Teutonic Knights

by William Urban

  Although the Teutonic Knights lost Montfort in 1271, they kept a considerable force in Acre until 1291, when the combined forces of all the military orders were driven from that last stronghold too. The grand master withdrew to Venice, where he could continue to direct the crusade against the Moslems. Only in 1309 did he move to Prussia and abandon the war in the East.

  One of the enduring controversies inside the Teutonic Order was whether resources should be concentrated on defending the Holy Land, or used in the Baltic, or nourished to provide services in the Holy Roman Empire. Throughout the thirteenth century the knights in the Holy Land jealously guarded their pre-eminence, denouncing grand masters who spent too much time ‘abroad’ (outside the Holy Land) or who wavered from loyalty to the Hohenstaufen cause; soon enough the German master, Prussian master, and Livonian master were eloquently championing the interests of their regions too. One grand master after another endured criticism and frustration in attempting to reconcile the demands of regional power blocs and to avoid the scandal of schism. This office was not one to be held by the thin-skinned or impatient.

  Only slowly, therefore, did the Teutonic Knights shift their attention and resources away from the Holy Land to the new crusades in the Baltic. Jerusalem long remained their primary commitment, both actively and financially, and only the loss of Acre in 1291 caused them to reluctantly and slowly abandon all hope of regaining the holy city. The military order had goals that were more important than either lands or power, but one cannot separate motives easily or neatly. Religious idealism, superstition, ambition and duties combined in complex ways to prevent the knights from seeing clearly that their duties were best performed against the pagans of north-eastern Europe.

  4

  The Transylvanian Experiment

  Defending Hungary against Pagan Attack

  As happens often in human affairs, it was chance that led the Teutonic Knights to consider making a change in their life’s mission. A common acquaintance introduced Hermann von Salza to the king of Hungary, and within a short time the grand master committed his order to its first great venture in Eastern Europe. The central figure in this affair was Count Hermann of Thuringia, the overlord of the Salza family. The Salzas had been loyal vassals who had probably named Hermann in honour of their powerful patron, who was famous for his brilliant court, where he encouraged poetry and chivalry. The count’s ancestors were noted crusaders – his father had been on the Third Crusade and he himself had been present when the Teutonic Order was transformed from a hospital order into a military one. It is quite possible that Hermann von Salza had accompanied him on that crusade and had joined the Teutonic Knights at that time. Certainly Count Hermann had followed Hermann von Salza’s career with much interest. At the time that the news would have found its way back to the Thuringian court that Hermann von Salza had been elected master of the Teutonic Order, Count Hermann was negotiating with Andrew II of Hungary (1205 – 35) to win the hand of four-year-old Princess Elisabeth for his son Louis. The king had long contemplated a crusade to the Holy Land, a subject that fascinated him and Count Hermann alike, but he could not leave Hungary while it was endangered by the increasingly strong attacks of the pagan Cumans.

  The Hungarian kingdom extended over the vast plain that lay south of the Carpathian mountains and stretched across the Danube River to the hills that bounded the kingdom of Serbia. In its south-eastern part the steep mountain chain became less formidable and dissolved into rolling, forested hill country variously called Transylvania or Siebenbürgen (seven fortresses). This wild region was never fully settled by the Hungarians, who were themselves descendants of nomads and therefore preferred the plain, and it was but sparsely populated by the descendants of the Roman settlers of Dacia. The passes served less for commerce than to lead the Cumans from the coastal plain into Hungary. King Andrew had tried to stem the invasions by planting vassals in the region, but these either lacked a sufficient number of warriors to hold the land securely or preferred a safe and easy life in the interior. When Andrew mentioned this problem to Count Hermann or his emissaries, he was most likely told that a military order such as the Teutonic Knights could protect this endangered frontier, making it possible for the king to go on crusade with a free mind. Although there were other ways that Andrew could have heard of Hermann von Salza and his order – his queen was from the Tyrol, an early base of the order – it seems more than a coincidence that the king invited the Teutonic Knights to come to Transylvania only shortly after signing the marriage contract with Hermann of Thuringia.

