History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 212 the Baltic Crusades, the Livonian Crusade Part 18, the Danish

conquest of Estonia.

Hello again.

Last time we saw Bishop Albert outplayed, out-manewvered and out-classed by King Valdemar the second of Denmark who via some deft behind the scenes

wrangling managed to force Bishop Albert to seed Estonia and Livonia to Denmark.

With Danish eyes now all turning to the riches land and plunder to be had in Estonia

German concerns would now be taking a backseat. Now as we mentioned last week in February 1219, Prince Henry of Mecklenborg was involved

in a successful attack on the Estonian settlement of Revol and his success seems to have opened the floodgates to involvement in the Livonian Crusade by noblemen from the northern reaches of the Holy Roman Empire.

The next recruitment drive saw a who's who of the upper echelons of the noble classes in Saxony and the surrounding

regions put up their hands to travel to Estonia. Amongst the prestigious crusaders were the Duke of Saxony,

Albrecht of Unhalt, numerous counts and the King of Denmark himself, who decided to take a reasonably

sized Danish army to Estonia.

Tagging along with the Danish army was the Archbishop of Lunt, the bishops of Schleswig and Roshkilt, and the Prince of Ruggin.

Now, as the... and the Prince of Rugan.

Now as these mostly Danish forces,

numbering in total probably a few thousand men,

travel towards Estonia, there's two matters that need to be brought to

everyone's attention. The first is that the Danes seem at the moment to be under the mistaken impression that Estonia has been subdued.

And with native resistance now gone, they wrongly believe that all they need to do is march into

Estonia and claim it for Denmark. The second thing we need to note is that Bishop Theodoric, the Bishop of Estonia seems to have split with Bishop Albert,

and is now traveling with the Danish army on its way to Reval. Now the Danish army with its high-level

...