Teutonic Knights (26 page)

By 1309 the Teutonic Knights had the situation in Livonia once more in hand. They had not defeated either the Rigans or Vytenis, but neither did they fear defeat. So secure was the situation that the Prussian master had been able to send his army into West Prussia, first to drive out the duke of Brandenburg, then to expel the Polish garrisons. By 1311 the master was ready to turn once again to Lithuania and strike at Gardinas (Grodno), a key position on the upper Nemunas that guarded the most direct routes along the waterways and paths to Volhynia and Masovia, or across the lake district to Prussia.

Vytenis was now a powerful lord. Called a king by his followers and the chroniclers of the Teutonic Knights, he was recognised only as a grand prince by the pope or emperor because they reserved royal titles for Christian princes. Vytenis had brought an end to assassination and civil war, and had sealed his power with victories in Livonia. He was a capable ruler and a wily commander. Often he would lead one army himself and send out others as diversions, so that the Teutonic Knights had to guess where the main blow would land; and, with so many routes to guard, they usually guessed wrong. Vytenis had Christian allies in the burghers and archbishop of Riga, and for their sake he occasionally made a pretext of seeking conversion. Franciscan friars at his courts in Vilnius and Trakai made his enquiries credible. Nevertheless, although he allowed his Rus’ian subjects and Roman Catholic visitors freedom of worship, he was a devout pagan; any hint of changing his religion would have increased the already great danger of assassination, and it would have stiffened Samogitian resistance to his claims to national leadership. Moreover, as a pagan, he personified the Christian fears of unpredictable and dangerous behaviour, of extraordinary cunning and deviousness. All these were qualities he must have had in abundance. He could not have ruled Lithuania without unfailing courage and a willingness to match wits and brutality with the worst of his enemies and the best of his friends. In barbaric splendour and simplicity he was a model pagan king, a worthy match for the crusaders.

The Teutonic Knights praised Vytenis’ skill and courage, because they were proud to consider themselves more than a match for him. In 1311 they were given an opportunity to demonstrate their prowess. In February Vytenis made a raid into Samland and Nattangia, killing many Prussians and taking 500 captives. The crusaders knew from experience that it was almost impossible to ward off such attacks. The best that could be achieved was to organise a watch for incursions, so that the villagers could be warned to seek refuge and so the militia could hurry to its assembly points. As soon as the marshal was told of the raid, he hurried from Königsberg with his mobile forces and, gathering the militia, followed the raiders’ path. He knew that raiding parties were most vulnerable immediately after the forces split up and separately returned to their homes, but he attacked while the pagans were feasting and dividing up the booty and prisoners. His victory was among the greatest of this era.

For their part, the Teutonic Order made at least one winter raid most years. Cavalry was very effective on the frozen rivers and swamps, and the Lithuanians were unable to hide in ambush in the snow as easily as among lush summer foliage. In the winter of 1311 – 12 six knights led 400 Nattangian militiamen through the Sudovian wilderness to Gardinas, taking a roundabout route through supposedly impassable swamps where they were lost for two days. The Lithuanians, who had patrolled all the usual paths carefully, had no warning when the Christians suddenly fell on them. The Prussians went on a rampage, burning, killing, collecting captives, and killing those who could not manage the difficult journey into exile. Then they escaped by the quickest route. Their terrible revenge for past sufferings inflamed the Lithuanians to an equally great hatred.

Nationalist historians of the modern era sometimes forget this mutual hostility of the native tribes. This desire to take revenge, to harm one’s traditional foes, made it easy to raise armies, to organise raids, and to summon labourers for work on fortifications. It also led directly to terrible atrocities.

The attack on Gardinas was a direct challenge to Vytenis, whose prestige rested on his military victories and whose principal deity was a war god. In April he pressed deep into Prussia, arriving without warning with a force estimated by a chronicler with the usual exaggeration at 8,000 men. Coming through the lake district during the period of thaw, he evaded patrols sent out by the Teutonic Knights and the dukes of Masovia, then swept up through Ermland to the castle at Braunsberg, yelling insults at the bishop on the ramparts and destroying every settlement along the coast. According to the Christian reports, he made churches a special target of his wrath, desecrating altars, tearing down crucifixes and trampling on them, handling and spitting on the consecrated wafers of the host, and then burning the buildings. In one day he carried away 1,200 captives, bound and fettered, and that evening he taunted them, asking: ‘Where is your God? Why did he not help you, as our gods help us now and at other times?’

If that quote was accurate, Vytenis was rejoicing too soon. His forces were actually in very great danger. Ermland was far to the west. The deeper the penetration into the country, the more time the native militia had to assemble and the easier it was to catch up with the slow-moving, booty-laden raiders, whose path could easily be followed through the snow. At this moment the grand commander was gathering a large army at an assembly point along the route which Vytenis had to take out of the country.

