Foundation of the Teutonic Order—Struggles of Germans and Slavs in the Baltic provinces—The Knights are invited to Prussia—Their conquests—Quarrel with the Papacy and complete transfer of the Order to Prussia—Further territorial acquisitions—The Order at the height of its power under Kniprode—Union of Poland and Lithuania—The Battle of Tannenberg—Decline of the Order—Internal discontent and disorder in Prussia—The Prussian League—Civil war and Polish conquest—The Peace of Thorn—End of the Teutonic Order and of the Order of the Sword.

The great Emperor Frederick Barbarossa died in Asia Minor as he was leading his forces to take part in the Third Crusade. The German army broke to |Foundation of the Teutonic Order.| pieces after the loss of its leader, and only a few scanty fragments reached Palestine to take part in the siege of Acre (1189). The besiegers were decimated by the diseases to which troops are liable in an unaccustomed climate, and complaints were made that the German sick were neglected in such scanty hospital arrangements as then existed. Under the pious care of some merchants from Lübeck and Bremen, an order was formed to combine the functions of soldiers and nurses. The ‘German Knights of St. Mary’ borrowed most of their rules from the Hospitallers or Knights of St. John, but some of their military regulations were adopted from the still more famous Order of the Temple. In 1191 the new crusading order received a bull of confirmation from Pope Clement III., and the first grand-master fixed his headquarters in Acre, which had now fallen before the assaults of the Crusaders. Its origin and its peculiarly national character were emphasised by the limitation of membership to men of German birth and speech. Like the Templars and Hospitallers, the Teutonic knights were the recipients of numerous gifts and bequests from pious benefactors, and acquired considerable estates in western Europe. But crusading ardour had begun to decline in the West, and the Germans had never taken quite as prominent a part in the movement as the Romance nations. If the activity of the Teutonic Order had been confined to Palestine, it is not likely that its existence could have been either prolonged or important. But within forty years from its foundation a new sphere was provided for its military exertions.

By the end of the twelfth century immense strides had been made by Christianity and German civilisation |Germans and Slavs.| among the Slavonic peoples to the south of the Baltic. Bohemia and Poland, the two outposts of the Slavs to the south-west, had been converted and brought into some sort of submission to the German Emperors. Their most thriving towns were filled with German settlers; and some of the border provinces, such as Silesia, had already received a preponderantly German element in their population. To the north-west the efforts of Henry the Lion and Albert the Bear had conquered and converted the Wends; Lübeck and other towns had been founded to serve as centres of German commerce and German influence; and bishoprics had been created for Mecklenburg and Pomerania. But from the valley of the Vistula to the Gulf of Finland there stretched an immense tract of dreary country, alternately sandy wastes and undrained marsh, in which a number of Slavonic peoples—Prussians, Lithuanians, Esthonians, and Livonians—still lived their primitive life, engaged in hunting, pasture, and rudimentary agriculture. They retained their heathen religion and their ancient customs, and were regarded by their more advanced neighbours as little better than savages. In the tenth century St. Adalbert of Prague had met with a martyr’s death as he sought to preach the Gospel to the Prussians, and ever since there had been a nominal bishopric on the eastern Baltic, but its holders had never ventured to reside in their diocese.

In the thirteenth century a vigorous effort was made to extend Christianity among these eastern Slavs. |Teutonic knights invited to Prussia.| The Bishop of Riga founded in 1200 the Order of the Sword to compel the acceptance of the faith by the people of Livonia. Soon afterwards Christian, a Cistercian monk of Oliva, undertook to preach the Gospel among the Prussians. The Pope gave him the title of Bishop of Prussia; and a Polish duke, Konrad of Masovia, who claimed the border district of Kulm, promised him active assistance. But the task proved beyond the powers of duke and bishop. The Prussians rose against the intruders, destroyed their settlements, and carried fire and sword into the Kulmerland and Masovia itself. This war between the Christian and the heathen Slavs gave occasion for the introduction of the Teutonic knights into Prussia. In 1226 an embassy from Konrad of Masovia appeared before the grand-master in Italy, and offered to cede the Kulmerland if the Order would undertake to defend him from the Prussians.

