Ep. 3 (130) – The Conquest of Prussia Part 1

The first knights arrived in: 1226

The Prussians, despite initially being lightly armed and disunited were no pushover. Rarely successful in open battle they disappeared into the dense forest or swampy marches before they could be routed. Again and again they rose up, reclaiming their freedom and again and again did the Teutonic Knights and the German and Polish crusaders pushed them back into submission.

Do not worry, this will not be an endless litany of battles and raids, but we will look at the relative military strength, the political structure they established and as you would expect, the economic underpinnings of the effort. Lets dive in..

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Let’s start with the obvious question, where is Prussia, or more precisely Old Prussia, the land where the Pruzzi lived?

If you look on a modern map, it may be easiest if you start looking for the Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic shore. This territory is however a lot smaller than the territory of the ancient Prussians.

In: 1225

This land was densely forested and still is interspersed with sheer innumerable lakes and rivers. At the time of the arrival of the Teutonic knights the total population of Prussia was estimated at 200,000 to 300,000. The best comparison may be Scotland, which is roughly twice the size and had a population of roughly half a million to a million in this period. So not exactly densely populated, but by no means empty.

The Prussians were Balts, members of the same linguistic and cultural group as the Lithuanians and Latvians. These groups had once settled across a large chunk of North-Eastern Europe but had been pushed toward the Baltic shore as the Great Migration of the 4th, 5th and 6th century sucked Slavic peoples into Eastern Europe, all the way to the Elbe River.

Chinese communist party until: 2002

Leaving out the thing about the toads, it seems the Old Prussians were pagans who believed in a set of gods not dissimilar to the pantheon of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans who all had their sun, moon and thunder gods. Prussian religion came with a compliment of sacred springs and forests but apparently no temples or similar structures. Some historians suggest that during a period of very loose Viking overlordship of the Prussian lands, their beliefs became infused with elements of Scandinavian pantheon resulting in the dominance of a warrior god similar to the Lithuanian god of Thunder called Perkunas (please forgive my pronunciation).

Peter von Duisburg further claims that there was a senior priest figure, a sort of mirror image of the pope who exercised ultimate religious authority over Prussians, Lithuanians and Livonians, called the Criwe. There is however no corroborating evidence of his existence in other chronicles which suggests it is another figment of the writer’s imagination.

What also did not exist was any sort of common secular authority, a king or duke of any kind. The Prussians were divided into roughly a dozen tribes, each of which were centred on a particular territory. I will not rattle down the names now as you are likely to forget them as soon as I have called them out. But we will encounter most of them as we go through this story.

Within these individual tribes there was an aristocratic leadership class who led the tribe in war. They fought on horseback carrying light armour, whilst the free men of the tribe made up a poorly equipped infantry. Whilst the ideal was that of the heroic fighter who would not hesitate to instantly charge a vastly superior force on his own, Berserker style, the reality was that most Prussian military encounters ended with the losing side disappearing into the dense forest before they could be routed to regroup and then fight another day.

Economically the free Prussians were mainly subsistence farmers. Aristocrats would not work but use slaves acquired in war to till their fields and serve as household help and concubines. Generally slave taking and trading was one of the ways Prussian nobility boosted their income. The scale of this slave trade is probably exaggerated by Christian chroniclers trying to paint the Prussians as backward barbarians.

castle was heavily bombed in: 1944

Now back to the 13th century. The Prussians, disunited as they were had been living in their homeland for centuries and exported their amber without bothering their neighbours in any unduly fashion, apart from their obstinate refusal to convert to Christianity. Their peaceful nature is even attested by the Teutonic chroniclers themselves.

Here is our friend Nicolaus von Jeroschin again:

Quote: “Their evil, sinful wickedness had made them so stubborn that no teaching or exhortation or blessing could move them from their error or take away their false belief. Although their minds were so set, there was one praiseworthy thing about them, because even if they themselves were inured to the faith and practised the worship of all manner of idols, nonetheless they lived at peace with the Christians who had settled alongside them during these years and allowed them to worship the living God without any interference.

