Teutonic Knights

by William Urban

  It was in this context that the grand master, Siegfried von Feuchtwangen, transferred his seat from Venice to Marienburg. First, this recognised that long-term complaints from Prussia were valid. For many years the Prussian knights had felt that their interests were being ignored by the distant grand master, and the depth of their anger had become clear in a stormy grand chapter meeting in Elbing in 1303, during which the Prussian and Livonian delegates argued with the Venetian and German representatives over the resignation of the grand master, Gottfried von Hohenlohe. The order was almost in a state of schism until Gottfried’s death eight years later. In those years Siegfried von Feutchtwangen had not dared to cross the Alps even for inspections or to recruit crusaders, lest he offend those knights who wanted to wait for an expedition to the Holy Land. Secondly, the situation in Italy was becoming perilous. In 1303 the king of France had arranged for the kidnapping of Pope Boniface VIII, and the next pope had moved to Avignon where both he and the king of France believed he would be ‘safer’. Four years after royal agents had mishandled the holy father, they arrested the entire membership of the Templars in France and put them on trial for heresy. Those knights confessed to grotesque and improbable crimes, and later many were burned at the stake and their possessions confiscated. In early 1308 the king of England similarly arrested the Templars in his lands.

  As Siegfried von Feuchtwangen watched this development, he concluded that it would be prudent to reside in a somewhat safer locality – there were no powerful friends of the Teutonic Knights ruling in Italy or Germany at this moment, and the wealth of the order was a tempting prize for hard-pressed rulers. Moreover, the grand master did not have historic ties to Venice; that was merely a convenient place to monitor politics in the Mediterranean. He saw no hope of organising a crusade large enough to reestablish a foothold in the Holy Land in the next few years, and therefore any knights stationed outside the Baltic would not be of much use to anyone. If by a miracle the crusaders could return to the Holy Land, the Teutonic Knights would join them, but meanwhile they would concentrate on the war against the pagans. Siegfried von Feuchtwangen established permanent residence at Marienburg in 1309, but it would be the next grand master, Karl von Trier, who actually reasserted the authority of his office over all the regional officers, making the grand master once again the leader of all Teutonic Knights; by then the organisation had a firm grasp of what its goals were – the extirpation of militant paganism in the Baltic.

  Siegfried von Feuchtwangen named new officers, giving them the more exalted titles formerly used in the Holy Land. He also appointed advocates to rural districts and established a convent of knights in Danzig. As prosperity returned, Danzig became the leading commercial centre in the Baltic. Rule by the Teutonic Knights was no longer seen by the patrician burghers and artisans as an oppressive despotism.

  King Ladislas of Poland

  Up to 1320 the Teutonic Knights did not consider Ladislas a serious threat. They had no reason to see him as a military genius or even a particularly good administrator, and they knew that conflicts broke out wherever he appeared, creating military chaos that he was able to repress only with difficulty. They must have welcomed his attacks on relatives, since that practically guaranteed that the Masovian dukes would support the order politically and militarily.

  The Polish clergy was initially divided over whether to recognise Ladislas, but that ended when the hostile bishop of Cracow went into exile. Later Ladislas obtained the support of the archbishop of Gniezno, the chief prelate of the kingdom. Still, it was not until 20 January 1320 that he was crowned king, and the coronation took place without prior papal blessing. This awkward by-product of the quarrel of the German emperor and the Avignon pope created problems in the short term, but long term it established the Polish monarchy as independent of papal politics. It also marked the rebirth of the Polish monarchy on a hereditary basis, father to son, rather than passing the crown among all surviving brothers before giving it to the eldest son of the eldest brother, as ancient practice dictated. Moreover, Ladislas, being from the north of the country, wanted to possess Pomerellia, whereas most competing Piasts were interested only in Silesia. Also, he was a stubborn, vengeful man who did not forget past slights such as those given by the Teutonic Knights.

  By 1320 Ladislas had learned much from his many defeats. Most importantly he had finally understood that one should not start a war without some hope of winning. Since he had no hope of victory over the Teutonic Knights at that time, he concentrated on reorganising his state on a feudal basis; and his appeals to the pope laid the foundation for future legal challenges to the order’s possession of West Prussia, Danzig, and Culm.

