8

THE CRUSADES IN THE BALTIC

FROM 1196 TO 1561 crusaders fought on the shores of the Baltic Sea against pagan and Russian Orthodox foes and brought the coastal territories of Prussia and Livonia into the sphere of western culture and Roman Catholicism. This was achieved at a high cost to the native peoples and the Germans’ relationship with the neighbouring peoples – Poles, Lithuanians and Russians – but today, now that the Baltic Germans are no longer there, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians remain committed to the West, not to their long-time Russian and Soviet occupiers. History has its ironies.

The crusade to Prussia began as a Polish effort to stop pagan raiders from terrorising northern villages and towns; at its inception it was directed by Polish dukes and prelates who invited the Teutonic Knights, a German religious order similar to the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller, to assist them.

The crusade to Livonia actually preceded this by three decades; it had originated as an international effort of Christian merchants and knights against pagan pirates and robbers. In the early thirteenth century Bishop Albert of Riga, the driving force for expanding the crusade, founded a military order, the Swordbrothers, that soon provided significant numbers, military expertise and leadership. The Swordbrothers eventually quarrelled with the bishop over sovereignty, over-extended themselves and were defeated in battle; the survivors were absorbed into the Teutonic Knights.

Within a few years of each crusade’s inception, the small area that was the immediate target became a base for the conquest of more pagan regions. Nothing less than Christianisation, it was believed, could bring peace and order to lands whose peoples lived by the laws of nature rather than those of God and civilised men.

Critics of the crusading movement (and purists as well) have often wondered whether these endeavours deserved to be called crusades. The goal of the First Crusade had been to recover from the Turks sites hallowed by the footsteps of Jesus, Peter and James – since the Turks had only recently defeated the Byzantine Empire and almost taken Constantinople, contemporaries had seen the First Crusade as a reconquest of the Holy Land, not as an aggressive war; they would have been utterly puzzled by accusations made by modern historians that this was early imperialism. At that time and later, popes made public appearances to urge believers to take the cross. The Baltic crusades were different. The motivations of the crusaders to Prussia and Livonia were multiple, and they were not always benign. Churchmen supporting missionaries were eager to expand their dioceses; nobles moved to the frontiers of Christendom to better their condition; kings were interested in acquiring the native peoples’ lands; and merchants wanted to expand their markets.

Aspects of these northern holy wars can be identified with chivalry. Maurice Keen has noted how both medieval men and modern scholars have seen this connection, first in conflicts against heathens, then against Muslims, as a shift in the Christian ideal away from pacifism and retreat from the world toward a forthright defence of justice and efforts to create a more perfect society. Nothing illustrates this better than papal proclamations and crusade propaganda – that taking the cross will both in change the personal life of the crusader for the better and guarantee salvation thereafter; it would also protect Christians and converts in other lands.

Central to the Baltic crusades was the failure of peaceful missions to the pagan tribes that inhabited the Baltic coastlands and islands. To a certain extent this lack of success lay in the hostility of the pagan priests, who understandably hated competition. But the new forms of western political and economic life frightened lay people, too, who worried that one of their own nobles would follow the example of Slavic leaders in Mecklenburg and Pomerania, convert to Christianity and use the institutions of the Church to make himself a feudal ruler. There was also concern that the foreigners would just take over – with little question there was a folk memory of the Viking domination of the coastline and river valleys.

While some native peoples living along the Baltic coast welcomed the Christians, others were determined to resist. All had individual members who were willing to take part in extortion, theft and the murder of merchants and priests if they thought they could get away with it. (Human beings are pretty much the same everywhere.)

If paganism had not been associated with piracy, robbery and raiding, the westerners would perhaps have had more patience. But paganism was a militant religion – not in the sense of desiring converts, but its gods rewarded warriors who sacrificed to them – and booty allowed young men to amass wealth and earn renown.

The crusaders’ ways of dealing with this was first war, then occupation of the lands, and lastly the incorporation of the native peoples into western society – most of them as heavily taxed farmers. Accomplishing these tasks would have been impossible if the organisers of the holy wars had relied solely on volunteers. They needed warriors willing to serve as long as necessary, even through the long northern winters. Copying the practices of crusaders in the Holy Land, they found these men first in the military orders – knights and soldiers who had taken up a religious life, but instead of simple prayer, work and rest, put their military skills to the service of the Church. Next they hired mercenaries.

It was natural for the native peoples to respond cautiously to strangers. Their experience with Vikings had been mixed. Discoveries of Viking coin hoards show that many travellers had brought their gains from commerce and military service in Byzantium and the Muslim world across Russia to the Baltic coastlands, then buried it overnight for safekeeping and not lived to dig it up. Apparently, the Baltic tribes were not innocent, peaceful children of nature.

This illustrates one of the most important hazards of the mercenary lifestyle – getting the wages home safely. A mercenary who died in service might or might not be paid (even his employer might be dead); in theory, his earnings could be taken to his family by friends, but that would depend on his being the member of a band or being accompanied by relatives. The anonymous individual was out of luck. For those who lived, there was still a long and dangerous journey home.

RUSSIA

When Scandinavia converted to Christianity, the new monarchs discouraged raids into other Christian lands. The was partly to hamper the rise of rivals, partly pious practicality, but these motives combined with better organised defences to dry up the supply of human merchandise for sale in Byzantium and the Muslim worlds. Then Byzantium lost its eastern lands to the Turks. Russia, no longer able to profit from the transit trade, began to develop new traditions and customs.

Whenever Russian rulers and churchmen looked beyond their city walls, they saw a countryside still either populated by pagans or only recently converted. They understood that they could buy furs and other forest products from these peoples for sale to westerners, and they could collect a modest tribute from them, but they were realistic enough to know that there was a practical limit to how closely they could govern them. Their policy toward these tribes, therefore, was often little more than warning them to abstain from robbing merchants and to pay their annual tribute. Here and there the churchmen founded a monastery, but on the whole the clergy worried that contact between True Believers and pagans would result in a mutual exchange of cultural practices and values, an exchange that would lead Christians away from the Orthodox Church and into perdition.

