Teutonic Knights (40 page)

By the autumn of 1560 the Estonians had concluded that German rule was so weak that no serious resistance could be expected if they were to rebel, seize the forts and castles, and call on the tsar for help. No great preparation would be needed; in fact, efforts to plan ahead might alert the nobility to their danger. It would only be necessary to hold out with primitive weapons and daring until well-trained Russian troops could arrive. The chronicler Russow reported:

The number of rebel Estonians under arms was not large – about 4,000 – and they were poorly equipped, with no supplies or fortresses to fall back upon; but they threatened to spread social revolution throughout Livonia, thereby bringing a sudden end to three-and-a-half centuries of German hegemony. Gotthard Kettler took the situation seriously, writing to the Polish king for help and committing the rest of the country so completely to the crown that it meant the practical end of the rule of the Livonian Knights there.

The rising was of short duration. The peasants lacked good leaders, proper arms, proper training, and the discipline that comes only with experience. They drove away their German officers and elected leaders – some chosen according to ancient tribal practices and decorated with the traditional pagan symbols of office – but these were no match for the professionals who had come from the West.

Credit for subduing the rebellion must go to the Danish commander in Wiek, Christopher von Münchhausen. Despite having but a small body of mercenaries, he ordered the handful of episcopal vassals to serve as his cavalry, rounded up the nearby Estonian peasantry to serve as foot soldiers against their rebel brethren, and then proceeded to trick the insurrectionary leader into thinking that the approaching army was another group of revolutionaries coming to join him. He caught the rebels by surprise, routed them, and captured their leader; then he quickly moved against hostile units elsewhere and dispersed them. As the few surviving rebels escaped to join the Russians, German nobles reappeared to take brutal revenge on guilty or suspect individuals and communities.

The German nobles were not content to return to the pre-war situation, but insisted on subjecting all peasants to serfdom. They had wished to do this for decades, but had not dared to violate law and custom wantonly. Now there was no one to stop them; and, in the years to come, the Polish, Danish, and Swedish monarchs agreed to sacrifice the few remaining rights of the peasantry in order to keep the unsteady loyalty of these nobles. Although the military worth of the feudal cavalry was very doubtful at the onset of the war, at length the Baltic barons became doughty warriors whose knowledge of the land, its customs, its traditions, and its languages made them indispensable to anyone who hoped to hold and administer the territories.

For the peasantry the failed rising was an unmitigated disaster. Even many of the free farmers were reduced to a state of near-slavery, subject to the wilful brutality and exploitation of a class of warrior-knights who were not required to exercise the caution of their ancestors in dealing with their subjects. In addition, the peasants suffered through years of war in which they lost more property and lives than any other group. First Russian armies came through, then Swedish or Polish forces, and finally the robbers who took advantage of the disorder. The peasants were taxed, burned out, murdered, raped, driven away from their ancestral homes, stripped of all means of self-defence, and left to suffer the ravages of marauders, famine, and disease. When the two decades of war ended, those who survived counted themselves lucky. Then the nobles – who now included many newly-arrived Swedish and Polish mercenary captains and royal favourites – organised a new administration to tax and exploit the peasants more effectively and brutally than ever before.

By the autumn of 1561 there was practically no place outside Kurland which remained in the hands of the Livonian Order. The castle of Sonnenburg on Oesel, which was being eyed by Duke Magnus, was the only fortress that Kettler could still offer to the Polish king; and if he waited much longer, until that was lost too, then it would be unlikely that he could bargain for a duchy in Kurland. Already he had committed the southern lands to the king so thoroughly that he would be fortunate to salvage anything for himself and those few surviving knights and administrators who were willing to serve as landed vassals. In September he sent the castellan of Riga to negotiate on his behalf and for the archbishop of Riga in Königsberg.

