MILITARY SYSTEM OF THE BALTIC CRUSADER STATES

 

The military system of the crusading armies that participated in the Livonian and Prussian crusades, as well as the resulting military systems of Medieval Livonia and the State of the Teutonic Order, illustrate the fundamental strategic weakness of the Medieval feudal order of Europe, and the tactical limitations of its martial institutions, as well as highlighting the strengths of these institutions. Strategically, crusading armies were generally stronger than those that occupied and held the conquered territories because crusading armies generally represented a temporary coming together of material and manpower resources that were directed toward a specific goal. If there was a strong leader, European crusading armies could be formidable, but lack of strong centralized leadership, aristocratic rivalry, and/or reckless and self-defeating impetuosity of subordinates or allies often led to devastating losses. Even when successful, the zeal for such adventures was generally short-lived, and those that remained in an area conquered by crusade were small in number and faced a difficult task in consolidation of gains made during the crusade, in no small part due to the fact that the indigenous population had been severely brutalized and neighbors were often hostile. The military orders were ostensibly supposed to ameliorate some of this by providing a disciplined core around which crusading armies could be built, and perhaps more importantly, to help hold territory once the seasonal campaigners returned home. However, as we have seen in the Gallery and History pages, military orders like the Brothers of the Sword/Livonian Order could prove to be just as ill-disciplined and uncooperative as their secular allies. In Livonia, this situation became acute when the Brothers of the Sword became great landowners themselves, at which point they often became rivals of the other feudal principalities of the crusader state (i.e., the Catholic Church, the secular landholders, citizens/townsmen, and the Christianized indigenous population). In Medieval Livonia, the Sword Brethren/Livonian Order came to enjoy control of far more territory than its erstwhile overlord—the Archbishopric of Riga—and the other bishoprics in Medieval Livonia—Courland, Dorpat, and Ösel-Wiek—which meant that the Order often simply ignored its overlord and operated according to its own interests. For their part, the other principalities did much the same thing. Riga and Dorpat often cooperated because Prince-Bishop Albert of Riga had founded the bishopric of Dorpat himself, its first prince-bishop was Albert's own brother, and from its founding Dorpat was administratively conjoined with Riga. However, over time the prince-bishops of Dorpat became increasingly independent-minded, and they did not always cooperate with the archbishops of Riga in secular matters (landholding disputes and military operations). The Bishopric of Ösel-Wiek was founded by the Papal Legate, William of Modena, after the Teutonic Order (which was at that time engaged in conquering Old Prussia) intervened on behalf of the Danish crown to force the Sword Brethren to relinquish the territories it had occupied in Danish Estonia, and therefore the Bishopric of Ösel-Wiek was usually beholden to the interests of the Teutonic Order, once again despite the fact that it was technically subordinate to Riga. The Bishopric of Courland was, for most of its history, aligned with the Sword Brethren/Livonian Order, although it too was sometimes led by independent-minded prince-bishops. Interspersed throughout the territories of the bishoprics and those of the Sword Brethren/Livonian Order were the landholdings (fiefs) of a minority of secular crusaders who had chosen to settle in Livonia or Estonia after their stint as crusaders, rather than to return to their places of origin. These landholders held their fiefs in fealty to the lord in whose territories their landholdings lay, although the more successful of these secular vassals sometimes had acquired fiefs in different regions and held them in fealty to different lords (a prince-bishop of one of the bishoprics, the Sword Brethren/Livonian Order, the Danish crown, and/or the Teutonic Order). Additionally, the Duchy of Estonia was technically