Or perhaps he even planned to resettle in the East. After all, Schwerin was not an old state – a little more than a century before, it had lain on the other side of the long-disputed frontier between Christendom and paganism – and, just as a mixed population of Germans and Slavs now lived there peacefully, Gunzelin’s family was now thoroughly intermingled with the Slavic dynasties which had once dominated the region. Consequently he was not likely to fear living among strange peoples or encountering new challenges. For many years Count Gunzelin had been gathering estates in Livonia by exchanging properties with the monastic orders – a medieval form of crop insurance – and he was undoubtedly well informed on conditions in the East. Moreover, at the moment his lands were occupied by the duke of Brandenburg and he had several children for whom he had to provide an inheritance. In short, he saw little future in Schwerin.
The crusaders must have landed in Livonia in the summer or autumn of 1267 in the expectation of waging a winter campaign near Novgorod. Master Otto, although occupied with Lithuanian attacks along the Daugava, had ordered thirty-four knights from Weissenstein, Leal, and Fellin to reinforce the bishop’s troops in Dorpat. Large numbers of native militia were available, too, and the Danish vassals were willing to fight here rather than attempt to defend their own lands later without help. Among the numerous crusaders was Count Heinrich of Mecklenburg with his German and Slavic troops. But Gunzelin apparently spent little time in Estonia.
Gunzelin’s ship would have brought him directly to Riga, where he met Albert Suerbeer, whom, it can be presumed, he had met previously during the archbishop’s long stay in northern Germany. But only now did the two men discover that they could be of service to one another. Albert resented the autonomy of the Teutonic Knights and the fact that they had confiscated his lands and stirred up trouble even among his canons. Gunzelin was poor, but ambitious and warlike; doubtless, he was well aware that his grandfather had dared to kidnap King Waldemar II, and bring the Danish empire crashing down. It is not clear who made the proposal to attack the Teutonic Knights and divide their territories, but, on 21 December 1267, Gunzelin and Albert signed a pact to work to this end. The archbishop appointed the count advocate of all his lands, with the duty of reorganising his holdings and protecting them against all enemies, and he gave him all authority, all incomes, and all responsibilities associated with his holdings. It was understood that the count would be rewarded with generous grants of land in the captured territories if he succeeded in taking any from the Teutonic Knights or pagan tribes, but if he failed, the archbishop would not even pay his ransom, implicitly denying all responsibility for his actions. It was a risky venture for the count, but counts of Schwerin were not intimidated by heavy odds.
Gunzelin hoped to become a great landowner in Semgallia, Selonia, and northern Nalsen in the Lithuanian borderlands. He may have thought these lands south of the Daugava would be an easy prize, since they were not heavily populated to begin with and currently had no experienced lord with a large retinue to defend them. As Gunzelin prepared the archiepiscopal territories for war, he presumably visited the vassals, inspected the castles, and estimated how many native troops he could summon to join his attack. Then, after ascertaining how many mercenaries he would need to accomplish his mission, he set out for Gotland to recruit them. Meanwhile, Archbishop Suerbeer made contact with all the order’s potential enemies. If he could find sufficient support abroad, his conspiracy might stand a good chance of overthrowing the Teutonic Knights in Livonia.
While all these plans were being set in motion, a large Rus’ian army, this time commanded by Duke Dmitri of Perejaslavl, the son of Alexander Nevsky, had invaded Estonia. The Rus’ians had not been sure what they would do at first – invade Lithuania through Polotsk, or cross the Narva into Wierland and then march on Reval, or go through the swamps toward Dorpat. The Western army, also very large (estimated by the chronicler at 30,000 men), gathered at Dorpat. The two forces collided in a pitched battle on 23 January 1268, near Maholm, then again on 28 February further east, on the banks of the Kegola River. The Livonian Rhymed Chronicle summarised:
When the people who were supposed to be with the brothers had arrived, orders were given to place the natives on the left flank. That was to be held by them in the battle. A larger army of royal vassals of German birth was brought there, and they held the right flank. Then they charged honourably. The brothers and their men struck together. Bishop Alexander was killed. Two formations of Russians advanced upon him, but they were forced into a rout. Up and down the field the Russian army had to retreat . . . The brothers revenged the injuries they had suffered from the Russians over a long period. The field was wide and deep, and the Russian defeat a great one . . . Each German had to fight sixty Russians . . . Prince Dmitri was a hero, and with five thousand chosen Russians he entered into battle. The other army had fled. Now hear what happened. The brothers’ flagbearers were opposed to him on a very bad stream. He saw the brothers’ army there, and the brothers had many men there, as I now tell you. There were one hundred and sixty there and that had to suffice. There were also foot soldiers, who, standing before the bridge, conducted themselves like heroes. They had done very well, and there were about eighty of them. They did their duty by the brothers and thrust back the Russians so that they were dismayed . . . Many Russian wives mourned over their husbands’ bodies when the battle was over. The Russians still hold that against the brothers, it is true. The feeling has lasted many years.
