(tense music)
- [Narrator] A land of mists and of mystery,
where the cross had yet to reach.
Beyond the pagan frontier of medieval Europe,
where the old gods confronted the new,
Christian Crusades, yet far from the deserts of Palestine.
A wilderness of forests, ice, and snow.
The Northern Crusades.
- The Crusades didn't only go east to the Holy Land,
they went northeast to the Baltic.
- [Narrator] Lost castles, last stands,
no quarter asked, nor given.
- It's a war with no holds barred.
- [Narrator] A war nearly two centuries long
fought by one of the most powerful military orders.
- One of the most important religious military orders.
- [Narrator] A savage war and an inhuman trade.
- These people had been slaves of the devil.
They are now the slaves of God.
(tense music continues)
- [Narrator] For God and for the empire,
they bore the cross of Christ.
The Brothers of the German Hospital of Saint Mary
who became the Order of the Teutonic Knights.
(dramatic music) (fire crackling)
The Black Cross of the Teutonic Knights is one of the icons
of the Christian Crusaders in the medieval period.
They were one of the major military orders
in the latter years of the Crusader era.
They came into being almost a century
after the taking of Jerusalem in the First Crusade
when the first of the new military orders were formed,
the Templars and the Hospitallers.
- The Teutonic Order is quite different
from either the Templars or the Hospitallers.
They did combine the Hospitaller and military functions
from an early time in their history.
- [Narrator] The Templars and Hospitallers recruited
from numerous nations across medieval Europe,
mostly in France, Italy, and England.
But the Teutonic Order was different.
- The Brothers of the German Hospital of Saint Mary.
The Teutonic Knights are the only order
that are known as a Teutonic Order, as a German order.
The others are known as French orders or whatever.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] The German order rose
to eventually become one of the most powerful
of the Middle Ages.
They grew into far more than just a military order.
They became virtually an independent autonomous state.
(dramatic music continues) (weapons clanging)
Their zenith was in the 15th century,
by which time the whole of Europe had changed
so much since the days of the original Kingdom of Jerusalem.
The written word, trade, and gunpowder
had brought new ideas, emergent nations,
and new alliances.
Inevitably, today the word Teutonic evokes images
of the worst of the 20th century.
The imagery and romanticized legends of the order
were appropriated by the Nazis to enhance the myth
of their Aryan heritage.
- It would be wrong to put into this period
some of the racist attitudes that developed later,
and which are sadly still around.
It was not like that.
On the other hand, the German knights,
and they were mostly Germans,
did see themselves as superior,
but this was on the basis of culture
and religion and so on.
(machinery whirring)
- [Narrator] During the Second World War,
places associated with this mythical Aryan past
became targets for the enemies
and eventual overthrowers of the Third Reich.
And so much of what remained
of the original Teutonic Order was lost.
It's the job of professional historians
to see back beyond the associations of the 20th century,
to find what factual evidence remains
and build up an unbiased picture of this period
in European history,
especially in the order's historical heartland.
- Teutonic Order created a very modern
and rich structure here in Prussia, in the Baltic region,
as a eternal enemy of the Polish state,
of the Polish kingdom in the Middle Ages.
And this history was so fascinating,
the wars, the battles, diplomacy, politics.
So when I decided what to do in my life,
it was simple for me.
To be a historian of the Teutonic Order,
to know its history
and to explain why so small group of knights
built so powerful state in medieval Europe.
(tense music)
- [Narrator] It's a vast and complex area of study.
But historians now are bringing dedicated research
to shed new light on the real story of the Teutonic Knight.
The order's origins lay in the Third Crusade.
Through the 1180s, the Muslim leader, Saladin,
had steadily regained most of
what the First Crusaders had established in Palestine
just over 80 years before,
including the holy city of Jerusalem.
(tense music) (weapons clanging)
At the Battle of Hattin,
Saladin had also virtually destroyed the main force
of the original military order, the Knights Templar.
In 1189, the three most powerful monarchs
in Western Europe set out
to retake the holy places for Christianity.
Richard I, the Lionheart, of England,
Philip II of France,
and Frederick Barbarossa, emperor of Germany.
The Crusade reversed many of Saladin's gains,
though Jerusalem itself was not recaptured.
Worse, Frederick Barbarossa died
before he even reached the Holy Land,
causing many of his leaderless soldiers to return home.
But not all.
Some continued on to honor their commitment
and their dead emperor.
