Teutonic Knights

by William Urban

  Although the crusading lords returning from Prussia in March of 1337 were entertained by Casimir (giving King John an opportunity to propose an end to the wars), it was not until after 1340, when Casimir’s plans to lead his armies south-east toward Kiev were fully matured, that serious peace talks began.

  Samogitian Operations

  Meanwhile, the pagans in Samogitia now had to defend themselves against attacks from the north as well as the east and south. The Livonian Knights were striking across the wilderness barrier from Memel, Goldingen, Mitau, Riga, and Dünaburg. This was a bitter war, with no quarter asked or given.

  The ferocity of the campaigns can be seen in the fighting around a small castle not far from Kaunas. In February of 1336 Louis von Wittelsbach brought a crusading force from Brandenburg that included many Austrian and French knights, a force so large that over 200 ships were required to transport the equipment. Duke Louis expected that his siege of the earth and timber fort would be short and the 4,000 refugees and all the herds and personal possessions would soon be his, but when the pagans saw that the crusaders would soon storm the ramparts they lit a huge fire and began to throw all their possessions into the inferno, then strangled their wives and children and threw the corpses into the bonfire. They did this in the expectation that when they went to their equivalent of Valhalla, they would be accompanied by all their worldly goods and their families. The Christians’ reaction to this was at first disbelief. Then, enraged at being robbed of their rightful booty, they recklessly began storming the fortifications, heedless of the costs incurred by failing to first break greater holes in the walls. The Christians prevailed by their superior numbers but not without heavy losses. The pagan chief, a heroic figure named Marger, smashed many heads before he saw that his own capture was imminent. At the last moment he fled down into a cellar where he had hidden his wife. Swinging his sword, he cut her into pieces and then thrust the weapon into his own belly. The crusaders were able to take few prisoners who could be made into serfs.

  Louis von Wittelsbach then began construction on a castle on the Marienburg island near Welun, hoping to prepare the way for an even greater expedition the next year. When he realised that he would be unable to complete his task before his supplies were depleted, he burned the half-finished fort and retreated. During the next winter, in 1337, King John and Duke Heinrich of Bavaria appeared with forces from Bohemia, Silesia, Bavaria, the Palatinate, Thuringia, the Rhineland, Holland, and even Burgundy; and the Teutonic Knights came with the militias of Nattangia and Sambia. The weather was extraordinarily warm, so that boats could be used to transport the army up the Nemunas. After taking two forts near Welun, they built an earth and timber castle opposite the ruins of Christmemel and named it Bayerburg (Beierburg) in honour of the Bavarian duke. Bayerburg became a base for raids and a way station for larger expeditions headed for central Lithuania or north into Samogitia. Gediminas, knowing that he had to destroy this strategic castle or face dangerous attacks with little warning, besieged it for twenty-two days that June without success. As he retreated with heavy losses, the garrison sallied out to bear off the siege weapons and mount them on their own walls.

  King John was not present at the conclusion of this expedition. He had caught a cold that settled in his eye and then became infected. The ailment became worse on his way home. He allowed a French doctor to treat him in Breslau (Wrocław), but became so angry at his bungling that he had the man drowned in the Oder River; in Prague he consulted an Arabian doctor, but without obtaining a cure. When the infection spread to the other eye, he was henceforth totally sightless. Blindness, however, far from dampening the king’s chivalric ambitions, spurred him on to new deeds of valour. If anything, John’s disability enhanced his reputation. Nor did it hinder him either in war or in diplomacy. Before he left Königsberg he borrowed 6,000 florins for expenses he would incur in negotiating with Casimir, and he worked at that task throughout his worst illness.

  Casimir was ready for peace. Aldona had died in May after a long illness, without ever producing a son. Although Casimir had distracted himself with numerous love affairs, these would not provide the male heir his kingdom needed. War would distract him from the pressing business of arranging a marriage with some important family, and therefore he accepted a truce with the Teutonic Order. As it happened, Casimir was extremely unlucky in his married life. He had hoped to marry John’s daughter, Margarete, but she died literally on the eve of the wedding in Prague. Casimir then hurried into an alliance with the unattractive heiress Adelheid of Hessen, whom he quickly sent into the country and refused to see again. Unable to obtain a divorce from the pope, it was obvious that the king would have no legitimate son.

