Europe: A History (75 page)
The first of the fires that burned that day
Was lit by the hand of a Friar Grey,
And a Blackfriar followed after.
37
[DANNEBROG]
The Prussian Crusade began in 1230. The Prussians had preserved their independence since the days of St Vojtech, and were worrying the local Polish princes by their incessant raiding. One of those princes, Konrad Mazowiecki (Conrad of Mazovia), determined to solve the problem by calling in a minor military Order, the Teutonic Knights, unemployed since their recent expulsion from the Holy Land. He was sowing the dragon’s teeth: instead of completing their contract and departing, the Knights obtained charters of permanent crusading rights from both the Emperor and the Pope, and dug in for the duration. By playing off their various sponsors, they were able to escape the control of all. The bull
Pietati
proximum
(1234), claiming Prussia as a papal fief, remained a dead letter, as did a similar imperial decree of 1245 claiming Courland, Semigalia, and Lithuania for the Empire. The Knights-Brothers, in their white surcoats with black crosses, pressed on regardless, building forts and trading posts as they went—Thorn (Toruñ 1231), Marienwerder (Kwidzyn 1233), Elbing (Elblag 1237). By 1295, after a final heathen revolt, Prussia had become the Teutonic State, an independent crusading enterprise in the heart of Europe.
DANNEBROG
O
N 15 June 1219, the Danish expedition to Estonia faced disaster. The native Estonians had just submitted to King Valdemar the Victorious, who was preparing to baptize them. But they rushed the Danish camp at nightfall, killed the bishop, and drove the crusaders towards the sea. According to legend, the fate of the battle only turned when the heavens let fall a red banner with a white cross, and a voice was heard urging the Danes to rally round it. Valdemar triumphed; the city of Tallin or ‘Danish Castle’, was founded; and Denmark adopted the
dannebrog
or ‘red rag’ as the national flag.
1
Since then, every independent nation has adopted a flag of its own. Many, like the
Dannebrog
, bear a cross—the red cross of St George in England, the diagonal blue cross of St Andrew for Scotland, Sweden’s yellow cross on a blue ground. Switzerland adopted Denmark’s colours, but a different cross. The Union Jack of the United Kingdom, which combines the crosses of SS George, Andrew, and Patrick, was first flown after the Irish Union on 1 January 1801.
All European monarchies possess a royal standard in addition to the national flag. Denmark’s royal standard, which carries three lions statant azure, with hearts gules, on a field or, pre-dates the Dannebrog.
Following the example of the Netherlands (1652), most modern republics have adopted simple tricolours or bicolours. Some of these, like the French (1792), the Italian (1805), or the Irish (1922), are vertical. Others, like those of Germany (1918) or Russia (1917), are horizontal. Most have had to contend with flags of rival regimes. National flags are a focus for patriotism, and a vital symbol of identity. The sequence in which they were adopted is not irrelevant to the uneven maturity of Europe’s national communities.
The methods and motives of the Teutonic Knights have long been the subject of controversy. Their neighbours in Poland and Pomerania, against whom they fought incessandy, complained bitterly to the Pope, and later brought the matter to the Council of Constance. More sympathetic observers have not seen the discrepancy:
The dominant motive of the Teutonic Knights, as of all crusaders, was the desire for atonement through sacrifice. The method chosen may seem bizarre, especially when contrasted with the ministry of love carried on by the Franciscans… but the Teutonic Knights and the Friars … had this in common: they were both trying to achieve redemption and holiness without cutting themselves off from the practical world they shared a monastic dedication to an unmonastic way of life.
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Thus did civilization advance.
In the thirteenth century Eastern Europe was stormed by invaders who made the Teutonic Knights look like laggards. The Mongols of Genghis Khan swept out of the Asian steppes like a whirlwind, first in 1207, when Juji, son of Genghis, subjugated southern Siberia, and then in 1223, when they ravaged Transcaucasia and destroyed a Kievan army on the Kalka River. In 1236–7 Batu Khan, grandson of Genghis, crossed the Urals, ravaged the principalities of Ryazan and Vladimir, and razed Moscow. He took Kiev by siege in 1240 before moving off to the west. In 1241 Galicia was ravaged and Cracow razed. On 9 April 1241 the Polish princes under Henry the Bearded were cut to pieces on the field of Legnica in Silesia. As proof of their victory the Mongols were said to have collected nine sackfuls of right ears from the bodies of the slain. Another column of the horde swept on to Hungary, where a similar fate awaited the Magyar princes under Bela IV on the river Tisza. Batu then returned eastwards, setting up his camp at Saray near the mouth of the Volga. Similar trails of destruction were blazed again in 1259 and in 1287.
[HEJNAL]
The Mongol invasions transformed the face of several countries. The horsemen of Batu Khan settled down on the Volga for good. The state of the ‘Golden Horde’, which they created between Volga and Don, supplanted that of the Volga Bulgars, whose sumptuous capital they razed. The khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, which were eventually to be annexed by Muscovy in 1552–6, put an Asiatic population in place that is the basis of modern ‘Tatarstan’. The Tartars of Crimea established a thriving state from their seat at Bakshishsarai that lived for centuries from their
czambuls
or ‘raiding-parties’. Their presence provoked the
rise of the later Cossack communities of the Dnieper and Don, and long delayed the settlement of adjoining Ukraine.