This upset the evil enemy who always opposes true peace and is jealous of all good things, so he did not suffer this state of affairs for long. He threw the seeds of hate among them, precipitating a violent feud between them, during which the Christians suffered great anguish and distress. Some of them were killed and some driven off into slavery among the Prussians.” Unquote.

the Piast dukes had called in: 1222

The Prussians realised that the only way to prevent further attacks was to take the war into the land of their enemies. Nicolaus von Jeroschin again: quote “They inflicted great damage on the country. They looted and burned; they put all the men they came across to the sword and drove the women and children away into perpetual captivity. If there was a pregnant woman, so heavy with child that she could not keep up with them, they became angry with her and killed her and her child. They roughly wrenched the children out of the arms of their mothers and impaled them here and there on stakes, where they struggled and screamed in pain, and writhed in agony until they died. They devastated the duke’s land so completely that of all of the fortresses large and small through which he imposed his control, only one on the Vistula, known as Płock, was left under his command.” End quote

Surely Jeroschin is exaggerating here in order to justify the subsequent conquest of Prussia by the Teutonic Order. Remember that the order was not just a military force, but also a monastic community that had to adhere to the teachings of the bible, even though in a rather twisted way. That meant they had to prove that they were defending Christians from imminent danger, not just attacking otherwise harmless pagans who should be converted peacefully.

Exaggeration or not, the fact that Prussians had taken many of his forward defences, including the fortifications at Kulm and could raid into his core territory was a major problem for Konrad of Masovia. Despite all his efforts, including the creation of his own chivalric order, the Prussians kept coming across the Vistula River and burned amongst others, the great Cistercian abbey of Oliva. Konrad was quite simply desperate.

Here is Nicolaus von Jeroschin again:

Quote “Before Poland was completely devastated by the Prussians, as I have read, and while there was still something left in the country, Duke Conrad was so hard pressed by them and so afraid of them that whenever they sent emissaries demanding horses or fine clothing he had to give in and did not dare refuse them anything. Therefore when he had nothing more to offer them to satisfy their demands, his lack of resources compelled him to adopt this strategy: he invited his nobles and their wives and others to a social gathering and when the guests were seated and eating and drinking cheerfully he sent the Prussian emissaries what they demanded: he secretly gave them his guests’ clothes and horses and let them escape.” End quote.

the one that was abandoned in: 1226

Quote: “They called the castle Vogelsang and here the brothers began the long war, establishing themselves without hesitation with just a few ill-equipped armed men against the heathen horde (which was innumerable). In their many tribulations they did not sing the song of the nightingale but songs like the songs of grief the swan sings as it dies…. They had left well-established, fruitful, calm and peaceful lands and come to a land of horrors and wildernesses, which no-one tended. It was completely joyless and full of hard fighting, and to put it bluntly: for God’s sake they had abandoned freedom, honour, family and all the joys of the world, and given themselves up to a miserable existence. Their humble lives were beset with hunger, hardship, poverty and abasement.” End quote

Three years later the crusade in the Holy Land is finally over. The treaty with the sultan stipulated a 10-year truce between the crusaders and the Saracens that freed the Teutonic Knights to relieve their fellow brothers in Vogelsang.

Hermann von Salza dispatched one of his brothers, a man called Hermann Balk and a much more sizeable force to Prussia. Hermann Balk became the first master of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia and would lead the war here and in Livonia for the next 12 years.

Under Hermann Balk the crusaders’ strategy in Prussia changed fundamentally.

Until he arrived, crusaders had gathered their armies in Spring and then driven straight into the interior of Prussia. They fought the occasional open battle which ended in an inconclusive victory as the Prussian forces disappeared into the forest before they could be routed. The rest of the time they spent burning villages and devastating crops until the season changed. As autumn approached they established multiple forts in the conquered territory and put a small garrison in each of them to hold out until next spring and left. During the winter the Prussians recaptured the forts that were too far away from any reinforcements and massacred the garrisons. The following year the crusaders had to conquer the same area again and rebuilt the forts but the previous year’s experience dramatically reduced the already slim number of volunteers who were prepared to stay behind. So the forts were taken again and everything reverted back to zero.