Thus it was that the Russian states of Novgorod, Pskov and Polotsk collected tribute from tribes on the Baltic coast (today’s Estonia and Latvia), but did not rule them directly. Hence they had little ability to prevent Roman Catholic missionaries from entering those regions from the west; nor did they have much desire to do so – the hard feelings that followed the Byzantine massacre of Latins in 1184 and the crusaders’ capture of Constantinople in 1204–5 still lay in the future. Although it would be incorrect to suggest that the two religious communities viewed each other unhesitatingly as worthy and valued representatives of a common belief – the Schism of 1054 would last over 900 years – there was still an occasional willingness to recognise one another as Christians rather than Schismatics who would lead to hell anyone they could persuade to perform the sign of the cross backwards.

LIVONIA

When the first Roman Catholic merchants appeared in Livonia in the late twelfth century, most came from the international merchant community at Visby on the island of Gotland. This town is today a popular tourist site, famous for its ancient walls and the museum displaying the bodies and weapons of warriors buried in a mass grave after the sack of the city in 1361. Gotland was centrally located in the Baltic Sea, easily accessible from all directions, and Visby’s market was open to merchants from Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Russia.

At first most of the merchants were descendants of Vikings, but as the Holy Roman Empire became wealthier and more prosperous, its Saxon inhabitants pushed east into the Slavic regions of Holstein and Mecklenburg. When these Saxons established a trading centre at Lübeck in 1141, all that prevented them from sending ships into the Baltic Sea was fear of competitors from Denmark and pagan pirates from the southern shores of the sea – the land of the Wends, Slavs who had been death enemies of the Saxon Germans for several centuries. Both Danes and Wends had the distressing habit of capturing ships and throwing Saxon crews overboard. They also did the same to one another whenever possible. The Danes long tended to have the better of the exchange, but all states experience declines, and when Denmark went through a period of difficulty in the eleventh century, the Wends became the dominant power in the western Baltic. This made it easy for St Bernard in 1147 to bring Christian Scandinavians and Christian Germans together to crush the pride of the Wendish pagans and bring them to the baptismal font.

After crusaders from Germany, Bohemia and Denmark defeated the Wends, Danish and Lübeck merchants were joined by adventurous commercial travellers from Hamburg and Bremen in sailing to Gotland. From Visby they made their way to Livonia in their commodious merchant ships, many of which were round-bellied vessels with high sterns and forecastles, with a large sails billowing from sturdy masts. The cog, as this new ship was called, relied upon wind power rather than rowers and hence was much more economical to operate. Moreover, under full sail a cog could crush the smaller Viking-style warships of the native Kurs and Estonians, who had become the masters of the eastern Baltic waters and now raided Scandinavian coasts with impunity. When becalmed or at anchor in the wide, shallow rivers of the Baltic coastland, the cog’s high sides made boarding difficult. Archers stationed in the forecastle and on the after deck could shoot down on their enemies with crossbows, picking them off one by one.

Any young man with a crossbow and the lust for adventure could easily find employment as a mercenary, protecting merchants from pirates, thieves and unhappy customers.

The merchants were also accompanied by missionaries, usually German monks. Whenever a merchant set up a shop in a settlement, the missionaries asked permission to take up residence as well; they often stayed through the winter, presumably paying well for their lodgings and food, and earning goodwill by assisting the natives deal with western merchants who came each spring and remained until fall. They dispensed medical advice and told stories from the Bible and recounted the miracles of the saints. The missionaries were, in all likelihood, the best free show in town. That made the local shamans very unhappy – not only were the competitors depriving them of income and prestige, but they derided the practitioners of magic and dispensers of herbs as misguided fools who were as useless in dealing with disease as they were dangerous to one’s prospects of earning eternal life.

Modern readers, knowing how primitive the westerners’ own medical practices were and how deeply their beliefs were coloured by superstition and ignorance, can smile that this conceit. But the western visitors were more advanced in technology, education and social organisation. There were also many more of them and they were very good warriors. But it was the ability of the western leaders to demand money and military service from their subjects that was decisive. Feudalism, as Marx noted, was a more advanced and effective social and political system than its predecessors.

While any western lord – secular or cleric – could mobilise his resources more effectively than clan leaders and give orders more quickly than clan councils could deliberate, we must not forget the religious zeal that inspired everyone. This was especially true of the missionaries.

When foreign priests began planting their own crops and doing better than the Livonian and Estonian farmers, jealous shamans began to spread stories about their using witchcraft. The missionaries must have been amused, but also comforted by knowing the successful outcome of similar contests in the Bible and in the lives of the saints. Missionaries lacked almost every necessity of life except self-confidence and a firm belief that God was with them. Nevertheless, they did not make many converts at first – peoples who attribute good harvests to fertility gods are reluctant to abandon their ancient beliefs. There were also the troubling changes that accompanied the commercial contacts. Money changes everything, not just hands. How, the village elders must have worried, can we protect our ancient culture and customs?

THE CRUSADE TO LIVONIA

The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, a thirteenth-century composition universally praised for its style, its drama and the importance of the events described, opens with the story of the most successful missionary to the Daugava River (Düna, Dvina) in what is today Latvia. Meinhard, a priest from Segeberg in north Germany, arrived with merchants from Visby in the spring of 1180, with a very small retinue of priests and servants. Meeting with some success among the Livs (hence the name Livonia), he asked for permission to spend the winter. The Livs were a weak tribe dwelling on the islands in the Daugava River, along the coast and in scattered settlements that extended north up the Aa River valley; Meinhard established his mission on an island in the Daugava regularly visited by merchants. One day that winter a warning came that Lithuanian raiders were on their way. The tribesmen, far from offering resistance – as Meinhard had expected – scattered and hid in the forests. Given that whenever the ground was not covered with snow, it was muddy, this seemed a poor strategy. The raiders could easily track the fugitives to their hideouts. Of course, the Livs had experience in this matter and obviously found hiding more successful than fighting – the Lithuanians were tall, strong, incomparably more numerous, and accustomed to victory.

