The Northern Crusades (34 page)

Sweden was thus out of the war. The Norwegians, under Erling the Steward, were slower to come to terms, but in 1326 they also agreed to make peace and observe ‘the old boundaries’. These boundaries – probably those agreed on in 1251 between Alexander Nevsky and Håkon the Old – were certainly not a dividing line between two powers, but the outer limits of a region within which both enjoyed restricted fiscal rights. From the Lyngen Fjord, east of Troms⊘, to the southern shore of the Kola peninsula both rulers were entitled to collect up to five white squirrel furs a year from each ‘bow’ – that is, from each adult male Lapp. At the eastern end of this region, the Norwegians were entitled to take their tribute from Karelians with Lappish mothers.

Thus neither treaty changed the political situation. The only new development was the strengthening of Novgorod’s hold on Lake Ladoga and its shores by the building of Orekhov, and this meant that future expeditions by the Swedes would have to be bigger and better equipped than they could afford for the time being. The fighting was merely suspended.

For over twenty years neither Sweden nor Novgorod was ready for a full-scale war on the Neva. In 1326 Novgorod turned from Moscow to Lithuania for a protector, and in 1333 handed over the wardenship of her western provinces to Prince Narimont, son of Gediminas. Although Prince Simeon of Moscow was able to reassert authority over the city in 1340, Narimont’s son Alexander kept the governorship of Koporye until the end of the decade, and neither the Lithuanians nor the Muscovites were inclined to embark on aggressive policies towards Sweden; they were too suspicious of each other. The territorial ambitions of the Regent were satisfied by the acquisition of Scania from Denmark in 1332, and the magnates of Norway and Sweden were kept busy after that with internal struggles. The maturing King Magnus was eager both to restore the power of the crown at home and, until 1343, to secure further territory from Denmark. In such conditions, trouble along the Russo-Swedish frontier was merely an irritating distraction to the two governments.

Therefore, when the enterprising Swedish captain of Viborg cooperated with the Karelians in an anti-Russian revolt in 1337, the Novgorodians’ attitude was restrained; they first negotiated with him, at Orekhov, and only when Captain Sten persisted in helping the Karelians to raid Lake Onega and the town of Ladoga did they retaliate. The Russians raided Swedish Karelia, and Sten was beaten off while attacking Koporye. But the situation was not allowed to get out of hand: a Russian delegation to King Magnus patched up a peace in 1339, and took the wind out of Sten’s sails. ‘If our Karelians flee to you’, they declared, ‘kill or hang them all. If your Karelians flee to us, then we will treat them in the same fashion, so that they shall not give rise to discord between us.’
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Independent action by frontiersmen merely interrupted the profitable flow of trade without gaining the ground or lordship which would counterbalance the cost of war.

However, if political expediency favoured peace, the embers of the crusade were kept alive in the meantime. Papal collectors continued to raise money from both kingdoms for crusading purposes, and in 1324 they repeated the deals they had made with the kings of France and England by granting the king of Sweden a half-share for his own use. By 1329 they had raised £4340 sterling, of which they handed over £2158
to the regent; and, when in the 1330s their yields dropped, it became clear that they would need firmer royal backing to raise the level of future levies – which would mean handing over a larger share. The tax-paying clergy therefore continued to show interest in the possibility of bringing the crusade nearer home. A note in the Register of Uppsala refers to ‘the preaching of the cross against the Karelians’
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among the topics to be brought to the attention of the faithful during the festivals of 1340. And during the 1340s the court was being reminded of this as well as other religious duties by the king’s cousin Bridget, who had charge of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting and was beginning to win fame as a prophetess.