  The Teutonic Knights were unable to take advantage of Casimir’s preoccupation in these years to mount a great expedition into Samogitia. Only small armies came to Prussia and those were hampered by bad weather. In the winter of 1339, for example, a count of the Palatinate led an attack on Welun, but after enduring extremely cold weather for four days he returned to Königsberg. Some Lithuanians were surrendering, accepting fiefs in Prussia; many more probably believed that the crusade would end soon, in a Christian victory.

  More Papal Investigations

  Major expeditions were rare after 1340, partly because of events in the Holy Roman Empire, partly because substantial troops had to be stationed on the Polish front. The grand master accepted this as an unhappy but unavoidable fact. He could not make concessions to either the papacy or the Polish monarch, especially not when they seemed to be working together. When the legate’s hearings were held in Warsaw in 1338 they followed the traditional course: the Poles brought forth a host of witnesses, while the Teutonic Knights boycotted the sessions. As before, the grand master asked the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Cistercians to write letters describing his order as a ‘wall before the house of the Lord’ and saying that the Teutonic Knights were given zealously to the performance of divine worship, proper habits, friendliness, observation of the rules of discipline, and so forth. But those letters were not to the point, and the hearings were.

  The grand master said that the emperor, Louis IV, had forbidden him to answer any complaints raised before the pope, but that excuse carried more weight in Germany than in Avignon, where a former inquisitor sat on the papal throne. The result was that in 1339 a legate ordered the Teutonic Knights to return West Prussia, Culm, Kujavia, Dobrin, and Michelau to the Polish king, and to pay him 194,500 Marks in damages. This was an almost unimaginable sum.

  Although the pope had summoned the grand master to Avignon to explain his conduct, he relented when Dietrich wrote that he was needed in the east to meet an imminent Tatar attack. The holy father urged the Teutonic Knights to continue their efforts to protect Christendom, and praised their ‘defence of the house of Israel, religious enthusiasm, morals, strong enforcement of its rules, and its maintenance of the peace’. Thereafter it was easier for the pope to make additional concessions. His interest, in contrast to his predecessors, was in reforming clerical orders, not in destroying them. He realised that enforcement of the legate’s verdict would have crippled the military order, and since he was committed to the crusade against the pagans he could not allow the principal bearer of the cross in the Baltic to be ruined. He therefore ordered a new commission to hold more hearings and urged the parties to compromise. Serious negotiations became possible after Dietrich von Altenburg died in 1342. Only when all the personalities had passed from the scene could new leaders seek an end to a conflict that no one could win.

  Peace with King Casimir

  Relatively little is known about the early career of Ludolf König, who was elected grand master in June of 1342. A native of Lower Saxony who had been stationed in Prussia (a rarity in itself, because knights from the Low German language regions were generally assigned to Livonia), he had been master of the robes and grand commander. His policy of seeking peace with King Casimir was crowned with success within a year.

 
The 1343 Peace of Kalish was based on three propositions: firstly, the dukes of Masovia and Kujavia (who were possible heirs of Casimir, should he not produce a male heir) renounced all claims to West Prussia; secondly, Duke Bogusław of Pomerania, Casimir’s son-in-law and therefore another likely heir, promised to see that the peace treaty was upheld no matter who inherited the throne; and thirdly, Casimir obtained from the cities and greater nobles of Poland oaths to maintain the peace and recognise the validity of the treaty. Ludolf, in his turn, promised to surrender Masovia and Kujavia.

