The World of the Crusades

by Christopher Tyerman

  Prussia

  By contrast, crusading created German Prussia. Through conquest and rule from the 1220s, the Teutonic Knights built an unprecedented Ordenstaat, a state run by a Military Order, a polity to which the Livonian Swordbrothers had aspired but failed to realise. Polish rulers, eager for greater access to the Baltic, had campaigned against the Prussians throughout the twelfth century in wars that, at least in retrospect, were afforded a gloss of quasi-crusading holiness; one early thirteenth-century Polish chronicler even described the Prussians as ‘Saladinistas’.27 However, it was only in 1217 that a crusade bull was issued on behalf of a mission to the lower Vistula valley by Bishop Christian (1215–45), supported by German and Polish lords. The failure of their efforts, confronted by local resistance, led in 1225 to an invitation from the Polish Duke Conrad of Mazovia to the Teutonic Knights to intervene. Since 1211, the Knights had been serving King Andrew of Hungary in Transylvania against the Cumans. In 1226 their Master, Hermann of Salza (1209–39), a sharp political operator and close associate of Emperor Frederick II, secured an imperial bull authorising the Order’s invasion of Prussia. Any conquests in Kulmerland and Prussia were to be held by Hermann as a Reichsfürst, an independent imperial prince. Conrad of Mazovia abandoned his role as patron of the enterprise. In 1234, Hermann secured the additional protected status of papal fief for the Order’s Prussian lands. The removal into Prussian captivity of Bishop Christian (1233–9) left the Order without rivals, a position consolidated by Innocent IV’s delegation to it in 1245 of the power to call and recruit crusades without prior papal consent.28 The Order thus became the arbiter of its own fate, sole political authority in Christian Prussia, and manager of any future crusades there.

  The conquest of Prussia began in 1229 with the Teutonic Knights’ deployment of a small garrison in the upper Vistula. This allowed the invaders to interrupt Prussian trade in the interior, enabling easy access to home bases and recruits via Poland and Pomerania. Proximity made Prussian crusades more popular than those to distant Livonia and among German nobles even usurped the Holy Land as the crusade destination of choice.29 Once again, campaigns focused on rivers, with forts and trading posts used to control and exploit conquered territory. The invaders’ technological superiority and land frontier further secured their advantages during the advance down the Vistula towards the Baltic and the Frisches Haff which, with aid from regular crusading armies recruited mainly from across eastern Europe, was reached by 1237. As well as estates granted to German lords, the conquest rested on a network of forts built by the slave labour of the conquered: Thorn (1231); Marienwerder (1233); Reden (1234); the tellingly named Christburg (1237); Elbing (1237). The Knights soon attracted Dominican preachers and German settlers, drawn by special civil privileges: Silesians in Kulmerland; citizens of Lübeck in Elbing. Further advances in the late 1230s towards Samland and the Order’s recently acquired Livonia threatened to deny indigenous Prussians access to the sea, thereby completing Latin Christian control of the Baltic seaboard.

  The Military Order’s early successes provoked a decade-long revolt from the Prussians aided by a fearful and jealous Duke Swantopelk of Danzig. Beginning in 1242, the rebels, using guerrilla tactics to neutralise the Germans’ heavy cavalry and crossbows, soon swept aside the Order’s conquests except in Pomerania and a few isolated outposts such as Elbing. The Order’s response combined renewed commitment to war and local reprisals. The so-called treaty of Christburg (1249) offered Prussian converts, chiefly aristocrats, civil rights under the jurisdiction of church courts, in other words obedience to the Order. The consequent emergence of an elite of Christianised Prussians provided a new buttress to the German regime. Pagans were cast beyond the rules and protections of civil society. Such limited accommodation extended to diplomacy. In 1253, to forestall Polish intervention along the Vistula, a deal was struck with Duke Swantopelk. King Ottokar II of Bohemia assisted the annexation of Samland (1254–6) to blunt the ambitions of Lübeck and of Hakon IV of Norway, who had been promised it by the pope. Even King Mindaugas of Lithuania (1236–61) was induced to convert and ally with the Order as protection from the Russians, allowing the incorporation of Samland and the construction of Memel (1252) and Georgenburg (1259).

