The Crusaders Episode 2 The Teutonic Knights
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00:00A land of mists and of mystery, where the cross had yet to reach.
00:09Beyond the pagan frontier of medieval Europe, where the old gods confronted the new.
00:16Christian crusades, but far from the deserts of Palestine.
00:21A wilderness of forests, ice and snow, the Northern Crusades.
00:27The crusades didn't only go east to the Holy Land, they went northeast to the Baltic.
00:34Lost castles, last stands, no quarter asked nor given.
00:39It's a war with no holds barred.
00:43A war nearly two centuries long, fought by one of the most powerful military orders.
00:49One of the most important religious military orders.
00:54A savage war and an inhuman trade.
00:58These people had been slaves of the devil, they are now the slaves of God.
01:05For God and for the empire, they bore the cross of Christ.
01:10The brothers of the German hospital of St. Mary, who became the order of the Teutonic Knights.
01:17The Black Cross of the Teutonic Knights is one of the icons of the Christian crusaders in the medieval period.
01:31They were one of the major military orders in the latter years of the crusader era.
01:37They came into being almost a century after the taking of Jerusalem in the first crusade.
01:42When the first of the new military orders were formed, the Templars and the Hospitallers.
01:53The Teutonic Order is quite different from either the Templars or the Hospitallers.
01:57They did combine the Hospitaller and military functions at an early time in their history.
02:03The Templars and Hospitallers recruited from numerous nations across medieval Europe.
02:08Mostly in France, Italy and England.
02:11But the Teutonic Order was different.
02:14The brothers of the German hospital of St. Mary.
02:19The Teutonic Knights are the only order that are known as a Teutonic order, as a German order.
02:26The others are not known as French orders or whatever.
02:30The German order rose to eventually become one of the most powerful of the Middle Ages.
02:37They grew into far more than just a military order.
02:40It became virtually an independent, autonomous state.
02:46The zenith was in the 15th century, by which time the whole of Europe had changed so much
02:52since the days of the original Kingdom of Jerusalem.
02:55The written word, trade and gunpowder have brought new ideas, emergent nations and new alliances.
03:05Inevitably, today the word Teutonic evokes images of the worst of the 20th century.
03:11The imagery and romanticised legends of the order were appropriated by the Nazis
03:16to enhance the myth of their Aryan heritage.
03:21It would be wrong to put into this period some of the racist attitudes that developed later
03:29and which are sadly still around.
03:31It was not like that.
03:33On the other hand, the German knights, and they were mostly Germans,
03:37did see themselves as superior.
03:40But this was on the basis of culture and religion and so on.
03:44During the Second World War, places associated with this mythical Aryan past
03:50became targets for the enemies and eventual overthrowers of the Third Reich.
03:55And so, much of what remained of the original Teutonic order was lost.
04:01It's the job of professional historians to see back beyond the associations of the 20th century,
04:07to find what factual evidence remains,
04:10and build up an unbiased picture of this period in European history,
04:15especially in the order's historical heartland.
04:19The Teutonic order created a very modern and rich structure here in Prussia,
04:29in the Baltic region, as an eternal enemy of the Polish state,
04:33of the Polish kingdom in the Middle Ages.
04:36And this history was so fascinating.
04:39The wars, the battles, diplomacy, politics.
04:44So, when I decided what to do in my life,
04:52it was simple for me to be a historian of the Teutonic order,
04:57to know its history and to explain why such a small group of knights
05:05built such a powerful state in medieval Europe.
05:13It's a vast and complex area of study,
05:17but historians now are bringing dedicated research
05:21to shed new light on the real story of the Teutonic knights.
05:26The order's origins lay in the Third Crusade.
05:29Through the 1180s, the Muslim leader Salah ad-Din
05:33had steadily regained most of what the first crusaders had established in Palestine
05:38just over 80 years before, including the holy city of Jerusalem.
05:44At the Battle of Hattin,
05:46Salah ad-Din had also virtually destroyed the main force of the original military order,
05:51the Knights Templar.
05:53In 1189, the three most powerful monarchs in Western Europe
05:57set out to retake the holy places for Christianity.
