But at this critical moment the Order selected as its Grand Master one of the truly great men of the Middle Ages, Hermann von Salza, who combined piety and managerial ability to a high degree—with more of the latter than the former. In a brilliant move he shifted the Order out of the Holy Land, where they were accomplishing nothing—primarily because it was too far for knights from Germany to travel—and into Hungary, whose savage land awaited Christianity and colonizing. Within fifteen years Von Salza threatened to become more powerful than the King of Hungary, Andreas II, who, with practically no warning, banished the knights from his territories. Homeless, but still possessed of great organizing skill and military prowess, they looked all through Europe for a theater in which to exhibit their abilities, and by the most fortunate chance they heard of a Polish duke who was having trouble managing the pagan barbarians on his northern borders.
In 1226, the year after they were expelled from Hungary, Conrad of Mazovia in northern Poland begged the knights to enter his domain for a brief spell to help him subdue his pagans, and in gratitude for their assistance, he wrote some unfortunate letters that could be interpreted as an invitation to stay permanently and also as a grant of land on which they could build a headquarters from which to Christianize territories that he, Conrad, did not own.
Hermann von Salza had brought his first German knights to Poland in 1226, with the presumed intention of staying a year or two. Nearly two hundred years later they owned most of the Baltic coast, including the lands of the Latvians and Estonians, and showed every intention of soon controlling Lithuania, Poland and much of Russia. Superior in military might, managerial ability and commerce, they excelled in diplomatic relations with the rest of Europe—especially with the papacy—and seemed destined to rule eastern Europe.
Their first Christianizing mission involved the Prussians, a handsome, barbaric, rural group of people who controlled the amber trade along the Baltic. All Europe applauded when the Teutonic Knights brought civilization and the church to these heathens, and it was upon this laudable beginning that the Germans erected their powerful structure.
They Christianized the Prussians in a most effective way: they eliminated them. Dividing the tribes, they dealt with them one by one, driving some into the sea, others into slavery, others into the wastelands of Russia. Those who remained on soil the knights wanted, about half the number, were converted into serfs and forbidden to marry, so that no further Prussian children would be forthcoming; they were to work fifteen hours a day, seven days a week until they died off.
The knights always held the Prussian barbarians in contempt, but when the latter were annihilated, the knights assumed their name and many of their characteristics. In later centuries, when Prussia became a name famous throughout Europe, there was hardly a true Prussian alive.
From this secure base, not very large, the Teutonic Knights launched two campaigns of real brilliance. Avoiding the pitfall which had overtaken early Poland and which would always contaminate its political processes—that of refusing to identify and follow one competent leader—the knights adopted the policy of electing one capable man Grand Master for life and then following his guidance for better or worse. With extraordinary luck, they picked a chain of men who were perhaps not as brilliant as the great Hermann von Salza but certainly as single-minded and as devoted to the Order. Prussia, under the Teutonic Knights, was the best-governed unit in Europe, and not once was there any war of succession, rebellion by contending claimants or uprising by the general population, for with great prudence the knights had replaced the vanished Prussians with loyal Germans imported from the homeland.
Once Prussia was established, a chain of impeccable military campaigns pushed the boundaries of the tiny original grant outward, so that the Teutonic state was fabulously enlarged, with its new areas also filled by German farmers imported from the west. Pomerania was captured, Chelmno Land, Dobrzyn, Samogitia; always the pressure was maintained, the civilized west encroaching upon the savage east.
These military campaigns were an unquestioned success, but it sometimes seemed that the Order’s diplomatic triumphs were more fruitful, for the knights repeatedly circulated through the courts of Europe glowing written reports of their extreme piety, their unfailing courage in the face of barbarian enemies, their success in introducing Christianity to alien lands:
We fight against the savage Lithuanians, the pagan Poles, the heathen Latvians and the Estonians who know not God, and a score of darkened lands between. Especially we war against the Muslim Tatars, a branch of the same infidel nation that controls the Holy Land where we fought for so long. We are the right arm of God, the successful extension of Rome, and all who long to fight for Jerusalem but cannot get there are invited to join this greater crusade at home.