- You have the survivors of the German part
of the Third Crusade reach the Holy Land
and attach themselves to the French and to the English,
because they are too few
and now too disorganized, too vulnerable
to really operate on their own.
It is they who become the Teutonic Knights
after the Crusade.
- [Narrator] In the newly recaptured Crusader city of Acre,
these knights established themselves
as the Brothers of the German Hospital of Saint Mary.
(ominous music)
From the end of the 12th century and through the 13th,
the brothers received sanction from the Pope
and thus became the Teutonic Knights.
Like the Templars and Hospitallers before them,
the order created its own rule,
the guide and laws by which its brothers had to abide.
And in this lies a factor that helps historians today
in researching the Teutonic Knights,
by comparison with the other two major military orders.
- They were a much more literate order than the other two.
Perhaps because they started off using the vernacular.
- [Narrator] Being almost entirely of one nationality,
the Teutonic Order wrote down its rules and histories
in vernacular German, the language of the everyday brothers,
rather than the more exclusive language
of the clergy and papacy, Latin.
- Although the other two start off
with their documents in Latin
and then translate them into the vernacular,
the Teutonic Order appear
to have started with material in the vernacular
and then translated it into Latin for wider distribution.
So they produced more material
than either the Templars or the Hospitallers did
for their own brothers to read,
saints lives and histories.
- [Narrator] The Templars never wrote down their own history
and the Hospitallers legend made outrageous claims.
The Teutonic Knights, by contrast, were more realistic.
- They didn't make up the myths like the Hospitallers did.
They stuck to recent history.
So in that respect,
they come across as being quite a rational order,
rather than one that invents miracles,
although their stories do have miracles in them.
But they feel like an order
much more has their feet on the ground.
(tense music)
- [Narrator] The city of Acre was the capital
of the Crusader state
for almost exactly 100 years until, once more,
resurgent Muslim forces recaptured most of the Holy Land.
Acre was the last city to fall.
Most of the remaining members of the other military orders,
including the Templars and Hospitallers,
went down fighting on the wall,
but not the Teutonic Order
with their perhaps more rational ethos.
(tense music continues)
- All the military orders who existed in Acre
at the time of the final siege and the fall of Acre,
they all fought and the city fell.
We know, however, that the Teutonic Knights' headquarters,
which they called their convent,
actually negotiated its surrender
to the victorious Muslims, the Mamluk army,
which had broken in.
And the survivors left.
So in a way, the Teutonic Knights went out
with a bit of a whimper, rather than a bang.
However, once Acre had fallen
and the survivors had reached Cyprus,
which is where most of them went,
they all had the same problem.
What to do now?
(tense music)
- [Narrator] All the military orders had to reassess
and look for new purpose, new frontiers
where they could defend Christendom or expand it.
For the Teutonic Order,
the distant East had been reluctantly abandoned.
Its new goal lay much closer to its homelands in Germany.
- The Crusades were not just a phenomena of the Middle East.
Crusading didn't just go east to the Holy Land.
It obviously went south into what is now Spain and Portugal.
But the most of dramatic of these other Crusades
were the Northern Crusades in the Baltic.
(dramatic music) (weapons clanging)
- The Northern Crusades, which took place around the Baltic,
were concentrating on converting the pagan peoples
around the Baltic to Christianity,
'cause they hadn't been converted to Christianity,
and taking over valuable territory.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] The Baltic region in the Middle Ages,
relative to the parts of Europe it bordered,
was a wilderness.
Settlement had changed relatively little since Viking times.
Society was tribal and clan based,
yet running through the region
were important trading routes.
From the Baltic Sea all the way along the great rivers
to the Black Sea and far beyond,
furs, ivory, silver, gold.
The neighboring and expanding kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden,
Poland, and the German Empire had all made inroads
into the Baltics, at least since the 12th century.
The Christian cross was a convenient banner.
- They're not trying to recover territory
that had been Christian.
They're trying to take over territory that wasn't Christian
and, they say, win it for Christ.
Or at least the Latin church will take it over.
Or to be a little bit more blunt,
the merchants of the Baltic area will take it over
because these areas opened the door
into the vast trade routes of Central Asia.
- [Narrator] For the military orders and the church,
what made this easier to contemplate was
that the Baltic peoples, so close to Western Europe,
were still far from Christian.
- Paganism survived in Northeastern Europe
for a very, very long time.
Well into the 14th century.