Balk’s concept was to build the conquest slow and steady, rather than haring in and out of the enemy lands. So instead of overstretching his forces, Balk built only one or two forts after each campaign, put in sizeable garrisons of Teutonic knights who were willing to take the winter’s cold and misery. And alongside the military effort ran a civilian effort. Balk invited settlers, mainly from central Germany, Thuringia, Saxony and Franconia to settle in the shadow of these forts. These settlers naturally stayed over the winter as well and were prepared to defend their new homes alongside the Teutonic Knights. The settlements grew rapidly and fortifications could be improved from wooden forts to brick-built castles and finally towns and cities.

Another sensible decision was not to go straight to the interior but to build defensive positions along the Vistula and the Baltic shore, thereby cutting the Prussians off from access to supplies, in particular from the supply of advanced western weaponry whilst at the same time keeping them from their most valuable export, amber.

Campaigns had a very seasonal pattern. During the summer the Teutonic Knights forces were supported by contingents of German and Polish crusaders. The popes would call up Christian knights to fight in the North almost every year and preachers mainly in Northern Germany and Poland would offer volunteers to have their slate wiped clean if they took the cross.

As before, these large forces would seek an open battle with one of the Prussian tribes which they would usually win, and as before the lightly armed Prussians would flee into the woods and swamps where the armoured riders struggled to follow. Their main deed done the crusaders would then help erect a fort before heading back home. In the winter the Teutonic Knights garrison of the fort would not just sit around the campfire shivering. They would go out and now that the rivers were frozen and the swamps hardened, they could seek out and harass the hidden Prussian villages and forts. It is during this period that the Teutonic knights acquired the skills in winter warfare they would become so famous for. If you are a Game of Thrones fan and you have read that the Night’s Watch is based on the Templars, think again. Templars fought mainly around the mediterranean, not in the frozen lands of Eastern Europe. If you are looking for an order of knights fighting in snow and ice, the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Sword Brothers are your go to place. That being said, this is where the similarity ends since the Knight Watch sincerely lacks in spirituality.

Hermann Balk arrived in: 1230

The following year Hermann Balk has enough forces to pursue two campaigns. One 100km along the Vistula where he founds the fort of Marienwerder, the other following the Drewenz for about half the distance where he put the next fort at Reden. With these three strategic positions, Balk had secured the Kulmerland, the territory the order had been offered by duke Konrad of Masovia and had its ownership confirmed by the emperor Frederick II.

Control of the Kulmerland was what had been promised to the order and he had now achieved this objective. The question was what next. Going further down the Vistula would be a move into territory that no Polish duke had conquered before. In the eyes of Christian noblemen of the 13th century, this was no-man’s land. At which point the question arises, who should own this land?

In hindsight it feels entirely natural that the Teutonic Knights would get all of it, finders, keepers and such things. But hang on a minute. The Teutonic Knights did not conquer Prussia all by themselves. There were the crusaders that provided the majority of the attack force in the summer. They hadn’t come to fight for the Teutonic Knights but for God and whoever God chose to rule these lands. Some were Germans but many were Poles, vassals of duke Konrad or one of his cousins who had at least interest in if not claims on Prussia.

Duke Konrad had called the Teutonic knights to defend the border and may or may not have given them the Kulmerland in unencumbered ownership, but that does not automatically mean he would give up all rights to the rest of Prussia. The Teutonic Knights claimed they had a treaty with Konrad that gave them full control, but that is disputed by some Polish historians and more significantly was refuted once the Polish Kingdom was restored in the 14th century.

sians by Pope Honorius in the: 1220

By all accounts a similar deal would have been the natural outcome of any further negotiations between the parties involved. But the Teutonic Orders had two aces up their sleeve, one was pure luck and the other was Hermann von Salza.