Hermann von Salza, who was grand-master at the time, was an intimate adviser of the Emperor Frederick II., who had given the black eagle of the empire as the Order’s standard, and a man of no small importance in the politics of southern Europe. Endowed with equal energy and foresight, he welcomed the opportunity of founding a new Christian state in the north, where greater security and distinction could be gained than in upholding a losing cause in the Holy Land. But he had no intention of fighting the battles of the Polish duke or the Prussian bishop without adequate reward, and he took the most painstaking precautions to secure the independent rule of the Order in what was destined to be its future home. Frederick II., who knew little and cared less about the fate of the Baltic provinces, was easily induced to grant to the Order a formal investiture of the district of Kulm with all future conquests in Prussia. This was followed by treaties with the Duke of Masovia and with Christian of Oliva, whose original alliance had been broken by their rival claims to suzerainty; and finally, to remove any difficulties with Rome, Pope Gregory IX. was persuaded to claim the lands of the heathen as the property of St. Peter, and to grant them to the Order on payment of a nominal tribute (1234).

In 1231 the first detachment of Knights entered Prussia and commenced the work of conquest. In spite of their smaller numbers, their superior arms and |Conquest of Prussia.| discipline gave them an immense advantage over the disorderly hordes which opposed them. As each district was reduced to submission, a fortress was built to enforce obedience and to serve as a base for further operations. Thus, in the first few years, Thorn, Kulm, and Marienwerder were built and garrisoned in rapid succession. In 1237 the Knights of the Sword agreed to form a close alliance with the Teutonic Order, of which they became a subordinate branch, though retaining a considerable measure of autonomy. Thus the heathen were threatened with attack on both sides—on the west from the valley of the Vistula, and on the north-east from Riga and the coast of Livonia. But the rapid successes of the Knights provoked jealousy and opposition. The Poles were indignant at the establishment of a German state between their own borders and the Baltic, and political and race antipathy soon overpowered the original alliance on religious grounds. Konrad of Masovia bitterly repented his shortsighted cession of Kulmerland, and both from Poland and from Pomerania aid was sent to the heathen Prussians. Even the bishop, Christian of Oliva, was alienated by the Order’s assumption of ecclesiastical independence, and did his utmost to enforce his own claims to superiority in the conquered districts. But the Papacy remained loyal to the warrior priests, whom it regarded as submissive vassals. The usual indulgences were offered to all who would undertake the pious duty of joining a crusade against the heathen, and crowds of recruits were induced to secure their temporal prosperity and their future salvation by fighting in the service of the Knights. The most famous of the princely allies was Ottokar of Bohemia, the lord of Austria, and the most powerful of German princes in the middle of the thirteenth century. In 1255 he led a large army into Prussia, and the fortress of Königsberg was named in his honour.

But the conquest of Prussia was not achieved without difficulties and reverses. In 1260 a general rising was organised among the Slav population, and for the next ten years the Knights were in serious danger of losing all they had gained. But their dogged resolution prevailed in the end, and by 1280 the land had once more been forced into sullen submission. The desperate struggle had seriously diminished a population which was always thinly scattered over a huge area. To fill the place of those who had fallen or had migrated eastwards to preserve their independence in Lithuania, the Order encouraged the settlement of German peasants and German burghers. The conquest of Prussia was a victory for Germany as well as for Christianity. The Slavs had to accept the religion and the language of the conquerors.

