Teutonic Knights (20 page)

Like all contemporary military figures, Luther understood that the destruction of property was an effective means of warfare against an obstinate enemy. His orders to do as much damage as possible were interpreted by the mercenaries, auxiliaries, and knights as a licence to terrorise and impoverish the king’s taxpayers. However, his forces were not achieving any truly significant successes.

King John, for his part, had been frustrated in his attempt to crush his opponent. Therefore he proposed that he meet the grand master at Kalish in September and force a decisive battle. Luther, agreeing, sent Marshal Dietrich von Altenburg to lead the Prussian army to the rendezvous. Dietrich crossed Kujavia, sending his forces along several routes to plunder and burn, but did not find the Bohemians at Kalish. This was not unusual. Communications being poor, most joint ventures like this one failed because one party was unexpectedly delayed or could not come at all. John, as a matter of fact, had just returned from an expedition to Italy and was unable to start his march on time. Dietrich, seeing the Polish army beginning to come together from all directions and not knowing that John was only a few days march away, began a slow retreat, plundering along the way. He was thus moving away from John, who himself turned about when he heard of Dietrich’s retreat. As Dietrich marched away, Ladislas and Casimir trailed behind with ‘40,000’ men. The royal levy was numerous, but less well armed than the crusading host, and the king was therefore unwilling to offer battle. However, when Dietrich divided his force into three parties, Ladislas swept down on the weakest division at Plowce.

Marshal Dietrich did not realise that he was so heavily outnumbered. Over the past days his Polish scouts had misinformed him about the size of the royal levy, causing him to think he was facing a small force, and now a heavy fog hindered efforts at reconnaissance. Dietrich aligned his men under five banners and faced the royal array. The king likewise formed his army in five units. The battle was cruelly contested, unusually so in an era when major encounters were rare and brief. The decisive moment came when the horse carrying the marshal’s banner was pierced by a spear, perhaps by Polish knights among the crusaders who changed sides without warning, creating disorder in the German and Bohemian ranks. The flagbearer had nailed the banner to his saddle, and once the steed fell, he could not raise it again. Consternation among the crusaders was great, because they could not see their commander, and Polish knights seemed to be everywhere. Soon the combat was over. Ladislas’ men, having smashed three units of enemy cavalry, captured fifty-six brothers and held them prisoner in a trench. When the king arrived, he asked who they were. Told they were Teutonic Knights, he ordered the ordinary knights killed and the officers held for ransom.

Ladislas’ action was based on his fear that the other two divisions of the Teutonic Knights were on the way. In fact, the castellan of Culm did arrive that afternoon and drove the exhausted Polish knights from the field, capturing 600 prisoners. Finding Marshal Dietrich chained to a wagon, he released him, then rode over to the area where the naked, dead knights lay piled high. Trembling, he climbed down from his horse, wept, and gave orders to slaughter everyone they had captured. The native Prussians tried to stop him, saying that they wanted to keep the captives to exchange for their own people who had been taken prisoner. Dietrich told them not to worry, that God would still give them many good prisoners that day, and he watched as they slaughtered the men in chains. Pressing the pursuit hard, he did take another hundred prisoners before nightfall, but Ladislas and Casimir rode even faster – they understood well the consequences of falling into the marshal’s hands at this time. They had fought well and bravely, and they considered it no disgrace to flee when continuing the fight with broken and exhausted units would be useless. Possession of the battlefield was not as important as the victory they had already won.

When the fighting came to an end, all that remained was to bury the dead. The bishop of Kujavia sent men to put the corpses into mass graves, during which process his workers counted 4,187 bodies. Immediately thereafter he built a chapel where visitors could pray for the souls of those who had fallen. The battlefield became a pilgrimage site for patriotic Poles, a shameful memory for Germans. One crusader poet ended his history at this point in the narrative without describing the battle.

It was Easter of 1332 before Luther was ready to seek revenge, but by that time his preparations were awesome. He not only had many mercenaries, but he had also recruited crusaders, some of whom came from England to participate in this war. After two weeks of siege he captured Brzesc, then Inowrocław, and finally all of northern Kujavia. Ladislas struck back in August but without effect. Then he sued for a truce to last until mid – 1333, by which time Ladislas was dead.