  King Ladislas and the Pagans

  When the Rus’ian prince of Galicia and Volhynia died in 1323, Ladislas sought to have Boleslaw of Masovia inherit his territories, but Gediminas of Lithuania made it clear that no broad swathe of lands along his western and southern borders could be transferred to a Piast duke without his permission. Negotiations over this revealed that Poland and Lithuania perceived common interests; most importantly, they had enemies – Tatars on the steppes, Teutonic Knights along the northern coasts – that could be resisted effectively if they worked together. An alliance was arranged. Gediminas sent daughters to the Masovian dukes, and Ladislas’ fifteen-year-old son, Casimir (1310 – 70), wedded Aldona, an appealing Lithuanian princess. Aldona bought joy again to a court that had been saddened by the deaths of Casimir’s two elder brothers. She went about in the company of beautiful maidens and musicians, and for a while her young husband loved her deeply. Later, when Casimir began pursuing other women, he abandoned her to his mother’s domestic tyranny.

  Ladislas was by now a wily diplomat. In early 1326 he signed a truce with the Teutonic Order that seemed to repudiate his Lithuanian alliance. Without much question the grand master probably thought that he was dividing the order’s enemies and diverting the king to a war against the Tatars – Ladislas had recently obtained a papal indulgence ‘for the defence of the Catholic faith in war or battle in the kingdom of Poland or in any other Christian land or in areas adjacent to the abovementioned kingdom or near to it inhabited or possessed by schismatics, Tatars, or any other mixture of pagan nations’. But Ladislas’ actual target was Brandenburg, whose dukes had been staunch supporters of crusading. In the spring he allowed fiercely pagan Lithuanians to cross his domains, to fall without warning on German villages and towns, ravaging districts that had never felt a military threat from pagans even during the most hard-fought campaigns of the thirteenth century.

  A chronicler contemporary to these events expressed the crusaders’ outrage at the devastation of churches, the desecration of the host, the murder of priests and burning of convents, and the torture of prisoners of both sexes. He claimed that those scenes horrified even the Poles who had accompanied the pagans. He reported incidents that have the ring of eyewitness accounts: of pagan warriors quarrelling so seriously over one beautiful girl that a leader stepped forward, cut her in two, and said, ‘now she’s worth nothing. Each can have the part that pleases him’; and the nun who begged for death rather than lose her virginity, and was dispatched by the sword of a co-operative pagan after appropriate prayers. The Teutonic Knights used the stories to inflame popular feeling against the pagans and their Polish allies. A rumour circulated that the Lithuanian leader, David of Gardinas, had been murdered by a Polish knight, and many wondered if the Polish alliance with Lithuania would be ended by this general fiasco.

  The Teutonic Knights did not await the expiration of the truce to take revenge for Ladislas’ attack on their ally. They drew up alliances with Piast princes that threatened Ladislas’ very grip on the Polish crown, first with Henryk of Silesia, later with Boleslaw of Volhynia-Galicia. The first treaty fairly burned with angry words denouncing Ladislas, accusing him of breaking the peace, aiding pagans in ravaging Christian lands, and of being an inhuman tyrant. Later Duke Henryk and his brothers became lay members of
the Teutonic Order.

  The grand master was now Werner von Orseln, the former castellan of Ragnit and grand commander. Although he was an enthusiastic proponent of war against the pagans, there was little fighting during the next three years. This was not due to Ladislas’ actions, but because the emperor-elect and the pope were at war, making it impossible to recruit crusaders from Germany.

  The long history of the Holy Roman Empire is marked by recurring conflicts between emperor and pope. The particular quarrel of this era was different because neither party had sufficient real power to harm the other significantly; their feud was characterised by few actions stronger than harsh words and empty threats. In 1326, after the pope laid an interdict over Germany, suspending all church services, the grand master summoned representatives to a grand chapter in Marienburg to discuss the matter. The knights and priests voted to support the emperor, Louis IV of Wittelsbach, duke of Bavaria.