The account of the battle in the Chronicle of Novgorod is more coherent:
When they reached the Kegola river they found a force of [Germans] in position, and it was like a forest to look at; for the whole land of the [Germans] had come together. But the men of Novgorod without any delay crossed the river to them, and began to range their forces; and the men of [Pskov] took stand on the right hand, and Dmitri, and Svjatoslav took stand also on the right higher up; and on the left stood Mikhail, and the men of Novgorod stood facing the iron troops opposite to the great wedge; and so they went against each other. And as they came together there was a terrible battle such as neither fathers nor grandfathers had seen . . . Now that the great encounter [had] taken place, and the laying down of the heads of good men for Saint Sophia, the merciful Lord speedily sent his mercy, not wishing utter death to the sinner; punishing us and again pardoning. He, turning away his wrath from us, and regarding us with his merciful eye; by the power of the Honourable Cross and through the prayers of the Holy Mother of God our Sovereign Lady, the Immaculate Mary, and those of all the Saints, God helped [Prince] Dmitri and the men of Novgorod . . . They pursued them fighting, as far as the town, for seven verses along the three roads, so that not even a horse could make its way for the corpses. And so they turned back from the town, and perceived another large force in the shape of a great wedge which had struck into the Novgorod transport; and the men of Novgorod wished to strike them, but others said, ‘It is already too near night; how if we fall into confusion and get beaten ourselves.’ And so they stood together opposite each other awaiting daylight. And they, accursed transgressors of the Cross, fled, not waiting for the light.
It had been a confused combat between two huge armies. Apparently each had been victorious on different parts of the battlefield, and afterward the Germans withdrew to defend another river crossing. Each side was exhausted, and the Rus’ians soon withdrew to their own country.
The ultimate victors were the Mongols, who understood well how to divide their enemies and thereby increase their own power. In 1275 they collected a second hearth tax from all the Russian lands – this time without resistance. It was this Mongol Empire, stretching from Russia to Baghdad, to Peking and Hanoi, that Marco Polo described in his long visit which began in 1268.
Conflict between Roman Catholics and Orthodox hardly mattered for many years to come. Both sides understood that all the advantages stood with the defensive forces. Not only were there strong fortresses with garrisons committed to defen
ding them to the last, but logistical difficulties made prolonged sieges impossible. The Germans who served in the Teutonic Order and who made up the clergy, secular knights, and burghers, were committed to fighting for their possessions. But equally opposed to the Rus’ian and Lithuanian invasions were the native peoples who had been the principal victims of raids in the past. Their motto seems to have been ‘better the devil you know’.
Native Life at the End of the Thirteenth Century
The charge that the Teutonic Knights were hindering the process of conversion lies at the root of every condemnation of the order’s actions in Livonia and Prussia. On the one hand, an interpretation dating from the end of the thirteenth century (reinforced at the end of the nineteenth century, and widely accepted at the end of the twentieth) denounced all interference with native customs as Western colonialism and cultural imperialism; at the same time the adherents of this doctrine denounced the order’s failure to spread Christianity and education among the Baltic peoples so as to raise them to the level of the Germans (as though this was not intruding significantly into traditional practices). The order’s enemies assumed that a low-key approach, through native priests, would make an impression on their hearers through their ability to use the native language skilfully and through a morality higher than that possessed by second-rate foreigners. Perhaps they were right. However, that was not the choice the order had. Religious education and the hiring of priests was the duty of the archbishop and bishops, not the master and his officials. If the friar-brothers had attempted to teach religion, no pope would have hesitated to rebuke them severely. Moreover, every effort to persuade the bishops and their canons to become members of the Teutonic Order provoked howls of indignant protest.
Clearly, all efforts to preach the word of God among the Baltic peoples were less than fully effective. Moreover, the reasons for the failure were obvious even to contemporaries: the Church hesitated to trust the sons of pagan priests not to make heretical interpretations of Christianity which would endanger the souls of their congregations; chastity was not a native folkway, and the nearby presence of married Orthodox priests was a dangerous example; and, moreover, because the foreign-born prelates and their canons did not speak Estonian or Latvian, they could not be sure what native-born priests might be saying or doing. The Church lacked the funds to maintain clergy in the countryside and was unable to prevent the priests they recruited in Germany from drifting back to the cities where they could find work and, at the very least, find someone they could speak to other than an occasional merchant, the local noble, or some advocate – individuals with whom they had (or should have) little in common. Lastly, all people who have accepted Christianity relatively quickly have adapted local myths and adopted ancient practices into their understanding of the new faith. We may not worry today about Irish fairies and Croatian vilija, but the medieval church did. And so the Church resisted incorporating Baltic pagan beliefs – most importantly those connected with burial and the remembrance of the dead – into daily worship and seasonal observances.
The native peoples resisted Christian burial rites successfully in every part of Livonia. However, we may have information about this form of resistance rather than about other methods only because it was much easier for the church to observe burial practices than to investigate the breaking of fasts, the performance of secret ceremonies, and beliefs in superstitions different from those held by Germans. The women, in particular, were more stubborn in their resistance to change, perhaps because their lives were less affected by the new regime than was the world of men. Moreover, neither Teutonic Knights nor priests were supposed to spend time with women.
