The Northern Crusades (28 page)

From the Order’s point of view the strongest argument against the peaceable approach to conversion lay in their archive. They were there because papal Bulls had authorized them to fight the heathen and rule the convert, and because the whole of Scripture and the Fathers had been combed for texts and opinions that justified what they were doing. Tradition and the
status quo
were on their side, whatever the intellectuals might say. St Bernard had justified monastic knighthood, Gregory IX had sent them to Prussia, and the canonist Hostiensis had proved that the heathen had no right to liberty or independence: these were not names that could be brushed aside. Nor could the charters, the Rule and the treaties; nor could the blood and money that had been spent in the cause. If it were objected that the Order had exceeded its documented rights and duties, by oppressing its partners and subjects, especially converts, it could be replied that there was a war to be won, and imposing discipline and even excessive labour-services on the whole Christian community was a necessary means of achieving this end. And in fact, from 1299 onwards, the knight-brothers in Livonia were evidently determined to put an end to the division of power within the province, and, by establishing themselves as the sovereign body over the whole territory, prevent the possibility of another civil war. If they were entitled to run a war-machine, it was their duty to run it as efficiently as possible – at least as efficiently as the grand-prince of Lithuania ran his, and it was not run on brotherly love.

The flaws in these two sets of arguments are hardly worth pointing out; the arguments themselves are worth repeating because they are what people believed at the time, and help explain why they acted as they did. The Order’s case may have been weak, but it satisfied thousands of crusaders who made the journey to Prussia in the course of the fourteenth century.

It is surprising that the Order should have attracted more secular crusaders from a wider field in that century, after Prussia and Livonia were conquered, than in the thirteenth, when its life depended on such assistance. Part of the explanation is that there were many fewer crusades to the Near East; or, rather, that the doctrine of the crusading vow was still flourishing at a time when opportunities for its redemption in Palestine were few. There were collection boxes in every church, crusading taxes in every kingdom, regular reminders from the pulpit, and a
continuous distribution of indulgences, letters of protection and special privileges. There was a great deal more planning and theorizing on the subject, now it became clear that the old ways of conducting crusades were inadequate. At the same time, continuous conventional wars in France and Germany meant that there were more professional and semi-professional fighting men than ever before; whenever there was a truce, or a treaty, these men had to face the question ‘Where next?’ The Teutonic Order made sure they came to Prussia, both by developing friendships with rulers and warriors in many different parts of Europe, and by offering their ‘guests’ all the advantages that went with the status of crusader.

Some kings and princes bought shares of merit by making donations. These begin with the emperors, and include most of the kings of Europe, including Edward I and Edward III of England. They wanted to be regarded as crusaders, even if they never went on a crusade. Rulers were apt to find it expedient to take the cross, but inexpedient to fulfil the vow; a gift of any kind to a crusading order was one way out. A friendly act would do as well; thus in 1329, all the brother dukes of Silesia were admitted as
confratres
of the Order, in recognition of their hostility against the king of Poland. Such allies were bought for the time being; others were more or less wedded to the Order from birth, by family tradition or by the proximity of the Order’s estates to their own. All the German kings and emperors held on to Swabia and the upper Rhine, and the strength of the Order in this area cemented the special relationship that Henry VI and Frederick II had begun. All the kings of Bohemia inherited the bond established by the crusading king Ottokar, they had the Order’s bailiwick of Bohemia to remind them of it. With Central and East European dynasts such as King John the Luxemburger (king of Bohemia 1310–46) and his son the emperor Charles IV (of Bohemia and Germany, 1347–78) the friendship was close and mutually profitable. These rulers made use of knight-brothers from the Order’s convents in Germany, while the Order employed them and their subjects in Prussia.

The first crusaders to arrive in Prussia at the beginning of the fourteenth century, after a thirty-year interval, were Rhinelanders, under the count of Homberg. Their lands lay round the grand-master’s private bailiwick of Coblenz, and their trip may be attributed to the influence of the Order as a local landowner. Rhineland princes were soon afterwards much involved in the wars of the Valois and Edward III, and in the
enterprises of John of Luxemburg, and through this network of interests the habit spread. Bohemians reached Prussia in 1323, Alsatians in 1324, Englishmen and Walloons in 1329, Austrians and Frenchmen in 1336, Bavarians and Hollanders in 1337, Hungarians and Burgundians in 1344, and in the second half of the century Occitanians, Scots and Italians.

The leader of the fashion was Kingjohn of Bohemia, who made three expeditions to Prussia and brought many lesser princes in his train. He went in 1328–9 partly in order to strengthen his claim to the kingdom of Poland by helping the Order against the reigning Polish ruler Wladyslaw Lokietek; but he also believed in what the Order stood for. As he put it in the preamble to one of his charters,

That was how the brothers liked to see themselves; it was a help if such a personage as King John made a public affirmation in favour of this view. In 1328 he had brought the French poet Guillaume de Machaut in his retinue; Guillaume’s references to the conquest and conversion of Lithuanian
mescreans
¹⁰³
were the sort of publicity the Order needed, and could have reached a wide audience. In 1341 the dying grand-master Dietrich von Altenburg consigned the Order to John’s protection; the king was nearly blind, he had very little land or money to spare, and his own subjects had rejected him, but his reputation as a knight was so high that such an association was bound to encourage similar enthusiasts to make the journey to Prussia.