Casimir was hurriedly crowned in Gniezno before the pope could raise objections to the coronation. Trouble came not from the papacy, but from Casimir’s mother, who was unwilling to relinquish her royal honours to Aldona, Casimir’s popular Lithuanian wife. Casimir, however, was firm – this was a matter of a royal prerogative. Aldona was crowned beside him and his mother withdrew to a convent.

With Ladislas no longer a factor, Casimir was able to open peace talks. He and the grand master agreed to ask Charles Robert of Hungary and John of Bohemia to arbitrate their differences, the former being favourable to Polish interests, the latter to Prussian. It was at this time that Casimir displayed fully those diplomatic talents whereby he later earned the title ‘the Great’
.
First, he shrewdly worked on the mutual jealousies of the Wittelsbachs in Brandenburg and the Luxemburgs in Bohemia, promising Louis of Brandenburg his young daughter in marriage. Then he broke up strong domestic resistance to his ‘pro-German’ policies. He did not find it difficult to persuade the capricious John of Bohemia to abandon his Silesian wars and take up new adventures.

In the autumn of 1335 Casimir, John, and Charles Robert met in Visegrad in Hungary, a magnificent palace overlooking the Danube, for one of the most famous conferences of the middle ages. For weeks they mixed memorable spectacle with hard negotiating. In November a delegation of the Teutonic Knights arrived to present demands that Casimir renounce his claims to West Prussia. Since Luther of Braunschweig had died on a journey to dedicate the new cathedral in Königsberg, this delegation had been sent by the new grand master, Dietrich von Altenburg. Dietrich’s Saxon ancestry was almost as illustrious as Luther’s. A youngest son having to choose among the various careers available in the church, he selected one with a military order. Castellan at Ragnit, then advocate of Samland, and finally marshal, he was a capable commander with only one blot on his record, the battle at Plowce, and he wanted revenge for that defeat.

Neither side yielded much during the talks. Although the Teutonic Knights made significant concessions, exceeding their instructions, the mediators were unimaginative: they proposed a return to the
status quo ante belIum.
King John abandoned his claims to the Polish throne, thus invalidating his grants of West Prussia to the Teutonic Knights. Casimir, who wanted peace in the north so that he could concentrate on other frontiers, offered one significant two-edged concession: he offered to grant West Prussia to the grand master as a gift from the Polish crown, implying that the territory was still his to give away. This was at least a step toward an agreement. The two parties were ready to stop hostilities, but the talks went no further than Dietrich’s promise to leave Kujavia and Casimir’s promise to obtain his subjects’ renunciation of West Prussia.

Casimir found he could not carry out his promises. First the dukes of Masovia advocated rejecting the settlement. Then Casimir’s nobles refused to ratify the treaty, and finally the pope insisted that legatine rulings giving West Prussia and Culm to Poland be honoured. The grand master doubted that this had all happened without Casimir having exercised some influence. So he contacted King John, who revived certain Silesian issues that had been left unresolved. For the meantime, Dietrich garrisoned the castles in Kujavia, but he left the Polish administrators in place, since he had no plans to occupy that province permanently. In contrast, he garrisoned the castles in Dobrin and Płock more securely, since this was the best way to keep Polish raiders distant from Culm.

Although the crusading lords returning from Prussia in March of 1337 were entertained by Casimir (giving King John an opportunity to propose an end to the wars), it was not until after 1340, when Casimir’s plans to lead his armies south-east toward Kiev were fully matured, that serious peace talks began.

Meanwhile, the pagans in Samogitia now had to defend themselves against attacks from the north as well as the east and south. The Livonian Knights were striking across the wilderness barrier from Memel, Goldingen, Mitau, Riga, and Dünaburg. This was a bitter war, with no quarter asked or given.

