God's War: A New History of the Crusades

by Christopher Tyerman

  The arrival of the Teutonic Knights restored the territorial integrity and political coherence of the Livonian colony that had almost been swept away in 1236, helped by their extensive international resources, the backing of the pope and the acquiescence of the Danish king, to whom northern Estonia was restored in 1238. Through a winning combination of military strength, alliances with neighbours and a measure of tolerance towards client rulers, the Teutonic Knights made themselves undisputed masters of Livonia. Bishop Albert’s ecclesiastical experiment was abandoned as the bishops (after 1253 archbishops) of Riga ceded two-thirds of conquests to the order. But the settlement remained precarious. A further general revolt in 1259–60, aided by Russians and Lithuanians, threatened to sweep away the whole edifice of German power in the region. The uprising was based on those client states that the Teutonic Knights had carefully nurtured around its key holdings, while Livonia and Prussia, despite the hardness of their rule, remained loyal. For the rest of the century, the Teutonic Knights fought to reclaim territory and secure Livonia’s frontiers. This they achieved, at a high cost in devastation and death. Semigallia was laid waste and depopulated as its inhabitants fled to Lithuania. Samogitia remained outside Livonian grip. The victory of the Knights was won at the cost of a new, even longer confrontation with Lithuania that lasted into the fifteenth century. Yet the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Knights, with its own provincial Master, survived until 1562, when Gotthard Kettler abandoned his religious vows and turned himself into the duke of Courland and Semigallia, thirty-seven years after the secularization of the order in Prussia. By then, the German order appeared as something of a relic, faced with Muscovite pressure on Livonia’s borders and Lutheran converts within.35

  The Conquests by Denmark and Sweden

  The spectacular colonizing achievement of the Germans in Livonia and Prussia should not obscure the wider aspects of the invasion of the northern and eastern Baltic by outsiders. Just as relations between Latin Christians, indigenous pagans, converts and Greek Orthodox Christians were as much of accommodation and compromise as of visceral or racial enmity, so the conquerors were not all German or ecclesiastical. At the same time as Scandinavian kings were eager to enter the orbit of Latin Christendom, so they were keen to expand their interests and power eastwards. The two processes went together to consolidate new national ideologies and the cohesion of power elites. The motives for attacks on Estonia and Finland may have been commercial, the need to combat or regulate piracy and increase profits; the means – naval raids and the settlement of religious centres and trading stations – prudential rather than ideological. Yet, even without the assistance of their own military orders, the kings of Denmark and Sweden managed to attract the approval of the church for their wars of Baltic conquest.

  Danish fleets had operated in the eastern Baltic on a number of occasions in the later twelfth century, from Finland to Prussia. The Swedes were also said to have launched occasional raids on the coasts of the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Riga. These transitory forays allowed later propagandists to assert supposed historic political, religious and ecclesiastical claims. More directly, by 1200, any Latin Christian war against non-Christians could expect to find religious backing. Locally, church-building and the construction of cathedrals, dioceses and monasteries anchored political and commercial imperialism. In alliance with the crown, the church ruled its tenants, collected raw materials and taxes (tithes) and dispensed justice on their estates. To such administrative structures was added social policing through conversion of the natives, at once a symbol and guarantee of local acceptance of the new order. The church gave the conquest, the conquerors and their allies a clear, shared communal identity. Internationally, conquests depicted as extending or defending Christianity could gain for the monarch who conducted such campaigns the recognition and sanction of the papacy, a valuable asset in elevating regional kingship above domestic challenge. Whether or not it actually produced material dividends, the attempts by Scandinavian kings to align their status with the great monarchs of western Christendom suggested that they believed such policies offered tangible rewards.36