  The king promised lands in the endangered region and immunities from taxes and duties; this implied that the military order could bring in settlers and maintain itself from their rents and labour without having to share its hard-won early revenues with the monarch. In effect, Andrew was presenting them that part of Transylvania called the Burzenland. He kept the right to coin money and a claim to half of any gold or silver that might be discovered, but he renounced his claims to taxes and tolls, and his authority to establish markets and exercise justice. This appeared to be a generous offer, and because the officers of the military order had little experience in such affairs, Hermann von Salza accepted the invitation on the assumption that the king’s goodwill would continue into the future.

  Almost immediately a contingent of knights, accompanied by peasant volunteers from Germany, entered the unsettled region and built a series of wood-and-earth forts; the peasants then established their farms and villages, providing the taxes and labour necessary to support these military outposts. Such settlements by religious orders were very common in this era, and the ethnic origin of the peasants generally meant little to the nobles and clerics who profited from their presence. The peasants soon began to harvest reasonably abundant crops, making it easy to attract yet more immigrant farmers from Germany. Only after these tasks had been accomplished did it become apparent that the king’s offer was terribly vague and unspecific. By that time, however, little could be done to change it, because he was absent on the Fifth Crusade.

  Andrew had sailed to the Holy Land in 1217 with a large army, accompanied by Hermann von Salza and a force of Teutonic Knights. Finding the crusaders in Cyprus idle, without much hope of mounting an offensive toward Jerusalem, the king and Hermann von Salza had called all the crusader leaders together and proposed to attack Egypt. If they could capture Cairo, which seemed weakly defended, they could exchange that city for Jerusalem and the surrounding fortresses. First, however, they had to capture Damietta. When that siege did not succeed as quickly as hoped, King Andrew returned home overland, making a truce with the Turks in Asia Minor to permit him safe-passage back to Hungary.

  Meanwhile, the contingent of Teutonic Knights in Transylvania had not been content to act the part of quiet vassals, defending the frontier in a static manner. They were ambitious and aggressive, pressing outward against the Cumans, and they found it easy to occupy new territories, because the nomads had no permanent settlements that might provide centres of resistance. By 1220 the Teutonic Knights had built five castles, some in stone, and given them names that were later passed on to castles in Prussia. Marienburg, Schwarzenburg, Rosenau, and Kreuzburg were grouped around Kronstadt at a distance of twenty miles from one another. These became bases for expansion into the practically unpopulated Cuman lands, an expansion that went forward with such surprising speed that the Hungarian nobles and clergy who previously had shown little interest in the region became jealous and suspicious.

  If the Teutonic Knights had been given another decade, they would probably have pushed down the Danube River valley to occupy all the territories down to the Black Sea; this would have relieved the pressure that the nomadic Cumans had long exerted on Hungary and the Latin kingdom of Constantinople. Garrisoning castles in the lower Danubian basin, they could have reopened the land route to Constantinople that had been unsafe for crusaders in recent decades. But the Teutonic Knights were too successful too quickly. The Hungarian nobles bega
n to have doubts that the Cumans were still a danger. They could remember that those wild horsemen had beaten the Byzantines and the Latin king of Constantinople, and had even invaded their own country. But that was in the past. Now it seemed that even a handful of foreign knights could drive them away. The Hungarian nobles did not understand the special organisation and dedication that made it possible for a military order to succeed where they had failed. For their part, the Teutonic Knights ignored the rights of the local bishop and refused to share their conquests with important nobles who had previously held claims on the region.

  It was only natural that the Teutonic Knights did not wish to surrender what had been won or built by their efforts and with their money, particularly when they would need every parcel of land and every village to provide the resources in food, taxes, and infantry necessary for future campaigns toward the Black Sea. But in addition their leaders may not have possessed the diplomatic skills of Hermann von Salza, who knew how to make friends and allay the suspicions of potential enemies; moreover, being far away in the Holy Land and Egypt, Hermann was not even in a position to offer advice. Consequently the Teutonic Knights in Transylvania operated with considerable autonomy, and they did not make many friends.