06:02Richard I, the Lionheart of England,
06:05Philip II of France,
06:08and Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor of Germany.
06:13The crusade reversed many of Salah ad-Din's gains,
06:16though Jerusalem itself was not recaptured.
06:19Worse, Frederick Barbarossa died before he even reached the Holy Land,
06:24causing many of his leaderless soldiers to return home.
06:29But not all.
06:31Some continued on to honour their commitment and their dead emperor.
06:37You have the survivors of the German part of the Third Crusade
06:43reach the Holy Land and attach themselves to the French and to the English.
06:49Because they are too few and now too disorganised,
06:53too vulnerable to really operate on their own.
06:55It is they who become the Teutonic Knights after the crusade.
07:03In the newly recaptured crusader city of Acre,
07:07these knights established themselves
07:09as the brothers of the German hospital of St Mary.
07:13From the end of the 12th century and through the 13th,
07:17the brothers received sanction from the Pope and thus became the Teutonic Knights.
07:23Like the Templars and Hospitallers before them,
07:26the order created its own rule,
07:29the guide and laws by which its brothers had to abide.
07:34And in this lies a factor that helps historians today
07:37in researching the Teutonic Knights,
07:39by comparison with the other two major military orders.
07:43They were a much more literate order than the other two,
07:45perhaps because they started off using the vernacular.
07:49Being almost entirely of one nationality,
07:52the Teutonic Order wrote down its rules and histories in vernacular German,
07:57the language of the everyday brothers,
08:00rather than the more exclusive language of the clergy and papacy, Latin.
08:05Although the other two start off with their documents in Latin
08:08and then translate them into vernacular,
08:10the Teutonic Order appear to have started with material in the vernacular
08:14and then translated it into Latin for wider distribution.
08:17So they produced more material than either the Templars
08:21or the Hospitallers did for their own brothers to read,
08:23saints' lives and histories.
08:26The Templars never wrote down their own history
08:29and the Hospitallers' legend made outrageous claims.
08:33The Teutonic Knights, by contrast, were more realistic.
08:37They didn't make up the myths like the Hospitallers did,
08:40they stuck to recent history.
08:43So in that respect, they come across as being quite a rational order
08:45rather than one that invents miracles,
08:49although their stories do have miracles in them,
08:51but they feel like an order, much more has their feet on the ground.
08:55The city of Acre was the capital of the Crusader state
08:59for almost exactly 100 years,
09:02until once more resurgent Muslim forces recaptured most of the Holy Land.
09:08Acre was the last city to fall.
09:11Most of the remaining members of the other military orders,
09:14including the Templars and Hospitallers,
09:17went down fighting on the wall,
09:19but not the Teutonic Order with their perhaps more rational ethos.
09:26All the military orders who existed in Acre
09:29at the time of the final siege and the fall of Acre,
09:32they all fought and the city fell.
09:35We know, however, that the Teutonic Knights' headquarters,
09:38which they called their convent,
09:40actually negotiated its surrender to the victorious Muslims,
09:45the Mamluk army, which had broken in,
09:47and the survivors left.
09:50So in a way, the Teutonic Knights went out with a bit of a whimper
09:54rather than a bang.
09:56However, once Acre had fallen and the survivors had reached Cyprus,
10:01which is where most of them went,
10:03they all had the same problem,
10:05what to do now?
10:07All the military orders had to reassess and look for new purpose,
10:12new frontiers where they could defend Christendom or expand it.
10:16For the Teutonic Order,
10:18the distant east had been reluctantly abandoned.
10:22Its new goal lay much closer to its homelands in Germany.
10:27The Crusades were not just a phenomena of the Middle East.
10:31Crusading didn't just go east to west.
10:35It didn't just go east to the Holy Land.
10:37It obviously went south into what is now Spain and Portugal.
10:41But the most dramatic of these other Crusades
10:45were the Northern Crusades in the Baltic.
10:50The Northern Crusades, which took place around the Baltic,
10:55were concentrating on converting the pagan peoples
10:59around the Baltic to Christianity,
11:01because they hadn't been converted to Christianity,
11:03and taking over valuable territory.