All that converts seemed to have understood was the need to repeat certain prayers, to respect the saints, and to add new superstitions to their already heterogeneous belief system. Understanding the role of the trinity in a monotheistic creed was probably as difficult then as it is today, and the Christians’ moral codes seemed to have little connection, at times, with how ordinary Germans lived. The rulers probably did not know what was going on in the villages – the knights of the military order least of all, because they were supposed to be in the convent at prayers instead of mixing with the natives (drinking parties with men were acceptable, but not entertainments where women were present). What the natives wished to preserve was preserved musically, in songs the foreigners could not understand. This singing tradition (though not the songs) has endured through the ages to our present time – in 1988 – 91, when the Baltic states won their independence again, they did so not through terrorism or force, but by means of a ‘Singing Revolution’.
The Teutonic Order’s indirect approach to conversion was more successful in Prussia, where large numbers of German and Polish peasants speeded the process of cultural assimilation and eventual Germanisation. Even so, the question of how sincerely converted the natives had been was discussed through the centuries. Missionaries preached in vain, because they were too few in number and lacked sufficient command of the language to stir the Livonians’ hearts. Christianity made inroads into native society only when the Reformation and Counter-Reformation reached the Baltic.
Contrary to what is widely believed, serfdom and slavery were not the immediate fate of the newly conquered peoples. Taxation and labour duties, yes, monogamy, and formal acknowledgement of adherence to Christianity, but in most other ways the native peoples were able to retain their traditional practices. The elders continued to administer local affairs, the warrior class came to look forward to the opportunities war provided for earning booty and prestige, and farming families had to perform perhaps no more than three days of required labour each year in the fields of their often distant lord. Without question, both secular and religious lords endeavoured to enlarge their estates, abused judicial privilege, and used little restraint in collecting taxes. Almost as certainly, some vassals defended these as rights they had inherited from their Estonian and Livonian mothers and grandmothers – widows or daughters of nobles slain in the wars of conquest, or, in the case of the von Ropp family, marriage into a prominent Rus’ian dynasty.
Livonia remained administratively divided. Consequently, the experiences of individual communities were probably quite diverse. Relatively few Germans settled on the order’s lands, only a few more on the archbishop’s. German influence hardly extended beyond the walls of the small communities clustered around the major castles or the coastal towns. In Estonia, however, where the bishops of Dorpat and Oesel-Wiek governed through landed vassals, and in the lands of the Danish monarch, German knights, merchants, and artisans were more numerous.
Unfortunately, it was only this handful of administrators and merchants who compiled the records and wrote the letters which comprise our most important historical sources from this period. When we reach the last lines of The Rhymed Chronicle and realise that our author has laid down his pen for good, we experience a loss almost as painful as the one we feel when we came to the end of The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia. The century of the Baltic Crusade concluded with the outbreak of a quarrel we must follow through lawyers’ briefs and statements by the order’s enemies at hearings conducted by papal legates, which, unfortunately, were boycotted by the Teutonic Knights, so that we never hear their version of events directly. The Rigans dared not give up their alliance with Lithuanian pagans, because that would have meant, in effect, their surrender to the Livonian master. For thirty years the Rigans would continue to fight desperately but vainly for their liberty. The crusade of the thirteenth century thus ended in civil conflict that would last many decades and would reappear late in the fifteenth century.
7
Territorial Rivalries with Poland
Pomerellia and Danzig
The strategic significance of Pomerellia (West Prussia) was, first, that it lay on the southern Baltic coast along the last stage of the sea route from Lübeck to Prussia, and, therefore, its rulers could aid or hinder commerce as they saw fit; and second, it provided an al
ternative land corridor for crusaders coming from the Holy Roman Empire. Some crusaders came by sea, especially those from England and Scotland. Sailing was the most comfortable way to travel, though it was expensive, and it was the only way for crusaders and merchants to reach Livonia. But most crusaders to Prussia came from Meissen, Thuringia, and Upper Saxony, and for them the direct route to Thorn, Culm, and Marienburg lay across Great Poland. Whenever that road was closed by the Polish king, they could reach Prussia only via Brandenburg, the Neumark, and Pomerellia.
For Poland, possession of Pomerellia would guarantee access to the Baltic Sea, an important consideration for the increasing volume of grain being shipped down the Vistula to the international market. Moreover, the king could station forces in the rear of the Teutonic Knights’ possessions in East Prussia, within easy striking distance of important castles such as Marienburg and Elbing.
The economic importance of the city of Danzig to the two sides is less clear. The Teutonic Knights had other outlets for their grain and forest products, and Danzig was never to submit meekly to the order’s wishes. The slaughter of citizens in an early uprising was as exaggerated (10,000 people, many more than the actual population) as it was widely publicised by the Polish king. Later the order’s officers would have to negotiate with the wealthy and self-confident patricians who dominated politics in this Hanseatic city, and they would rely on Danzig warships in their efforts to suppress piracy. The Piast monarchs of Poland valued the theoretical sovereignty over Danzig more than any immediate military or financial advantages they could have obtained. Claiming that the German-speaking citizens of Danzig were really Poles was good propaganda, and it was plausible because language was not yet a certain sign of political allegiance.
Teutonic Knights Page 14