a fief of the Danish crown for most of its history, although due to its remoteness from Denmark and various turmoils in which the Danish crown was embroiled during this time period, the Duchy of Estonia was organized as a semi-independent viceroyal domain, which is a fancy way of saying that its governors/viceroys and landholders usually looked to their own interests and only vaguely recognized the suzerainty of the Danish crown. These interests were often aligned with those of the Sword Brethren/Livonian Order, and as we have seen on the Gallery and Livonian History pages, the Sword Brethren even occupied the Duchy of Estonia for a brief period (later, after the Duchy was sold to the Teutonic Order, the loyalties of the local Danes seem to have been split between the Teutonic Order, the Livonian Order, and the Hanseatic League). The Christianized indigenous Livonian and Estonian chiefs, while few in number, had by virtue of their willing conversion to Christianity and military support of the Livonian Crusade managed to set themselves up as feudal lords whose loyalties often depended on where their landholdings were located (similar to the other secular landholders). Because they were generally loyal to the crusaders, these lords and their subordinates were often despised by the conquered indigenous population, almost all of whom had been reduced to the status of serfs (and forcibly converted to Christianity). Although the crusaders and especially the various landholding elites of Medieval Livonia sometimes called up mass levies of these serfs to serve as auxiliaries, the quality of these levies was often very low and their enthusiasm to achieve the goals of their lords even lower. Thus, it was usually up to the Christianized natives to supply the crusaders with auxiliaries, called turcopoles (German, turkopolen)—a term derived from the practices of the crusades to the Holy Land, where many of the Christianized auxiliaries were ethnic Turks. Finally, the towns and cities of Medieval Livonia were largely populated (in the case of new foundations like Riga) or re-populated (in the case of Livonian towns that had been conquered and expanded) by non-aristocratic German colonists (burghers)(or Danish colonists in parts of Estonia), most of whom were in some way or another involved in the trade and craft guilds that made up the body politic of Medieval European cities. The wealthiest of merchants may also have been rural landholders, but the majority were focused on the commercial interests that had attracted them to Livonia or Estonia (even before the arrival of the crusaders, the towns of the Livs and Ests were prosperous and involved in the northern trade routes that led from Russia to Scandinavia, Germany, and beyond). The purpose of the trade and craft guilds were esentially to give the non-aristocratic citizens a kind of collective-bargaining strength vis-à-vis their social superiors (the prelates of the Church and the aristocratic landholders). Although the interests of the colonist citizens were sometimes aligned with those of the crusaders and great landholders, they were sometimes not, especially when it came to commercial interests. The ability of the urban colonists in Livonia to look after their own interests increased when several Livonian cities joined the Hanseatic League in the late thirteenth century, and by the time of the formation of the Livonian Confederation (ca. early fifteenth century CE) the representatives of the Hanseatic cities stood as the equals of those of the Catholic Church and Livonian Order in the Livonian Diet. Indeed, by the fourteenth century, the Hanseatic League had begun to hire Teutonic Order and Livonian Order knights as mercenaries/marines. This balkanized socio-political structure, with the sometimes conflicting interests of its constituent elements, often obscured the rights and obligations of the various pillars of society in Medieval Livonia (as it did in other parts of Medieval Europe), and after the initial successes of the Livonian Crusade the state of Medieval Livonia often lacked the resources to successfully compete against more-populous and more-centralized powers like the Lithuanian Federation, the Kingdom of Poland, the Kingdom of Sweden, the Republic of Novgorod, and the Grand Duchy of Moscow. 