11:07The Baltic region in the Middle Ages,
11:10relative to the parts of Europe it bordered,
11:12was a wilderness.
11:14Settlement had changed relatively little since Viking times.
11:18Society was tribal and clan-based.
11:22Yet running through the region were important trading routes.
11:27From the Baltic Sea, all the way along the great rivers,
11:31to the Black Sea and far beyond,
11:34furs, ivory, silver, gold.
11:38The neighbouring and expanding kingdoms of Denmark,
11:41Sweden, Poland and the German Empire
11:44had all made inroads into the Baltic,
11:47at least since the 12th century.
11:50The Christian cross was a convenient banner.
11:54They're not trying to recover territory that had been Christian.
11:58They're trying to take over territory that wasn't Christian,
12:01and they say, win it for Christ.
12:03Or at least, the Latin Church will take it over,
12:06or to be a little bit more blunt,
12:07the merchants of the Baltic area will take it over,
12:10because these areas opened the door
12:14into the vast trade routes of Central Asia.
12:17For the military orders and the church,
12:20what made this easier to contemplate
12:22was that the Baltic peoples,
12:24so close to Western Europe,
12:26were still far from Christian.
12:29Paganism survived in north-eastern Europe
12:34for a very, very long time,
12:36well into the 14th century.
12:39The eastern shoreline of the Baltic,
12:42that's what's now the Baltic States,
12:44but also Finland,
12:45this was pagan territory,
12:48well into the 12th century for all of it.
12:53And then it becomes the new crusade frontier.
12:57So the crusade idea, as it were,
13:00got a second wind, a second life in the Baltic.
13:05The distant Holy Land was forgotten,
13:07with so many unrepentant pagan states
13:10so close to the European heartland.
13:13And so the crusading idea was reborn.
13:17The northern crusades went on for much, much longer
13:22than the Holy Land crusades did.
13:25They became a way of life.
13:27Almost self-perpetuating.
13:30And in fact,
13:31the northern crusades went on for so long
13:35that they structured the whole
13:37of the eastern Baltic around them.
13:40So what exists today,
13:43the states which exist today,
13:45and the tensions which still exist today,
13:48can be traced back to the northern crusades.
13:53One state in the region
13:54did not survive to this day as a sovereign nation.
13:58When the Teutonic Knights were aiming to expand towards the Baltic,
14:02Prussia lay directly in their sights.
14:05It's now associated with Germany.
14:07But in the 13th century,
14:09Prussia was ferociously independent.
14:12And it bordered Christian Poland.
14:16The Prussians, the original Prussians, are not Germans.
14:20They are another Baltic people.
14:22The Poles didn't seem to be able to cope
14:25with these very fierce pagans on their northern frontier.
14:30So they invited in western knights to help them.
14:34The Teutonic Knights filled this gap.
14:37The Poles would have liked to have got their hands on Prussia.
14:40They brought the Teutonic Order in to help them,
14:43which possibly was a mistake.
14:45All the main military orders
14:47faced the problem of being dependent on existing nations.
14:52For the Templars, always under the eye of the French kings,
14:55it led to their downfall.
14:57The hospitalers perhaps learned from this
14:59and based themselves on the island of Rhodes.
15:03Prussia was the opportunity the Teutonic Knights
15:06had been waiting for to establish their own territorial state.
15:11Start from scratch if you can.
15:14This they were able to do in the Baltic area
15:18by getting a castle, one castle, from the King of Poland
15:23because he needed their help.
15:25But on the agreement, only on the agreement,
15:29that they were independent in this one castle.
15:32And it was from this one castle
15:34that the whole of the Teutonic Knights state,
15:37which was quite big eventually, grew.
15:42The fortress of Chulm was on the Polish frontier
15:45facing the pagan Prussians.
15:48The Teutonic Knights took over the castle
15:51and began an extraordinary period
15:53in the history of the military orders.
15:55Over more than 100 years, the Teutonic Order built up
16:01and consolidated what became virtually
16:03an independent medieval state.
16:06Far enough from the German emperor
16:08and even further from the Pope that they could do as they pleased.
