History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 237. Episode 236, the Baltic, the Baltic Crusades, the Livonian Crusade Part 29, the Southern Push Part 1.

Hello again.

Last week we took a look at the Mongol invasions and saw the Step Warriors not only knock on the door of Latin Christian Europe,

but bash it down completely storming through Poland and occupying the Kingdom of Hungary before withdrawing

back to the steps. The two episodes before the Mongol invasion were spent looking at events in Prussia.

So now it's time we swung to the east to follow events which are taking place in the Livonian Crusade.

Now the last time we visited the Livonian Crusade in any great detail was in our last episode for 2017 when we examined the

failed crusade to Novgorod. Now the crusade to Novgorod was one of those fork in the road historical events.

Had the crusade been successful it would have radically altered the dynamics of the Livonian

Crusade.

In his book The Baltic Crusade, William Urban speculates that success in the Crusade to Novgorod would have seen

its participants rise in wealth and power. So the Danish facles in Estonia would likely have returned to Estonia

enriched by the vast quantities of Russian land they had conquered and would have become even more

rebellious than they had been before.

Likewise, the former members of the Sword Brothers who had found themselves now members of the

Teutonic Order would likely have wielded new-found power within the order and the hierarchy of the order would have had to have found

some way of accommodating them and the new obligations which would have arisen due to the Russian conquests.

But of course none of this happened.

The Crusade was unsuccessful and the Sword Brothers pretty much vanish from the historical record at this point.

With many of the more rebellious Sword Brothers being killed on the battlefield,

leaving the few who remained alive after the crusade to Novgorod

...