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.

TRANSCRIPT

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

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..

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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