16:14Some of what remains of the Teutonic state
16:17can still be seen across the modern-day Baltic countries.
16:21A state required a capital
16:24and in modern-day Poland, Malburg Castle
16:27is a reminder of the Teutonic Order's strength and influence.
16:32For any Teutonic warrior who had seen the Holy Land,
16:35he would have thought the warfare in the Baltic
16:38drastically different.
16:41The environment, the ecology of the area was so different
16:46that you can imagine warriors who had some experience
16:51of the Middle Eastern Crusades having a certain mindset,
16:55finding themselves in the Northern Crusades,
16:58trying to use this method of warfare
17:01and then having very quickly to modify it
17:04because that world is totally, totally different.
17:10We have an image of crusaders fighting in armour
17:13in the arid terrain of the Middle East.
17:16Water supplies for armies was a constant problem.
17:20The military orders of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
17:22spent decades learning how to campaign in such conditions.
17:28Transfer this to the Baltic area.
17:31There are large areas not only of Martian forests
17:35but also of heathland, relatively dry, relatively open.
17:40That's the bit you can get through.
17:43But you only have to go relatively few kilometres,
17:47you find yourself in another forest
17:48and then you have to hack your way through it.
17:50You can't really make a road
17:52because by the time you come back
17:54to do a similar campaign the following year,
17:56it's all overgrown again.
17:58So a large part of these raiding campaigns
18:00were just hacking your way through the undergrowth.
18:04Their opponents too were different to those
18:07the crusaders faced in the Holy Land,
18:09where war was propagated on both sides by knights
18:13or at least nobles and professional soldiers.
18:16Wars in Prussia and Livonia were against an enemy
18:20who didn't play by the same sort of rules
18:22as the Arabs and the Turks.
18:24The Turks and the Arabs
18:27were from the same sort of warrior background.
18:30When you're fighting against the pagan Prussians,
18:32they are warriors,
18:33but they don't mind burning their captives alive
18:36on their horses, for example,
18:38and the Muslims wouldn't do that.
18:39So it's more of a war with no holds barred
18:43and a much more violent war.
18:45than that in the Kingdom of Jerusalem
18:48and the other crusader states.
18:51In Palestine, warfare had been dominated by cavalry.
18:55The military orders came into being as horsemen
18:58who could protect the pilgrim routes from Western Europe,
19:01ranging long distances along the frontiers,
19:05protecting against enemy raiders.
19:07In Prussia though, this role was reversed.
19:12In the Baltic, the kind of warfare
19:13that they were conducting
19:15was really just a development of raiding.
19:20A classic strategy of the Middle Ages
19:23was what was known as a chevauchee,
19:24which is like a flying column of cavalry and its supports
19:28used to raid and put pressure on a population.
19:33And of course, that's what happened
19:34in the Baltic states a lot.
19:37The chevauchee was used to great effect
19:40by English troops during the Hundred Years' War,
19:43where they would penetrate for miles
19:44through enemy-held territory,
19:46plundering and causing chaos as they went.
19:50For the Teutonic raiders,
19:51it was the ideal way to destabilise Prussia
19:55and to gradually take it over.
19:58But it also brought another commodity
20:00beyond just looted food or silver.
20:04This is a form of economic warfare.
20:07You're destroying the enemy's crops.
20:10You're capturing their livestock.
20:13You're capturing their people.
20:14So in fact, taking captives as slaves
20:19was very, very important for both sides.
20:23So we have these Christian knights,
20:25members of a military order on slave raids.
20:30It's a mistake to think warfare is ever clean
20:33when it's being done under a religious banner
20:36by not just the Teutonic Order,
20:37but several neighbouring Christian kingdoms.
20:40For us, looking back now,
20:42it's even harder to accept.
20:46The Northern Crusades look much more like colonialism
20:49than the Crusades to the Holy Land,
20:52because those that go there are going to trade
20:57and take slaves to exploit the area.
21:01They did settle there.
21:03They did set up holy sites there to bring in pilgrims,
21:07but it's not land that's traditionally been Christian.
21:10And the emphasis was on getting resources out
21:14for the benefit of Germany, Denmark, Sweden.