  In 1171, Alexander III offered to those who campaigned against the pagans of the eastern Baltic, probably the Estonians, a year’s plenary indulgence as given to pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre. Those who died on the expedition would receive full remission of confessed sins. Although not technically exactly equivalent to a crusade – no vow, no cross and smaller spiritual privileges – such incentives recognized the direction of papal thinking.37 Despite Valdemar I’s interest in the area, nothing came of this initiative. It seems that the first full-blown Danish crusade in the eastern Baltic, complete with crucesignati, accompanied Valdemar II’s attack on Osel in 1206.38 This produced no lasting occupation, but whetted the king’s appetite for the creation of Danish colonies and protectorates across the region. In 1218, Honorius III backed Valdemar’s east Baltic ambitions by proclaiming a crusade against the heathens of Estonia. Danish crusading forces invaded in 1219 and 1220 as part of a coalition that included the Livonian Swordbrothers, attacking Estonia from the south, and King John of Sweden capturing Leal on Estonia’s west coast. In 1219 Valdemar established a garrison at Reval that controlled the chief natural harbour in northern Estonia. There the Danes built a new city and colonized it with Germans, from Saxony, Holstein and Westphalia, the king content to act as absentee ruler skimming off the profits of trade and the income from extensive estates that the crown assigned to itself. In the long run, this allowed increasing autonomy for the burghers and landowners of Reval and Estonia. Danish interests were decreasingly engaged. In 1346, Valdemar IV sold northern Estonia to the Teutonic Knights, who loosely integrated it into Livonia.

  The earliest threat to the Dano-German plantation in northern Estonia had come from former allies. Although the Swedes soon evacuated Leal, the Swordbrothers, as already discussed, continued to advance from the south, occupying Reval itself in 1227. Conflicts of jurisdiction led to an appeal to Rome. Only after the settlement with the new Livonia authorities, the Teutonic Knights, in 1238 was Danish overlordship accepted, at least by fellow Latin Christians. Thereafter, the main interest of the Danish kings concerned the prospects for further eastwards expansion into the Vod region controlled by the Russians of Novgorod. The limits to Danish expansion were set in a series of wars along Estonia’s eastern frontier. Valdemar II became involved in the anti-Russian crusade of 1240–42 beside the Teutonic Knights from Livonia and the Swedes moving east from their bases in Finland. However, the Swedes were defeated on the river Neva in 1240 and, after early success against Pskov, the Teutonic Knights were defeated at and on Lake Chud-Peipus on 5 April 1242 by Alexander Nevsky of Novgorod, an incident glamorously imagined in Eisenstein’s famous nationalistic film. Papal policy after the 1220s consistently branded the Russians as schismatics, who had to be opposed by force, as well as harbouring fanciful schemes for the conversion of the pagans at the eastern end of the Gulf of Finland. Papal hopes for concerted anti-Russian crusades encouraged Eric IV of Denmark (1241–50) to take the cross in 1244, but without consequence. Pope Alexander IV revived the crusade in 1256, appealing to the faithful in Prussia and Livonia to assist the conversion of the pagans further east. In fact, the modest expedition that followed simply helped a local landowner consolidate his hold on the lower Narva; baptisms were not attempted. Future campaigns in the region, against Novgorod or the pagans of Finland, were entrusted to the kings of Sweden, who had already established a presence on the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland. The political and economic returns from such remote and intractable lands appeared increasingly peripheral to the Danes, while relations between Livonia and the Russians were largely determined by commercial traffic, not religious controversy.39

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  Swedish interest in Finland reached back to the twelfth century.40 Missionizing the Suomi of south-west Finland began after 1209, accompanied by some colonization from Sweden. Attempts to convert the
wilder Tavastrians further east ran into religious and political difficulty. The locals were less amenable. By trying to penetrate Tavastria, the Swedes came into competition with the neighbouring Karelians, who were controlled by the Russians of Novgorod. A crusade to bring the Tavastrians to heel was proclaimed in 1237. Further campaigns were conducted by Birger Jarl, Eric XI’s brother-in-law, in 1249. In 1257 the pope called on the Swedes to attack the Karelians, a war that was aimed at the Russians as well as the pagans. Another expedition in 1292 pushed Swedish influence further into Karelia. Ostensibly organized by King Birger (1290–1319) to promote Latin Christianity in the region, its objective was control of the lucrative north-east Baltic trade, not the cure of souls. Fame and profit, not faith, drove the Swedish armies into the wastes of the Finnish interior.