The ferocity of the campaigns can be seen in the fighting around a small castle not far from Kaunas. In February of 1336 Louis von Wittelsbach brought a crusading force from Brandenburg that included many Austrian and French knights, a force so large that over 200 ships were required to transport the equipment. Duke Louis expected that his siege of the earth and timber fort would be short and the 4,000 refugees and all the herds and personal possessions would soon be his, but when the pagans saw that the crusaders would soon storm the ramparts they lit a huge fire and began to throw all their possessions into the inferno, then strangled their wives and children and threw the corpses into the bonfire. They did this in the expectation that when they went to their equivalent of Valhalla, they would be accompanied by all their worldly goods and their families. The Christians’ reaction to this was at first disbelief. Then, enraged at being robbed of their rightful booty, they recklessly began storming the fortifications, heedless of the costs incurred by failing to first break greater holes in the walls. The Christians prevailed by their superior numbers but not without heavy losses. The pagan chief, a heroic figure named Marger, smashed many heads before he saw that his own capture was imminent. At the last moment he fled down into a cellar where he had hidden his wife. Swinging his sword, he cut her into pieces and then thrust the weapon into his own belly. The crusaders were able to take few prisoners who could be made into serfs.

Louis von Wittelsbach then began construction on a castle on the Marienburg island near Welun, hoping to prepare the way for an even greater expedition the next year. When he realised that he would be unable to complete his task before his supplies were depleted, he burned the half-finished fort and retreated. During the next winter, in 1337, King John and Duke Heinrich of Bavaria appeared with forces from Bohemia, Silesia, Bavaria, the Palatinate, Thuringia, the Rhineland, Holland, and even Burgundy; and the Teutonic Knights came with the militias of Nattangia and Sambia. The weather was extraordinarily warm, so that boats could be used to transport the army up the Nemunas. After taking two forts near Welun, they built an earth and timber castle opposite the ruins of Christmemel and named it Bayerburg (Beierburg) in honour of the Bavarian duke. Bayerburg became a base for raids and a way station for larger expeditions headed for central Lithuania or north into Samogitia. Gediminas, knowing that he had to destroy this strategic castle or face dangerous attacks with little warning, besieged it for twenty-two days that June without success. As he retreated with heavy losses, the garrison sallied out to bear off the siege weapons and mount them on their own walls.

King John was not present at the conclusion of this expedition. He had caught a cold that settled in his eye and then became infected. The ailment became worse on his way home. He allowed a French doctor to treat him in Breslau (Wrocław), but became so angry at his bungling that he had the man drowned in the Oder River; in Prague he consulted an Arabian doctor, but without obtaining a cure. When the infection spread to the other eye, he was henceforth totally sightless. Blindness, however, far from dampening the king’s chivalric ambitions, spurred him on to new deeds of valour. If anything, John’s disability enhanced his reputation. Nor did it hinder him either in war or in diplomacy. Before he left Königsberg he borrowed 6,000 florins for expenses he would incur in negotiating with Casimir, and he worked at that task throughout his worst illness.

Casimir was ready for peace. Aldona had died in May after a long illness, without ever producing a son. Although Casimir had distracted himself with numerous love affairs, these would not provide the male heir his kingdom needed. War would distract him from the pressing business of arranging a marriage with some important family, and therefore he accepted a truce with the Teutonic Order. As it happened, Casimir was extremely unlucky in his married life. He had hoped to marry John’s daughter, Margarete, but she died literally on the eve of the wedding in Prague. Casimir then hurried into an alliance with the unattractive heiress Adelheid of Hessen, whom he quickly sent into the country and refused to see again. Unable to obtain a divorce from the pope, it was obvious that the king would have no legitimate son.

The Teutonic Knights were unable to take advantage of Casimir’s preoccupation in these years to mount a great expedition into Samogitia. Only small armies came to Prussia and those were hampered by bad weather. In the winter of 1339, for example, a count of the Palatinate led an attack on Welun, but after enduring extremely cold weather for four days he returned to Königsberg. Some Lithuanians were surrendering, accepting fiefs in Prussia; many more probably believed that the crusade would end soon, in a Christian victory.