21:20Since the Knights Templar became the first military order,
21:24the technology of war had also changed considerably.
21:28Technology and technological advantage and superiority
21:32was as key to medieval warfare as it is to modern warfare.
21:37In the early days of the Kingdom of Jerusalem,
21:40knights fought dressed little different to Viking warriors
21:43with virtually the same weapons.
21:46The Teutonic Knights of the early 15th century
21:50were unrecognisable for the original Templars.
21:52And you're talking about people with full plate armour,
21:56exactly the kind of armour that was worn at Agincourt,
21:59for example, and heavily armoured horses as well,
22:05conducting warfare usually against much more lightly armoured opposition.
22:10As with all the military orders,
22:12knights, the main armoured soldiers who comprised
22:15the Teutonic Order's core battlefield troops,
22:19were relatively few in number.
22:22Yet in the Northern Crusades,
22:24the armoured knight on horseback
22:26could never dominate in the terrain of the Baltic.
22:29They needed the support of infantry.
22:32Who were these infantry?
22:34Well, some of them were sergeants, brother sergeants.
22:37Others were mercenaries.
22:39Others were low status associates of the order.
22:45There were also levies from the towns
22:49under the control of the orders.
22:52But one kind of weapon gave infantry even more killing power.
22:59In the 15th century, there's no doubt that
23:03infantry becomes stronger in relation to cavalry.
23:07And because they possess more missile weapons
23:10and they're capable of standing their ground.
23:12Here again, technology was on the side of the Teutonic Order.
23:17This was not just their castle building activity
23:21and the speed and effectiveness of that.
23:24It was also things like siege machines
23:27and almost above all else, crossbows.
23:31English longbowmen had proved time and again
23:34that disciplined infantry armed with missile weapons
23:37could dominate the medieval battlefield.
23:40Yet the longbow took years of training to master.
23:44Whereas the crossbow was simpler to use.
23:47It was a level that almost anyone could learn to use
23:50relatively quickly, like the firearms of future centuries.
23:55To understand the role of the crossbow armed infantry,
24:00it might be good to see them as a sort of early form of musketeer.
24:05These are not repeating weapons.
24:08It takes time to reload, span, aim, shoot.
24:13So you need teamwork.
24:14You have a front rank, you have loaders.
24:17It's also not like longbow archery
24:20and certainly not like the archery techniques
24:23of Asia and the Middle East,
24:25where they are shooting rapidly
24:27and they shoot and they shoot and they shoot.
24:29It's not like that with the crossbow.
24:31It's one aimed shot, punchy, hugely powerful,
24:36takes time to reload.
24:38Prussia was steadily overwhelmed
24:41and its lands came under Teutonic control.
24:44It was a process of penetrating as far as they could
24:47through the Prussian interior,
24:49then establishing small forts,
24:51bases from which they could operate.
24:54These were often in remote areas
24:57with building materials in short supply.
25:01The first castles, if they were in an important location,
25:05would then be rebuilt with more permanent materials,
25:09sometimes stone, but most typically of brick
25:14because this is a low-lying marsh area.
25:16You don't find much good stone.
25:20Brick isn't normally thought of as being a medieval material,
25:24even though it had been around since Roman times.
25:26And perhaps still less for building castles.
25:30But bricks could be either made in country
25:33or transported quickly on the rivers.
25:36It meant forts could be thrown up quickly
25:38by teams of bricklayers,
25:40almost like sandbag defences in 20th century war.
25:45Those forts and castles gradually grew in scale
25:49until they reached the size of the magnificent remnants
25:52that we have now in Poland and elsewhere.
25:56It took many years and huge resources,
25:59but Malbork Castle, the Teutonic Knights' capital,
26:03was steadily built up and expanded
26:05into one of the greatest fortresses
26:07for any of the military orders.
26:10As Malbork is the biggest brick castle in the world,
26:16the Teutonic Order started construction works
26:21at the end of the 13th century
26:23and finished in the first half of the 15th century,
26:26so more than 120 years.
26:30More than six million bricks were used
26:32to build this castle.
26:35It's about 20 hectares.
