History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 320, the Baltic Crusades, the Lithuanian conflict part 25, the decline of the Teutonic Order.

Hello again.

Last week we saw the exit of many of our players from the stage,

with King Agile and Emperor Sigismund both joining V. Tortoise in

departing both from their earthly lives and from this podcast. Once all the dust had finally settled, we saw Poland and Lithuania strongly

bound together once again.

Under the rule of Yagila's second eldest son, Kazimir,

who became the Grand Duke of Lithuania in the year 1440 and became the king of Poland in the year 1447 ruling as King

Kazimir the 4th.

King Kazimir the 4th will enjoy a long and successful rule until his death near the end of the 15th century in the year 1492.

In this episode, you probably won't be too surprised to learn,

we will be taking a look at the demise of our final player on the Baltic Crusade stage, the Teutonic Order.

Now as you may have noticed things really haven't been going all that well for the Teutonic order since

its defeat at the Battle of Tannenberg. No one wants to join a military order which keeps losing battles, so the ranks of the

Teutonic order are now predominantly filled by not entirely useful older knights who understand the orders ways but aren't

the sort of men you want to see lined up in battle and young recruits who are the sort of men who tried and failed to get better gigs elsewhere.

To put it bluntly, many or perhaps even most of the Order's fighting men were pretty hopeless.

With both the younger and older knights not terribly proficient on the battlefield, and with an increasing number of the new recruits

struggling to understand or come to terms with the Order's religious and disciplinary requirements.

The result of all of this is that Grand Master Paul of Rousdorf is increasingly having to deal with the incompetence of his

fighting men and he is also facing issues such as heavy drinking, gambling and laziness amongst the orders ranks.

...