The ambassador left us a memoir that describes the short negotiations that brought an end to the Livonian Order. He arrived in Königsberg on a Saturday afternoon, found his lodgings, and rested. The next morning he attended worship service, had a short breakfast with two scholars sent by Duke Albrecht of Prussia, then was summoned to an audience with his royal majesty. Sigismund Augustus did not have business on his mind, however; he only wanted more company for lunch. So the ambassador sat down at a round table with the king, a few nobles, and an observer from Sweden. The fare was good and the wine worth commending. After the meal there was light conversation, during which Duke Albrecht arranged for the ambassador to meet with the chief Polish officials who would conduct the negotiations. That meeting was strictly business, filled with knowledgeable and critical discussions of vital details, and lasting until three in the morning. The next day a Polish official came to the ambassador’s lodgings for lunch to discuss some of the more important points confidentially; and they came to a general agreement on the questions of succession, use of the German language, the retention of traditional rights and privileges, religious liberty, and the status of Livonia within the Holy Roman Empire. The next morning the ambassador met with the duke’s representatives, who had little to say other than good wishes – because Albrecht had hopes of inheriting the new duchy should Kettler die without heirs, and he did not want his officials to say anything which might harm his chances. At lunch all the principal negotiators met again, at which time the Polish representative passed the ambassador a note asking for an urgent and secret meeting. Soon afterward he and the ambassador agreed upon all the basic points, including the method of announcing the agreement to the world.

The details are too tedious to repeat, but they indicate the care with which both sides entered into the agreement. On 28 November 1561 the Livonian Knights were secularised; and on 5 March 1562 Master Kettler informed the world of this. Thenceforth he was Duke Gotthard of Kurland, and the Livonian Order ceased to exist.

The two decades of war that followed can be divided into three periods. The first was the Seven Years’ War (1563 – 70), a conflict principally between Denmark and Sweden that ended after the Swedish nobility deposed their insane monarch and adopted a policy more favourable to Poland, after which Danish influence declined and the two remaining Western powers, Sweden and Poland, joined to face the tsar. Next was an equally long period, 1570 – 8, during which Ivan IV almost expelled his opponents from the region, until at last everyone joined together to resist him. Ivan was his own worst enemy, executing his generals and terrorising his own nobles and citizens, so that any gains made by the Russian and Tatar generals were accomplished in spite of the tsar rather than because of him. Of course, it was not possible for him to provide sufficient troops both for the Livonian theatre and to throw back the Crimean Tatar assaults; he correctly chose to give priority to the Tatar threat (and by eliminating them as a major military force he made possible subsequent Russian advances to the south). Finally, there were the three years following 1578, when Stefan Batory, the newly elected Polish monarch, resolved the problems with the Turks that had kept him busy on Poland’s southern frontiers. Leading his experienced troops north, the great general-king routed the Russian armies out of Livonia and reconquered parts of Rus’ that had formerly belonged to the Lithuanian state. The Swedes joined in this offensive, occupying Estonia and the Russian coastline up to the mouth of the Neva River. In 1582, Ivan IV, bankrupt, exhausted, and mentally ill, admitted defeat and signed a peace treaty that left Livonia in Western hands for another century.

For Sweden and Poland this was not a happy development. The war had drawn them into a distant region, drained them of men and treasure, and given them grounds for future quarrels.

For Russia it meant another century of weakness and isolation; the country was deprived of those European contacts that could balance the Asiatic influences on its culture and politics. The frustrated tsar died soon thereafter, leaving his country in a shambles. For Livonia it was the beginning of centuries of conflict, centuries when the country went from being an important if isolated part of Western Europe to a minor province of Eastern Europe. Soon Livonia would be practically forgotten, a footnote in the careers of great men.

There had still been a future for the Teutonic Order once the crusading era had fully run its course. Several futures, in fact, since the organisation had disintegrated into three distinct parts in 1525. But that fate was not preordained; it merely came about.