26:37And this castle in the Middle Ages
26:39was never taken by the enemy forces.
26:43It's staggering to think, though,
26:45that just 75 years ago,
26:47this exceptional castle lay in ruins.
26:51As the Second World War drew to a close,
26:54Malbork Castle was used as a stronghold
26:57by Nazi German troops.
26:59It overlooked the railway the Germans were using
27:02to evacuate troops from the Russian front.
27:05This and the castle's associations
27:07with the Nazis' Teutonic propaganda
27:10meant that the Red Army spared little thought
27:13for Malbork's value to posterity.
27:16But since the war, a huge project
27:18saw the rebuilding of Malbork
27:20to something like its original architectural grandeur.
27:24Archaeologists and historians
27:26worked together to interpret
27:28what they found in the process.
27:30Karol Polzowski is a curator at Malbork Castle.
27:36The Teutonic Order engineers took the decision
27:39to build the first part of the castle, this part.
27:46He's exploring here the vaulted chambers
27:48beneath the High Castle,
27:50the first parts built by the Teutonic Knight engineers.
27:54We are at the moment in the oldest part
27:57of the castle in Malbork.
28:01The construction work started here about 1278, 79.
28:07Even this far underground,
28:09the walls have been partially restored.
28:11But this reveals detail
28:13of some of the original building materials.
28:15We see here the original stones from the 13th century,
28:19original bricks from the same period.
28:23But here we can see the modern bricks
28:27from the 20th century
28:29used during the reconstruction works.
28:33The Teutonic Order didn't want Malbork
28:35to be simply a stronghold.
28:37They were a religious order,
28:40so it was also their convent,
28:42the entrance to the castle's church,
28:45the Order's cathedral,
28:46contained a reminder that as soldiers of God,
28:50their original spiritual home
28:52still lay in the far-off Holy Land.
28:55This is the Golden Gate,
28:57the main entrance to the Teutonic Order's church
29:00in the castle of Malbork.
29:04I am of the opinion that this gate, Golden Gate,
29:09this is the gate to the Teutonic Order.
29:12The Golden Jerusalem for the Teutonic Knights,
29:16it was very important to connect their new capital,
29:23convent, capital, castle with Jerusalem
29:28because the Teutonic Order,
29:30it was the order of the St Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem.
29:35Only members of the Teutonic and military orders
29:38or important churchmen or dignitaries
29:41could pass here into the Church of St Mary,
29:45the main church in the Teutonic Order's state in Prussia.
29:51This is the most important place
29:53in the Teutonic Order castle in Malbork.
29:57And this is the most important church in the Teutonic Order.
30:01The first construction works were done
30:04in the 1280s of the 13th century.
30:08And during the 14th century,
30:11the church was richly decorated.
30:16Very little survived the Second World War
30:19or the Red Army's occupation in the aftermath.
30:22But it's thought that the Order's holy relics
30:25were stored or displayed here,
30:27including a tangible link to the crucifixion itself.
30:31The most precious, the most important was the fragment,
30:36the piece of the True Cross.
30:38We know that the Teutonic Order received it
30:41from the King of France in the 70s, 80s of the 14th century.
30:46It was so important to have relics in the churches
30:51because the people need to contact with the saints,
30:57with the objects connected,
31:01with the passion of the Christ.
31:04And it was important to collect for pilgrims
31:09who arrived here in the 14th and 15th century.
31:13Pilgrims were vital to the Order
31:15as they brought with them money in the form of donations.
31:20And in return, the brothers showed off the Order's relics.
31:24They included nobles from across Europe,
31:27including in 1390, Henry Bolingbroke,
31:31future King Henry IV of England.
31:34The raison d'etre of the Order, as they saw it, was holy war.
31:39And pilgrims brought more than just their money.
31:42Teutonic Order is known also as a military organisation.
31:47We can see here two long swords
31:51from the first half of the 14th century.
31:56These swords were found nearby the castle
31:59and they bear the telltale inscriptions of religious warriors.
32:03This sword is very interesting
32:06because we can see here the Jerusalem Cross.
32:10This is the symbol of the Crusades.
32:13Crusades, of course, Palestine.