  Frontier war continued between the Swedes and the Russians into the fourteenth century. A Swedish base was established at Viborg in Karelia. Some attempt was made to elevate these conflicts into the sort of permanent religious war familiar in Livonia and Prussia. In the later thirteenth century an appropriate royal saint, the twelfth-century Eric IX, was promoted as the model holy warrior against the Finns, on shaky if not wholly spurious grounds. Dimly remembered martyrs in Finland were brought into the light of ecclesiastical propaganda. The cause of conversion receded in fact, but not as an ideal that could justify the violent aspects of aristocratic power and culture. In the 1340s, Bridget of Sweden urged on her cousin King Magnus II (1319–63) the spiritual merits of a holy war to be fought by a select army of the pious, a penitential and redemptive act of faith and charity.41 More practically, church taxes continued to be raised in expectation of crusading wars, money that could be assigned to the king if he gave the appearance of sympathizing with the cause. Even the religiously refined and later canonized Bridget argued that the king could more justly raise funds for a crusade than for more secular warfare, thus recognizing that the idea of a holy war could still be made to underpin royal authority and neutralize opposition to kings raising men and money.

  After a generation of accommodation along the Karelian frontier after the 1320s, in 1348 and 1350, Magnus II launched two new crusades along the Neva either side of the appearance of the Black Death. Backed by yet another crusade enthusiast on the throne of St Peter, Clement VI, Magnus sought to bolster his position at home by attacking the Novgorod Russians when their potential allies in Lithuania and Muscovy were distracted. Orekhov on the Neva was captured and briefly occupied before its recapture by the Novgorodians early in 1349. In 1350, after a futile promenade around the eastern end of the Gulf of Finland, Magnus arrived at Reval, where he tried to achieve by commercial blockade against Novgorod what he had failed to take by arms. Further papal approval in March 1351 allowed Magnus to try to continue throwing his weight around, supported by the prospect of a new church crusade tithe. Despite healthy profits from the tax, Magnus failed to drum up support, either at home or elsewhere in the Latin Baltic. His crusading enterprise fizzled out. Soon Magnus faced rebellion in Sweden and an unwelcome change of policy at the papal Curia; in 1355 they asked for their money back. This marked the end of serious crusading by the Swedes in the Baltic. Attempts to revive the crusade against the Russians were made in the 1370s by King Albert (1364–89); Urban VI offered indulgences in 1378. Raiding across the Karelian frontier sporadically spluttered into life into the fifteenth century. The final Swedish crusade bull, issued by another, if improbable, crusade devotee, the venal and libidinous Alexander VI in 1496, failed even to reach its destination, intercepted by a hostile king of Denmark. The triumph of internecine Christian politics over sentimental, hypocritical or pious manipulation of the institutions of holy war provided a fitting coda to what had become one of the longest and least glamorous of all the conflicts to which the crusade had been attached. Yet it should be remembered that Finland remained part of the Swedish kingdom until 1809.

  Prussia

  Crusading in Prussia was of a very different stamp to the dingy campaigns of the far north and left a more obvious mark. If anywhere could be described as a ‘crusader state’ it was the principality created by the Teutonic Knights in thirteenth-century Prussia. Even more than Livonia, medieval Prussian institutions and identity were forged out of a continuous holy war and rule by a military order whose authority, while repeatedly challenged by natives and pagan neighbours, was recognized by pope and emperor alike and sustained by permanent access to crusade privileges, preaching and formulae. Whereas in Livonia or Estonia, the order had to compete with the urban patriciate, ecclesiastical hierarchy or Danish kings, in Prussia by the 1240s the order was supreme domestically and already enjoyed the privilege of declaring crusades on their own, not papal initiative. If not the sadistic ghouls of certain black legends, the order’s rule was effective and transforming. Although suffering repeated military disasters, the order’s international resources and a ready supply of recruits prevented its disintegration. Despite unease at some of the Teutonic Knights’ methods and behaviour, the model of a military order ruling a colonizing state was borrowed by planners of new ways to win back the Holy Land in the fourteenth century. The order provided the aristocracy, commanding the castles, controlling commerce and holding vast tracts of land. From conquered marcher lordship, Prussia became a new heartland of Germany and Germanness. Whilst one of crusading’s more awkward and, for some, uncomfortable legacies, this was also one of its most influential and enduring.42