  At this same meeting the delegates voted on a number of changes in the statutes. The principal innovation was to revise the form of worship service, but later generations remembered the meeting best for a subsequent forgery that gave the German master authority to remove an incompetent grand master.

  Wars on Several Fronts

  Grand Master Werner’s first campaign, in 1327, was to the south along both banks of the Vistula, a territory King Ladislas was holding in his effort to assert royal authority over his Masovian relatives. Werner first cleared Polish forces from Dobrin and Płock, then pushed on into Kujavia. When his attack on Brzesc failed, Werner proposed a truce. He may have thought that he had taught Ladislas a lesson. If so, he was mistaken. This conflict was only the beginning of a long war. Ladislas accepted the truce, but was only waiting for the proper moment to strike back hard at his opponents.

  Not realising what he had taken on, Werner proceeded with plans to transfer his forces east for an advance into Samogitia. Replacing the garrison of Livonian knights in Memel with Prussian knights gave the Livonian master additional troops for his siege of Riga; also, it made it easier for the Prussian marshal to co-ordinate operations up the Nemunas River. Werner then struck across the wilderness toward Gardinas, the fortress protecting the water route westward across the swamps and lakes to the Narew River and then to the Bug River, the easiest way to travel from Masovia and Volhynia to Lithuania. He employed a clever stratagem to lure the enemy into a headlong pursuit, then ambushed the surprised pagans. The Teutonic Knights then burned an area around Gardinas thirty miles across. Some Lithuanian nobles, either concluding that Gediminas could no longer protect them or being his personal enemies, came to Prussia with their wives and children, accepted baptism, and served in the crusader armies.

  About this time Werner lost the use of Christmemel as a forward base on the Nemunas River. Supposedly, warning of a portending disaster was observed a year before, when three knights saw a star moving east from the constellation Aquarius. Of course, there was no way to interpret this as a prediction that an earthslide would destroy Christmemel’s defences. The foundation of the wooden fort gave way and some walls collapsed. Inspecting the damage, the grand master realised that he could not repair it immediately. Therefore, at the conclusion of a magnificent banquet he set fire to the ruins and abandoned the site temporarily.

  John of Bohemia joins the Conflict

  King John of Bohemia (1296 – 1346) was an extraordinary man by any standard. Crowned at the age of fourteen, he was an inveterate traveller and campaigner who was embroiled in so many quarrels that contemporaries said, ‘nothing without King John’. In his early thirties, he left the government of Bohemia to his vassals so that he could concentrate on foreign adventures. His most persistent ambition was to lead a crusade to the Holy Land. Unfortunately for him, it was impossible to raise a Christian army powerful enough to challenge the Turks, so he accepted Samogitia as a reasonable substitute. In the winter of 1328 – 9 he came to Prussia with a large number of Bohemian, German, and Polish nobles and knights. He was also accompanied by the French troubadour, Guillaume de Machaut, who was to compose a poetic description of John’s exploits. Grand Master Werner called up an estimated 350 Teutonic Knights and 18,000 foot soldiers. The combined army was so large that the participants expected to deal the Samogitians a fatal blow similar to that landed by Ottokar II of Bohemia the previous century. John wanted a victory so spectacular that cities in Samogitia would be named after him, just as Königsberg had been named to honour Ottokar.22

  The crusaders marched across frozen swamps and rivers to an inland castle, where their demonstration of power persuaded the garrison to ask for terms, which, in turn, provoked a dispute among the crusaders. Werner argued for resettling the garrison in Prussia; he compared the pagans to wolves who would soon take off for the woods and resume their evil ways. The chivalrous king from Bohemia, however, insisted that the pagans be given a courteous and honourable baptism, after which they be allowed to remain in possession of the castle. John prevailed. Soon priests had baptised 6,000 men, women, and children.

  This generous policy might have been wise if the crusaders had gone on to occupy all Samogitia, but they did not have the opportunity. At that moment news arrived that Ladislas had invaded Culm on the same day that the crusaders had marched into the wilderness. The messenger had ridden five days to urge the grand master to send the army back to protect Prussia. Werner and John reluctantly turned back to Culm, arriving too late to catch Ladislas. Meanwhile, the newly baptised Samogitians rebelled.