When the danger had passed, Meinhard asked his hosts why they did not build proper fortifications. The response was that they did not know how. This was only partly true – almost every hilltop in the region had once been topped by a fort. More important than this was the refusal to empower leaders who could persuade, inspire or force the warriors to fight. The tribesmen liked their primitive clan democracy, and they understood that once they gave any leader authority, he would expand it, whether he intended to or not, until he became king. This was the organisational weakness of the region – while western Slavic tribes had become feudal states, with castles, cities, vassals, abbeys and churches, the tribes in the eastern Baltic had not.

Meinhard reflected on this, then offered to build a brick castle and provide mercenaries to defend it. The natives were excited to hear his proposal, despite the accompanying conditions – that they undergo baptism and pay taxes and tithes to support his church. His was a reasonable request, everyone agreed, since Meinhard would have to hire artisans to make the bricks and lay them; and while merchants who were present in the summer would assist in guarding the castle, none of them would remain through the winter, much less do so for free. The initial capital outlay was comparatively great, but Meinhard collected funds for the construction from merchants on Gotland and his brother monks in north Germany, and proceeded to build two brick forts on islands at Holm and Uexküll. He then recruited mercenaries in Gotland as garrisons.

When the Lithuanians arrived the following winter, they laughed at the Christians’ folly. In the summer they might have collected dry wood to fill the moat and then asphyxiated the garrison with smoke, but this was winter – and the snow would have buried firewood beneath feet of cover. Hurriedly they attached ropes to the corners of one of the forts and tried to pull it apart; this had always worked against log fortifications. But the brick walls remained firm, and crossbowmen shot down many of the attackers. After the Lithuanians withdrew, the Liv populace emerged from their hiding places and congratulated the priest and his men. But the Livs were less happy when Meinhard reminded them that now it was time to pay the first taxes. A few were baptised and began to pay their tenth to the Church, and about the same amount in taxes. Most of the natives, however, treated Meinhard’s demand as a huge joke – they had tricked him into building forts, and he had believed that they would willingly become his subjects and pay him taxes! A mere priest! And a foreign priest at that.

Far away, however, the pope saw Meinhard as more than a mere priest. He saw him as a gifted personality who could build a great church among a people living in darkness. If asked whether he meant that literally, the pope would probably have been puzzled until reminded that there was little daylight in winter. But the darkness he meant was metaphorical. The native peoples did not lack for talent and ability – the ones the pope had met were intelligent enough – but they did not even have a form of government that permitted them to defend themselves. Unless the Church stepped in soon, the entire region would remain under the domination of Orthodox Russians and pagan Lithuanians.

The pope was worrying unduly. The Russian princes of Polotsk, Novgorod and Pskov had indeed been collecting tribute from the nearest Estonian and Lettish tribes, but the revenue was not great enough to justify making the bonds tighter. Moreover, although the princes had converted a handful of the leading seniors, the heads of the clans whose council meetings constituted the main lawmaking and judicial body of each tribe, this had not led to the others accepting Orthodox Christianity. It was the same issue that had made the Livs reluctant to entrust any one noble with authority. While it was important to have a chief who could speak on the tribe’s behalf as a coreligionist of the distant sovereign, they feared more demands for taxes and for military service. The councils insisted on retaining control of all aspects of government except religion, which was the realm of the shamans, and if a prominent noble became a Christian – Catholic or Orthodox – the remaining elders and the priests might have advised that everyone else remain pagan in order to limit that individual’s ambitions.

Nor were the Lithuanians interested in expansion. That would come later. What this relatively numerous and warlike people needed at this time were items for trade. Their own country produced marvellous horses, but it was so covered with hills, swamps and nearly impenetrable forests that there were no commercial products worth speaking of. Worldly goods were acquired through warfare – attacking Christian settlements in Russia and Poland, and carrying away prisoners and cattle from the tribes in Livonia and Estonia. They would divide up the captives – the kings and nobles taking the largest share, of course – then sell them to the slave traders in Poland and Russia, taking care to make sure that Poles saw only Livonians and Russians saw only Poles; if they could transport the booty all the way to the nomadic pagan tribes on the steppe, the profits would be all the better.

With Lithuanians coming at the Livs from the south, and Estonians raiding from the north, it was relatively easy for Meinhard’s successor, Bishop Albert, to establish a fortified commercial centre at Riga and to make allies of more tribes. What Bishop Albert could not do was give fiefs to a sufficient number of German knights to defend his new subjects. First, he could not make the natives into serfs without driving them into the arms of their common enemies. Second, he wanted to keep as much of the tax revenues as possible for himself. And last, he understood that knights would eventually challenge his authority. He gave a few large fiefs to relatives, but his handful of knights had to support themselves by collecting taxes and supervising justice – just like ministeriales in Germany.

On the bishop’s travels to Germany and Italy – to meet with the Hohenstaufen emperor-elect and Innocent III – he spoke to the public about the needs of his mission. The money poured in, and so did volunteers for the holy war. But the expenses were always greater than revenues. The money was quickly spent, and the crusaders went home at the end of a summer or a year. Albert wanted to hire mercenaries to garrison his castles, but he could not afford to do so. He simply lacked the funds.

Albert’s solution was to found the new military order, which would provide a body of knights – well-trained volunteers who had taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. With enough prayer, cabbage and beer, they could take on any foe.

Most importantly, these Swordbrothers cost almost nothing. For a promise of one-third of the lands to be conquered, they were willing to serve even in the most isolated and unpleasant locations on the frontier. The bishop could have called on an existing military order, but he wanted knights who would be utterly dependent on him and, therefore, obedient. How little he understood the psychology of such men. Or perhaps he knew the risks, but thought that this was the best chance he had.

