History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 222, the Baltic Crusades, the Prussian Crusade, the Prussian Crusade Part 4, the

years 1221 to 1226.

Hello again.

Last week we met Bishop Christian, the Bishop of Prussia,

and we saw him attempt to replicate Bishop Albert's moves in Lavonia with little success.

The Prussian pagans were proving more difficult to Christianize than the Letts and Lovanians.

And with his recent crusade against the Prussians having failed completely Bishop Christian is currently recruiting for a new

crusade. Bishop Christian's goal is to use the Crusaders to take the region around the Prussian stronghold of Calm and then use the

stronghold as a base for Christianizing the rest of Prussia. So all Bishop Christian needs now is a large

crusading army to put his plan into action. Unfortunately Bishop Christian is finding it quite a

challenge to master a large crusading army. In his book the Prussian Crusade William Urban explains why.

We discussed briefly in last week's episode the fact that during this period Poland was facing

a number of challenges including floods, crop failures and even an outbreak of the plague.

This of course made it more difficult to find Crusade Volunteers,

as did the fact that the Mongols had created a power vacuum in one of the Russian

principalities after their victory in the Battle of Calca River.

So powerful Polish dukes who were looking to expand their territory

were currently eyeing off territory in Russia and weren't that interested in the swampy boggy lands full of Prussian pagans

that Bishop Christian was trying to conquer. And there is another reason why the powerful dukes of Poland weren't terribly

interested in acquiring land in Prussia. That reason being King Valdemar the second of Denmark.

At this point in time King Valdemar was at the peak of his power. It would be another couple of years before

...