  Pomp and ceremony ended twenty years of war. Soon a chronicler could write, ‘The pope finally lifted the interdict he had hung over Prussia.’ The Peace of Kalish ended hostilities between the two greatest Roman Christian powers in North-East Europe. Although the peace was not to be permanent, it was as final as could be expected. There were no fundamental reasons for the parties to quarrel again. The Teutonic Knights wanted to move north-east against the Lithuanians, while King Casimir planned to advance south-east against the Tatars. The lands lying between them, Masovia and Kujavia, remained in the possession of minor Piast princes who were usually more or less neutral.

  With this era of warfare behind them – an era that too many historians assume represents the entirety of the century, rather than three decades – the Teutonic Knights reopened the crusade against the Samogitians. This time they had no interference from the Franciscans, the order most sympathetic to heretical and non-Christian views. This was because about the time of Gediminas’ death, 1340 – 1, two Franciscan friars were martyred in Vilnius. From that time until 1387 the Franciscans do not seem to have been in the Lithuanian capital.

  Almost unnoticed, the Teutonic Knights had used the presence of the duke of Bavaria on crusade in 1337 to petition for an imperial grant of three small frontier territories.23 That, in addition to the early grant from King Mindaugas in 1257, seemed to confirm the order’s right to conquer Samogitia. Now all the grand master had to do was to attract a sufficient number of crusaders to assist his forces. He found that the way to do this was by making a greater appeal to the cult of chivalry.

  The Cult of Chivalry in Prussia

  Popes Clement VI, Innocent IV, and Urban V restored some measure of public respect for the Church. They abandoned the long constitutional arguments over the imperial election and combated nepotism and corruption. Also, they gave more support to the crusades and ceased to harass the Teutonic Order about Riga and Danzig.

  Within a short time Western crusaders were flocking to Prussia in greater numbers than to other contemporary crusades. The attraction was the opportunity to participate in elaborate feasts and hunts while simultaneously striking a blow against the enemies of Christ; and even that at reasonable cost and in relative comfort. In 1345 King John and his son, Charles of Moravia, appeared, accompanied by King Louis of Hungary, the duke of Bourbon, the counts of Holland, Schwarzenburg, and Holstein, and the Hohenzollern count of Nuremberg. Such an imposing collection of notables could not have been found anywhere else in Europe. While, strictly speaking, it is an exaggeration to say that Prussia became the showplace of the bored chivalry of Europe, for the period 1345 – 90 that judgement is not completely unfair.

  This chivalry also represents a fundamentally new cast of characters. Within a short time William of Holland and John of Bohemia would be dead. When Charles of Moravia became king of Bohemia in 1346, and then Holy Roman emperor the following year, he would have no time for more crusading; nor could Louis leave his Hungarian domains again. In short, the next grand master would be forced to turn from recruiting a few great lords at intervals in favour of attracting many minor nobles for smaller annual forays. Chivalry was the device he used to lure them east.

  The Age of Chivalry

  The Teutonic Knights had changed greatly in the four decades between 1310 and 1350. Fame and wealth, and greater contacts with the homeland, had made a profound impact on their way of life. They had the financial resources to live like lords at the very moment that chivalry was entering an era of extravagance and luxury beyond previous imagination. Moreover, competition with Casimir of Poland stirred them to win friends among the great lords of Europe, and the crusade in Samogitia required that they recruit widely among the lesser lords. Eventually they came to believe that their crusading goals could best be achieved if they put less stress on monkish values and more on chivalric ones. At this same moment they found in Winrich von Kniprode a leader who could bring all the strands of chivalry together. Consequently, the era from 1350 to 1400 became the spiritual and moral apex of the Baltic Crusades; but its hallmark was worldly display.

  In contrast to the chivalric pageantry of France and England, this was a completely male activity. The Teutonic Knights had a few female members, but those were nuns who worked in the hospital and none, as far as we know, were of noble birth; thus they were completely unsuited to helping entertain at drinking bouts. The Teutonic Order’s chivalry celebrated the virtues associated with war against the foes of Christ and Lady Mary.