  The crusades in Prussia predated the involvement of the Teutonic Knights by more than a decade. The efforts of Christian, a Cistercian missionary in the region since 1206 and appointed bishop of the Prussians in 1215, received the backing of papal crusading bulls from 1217. For the next few years, in alliance with Germans and Polish lords from the upper Vistula, the bishop tried to extend Christianity to the pagan tribes of the lower Vistula without success. The fierce reprisals after such raids persuaded Conrad duke of Mazovia in 1225 to invite the Teutonic Knights to support the enterprise, freeing him to pursue his ambitions within Poland. The Knights had made a name for themselves since 1211, employed by King Andrew of Hungary defending eastern Transylvania from the Cumans. Founded as a German hospitaller order in Acre during the Third Crusade, the order had enjoyed the patronage of Henry VI, who secured them papal recognition, and later his son Frederick II, who confirmed their privileges in 1215 and vastly increased their endowment. Adopting the rule of the Templars more or less wholesale, although the order’s main theatre of operation, ideologically if not always materially, remained the Holy Land, by the 1220s it had become a landowner across all western Christendom. Just as importantly, in their Master, Hermann of Salza (1209–39), the order possessed a skilled political leader, close to Frederick II. In 1226, in an imperial bull issued at Rimini, Frederick authorized the order to invade Prussia under its own authority; Hermann was to hold its conquests in Kulmerland and Prussia as a Reichsfürst, an independent imperial prince. Conrad of Mazovia was also seemingly persuaded to recognize the order’s autonomous authority in Prussia. Hermann exploited the competition between the pope and Frederick by obtaining in 1234 Gregory IX’s papal designation of the order’s lands in Prussia as a papal fief, under the protection of St Peter, but held by the Teutonic Knights.43 This canny charting of the choppy waters of international politics gave the order a very free hand, especially when Bishop Christian, the only nominal check to their activities, was captured by the Prussians in 1233 and held until 1239. This was a vital period in the consolidation of the order’s leadership of the conquest and organization of the regular crusades proclaimed to help them. They made few obvious efforts to secure the bishop’s release. Recognition of the order’s role in orchestrating outside military reinforcements was recognized in Innocent IV’s grant in 1245, allowing the Teutonic Knights to recruit crusades at will without express papal authority each time.44 This devolution of crusade authorization was logical in dealing with military orders permanently in the front line, and had parallels in Livoni
a and Spain. In Prussia it consolidated the order’s supreme position as the principal political authority in the new state that was emerging in the wake of conquests they had secured as much by being managers of crusades as through their own unaided efforts.

  Hermann of Salza had not been unconditionally impressed by Conrad of Mazovia’s first invitation in 1225. He postponed committing the order until his return from accompanying Frederick II’s crusade to the Holy Land in 1228–9. Then a small reconnaissance force under Hermann Balk established a garrison on the Polish–Kulmerland frontier in 1229 preparatory to an assault down the Vistula. As in Livonia, the key battleground lay along the rivers, the ripuarian forts and trading posts providing the bases for control of the surrounding countryside and for further advance. However, in contrast with the war along the Dvina, the invasion of Prussia came from upstream, strangling Prussian commerce with the interior. Equally unlike Livonia, the order and its crusading allies operated close to home bases, in Poland and Pomerania, within easy reach of the rest of northern Germany. This was reflected in the much greater numerical popularity of the Prussian crusade of the 1230s than any fought in Livonia, Estonia or Finland. It also meant that, unlike the sometimes beleaguered German outposts at Riga and Reval, there was little prospect of the Germans in Prussia being driven into the sea. This did not prevent a series of revolts and counter-attacks challenging and occasionally reversing the process of conquest.