  These successes were immediately thrown into hazard by a well-organised general Prussian rising in 1260 supported by Swantopelk’s son Mestwin of Danzig. Limited acculturation had lent the Prussians German military technology: crossbows, siege engines and field tactics. Between 1260 and 1264 two of the Military Order’s Prussian Masters were killed; a crusade was destroyed at Pokarvis near Königsberg; forts were overrun; settlers massacred. Savagery in the name of faith was mutual; devastation and displacement of people extensive. The Order survived through regular assistance from large, well-funded crusade armies. By 1283, with the surrender of the Yatwingians, the Prussian tribes had been subdued or annihilated. The Coronians, Letts and Semigallians were conquered by 1290. Revolts in 1286 and 1295 failed to loosen the Order’s grip. Opponents were left with the choice of slavery or exile. The Prussian Ordenstaat emerged as a regime in its own right: enclosed, brutal, exploitative, defined by God and the sword.

  Recruitment for the crusades that saved Prussia for the Teutonic Knights far outstripped that for the Livonia wars. The 1230s saw Polish nobles, German princes; townspeople from Silesia, Breslau, Magdeburg and Lübeck; minor lords from Saxony and Hanover. Leading German princes soon followed: Rudolph of Habsburg (1254), Otto III of Brandenberg (1254 and 1266); Albert I of Brunswick and Albert of Thuringia (1264–5); and Dietrich of Landsberg (1272). Ottokar II of Bohemia (1254–5 and 1267) gave his title to the new castle of Königsberg. Some recruits may have used these crusades to escape the political dilemmas thrown up by extended German civil wars from the late 1230s. The Military Order’s skilful diplomacy maintained relations with both warring parties of pope and emperor, securing its own independence and soothing papal doubts over the Order’s increasingly notorious activities. As well as defeating the Prussians, the Order contained or repelled other challenges to its monopoly of power. Besides incorporating the Livonian Swordbrothers in 1237, the Order absorbed Bishop Christian’s Militia of Dobryzn in 1235 while their patron was in Prussian captivity. In 1243 the new Prussian episcopacy was reduced in size, jurisdiction and share of new possessions.30 After a failed coup in Livonia in 1267–8, the legate Albert Subeer (archbishop of Prussia 1246–53 and of Riga 1253–73) even spent a short time imprisoned by the Order. Innocent IV’s devolution to the Order of the authority to call crusades in 1245, while not eliminating papal appeals and preaching campaigns, provided the Knights with the means to pursue their wars as crusade at will, a privilege extended in 1260 by Alexander IV’s mandate for the cross to be preached by the Order’s own priests.31 These arrangements gave the Order free rein, the crusade forming an integral element in military policy and the rhetorical projection of the Knights as champions of the faith.

  The Later Middle Ages

  Frontier wars and military aggression, frequently in the guise of crusades, did not cease with the consolidation of the Military Order’s control within Prussia, Livonia and southern Estonia. Encouragement of trade and German – ‘New Prussian’ – immigration prompted attempts to expand control over the whole southern and eastern Baltic. Besides the purchase of north Estonia in 1346, Danzig and eastern Pomerania were annexed in 1308–10. In 1337, Emperor Louis IV of Germany invited the Order to conquer pagan Lithuania and its Christian Polish allies, the crossed-wires of Baltic politics finding Poles both as allies of pagan Lithuania and, in papal eyes, potential crusaders against them. Additional incentive for continued crusading militarism came from the Order’s precarious international status following the fall of the last mainland outpost of Outremer in 1291. Despite ruling Prussia, the Order initially maintained its Mediterranean base, moving its headquarters to Venice, an indication of the continuing importance of its Mediterranean origins. Events subsequently forced a change. The violent suppress
ion of a rebellion against the Order by the archbishop, clergy and citizens of Riga in 1297–9 led victims to appeal to the pope, feeding growing disquiet in some quarters at the Order’s general behaviour in the Baltic. Although retaining vociferous supporters, such as Bishop Bruno of Olmutz who wrote in laudatory terms for Pope Gregory X in 1272, persistent complaints led Clement V (1305–14) to instigate an inquiry in 1310 into the Order’s methods and performance. The Livonian brothers were briefly excommunicated in 1312. Fortuitously or not, this coincided with new attacks on Livonia and Prussia by the pagan Lithuanian Grand Prince Vytenis. Even more immediately, the whole function and legitimacy of Military Orders, the subject of academic debate for a generation, were cast into jeopardy by the arrest and trials of the Templars, beginning in 1307–8, culminating in their suppression in 1312. To avoid scandal and escape from harm’s way while simultaneously polishing their credentials as holy warriors, just as the Hospitallers responded by supervising the occupation of Rhodes (1306–10) and moving their central Convent there in 1309, so in the same year the Teutonic Knights established their headquarters at Marienburg.

