the Emperor Frederick II., who in virtue of his pretended universal dominion bestowed the land which Konrad might give for the use of the Knights, and in addition all territory which the Order could win by conquest.
The work of conquest and conversion began. A crusade against Prussia was announced throughout Europe. From Poland alone went twenty thousand men to assist in the labor.
Soon, however, Konrad wished to define his sovereign rights more explicitly. The Order insisted on complete independence. In 1234 a false[1] document was prepared and presented by the Grand Master to Pope Gregory IX. as the deed of donation from Konrad. The Pope accepted the gift, gave the territory in fief to the Order, informed Konrad, August, 1234, of the position of the Knights, and enjoined on him to aid them with all means in his power.
Konrad of Mazovia was in an awkward position. He had brought in of his own will a foreign power which had all western Europe and the Holy See to support it, which had, moreover, unbounded means of discrediting the Poles; and these means the Order never failed in using to the utmost.
In half a century after their coming the Knights, aided by volunteers and strengthened by contributions from the rest of Europe had subjugated and converted Prussia, and considered Lithuania and Poland as sure conquests, to be made at their own leisure and in great part at the expense of Western Christendom.
This was the power which fell at Tannenberg.
The German military Order of The Teutonic Knights, or Knights of the Cross, was founded in Palestine in 1190 to succeed an Order of Knight Hospitallers, also German, which was founded about 1128.
- ↑ Dzieje Narodu Polskiego Dr. A. Lewicki, p. 82, Warsaw, 1899.