  The result was a conflict of ambitions and bitter jealousy. As the Hungarian nobles came to see it, King Andrew had unwisely invited in a group of interlopers who were making themselves so secure in their border principality that the king himself would soon not be able to control them. They accused the order of overstepping its duty to defend the border and of planning to become a kingdom within the kingdom.

  Even if Hermann von Salza had not been at Damietta, it is unlikely that he could have done much about these developments. If the pope was unable to persuade distant and quarrelsome nobles to support the crusading movement, what chance did a minor noble in charge of a minor military order have?

  Andrew returned home to a kingdom bitter about the losses and expenses of his crusade. His reputation had diminished badly, and the country had suffered in the absence of firm government. In 1222 the nobility extorted from him a document called the Golden Bull, which was very similar to the Magna Carta that English barons had extorted from their own unlucky king only a few years before. Even so, when the nobility demanded that he take back his grants to the Teutonic Order, he refused. He examined the complaints, concluded that the order had indeed exceeded its mandate, and agreed that changes should be made in the charters; but he ended by issuing a new charter more extensive in its terms than the first. He allowed the Teutonic Knights to build castles in stone; and, although his grant forbade them to recruit Hungarian or Romanian settlers, he implicitly approved their having brought in German peasants. Hermann von Salza had doubtless used his influence with Pope Honorius III (1216 – 27) and Count Louis of Thuringia to strengthen the royal resolve on this issue, but he could not affect the attitude of the Hungarian nobility; nor could he win over the heir apparent, Prince Bela, who had thrown in his lot with them. These continued their complaints against the Teutonic Order and supported the local bishop in his ambition to subordinate the order to his rule.

  Hermann von Salza reasoned that his order need not anticipate trouble as long as King Andrew was alive, but that he could expect great difficulties once Prince Bela mounted the throne. This could be avoided, perhaps, if the order could loosen its ties to the crown. When he returned to Italy he spoke to Honorius III about the problem, and subsequently the pope took the order’s lands in Transylvania under papal protection. In effect, the Burzenland became a fief of the Holy See.

  This action was a fatal mistake. In place of trouble at some future date, Hermann von Salza had to deal with it at once. Andrew ordered the Teutonic Knights to leave Hungary immediately. Not even he was willing to see a valuable province lost, stolen from his kingdom by legal chicanery. The pope intervened as best he could, and Hermann von Salza tried to explain that the act had been misinterpreted, but it was of no use. The Hungarian nobles had their issue, and now the king stood with them. When the Teutonic Knights unwisely refused to leave without a further hearing, Prince Bela was authorised to lead an armed force against them. The order was driven ignominiously from its lands and expelled from the kingdom. Only the peasantry remained, forming an important German settlement until 1945, when their descendants were expelled by the Rumanian government.

  The Hungarians did not replace the Teutonic Order with adequate garrisons or follow up on the attacks on the Cumans, thereby enabling the steppe warriors to recover their self-confidence and their strength. Soon the Cumans were again a danger to the kingdom.

  The Hungarian debacle shook the confidence of the Teutonic Order badly. Many men had given their lives, and much money had been collected with great difficulty to build the fortifications and make the new settlements secure. These efforts were all wasted. The order’s reputation was besmirched. In the recent past many gifts had come from the emperor and the princes – estates in Bari, Palermo and Prague. How many potential donors would consider the stories they heard and then make their donations elsewhere? The answer was not at all certain, although the example of the Tyrolean count of Lengmoos was encouraging – in the midst of the controversy he had joined the order and brought all his lands with him as a gift. Such a knight, reared in the art of the Alpine plateau where German chivalry and poetry flourished a short way from rich and vibrant Italian cities, was a living example of the problem the Teutonic Order faced. It could thrive in Germanic regions, winning recruits and donations from idealistic nobles and burghers, but it had no reason to operate in those areas. To have a purpose for existence the Teutonic Knights had to fight infidels or pagans, and those could be found only on the borders of non-German states. Unfortunately, the nobles and people of those states often had little in common with the members of the Teutonic Order; therefore, hostility rather than sympathy was their natural attitude toward the crusaders once the immediate danger had passed.