This passed the bishop’s problem of regional defence to other hands, but the Swordbrothers were never able to persuade enough pious knights to forsake the world and join them. Salvation was a worthy end, but fasting, prayer and celibacy did not attract many warriors even in those days. As the crusader state grew, the Swordbrothers had to add mercenaries to their numbers. Awkwardly, the taxes of each newly conquered region were insufficient to the military order’s growing needs. Only constant expansion offered any hope of resolving the financial crisis – in theory, expansion would provide larger number of native warriors and more taxes, but in practice tribes that had once been dominant were much less willing to accept foreign rule than those which had been traditional victims. Eventually, following a 1223 native uprising in Estonia that slew a third of the order’s members and slaughtered hundreds of other Germans in the Danish provinces – including many knights and gentry – the Swordbrothers annexed the Danish lands and invaded the lowland regions of Lithuania.

The vicious cycle of hiring mercenaries to expand, then expanding in order to pay the mercenaries, led the Swordbrothers straight to disaster. It was not a matter of evading disaster, but only of when it would take place. This happened first on the swampy banks of the Saule River in 1236, with hundreds of crusaders slaughtered by Samogitian Lithuanians and their highland allies. Lastly, a papal legate ordered the return of Estonia to Denmark. The Swordbrothers, who had earlier agreed to submerge their membership and lands into the Teutonic Knights, rebelled. In 1240–42 they joined in a coordinated attack on Novgorod, which ended in disaster at the battle on the ice of Lake Peipus. Their last surviving knights were dispersed – some sent to the Holy Land, replaced by knights recruited from north Germany who shared the language spoken by the German merchants and clergy of Livonia. The Teutonic Order had resources throughout Germany which could be used to hire as many mercenaries as were necessary, but it was also sufficiently popular as to require relatively few of them.

For practical reasons – mainly the distance from Germany and Prussia, but also the complicated relationship with the bishop of Riga – the knights in Livonia were given considerable autonomy from the rest of the Teutonic Order. They became known as the Livonian Order.

ALEXANDER NEVSKY

The one connection that modern movie fans have to the Swordbrothers is through Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 movie Alexander Nevsky. Although there are other films set in the era of the northern crusades, Alexander Nevsky is the only one that western audiences see. The dramatic story of the Novgorod prince’s rout of the Teutonic Knights on the ice of Lake Peipus became all the more authentic through the director’s skilful use of black-and-white film and silent movie techniques (there was dialogue, but the film was less a ‘talkie’ than a spectacle), then overlaying the whole with Prokofiev’s stirring score. The film was deliberately anachronistic and spectacularly successful.

Eisenstein used considerable artistic license, but, having grown up in Riga, he was well acquainted with the costumes and iconography of the Middle Ages, and with the narrative sources of the crusading era as well. Unfortunately for those who rely on his film for historical information, Eisenstein’s understanding of the actual events was minimal or they did not apply well to the uplifting patriotic and socialist story he wanted to tell. The grand master of the Teutonic Knights was not at the battle, nor the Livonian master, nor even the acting Livonian master. Having the crusade organised by a papal legate was somewhat accurate, and the twenty-year-old Alexander had smashed the Swedish prong of the western aggression in 1240 on the banks of the Neva River, giving him the title Nevsky. But the crusader army came from Danish Estonia, the bishopric of Dorpat and former Swordbrothers now in rebellion. If there were any Teutonic Knights present at the battle on 5 April 1242, they were few in number.

Eisenstein also had to cope with contemporary politics. In 1938 Stalin held absolute power in the Soviet Union – and no movie was released without his personal approval. No viewer should miss the references to internal enemies, capitalists, the impending war with Nazi Germany, the threats from sneaky orientals and evil Catholic prelates, and the importance of giving unconditional support to the national leader. Alexander Nevsky is a superb example of how a movie made for propaganda can live on as exciting entertainment.

In reality, Prince Alexander later collaborated with the Great Khan, ultimately being entrusted with the governance of the entire northern part of Russia so that he could collect taxes and provide soldiers to the Mongol Horde more effectively. He was murdered in 1263 while visiting the khan. Novgorod remained independent until 1471–89, when it was subjected by the grand duke of Moscow, Ivan III (1462–1505). The Orthodox Church declared Alexander Nevsky a saint in 1547.

One could argue that Alexander had few choices and that he did his best under the circumstances. In helping fasten ‘the Mongol Yoke’ around the necks of the Russian people, he protected his subjects for a while from the worst effects of foreign rule. However, one should not argue that Alexander was an early communist who relied on the peasant masses doing their patriotic duty against foreign aggressors. His army was largely composed of professional archers, and Novgorod provided a well-trained citizen militia and much money.

THE TEUTONIC ORDER

The Teutonic Knights had been established during the Third Crusade as a hospital order to care for German knights who were being ignored by the established English–French orders. In 1198 crusaders who saw the order’s knights emptying bedpans persuaded the pope to transform the organisation into a military order. Though the ‘German Order’ (a more exact translation of its name) grew rich quickly under the leadership of Hermann von Salza, who was a major figure in the Fifth and Sixth Crusades and was a friend of Friedrich II, there was too little room in the Holy Land to deploy its forces effectively. Though the grand masters and the members continued to see the Holy Land as their primary field of operation, they sent knights first to Hungary (where they succeeded so well that jealous nobles and prelates had them expelled), then to Prussia and later to Livonia.

The military order consisted of knights, men-at-arms and priests, all represented in the assemblies that passed laws, debated policies and elected officers. The grand master and his council conducted diplomacy and led the armies in battle, while castellans governed regions and advocates oversaw the governance of converted native peoples who were allowed to retain many ancient customs, including the councils of elders.