The end of the thirteenth century ushered in a period of trial for the great crusading orders. The fall of |Quarrel with the Papacy.| Acre in 1291 marked the ultimate failure of the attempts to recover the Holy Land for Western Christendom. The military associations were discredited by their ill-success; and while they lost their hold upon popular favour, their immense wealth excited the avarice of the temporal princes. The Papacy had fallen from the lofty position which it had held in the time of Innocent III., and was forced to become the accomplice and the agent of the royal spoilers. The Templars were first persecuted and then suppressed by Philip IV. of France and his creature Pope Clement V. The Knights of St. John only escaped a similar fate by throwing themselves into Rhodes, and by holding the island as a bulwark of Christendom against the encroaching Mohammedan power. The position of the Teutonic Order was as insecure as that of their older and, for a time, more prosperous rivals. The grand-master had removed his headquarters from Acre to Venice, and thence could watch the approach of danger. When, in 1309, Clement V. issued a hostile bull against the Order, the Knights were prepared with a practical and efficient answer. The only way to prove their strength and their value to Europe was to concentrate their undivided energies upon the work which had been undertaken on the Baltic coast. The hostility of a distant Pope would there be comparatively impotent, and they could strengthen themselves by a close alliance with the interests and forces of Germany. It was, no doubt, a great sacrifice for the Knights to abandon a residence in southern Europe, where they had enjoyed considerable wealth and influence, and to bury themselves in a |Transference of the Order to Prussia.| remote and barbarous district in the inclement north. But there was no other alternative if they would escape destruction; and in 1309 the grand-master transferred his residence from Venice to Marienburg, which became henceforth the headquarters of the Order.

The severance of the Teutonic Order from all connection with Palestine and its concentration in Prussia had many important results. The close connection which had been hitherto maintained with the Papacy was weakened, and the ties with Germany and the Empire were drawn closer. Henry VII. hastened to assure the Knights of his protection and to confirm their rights and privileges. Hitherto they had conquered in the name of the Church, henceforth their triumphs are to be for the extension of Germany. And these triumphs were for a time proportioned to their increased unity and strength. In 1311, by dexterously taking advantage of a dispute between Brandenburg |Acquisition of Pomerellen.| and Poland, they seized the district of Pomerellen on the left bank of the Vistula, which contained the important city of Danzig. This acquisition enormously strengthened the position of the Order on its western or German border; but, at the same time, it led to the long and desperate struggle with Poland which ultimately brought disaster in its train. And the conquest illustrates the changed attitude of the Order, for which the quarrel with the Papacy was partially responsible. Its aims have become political rather than religious. It is no longer solely absorbed in the task of forcibly converting the heathen, but can turn aside to the pursuit of self-aggrandisement at the expense of its Christian neighbours.

The Papacy, which had been so enthusiastic a supporter of the Teutonic Order in the thirteenth century, was on the side of Poland in the fourteenth. But its ecclesiastical |The Order at the height of its power.| weapons were blunted by the energetic support which was given to Lewis the Bavarian, and by the complete alienation of Germany owing to the residence in Avignon. The first war with Poland ended in the victory of the Order. In 1343 Casimir the Great concluded the Treaty of Kalisch, by which he confirmed the cession of Pomerellen and other disputed territories near the valley of the Vistula. In 1346 Denmark handed over to the Order its ancient claims on the province of Esthonia. The Knights had now acquired almost the whole of the Slav territories to the south-east of the Baltic. Only the Lithuanians remained obstinately heathen and obstinately independent, and against them the Order waged a fairly successful war during the grand-mastership of Winzig von Kniprode from 1351 to 1382. During these years the Teutonic Order was at the zenith of its power and prosperity. Brandenburg, which might have contested its ascendency in the north, was rendered impotent by the extinction of the Ascanian line, and by its rapid transfer through the hands of successive Wittelsbach and Luxemburg margraves. In Poland Casimir the Great was succeeded in 1370 by his nephew, Lewis of Hungary, who had no sympathy with the anti-German prejudices of the Polish nobles, and was disinclined to employ his forces in the defence of the heathen peasants of Lithuania. The campaigns of the Order had become a recognised school of warfare for the active and ambitious youth of northern Europe. Among the numerous allies who gave their services to the cause of Christianity were the adventurous John of Bohemia, who lost his eyesight in the marshes of Prussia, and Henry of Derby, son of John of Gaunt, who later established the Lancastrian dynasty on the English throne. Chaucer, in describing the career of his knight, says that