As a consequence of this constant insistence on the virtue of the Germans and the barbarity of all others, a flood of knights from other countries sought to join the Order, and though they were refused full membership, they were granted honorable affiliation, so that when the knights went into battle against a country like Lithuania they had in their ranks young men of noble family from France, England, Luxembourg, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia and the Low Countries, and each man was satisfied that he rode under the banner of Jesus Christ to subdue an inferior civilization and bring it into the glorious fold of the Christian church.
The propaganda campaign was especially vicious against Poland, which had become Christian officially in A.D. 966 and unofficially perhaps fifty years earlier, and it was impossible in this year of 1409 when Krakow had a fine university, a sophisticated court and a strongly entrenched church for Poles to think of themselves as pagan. But that was the report circulated through the knightly circles of Europe, and it was to rescue Poland from darkness that many of the alien knights volunteered to help the Germans.
If one asked a hundred courtiers throughout Europe what the Teutonic Knights did, the answer almost universally would be: They carry Christianity to pagan lands. They are the right arm of God.’ And if one asked: ‘Who are these knights?’ the answer would be: ‘They are ordained priests who have taken the vow of chastity and poverty, and they do only as their leader, the Pope in Rome, commands.’
The truth was somewhat different. At Marienburg, not far from Danzig where the Vistula River enters the Baltic Sea, the Teutonic Knights had erected within a semicircle of high brick walls—a river forming the other half of the wall—the most powerful fort in Europe, a magnificent red structure that ran more than three thousand feet from northeast to southwest. It consisted of two great central castles, many-storied and battlemented, and, north and south, two immense walled courtyards filled with administrative buildings. In time of stress, the fortification at Malbork could bring within its protection about ten thousand defenders, with adequate food and cistern water to withstand a siege of months or even years.
This was not a monastery fortress such as one might see at Cluny in France or York in England; this was a tremendous battle station, infinitely rich in possessions and power, and it was ruled by hard-headed men determined to use it as the nucleus of a vast temporal kingdom.
The knights had forewarned the world of their intentions early in their occupancy of the castle. In 1308 the nearby town of Danzig had given trouble, so the knights marched there singing ‘Jesu Christo Salvator Mundi’ and killed most of the citizens, about ten thousand in number, replacing them with German immigrants who gave them full allegiance.
It was difficult for the Poles to inform Europe about such matters, because the Teutonic Knights always got their report in first, and also because every settlement in Prussia bore two names, the German and the Polish, and this would continue throughout history, as the following table compiled by a Polish scribe in 1409 testified:
Its real name is Gdansk but they call it Danzig
Its real name is Malbork but they call it Marienburg
Its real name is Pomorze but they call it Pomerania
Its real name
is Klajpeda but they call it Memel
Its real name is Szczecin but they call it Stettin
Its real name is Krolewiec but they call it Koenigsberg
Its real name is River Wisla but they call it Vistula River
[And so on, for more than a hundred altered place names]
In certain cases the German version was superior; for example, Marienburg bespoke a fortress dedicated to Mary the Mother of Jesus from which the teachings of her son were promulgated, while Malbork conveyed none of the gentleness of Mary. In a way, of course, this might have been more appropriate, for of a hundred persons residing in the castle at any one time, the distribution was this: Grand Master, one; his immediate council, seven; knights from Germany, twenty; knights from other nations, nine; squires, pages and other assistants to the knights, eighteen; full-fledged priests, three; friars, six; paid soldiers, eight; servants of all kinds, twenty-eight. And if one distributed the gold pieces in the castle coffers among the twenty-nine knights, each would receive more than three thousand pieces, but even this would be deceptive, because the Order maintained numerous subsidiary castles, often of considerable strength, in Prussian towns like Frauenberg (Frombork), Marienwerder (Kwidzyn) and Rastenberg (Ketrzyn), not to mention a dozen lesser ones erected in what had once been Polish towns but which were now occupied by the Order. The fortune of the Order was tremendous, but so were its expenses, and by careful manipulation and the constant watchfulness of the Grand Master, it avoided sending any great tithe to Rome. It was, in fact, a nation unto itself and it intended staying that way, always growing, always encroaching upon the lands of its neighbors.