Bishops oversaw religious life, including the education and spiritual care of the native peoples; abbots were important in the countryside, and friars in the towns. But no one was allowed to challenge the authority of the grand master in Prussia or the regional master in Livonia. Immigrants were settled in swamp and forest lands, or areas which had been depopulated by war; and towns sprang up along the Baltic coastline and the Vistula River. The revenues from taxes, estates and gifts gave the grand master a reputation for incredible wealth.

This wealth could be used to hire mercenaries.

THE CRUSADE TO PRUSSIA

In the fourteenth century the crusade to Prussia began to attract ever larger numbers of volunteers, and from an ever greater distance. Some made the journey out of piety, some for adventure, and some for money. Jean Froissart recorded examples of nobles taking advantage of truces in the Hundred Years War to make the journey (Reise) to Prussia. Sometimes the vow to take the cross was not easily fulfilled, as the adventures of the duke of Geldern demonstrated – he was taken prisoner in Pomerania, but after the grand master stormed the castle in which he held prisoner, he would not leave until his captor (who had prudently fled) released him from his vow not to attempt escape until ransomed. Such extravagant devotion to the cult of chivalry may have been unusual, but many young squires saw this crusade as an opportunity to have a memorable adventure and to earn knighthood as well.

In 1377 the duke of Austria went on crusade in Prussia, accompanied by 2,000 men and one of the better poets of the era, Peter Suchenwirt:

Dâ sach man wûchsten, prennen	There was destruction, burning,
Slahen, schiezzen und rennen	slaying, shooting and charging
haid ein, pusch ein, unverzagt,	through meadows and tickets,
rechts als der füchs und hasen jagt	just like chasing foxes and rabbits.

The poem made it clear that the duke was seeking an opportunity to ‘win his spurs’, the symbol of knighthood. Many squires had come, too, in hopes of being dubbed as well – not only would the crusade be something to boast about through a lifetime, but the expensive ceremony of knighthood would be practically free! Suchenwirt quoted a prominent lord as he pulled his sword from his scabbard to do the duke his honour, ‘better knight than squire!’ (Pezzer ritter wenne chnecht!).

While on crusade, the poet implies, the duke of Austria and his friends paid most of the costs of obtaining equipment, travel and the lavish entertainment. This suggests that the line between impoverished volunteer and mercenary is blurred at best, and evidence further indicates that some who received expense money were actually taking thinly disguised wages. This practice was sufficiently distasteful as to be seldom mentioned, but it was more satisfactory than cancelling the expedition or being embarrassed by having too small a force to claim a seat at the famed Table Round that Suchenwirt described.

THE CONVERSION OF LITHUANIA

After the conversion of Lithuania to Roman Catholicism in 1386/87, the Teutonic Knights found it increasingly difficult to persuade knights and clerics that their holy war was in defence of the Church against pagan and Orthodox enemies. They were able to continue the crusade only because the cousins who ruled Lithuania and Poland, Vytautas (baptised as Alexander) and Jagiełło (Jogaila in Lithuanian, baptised as Ladislas), had a long history of changing their religion, or seeming to promise to do so, to suit their political ends. Vytautas was first baptised as a Roman Catholic in Poland after he escaped from Jagiełło’s prison in disguise, then again for the grand master of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia. After achieving a cautious reconciliation with Jagiełło, he underwent a baptism in the Russian Orthodox Church. When Jagiełło married the heiress to the Polish crown, Vytautas demonstrated his loyalty anew by undergoing another baptism, non-German and non-Russian, in Cracow.

The great siege of Vilnius in 1394 with the aid of English knights and archers and the flower of French chivalry was the greatest expedition of its kind. (See my book, The Teutonic Knights, a Military History for more details) Five years later Vytautas and Jagiełło led their forces to assist the grand master in subduing the last pagans in the Baltic, the fierce Samogitians north of the Nemunas River.

Although the Teutonic Knights obtained sovereignty of this region, they found it difficult to govern. First of all, the knights of the order had decided not to force Christianity on the people immediately (despite the outcry of churchmen who were concerned about the souls of the newly subject peoples and who may have wanted the order’s lands for themselves), but first to make them comfortable with Christian habits such as commerce and feudal rank. This offended those warriors who considered themselves above the peasant class, but were not freed from taxes like the nobles selected to provide military service. The exemption meant little until 1409. The tax levied that year provoked a rebellion that widened into war with Vytautas and Jagiełło.

There was no good reason for this war to have occurred. The rulers of the three states had cooperated in military operations in Russia against the grand duke of Moscow, in Russia against Novgorod, on the steppe against the Tatars, and in the Baltic against pirates. Together they could have changed the political and religious situation in Eastern Europe significantly.

It is worth pausing in this story to look at the pirates, partly because eliminating piracy was one of the original goals of the crusade to Livonia, but also because pirates often begin their careers as components of a regional navy or as privateers hired by a local ruler to attack the commerce of his rivals. Privateers were a sea-borne form of mercenary warfare.

PIRATES AS SEAFARING MERCENARIES

The line between pirate and privateer is clear: a pirate was a free-enterprise thief; the privateer was licensed by a government to attack the vessels and towns of an enemy on whom war has been declared. In practical terms, of course, the distinction was harder to maintain. Enemy ships attempted to disguise their identity, ships of neutral states carried contraband, and crews wanted their share of the loot, no matter what the niceties of legal status were. Privateers tended to become pirates when peace returned, and pirates signed on as privateers whenever war was declared.

The most famous privateers in the Baltic were the Victuals Brethren (in German, Vitalienbrüder). These arose during a three-sided war – the claimant to the Swedish throne, Queen Margaret of Denmark, and the duke of Pomerania – for control of the rich province of Scania, today southern Sweden, and the trade routes across the Baltic. Also involved was the Hanseatic League, a loose collection of German commercial cities led by Lübeck, Hamburg and Bremen; and the Prussian and Livonian cities. The war had brought the first privateers out as allies of one or the other of the challengers, but they became a formidable force only after the Danes began a long siege of Stockholm in 1390. The privateers allied with the Swedish king began delivering food through the many waterways leading to the city. The king, pleased at the discipline and loyalty of his new allies, gave them letters of marques authorising them to make war on his behalf and granting them possession of the strategic island of Gotland.