  The fourteenth-century crusades against Lithuania provided ideological cover for the Military Order’s power, justifying its privileged international status and attracting military recruits. At its largest, alone the Order’s knights only numbered about 1,000 to 1,200 divided between Prussia and Livonia. Regular winter and summer Reisen (raids) against Lithuania, until 1386 a pagan power, sustained the tradition of meritorious religious war for a European aristocracy increasingly embroiled in unequivocally secular conflicts such as the Hundred Years War. Although conditions across the wilderness between Prussia/Livonia and Lithuania were consistently grim – frozen in winter and waterlogged in summer – foreign nobles could take the opportunity (and risk) to show off in difficult and often dangerous combat. Conversion of the enemy was not an issue. With stalemate with Lithuania prevailing, Reisen assumed features of chivalrous grand tours, decked with feasts, heraldry, souvenirs and prizes. These attracted clients from western Europe, beyond Germany or central Europe. While part of a dour violent struggle for power and profit, Reisen ostentatiously incorporated recruits’ cultural aspirations, as in 1375 under Grand Master Winrich of Kniprode (1352–82), when selected nobles received badges with the motto ‘Honour conquers all’, despite its stark crusading incongruity. Baltic Reisen proved particularly attractive during truces in the Hundred Years War in the 1360s and 1390s.

  107. Marienburg Castle.

  Between 1304 and 1423 the bulk of recruits came from Germany, although many came from other regions. Some campaigned many times: John of Luxembourg, king of Bohemia, William IV count of Holland and the Frenchman Marshal Boucicaut three times each; William I of Gelderland on seven occasions between 1383 and 1400. Summer campaigns could be substantial: in 1377, Duke Albert III of Austria brought 2,000 knights with him. At least 450 French and English nobles made the journey over the century, so Chaucer’s Knight became a familiar type:

  Ful ofte time he hadde the bord bigonne

  Aboven alle nacions in Pruce;

  In Lettow hadde he reysed, and in Ruce,

  No Cristen man so ofte of his degree.32

  English evidence confirms the extended social networks involved.33 Anglo-French peace in 1360 prompted relatively large-scale plans and expeditions, notably one led by the earl of Warwick. However flamboyant, such commitment was not necessarily light-hearted. The reality of combat, injury and death elevated the enterprise beyond the merely self-serving or ludic. The Marienkirche in Königsberg acted as a mausoleum. The experiences of recruits linked the Baltic crusades with other theatres of war against the infidel: Marshal Boucicaut, Humphrey Bohun earl of Hereford and Richard Waldegrave, a future Speaker of the English House of Commons (1381), each fought in the Mediterranean as well as against the Lithuanians. In 1365, Pope Urban V saw Thomas Beauchamp, earl of Warwick’s vow as applying equally to Prussia or Palestine.34 Although it is difficult to determine whether those who fought with the Military Order had ceremonially taken the cross, the trappings, language and perhaps the emotions of religious war remained as the knights continued to proclaim their Reisen as crusades. Recruits such as Henry Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV of England, visited Prussian shrines offering indulgences. Despite the growing gap between military strategy and religious purpose, the popularity of the Baltic campaigns emphasised the tenacity of crusading tradition while the Order restricted foreigners to military assistance alone. In alliance with the Hanseatic League, the Order resisted external penetration of its markets, negotiated tight trading concessions, fought over control of fish stocks, and exacted heavy fines for trading irregularities.35

  The Military Order’s success in Prussia and Livonia contrasted awkwardly with the failure of the Lithuanian crusades. Generations of war produced no resolution; Prussia remained German and Lithuania independent. In 1386 the political and religious context radically altered when Jogaila of Lithuania (1377–81; 1382–1434) became king of Poland (1386–1434) and converted to Christianity, calling into doubt in some minds the very legitimacy of Baltic crusading, the Order’s purpose and its rule in Prussia/Livonia. Still employing traditional crusading rhetoric, the Order, with some success, sought foreign allies to unpick the Lithuania and Poland alliance. With larger contingents even than in the 1360s and 1370s, the Order made ground: Dobryzn in the 1390s and Samogitia between 1398 and 1406. This aggressive policy came to a disastrous end with the Lithuanian-Polish victory at Tannenberg/Grunwald (15 July 1410) at which Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen, most of the Order’s high command and 400 knights were killed. Although territorial losses were modest, a brief revival of international aid after Tannenberg soon waned, perhaps because the Hundred Years War restarted in 1415. It seems that non-Germans ceased to campaign in the Baltic after 1413, concluding a trend apparent before Tannenberg. After 1423, even the Germans stayed away.