HEJNAŁ
H
EJNAŁ, which derives from the Hungarian word for the dawn and, by extension for reveille, has passed into the Polish language as a term for the trumpet-call which sounds the alarm on the enemy’s approach.
Hejnal krakowski
Today, the
hejnał mariacki
or ‘trumpet-call of St Mary’s’ is one of the many curiosities of old Cracow. It is sounded from the top of the tower of the ancient church which overlooks the city square. It is sounded on the hour, every hour of the day and night, winter and summer; and each time it is repeated four times: to north, south, east, and west. It consists of a simple melody of open chords, which is always cut short in the middle of the final cadence. It commemorates the trumpeter who, whilst raising the alarm in 1241, or perhaps in 1259, was shot through the throat by a Mongol arrow. His call, though interrupted, enabled the burghers to flee. The survivors undertook to endow a town trumpeter in perpetuity.
The ritual has been maintained for over 700 years, with only short interruptions in the nineteenth century, and during the German occupation of 1939–45. It is older than the church from which it is sounded. The melody took its present form in the seventeenth century. After 1945, Polish Radio adopted it as a prelude to its daily time signal at twelve noon. It reminds millions of listeners both of the ancient pedigree of Polish culture and of Poland’s exposed location. It is one of the few active mementoes of Genghis Khan, and of the irruption of his horsemen into the heart of Europe.
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On 25 October 1405 the Swiss city of Lausanne was ravaged by fire. The Bishop promptly issued an eleven-point edict on fire precautions. Article 5 stated that ‘at every hour of the night, one of the watchmen on the tower of the Cathedral is obliged to shout the hour and to call to the watchmen of the city’s other wards … on pain of 6 deniers for every failing.’ Six centuries later, from 10 o’clock every evening, the watchman’s call still echoes to the four winds: ‘II a sonné dix!’
2
At Ripon in Yorkshire, they say that the ‘charter horn’ has ‘sounded the trump’ every evening since 886.
The European Ground and Tower Watch Association was founded in 1987 at Ebeltoft in Denmark. Most of its members represent modern revivals. Cracow, Lausanne, and Ripon, together with Annaberg, Celle, and Nordlingen in Germany, and Ystad in Sweden belong to the select company which can claim to have kept the watch ‘since the beginning’.
Poland and Hungary, denuded of much population, were left to recover as best they could. In both cases, since a ready supply of colonists was available in the German Empire, the Mongol invasions accelerated an existing process of migration and colonization. In this period German and Flemish settlers moved into Silesia and Pomerania, and also into Transylvania. The princes’ ‘locators’ offered land on favourable terms of tenure, and persuaded whole convoys of peasant migrants to trek east. At the same time, the cities were rebuilt and provided with charters on the model of the Magdeburg or, less frequently, the Lübeck Law. The cities of that vintage—Breslau (1242), Buda (1244), Cracow (1257) and others— were governed by German law and were full of German merchants. Added to the activities in the Baltic both of the Hanseatic League and of the Teutonic Knights, these changes brought about a massive increase of German influence,
[BUDA] [HANSA]
The Mongols destroyed all semblance of unity among the east Slavs whose lands they had subjugated. Some of the princes of Rus’ were eventually able to escape by turning to their Lithuanian neighbours (see p. 392). But those in the East were forced, quite literally, to ‘bend the neck’. Summoned at regular intervals to the camp of the khan, they were obliged to walk between blazing bonfires, to stoop beneath the proffered yoke, and to prostrate themselves before their master. It was a ritual humiliation whose purpose was not forgotten. Their people were condemned to pay tribute, collected by resident Mongol
baskiki
or ‘governors’. But the Orthodox Church was not oppressed. It was the period of ‘the Tartar Yoke’.
There is a description of ‘the province of Russia’ at this time in the travels of the Venetian Marco Polo, whose father had visited the Crimea on a trading venture in 1260:
The province… is of vast extent… and borders upon that northern tract which has been described as the Region of Darkness. Its inhabitants are Christians, and follow the Greek ritual… The men are extremely well-favoured, tall and of fair complexion; the women are also… of a good size, with light hair which they are accustomed to wear long. The country pays tribute to the king of the Western Tartars… Within it are collected in great abundance the furs of ermines, sables, martens, foxes … together with much wax. It contains several [silver] mines… [It] is an exceedingly cold region, and I have been assured that it extends even as far as the Northern Ocean, where … peregrine falcons are taken in vast numbers.
39
Contrary to former assumptions, economic life in the Middle Ages was not stagnant. There is a school of thought which holds that ‘an agricultural revolution’ in northern Europe at this time was ‘equally decisive in its historical effects’ as ‘the so-called Industrial Revolution’ of the nineteenth century.