The Danish queen hated the Victuals Brethren not only for their having saved the king from certain defeat, but also because they had been collecting much of their foodstuffs from her subjects; that is, as she saw it, they were stealing it from her. However, there was little that she could to do drive them from their strongly fortified base in Visby.

The pirates might have been able to eke out an existence for many years if they had been able to restrain their members more. But when the war slowed down, one group advocated continuing the war, raiding Pomerania and looking for Danish fishing and commercial vessels; another advocated picking on the rich ships of the Hanseatic League that were sailing to Riga and Reval, to Polotsk, to Pskov and to Novgorod. Yet another group advocated taking service in the employ of the bishop of Dorpat; war seemed likely there, and rich merchants could be found on the rivers in summer and on overland trails in the winter.

The bishop of Dorpat, Dietrich Damerow, was an ambitious prelate whose plans dovetailed nicely with the traditional policies of the city’s mercantile elite and the numerous hereditary nobles. All were of German descent, and though a few could boast of ancestry that included Russian nobles and native princesses, their ties were to nobles and merchants elsewhere in Livonia and in the Holy Roman Empire.

The policies of Dorpat were simple and straightforward – first, freedom to act independently from both the Livonian Order and the archbishop of Riga, who were otherwise usually bitter rivals; and from the other prelates and cities of Livonia; second, to call on these rivals in trade and politics for help whenever war with one of the nearest Russian states (Novgorod or Pskov) or with Lithuania threatened. Damerow brought to these ancient practices his irritating personality and a desire to make a great reputation for himself – his likely goal was to advance his career in the Church, perhaps being first archbishop of Riga, then reaching even higher office.

The Livonian master saw Dorpat’s traditional policies as a perennial nuisance, but Damerow’s as an immediate threat. Whenever the master would want to use a trade embargo to put pressure on Russians or Lithuanians, Dorpat’s merchants would ignore his requests to cooperate. Whenever Riga merchants had difficulty with their Russian counterparts in Polotsk, Dorpaters would tell the Russians that they had nothing to do with it; similarly, whenever Reval complained about robbers to Pskov or Novgorod, Dorpat merchants would disclaim any part in the quarrel. Still, Dorpat was a passive nuisance; its merchants and nobles had no territorial ambitions. Damerow, in contrast, was aggressive; he created difficulties rather than merely taking advantage of them. His immediate goal was to undermine the Livonian Order, even to destroy it.

This situation had already become a crisis before the master heard that some of the Victuals Brethren were sailing to Dorpat. He asked why this was happening. No response. In 1398 Grand Master Conrad (III) von Jungingen had had enough. He called his knights together and explained the situation. The provocations were nothing new – the Teutonic Knights had discussed the Dorpat situation often. But this proposal was unprecedented – to put the order’s knights on ships and transport them across the sea to Gotland, to destroy the pirate base. The knights having voted favourably, the grand master then contacted Vytautas of Lithuania, whose plans for annexing Russian lands could be disrupted by disorder on his Dorpat front. Vytautas not only liked the plan, but he sent warriors to join the expedition. (These may have been the equivalent of hostages, but their presence was welcome.)

Prussian cities belonging to the Hanseatic League provided ships, which set sail despite the lateness of the season. Within weeks the pirate base existed no more, and the bishop of Dorpat capitulated to the Livonian master.

THE BATTLE OF TANNENBERG

The great war that began in 1409 between the Teutonic Knights and the rulers of Poland and Lithuania was a significant turning point in the history of the Baltic region. There was no need for the conflict, except that perhaps the three powers ultimately had to determine which would be supreme in the region, the well-established Teutonic Order or the rising powers of Lithuania and Poland.

The three states had cooperated effectively through much of the decade 1399–1409, but when an uprising began in Samogitia, Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen suspected that Vytautas and Jagiełło had encouraged the rebels. Most of his castles had fallen quickly, and he would probably not be able to recover them if he had to guard his other frontiers against Lithuanian and Polish attack. He decided to try an economic blockade first, then, if necessary, war.

Jungingen’s decision to prevent Polish grain from reaching famine-stricken regions of Lithuania brought on war. Polish and Lithuanian nobles, and patriotic churchmen demanded action. Vytautas and Jagiełło acted cautiously, well-aware that the army of the Teutonic Knights had not suffered a major defeat in living memory; moreover, that it was at the height of its powers, with many experienced, well-trained knights, with formidable castles stocked with supplies, and with what many believed to be an inexhaustible reservoir of revenues.

In addition, the grand master had excellent intelligence services. Merchants passed on information about every ruler whose lands they crossed; in return they were given favours that were good for business; churchmen wrote letters or whispered gossip into the right ears; and factions opposing the Lithuanian and Polish rulers sought aid and comfort from him. Learning that Vytautas and Jagiełło were discussing a joint military campaign, Ulrich von Jungingen decided to strike first.

Lithuania and Samogitia could not be attacked as long as Jagiełło represented a danger to the southern frontier. Therefore, it seemed logical to strike at the Polish threat first. This was most easily done on the eastern bank of the Vistula, where the grand master sent units in August of 1409 to destroy the fortress at Dobrin. A second army swept up the other side of the river, capturing the strategic fortress of Bydgoszcz. A third force struck from the Neumark into Great Poland, but turned back after burning some border districts.

A second offensive followed in September, directed at Krone – the commander reported killing 500 Poles in a one-sided battle, but did not capture the Polish strongpoint. A report noted that only one knight from the order’s army died, killed ‘at the head’ of the charging cavalry. This suggests a massive wedge-shaped formation designed to burst a defensive line apart.

Another force struck east of Dobrin at the communication route to Lithuania, territories belonging to Johan of Masovia.

