The Teutonic Knights' Bloody Crusades—and Their Ultimate Downfall

Founded during the Third Crusade, the Teutonic Order was a Catholic religious institution whose members took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience while fighting to defend and expand Christendom. Less well-known than the Knights Templar, the Teutonic Order was originally established to care for sick and wounded German crusaders during the Siege of Acre in 1190. It evolved into a military order of warrior monks dedicated to fighting enemies of the Catholic faith.

The Teutonic Knights, as its warrior members were called, went on to build one of the most formidable military forces of the Middle Ages, leaving a legacy that continues to haunt Europe today.

The Teutonic Order first began to expand in Galilee, where it acquired fertile land and built a series of impressive castles. However, they were prevented from expanding further in the area by the larger Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller orders. “Their expansion, ultimately, takes the [Teutonic] order to the Baltic, where [they] rise to the zenith of their power and shine as an institution,” says Aleksander Pluskowski, author of The Black Cross: A History of the Baltic Crusades.

The Baltic Crusades were a series of military campaigns around the Baltic Sea in which Catholic armies sought to conquer some of Europe’s last pagan societies, convert their populations to Christianity and bring their territories under Catholic control. Some campaigns also targeted Eastern Orthodox Christians, including those in the Russian city-state of Novgorod. Although the Baltic Crusades began in 1147 with a campaign against a pagan Slavic group called the Wends, the Teutonic Knights didn't join until 1230, when a crusade was launched against the Prussians.

“Ostensibly, they were about religion, but the Baltic Crusades were ultimately about land, trade and power as well,” says Pluskowski. “Many of these pagan societies are decentralized, small-scale and ruled by local families and quite easy for the Knights' war machine to overwhelm them.”

The Knights also brought in German settlers to pacify and exploit their conquered lands. They gained control of key ports and trade routes in the Baltic region, from which, as skilled administrators, they generated great wealth.

The Teutonic Order grew in power. “In 1237, the Teutonic Knights take over the lands of a local military order in Livonia called the Sword Brothers and this turns them into the dominant military force in the Baltic,” says Pluskowski.

The Knights’ war machine operated on many different levels. It was part army, part business and part state, powered by professional knights, cutting-edge weaponry, networks of fortifications and vast economic muscle that overwhelmed opponents.

Support from the pope and the Holy Roman Empire helped with the order recruit fighters, secure funding, establish legitimacy and protect itself against rivals. “The order’s strong centralized command structure reduced faction fighting," explains Pluskowski.

Then there were the knights themselves: heavily armored, strictly disciplined professional fighters whose main tactic was a coordinated cavalry charge. Their infantry was armed with the crossbow because, according to Eric Christiansen’s The Northern Crusades, “its accuracy and penetration power shortened the odds considerably in the battle between the many and the few.”

Malbork Castle, the world’s largest castle measured by land area, served as the "nerve center" for the order. Its brick walls still dominate the town that bears its name in northern Poland, as they did in 1309. “Malbork Castle is a massive symbol of the order’s rule, legitimacy and divine mission,” says Pluskowski. “It’s the best example of medieval soft power I know of.”

The Knights built extensive stone and brick fortifications, which they equipped with defensive weapons including ballistae (bolt throwers) and giant catapults. They also shrewdly used the environment and the seasons to their advantage. According to Pluskowski, they were known for launching winter campaigns, taking advantage of frozen rivers and marshes to move their heavily armored forces across otherwise impassable terrain and catch their enemies by surprise.

Nonetheless, the Teutonic Knights weren’t able to defeat all of their enemies. Those who survived were able to copy, adapt and counter. According to Pluskowski, the pagan Lithuanians consolidated their power and formed an alliance with Poland. “Instead of facing two small, divided enemies, suddenly they’re facing a unified superpower," he says.

When Lithuania adopted Catholicism in 1387, the Teutonic Order lost the propaganda war. “The order tries to argue this is just a sham conversion, but people stop believing them and this plays a big part in undermining its legitimacy, recruitment and finances,” Pluskowski says.

The Knights increasingly relied on expensive and unpredictable mercenaries to garrison their castles. In July 1410, the armies of the Teutonic Order and a Poland-Lithuanian alliance clashed near Grunwald in what is now Poland. Led by the Grand Master of the the Teutonic Knights, the order was outnumbered almost two-to-one but managed to hold its own for a large part of the battle. That is, until the Lithuanians staged a feigned retreat—a tactic they likely learned from the Mongols.

The Grand Master led his knights in a charge after his retreating foes. The knights were then surrounded and killed. “The order promote a story that they were betrayed by one of the knights who lowers his banner in a signal of surrender, which prompts a retreat which turns into a rout,” says Pluskowski. “Whatever the truth is, they can’t disguise the fact that the Grand Master and all the other knights present at the battle are killed and thousands of the infantry are captured.”

The Polish-Lithuanian army failed to take Malbork Castle, but the Teutonic Order’s war machine had been smashed, never to be rebuilt. Still, its legacy remains. During World War II, both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invoked the history of the Teutonic Order for propaganda purposes. Today, the Baltic region remains a geopolitical flashpoint, with tensions between NATO and Russia echoing centuries-old struggles for control of the region.