surely some nepotism in the appointments at times, but positions weren’t inherited as knights had no legitimate children, there is little evidence of corruption and the transfer of order property to the family of grand masters or other officers is rarely mentioned.

And there was something even more unusual about Prussia, there was no local nobility, except for the leadership class of the old Prussians. Despite the fact that the Teutonic order were almost all aristocrats, they did not establish the kind of feudal system they had grown up in. Actually where they had acquired territory with an existing local nobility, they tried to buy them out and get rid of them.

Though they sure must have had their problems with discipline, by and large the knight brothers stuck to their vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. And that removed some of the main scourges of medieval life – the endless feuds.

We are in the 14^th century and this is a time where the four horsemen of the apocalypse, pestilence, war, famine and death are roaming Europe. It is not just the 100 years war that spreads misery in France, but within the empire there is incessant fighting. Take the Margraves of Meissen, the house of Wettin where one war between brothers is followed by the next as they fight over the succession. On top of that you have the Black Death killing sometimes half or more of a town’s population.

But Prussia was spared quite a bit of this pain. In the absence of a local nobility, there weren’t any feuds. The Teutonic Knights had their internal differences but they never spilled out into open warfare. When the Grand Master Werner von Orselen was murdered, the brothers insisted that it was the act of just one disaffected individual.

As for the plague, it did reach Elbing in 1349 and devastated the trading cities. But given the still fairly sparse population, it might be that the countryside got away with less severe losses. And similar to wat happened in the Hanse in general, the lure of the commercial opportunities in the cities was strong enough to compel peasants to leave their land and try their luck quickly refilling the depopulated cities of Elbing, Thorn, Braunsberg or Danzig.

Whilst there was no proper nobility in Prussia, there were cities, cities that were members of the Hanse. Whilst their city’s rights were much constrained compared to the other members of the league, they did have some independence. And the Teutonic knights recognized that. The cities were invited to regular consultations with the grand master. Some have called this a Staendetag, a sort of early parliament. But at least before 1410 the order having essentially all the revenues from the land did not have to raise taxes to cover its expenses, which left the cities with limited bargaining power.

Talking about finances, this gets us to the other interesting way the order organized its Prussian state. As the order kept expanding the area of cultivated land in Prussia, it began to produce a huge agricultural surplus, in particular in grain. This grain was then exported from Elbing and after 1310 from Danzig, which the order had acquired in a war that we will discuss next week.

Now if you have followed the series about the Hanseatic League, you will remember how significant the grain exports from Danzig were in feeding Norway, England and most importantly Flanders. The Teutonic Knights became a major commercial force in Northern Europe and participated in the various embargoes against Flanders and Norway. And they combined that with their military capability. They did get involved in a number of the confrontations, including the wars with Denmark and England where their weight counted for a lot.

They also continued the export of amber that had already been Prussia’s main business for more thousand years.

Their biggest money-spinner however was tourism, chivalric adventure tourism to be precise.

After the fall of Acre in 1291, crusading in the Holy Land more or less stopped. There were still crusade south attacking the North African coast and others aimed at fighting heretics all across western europe. But the real spark had left the movement. That being said, the great knights and princes of europe were still looking for a way to use their considerable skills in killing and maiming for a good cause. Wars were numerous but there was ever so often a dry stretch where no campaign was fought that one could join.

That is where Teutonic Knights tours came in. they organized something they called a Rhyse, still the German word for journey.

The rhyse was technically a rolling crusade. It happened twice a year almost every year from 1304 onwards. Noble crusaders from France, England, Scotland, the Empire, Poland, Denmark, Sweden would come up to Prussia for a season of fighting the heathens. It was particularly popular with the English nobility. When Henry Bolingbroke, future king Henry IV arrived in 1390, he followed a long list of travelers to the Baltic. His father in law had been, his Grandfather and his ally in the future civil war, Henry Hotspur Percy. When Chaucer described the Knight in his tale he mentioned that he had traveled to Prussia, Lithuania and Russia and had “sat at the table of honor above all nations”.

It was a rite of passage, a sort of medieval grand tour that all young men of wealth and breeding would undertake.

The Teutonic Order offered two trips, a summer and a winter trip. The summer trip which started traditionally on August 15 was less popular as the crusaders would arrive when the ground was boggy and hard to pass on horses weighed down by armor. The summer period was usually known as the Bauzeit, the time to build new fortresses or reinforce already existing ones. The more glamorous season was in the winter when the bogs were frozen and the knights could attack on the surfaces of the rivers and lakes. And not only that. Because war in western europe was usually limited to the summer season, intrepid knights who wanted to engage in their favorite sport in winter had limited options. Lithuania was close and it had a winter season.

The crusaders would either arrive by ship from Bruges via Lubeck into Elbing, Danzig or Koenigsberg or on the land route again first to Luebeck and then along the coastal road through Pomerania and to Danzig. Alternatively there was the High Road through Silesia and Poland to Thorn in Prussia.