The death of Kniprode in 1382 was followed by the death of Lewis the Great of Hungary and Poland. The party of strong Slav sympathies among the Polish nobles were determined to put an end to the union with Hungary and the rule of a foreign king. Lewis’s |Union of Poland and Lithuania.| younger daughter, Hedwig, was invited to assume the crown of Poland, but she was compelled to offer her hand to Jagello, the grand prince of Lithuania. Jagello agreed to purchase a bride and a kingdom by accepting Christianity, and was baptized and crowned by the name of Ladislas in 1387. The accession of this Lithuanian dynasty, under whose rule Poland rose to the height of its power, dealt a fatal blow to the interests of the Teutonic Order. The two great enemies of the Order, whose quarrels with each other had more than once given the Knights both military and diplomatic triumphs, were henceforth united in a common cause. And the conversion of the Lithuanians, who now adopted the faith of their neighbours and allies, struck at the very foundations of the Order, which rested upon the conception of a crusade against the heathen. Now that Prussia was surrounded by a ring of Christian states, there could no longer be any pretext for a religious war; and foreign princes and nobles were not likely to take an active interest in what became from this time a purely political struggle. The stream of auxiliaries from Europe was dried up at its source, and the Order had to fall back upon the expensive and unsatisfactory expedient of filling its armies with mercenary troops.

For more than three hundred years Germany had been steadily conquering the Slavs, driving them eastwards, or subjecting them to overwhelming German influences. |War with Poland.| Thanks to the Hanseatic League and to the Teutonic Knights, the Baltic had been made into a German sea. But with the fifteenth century a reaction set in in favour of both Scandinavians and Slavs. Just as the Union of Kalmar involved a serious danger to the Hanse towns, so the close association of Lithuania and Poland threatened the vital interests of the Teutonic Knights. In Bohemia the same reaction against German predominance found expression in the Hussite movement, and in the internal quarrels within the University of Prague (see p. 209). But it was in Prussia that the Slavs gained their most durable successes, though the victories of Ziska and Prokop over the crusading armies of Germany made the greater impression upon Europe at the time. The inevitable struggle which altered conditions forced upon the Teutonic Order broke out in 1409. In the next year the largest armies which had ever met in these northern wars confronted each other on the field of Tannenberg. After a |Battle of Tannenberg.| terrible contest, in which John Ziska, the future leader of the Hussites, fought for the men of his own race, superior numbers gave a decisive victory to the forces of Poland and Lithuania. The grand-master and the flower of his Knights fell in the battle, and Prussia seemed to be at the mercy of the conquerors. But the progress of King Ladislas was checked by the heroic resistance of the fortress of Marienburg; and he consented, in the Peace of Thorn (1411), to give up all his conquests except one district, which was to be ceded only for his own lifetime. The ruin of the Order was postponed for half a century.