Said Ulrich von Jungingen, the brilliant Grand Master who controlled the Order in these exciting years: ‘We are, as we say, the forward arm of God Almighty, but we are also the forward arm of German settlement, and that combination is irresistible.’ It was upon this powerful state that dumb-looking Pawel of Bukowo was presuming to spy.
He discovered the power of the Teutonic Knights when he left the city of Wilno on his way to the little amber town of Lembok, which lay to the north of the powerful German town of Koenigsberg. From Wilno, the Amber Road passed through villages only recently occupied by the knights, and when he and Janko spent the night at a Lithuanian farmhouse, Pawel learned of their harsh rule.
‘We cannot give you good bread,’ the wife lamented, ‘because they’ve broken our quern.’ And she pointed to the shattered pieces of what had once been her most valued possession: the hand mill, consisting of two flattened stones, the upper of which revolved upon the stationary lower, grinding wheat into flour.
Explained the husband: ‘The knights have given orders that we must henceforth sell all our wheat to them, at the prices they state. And they’ve smashed our querns to enforce that law.’
Later the wife said: ‘They’re going to allow us to keep our spinning wheels for the time being, because they can’t find women to spin for them at Malbork, but they’ve smashed our looms because only they will be allowed to weave cloth.’
‘It’s about the same with cattle,’ her husband said. ‘I had nine, but now I’m allowed only four.’
‘Did they pay for the five they took?’ Pawel asked.
‘Pay?’ the husband snorted. He stared at Pawel, one farmer to another, and after a while Pawel asked: ‘What are you going to do?’ and the Lithuanian said: ‘When the word comes, I take my scythe and I help you Poles when you go looking for Germans.’
‘Who said we were going to do that?’ Pawel asked, and both the husband and wife wanted to speak at once. They said that with Witold at the head in Lithuania and his cousin Jagiello ruling Poland, it was obvious that something must happen, and soon. ‘We can’t let the knights gobble up our countries, can we?’
‘I know nothing of such things,’ Pawel said honestly, but he was learning.
At the next village they saw three burned cottages and a woman hanging from a tree, and when Pawel inquired as to what crime she had committed, the Lithuanians told him: ‘She hid her quern, and the knights caught her grinding illegal grain.’
That night three families sat late with the travelers, telling of the terrible repression that had settled over their lives after the knights captured their territory: ‘Cattle were confiscated. Our mill was burned. Now we must pay to cross the bridge. My sons were taken to Lidzbark to work as servants in their castle. And all trade must pass through their hands.’
‘Do they leave you any rights?’ Pawel asked.
‘None. They say we’re pagans and that they’re doing all this to save our souls. For four generations my fathers were Christian …’
‘Way to the east,’ one of the women said, pointing in that direction, ‘there are still pagans. And because those few remain after Jagiello converted us, the Germans say we’re all pagans and that whatever they wish to do is all right, because they’re saving us.’
Late in the evening one farmer voiced the real complaint of these people: ‘What hurts more than the loss of the cow is the fact that they treat us with contempt. They treat us like slaves, because we aren’t German. And they leave us no hope, because we can never become German, and we see them taking all the good land and moving their farmers onto it, and pretty soon there’ll really be no place for us. My farm will go, and his, and his.’ He halted his recital, clenched his hands, and said: ‘They treat us with contempt.’