Some travelers combined the Prussian Rhyse with a sort of world tour that took in Venice and the Holy Land from there Spain where they would join the Reconquista before returning home to Blighty or La Douce France. That is where the adventure trip becomes a fully-fledged medieval gap year.

There was however a big difference to the gap year. These noble tourists did not journey with just a backpack containing three changes of underwear and a collection of achingly cool t-shirts. They journeyed in style. Henry Bolingbroke, admittedly the son of the richest man in England brought about 200 retainers who traveled on three ships. His supplies included not just the latest and best in military gear but also his horses, dogs, falcons, tapestries, gold and silver plates and cutlery. He was accompanied by his chaplain, doctor, cook, heralds, minstrels, pipers. The three or four heavy wagons that followed his progress contained his provisions, including the finest foodstuff, spices, herbs, wines from Bordeaux and the Rhine, clothes for feasts, equipment for tournaments and so on and so. When one of these fighting pilgrim stopped in a town or city he would expect a banquet to be held in his honor, where the local girls were asked to dance with the guests. In turn the traveling prince would make generous donations to the local churches and monasteries. He would also buy souvenirs along the way. Altarpieces, jewelry, furs and sometimes more exotic things like the ostrich Henry Bolingbroke acquired in Vienna.

Occasionally that ostentatious display of wealth planted unholy desires into the local aristocracy’s mind. We hear of multiple occasions where the crusaders are held for ransom or at least relieved from the heavy load they were dragging across the muddy roads of central europe.

Assuming you have managed to get to Prussia and were still in possession of most of your limbs, weapons and provisions, the next place to go to was the castle of Marienburg, modern day Marbrog in Poland, the seat of the grand master of the Teutonic Knights. This, the largest brick castle in the world never failed to impress the visitors. It covers a surface area of 18 hectares and has 145,000 square metres of floor space, roughly double of Buckingham palace and comparable to the Louvre, both of which were built much later.

Marienburg is not just large. It is breathtaking in its beauty and coherence. At the heart is the square structure of the High Castle, built on the standard floorplan of the Teutonic castles that combined elements of monastic convents with its defensive nature. One side is taken up by the palace chapel, a structure that can compare with the greatest of them all, the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. There is the grand masters palace where “the shape of the interior spaces, the manner of vaulting, and the illumination from the many enormous windows have no parallels in the residential architecture of medieval Europe” as the Unesco world heritage experts describe it The great refectory, the dining hall of the knights is “another structure of exceptional value, even on a global scale. This is due to the superb systems of proportions and the innovatory artistic form of the vaulting, supported on slender columns. It is one of the most magnificent and elegant secular interiors that European Gothic architecture produced.” My favorite structure is the Dansker, something you find in most Teutonic Knight’s castles. These are large latrine tower that emptied into a stream or river and is connected to the main castle by a covered walkway. These were needed because the order’s castles were permanently garrisoned by a much large number of men than “normal” European castles – just another indication of how different the Teutonic Knight’s state was.

The noble guests were usually given an audience with the Grand Master and invited to a banquet in that fabulous dining hall which by the way had an underfloor heating system that could raise the temperature in the 800 sqm room from 6 to 22 degrees in just 20 minutes. The dinner was almost certainly splendid though in keeping with the order’s strict rules, no women were allowed. Vistors keep pointing out that amidst the splendor the knights remained austere, eating the same modest meal and wearing the same unadorned clothes. They had no personal property and in war they had the same weapons and armor, all provided for by the order.

The guests, honored as they were, were not invited to stay inside the enormous castle. They were expected to find their own accommodation for themselves and their retinue. Not even food or drink was provided for free.

From Marienburg the crusaders set off for Konigsberg the jumping off point for the actual Rhyse.

So what was the that crusade actually. The chronicler Peter von Duisburg described it as follows: “In the year 1283, when 53 years had already passed since the beginning of the war against the Prussian people and all the tribes in the aforementioned land had been conquered and exterminated, so that not one remained who did not humbly bow his neck to the yoke of the holy Roman Church, the brothers of the German House began the war against that powerful and extremely stubborn and warlike people who live next to the Prussian land on the other side of the Memel in the land of Lithuania”

As we have heard before, the Lithuanians prove much harder to beat than the Prussians and Livonians. And, spoiler alert, they never were conquered. They did have two things in their favor, for one they were able to unify in the face of the oncoming attacks and secondly, Lithuania prove even more geographically impenetrable than Prussia, Latvia and Estonia.

The Teutonic Knights maintained a string of border fortresses that stretched from Memel, modern day Kalipeda along the Neman river to Ragnit. Across from there was the Wilderness, a 30 to 50km wide stretch of no-man’s land that could be crossed only under most favorable weather conditions, namely in the winter when the swampy ground was frozen hard.

The difficulty of the terrain meant that any campaign, the actual Rhyse needed a lot of advance planning. The guests were asked to gather food and equipment ahead of departure. The Knights would bring their own gear and supplies, but none for the other crusaders

The purpose of the attacks on Lithuania were the same as in all the Northern Crusades, to convert the locals to Christianity by force. But as time went by, this objective became less and less realistic. The Rhysen started in 1304 and lasted about 100 years but shifted the borders only marginally.