The secularised members of the Teutonic Order in Prussia gave up all efforts to continue their former crusading and religious functions. Albrecht von Hohenzollern-Ansbach adopted the Lutheran teaching and secularised the state. Those who wished to remain friar-knights withdrew to Germany to discuss impossible plans to conquer Prussia and reinstall Roman Catholicism. Perhaps the best hope for the military order to continue its crusading tradition had been Polish proposals to resettle them on the Turkish frontier, using the order’s German resources to support a small but efficient army. Those proposals had all been rejected as a result of pride and stubbornness, combined with hatred of the Polish king, a justified suspicion of his motives, and a fear of defeat in the Balkans. In any case, the Polish offers had not been altogether fair and honest: Prussia was to be surrendered for new, unsettled, danger-filled territories. The knights saw this as trickery, a none-too-subtle means of killing them off and seizing their lands. They gave the crusade against the Turks but feeble support. Perhaps nothing demonstrates better the moral bankruptcy of the traditions of the Teutonic Knights in their last days in Prussia, and the amorality of their enemies too, than the mock negotiations to move the order to the Balkans.

Grand Master Johann von Tiefen did command a Prussian force on one last crusade, a miserably botched invasion of Moldava led by the Polish king in 1497. The aged grand master died of illness and exhaustion during the harrowing retreat.

The Livonian Knights survived longer and better than their Prussian brethren. There were those who should have known better who accused the knights of being lazy, drunken, womanising cowards. A more accurate assessment is that a Roman Catholic military-religious order found it impossible to recruit knights and men-at-arms from its traditional North German homeland, which was now Protestant, and Livonia did not produce enough noble sons to fill the ranks.
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Nor did the order have the money to maintain a large mercenary army in peacetime, the power to persuade the independent-minded estates of the Livonian Confederation to tax themselves, or the ability to force on the estates common plans in wartime. Lastly, it could no longer count on reinforcements from Prussia in moments of emergency. Unable to stand up to the numerous well-armed, well-trained, experienced troops sent by Ivan the Terrible, the Livonian Order went down fighting, defending Lutheran and Roman Catholic subjects alike from an insane Russian Orthodox tsar.

Into the vacuum came Poland-Lithuania, Sweden, and Russia. None was particularly interested in acquiring the Baltic coastline, but all were determined that the others would not get it either. Therefore, though each new mega-state had more important problems – Sweden with Denmark, Poland-Lithuania with the Turks, Russia with the Tatars – all would be drawn into war over the pitiful remains of the mini-empire of the Livonian Order.

The German Order (
Deutscher Orden
, a more accurate name than Teutonic Knights) continued its military and religious role in the Holy Roman Empire for almost another three centuries, serving in imperial armies against Turkish sultans, French kings, and Protestant princes. Most members were Roman Catholics, but in accordance with the Augsburg Treaty of 1555 they had to share the faith of the rulers in the Protestant and Reformed parts of Germany; hence some members of the order were Protestants. It had a distinguished and varied career. The Teutonic Knights of this era were a baroque organisation that contrasted strongly with the Gothic order of medieval Prussia. Hardly a region of south Germany does not boast of a palatial residence that was formerly the seat of a local castellan. Their time eventually expired, too, and Napoleon abolished the German Order along with many other relics of bygone times.

The German Order was revived twice after Napoleon’s fall, first as a private order for the Habsburg family, then as a religious order after 1929. Small churches and hospitals continue to operate under its auspices today. These are missions which go back to the order’s foundation at Acre in 1189 – caring for the sick, the aged, and the troubled. That aspect of the order had been important throughout the Middle Ages too. Hardly a middle-sized town in Germany was without a hospital, church, or convent which street names commemorate today. By serving local needs, the order kept alive the memories and traditions of the past.

Today the German Order provides priests for German-speaking communities in non-German-speaking countries, particularly in Italy and Slovenia. In this it has returned to another major aspect of its original mission, the spiritual care of Germans who were being neglected by other orders.

