Despite having emerged after the Temple and the Hospital, both the fame of the Teutonic Order and its importance are comparable to these. However, one can fall into the error of considering that the Teutonics were the only agent responsible for the Christian advance in the northwest, or that this area was the only area of action of the order.
In this article, the first of the two that will deal with the subject, issues such as the foundations of the power of the Order, who were part of it, what was its internal and territorial organization, etc. For its part, the second will deal with the political development and the military operations in which the order was involved.
It is said that at first they had to face a huge horde of natives but after a while no one was left who did not bow their necks before the yoke of faith.
Petrus Von Dusburg, c.1330. (Seward, 2004: 115)
The beginnings of the Order.
First of all, it will be necessary to point out what the first steps of the Order were, although as has been pointed out, its purely political development will correspond to the following article.
the beginnings of what would later become the Teutonic Order are located early 12th century. In 1127, according to traditional sources (Seward, 2004: 117), the Germans would found the hospital of Santa Maria in Jerusalem. After the debacle of 1187, it seems that the remains of this institution would be joined in 1190, during the siege of Acre, to a field hospital created by German merchants. However, the possible continuity of this hospital in Jerusalem is not accepted by all (Demurger, 2005: 49). Be that as it may, the new hospital received privileges and autonomy from the Hospitallers, all granted by Celestine III in 1196. But only three years later, after the confirmation of Pope Innocent III, the order ceased to be a welfare institution to become an authentic military order (Palaces, 2017: 375). The military order of the brotherhood of the “Teutonic Knights of the Hospital of Santa Maria de Jerusalem” was born.
The first steps of the order were difficult, among other things because the Order of the Hospital of Saint John sought to obtain the guardianship of the Teutonic Knights. These pretensions were finally abandoned in 1258. Over time, the Order was formed, putting together a structure that will prove efficient and effective. Therefore, what is exposed below will reflect the reality of the order during the thirteenth, fourteenth and much of the fifteenth century, when the decline of the Order was already total.
Internal organization and administration.
The Teutonic Knights, like the rest of the military orders, welcomed within them a mix of laity and clergy. Entry into the order was free and voluntary, at least in principle. The order was made up of knights, sergeants and priests. The brother-knights would be a minority, but they filled the positions of responsibility. Over time, the knights had to be German as well as of noble origin and they were identified because they wore the black cross on their white tunic. Second, the sergeants, called Haldbrüder (half-brothers) were distinguished by the color of their mantle, gray instead of white, as well as by wearing a three-armed truncated cross (a T) on their robes, instead of the black cross. They were entrusted, generally, agricultural tasks and their number was superior to that of the brother knights. Finally, the priests were in charge of maintaining piety and wore a white robe longer than that of the brothers. On the other hand, there were other groups of people who, without being part of the order, performed various functions for it, such as the diener, servants who were often part of the garrison.
Regarding the hierarchy internal, was similar to that of other orders such as the Templars. At the head of the order was the Hochmeister, the grand master, a figure who, despite the existence of mechanisms that allowed his dismissal, acted in practice as a true monarch. His election was carried out through a mechanism dedicated to eliminating influence peddling, with a total of twelve brothers choosing the new Grand Master. Grosskomtur (Grand Commander), ordersmarschall (supreme marshal), splitter (hospitable), tressler (Treasurer) and the trapper (fourth master) formed together with the Hochmeister the great council (Seward, 2004: 118). The most important administrative body would be the General Chapter, which met (at least theoretically) in September of each year. It brought together representatives from each of the ballet (bailiffs), as well as the five superior officers mentioned and the grand master (Nicolle, 2011: 16).
However, it was necessary creation of other lower administrative structures, covering the national, regional and local level. The great provinces of the Order were directed by a Landmeister, that is, a provincial governor; the main provinces of the order (after its expulsion from the Holy Land) were Prussia, Livonia and Germany. On the lower level were the ballet (bailiffs), responsible for the regional administration in Germany and for the domains of the order in Europe. Finally, at the local level we find the Komtureis (parcels) in charge of a Komtur. In Prussia, for example, each encomienda had to provide one hundred armed men for the campaigns that the Order launched.