 

In addition, the military orders were often only able to field small contingents that were sometimes dwarfed by the secular crusaders, and therefore their overall contribution to the strategic strength of crusading armies would have been severely limited. The Livonian Crusade generally did not attract the large numbers of crusaders that the Prussian Crusade attracted, and therefore the largest armies mentioned in the annals of the Livonian Crusade were usually approximately 20,000 men (and these represented exceptional musters), but the typical size of a Medieval Livonian army was only between 3,000 and 10,000 men. In such armies, the contingents of the Brothers of the Sword/Livonian Order were often quite small (usually in the double-digits for knights, with perhaps twice the number of men-at-arms, vassals, and/or indigenous auxiliaries). To illustrate, in about the mid-thirteenth century, it has been estimated that the Livonian Order had a total strength of 110 knights, 500 men-at-arms, 700 turcopoles (Christianized indigenous auxiliaries), 400 secular vassals (knights and men-at-arms), and 5,000 levy infantry (serfs armed primarily with improvised weapons). This means the total army strength of the Sword Brethren/Livonian Order in the mid-thirteenth century was 6,710 combatants. It is highly unlikely that these forces were ever gathered in any one place at any one time, so the actual field strength of the average forces committed by the Sword Brethren/Livonian Order to any given campaign would have been much smaller. The Archbishopric of Riga, together with the Bishopric of Dorpat, likely equaled this strength, while the other bishoprics, the Duchy of Estonia, and the cities would have fielded substantially fewer forces. Considering the relative lack of manpower resources, the various elements of Medieval Livonian society became increasingly reluctant to contribute troops to risky crusading endeavors because any losses would have been keenly felt. This meant that, even after the conquest of Livonia and Estonia was complete, the armies of Medieval Livonia were still heavily reliant on influxes of crusaders from other parts of Europe in order to carry out major offensive operations (the constituent elements of Medieval Livonian society were usually more willing to cooperate in defensive operations). Most of these crusaders came from Germany, and most were interested in fighting the pagan Lithuanians, which is probably why most of the offensive wars of Medieval Livonia after the early thirteenth century were fought in Samogitia (the border wars with Orthodox Novgorod and Pskov were, after the debacle at the Battle of Lake Peipus, mostly characterized by low-intensity raiding). As had happened in the Holy Land, however, there was sometimes a conflict of interest between the strategic goals of the local forces in Medieval Livonia and the seasonal crusaders who all-too-often had the mentality that they were there to do a short stint of service that would allow them to gain plenary indulgences for their sins (the Catholic Church drummed up support for the Crusades by offering to forgive the sins of crusaders in return for faithful service), and it should be noted that many responded to the call to crusade simply for the opportunity to rape and plunder indigenous populations and return home with booty. Sometimes, the local forces of Medieval Livonia were forced to launch ill-considered campaigns simply because a newly arrived contingent of crusaders had demanded to be provided with an opportunity to fight pagans, infidels, or schismatics—if they were not indulged, they often made trouble for their hosts in various ways (e.g., idle drunkeness, molestation of the female population, picking fights amongst themselves and with the locals).

 