  Whereas the previous hundred years had seen great struggles and hard-won victories, the second half of the fourteenth century was an era of triumph, of public acclaim, and of international popularity. In part this reflected the failure of competing crusades – the Holy Land been lost, the Turks were overrunning Bulgaria and Serbia, and the Spanish Reconquista had been slowed by the Hundred Years’ War. It was important that at least one crusade be successful, because holy war was an expression of the cult of chivalry that gave meaning to fourteenth-century noble society. Chivalry and crusading were not essential to good government or a prosperous economy, but they were important to nobles whose role in government, in economic life, and even in warfare, was declining. Chivalry was expensive and impractical, but that was one of its attractions: the new class of professionals could not afford to participate – they had to make their fortune before middle age caught up with them; minor nobles could not afford lavish gestures, nor could burghers who needed money for investments, and churchmen often advocated radically different moral and social values. Yet even these groups were attracted to a code emphasising generosity, service, honour, good manners, and gracious living. Everyone, in short, believed that society needed ideals, even unrealistic ones. Moreover, even the critics of chivalry agreed that it was necessary to defend Christendom against its enemies, and they understood that Western Christendom was better defended through victories rather than by defeats in battle. The Lithuanian Reisen offered both chivalry and victory, and for the many who were genuinely religious, the Church offered substantial spiritual rewards.

  Perhaps this was all a reaction to the plague, that horrible flea-borne pestilence known today as the Black Death, which reduced the population of Europe by a third. As entire families perished, the heirs had more money to spend, and they were less inclined to save for the future. ‘Eat, drink, and be merry,’ was one common reaction; increased spirituality was another. The crusade to Prussia combined both.

  Although the numbers of crusaders at this time never equalled those of earlier centuries, they were by no means a rare sight on the roads of Europe. It was no surprise for Chaucer’s audience to read in the prologue to The Canterbury Tales the following lines:

  A knight ther was, and that a worthy man

  that from the time he first began

  to riden out, he loved chevalrie,

  trouthe and honour, fredom and curtesie.

  Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre

  and therto hadde he ridden, no man ferre,

  as wel in cristendom as in hethenesse,

  and ever honoured for his worthinesse.

  At Alisandre he was whan it was wonne.

  Ful often time he hadde the bord bigonne

  above alle nations in Pruce.

  In Lettowe hadde he reysed and in Ruce

  no cristen man so often of his degree.

  The bord, or table of honour, was well known (as was to be expected in the homeland of Ki
ng Arthur), and while the greatest lords of chivalry were invited, the place of honour was not given on the basis of birth alone, but for courage in battle. Englishmen often saw the crusade as a religious pilgrimage on behalf of the Virgin Mary and St George. Knights on pilgrimage were a common sight in France, too, and in Germany. They were a special sort of pilgrim, for they did not come barefoot, practising poverty and humility, but with pomp and circumstance, and they were entertained not with prayer vigils and fasts, but with feasting and elaborate balls. The participants in this crusade were the epitome of chivalry, display, and pageant. Experienced veterans came to share the feasts and hunts, and to earn spiritual benefits that would offset mortal sins. Young squires flocked to Prussia, hoping to be dubbed a knight by a famous warrior, perhaps by a king or a duke.

  Chivalry in Prussian Literature

  This chivalric spirit was celebrated in poetry and prose. In Prussia it had already stimulated an outpouring of literary creativity, especially between 1320 and 1345, when knights and priests composed religious and historical works of moderately high quality and significant local importance. Encouraged by two grand masters, Luther von Braunschweig and Dietrich von Altenberg, who were both authors themselves, Prussian writers produced lives of saints, translations of selected books of the Bible, and histories of the northern crusades. Composing in their native Middle High German dialects, the authors were more noted for the ambition of their poetry than for their success, but that was a shortcoming to be expected among men untrained in formal rhetoric, whose strength came more from passion and effort than from refined reflection. Although one can belittle the poetic achievement, it is more fitting to be astonished that there was any literature at all. Warfare is not usually compatible with refined literary tastes. How much easier it would have been to adopt the chivalric and spiritual creations of the homeland. Yet the fact remains that the Teutonic Order did not do so. It created a literature for its own needs.