The count of Meissen was important in the great offensive of 1236 – 7. First he built large sailing ships, then sank the small pagan vessels that came out to challenge him, and finally he transported his men downstream to strike in the enemy’s rear. The Pogesanian militia came out to fight, but fled after hearing the count’s men blowing horns (presumably in their rear). Clearly, the Prussians were in no mood to stand up to heavy cavalry, flights of crossbow quarrels, and disciplined infantry. Western methods of making war swept the Prussians from level battlefields. It was harder to find the pagans in the woods and swamps, especially in the summer, but in winter – a season of war in which the crusaders came to specialise – they could be easily traced back to their lairs.
Each year small crusader armies came to Prussia, and each year the result was the same – an expansion of the order’s conquests. Many of these volunteers were Polish, and everyone involved in this crusade understood that without the steadfast support of the Piast and Pomerellian dukes the volunteers who came from Germany could have done little besides provide garrisons for the castles already constructed. Why, then, if the Poles were doing so much of the fighting, were the Teutonic Knights so important?
The answer is that Polish and Pomerellian crusaders went home or stayed home. At first they were only gone from the onset of bad weather in the fall until the long days of the short summer began, but within a few years their active contributions went permanently missing – Duke Conrad had troubles on his other frontiers, Duke Sventopełk was quarrelling with his brothers, and eventually all the Piasts of Poland were feuding. None of these feudal lords, nor their bishops, had the resources to provide an occupation force – that became the role of the Teutonic Knights here just as it had been in the Holy Land. Celibate knights, pledged to poverty and obedience, were willing to serve through the wet seasons and the long cold winter nights. Secular knights who preferred a hot drink and a warm woman (or the other way around) were not eager to patrol dark paths in the forest or endure the freezing winds atop a lookout tower above lonely ramparts.
To assist in occupying the newly conquered territories, the Teutonic Knights settled secular knights on vacant lands in Culm, recruiting most of them from Poland; and in these early years they attracted burghers from Germany to found one new town a year, guaranteeing their rights in the Charter of Culm (1233). These immigrants were not numerous, though they would become so by the end of the thirteenth century, and were even more plentiful in the fourteenth. A large part of the fighting force, however, was composed of Prussian militiamen and nobles, the former serving as infantry, the latter as cavalry (often referred to – though slightly inaccurately – as ‘native knights’).13
Whenever crusading forces were available, the Teutonic Knights, who were now experts on local topography and native customs, led the German and Polish knights, together with the allied Prussian cavalry and militiamen, down the Vistula River and along the coastline, capturing one fortress after another. There were distractions – in 1237 the Teutonic Knights incorporated a local military order, the Swordbrothers (see next chapter), and thereby took on additional responsibilities in Livonia that required diverting men and material to the north; then Pope Gregory IX excommunicated Emperor Friedrich II, precipitating a long and costly struggle that tore Germany apart; the Mongol onslaught of 1241 – 2 devastated Galicia-Volhynia, Hungary, and Poland, temporarily making it impossible for those powerful states to provide military assistance in the crusades; and in the 1240s Sventopełk of Pomerellia joined rebellious Prussians in an effort to drive the Teutonic Knights out of lands he wanted to make his own. This last conflict, the First Prussian Insurrection, was a close-run affair, but at last Sventopełk was forced to make peace, then forced again to surrender. Afterward the Prussian tribes negotiated a surrender that guaranteed them considerable autonomy in the conduct of their daily lives.
Meanwhile the Livonian branch of the order was also making headway in its offensives south from Riga. It seemed on the verge of a significant victory in 1250 when Mindaugas of Lithuania accepted Roman Christianity, thus removing the justification for attacking his lands. Although some critics of the Teutonic Order see the knights as nothing more than land-hungry robbers, in this instance they gave up an opportunity to seize territories in order to make one of Christendom’s greatest foes into a strong ally.14 Shortly thereafter Prussian resistance began to collapse, too – in 1256 King Ottokar II of Bohemia, the most powerful single ruler in the Holy Roman Empire, led to Samland an army so powerful that the local natives realised resistance was futile. Shortly afterward, in 1257, the Samogitians asked for a two-year truce to consider their options. The crusaders granted this request, confident that self-interest would induce their foes to make a formal acceptance of the true faith. For a moment it appeared that Christendom had triumphed totally in the Baltic region.
The crusaders’ enthusiasm for peaceful conversions should give pause to those who cannot manage to disassociate the medieval mind from modern ideologies such as nationalism and racism, or who prefer to believe that the Germans were out to depopulate the entire region and resettle it. But it is unlikely that the Teutonic Knights will be judged by the most consistent of their statements and actions, for they, like most human organisations, exhibited over time a wide range of behaviours; if one always assumes the worst of them and the best from their foes, one can see them as evil, indeed; and that is the way that many historians, particularly those who judge the past as essentially part of the twentieth century, have written about these German warriors.
