The Knights of the Cross/Translator's Note

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.

The period embraced in "The Knights of the Cross" is one of the most dramatic and fruitful of results in European annals,—a period remarkable for work and endeavor, especially in the Slav world.

Among Western Slavs the great events were the Hussite wars and the union of Lithuania and Poland. The Hussite wars were caused by ideas of race and religion which were born in Bohemia. These ideas produced results which, beyond doubt, were among the most striking in European experience. The period of Bohemian activity began in 1403 and ended in 1434, the year of the battle of Lipan, which closed the Bohemian epoch.

The marriage in 1386 of Queen Yadviga to Yagello, Grand Prince of Lithuania, brought Poland into intimate relations with all the regions owing allegiance to the Lithuanian dynasty, and made it possible to crush at Tannenberg the Knights of the Cross, whose object was the subjection of Poland and Lithuania, and a boundless extension of German influence in eastern Europe.

Bohemian struggles made the religious movement of the next century possible in Germany. The Polish victory at Tannenburg called forth that same movement. Had the Knights of the Cross been victorious at Tannenburg and found the East open to conquest and their apostolic labor, it is not conceivable that the German princes would have taken action against Rome, for such action would not have been what we call practical politics, and the German princes were pre-eminently practical. But when the road to the East was barred by Polish victory there was no way for Germany to meet Rome but with obedience or a new religion; hence the German Reformation. Luther himself declared that he could not have succeeded had Huss not lived before him. Huss gave the intellectual experience needed by the Germans while Polish victory threw them back upon Germany and thus forced the issue between Roman and German tendencies.

The history ending at Tannenberg is of profound interest, whether we consider the objects sought for on each side, or the details involved in the policy and the acts, diplomatic and military, of the two opposing forces.

The struggle between German and Slav began long before the Knights of the Cross were in existence. Originating in earlier ages in what undoubtedly was mere race opposition, it grew envenomed at the beginning of the ninth century, after the restoration, or more correctly, perhaps, after the creation of the Western Empire in 800, in the person of Charlemagne. This new Roman Empire was German; there was little of Roman in it save the claim to universal dominion. This pretension to empire was reinforced greatly by association with the Church, whose unbending resolve it was to bring all men to the doctrine of Christ, that is, to bring them within its own fold and jurisdiction.

The position of peoples outside the Empire and the Church, that is, people independent and not Christian, who refused the rule of the Empire and the teachings of the Church, was that of rebels against Imperial authority, and dupes of Satan.

The position was aggravated intensely by the fact that those peoples were forced to accept political subjection and the new religion together. Political subjection meant that the subordinated race went into contempt and inferiority, was thrust down to a servile condition; the race lost land, freedom, language, race institutions, primitive ideas, and that aboriginal philosophy which all races have without exception, no matter what be their color or what territory they occupy.

North Germany from the Elbe eastward is Germanized Slav territory; the struggle to conquer the region between the Elbe and the Oder lasted till the end of the twelfth century, the process of Germanizing lasted during centuries afterward. Those of the Slav leaders in this region who were of use in managing the people and were willing to associate themselves with the invaders retained their positions and became German. The present ducal houses of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Mecklenburg-Schwerin are of this kind, Slav in origin.

After the fall of those Slavs between the Elbe and the Oder the German (Roman) Empire and Poland stood face to face.

Omitting details for which there is no space here it suffices to state that the early leaders of the Poles saw at once the supreme need in their own case of separating religion from other questions. The first historic ruler of Poland, Miezko I., 963-992, married a Bohemian princess and introduced Christianity himself. He forestalled the Germans and deprived them of the apostolic part of their aggressive movement, and one great excuse for conquest.

Being Christianized the Poles maintained themselves against the Germans, but as they were Christian they felt obliged to extend Christianity to places embraced within their territory or connected with it.

Along the Baltic from the Vistula to the Niemen lived the Prussians, a division of the Lithuanian stock. The Lithuanians are not exactly Slavs, but they are much nearer to the Slavs than to any other people, and are among the most interesting members of the great Aryan race. In their language are preserved verbal forms which are more primitive than those retained in Sanscrit, and with the single exception of the Gaelic of Ireland and Scotland it has preserved in actual use the most primitive forms of Aryan speech, though its grammatical methods are not so primitive as some used in the Gaelic.

The Prussians had a great love for their own primitive racial religion and for their independence; this religion and this independence they considered as inseparable. They inhabited a portion, or what was considered a portion, of the territory of Konrad, Prince of Mazovia, who tried to convert them; but instead of succeeding in his attempt he met with failure, and the Prussians took revenge by invading that part of his territory which was purely Polish and Christian, and which was known as Mazovia, immediately south of and bordering on Prussia, which, as stated already, touched on the Baltic and extended from the Vistula to the Niemen. The chief town of Mazovia was Warsaw, which became afterward the capital of Poland.

Among measures taken by Konrad to convert Prussia was the formation of a military order called the Brothers of Dobryn. These Brothers the Prussians defeated terribly in 1224.

In 1226 Konrad called in the Knights of the Cross to aid in converting the stubborn Prussians, and endowed them with land outside of Prussia, reserving sovereign rights to himself, at least implicitly. The Knights, however, intended from the very first to take the territory from Konrad and erect a great German State in the east of Europe on Slav and Lithuanian ruins. They had no intention of performing apostolic labor without enjoying the highest earthly reward for it, that is, sovereign authority.

Before he had received the grant from Konrad, the Grand Master of the Order obtained a privilege from 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.

1. Dzieje Narodu Polskiego Dr. A. Lewicki, p. 82, Warsaw, 1899.