The strategic situation for the Prussian Crusade and the State of the Teutonic Order was similar, although the Teutonic Order fortuitously managed to secure much better terms from the Holy Roman Empire (in the Golden Bull of Rimini) and the Papacy (in the Golden Bull of Rieti) in regard to its political settlement of the conquered territories—although the State of the Teutonic Order was considered an Estate of the Holy Roman Empire, and its bishoprics were technically subordinate to the Papacy, in reality the State of the Teutonic Order was fiscally and administratively independent. The fact that it had large landholdings outside Prussia, in the Holy Roman Empire and various parts of the Mediterranean, also meant that it could draw on greater manpower and fiscal resources than the feudal lords of Medieval Livonia, and the greater wealth and power of the Order gave it quite a bit of leverage when enforcing its feudal rights within Prussia, firmly subordinating the secular landholders, the ecclesiastical landholders, and the townsmen to its authority. It still relied on infusions of seasonal crusaders for major offensive operations, but its own forces made up a more significant proportion of such armies, and its strong relationship with both the Holy Roman Empire and (later) the Hanseatic League meant that it could often rely on meaningful cooperation with these allies. The Teutonic Order directly administered the lion's share of the fiefs in Prussia, it had a legal right to the majority of the material proceeds of the ecclesiastical sees within Prussia (giving it significant fiscal leverage over these sees), and despite the move toward membership in the Hanseatic League of several cities within the State of the Teutonic Order (Danzig, Elbing, Thorn, and Königsberg), the Order managed to develop a mutually beneficial relationship with the League (i.e., the Order provided the muscle to protect and expand the commercial interests of the League, and the League assisted the Order with fiscal subsidies). The expansion of the State of the Teutonic Order to include large parts of Medieval Livonia through its assertion of its status as overlord of the bishoprics of Courland and Ösel-Wiek, as well as the Duchy of Estonia, only served to make it more powerful, but its participation in the internal affairs of Medieval Livonia did remain hampered by the internal rivalries that characterized that state. In particular, the Livonian Order remained a fractious vassal, and ultimately the refusal of the Livonian Order to support its Teutonic Order overlord is considered to be one of the reasons the Teutonic Order was defeated at Grunwald (nicely illustrating how the internal divisions of the Baltic Crusader States was often self-defeating), and the Archbishopric of Riga often tried to assert its authority via the official Catholic Church hierarchy (the Teutonic Order was technically outside this hierarchy), but its resources were dwarfed by those of the Order and thus its leverage was often minor (not to mention the fact that it had developed serious rivalries with the other feudal states in Livonia). By point of comparison to the Livonian Order, in the mid-thirteenth century the Teutonic Order had in Prussia 400-700 brother-knights, 5,000 half-brothers/gray-mantles, 3,000 secular vassals, 1,500 ecclesiastical vassals, and 2,000 urban militia. To this can be added an unknown number of Baltic turcopoles, as well as brother-knights and men-at-arms from other Tuetonic Order bailiwicks who occasionally traveled to Prussia to campaign with their brothers-in-arms—in 1250 CE there were 400 Teutonic Order brother-knights in Palestine, 200 in other parts of the Mediterranean (Cilicia, Italy, and Sicily), 400 in Germany, and 180 in Livonia (although the numbers of men-at-arms, secular vassals, ecclesiastical vassals, and turcopoles drawn from these places would have been far less significant than in Prussia). This gives us a base total army strength for the Teutonic Order in Prussia of between 11,900 and 12,200 men (plus an unknown number of turcopoles, levies, and visiting brother-knights at any given time), although as with Medieval Livonia these would never have been gathered all in one place at any one time. Due to the relative popularity of the Prussian Crusade, including its strategic value to the Holy Roman Empire, the crusading armies in Prussia were often larger than in Medieval Livonia—the massive army that assisted the Teutonic Order in quelling the Great Prussian Uprising was exceptional, major Teutonic Order armies actually averaging between 10,000 and 15,000 men.

 