32:15But in the 14th century, the knights coming here
32:21from Western Europe were crusaders too.
32:25They fought in the name of Christ
32:29against the pagans, against the Lithuanians.
32:32Lithuania was the next country
32:34that the Teutonic Order coveted and invaded.
32:39Like the Prussians, the Lithuanians too were Baltic pagans.
32:44Their land as well was of wilderness,
32:47even further from Western Europe.
32:49But beyond lay the trade routes to Russia and to Asia.
32:53The distances were greater
32:55and so one kind of transport became even more important.
33:00A striking feature of the Teutonic Knights
33:02and their campaigns in the Baltic
33:05was how they used rivers in order to move more rapidly.
33:13The main rivers of the Baltic states area, northern Poland,
33:18were, and to some extent remain, major arteries of trade.
33:24At the time of the Northern Crusades,
33:26they were also major arteries of warfare.
33:30Raiding, counter-raiding, supplying your forces in the field.
33:36In winter, the rivers freeze, even the big ones.
33:41So you end up with a smooth, icy, reasonably accessible route
33:47from where you are deep into the enemy territory.
33:51The order pushed north and east from Prussia
33:54and historians and archaeologists can now trace the routes they took.
34:00That is why most of the castles which survive, the locations, were on rivers.
34:06They're not just scattered around.
34:08This was to secure the rivers, secure crossing points of the rivers,
34:14secure junctions of rivers.
34:16These castles were put in places with great thought.
34:21But some of the castles the order built in Lithuania are more than just ruins.
34:27Trakai Castle was built by the Teutonic Knights and has survived intact.
34:32Today, it's one of Lithuania's most important heritage sites.
34:37Like Malbuk, it was built from stone and brick
34:41and it was both a stronghold and an administrative centre for the order.
34:46The campaign lasted decades.
34:49The fighting was bitter, bloody and, above all for the Teutonic Knights, expensive.
34:55They needed a breakthrough.
34:58In the 1380s, the order launched an offensive that led to what one historian now regards
35:04as the possible beginning of the end for the Northern Crusades.
35:09In 1384, the Teutonic Knights recaptured a castle at Konas in what's now central Lithuania.
35:17The confluence of the two rivers here, the Nerys and the Nemunas,
35:21makes the site strategically vital.
35:24Control this spot and you control movement to and from the Baltic Sea
35:29on two axes for hundreds of miles inland.
35:33Both sides knew this was a position they had to hold.
35:37The order immediately began rebuilding the defences
35:41while the Lithuanian leader, Grand Duke Vytautas,
35:45set about laying siege to try to take the castle before it was completed.
35:51The Teutonic Knights called the new stronghold after their patron figure,
35:55the Virgin Mary.
35:57Marian Verdi.
35:59Its exact site has been lost for centuries.
36:03The peninsula on which it stood has been fought over many times since.
36:08The partially ruined Konas castle that still stands today
36:11dates from the period after Marian Verdi.
36:15And the remains of earlier fortifications can also still be seen.
36:20It's a confusing puzzle of battlefield archaeology.
36:24Konas historian Vytenis Salmonaitis has researched the matter for many years.
36:37The castle was besieged by a large army of the Vokic Order,
36:41which had a lot of combatants.
36:43Ritters also came from England.
36:47There were many fierce battles.
36:50For more than one week,
36:52the castle was defended by about 400 defenders.
36:57Only 36 survived.
37:00And the castle was taken.
37:0320 years later, when Vytautas turned the tables
37:07and besieged the Teutonic Knights' Marian Verdi,
37:10the fight was no less bloody.
37:14The siege opened with hails of missile fire from both defenders and besiegers.
37:19Both sides used traditional siege engines
37:22and notably many new gunpowder weapons.
37:27The Teutonic Knights rained crossbow bolts on the Lithuanians.
37:30But this would be a battle settled by a savage artillery duel.
37:36A chronicle describes that the Lithuanians lay great store in a large trebuchet,
37:41which hammered down huge stone walls on the incomplete brick walls.
37:47The Teutonic gun commander responded
37:49and himself laid the shot which destroyed the trebuchet.