The eastern shoreline of the Baltic,
that's what's now the Baltic states,
but also Finland,
this was pagan territory
well into the 12th century for all of it.
And then it becomes the new Crusade frontier.
So the Crusade idea, as it were,
got a second wind, a second life in the Baltic.
- [Narrator] The distant Holy Land was forgotten
with so many unrepentant pagan states so close
to the European heartland.
And so the Crusading idea was reborn.
(dramatic music)
- The Northern Crusades went on for much, much longer
than the Holy Land Crusades did.
They became a way of life, almost self perpetuating.
And in fact, the Northern Crusades went on for so long
that they structured the whole
of the Eastern Baltic around them.
So what exists today, the states which exist today
and the tensions which still exist today,
can be traced back to the Northern Crusades.
(somber music)
- [Narrator] One state in the region did not survive
to this day as a sovereign nation.
When Teutonic Knights were aiming
to expand towards the Baltic,
Prussia lay directly in their sights.
It's now associated with Germany,
but in the 13th century, Prussia was ferociously independent
and it bordered Christian Poland.
- The Prussians, the original Prussians, are not Germans.
They're another Baltic people.
The Poles didn't seem to be able to cope
with these very fierce pagans on their northern frontier,
so they invited in Western knights to help them.
The Teutonic Knights filled this gap.
- The Poles would've liked
to have got their hands on Prussia.
They brought the Teutonic Order in to help them,
which possibly was a mistake.
- [Narrator] All the main military orders faced the problem
of being dependent on existing nations.
(ominous music)
For the Templars, always under the eye of the French kings,
it led to their downfall.
The Hospitallers, perhaps, learned from this
and based themselves on the Island of Rhodes.
Prussia was the opportunity the Teutonic Knights
had been waiting for
to establish their own territorial state.
- Start from scratch if you can.
This they were able to do in the Baltic area
by getting a castle, one castle,
from the King of Poland because he needed their help.
But on the agreement,
only on the agreement that they were independent
in this one castle.
And it was from this one castle
that the whole of the Teutonic Knights' state,
which was quite big eventually, grew.
(tense music)
- [Narrator] The fortress of Kulm
was on the Polish frontier facing the pagan Prussians.
The Teutonic Knights took over the castle
and began an extraordinary period
in the history of the military orders.
Over more than 100 years, the Teutonic Order built up
and consolidated what became virtually
an independent medieval state.
Far enough from the German emperor
and even further from the Pope
that they could do as they pleased.
(tense music continues)
Some of what remains of the Teutonic state
can still be seen across the modern-day Baltic countries.
A state required a capital.
And in modern-day Poland, Malbork Castle is a reminder
of the Teutonic Order's strength and influence.
For any Teutonic warrior who had seen the Holy Land,
he would've thought the warfare
in the Baltic drastically different.
- The environment, the ecology of the area was so different
that you can imagine warriors who had some experience
of the Middle Eastern Crusades having a certain mindset.
Finding themselves in the Northern Crusades,
trying to use this method of warfare,
and then having very quickly to modify it
because that world is totally, totally different.
(ominous music)
- [Narrator] We have an image of Crusaders fighting in armor
in the arid terrain of the Middle East.
Water supplies for armies was a constant problem,
and the military orders
of the Kingdom of Jerusalem spent decades learning how
to campaign in such conditions.
- Transfer this to the Baltic area.
There are large areas not only of marsh and forest,
but also of heathland,
relatively dry, relatively open.
That's the bit you can get through,
but you only have to go relatively few kilometers,
you'll find yourself in another forest
and then you have to hack your way through it.
You can't really make a road,
because by the time you come back
to do a similar campaign the following year,
it's all overgrown again.
So a large part of these raiding campaigns
were just hacking your way through the undergrowth.
- [Narrator] Their opponents too were different
to those the Crusaders faced in the Holy Land,
where war was propagated on both sides by knights
or at least nobles, and professional soldiers.
- Wars in Prussia and Livonia
were against an enemy who didn't play
by the same sort of rules as the Arabs and the Turks.
The Turks and the Arabs were from the same sort
of warrior background.
When you're fighting against the pagan Prussians,
they are warriors, but they don't mind burning
their captives alive on their horses, for example.
And the Muslims wouldn't do that.
So it's more of a war with no holds barred
and a much more violent war than that
in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other Crusader states.
(tense music)
- [Narrator] In Palestine,
warfare had been dominated by cavalry.