Life within the Order: righteousness, piety and war.
Life of any member of the Order was regulated by the rule, instituted more or less definitively until the middle of the 13th century. Everything dictated in it was respected in the most meticulous way possible, which gave rise to the lifestyle of the brothers was extremely austere. His possessions were meager, consisting basically of his sword and the order’s uniform. But the deprivations did not end there, but they had to sleep fully clothed and, as “warriors of Christ” that they were, they had to go to pray the office in the middle of the night. In relation to that absolute sobriety, they were also prohibited from wearing the family coat of arms.
Emphasis was also placed on the piety of these military christi. religious observance practiced by the order, it was a copy of the one carried out by the Dominicans. They took communion up to seven times a day and meat was banned for much of the year. As if this were not enough, the brothers practiced self-flagellation, which took place on Fridays. On the other hand, the Order maintained the cult of the Virgin Mary, as well as saints such as Saint George; in fact, the Order marched to war under its insignia, which accompanied that of the Hochmeister.
On the other hand, the Order also paid attention to issues that had to do with the warsince he was the modus operandi of the Teutonics in order to expand its territory, and to expand the Christian faith. In fact, “conversion was equivalent to submission by violence” (Demurger, 2005: 302).
The Teutonic way of waging war.
If the Order aspired to be successful in warfare, training and equipment had to be of the highest possible quality. Regarding the development of military skills, the information is really scarce, but it is considered that this training “was similar to that of other military orders and reflected the evolved military arts in the Empire” (Nicolle, 2011: 49). As for the equipment, it seems that it was not until the fourteenth century that an attempt was made to establish a certain uniformity. The Order imported large amounts of material from many parts of Europe, particularly from the German zone; although it is remarkable that as the cities established in Prussia developed, the artisans residing in them began to supply military equipment to the Order. The development of war in Europe in the thirteenth centuries, and especially fourteenth and fifteenth, was no stranger to the Teutonics, so that their teams evolved according to the general trend. Finally, it should be noted that, to the best of its ability, the Order quickly adopted the primitive firearms that appeared on the European war scene.
The Teutonic Order fought the enemies of the Christian faith in the Middle East and Hungary, but their main battlefield was Prussia, Livonia and the Lithuanian lands. The war in the north had nothing to do with what these gentlemen had experienced in the East. The lands to the northeast of the Empire were inhospitable places, inhabited by multitudes of peoples who had maintained their traditional ways of life apart from the social and economic trends that were developing in the medieval West. Especially the peoples of the regions of Livonia and Prussia. In the case of the Lithuanians, they would be unified by Mindaugas in the middle of the 13th century, by the end of the century it was already a consolidated territory, which had an important warrior aristocracy and that would not make things easy for the Order.
Campaigns in the Baltic area ran from the early 13th century until well into the 15th century. The weather rigors region of conditioned seriously the way they developed the campaigns. The winter snows chilled men and animals, while favoring transit over the frozen water, which often became mass graves as the ice cracked. However, sudden winter thaws or summer floods could isolate the Order’s contingents. There were no roads or trails, and ambushes were frequent.
In order to conquer and pacify these lands, the Teutonics resorted to a hard fight without quarter. Especially in Prussia, war that between natives and the Order was marked by brutality used by both sides. The land, dotted with small wooden forts, was conquered by overcoming the resistance opposed by the natives and substituting control of those sites, reinforcing those whose importance was key. That fight ended with great successes on the part of the Order, which recruited as soldiers those who, once conquered, would colonize that territory.
While in Prussia the Teutonic Knights managed to advance and take over territory, in Livonia they always found themselves more exposed and less secure. On the other hand, as will be reported in the next article, the war against Lithuania consisted of a long struggle of attrition; Annual campaigns penetrated Lithuanian territory with the intention of repeating what had been achieved in Prussia, but the advances were never as desired. Despite its successes and failures, it must be borne in mind that the Baltic terrain was anything but conducive to knights. Although their strength was ultimately limited by not fighting in the open, the knights were still far superior to their rivals, even though they almost always fought outnumbered.
Fortifications and control of the territory.
As already mentioned, during the conquest of Prussia,…