Duke Henry of Lancaster, Edward III’s cousin, was one of these; he took advantage of the truce in the French war to set out for Prussia, but there was no
sommer-reysa
in the year he chose, 1352, and he redeemed his vow when he got to Stettin. His grandson, Henry, Earl of Derby, later Henry IV, made two expeditions to Prussia, in 1390 and 1392, and the detailed account of what he spent on these trips brings out the enormous financial saving made by the Order on the military service provided by such magnates. Between August 1390 and April 1391 Henry
maintained a retinue of thirteen knights, eighteen squires, three heralds, ten miners and engineers, six minstrels and sixty other ranks – about 100 in all, with perhaps fifty more volunteers. He spent a total of £4360, or 13,000 Prussian marks (more than the Order was to pay for the whole isle of Gotland), and, of this, £564 went on wages and over £400 on gifts. In 1392 he spent £239 in six weeks. He received presents and entertainment, but these were not worth anything like what he handed out; he was a big spender for the honour of his father, John of Gaunt, and his cousin King Richard II. He had his silver and his kitchen ware made locally, to the tune of £75, and he hired boats, horses, and waggons to carry his stuff. His father had to help him with the payments, but the Lancaster estates could afford it.
¹⁰⁴

The disadvantage of this system was that princes sometimes tried to use their association to advance their own political interests through the Order, or else demanded a say in how the fighting was to be conducted. The first was not a serious threat, since it could be averted or mitigated by bargaining, but the second was: a prince who brought 500 knights with him, as did the margrave of Meissen in 1391, could hardly be ignored if he had views on what the marshal of the Order ought to be doing, but the conditions of the Lithuanian war left no room at all for mistakes. If it was too wet, or too cold, there could be no campaign, however many crowned heads were strutting impatiently round the yard at Marienburg castle; yet some of them would always be prepared to chance it, and court disaster. Wigand of Marburg relates how in 1378 von Kniprode went on a
Winter-reysa
‘in honour’ of the duke of Lorraine, who had just arrived with seventy knights. This campaign was a success, but, when the duke of Austria and the count of Cleves arrived, a little later, he was obliged to lay on a special raid for them in early December, which was really no more than a week’s safari to give them a chance to accomplish their vows before Christmas.
¹⁰⁵
But ‘big names’ were worth the trouble.

In attracting ordinary knights to Prussia, the Order relied both on the example of the princes, and on direct family ties within the regions covered by the German bailiwicks. Not just the landgrave, the margrave and the counts, but the whole military class of the area drained by the tributaries of the upper Elbe – Thuringia, Meissen and the Vogtland – was more-or-less closely concerned in it. This group provided nine grand-masters, an innumerable body of knight-brothers, and continuous
donations.
¹⁰⁶
If such knights wanted to give alms, or perform corporal acts of mercy, the three local hospitals of the Order gave them their chance; if their younger sons had to be provided for honourably, and their own church-patronage was inadequate, the local convent was the place to apply for admission as a priest-brother. If they wanted to migrate, the grand-master could offer them land; the Pleissenland provided the Order’s most powerful family of lay vassals in Prussia, the von Stange, who had built their own settlement at Stangenburg, near Christburg, in 1285. If they wanted to crusade, Prussia was the obvious target. In a complex of relationships such as this, the bailiwick became a spiritual sponge, soaking up all the gentry had to give through the many orifices that led to atonement. It was the same at the confluence of the Main and the Rhine: Nassau, Falkenstein and Katzenellenbogen were so honeycombed with commanderies that local society automatically banked its contrition with the Order. In other areas – in the Breisgau, for example, and in Silesia and northern Switzerland – the Teutonic Order’s place was taken by the Hospitallers, and until 1309 the Templars rivalled it in Brunswick and Halberstadt; but where the Order was well established it had the advantage over other religious houses by providing such a variety of routes to atonement.

In recruiting the plebeian crusader the Order relied mainly on the well-to-do, who could bring paid retinues, and partly on the general availability of the crusading vow as a means of atonement. To take an early example, in 1252 the count of Holstein sacked the city of Schleswig, and some of his troops broke into the church. This was by no means unusual in Scandinavian warfare, but, when one of the Holsteiners fell dead for no apparent cause, his companion, a crossbowman, was stricken with remorse. He went to the bishop, and swore that he would go to Prussia as a crusader and never fire a bolt at a Christian again.
¹⁰⁷
Such moments of contrition must have accounted for many of the rank and file present on the Order’s
reysen
; they were there because they needed that particular kind of war to pay off their debt to God, and this was the nearest theatre of operations.

Others went in for vicarious atonement. The burgher Lutbert of Rostock made a will in 1267 by which his property and a half-share in his ship were bequeathed to his son Jordan. If Jordan wanted to get the whole ship, he was obliged to make a voyage to Prussia or Livonia to obtain remission for his father’s sins; and, if he preferred not to go, he
must sell even the half-share he had, and use the money to pay someone else.
¹⁰⁸
The plain penitents were encouraged to enlist in units directly under the command of the knight-brothers. The first regulations for such men were issued in 1292, and were based on the usages by which the Templars governed their native auxiliaries, the Turcopoles. In Germany they were called
Knechte
, or squires, and they could enlist either
in caritate
or for pay. In either case, they came under the same strict discipline as the knight-brothers themselves, living in the convent apart from their wives and incurring penance and correction for any breach of rules. On admission they had to swear loyalty and obedience, and promise not to go outside without leave or ever visit taverns; and, above all, none was to shed blood unless ordered to. Those
in caritate
had to trim their hair and beards like the knight-brothers, and got an honorarium of two bezants for their first year, rising to four if they stayed on.
¹⁰⁹

By this means the Order could skim off the cream of the more indigent crusaders, and make sure that their poverty was not allowed to hinder their military efficiency. If they were not needed in war they could be found war duties in any convent, and they would earn their remission in either role. On the march they were expected to act as an advance guard, and as flankers, and in battle they formed up round the baggage under the marshal’s standard while the knight-brothers charged. Like the half-brothers, who did the manual work, they were not actually members of the Order, but they were essential to its military performance.