After nine days of travel through these newly acquired German territories, Pawel and Janko entered the coastal areas which the knights had held for many years, that chain of beautiful little seaports on which the amber monopoly operated by the knights centered, and Pawel saw at once the superior quality of any place controlled by the Germans. Everything was clean. Order prevailed. The shops were small but they were neat, and people behaved in an organized manner.
As they moved from one seacoast town to the next, always in a northerly direction as if trying to escape the German domination, Pawel became aware of a very large dark-haired knight who seemed always by accident to be traveling in the same direction, and he set Janko the task of determining who this Teuton was. It was not difficult, because the first peasant Janko spoke to in the barbarous mélange of words he had acquired—Polish, German, Lithuanian, Prussian—told him that the impressive knight was Graf Reudiger, commander of the Baltic coastline and enforcer of the amber monopoly, which allowed sales to officials of governments but not to random individuals. When Pawel heard this he smiled, because it was now obvious that Graf Reudiger was trying to catch Pawel circumventing the amber laws, and Pawel was trying to be caught so that he would be hauled off to the legendary castle at Marienburg.
An amusing game developed, with the two Poles asking obvious questions of persons who might be expected to report them to Reudiger, and the big knight trying to look inconspicuous as he trailed them. In this fashion the three came to Lembok, a village of the greatest charm and with the finest amber, and after two days of rest Pawel eased himself into a small building by the clock tower where the amber trade flourished, and there for the first time he saw why it was understandable that an entire roadway across Asia and Europe had been established to trade in this precious substance, more beautiful than silver, more valuable than gold.
The merchant, a German, had on his wooden counter a selection of pieces brought to him over recent days by the Lithuanian fishermen who prowled the shoreline searching for any amber that the waves might wash up and by other Lithuanians who actually mined for deposits laid down long ago. Pawel had no clear idea of what amber was, except that Polish ladies cherished such occasional samples as the knights allowed to filter into that country, and when he was actually permitted to handle a fragment he was surprised by its light weight, soft surface and radiant color.
It did not sparkle harshly, nor was it luminescent when sunlight struck it. A golden brown, it gave forth a soft radiance, but whatever its physical character, it created an impression of worth and loveliness and candlelight. The first piece Pawel hand
led was opaque, filled, it seemed, by a thousand white bubbles of air, and when Pawel asked about this, the German nodded: ‘Exactly right! When it formed, it was filled with tiny bubbles, and there they stay, forever.’
So Pawel, looking the big dumb peasant with a few gold pieces from his master, asked: ‘How did it form?’ and the German became pleasantly excited; he enjoyed answering that question, for he was the expert.
‘Have you ever worked with trees?’ he asked. ‘Good. Have you ever worked with pine trees? The ones that give off sticky substances? Good. That liquid is resin, and when you collect it you can do many things with it.’
‘But how do you make amber from it?’
The German laughed and jabbed Pawel in the ribs. ‘You can’t make it and I can’t make it, but if you put it in sand under the sea for a hundred years … two hundred years, it binds itself together and hardens and makes amber.’
‘You mean that this wonderful thing was once the stuff that makes my hands sticky when I cut a pine tree?’
‘Yes! And to prove it, I’m going to show you something extremely precious,’ and from a little suede pouch he placed on the counter a piece of flawless amber, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, completely transparent and with no interior bubbles, colored like the coat of a fawn and hiding in its center perfectly preserved in every detail a single fly with wings extended.
‘May I touch it?’ Pawel asked, instantly appreciative of its rare form. When he had inspected it from all angles, allowing sunlight to dance past the suspended fly, he asked: ‘How did you get the fly in there?’
This time the German laughed boisterously. ‘You think I put it there with my big, heavy fingers? No, my friend. That fly landed on the resin while it was still sticky and it got caught. This was a hundred years ago. And more resin flowed about it, and then the whole thing was left in sand underwater for another hundred years and it became amber.’ He admired the lovely bead and said: ‘The fly holds his wings forever ready to soar again the minute the amber lets it go. But it will never let go.’
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