This later history suggests that it had not been necessary for the Teutonic Knights in Prussia to see themselves solely as a territorial state. It is understandable that they did so – looking back to their expulsion from Transylvania, the loss of the Holy Land, the destruction of the Templars, and the jealousy of Ladislas the Short – but it is less understandable that they forgot their primary duty to serve as crusaders. The crusade had once been a matter separate from the state, so that they could discuss the conversion of Mindaugas’ Lithuanians without first conquering his lands; it was sufficient to be present at his coronation. Unfortunately, the acquisition of West Prussia and Danzig had changed the Poles from traditional allies to mortal enemies, so that the Teutonic Knights came to see further territorial conquests as the best means of protecting themselves. Once they had convinced themselves that they would be safe only if they held onto all of Prussia – and Samogitia as well, to secure the land route to Livonia – they were doomed. Changing times found them petrified in old ideas.

Samogitia was lost at Tannenberg in 1410, a fact that the order acknowledged, more or less, in the Treaty of Melno in 1422; but the knights deluded themselves for many years that the crusading tradition could still be revived. Worse, they came to believe that little else could be done until the order had taken revenge for the defeats at Tannenberg and after; the ancient belief that one could not be both a vassal and honourable came to be the ghost at the banquet that spoiled every occasion for celebration. That collection of self-deceptions became the evil spirits of the order. They made a radical break with the past impossible.

In sum, what happened after the battle of Tannenberg was a lengthy and often unplanned reorientation of the Teutonic Order from its commitment to an outdated crusade to other endeavours. That was painful and cost the order heavily. The future was partly determined by the men ruling at the time, partly by events beyond their control. History makes its own rules; men play their games within those bounds. The Teutonic Knights had mastered the possibilities during the fourteenth century and had prospered. When history introduced new challenges and the order failed to meet them satisfactorily, the Teutonic Knights shattered into three parts. Two of those, Prussia and Livonia, vanished in the sixteenth century. The third evolved, ultimately finding a small but useful niche in the vast edifice of modern Roman Catholic orders and activities.

What remained of the order’s political heritage was that of a powerful symbolism. Lithuanians and Poles remembered the evil deeds attributed to the crusaders vividly, and Germans tended to remember only the crusaders’ glorious victories.

There should be no misunderstanding of this circumstance, for it relates to modern history rather than to medieval. Poland and Lithuania disappeared as states in the eighteenth century, while Germany became a more eastward-looking power which could associate its traditions and aspirations with medieval Prussia. That circumstance has caused subsequent generations to view the medieval crusades in Eastern Europe (and the other eastward migrations by Germans, Jews, and Poles known as the
Drang nach Osten
) as first a stage of German imperialism, then as a forerunner of Nazism. Historians must share more than a small burden of the guilt for that overly simplified misreading of history, more than even that borne by the history-makers themselves, because they should know better the consequences of their actions. Medieval history is filled with atrocities and cruelties, yet it is not right to perpetuate mutual hatreds. Just as the English and French have largely forgiven one another for the many misdeeds of the Hundred Years’ War, so, too, must the descendants of the aggressors and victims do the same, if for no other reason than because it is impossible to say that either side was purely aggressor or purely victim.

A first step is to see that historians do not describe the crusading movement only as a selfish seizure of land belonging to innocent peoples, but as an aspect of both larger and local events. The larger scene must include the interplay of differing religious beliefs, the expansion of peoples, dynasties, and trade, and great personalities; the local should include geography, past interactions of peoples, their desires for glory, revenge and booty, and the accidents of life and death to major and seemingly minor political figures. Misunderstandings, too, should be included – though these can be exaggerated: Christians may not have known much about the Golden Horde, but not understanding what the Tatars wanted was not the problem. History is more than victimisation, more than heroic posturing. More, alas, than any historian can write. But one must do what one can. Above all, we should remember that historians who simplify the complexity of the past too much do a disservice to future generations who must live with the impressions their work makes on readers.
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