The luck was twofold.

captured by the Prussians in: 1233

With two main contenders out of the picture, Hermann von Salza could dominate the diplomatic battlefield. In 1234 he persuaded pope Gregory IX to confirm the Order’s rights in the Kulmer Land and granted it ownership of all territory in Prussia still to be conquered. The Pope also put the Order and its territory in Prussia under his direct control and protection. The following year 1235 Hermann got Frederick II to do the same. He re-issued the Golden Bulle of Rimini that guaranteed the order the ownership of all conquered lands and making them imperial princes with all the rights and protection that entailed.

Both Pope and emperor have confirmed their ownership of the lands that the crusades were to conquer. Nothing the bishop and the duke could do about it any more. And best of all, the order now had two bosses, the pope and the emperor, which meant it had no boss.

tinue with renewed energy. In: 1236

This period was followed by a period of lull where the overall situation was so calm, Hermann Balk could send some of his forces north to Riga to support the Livonian Sword Brothers who had just been integrated into the Teutonic order.

s at Kulm wasn’t yet dry in: 1233

What amazes me is how quickly these settlements become wealthy in the 13th century. In 1231 Kulm was allegedly a broken fort, but by 1242 Kulm, Rheden and Thorn had brick walls. Trade was flourishing, flourishing to a degree that it caused concern for duke Swantopolk of Pomerania whose capital and main trading centre was Gdansk/Danzig and it was feeling the heat from the competition.

e coastal areas continued. In: 1239

The Mongols had their eye on Hungary, having conquered most of the former empire of the Rus. The direct route into Hungary was through the Carpathian mountain passes that could be defended by even relatively small force. Therefore, the Mongol Khan sent two armies, one directly to Hungary and one to go around the Pannonian basin aiming to get to Hungary through Poland, Saxony and Bohemia. This invasion was extremely successful. The Mongol army pushed rapidly into Poland and found little resistance on the mountain passes into Hungary.

In April: 1241

At the same time the Teutonic Knights in Livonia got into conflict with the republic of Novgorod, a story we will look at in more detail in two weeks. What is important here is that this conflict led to the famous Battle on the Ice in which Alexander Nevsky leading the forces of the Republic defeated an army of the Teutonic Knights.

News of a defeat of the seemingly invincible Teutonic Knights spread like wildfire across Prussia. The Prussians also sensed that duke Konrad of Masovia and the other Polish dukes were too weak to come to the aid of the order. What swung them into action was that duke Swantopolk of Pomerelia had had enough of his cousins, the Teutonic knights and the competition from the citizens of Thorn, Kulm and Elbing and so he allied with the Prussians.

n battle wasn’t assured. In: 1244

The war ground down to a stalemate. The Teutonic Knights were unable to hold the open countryside and even where they built wooden forts, they were often overrun. On the other hand the Prussians and Swantopolk were unable to take the three strong castles.

This could have easily been the end of the story, had it not been for papal support

It is now the year: 1249

Swantopolk was ready to negotiate, which forced the Prussians to the table as well. The pope had sent a legate to balance the various interests of the church, the Polish dukes, the order and indeed the Prussians.

h the treaty of Christburg in: 1249

And finally, they were obliged to grant converted Prussians full citizens’ rights equal to those of the Christian settlers, including the right to become knights.

These were tough conditions that if permanent would have prevented the Teutonic Knights from creating the theocratic state Prussia would eventually become.

The peace of Christburg puts an end to the first Prussian revolt. As you can gather from the name first Prussian revolt, there may be another one. In fact there will be two more. But time is up. As usual I have spent too much time with digressions and descriptions of long lost civilisations. Next week I will try to be crisper and fail again. But I should get through the remaining 40 years of the conquest of Prussia. I hope you will join us again.

If you want to read ahead, there are some book recommendations in the show notes and a link to the excellent translation of Nicolaus von Jeroschin’s chronicle by Mary Fisher, well worth a read.

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