The military orders came into being as horsemen
who could protect the pilgrim routes from Western Europe,
ranging long distances along the frontiers,
protecting against enemy raiders.
In Prussia, though, this role was reversed.
- In the Baltic, the kind of warfare
that they were conducting
was really just a development of raiding.
A classic strategy of the Middle Ages
was what was known as a chevauchee,
which is like a flying column of cavalry
and its supports used to raid
and put pressure on a population.
And of course that's what happened
in the Baltic states a lot.
(tense music)
- [Narrator] The chevauchee was used to great effect
by English troops during the Hundred Years' War
where they would penetrate
for miles through enemy-held territory,
plundering and causing chaos as they went.
For the Teutonic raiders,
it was the ideal way to destabilize Prussia
and to gradually take it over.
But it also brought another commodity
beyond just looted food or silver.
- This is a form of economic warfare.
You're destroying the enemy's crops,
you're capturing their livestock,
you're capturing their people.
So, in fact, taking captives as slaves
was very, very important for both sides.
So we have these Christian knights,
members of a military order, on slave raids.
(ominous music)
- [Narrator] It's a mistake to think warfare is ever clean
when it's being done under a religious banner,
and not just the Teutonic Order,
but several neighboring Christian kingdoms.
For us, looking back now, it's even harder to accept.
- The Northern Crusades look much more like colonialism
than the Crusades to the Holy Land
because those that go there are going to trade
and take slaves to exploit the area.
They did settle there.
They did set up holy sites there to bring in pilgrims,
but it's not land that's traditionally been Christian.
And the emphasis was on getting resources out
for the benefit of Germany, Denmark, Sweden.
(reverent music)
- [Narrator] Since the Knights Templar
became the first military order,
the technology of war had also changed considerably.
- Technology and technological advantage and superiority
was as key to medieval warfare as it is to modern warfare.
(reverent music)
- [Narrator] In the early days of the Kingdom of Jerusalem,
knights fought dress little different to Viking warriors
with virtually the same weapons.
- The Teutonic Knights of the early 15th century
were unrecognizable for the original Templars,
and you are talking about people with full plate armor,
exactly the kind of armor
that was worn at Agincourt, for example,
and heavily armored horses as well,
conducting warfare usually against
much more likely armored opposition.
- [Narrator] As with all the military orders,
knights, the main armored soldiers
who comprised the Teutonic Order's core battlefield troops,
were relatively few in number.
(tense music)
Yet in the Northern Crusades,
the armored knight on horseback could never dominate
in the terrain of the Baltic.
They needed the support of infantry.
- Who were these infantry?
Well, some of them were sergeants,
brother sergeants, others were mercenaries.
Others were low-status associates of the order.
There were also levies
from the towns under the control of the orders.
- [Narrator] But one kind of weapon
gave infantry even more killing power.
(weapons clattering) (tense music)
- In the 15th century,
there's no doubt that infantry becomes stronger
in relation to cavalry,
and because they possess more missile weapons
and they're capable of standing their ground.
- [Narrator] Here again, technology was on the side
of the Teutonic Order.
- This was not just their castle building activity
and the speed and effectiveness of that,
it was also things like siege machines,
and, almost above all else, crossbows.
(tense music)
- [Narrator] English longbowmen
had proved time and again,
that disciplined infantry armed with missile weapons
could dominate the medieval battlefield.
Yet the longbow took years of training to master,
whereas the crossbow was simpler to use.
It was a leveler that almost anyone could learn
to use relatively quickly,
like the firearms of future centuries.
- To understand the role of the crossbow-armed infantry,
it might be good to see them
as a sort of early form of musketeer.
These are not repeating weapons.
Takes time to reload, span, aim, shoot.
So you need teamwork.
You have a front rank, you have loaders.
It's also not like longbow archery,
and certainly not like the archery techniques
of Asia and the Middle East
where they are shooting rapidly,
and they shoot and they shoot and they shoot.
It's not like that with a crossbow.
It's one aimed shot, punchy, hugely powerful,
takes time to reload.
- [Narrator] Prussia was steadily overwhelmed
and its lands came under Teutonic control.
It was a process of penetrating as far as they could
through the Prussian interior,
then establishing small forts,
bases from which they could operate.
These were often in remote areas
with building materials in short supply.
- The first castles, if they were in an important location,
would then be rebuilt with more permanent materials.
Sometimes stone, but most typically of brick.
Because this is a low-lying marshy area,
you don't find much good stone.