  The Mongol Storm blows in from the East

  Already by the time the Hungarian king had expelled the Teutonic Order from the ramparts of the Carpathians, he could hardly have failed to hear reports of the 1223 battle on the Kalka River in south-east Rus’.6 But it was another fifteen years before the full extent of his error became apparent. The Mongols had won their first battle, then returned home; but in 1237 – 9 it became clear that they were in Rus’ to stay.7 In the meantime the Polish and Hungarian kings had been expanding into Galicia and Volhynia, the most westerly Rus’ian states. Rumours that the Mongols planned to mount an offensive against Poland and Hungary spread quickly, based partly on Tatar warnings and partly on the assumption that the grand khan was determined to rule over all Rus’ and every steppe tribe. However inaccurate or misleading these accounts may have been, they were indicative of a massive shift in the balance of power. King Bela of Hungary (1235 – 70) had hoped to profit from this confusion, but his gains were only temporary.

  The Cumans, under pressure from the grand khan to pay tribute and contribute warriors to his armies, withdrew into Hungary, where they remained an important and disruptive element for the rest of the century. Pagan nomads, they had little in common with the Christian nobles and peasants of the Danubian basin. But they were sufficiently like the Mongols to be seen as potential competitors for dominance in southern Rus’. Therefore, the grand khan ordered Batu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, to eliminate them. Doing this would not be easy, however, because first he had to crush Rus’ian resistance in Galicia – and he could anticipate meeting Polish and Hungarian forces there, too – then penetrate through the fortified passes of the Carpathian mountains. The khan, ever resourceful, decided upon a bold strategy that would put a second army in the rear of the royal forces at the passes: he would send a swiftly moving cavalry force across Galicia and Poland, then press through the mountains at the gap west of Cracow, thunder through Moravia, Slovakia and Austria, making a counter-clockwise sweep along the base of the mountains, and enter Hungary f
rom the rear. As it turned out, this distracting invasion was not necessary – King Bela could not persuade his nobles to follow orders, so the high passes were inadequately defended. The Tatars overwhelmed the royal army in the summer of 1241 and chased the king all the way to the Adriatic coast.8

  It is not recorded whether Bela repented of his having expelled the Teutonic Order from the Carpathian mountain passes, but he probably did not. Bela never had many doubts about his own abilities, and he generally managed to foist blame for his failures onto others. On this occasion it was convenient to blame the Poles, for not having defended Galicia properly. In fact, this was not completely inaccurate.

  When the Mongols had first invaded Galicia that spring, Conrad of Masovia had led the Polish armies east and won an engagement near Sandomir. Although his forces slew the Mongol general, the victory was hardly decisive – his own forces, dismayed at their heavy casualties, had allowed thousands of their opponents to escape when they could have destroyed them; some of his units, in fact, had been routed by their Tatar opponents. Certainly few Poles were eager to fight the invaders again soon, and in any case, the warriors had performed their military duties for the season. The second invasion, probably spearheaded by a new Mongol-Turkish army, consequently caught the Masovian and Volhynian dukes by surprise. There was no possibility of meeting the invader in Galicia, nor even of intercepting him on the frontier. As each Piast duke concentrated on defending his own ancestral lands, the Mongols pressed on toward Cracow, then into Silesia. Near Liegnitz the Tatar cavalry crushed the army of the duke of Silesia, who may have been supported by units of Teutonic Knights. The Tatars then turned around and rode through Moravia and then into Hungary, to join with the victorious forces that had routed Bela’s army.