  John and Werner believed that it would be impossible to invade Samogitia again until the grand master had eliminated King Ladislas’ threat to Culm. Moreover, they were concerned about the question of honour, which was easily as important as the strategic situation: they had to take revenge for Ladislas’ violation of the truce. In addition they had to punish Ladislas of Masovia (d.1343), whom they now considered a vile traitor to the Christian cause. In March of 1329, Werner and John signed a formal treaty of alliance. John asserted his claims to the Polish throne by right of inheritance and marriage, a fact that became important when his queen surrendered her hereditary claims to West Prussia to the grand master. They then invaded Masovia and Kujavia, devastating vast areas on both sides of the Vistula River and forcing Ladislas to plead for a truce.

  Before hostilities ended, John had made Ladislas of Masovia become his vassal, and the Teutonic Knights had occupied Dobrin, the province that protected the southern approach to Culm. A year later John sold his share of the conquered areas to Werner.

  Papal Intervention

  One of the great issues that divided the Teutonic Order and the papacy was the payment of Peter’s Pence, a tax that Poland and England paid directly into the papal coffers. In recent years Pope John XXII had attempted to require this payment from other nations. Meeting resistance, he needed an example; the Teutonic Knights seemed perfect – they owed him obedience, their West Prussian subjects paid Peter’s Pence, and the military order was fabulously wealthy. However, the Teutonic Knights refused on the grounds that many of their possessions were in Germany and Italy, and therefore were immune from this tax; moreover, paying the tax would lend credence to Polish claims to overlordship of Prussia. John XXII, who had little patience with such quibbles, encouraged the order’s foes to bring lawsuits against them; and he made it clear that he would be very understanding of the special needs of his friends and supporters. There was a change in papal policy in 1330, when the pope offered to forgive all past debts if Culm and West Prussia would pay Peter’s Pence in the future. The provincial assembly accepted the offer, but the grand master did not.

  The pope then ordered the grand master and his officers to come to Avignon to explain their behaviour, warning that if they failed to do so their privileges would be suspended, his legates’ excommunication would be confirmed, and he would put the officers of the Teutonic Order on trial in absentia . The officers still did not attend. The pope had even less success with his commands that the Teutonic Knights
join in military attacks on the emperor and his son, Louis of Brandenburg. The Teutonic Knights were unwilling to risk compromise. Not only did they believe that the emperor and his son were within their rights, but they feared that the emperor could order their German possessions confiscated and that Duke Louis, his son, could harass crusaders as they crossed Brandenburg.

  If the grand masters were sceptical about papal offers to mediate their disputes with Poland, modern historians might also be sceptical about this pope’s criticisms of the Teutonic Knights. Still, papal legates were figures who could safely pass from one court to another, and all parties recognised that whatever one thought of the pope’s motives, the pope was still the pope, and the Church provided the only international order that Christendom possessed. More importantly, perhaps, both the king and the grand master needed a pause in hostilities and somebody had to arrange these. Consequently papal efforts to arrange truces were successful in 1330, 1332, and 1334; but hopes for a permanent peace were frustrated because the parties were so far apart that only the passage of time and the passing of the principal figures could remove the mutual mistrust. The truces brought a suspension of hostilities but nothing more.

  Victory in Livonia

  The truces did permit Werner von Orseln to resume his campaign in Samogitia. In the winter of 1330 he welcomed a large group of Rhenish crusaders and led them into the hostile wilderness. He did not find any forts to besiege. The natives, having long since been forewarned of the crusaders’ approach, had abandoned their villages and hidden in the woods. Consequently Werner’s expedition achieved relatively little. However, the crusaders’ offensive had distracted the Lithuanians’ attention sufficiently that knights from Ragnit were able to slip past enemy outposts and raid Vilnius, deep in the interior of the highlands. Finding the watchmen asleep, they sacked and burned the suburbs of the city.