  108. The reconstructed Königsberg/Kaliningrad Cathedral.

  109. The battle of Tannenberg, 1410.

  Tannenberg exemplified the problem: a Christian army defeated by another Christian army. The Council of Constance (1414–18) that healed the Great Schism (1378–1417) debated the Order’s future. Although rejecting radical criticisms and refusing to censure the Order, in 1418 the Council declined to approve the Order’s request for a new crusade against its enemies. Tellingly, the new pope, Martin V (1417–31), made the rulers of Poland and Lithuania his vicars-general for a planned war against the schismatic Russians. The whole basis for continuing crusading against Lithuania-Poland collapsed, along with the Order’s reputation and credentials. With the last foreign crusade to Prussia ending in 1423, the Order’s power declined, undermined internally by competing landed and civic interests and externally by a resurgent Poland. A Thirteen Years War (1454–66) unpicked the Order’s dominance. At the Treaty of Thorn in 1466, west Prussia, including the Order’s seat at Marienberg and most of the earliest conquests dating back to the mid-thirteenth century were lost, leaving only an eastern rump. The Grand Masters in their new capital at Königsberg were now little more than Polish clients.

  Holy war was not wholly abandoned. In 1429 a detachment of Teutonic Knights fought the Ottoman Turks for Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Hungary. In Livonia the interminable struggle with the Russians continued. However, popes, not averse to allowing crusades elsewhere, refused to assign crusades to the Order’s wars. Between 1495 and 1502, Alexander VI consistently rejected Livonian appeals for a crusade against the Russians. Although technically able to authorise crusades themselves, the Order unavailingly sought international support. The Baltic crusades had helped turn the Baltic region Christian. Regional demography, economy, even flora and fauna, had been fundamentally changed in one of the most radical, harsh and extensive colonial transformations in Europe since the barbarian invasions.36 Once the process had achieved maturity, the justification for further crusades became harder to sustain. Now they ended. In 15
25 the Prussian Order secularised itself. In 1562 the Livonian convent followed suit.

  CHAPTER NINE

  CRUSADES AGAINST CHRISTIANS

  Wars between Christians had been presented as earning spiritual merit long before Urban II’s Jerusalem campaign of 1095. Once Christianity became identified with political authority, dissent could be treated as a challenge to the religious as well as secular establishment. To defend the state was to defend its Church and vice versa. Early medieval Christian armies sought divine approval before fighting other Christians, carrying religious images and relics into battle and enjoying church blessings of troops, banners and weapons. Individual warriors welcomed the comforts of religion before the deadly hazard of battle through prayer, confession or the sacrament. While religious war against non-Christians remained easier to justify, claiming divine sanction in battles against co-religionists became commonplace. By the tenth century, popular liturgies were including prayers likening victory in temporal battle to Christ’s victory on the cross.1 From the eighth century, the image of active Christian warriors received increasing clerical respect, as protectors of the faith and even models of conduct. Martial saints became more prominent in church dedications and iconography. Popes explicitly promoted military champions of the Church. In 1053, Leo IX granted remission of penance and absolution of sins to his followers fighting the Normans of southern Italy. Gregory VII further moralised war in consecrating the violence of his supporters in Milan in the 1070s as a war of God (bellum Dei), offering ‘absolution of all your sins and blessing and grace in this world and the next’ to adherents fighting against Henry IV, and recruiting what he and his partisans called milites Sancti Petri.2 Secular wars against supposed religious disobedience or schism attracted papal blessing as they had enjoyed local episcopal approval for generations. In 1066, William of Normandy fought Harold II of England, stigmatised as a perjured protector of a schismatic archbishop (Stigand of Canterbury), under a papal banner. Gregory’s framing of political conflict in spiritual terms received academic gloss from sympathetic scholars who approved of the penitential service of an ‘ordo pugnatorum’ fighting just wars to defend the Church and the weak against tyrants, excommunicates, schismatics and heretics.