History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 290, the Baltic Crusades, the Samagitzian Crusade Part 22, Grandmaster Conrad von Volenroder.

Hello again.

Last week we followed the Crusaders on campaign to Lithuania,

where the Crusaders attacked the Lithuanian town of Vilnius with the ultimate aim of securing the town,

defeating Yagila and Skirgila and elevating their man V tortoise to the position of ruler of Lithuania.

None of these events came to pass, but it did result in one crusader, Henry Bolingbroke, the future king of England, drinking a lot of beer with his men.

We also saw last week the death of Grandmaster Conrad Zona von Rothenstein and his replacement

by another Conrad von Volenroder.

Now William Urban points out in his book the Samagitzian Crusade that as the current

grand commander of the Teutonic Order Conrad von Volenroer was the obvious standout candidate to be elected as the next

grandmaster. The Volenroder family had played prominent roles inside the Teutonic Order for some time and Conrad von Volenroder

had enjoyed success as Grand Commander. Despite this though, there were apparently significant misgivings inside the Teutonic Order

about the appointment of Conrad von Volenroader to the position of Grand Master.

Why? Well, because Conrad von Rolen Roder was a military man through and through.

In fact, to say that Conrad von Volenroder had little or no interest in religion wasn't

too much of an exaggeration.

And William Urban reports that Conrad took so little notice of priests and God that he was once accused of heresy.

The worst fears of the religious men of the order seemed to have been realized when, after being elected as Grandmaster, one of Conrad von Follenrod's first acts was to reform the command structure inside the order

to increase his authority.

Thankfully though, as well as being a solid military man, Conrad von Volenroder was well aware of the virtues of diplomacy, and he reached out to Yagila hoping to come to some sort of arrangement whereby Yagyla could keep Lithuania

but would hand Samagetia over to the order, a move which William Urban points out must have alarmed the tortoise who had been led to

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