In October it was the Polish turn. Jagiełło ordered an assault on the fortifications of Bydgoszcz, but after 200 of his men died, he called the attack off. The Teutonic Knights might have been able to hold the place until the grand master’s relief army arrived, but the order’s commander had been killed in action, struck by an arrow, and the mercenaries in the castle surrendered when they were promised they could take with them all their possessions. A complicating factor was a large quantity of salt that had been stored there since spring, apparently deposited by two ships originally hired to transport it down the river, across the Baltic Sea, and up the Nemunas River to Lithuania. The mercenaries had demanded a share of this booty earlier, but the order’s late commander had refused – the castle had been surrendered to him, not to the mercenaries.

Soon afterward the grand master’s army marched down to face the royal array, but neither commander was willing to hazard battle. After emissaries sent by King Wenceslas of Bohemia arranged a truce, both sides withdrew into winter quarters.

This was not an important campaign except in one respect – the grand master kept detailed records of expenses. This Soldbuch (payment book) has been used by the Swedish scholar Sven Ekdahl to describe in detail the process of recruiting and employing mercenaries, and he has done this imposing task, one that has daunted many an ambitious doctoral student, better than anyone else to date. Teutonic thoroughness has its virtues, and no Germans of the fifteenth century were more thorough than the grand masters of the Teutonic Order.

Recruiting mercenaries for these armies had a particular difficulty – the grand master had wanted his attack to come as a surprise. Therefore, the two recruiting officers who were sent to Silesia and the nearest German states (Pomerania, Meissen, Thuringia, and Brunswick and Lüneburg) were authorised to raise quietly 200 lances (a Spieß or Gleve) for six months’ employment. The instructions to the recruiters emphasised that each lance was to consist of a man with armour, a man with a crossbow and a youth, each with a horse, and that they be honest, capable of fighting and well mounted. The pay was to be twenty-four Hungarian ducats, equivalent to eleven marks, and while no promises were made to replace horses and equipment lost in combat or on campaign, everyone knew that there was a custom to make ‘gifts’ which covered such eventualities.

Most ‘guests’, as both mercenaries and volunteers were called, qualified for spiritual benefits as well. However, because crusading expeditions had been suspended after the subjection of Samogitia, the habit of taking the cross to fight the pagans had fallen into disuse. Now and in the future, though ‘crusaders’ would be welcomed, everyone understood that most came for the money. Even Heinrich the Rich of Bavaria, who was in Prussia two years later, had not become famed for his wealth by spending his own money on someone else’s war.

Ekdahl demonstrated that most of the mercenary leaders were knights or nobles. In addition to these short-term mercenaries, there were long-term arrangements with prominent rulers. The most important was with the dukes of Pomerania, who were paid to remain friendly or neutral and to allow recruiters to spread out through their lands. A special arrangement with the lords of Sagan and Oels was evolving so that they became future recruiters and leaders of mercenary armies in Prussia.

A number of musicians (pipers, trumpeters, drummers) were hired as well, and two cannonmasters from Brunswick. Lastly, there were a ‘large number’ of squires with two horses which could be risked anywhere. (The grand master had reservations about his hired men demanding repayment for good horses lost on the campaign.)

The grand master’s mercenaries did not participate in the early campaigns east of the Vistula in any significant numbers, though undoubtedly there were sergeants (men-at-arms) in the garrisons who did, men who were serving on multiyear contracts. This was a result of time pressure – it was simply not possible to get recruits from Germany, Pomerania or Silesia to that front quickly enough. Instead, they gathered in West Prussia and the Neumark.

There was an initial disruption of the 1409 invasion from the Neumark because Duke Wartislaw of Pomerania failed to appear as promised. The governor of the Neumark hurried to see what the problem was, but the damage to the campaign had already been already done. The next problem was providing sufficient food and hay for the new arrivals until they could cross the Polish border again and sustain themselves from plunder. The assembly point was in Schlochau, in West Prussia, whence they were dispersed to other castles where provisions were more plentiful.

Among these mercenaries were probably five members of the same family, Borsnicz – Kunze, Hannus, Jon, Nickel, Paczko. The financial records for 1410 did not survive, but they are recorded as having left the grand master’s employment the following year.* The mercenaries were soon brought together to repel a raid by the Polish commander of Bydgoszcz on the Vistula fortress at Schwetz. They ambushed the raiders, recapturing all the cattle and horses that had rounded up. Meanwhile, the commander of Schwetz, Heinrich von Plauen, captured the Polish commander, then hurried south to Bydgoszcz and captured the castle.

Forty mercenaries led by Heinz von Borsnitz formed the new garrison. These were the men who later quarrelled over the salt; moreover, when Jungingen sent reinforcements, workers and war machines to their assistance, they turned them away, saying that they were solely under the commander of the castellan of Schlochau.

Complaints began coming in. The mercenaries were given to theft, were undisciplined and untruthful, and were unreliable. The grand master indicated that he was ready to release them from his service as soon as he could replace them. However, the only action Ulrich von Jungingen took was to assign an officer from the Teutonic Order to share command. As we have seen, this officer was killed by an arrow during the Polish assault.

In contrast to the negative comments about Borsnitz’s men, Heinrich von Plauen wrote to praise Borsnitz as an energetic and capable leader. As a result, Jungingen gave him a responsible position in leading the mercenaries who later fought at Tannenberg.

In all, there may have been as many as 800 lances, with a total outlay of at least 46,000 marks. The costs were probably significantly higher once the payments to prominent noble allies were reckoned in.