Bridget’s posthumously compiled Revelations contain several thoughts on the subject of crusades which must have been expressed in the period 1344–8.
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Her main object was to reform and purify the upper class, and, like St Bernard in his day, she saw the Holy War as the best possible way in which kings and knights could carry out their God-given social duty of fighting. After King Magnus had tried and failed to get possession of the kingdom of Denmark in the early 1340s, she informed him that his warriors had lost their lives in this fruitless enterprise because God did not wish him to increase his territories at the expense of other Christian kingdoms. It would be far better ‘to send his vassals and people to those heathen parts where it is possible to increase the Catholic faith, and charity’. Rather than vex his subjects with taxes to pay for wars that were hateful to God, the king should raise money only for self-defence or for attacking unbelievers. When she asked Christ whether he were going to give the order for Magnus to begin the crusade, Christ replied, through his Mother,

Christ also advised the king to enlist learned clerics, who would be able to reach the minds of the pagans, and insisted that the crusading army must be small and select. A mass army would be sure to contain
sinners, and sinners would not be allowed to enter the Promised Land. According to the rhyme-chronicle called the
Förbindelsedikt
¹³⁶
which was produced in patriotic circles about 1452, the Virgin also admonished the king to let no foreigners accompany him, but it appears from the Revelations that what Bridget actually objected to was mercenaries in general, rather than aliens.

This picked body of conscientious volunteers was to be marshalled under two banners: one of the Passion, signifying peace, and one of the Sword of Justice, signalling war. It was essential that the heathen should first be offered peace, faith and liberty, by having banner number one displayed to them, and only if they rejected the offer were the army to move on to battle under number two. Once defeated, they could be compelled to accept baptism into the Latin faith, on pain of death. If they were killed, it was surely better for their souls than being left to drag out their lives in sinful error.

Armchair crusaders were not uncommon in the fourteenth century, and this war-cry from the boudoir seems no more fatuous than other appeals of the time. Bridget’s views were given added force by her social position and connections; her brother Israel Byrghisson was one of the king’s ablest servants, and the bishop most concerned with the eastern provinces, Hemming of Åbo, was a friend and a promoter of her canonization. However, the decision to declare war on Novgorod was the king’s own, and, since he was not such a fool as Bridget pretended, he was moved by political calculation, rather than religious zeal.

For Novgorod appeared to have fallen between two stools. In 1346 Prince Algirdas of Lithuania had subjugated the city’s southern lands, and Simeon of Moscow had failed to intervene; the citizens were divided between competing boyar factions, and were reduced to executing their own ex-mayor for offending the Lithuanians. On the other hand, the Swedes and the Norwegians were now at peace with each other, and with King Valdemar IV of Denmark. Valdemar himself had set an example of conspicuous piety by going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Magnus had assured the succession by having his son Eric elected king of Sweden and Scania, and his son Håkon recognized as heir to Norway. He had settled his internal difficulties for the time being, and was drawing up a national law-code. He had brought the administration of Sweden under the control of a nominated royal justiciar, the ‘official-general’. It was time for a successful war of conquest, but it was generally accepted
that the king could only call out the full military strength of his kingdoms for service overseas if he got the consent of his magnates first. Thanks to the propaganda of the clergy and landowners concerned with Finland and the Far North, a war with Novgorod was likely to command that consent; and, when Magnus broached the project to the Norwegians in 1347, and met with some opposition, he overcame it by declaring the enterprise a full crusade. He sailed over to Finland in the autumn, and remained there for the winter, while his envoys prepared the way for next year’s invasion.

It is slightly surprising to read in the Novgorod Chronicle that Magnus’s message to the Russians was