Tactically, the constituent elements of Medieval Livonian armies were basically the same as those in the rest of feudal Europe, and they thus provide a microcosm that helps us see the tactical strengths and limitations of the feudal military system. The consituent elements were knights, men-at-arms, peasant/serf levies, and native auxiliaries. The highest-prestige institution of any Medieval European army was the knight. It was the military institution that embodied the socio-political superiority of the aristocracy, and its members were, for most of the Middle Ages, mostly landholding nobles. As a fighting system, each knight required a large amount of material resources and time to train, and this meant that knights generally made up a very small proportion of the combatants in Medieval European armies. The armies of major royal domains and feudal principalities, as well as those of the crusades, achieved the largest numbers of knights by recruiting them from over a large area (throughout a kingdom, region, or all of Europe). Knights were usually equipped and trained to fight as heavy cavalrymen, and their warrior ethos usually stressed an impetuous charge with lance followed by close combat with sword, axe, mace, and flail. During the period covered by this gallery and these notes (ca. twelfth and thirteenth centuries) knights could and sometimes did dismount to fight as infantry, but this was rare in the field and was most successful in siege warfare. Knights were very aware of their status as elites, and their personal honor often trumped tactical considerations (i.e., they held bravery to be more important than strategy and tactics, and they sometimes accorded enemies who they perceived to be members of their own class dignities and considerations that could sometimes foil the best-laid plans). In the crusades, there was an added element of ideology that, once again, often trumped strategy and tactics (e.g., there was a widespread belief amongst crusaders that an army that was true to its faith in God would achieve victory over pagans, infidels, or schismatics through divine intervention, and that strategy, tactics, and diplomacy were tools of those who were weak in their faith). The result of all this was that the strength of the Medieval knight as a fighting system often lay in small-scale engagements and siege warfare, while large-scale field battles were often disastrous when fought against opponents with a fluid fighting style (e.g., the hit-and-run tactics of horse archers), disciplined infantry, and/or massed infantry bowmen—the impetuosity of the knights meant that they could often be tricked into pursuing enemy cavalry that appeared to be fleeing, only to result in the knights becoming disorganized, worn out, and isolated in small pockets where they could be surrounded and cut down, while a precipitous headlong charge into the teeth of disciplined infantry (especially those with spears or pikes) or mass volleys of arrows (most knights rode unarmored horses) often resulted in a blunted charge and heavy casualties. The increasingly heavy armor of knights throughout the Middle Ages only partly compensated for this (especially if the knight lost his horse to bow-fire and was forced to fight on foot encumbered by his heavy armor). Added to this was the fundamental weakness of cavalry fighting in rough terrain. This limitation was particularly acute in the Baltics. Much of Livonia, Estonia, Prussia, northwestern Russia, and Lithuania was made up of swamps/bogs/marshes, winding rivers and streams, lakes and ponds, dense forests, and rocky highlands. Indigenous warriors had developed fluid fighting systems that worked well in these environments, and the annals of the Livonian and Prussian crusades are full of the laments of the commanders of crusading forces over the difficulty of the terrain that did not allow knights to play to their strengths. Recognizing this, the Lithuanians eventually developed a 90- to 100-mile deep border region between the Baltic Crusader States and the heartlands of Lithuania that were purposely left undeveloped, dominated by forest and fen, in which they were able to frequently ambush crusading armies that were attempting to penetrate their territories. The German crusaders laconically referred to this border zone as the grauden ("slow-going"). The outlook of men-at-arms (a.k.a., sergeants) was often identical to that of knights. Men-at-arms could be mercenaries in the employ of a knight that were used to bulk out his retinue, a member of an aristocratic retinue (e.g., squires, sons, or extended kin) that owed fealty to a socially superior knight or other lords, or members of a "free company" of mercenaries who operated in the field as a distinct unit (often in the employ of a city or guild, but also sometimes utilized by a feudal lord). Like knights, they were usually heavy cavalry with similar equipment, but their lower social status meant that sometimes they fought primarily as infantry or as mounted crossbowmen (missile weapons were not considered to be honorable weapons suitable for a knight, but this was no impediment to men-at-arms). This was as true in the military orders as it was in secular society—many modern students find it strange, but despite the democratic and communal ideals of the military orders, aristocratic priveleges were often retained by nobles that entered the military orders, although they did differ from secular society in that it was easier for men of humble social origin to rise in rank within his chosen military order, and essentially become ennobled and enjoy the perquisites of aristocratic rank later in his career. Men-at-arms serving in a knightly retinue were sworn to support and protect their lord, and so even though they technically were not subject to the codes of honor and martial philosophy of knights, they often did so because their behavior reflected on the honor of their lord (to whom they had sworn fealty). Thus, men-at-arms usually fought alongside their lord in battle and conformed to the same tactical stance, although as I've mentioned they were sometimes tasked to fill separate tactical roles (e.g., as infantry or as crossbowmen). A quick look at the numbers for the forces available to the Livonian Order in the previous paragraph, however, indicates that the numbers of men-at-arms fielded in any given engagement were likely small (at most four times as many as the knights), and divided as they were between those who fought alongside their lords as heavy cavalry and those that were separately deployed, we can see that the number of units of such separately deployed units were likely usually small and probably had a minor impact on the overall tactical dimensions of a given army. This was only slightly different in crusading armies, where the call to crusade often attracted men of low social standing in large numbers. Many of these would have been little different than peasant/serf levies (see below), although some swelled the ranks of lords who could afford to equip distinct units of commoner men-at-arms. To be able to do so both increased the military effectiveness of a lord who could afford to do so, and was a source of prestige (i.e., I've brought the most men to this crusade, I can afford to equip them, and so I'm visibly contributing to the success of this crusade).

 

In the Baltic context, the lines between the last two major elements of a Medieval Livonian or Baltic crusader army—peasant/serf levies and Christianized indigenous auxiliaries—were often blurred.