In fact it seems the main purpose of these campaigns wasn’t to convert the Lithuanians. Of the 307 campaigns the historian Werner Paravicini analyzed in his 700 page work on the Prussian Rysen, he categorized 127 as pure devastation campaigns, 35 were set up as sieges, 38 as campaigns to build or rebuild fortifications and only 10 that involved an actual battle against the Lithuanians, and of these 10, only three were planned to result in a battle whilst the other seven were the consequence of an unexpected Lithuanian counterattack.

These military campaigns were also very short, usually about 2 to 3 weeks, of which a chunk must have been taken up just by cutting a way through the wilderness.

All that is why I call them adventure holidays. Sure, the guests are given the opportunity to do some actual fighting, but in 95% of cases only against unarmed peasants. And by the time the powerful Lithuanian cavalry forces come to relive the pressure on the villages, the brave Christian knights are back in the woods, carrying their plunder and the occasional prisoner back to Konigsberg. It was a very controlled risk that made sure the honorable guests could come back again.

Once the expedition returned to Koenigsberg, it was tea and medals. The order set up a table of honor with 12 seats, some reimagining of the round table of king Arthur. Only the most valiant knights were given the great honor to sit at that table. That is what Chaucer’s knight refers to when he boasts that he had sat “at the table of honor above all nations”. And those amongst the crusaders who had not been knighted yet could be daubed by the master’s sword. It was great way for young men to be introduced into the chivalric world without too much risk that the precious heir to the duchy or county would come to serious harm.

So if this was just a little bit of fun with little to no military significance, why did the Teutonic Knights organize these trips? Well, let’s take a look at the bills Henry Bolingbroke, the son of John of Gaunt and one of the richest men in England racked up on his 8 month jaunt to Prussia: he spent £564 on wages for his retinue, £400 on gifts for various potentates and the leaders of the order, £75 on silver kitchenware made in Prussia, he hired boats, horses, wagons to carry his stuff, he had to hire accommodation everywhere he went as the order would not cater for that and he had to feed all these men. And not to forget the gambling and other entertainment. The total bill came to £4,360 pounds, more that the Teutonic order spent in that same period on acquiring the whole island of Gotland.

There you have it, these guests were a huge boon to the Prussian economy and as we will see, when they stopped coming, the finances of the order are hit hard. The end of the Rhysen and with it the end of the golden age of the Teutonic Knights came at the very end of the 14^th century. And why it came is what we are going to discuss next week. I hope you will join us again.

I have put a link to the truly astounding work by Werner Paravicini about the Rhysen into the show notes. Even though I have gone far beyond the time I initially allocate to this story, I have barely scratched the surface of his analysis. If you want to know more about this unique phenomena, take a look. It is full of great little vignettes of life in the Middle Ages. It is unfortunately in German. If you look for an English text, you can find more detail in Eric Christiansen’s The Nordic Crusades.

Bibliography

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

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

Episode 132– The Battle on the Ice

by History of the Germans Podcast on 1st January 202410th March 2024

Alexander Nevsky, Sergei Eisenstein and what really happened

This week we look at the activities of the Teutonic order in Livonia during the 13^th 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.

History of the Germans

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.

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.

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Ep. 132 – The Battle on the Ice – Alexander Nevsky, Sergei Eisenstein and what really happened

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 13^th 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.

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.

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

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, 1/3^rd 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 15^th 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 5^th in the Julian calendar, the 12^th 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 13^th 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

Episode 131 – The Conquest of Prussia (Part II)

by History of the Germans Podcast on 21st December 202310th March 2024

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…

History of the Germans

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Ep. 131 – The Conquest of Prussia (Part II) – The second, third and n-th Prussian uprising

TRANSCRIPT

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

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.

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

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 12^th century, the Danes went into Estonia at the end of the 12^th 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 15^th 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

EPISODE 130 – The Conquest of Prussia (Part I)

by History of the Germans Podcast on 15th December 202310th March 2024

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..

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Episode Website with transcript, maps and lots more: EPISODE 130 – The Conquest of Prussia (Part I) • History of the Germans Podcast

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The translation of Nicolaus of Jeroschin is here: Jeroschin N. The Chronicle of Prussia (2016), OCR.pdf

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So far I have:

Ep. 130 – The Conquest of Prussia (Part I) – from Konrad of Masovia’s offer to the first Prussian revolts

TRANSCRIPT

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

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.

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

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 4^th, 5^th and 6^th 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 14^th 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 13^th 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 13^th 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 14^th 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 1/3^rd, 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 12^th 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 13^th 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

EPISODE 129 – Hermann von Salza

by History of the Germans Podcast on 7th December 202310th March 2024

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.

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Ep. 129 – Hermann von Salza – Diplomat and Grand Master of the Teutonic Order

TRANSCRIPT

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

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.