Baltic Warfare: The Northern Crusades Theatre
The Baltic theatre of the Teutonic Order’s military history was, the most distinctive of the Order’s campaigns. The Latin West had, by the early thirteenth century, developed a sophisticated tradition of field warfare based on heavy cavalry, the mounted charge and the close-order infantry formation. The Baltic theatre required the Order to adapt that tradition to a strategic environment of rivers, marshes, lakes and dense forests; an environment in which the standard Latin field army was often of limited use. The Order’s adaptation of Latin military practice to the Baltic theatre was, the Order’s most important single military achievement, and it was an achievement that took more than a generation to consolidate. The Order learned to combine infantry, cavalry and river warfare; to take and to defend brick-built fortresses; to organise supply convoys along the great rivers; and to integrate the German settlers into its military operations. The lessons of the Baltic theatre, in turn, fed back into the Order’s broader practice in the Latin West.
The Baltic theatre can be divided into four sub-theatres. The first was the Prussian theatre: the long, intermittent war against the pagan Prussian tribes that ran, with varying intensity, from 1230 to 1283. The second was the Lithuanian theatre: the even longer, intermittent war against the pagan Lithuanian state that ran from the 1240s to 1386. The third was the Russian theatre: the war against the Orthodox Russian principalities, especially Novgorod and Pskov, that ran from the 1240s to the 1470s. The fourth was the maritime theatre: the war at sea, and on the great Baltic waterways, that was a constant feature of the Order’s campaigns.
The Prussian Theatre
The Prussian theatre was the first of the Order’s Baltic campaigns, and it was, the most important. The Order’s campaign in Prussia was, in operational terms, a long, slow process of conquest: the Order built a network of brick-built fortresses along the Vistula and the Frische Haff, established a line of communication through the lower Vistula, and conducted a series of annual campaigns against the Prussian tribes in the interior.
The Order’s tactics in Prussia were those of a small, professional, heavily armoured force operating in difficult terrain. The Order’s principal field formations were the knight-brother units, supplemented by the Prußen — Prussian auxiliaries recruited from among the Christianised tribes — and by German settlers. The most serious crisis was the great Prussian uprising of 1260–1274, triggered, in part, by the Order’s attempt to incorporate the Prussian lands more closely into the monastic state. The Order suffered several serious defeats, the most catastrophic being the battle of Durbe in 1260. The Order was saved, by the loyalty of the German settlers and by the strategic patience of the Grand Masters.
The Lithuanian Theatre
The Lithuanian theatre was, a continuation of the Prussian theatre, on a larger scale. Lithuania was, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a substantial political entity capable of raising armies of tens of thousands of men. The Order’s principal opponents in the Lithuanian campaign were the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, and the principal field armies were the great Reisen — the annual campaigning season, which ran from the spring thaw to the autumn freeze. The Order typically campaigned in two directions: east, into Samogitia and the Lithuanian heartland; and south, into the Polish-Lithuanian marches.
The Lithuanian campaign ended abruptly in 1386, when the Grand Duke Jogaila accepted baptism into the Latin rite, married the Polish queen Jadwiga, and became King of Poland. The conversion of Lithuania was a political disaster for the Order, which lost its principal strategic rationale for the campaign, but it was not a military defeat. The Order continued to campaign against the Orthodox Russians on the borders of Lithuania, and the Order’s army was still capable of major operations at the end of the century.
The Russian Theatre
The Russian theatre was, in operational terms, a war of fortresses. The Russian principalities of Novgorod and Pskov were, by the standards of the age, very heavily fortified. The Order’s principal Russian campaigns were, in consequence, sieges: the Order’s army would approach the Russian frontier, lay siege to a Russian fortress, and either take the fortress by storm, blockade the fortress into surrender, or, in the most common outcome, withdraw at the approach of the Russian field army.
The most important single Russian campaign of the Order’s history was the siege of Pskov in 1240–1242. The siege was a turning point: the Order’s army, which had been operating deep in Russian territory, was forced to withdraw in the face of a Russian counter-offensive that culminated in the battle on the ice of Lake Peipus in 1242. The Order’s Russian frontier was, for the next two centuries, stabilised on the line of Lake Peipus and the Narva river.