The defeat at Tannenberg might have proved less fatal in its results if it had not been accompanied by growing internal weakness. An order of militant monks may provide |Decline of the Order.| a magnificent fighting force, but it is unlikely to prove a satisfactory conductor of civil administration. The great evil in Prussia was the absence of any substantial common interest between the governors and the governed. At first the German settlers were bound to the Knights as their protectors against the original inhabitants; but as time went on, and new generations grew up in the country of their birth, the original enmity between Germans and Slavs gradually cooled, and the two peoples were brought closer together in the ordinary intercourse of industry, trade, and social life. But this growing union was a source of danger rather than of gain to the ruling Order, because it deprived them of the aid of that section of the population which might naturally have been expected to support the Government. The Knights themselves, being bound by the priestly vow of celibacy, could not train up successors with a hereditary knowledge of the people and the country. Each generation of Knights came from other districts, and had to learn the work of government afresh. They came for the most part from southern Germany, and their habits and even their language differed in many respects from those of the Low Germans who had come in to settle in their towns and villages. And strict as the disciplinary code of the Order was, it was difficult to enforce its rules among men who were not secluded from the world in monasteries, but were busily engaged in the work of war and administration, and were in constant intercourse with visitors from all countries. The charges of immorality and unbelief which had been urged against the Templars could certainly be brought with equal if not with greater force against the members of the Teutonic Order. The Knights had none of the ordinary restraints of family affection, private property, and home life; and it would have been superhuman if most of them had been able to resist the temptations to which their mode of life and their despotic authority over their subjects exposed them. For there was nothing like constitutional life in Prussia outside the Order itself. The authority of the grand-master was limited by the necessity of gaining the consent of his chapter and by the great independence of the provincial masters. But there was no machinery by which the Knights could receive advice and information from the people whom they ruled. Even the Prussian nobles, whether of German or Slavonic origin, were excluded from all voice in the government. After the battle of Tannenberg an attempt was made to establish a representative diet, in order to enlist popular sympathy in the task of resisting invasion. But it was the arbitrary act of an individual grand-master, and it broke the standing rule which forbade priests to be guided by the counsel of laymen. The economic policy of the Order was peculiarly affected by this want of easy intercourse with the traders whose interests were at stake. The most important towns within its dominions—Danzig, Elbing, Memel, Thorn, Kulm, and Königsberg—were extremely flourishing, and all except Memel were members of the Hanseatic League. On the whole, a wise instinct impelled the Knights to maintain a close alliance with the League, which so ably championed the cause of Germany in the western Baltic, and thus the danger of conflicting interests between the Order and the Hanse towns proved less than might have been expected. But the Knights themselves embarked in trade, especially in amber; and, after the fashion of rulers, they sought to regulate the market to bring gain to themselves, a course of action which excited the jealous hostility of the professional merchants. And their imitation of the action of the League proved disastrous. For the maintenance of their great war against Denmark, the Hanse towns had imposed a duty upon all exports to be levied at each port (see p. 434). The Teutonic Order imposed a similar tax for the Polish war, and endeavoured to make it a permanent source of revenue. But the inevitable comparison was not in their favour. The Hanseatic League was fighting in the common interests of all German traders, and it was reasonable to ask them to contribute. The Order was conducting a war in which the merchants as such had no appreciable interest at all. The heavy taxation necessitated by the employment of mercenaries raised the question whether the government of the Order was worth the expense. Both nobles, citizens, and peasants were gradually convinced that their welfare was by no means bound up with crusades in Lithuania and perpetual warfare with Poland. In 1440 a number of nobles and twenty-one towns combined to form a ‘Prussian League’ for the defence of their liberties and common interests. There was no overt defiance of the Order, but the League constituted a state within the state, and a collision with the older government was sooner or later inevitable. And when it did occur, it was more than probable that the foreign enemies of the Order would be able to make use of the League to serve their own purposes.

As the alienation of their subjects became more and more pronounced, the Knights were driven to maintain their power by measures of ever-increasing severity. They denounced their opponents as traitors. But they themselves had no better claim to be considered as patriots. They were not native Prussians, and they had none of that instinctive devotion to the cause of their country which can hardly ever be acquired except under the subtle influences of birth and early training. For this love of the soil loyalty to a corporation proved a very inadequate substitute. Henry of Plauen, the hero of the defence of Marienburg in 1410, was rewarded for his services by election to the vacant grand-mastership. But a few years later he incurred the displeasure of the chapter and was formally deposed. In his chagrin he did not hesitate to open treacherous negotiations with the Polish king, and ultimately he died in the prison to which he was justly condemned. Such an instance was by no means isolated; and, in fact, many of the Knights were secretly members of the Prussian League. The wonder is, not that the Order fell, but that its rule was for a time so successful, and that it lasted as long as it did.