The mercenaries played no significant role in this short war. Nevertheless, the net of alliances was important for recruiting an even larger force the next year. Unfortunately, the Soldbuch for 1410 is missing. Therefore, we can only guess how many mercenaries the grand master hired to face the 40,000 Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, Tatars, Moldavians, and the Czech mercenaries that Jagiełło led into east Prussia. Jungingen had arrayed his main force north of Bydgoszcz, anticipating a repetition of the 1409 campaign. But the Polish king had arranged to meet Vytautas in Masovia, with a plan to strike north into Culm. Jungingen, alerted by papal and imperial peace commissioners that the king had built a bridge across the Vistula, shifted his force to the east bank of the river to block the invaders. But Jagiełło moved east and north through the wilderness toward the bishopric of Ermland; the grand master followed, moving ever farther from his bases. As Vytautas’s Tatar scouts spread terror through villages and towns, Jungingen realised that his strategy of defending fords and forest paths was not working. He attempted an overnight march on the royal camp, but failed to achieve surprise. Deciding neither to attack nor to retreat sufficiently to allow his men to rest and to eat, he put his 20,000 men into a defensive position, then pulled back in order to allow the Poles and Lithuanians to align their forces opposite his. He thus abandoned the traps his exhausted men had dug or built to frustrate the opposing cavalry, removed his artillery from its most advantageous position, and left his knights standing in the heat in heavy armour, their horses suffering from the lack of food and water, until Jagiełło had finished hearing several masses.

The battle on 15 July, 1410, nevertheless seemed to go well for the grand master at first. A critical moment was reached when the Lithuanians and their Russian and Tatar units launched a terrific assault on the ‘crusaders’ stationed opposite them. When the Lithuanian attack failed, the mercenaries followed the retreating formations. This was standard practice – to turn a retreat into a rout. However, this was not a general retreat – the other formations stood fast, and the mercenary cavalry made no attempt to strike into their now exposed flank, but rode off into the distance. Vytautas, seeing the gap in the line, gathered every man he could and charged. What remained of the crusader left flank collapsed. The grand master’s units in the centre, now attacked from the front and the flank alike, begin to flee. Ulrich understood that an orderly retreat was impossible, since the roads leading to the rear were too narrow to accommodate his forces; already they were clogged with frightened fugitives. His only chance to lead his last units in a charge directly at the Polish king. When that failed and he fell in combat, panic set in among the few units remaining intact.

The subsequent episodes of combat resembled a slaughter. Poles and Lithuanians pressed upon the unprotected backs of the fleeing soldiers, chased down individuals who tried to escape through the woods, ambushed the mercenaries as they came back with exhausted horses, and then murdered all the captives except those who could be expected to pay high ransom. About 8,000 men had fallen on each side.

Given that at the end the German forces were slaughtered almost without resistance, they must have given good account of themselves early on, before thirst and exhaustion overcame men and beasts. They had been better armed and better trained, so much so that outside experts had expected them to win easily despite the disadvantage in numbers. Previous grand masters had been able to keep their armies in check. But Ulrich had not. His mercenaries’ wild pursuit of a seemingly beaten foe, without assuring that the foe was indeed beaten, had led straight to disaster.

Few of the lower-born mercenaries would have been spared. They were generally not the kind of men who could pay ransom, and the Poles would not have wanted to see them in arms again. A gigantic burial pit barely sufficed to hold the bodies of the executed captives. Those with money, among whom was Heinz von Bursnitz, were ransomed. In fact, he was released so quickly that he appeared in the order’s service with forty lances in Marienburg on 20 July! This while officers of the order faced long imprisonment yet.

Jagiełło, having wounded to tend and dead to bury, was unable to follow up his victory instantly, but there seemed no reason to hurry. If Heinrich von Plauen had not hurried from Schwetz to Marienburg with his men, then rounded up every man and mercenary in the region, the Polish king would have found this key fortress, one of the largest in Europe, unprotected. Later it was clear that, had the king pushed his men harder, he could have rolled up the entire network of castles quickly.

Mercenary soldiers and the ‘ships’ children’, that is sailors, saved Marienburg from capture. Heinz von Bursnitz was apparently soon dismissed. But only briefly. The grand master needed mercenaries, even poor ones; and it is not clear whether Heinz was considered good or bad. At least he was alive – he seemed to have a knack for staying alive, or was it simply an extraordinary skill in knowing when and how to surrender?

Plauen ordered the commander of the Neumark to raise another mercenary army. By the time the Poles abandoned their unenthusiastic siege of Marienburg, this army was ready to move. Plauen moved on the Polish castle at Stuhm, a fortress the king had built just south of Marienburg to threaten the heart of the order’s domains. It is presumed that Jagiełło filled it with mercenaries, since his vassals’ terms of service had expired. Not surprisingly, the garrison surrendered and was allowed to leave with all their possessions.

Plauen’s fortunes varied. On the whole, he was successful in recovering the order’s cities and castles, but there were setbacks. Heinz von Bursnitz reappeared, only to be captured in battle in October of 1410. The next we hear of him is after his death, in a 1431 document issued by the duke of Oels that mentions his son, Kunze.

The Teutonic Order never recovered from the disaster. The grand master could be replaced easily, but not so his officers and knights. More importantly, mercenaries who formerly served for relatively affordable wages were now sceptical that their employer would be victorious against Polish and Lithuanian arms. They now expected more pay, and to be paid promptly. This was not a promise that the grand masters of the future could fulfil.

 

* Other mercenaries with the same name, thus very likely having some relationship, included Czenke von Borsnicz, who together with Nickel von Logau brought 120 lances to Prussia in June of 1410, thus arriving too late to see action until sent to Marienburg in mid-July. At the end of January Czenke was paid 300 gulden for his services. By that time he had risen high, serving in the grand master’s council and being entrusted with important financial duties requiring courage, honesty and efficiency. Among his men was Gunzel von Borsnitz, who was paid for having brought one lance and an archer; two presumed brothers from Silesia, Hermann von Borsnicz, who brought two lances, and Pritzlaw von Borsnitz, who brought four lances and two archers; and Conrad von Borsnicz (perhaps identical with Kunze above), who had four lances. The most famous member of this extended family was Heinz von Borsnitz, a vassal of the duke of Oels. The paybook indicated that Heinz was a Ritter, that is, a knight. Most well-born mercenaries were referred to politely as Her (Sir), a more ambiguous title.