The Battle on the Ice, 1242
The battle on the ice of Lake Peipus, fought on 5 April 1242, is one of the most famous engagements in the Order’s military history. The battle was fought on the frozen surface of Lake Peipus, on the boundary between the Order’s Livonian territory and the Republic of Novgorod. The Russian army, under Alexander Nevsky, attacked an Order army that had been operating in the Russian frontier zone.
The battle is conventionally described as a Russian victory. The Russian chronicles report that the Order’s army was driven onto the ice of the lake, that the ice gave way under the weight of the Order’s cavalry, and that a large part of the Order’s army was drowned. The modern debate has questioned the catastrophic scale of the defeat, but the engagement remains, in the popular and the academic imagination, a striking example of the limits of the Order’s Russian campaigns. The Order’s army was, on any reading, driven from the Russian frontier, and the Order’s Russian campaigns were, confined to a much smaller scale of operation.
River Warfare
The Baltic theatre was, a theatre of river warfare. The Order’s principal operational areas in Prussia, in Livonia and in Lithuania were all dominated by rivers: the Vistula, the Memel, the Dvina, the Narva, the Niemen. The Order built and maintained a substantial fleet of river boats — flat-bottomed vessels, known as Schifflein in the Order’s records — that were used to move supplies and personnel along the Vistula, the Memel and the Dvina. The Order also built a network of river fortresses, equipped with wharves and ship-sheds, that supported the Order’s river operations.
The Order’s river warfare capability was, one of the most distinctive features of the Baltic campaigns. The Order was one of the most sophisticated practitioners of river warfare in the Latin West in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the Order’s experience in Baltic river warfare was, in significant part, the foundation of the Order’s later success in siege warfare and in the construction of convent castles along the principal rivers of Prussia and Livonia.
Naval Operations
The Baltic theatre was, in addition to a theatre of river warfare, a theatre of naval operations. The Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga and the Frische Haff were all important operational areas. The Order built and maintained a fleet of Baltic warships — the so-called Ordensschiffe — that were used to patrol the Baltic coast, to escort merchant convoys, and to support military operations. The Order’s principal naval bases were Danzig, Elbing, Königsberg and, in Livonia, Reval and Riga. The Order’s naval capability was, however, always subordinate to the Order’s land forces; the Order was, throughout its history, primarily a land power.
The Significance of the Baltic Theatre
The Baltic theatre was, both the foundation of the Order’s military reputation and the theatre of the Order’s ultimate military defeat. The Order’s adaptation of Latin military practice to the Baltic was, in significant part, the foundation of the Order’s success as a territorial prince in Prussia and in Livonia, and the Order’s military architecture in the Baltic — the convent castles, the brick-built fortresses, the river lines — was, the most distinctive military achievement of the Latin West in the high middle ages. The Baltic theatre was also, however, the theatre in which the Order was, ultimately, to be defeated — at Tannenberg in 1410, in the Thirteen Years’ War of 1454–1466, in the Polish-Teutonic War of 1519–1521.
Sources
- Biskup, Marian, and Gerard Labuda. Dzieje zakonu krzyżackiego w Prusach. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Morskie, 1986.
- Boockmann, Hartmut. Der Deutsche Orden: Zwölf Kapitel aus seiner Geschichte. Munich: Beck, 1981.
- Hjorth, Poul, ed. Henrici Cronicon Lyvoniae. Copenhagen: Copenhagen University, 1962.
- Urban, William. The Teutonic Knights: A Military History. London: Greenhill, 2003.
Related Reading
For the major field battles fought in the Baltic theatre, see the cluster on major battles and the articles on the battle on the ice of Lake Peipus and the siege of Pskov. For the broader context, see the pillar on military campaigns and the history of the Teutonic Order. For the Order’s fortifications, see the cluster on convent castles and the Livonian branch.