The crusading position began to come apart in 1259, when the Samogitians chose to fight for their pagan faith and traditional customs (which included raiding Christian settlements). They inflicted annihilating defeats upon Prussian and Livonian armies, forced Mindaugas to recant his conversion, and persuaded native peoples to the north and west to rise in revolt against their German masters. Soon Lithuanian armies were penetrating into Livonia, Prussia, Volhynia and Poland. Pagan victories seemed to confirm the rightness of the pagan religion. Holy War was now truly a contest of faiths, not merely a struggle between rulers as to who would rule.
This time the Teutonic Knights were more or less on their own. Neither German nor Polish crusaders came in great numbers, much less Bohemian monarchs and prelates. Moreover, the Holy Land became once again the centre of crusading energies, and the Teutonic Knights, like other military-religious orders, gave that region priority. The war in Prussia became a contest of border raids, sieges and surprises, and patrolling the wilderness to prevent the eastern Prussians and Lithuanians from coming through the depopulated Galindian forests and swamps to attack isolated settlements. Poles and Germans worked together to close the gap and eventually they were joined by Volhynians in carrying the war to the common enemy.
Pagan and Orthodox Enemies
The fifteen years of this Second Prussian Insurrection (1260 – 75) had been difficult ones, as Peter von Dusburg reminded his readers:
There was hardly a time in which there was enough bread to eat, and one, two, or more times they had to ride to battle and drive the enemy away. And so, they acted as did those Jews who wanted to rebuild the holy city of Jerusalem when threatened by enemies, in that half of them worked and the others stayed on guard from dawn till dusk. With one hand they worked, and in the other they held a sword.
The worst years of the insurrection were over by 1273, the year that the bishop of Olmütz (Olomouc), a Czech prelate with excellent access to information about Poland, Galicia and Hungary, wrote a memorial for Pope Gregory X reminding him that the entire eastern part of Europe was still threatened by pagans, heretics and ‘schismatics’ (members of the Orthodox church):
There are four realms in this region – Hungary, Rus’, Lithuania, and Prussia. There are imminent dangers to the Christians in the kingdom of Hungary. First, because the Cumans are there, where they are not only aliens, but attack the kingdom and, among other customs, kill the very young and very ol
d and take the youths and maidens captive and teach them their evil rites, and such is their power that they multiply, and, therefore, Hungary is certainly in danger from them, and the neighbouring lands, too. And in that kingdom there are heretics and schismatics who have fled from other lands. The very Queen of Hungary is a Cuman, whose parents were and are pagans. Two daughters of the Hungarian king have been married to schismatic Rus’ians . . . The Rus’ians are schismatics and servants of the Mongols. The Lithuanians and Prussians are pagans who devastate many bishoprics in Poland. These are the closest to us.
There were great dangers still, and not far away. The surrender of the Nattangians, Warmians and Bartians made the Teutonic Knights responsible for protecting these new ‘converts’; this could be done only by striking deeper into the interior of the country against the remaining pagans, the Sudovians, and their Lithuanian allies. Moreover, the Teutonic Knights had to fight alone. Ottokar of Bohemia was now fighting Rudolf von Habsburg for possession of Austria and the throne, and until the decisive battle in 1278 the king needed his supporters to provide all the military aid they could – Brandenburg, Bavaria, Cracow, Silesia, Thuringia and Meissen all sent knights to Bohemia. As a result, although all of these rulers were traditional allies of the Teutonic Order, often men who had been on crusade themselves, each was too deeply involved in the struggle for empire to send help to Prussia in this moment of direst need.
War along the Frontier
The Sudovians were not an easy enemy for the crusaders to fight. First of all, they were good warriors and fairly numerous; secondly, their lands lay far to the east, in the midst of seemingly impenetrable swamps and forests. It was easier to find a great aurochs, that huge ox-like beast already on the verge of extinction, than to locate Sudovians hiding in the woods. Nor was it much easier to spot a Sudovian raiding party before it struck without warning at isolated settlements and garrisons.
The first Sudovian attacks came even as the Nattangians and Bartians were surrendering. The Sudovians fell on the construction party that was rebuilding Bartenstein, a strategic point on the Alle River in central Bartia, and killed all the men there, then burned the uncompleted structure. That was a hard blow to the Teutonic Knights. Bartenstein was to be the anchor of their defensive line facing the wilderness. The Sudovians, led by an intrepid leader named Scumand, were then able to raid freely among the disorganised and defenceless tribes that had so recently been their allies.
By terrorising the Nattangians and Bartians, however, the Sudovians drove those tribes, willy-nilly, into the arms of the Teutonic Order. Much as those tribesmen may have sympathised with the Sudovians, they were unwilling to see their families perish in Scumand’s frightening raids. Without a castle base from which to operate, the Teutonic Knights could do little to help them; therefore, it was up to the natives to protect themselves. At first the warriors who had survived the insurrection lacked confidence and leadership, and until 1274 they did little but hide in their forts. Then a stout-hearted matron – a relative of Herkus Monte, the most famous leader of an earlier Prussian rebellion – began to berate her sons, accusing them of being unable either to defend themselves or their people. Stung by her accusations, they gathered the warriors from several forts and fought a pitched battle against the Sudovians, killing 2,000 of the raiders. This cleared the country of most of the border ruffians and made it possible for the Teutonic Knights to rebuild Bartenstein. When Prussian natives in their own self-interest brought their formidable military skills to the service of the Teutonic Knights the balance of power tipped in favour of the Christians. The episode also proves that the Nattangians had hardly been exterminated or even reduced hopelessly in numbers.