Heinrich von Plötzke had dreamt of an opportunity like this for many of his fifty years. Now he had a force of eighty knights and thousands of militiamen in position to overtake the Lithuanian army. With luck he could destroy the invading force and perhaps kill or capture the king.

Vytenis was also a believer in fortune, but he understood that luck is a malleable commodity, one that can be moulded by the skilled hands of a courageous leader. When he saw the Christians approaching, he ordered his men to form a line of battle on a hill behind an improvised wall of hedges and trees. He must have thought that the Christians would hesitate to assault such a strong position, and that, if it came to a siege, he had the stolen cattle to feed his men, while the Christians could not have brought many supplies with them.

Heinrich recognised his enemy’s strategy instantly. Although he would have preferred a battlefield where he could use his cavalry more effectively, he was willing to fight on foot. He ordered Gunther von Arnstein, the most heroic knight of his generation, to test the pagan defences. The probing attack failed, leaving behind forty to sixty dead, but Gunther had learned the location and strength of the enemy forces. When Heinrich heard Gunther’s report, he ordered a general attack.

A crusader poet tells us that this was a moving scene: as the Christian warriors advanced into position there were cries from women and children, the returning shouts of their relatives in the militia, yells by desperate men ready for the furore of battle. The chronicle that related this scene may have been read aloud at mealtimes to teach proper attitudes to the knights and their men-at-arms. Such passages emphasising knightly deeds, courage, fairness, pity for the unfortunate, and service to the Church and Lady Mary, give us valuable insights into the mind of the crusading knight. Unfortunately, we lack a Lithuanian equivalent of this chronicle; the pagan tradition was oral, not written, and it has largely vanished.

When the entire force of Christians had formed their lines for the assault, Vytenis recognised the flags and banners of his opponents. Only then did he realise whom he was up against. Success in arms, he knew, was not a question of numbers, but of quality. The gay banners of the castellans and the grand commander’s great black cross on a white field told knowledgeable pagans that they were facing the best the Teutonic Knights had. Consequently, as the attackers approached, the less bold Lithuanians (or, at least, the most discreet and prudent) began to seek their horses and ride hurriedly for home. Meanwhile, the captive women broke loose from their bonds and created confusion in the rear. Vytenis disappeared (and escaped), while thousands of his followers fell in the hand-to-hand fighting. The Christians took as booty 2,800 horses, thousands of spears and swords, reclaimed the booty and prisoners taken earlier, and took Vytenis’ chamberlain captive. One chronicler wrote a hymn of victory: ‘Oh, noble knights of God, God must honour you on earth and in heaven.’ Heinrich commemorated the day by founding a nunnery at Thorn.

Despite what seemed to be an overwhelming victory, the battle made little impact on the general course of events because the Teutonic Knights lacked the forces to exploit it and because Vytenis had escaped. The grand prince regrouped his forces, encouraged his subjects to defend their forts resolutely, and ordered everyone to refrain from taking risks. Somewhat later, when a young castellan, Gerhard von Mansfeld, boldly rode into Lithuania, the pagans followed his small army back out of their country. Fearing an ambush, they refused his offer of formal battle, but they asked his name and warned him he would not live long if he continued to enter their country with so few men.

The fact was that significant advances could be made only by occupying key castles, and castles were difficult to capture. This was especially true in Lithuania, where the fortresses lay across a difficult wilderness, so that men, supplies, and siege engines had to be transported long distances. The easiest way to capture a castle was as ransom or by treason.

Treason worked best. As noted above, Heinrich had captured Vytenis’ chamberlain, the castellan of Gardinas. If he held him for ransom, he could have demanded a small fortune or exchanged him for Lithuanian captives. Instead, he listened to his promise to surrender Gardinas in return for his freedom. It was necessary to act quickly, however, so that he could explain his late return as the result of hiding in the woods or having lost his way. Moreover, there was no guarantee of obtaining a ransom, because Vytenis might conclude that this was a convenient excuse to eliminate a potential competitor and simply appoint a replacement. Therefore Heinrich released his prisoner on a promise to allow the crusaders to enter his castle by stealth and capture it. Not unexpectedly, the chamberlain did not keep his part of the bargain. Instead, he ‘betrayed’ the Christians by telling Vytenis of his bargain and arranging for an ambush of the Prussian forces near Gardinas.

Heinrich had not ignored the risks. He knew that the chamberlain might be a clever liar. We do not know what the chamberlain said to persuade the grand commander and his council, but we do know that treason was common in this era, that personal feuds were more important than clan loyalty, and that ambition often overrode personal loyalty. Moreover, the heathen code of honour emphasised keeping oaths, and Heinrich had undoubtedly extracted powerful oaths from his prisoner. For Heinrich’s part, he was in a position to make handsome promises for the chamberlain’s future, even to recognise him as a future ruler of Lithuania. In short, Heinrich had good reasons for trusting this pagan lord. But he had equally good reasons not to trust him too much.