It is usually assumed that the chronicler misrepresented the substance of the Swedish embassy, and that the real object of the mission was to discuss boundaries and lay claim to new territory. Perhaps; but there is nothing improbable in the story as it stands, since Magnus would obviously increase his chances of getting the war authorized by a crusading Bull from Avignon if he gave public notice that his aim was to extend the Latin faith. This was how Bridget had advised him to begin his campaign, by peaceful persuasion; and in any case, what the faiths represented on the river Neva was primarily a difference between two rival colonial systems. Whether Magnus also hoped to be accepted at Novgorod as prince protector, in succession to the Lithuanian and Muscovite rulers, is unknown; certainly he could not have chosen a less likely method of seducing the Novgorodians than challenging their beliefs. They replied that if he were really interested in theology he ought to apply to the patriarch of Constantinople. Instead, he returned to Sweden and assembled an army which (according to the
Förbindelsedikt
) included Danish and German auxiliaries, and Henry of Rendsburg, one of the counts of Holstein. Henry had already campaigned against the Lithuanians very briefly in 1345, and seems to have been ready to go anywhere for money and loot; he got a pension from Edward III of England in 1355, and acted as his intelligence agent for the Baltic. The
army set sail on 8 June 1348, and had reached Viborg when envoys from Novgorod arrived to resume negotiations. Again Magnus is alleged by the Russian sources to have insisted on his religious mission: ‘I have no grievance whatever against you. Adopt my faith, or I will march against you with my whole force.’

The envoys hurried back to Orekhov, and the crusaders flooded up the Neva behind them, offering the inhabitants the choice of death or baptism into the Latin church. According to the Russian sources, many were baptized and ‘had their beards shaved’, as the
Förbindelsedikt
put it;
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the garrison at Orekhov was cut off and besieged, and some of the invaders moved south into Ingria and Vod. The siege began on 24 June; a month later, a Novgorodian raiding party defeated the Swedes near Koporye, but the besiegers sat tight, and the fortress surrendered on 6 August. Ten boyars were held prisoner, and the rest of the Russo-Lithuanian garrison was allowed to march home.

These successes were made possible by the lack of unity between Novgorod and her allies. The Lithuanians, who were still supposed to be defending the province of Koporye, were fully occupied at home with the Teutonic Knights, and made no move to reinforce Orekhov during the siege. The Muscovite prince Simeon was delayed by business with his overlord, the Khan of the Golden Horde. His brother Ivan arrived late. Magnus also appears to have had the advantage of numbers, since he was using both levy-troops and foreign auxiliaries; but this advantage was short-lived. One summer’s campaign was enough for most of his men. The king himself retired to Sweden soon after Orekhov fell, and left behind a garrison that was small enough for the Novgorodian city forces to tackle with the help of a detachment from Pskov. The fort was besieged. Winter set in. The Pskovians marched home, to the amusement of the Swedes, but the Novgorodians stayed, and in February 1349 they took the fort and killed or captured all the defenders.

Why had Magnus allowed this to happen? He knew that there would be no hope of relieving his men once winter set in; he knew that Novgorod would not allow him to occupy the Neva lands without a struggle. It is possible that he expected help from the Livonians, who did attack Izborsk that winter. It is possible that he expected the Russians to send an embassy to Sweden to negotiate, before they counter-attacked. In either case, he was mistaken; but he would hardly have done better if he had recruited only pious warriors to fight the war, as St Bridget later
claimed, or if he had simply massacred the whole Orthodox population, as the
Förbindelsedikt
suggested a century later.
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His only chance of success seems to have been lost when he sailed back to Sweden rather than pressing onwards to Ladoga and Novgorod; but it took him a long time to understand this.

In 1349 the Black Death reached Sweden and made it impossible to avenge the loss of Orekhov for the time being, at least by military action. Instead, Magnus tried to raise money by appealing to his subjects to send a penny each to their cathedrals, and pray that the Virgin would avert the plague; he tried to weaken the Russians by forbidding his Hanseatic allies to trade with Novgorod. He seems to have interpreted the plague as a mark of divine anger at his not having persisted with the campaign against the heathen; at all events, it made him more rather than less determined to continue the war in better times. There was still a lack of unity or leadership among the Russian states, and it was clearly impossible for Novgorod to hold out against an effective economic blockade from the West. If the Teutonic Order, the Livonian bishops and the Hansa could be persuaded to co-operate, such an embargo might be brought into effect. Pope Clement VI was bound to favour the enterprise and another expedition would oblige him to offer a crusading tax and crusading Bulls. The Norwegians were attacked by a Russian raiding force during the plague year – it reached the steward’s own estate at Bjarkey – and would be more eager to assist their king than before.