37:53His victory was brief.
37:56The commander was beheaded by a Lithuanian shot.
37:59The Teutonic Knights fought on a while longer,
38:02but in the end, they were forced to surrender the castle.
38:05The Grand Duke was victorious and became Vytautas the Great.
38:11The castle of Marian Verdi disappeared from history, until perhaps now.
38:17Galbut, Galbut, Galbut, Jojo.
38:20I think Galbut is the name of the castle.
38:22Galbut, Galbut, Galbut.
38:25In the future, Marian Verdi will continue to find this place.
38:30Because it was a large walled city.
38:33And the remains of it will not be found here.
38:38It must have been left behind, it must have been left behind.
38:41So far, we have not found anything very special.
38:46But in 2015, it was very, very destroyed.
38:55Time and tides mean that the riverbanks here are different now
38:59than in the late 14th century.
39:01It's likely there was a small island or natural cove
39:05which the order exploited for its castle.
39:08The place would be ideal for reinforcement from its ships,
39:11which likely brought in every single brick used to build the defences.
39:16The low water in 2015 revealed clues.
39:24We are now in this small area.
39:27It is about 500 meters from the city of Kaunas.
39:32There are many old castles in the river Dugne.
39:36We managed to find even one almost intact castle.
39:44Perhaps this castle is from the city of Kaunas, which is not far away.
39:51But we can leave the comparison.
39:55This castle is really from Prussia.
40:00In Prussia, it was built around the same time
40:06to house some kind of a church.
40:10And we know that when the Marienwerder was built,
40:15the castle was brought here from Prussia.
40:19This is a standard castle.
40:23It is one foot long.
40:27We can compare the two castles.
40:30This is a castle from the west,
40:32and this is a castle from the east.
40:34Let's have a look.
40:36For example, their width is the same.
40:41Their height is the same.
40:46And from the back, it looks the same.
40:51All in all, there is hope that this special historical site will be found someday.
41:05The Battle of Marienwerder is perhaps the greatest Lithuanian victory.
41:10Never again would the Teutonic Knights hold the rivers here at Kaunas.
41:15Never again would they penetrate as far east into Lithuania.
41:20Within the German Empire and the Papacy,
41:23questions were asked of the order
41:25and its seemingly endless war in the Baltic.
41:29By the time you get to the late 14th century,
41:33with the conversion of the big, powerful Duchy of Lithuania to Christianity,
41:40there's no more pagans to fight, but the Teutonic Order is still there.
41:43And it will be there for several more centuries.
41:46So what's it for?
41:47Its resonditra seems to have disappeared.
41:51Its main, initial resonditra has disappeared.
41:55No more pagans to fight.
41:57Just over 20 years later, some 50 miles west of Kaunas,
42:03the fate of the order was sealed.
42:06The Germans called it Tannenberg.
42:09The Poles, Grunwald.
42:11The Lithuanians, the Zalgiris.
42:14Teutonic troops faced an opposing allied Lithuanian and Polish army.
42:20The Teutonic Knights overreached themselves
42:23and were destroyed at the Battle of Tannenberg
42:25by a combination of Poles and Lithuanians and so on.
42:29But that was really a political misjudgment as much as a military failing.
42:34The Teutonic Army was defeated.
42:37It was a crushing victory for the Lithuanians and Poles.
42:41It was the greatest ever inflicted on the Christian military order.
42:46The end of the Teutonic Order is at the hands of fellow Christians.
42:52In 1929, the Teutonic Knights as a military order
42:57were once and for all dissolved.
42:59Yet the order remains today as a charitable organisation in many countries.
43:05With the benefit of hindsight and history,
43:08it can perhaps be seen in perspective.
43:12I think that the Teutonic Order is still important
43:17in the religious life of the people in Western Europe.
43:23For Polish people, Teutonic Order is not only an eternal enemy.
43:32Now we can say that Teutonic Order
43:36is an element of the medieval life in Europe.
44:06TEUTONIC ORDER
44:10TEUTONIC KNIGHTS
44:14TEUTONIC ORDER
44:18TEUTONIC KNIGHTS
44:22TEUTONIC ORDER