New leaders were now heading the military order, and with them came new strategies and new tactics. Grand Master Anno von Sangerhausen had gone from Prussia to the Holy Land in 1266 and remained there until the conclusion of peace with Sultan Baibars in 1272; then he had returned to Germany to recruit those crusaders from Thuringia and Meissen who brought the war in Nattangia to a conclusion; shortly after returning from Prussia to Germany again, he died. The grand chapter that met in July of 1273 chose as his successor Hartmann von Heldrungen, a man of advanced years who as a youth had known Grand Master Conrad, Duke of Thuringia, who had witnessed personally the union with the Swordbrothers, and who had visited Prussia in 1255. Following tradition, Grand Master Hartmann went to Italy and took ship for the Holy Land, where the knights outside Prussia and Livonia still saw their chief duty – the defence of Acre until that day when a new crusading force would come to liberate Jerusalem again. Hartmann, however, soon returned to Germany. There simply was not enough room in the order’s convent in Acre to house the number of officers and knights who were available for duty. Some of them had to be sent back to Europe, subject to immediate recall.
That same grand chapter meeting also confirmed the election of Conrad von Thierberg as Prussian master. Conrad, a Frank by birth, had served most of his career in Prussia as castellan of Zantir and Christburg, strongholds in the north-west. From 1269 on he had been acting-master on several occasions. Now that he held office in his own right he called on his younger brother to be marshal. Because they shared the same first as well as last name they were known as Conrad the elder and Conrad the younger.
The grand chapter had instructed Master Conrad to attack east from Königsberg up the Pregel River and drive a wedge between the Sudovians and the Nadrovians. The assembly of knights hoped that this would facilitate the conquest of the Nadrovians; from their lands they could use the Nemunas to operate against the southern flank of the Samogitians. Also, the new castles on the Pregel could be easily supplied by ship, and they would protect traffic moving toward the Alle River. Moreover, in contrast to the recent past, the grand chapter apparently sent enough knights and men-at-arms to make the effort successful.
Master Conrad opened the campaign by sending the advocate of Samland, Theodoric, with his native militia against two large log forts on the Pregel River. Both were taken, and the Samlanders found so many horses, cattle, and other booty in them that they could barely carry their loot or drive the animals home. Next he sent Theodoric by boat with a force of Teutonic Knights and 150 sergeants and many native infantry to a more distant castle. As soon as the advocate had placed his archers in position, he directed the native militiamen to make the assault with storm ladders. Too late, the Nadrovians tried to surrender; the attack had proceeded too far to call back the troops, so the slaughter encompassed most of the warriors inside the walls. A few pagans managed to make themselves understood and were spared to be taken away for resettlement with the women and children, but not many. The victors then burned the fort and departed.
Once the border forts were cleared away, Master Conrad led the army into the interior of Nadrovia. He plundered the nearby districts before besieging the main fortress, a stronghold protected by 200 well-armed men. His assault was similar to others directed against native log and earth forts, and the outcome was similar too: after hard fighting Master Conrad’s troops captured it, slaying most of the garrison. Not long afterward the rest of the Nadrovians surrendered. An order chronicler summarised this victory:
There were many glorious deeds done against the Nadrovians which are not written in this book because it would be tedious to describe them one by one. But the Nadrovians had a large, strong army at that time and many castles. Nevertheless, they put aside their hate and surrendered to the brothers, except for a few who went to Lithuania. And to the present day that part of Nadrovia remains a wilderness.
In accordance with plans made many years before, the Teutonic Knights proceeded to advance north-east. Nadrovia now served as the base for attacks on Scalovia on the lower Nemunas, beyond which lay Samogitia. The leaders of the crusade had long desired to crush the stubborn and courageous resistance of the Samogitians, whose attacks on Kurland were obstructing communication with Livonia; currently the Prussian master could safely send messages, men and
supplies only by sea, and then only in the summer. The strategy was clear. Just as the Prussian master’s advance into Scalovia had become possible only because earlier victories had eliminated all dangerous threats to his flank, now he was eliminating the danger to his current flank, with the ultimate goal being to make secure the border regions of Kurland and Livonia. Ultimately, just as the Nadrovians now served as crusader auxiliaries, not enemies, so the Scalovians would soon assist against the Samogitians and, if all went as planned, the Samogitians would eventually assist in fighting the Lithuanians.
The Lithuanians understood this perfectly, and so they gave all the help they could to the endangered tribes on the frontier. Awkwardly, these reinforcements came only at those times when the common warriors were not needed for agricultural work, and all warriors disliked the boring duties involved in regional defence. So the most logical employment of these forces was in attacking Livonia and Prussia, thus tying down the Christian forces to protect their porous frontiers. The Teutonic Knights, quite understandably, chose to tie down the pagan troops in the same way, by threatening to invade the highlands at all times of year, with minimal warning and maximum damage.
Teutonic Knights Page 8