Under the circumstances that grew up in the fifteenth century, with the Government divided in itself and confronted by the growing hostility of its subjects, a renewal |Civil war and Polish invasion.| of the Polish war could only be attended with disaster. For many years a quarrel was averted by a series of abject concessions, which were interpreted as a sign of weakness, and naturally encouraged further demands. At last the final catastrophe was hurried on by the outbreak of civil war. The Prussian League had become more and more openly antagonistic to the rule of the Order, and it was determined to make a resolute effort to crush the disaffection. In 1453 the Emperor Frederick III. was induced to condemn the League, and the Order armed its forces to carry out the imperial decree. The result might have been foreseen. The League renounced all allegiance to the Teutonic Order, and offered the suzerainty of Prussia to Casimir of Poland. The offer was accepted. The Polish king declared Prussia to be annexed to his dominions, and an army was led by Casimir himself to aid the rebels. For twelve years the unfortunate country was doomed to suffer all the horrors of civil strife and foreign invasion. In spite of the tremendous odds against them, the Knights offered a resistance worthy of their military reputation in the past. In 1457 the grand-master was forced to quit the fortress of Marienburg, where seventy of his predecessors had held their residence for a century and a half. A refuge was found for a time in the eastern castle of Königsberg, which was to be the future home of kings of Prussia in times of similar distress. But the town of Marienburg held out with heroic obstinacy for another three years, and siege operations there and elsewhere delayed the progress of the Poles long after they had crushed all resistance in the open field. The grand-master made frantic appeals to the Emperor and the German princes for aid against the Slavonic conquerors of the great province which the Order had won for Germany. To Frederick II. of Brandenburg he sold the Neumark (1455), which had been handed over to the Teutonic Knights by Sigismund in 1402. But prayers and bribes were equally unavailing to excite any sentiment of nationality among princes who had long ceased to regard anything but their own territorial interests. In 1466 it was at last necessary to submit to the consequences of defeat |Treaty of Thorn, 1466.| and to sign the Treaty of Thorn. The whole of western Prussia, with Pomerellen, including the towns of Danzig, Thorn, Elbing, and Kulm, was ceded to Poland, and the valley of the Vistula passed once more into the hands of the Slavs. Eastern Prussia, with Königsberg as its capital, was left in the hands of the Order, but it was to be held as a Polish fief. All allegiance to any other secular prince was to be repudiated, and thus the connection with Germany was formally ended. Future grand-masters were to do homage on election to the king of Poland, and were to sit on his left hand in the Polish Diet.

It is needless to dwell at any length on the subsequent fate of the Teutonic Order, which had fallen so lamentably |End of the Teutonic Order.| from its high estate. The Knights of the Sword repudiated their subordination to a grand-master who was no longer a sovereign prince, and assumed the independent rule of Livonia and Esthonia. The House of Jagellon went from one triumph to another; and its ascendency in eastern Europe seemed to be established when Ladislas, a younger son of Casimir IV., was elected to the crown of Bohemia in 1471, and to that of Hungary in 1490. Resistance to so great a power as Poland had now become must have seemed chimerical, yet the Knights continued to cherish the idea of recovering their lost independence. With this object in view they resisted all proposals to unite the grand-mastership with the Polish monarchy, and adopted the policy of electing successive chiefs from the great families of northern Germany, in the hope of enlisting their support for the cause of Prussia. Thus in 1498 they chose Frederick of Saxony, and in 1511 Albert of Hohenzollern. The latter was for a time encouraged by the promise of assistance held out by Maximilian I. But the Hapsburgs ever preferred the interests of their house to those of Germany; and the hopes of Albert were dashed to the ground when he learned that Maximilian had, in 1516, concluded a treaty and a double marriage alliance with the Jagellon princes in order to secure to his grandson Ferdinand the succession in Hungary and Bohemia. In anger and despair Albert determined to repudiate his allegiance both to Church and Empire. In 1525 he adopted the Protestant faith, confirmed the cession of West Prussia to Poland, and received East Prussia as a hereditary duchy for himself and his heirs. Although an obstinate minority of the Knights refused to acknowledge the validity of the grand-master’s action, the Teutonic Order was practically dissolved. The remnant of the state which it had built up with such strenuous exertions fell a century later to the main line of the electors of Brandenburg, and gave a title to the monarchy which has become in later times the paramount power in a united Germany.

The Order of the Sword lingered a few years longer, only to meet with a similar fate in the end. In 1561 the last grand-master, Gotthard Ketteler, finding it impossible |End of the Order of the Sword.| to maintain independence, imitated the action of Albert of Hohenzollern. He carved out for himself the secular duchy of Courland, to be held in vassalage to Poland, while the rest of Livonia and Esthonia was thrown as an apple of discord into the midst of the rival Baltic states—Poland, Denmark, Sweden, and Russia. The struggle which followed is noteworthy, not only because it led to the temporary ascendency of Sweden in the Baltic, and so to the achievements of its warrior-kings, Gustavus Adolphus, Charles X., and Charles XII., but also because it gave occasion for the first appearance of Russia as a European power.