History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 308, the Baltic the Baltic Crusades, the Lithuanian conflict part 13,

tales of intrigue and suspicion.

Hello again.

Last week we examined the troubled provisions of the first piece of torn, a treaty which was negotiated between the Teutonic Order,

the Kingdom of Poland, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the year 1411.

In essence, the treaty stipulated that the order was to hand Samagetia over to Lithuania, but only for the term of the remainder of

Kinyagila and Grand Duke Vitortis' lifespans. The treaty also stipulated that the Teutonic Order pay an absolutely massive sum of money

to the victors of the Battle of Tanenburg as both a war indemnity and as a ransom for the 14,000 or so German

prisoners currently languishing in captivity in Poland.

As Grand Master Heinrich von Plowen was determined to raise the cash needed to pay the installments of the indemnity and as he continued to

employ expensive mercenaries and made moves to re-arm and re- equip the Tutonic order, it wasn't hard to see that a

financial tsunami was about to crash down on Prussian shores. As we saw at the conclusion of last week's episode,

the first victim of that tidal wave was the city of Dunsig. In his book the last years of the Teutonic Knights,

William Urban notes that the manner in which the Teutonic Order dealt with the refusal by Danzig to pay the taxes to fund the first

installment of the war indemnity was a sort of a fork in the road moment.

There were two paths open to the Grandmaster regarding this dispute. As you may have noticed, we have entered the 15th century in our narrative, and across Europe, well, the times they are changing.

One of the many shifts, which is just beginning to take place is the awakening of the idea of democracy in the form of a gradual move to let some of the people have some sort of a voice in the decisions made which

would govern their lives.

Grand Master Heinrich caught a whiff of these winds of change and he did actually end up establishing an assembly whereby merchants, Knights and noblemen could have a say in the affairs of state.

But by completely alienating Danzig and failing to punish his cousin, the captain of the garrison of the castle

at Danzig for causing the deaths of the influential group of merchants and city councillors who had led the opposition to the

...