40
The argument centres on new sources of power such as the water-mill and the windmill, on expanded mining activities, on the impact of the iron plough and horsepower, and on crop
rotation and improved nutrition. New techniques sometimes took centuries to be widely applied, but the chain effect over time was decisive. Agriculture moved into the heavier but more fertile soils of the valleys. The increased food supply fuelled a demographic explosion, especially in northern France and the Low Countries. The rising population filled the new towns and released a new labour force. The labour force could be employed in new industrial enterprises such as mining and weaving: specialized textile towns proliferated. Sea trade was steadily expanded,
[PLOVUM] [MURANO]
BUDA
I
N
1244, King Bela IV of Hungary granted a charter of autonomy to the I ‘free city of Pest’ on the Danube. His decision formed part of a wider programme of reconstruction following the recent Tartar invasions. Henceforth, the city was to govern itself according to the Law of Magdeburg, the king ceding all but residual powers. In due course, similar arrangements would be made for the castle suburb of Buda on the opposite bank of the river, creating two distinct jurisdictional units within the one urban area.
1
Buda, which in German was known as Ofen, succeeded Esztergom as Hungary’s royal capital in 1361.
The future life of a city was greatly influenced by the nature of the authority which granted its founding charter. Although municipal charters granted by kings and princes were most common, bishops were often active, especially in Germany. Wherever the nobility was strong, as in Hungary and Poland, private cities also sprang up, providing oases of immunity from the long arms of Church and State. The growth of cities greatly strengthened the centrifugal tendencies of late medieval polities. In Hungary, it complemented the existing system of territorial counties and of noble liberties.
A city’s adoption of the Magdeburg model does not necessarily mean that it was a German settlement. The Magdeburg Law was adopted all over East and Central Europe by German and by non-German cities alike. None the less, there was always a strong German community both in Pest and in Buda even under Ottoman rule. The twin cities were not joined into one joint municipality until 1872, shortly after Hungary re-asserted its separate existence within the Habsburgs’ dual Monarchy. In 1896, they played host to an extravagant festival celebrating the millennium of Hungary’s foundation.
Hungary’s Millennium naturally focused on the person of St Stephen and on the gift of a crown by the Pope. This event, like the founding of Pest, was understood to have cemented the lasting connection with the West. Stephen’s queen, Gisella, was sister to Henry of Bavaria (the future German Emperor, who was also canonized). His coronation in
AD
1001 helped him oust his Bulgarian- and Orthodox-backed rivals for the throne. From then on, like Poland, Hungary was firmly committed to the Western, Catholic camp.
The crown, which bears St Stephen’s name and which is now the prime exhibit in the Hungarian National Museum, came to symbolize Hungary’s extraordinary powers of survival. It was supposedly worn by all the Hungarian kings from the Arpads to the Habsburgs, and was a necessary adjunct to all valid coronations. It was many times lost or hidden, but never destroyed. In -1405 it fell unnoticed into an Austrian bog, whilst being illegally exported by Sigismund of Luxembourg, but was recovered when the bog started to glow with heavenly rays. In 1945 it was smuggled out of the country again, taken to the USA, and secretly deposited in Fort Knox. It was returned to Budapest in 1978, even though Hungary was still a communist-ruled country.
It is interesting to find, therefore, that doubts have been raised whether ‘St Stephen’s Crown’ had ever belonged to St Stephen. Nor, despite later attributions, is it likely to have originated in Rome. According to the most recent scholarly opinions, the principal gold band, the
corona graeca
, was made in eleventh-century Byzantium, probably for Synadene, consort to Geza I (r. 1074–7). In the traditional view, this ‘Greek Crown’ was welded onto an older crown, the
corona latina
, which had been made for Stephen I.
2
In the modern view, its only possible link with St Stephen lies in the original cross, a relic of the True Cross now lost, which once topped the arched bands of the Latin Crown.
Whatever their origins, the two constituent parts of the Crown, the Greek and the Latin, combine to present the aptest of reminders not of Hungary’s western connections but of medieval Hungary’s location at the heart of Christendom. The Greek Crown carries a ring of alternating gem-stones and of small plaques of cloisonne enamel. At the front, above the forehead, stands a raised plaque of Christ Pantokrator: at the rear, a corresponding plaque of the Emperor Michael VII Dukas (r. 1071–8) with green aureole. On either side of the Emperor there are portraits of the emperor’s son Constantine and of King Geza. Geza’s plaque is accompanied by a Greek inscription: GEOBITZAS PISTOS KRALES TURKIAS (Geza the believer king of Turkia). Elsewhere round the rim runs a circle of Byzantine archangels and saints. The Latin crown, in contrast, carries eight plaques of the apostles, with Christ enthroned at the crossing-point of its bands. A leaning gold cross, which replaced the original in 1551 at the time of the first Habsburg coronation, precariously surmounts the whole.
3
What is certain is the aptness of the quality with which the Crown is said to be most strongly endowed—its
inadmissibility
, ‘its incapacity to be permanently lost’.
4