Heinrich had brought his army almost to Gardinas when his scouts came upon an old man whom they put to torture until he revealed that Lithuanians were lurking near a river, waiting until half of the Christian army had crossed over before attacking. Heinrich spared the old man, as promised, and fled with his army back to safety.

Heinrich’s next effort was in late May, when he called up 140 knights, a strong force of native knights and mounted militia, and 2,000 foot soldiers who probably followed a somewhat different route through the lakes, rivers, and swamps in small boats. As the mounted troops approached Gardinas through a thick forest, they came upon four scouts. Killing three, they captured the fourth and learned that nobody was aware of their approach. Quite the contrary. Vytenis was feeling so secure that he had sent the scouts as part of a group of fifty men to set up a hunting camp. Heinrich annihilated the advance force, then crossed the Nemunas River. Leaving twelve knights and the foot soldiers to guard the boats, he struck through the countryside, sparing neither age nor sex. The raiders took 700 prisoners, and of the dead they left behind ‘only God knows the number’.

These victories made Heinrich von Plötzke a strong candidate to replace the deceased grand master, Siegfried von Feuchtwangen, but his bid for election failed, perhaps because of his controversial seizure of Danzig and West Prussia, perhaps because of his domineering ways. In any case, he was unacceptable to the electors in Germany, who chose Karl von Trier as their new leader. Heinrich von Plötzke was given the consolation office of grand commander and, later, marshal.

Karl von Trier was forty-six years old, relatively young to hold the highest office in the military order. However, Karl spoke fluent French, and his Latin was reputedly so good that even his enemies loved to hear him speak. Consequently, he was the ideal figure to deal with the French pope in Avignon. This was an important consideration, since the order was under investigation by papal officials. As a corollary to giving the papacy primary attention, Karl wanted to reduce the tempo of war against Lithuania. He also wanted to make peace with King Ladislas of Poland and to resolve the troubles in Livonia. These were not policies popular among the knights in Prussia. Karl’s only chance to persuade them to accept his point of view was to go east and speak to them in person.

After completing a tour of Prussia, inspecting the order’s resources and discussing various possible strategies, the new grand master ordered the attacks on Gardinas suspended. He had decided to concentrate all his forces against Samogitia in the hope of securing a shorter land route to Riga and putting an end to devastating pagan attacks on Kurland and Semgallia.

In April 1313 Karl von Trier loaded ships in Königsberg with supplies, war equipment, and men, and sent them to the Nemunas River via the Baltic Sea and the Kurland bay. Other forces he sent overland to Ragnit. Despite the misfortune of losing at sea four knights, 400 men, a vast amount of supplies, and building materials for a new castle, Karl marched his forces thirty miles upriver, where he built a bridge of boats across the stream. When the bridge was completed, priests led a great procession and held a festive mass before the workmen crossed over to build a great castle of logs and earth that Karl named Christmemel. It was to be the base for his attacks into the heart of Samogitia.

Not long afterward Heinrich attacked the castles farther upstream. He personally led the assault on Bisen, using a bridge of boats to bring siege weapons to bear, but without success. Meanwhile, the castellan of Ragnit sailed farther upriver to Welun. His plan was to assault the walls directly from a large warship, but a strong burst of wind drove his ship ashore as he approached the castle. Surprise was lost, and only after desperate fighting was the crew able to get the vessel back into midstream and return to Ragnit.

Vytenis was stirred into action by these attacks. He was especially worried about the large warship, because it threatened every riverside castle along the Nemunas. Therefore he ordered one of his vassals to destroy it as quickly as possible.

The Lithuanian commander ordered 100 cavalry to make their way to Ragnit, while 600 warriors went down the river in a hundred small boats. These forces were observed by scouts and lookouts, but they moved so quickly that they arrived at Ragnit ahead of all efforts to send a warning. The rest of the plan was not so easy to accomplish. Although the pagans found the great warship anchored in midstream with only four bowmen on board, the vessel was so huge that they could not scale the sides (especially while the archers were shooting them down one after the other). In fact, the attackers, who could not easily retreat upstream, might have been massacred if the archers had been reinforced. But at that critical moment the Lithuanian cavalry prevented a sortie from Ragnit. Soon thereafter the Lithuanians cut the anchor rope and the ship glided down the river, followed by the host of small boats. When the vessel ran aground, the Lithuanians were able to set it ablaze. The grand master did not replace the warship. Apparently he had concluded it was not as useful as hoped even in summer; and in winter such a large vessel would be icebound and probably crushed by the ice floes.