- [Narrator] Brick isn't normally thought of
as being a medieval material,
even though it had been around since Roman times,
and perhaps still less for building castles.
But bricks could be either made in country
or transported quickly on the rivers.
It meant forts could be thrown up quickly
by teams of bricklayers, almost like sandbag defenses
in 20th-century war.
(somber music)
- Those forts and castles gradually grew
in scale until they reached the size
of the magnificent remnants
that we have now in Poland and elsewhere.
(tense music)
- [Narrator] It took many years and huge resources,
but Malbork Castle, the Teutonic Knights' capital,
was steadily built up
and expanded into one of the greatest fortresses
of any of the military orders.
- Yes, Malbork is the biggest castle, brick castle,
in the world.
The Teutonic Order started
construction works at the end of the 13th century
and finished in the first half of the 15th century.
So more than 120 years.
More than 6 million bricks were used to build this castle.
It's about 20 hectares,
and this castle in the Middle Ages
was never taken by the enemy forces.
- [Narrator] It's staggering to think though,
that just 75 years ago,
this exceptional castle lay in ruins.
(somber music)
As the second World War drew to a close,
Malbork castle was used as a stronghold
by Nazi German troops.
It overlooked the railway the Germans were using
to evacuate troops from the Russian front.
This and the castle's associations
with the Nazis' Teutonic propaganda meant
that the Red Army spared little thought
for Malbork's value to posterity.
But since the war,
a huge project saw the rebuilding of Malbork
to something like its original architectural grandeur.
Archeologists and historians worked together
to interpret what they found in the process.
Karol Polejowski is a curator at Malbork Castle.
- The Teutonic Order engineers took the decision
to build the first part of the castle, this part.
- [Narrator] He's exploring here the vaulted chambers
beneath the high castle,
the first parts built by the Teutonic Knight engineers.
- We are at the moment
in the oldest part of the castle in Malbork.
The construction works started here
about 1278, '79.
- [Narrator] Even this far underground,
the walls have been partially restored.
But this reveals detail of some
of the original building materials
- We see here the original stones from the 13th century,
original bricks from the same period.
But here we can see the modern bricks
from the the 20th century
used during the reconstruction works.
- [Narrator] The Teutonic Order didn't want Malbork
to be simply a stronghold.
They were a religious order, so it was also their convent.
The entrance to the castle's church,
the order's cathedral,
contained a reminder that as soldiers of God,
their original spiritual home still lay
in the far-off Holy Land.
- This is the Golden Gate,
the main entrance to the Teutonic Order's church
in the Castle of Malbork.
I am of the opinion that this gate, Golden Gate,
this is the gate to the golden Jerusalem.
For the Teutonic Knights,
it was very important to connect their new capital,
convent, capital castle with the Jerusalem.
Because the Teutonic Order,
it was the Order of the Saint Mary of the Germans
in Jerusalem,
- [Narrator] Only members of the Teutonic
and military orders or important churchmen
or dignitaries could pass here
into the Church of Saint Mary,
the main church in the Teutonic Order's state in Prussia.
- This is the most important place
in the Teutonic Order castle in Malbork.
And this is the most important church in the Teutonic Order.
The first construction works were done in the 1280s
of the 13th century.
And during the 14th century,
the church was richly decorated.
- [Narrator] Very little survived the Second World War
or the Red Army's occupation in the aftermath.
But it's thought that the order's holy relics
were stored or displayed here,
including a tangible link to the crucifixion itself.
- The most precious, the most important,
was the fragment, the piece, of the True Cross.
We know that the Teutonic Order received it
from the King of France in the 70s, 80s of the 14th century.
It was so important to have relics in the churches
because the people need to contact with the saints,
with the objects connected with the Passion of the Christ.
And it was important to collect
for pilgrims who arrived here in the 14th
and 15th century.
- [Narrator] Pilgrims were vital to the order,
as they brought with them money in the form of donations.
And in return, the brothers showed off the order's relics.
(somber music)
They included nobles from across Europe,
including in 1390, Henry Bolingbroke,
future King Henry the IV of England.
The raison d'etre of the order, as they saw it,
was holy war,
and pilgrims brought more than just their money.
- Teutonic Order is known also as a military organization.
We can see here two long swords
from the first half of the 14th century.
- [Narrator] These swords were found nearby the castle,
and they bear the telltale inscriptions
of religious warriors.
- This sword is very interesting
because we can see here the Jerusalem cross.
