History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 321, the Baltic Crusades, the Lithuanian conflict part 26, the end.

Hello again.

Last week we saw the Tutonic Order stumble into a 13-year-long war with the Prussian League, a conflict which was settled by the second

piece of torn, a treaty negotiated between King Hasamir the 4th of Poland and the Teutonic Order in the year 1466.

Under the terms of the treaty the order ceded a bunch of territory in Western Prussia to the Kingdom of Poland.

Effectively, Prussia was now divided down the middle, with the Western half under the effective control of Poland,

while the Eastern half remained under the control of the Teutonic Order.

The Grand Master of the Order, however, the

Tutonic Order. The Grand Master of the Order, however, was required by the Treaty to swear a personal oath of loyalty to the King of Poland.

So despite the fact that Eastern Prussia was, on paper at least,

independent from Poland, with the Grand Master administering it from his new base at Kurnigsburg. In reality, Poland still loomed large in eastern Prussian affairs.

So what does this mean for the Baltic Crusades?

Well after the second piece of torn it was generally agreed that the Baltic Crusades were now over.

But the Teutonic Order was quick to point out that it still needed to exist in order to confront two looming threats to Eastern

European Latin Christianity, those threats being the Ottoman Turks and the Orthodox Christians of the Russian

principalities. Now as Eric Christensen notes in his book the Northern

Crusades with the benefit of hindsight there were two

courses of action which the Teutonic Order could have taken to resurrect and reform itself following its subjugation to Poland.

The first possible reform was one that had already been flagged by Emperor Sigismund back in episode 317 at the Great Conference of 1427.

This reform entailed shifting the Teutonic order out of Prussia and basing it closer

to the at the Great Conference, the Kingdom of Poland actively advocated for this move following the second piece of torn.

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