This is the symbol of the Crusades.
Crusades, of course, to Palestine.
But in the 14th century,
the knights coming here from Western Europe
were Crusaders too.
They fought in the name of Christ against the pagans,
against the Lithuanians.
- [Narrator] Lithuania was the next country
that the Teutonic Order coveted and invaded.
(soldiers shouting) (metal clattering)
Like the Prussians,
the Lithuanians too were Baltic pagans.
Their land as well was of wilderness,
even further from Western Europe.
But beyond lay the trade routes to Russia and to Asia.
(dramatic music)
The distances were greater,
and so one kind of transport became even more important.
- A striking feature of the Teutonic Knights
and their campaigns in the Baltic
was how they used rivers in order to move more rapidly.
(tense music)
- The main rivers of the Baltic states area,
Northern Poland, were, and to some extent,
remain major arteries of trade.
At the time of the Northern Crusades,
they were also major arteries of warfare,
raiding, counter-raiding,
supplying your forces in the field.
In winter, the rivers freeze, even the big ones.
So you end up with a smooth, icy,
reasonably accessible route
from where you are deep into the enemy territory.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] The order pushed north and east from Prussia,
and historians and archeologists
can now trace the route they took.
(metal clanking)
- That is why most of the castles which survive,
the locations were on rivers.
They're not just scattered around.
This was to secure the rivers,
secure crossing points of the rivers,
secure junctions of rivers.
These castles were put in places with great thought.
- [Narrator] But some of the castles the order built
in Lithuania are more than just ruined.
Trakai Castle was built by the Teutonic Knights
and has survived intact.
Today, it's one of Lithuania's
most important heritage sites.
Like Malbork, it was built from stone and brick,
and it was both a stronghold
and an administrative center for the order.
The campaign lasted decades.
The fighting was bitter, bloody,
and, above all for the Teutonic Knights, expensive.
They needed a breakthrough.
In the 1380s, the order launched an offensive
that led to what one historian now regards
as the possible beginning of the end
for the Northern Crusades.
In 1384, the Teutonic Knights recaptured a castle
at Kaunas in what's now Central Lithuania.
The confluence of the two rivers here,
the Neris and the Nemunas,
makes the site strategically vital.
Control this spot and you control movement
to and from the Baltic Sea on two axes
for hundreds of miles inland.
Both sides knew this was a position they had to hold.
The order immediately began rebuilding the defenses,
while the Lithuanian leader, Grand Duke Vytautas,
set about laying siege to try to take the castle
before it was completed.
The Teutonic Knights called the new stronghold
after their patron figure, the Virgin Mary.
Marienwerder.
Its exact site has been lost for centuries.
The peninsula on which it stood
has been fought over many times since.
The partially ruined Kaunas Castle
that still stands today dates
from the period after Marienwerder,
and the remains of earlier fortifications can
also still be seen.
It's a confusing puzzle of battlefield archeology.
Kaunas historian Vytenis Almonaitis
has researched the matter for many years.
(Vytenis speaking in foreign language)
- [Narrator] 20 years later,
when Vytautas turned the tables
and besieged the Teutonic Knights' Marienwerder,
the fight was no less bloody.
(somber music)
The siege opened with hails of missile fire
from both defenders and besiegers.
Both sides used traditional siege engines
and, notably, many new gunpowder weapons.
The Teutonic Knights rained crossbow bolts
on the Lithuanians,
but this would be a battle settled
by a savage artillery duel.
(dramatic music)
A chronicle describes
that the Lithuanians lay great store in a large trebuchet
which hammered down huge stone balls
on the incomplete brick walls.
The Teutonic gun commander responded
and himself laid the shot which destroyed the trebuchet.
His victory was brief.
(explosion booms)
Commander was beheaded by Lithuanian shot.
The Teutonic Knights fought on a while longer,
but in the end, they were forced to surrender the castle.
The Grand Duke was victorious and became Vytautas the Great.
The castle of Marienwerder disappeared from history,
until perhaps now.
(Vytenis speaking in foreign language)
(somber music)
- [Narrator] Time and tides mean
that the river banks here are different now
than in the late 14th century.
It's likely there was a small island or natural cove,
which the order exploited for its castle.
The place would be ideal for reinforcement from its ships,
which likely brought in every single brick used
to build the defenses.
The low water in 2015 revealed clues.
(Vytenis speaking in foreign language)
(tense music)
- [Narrator] The Battle of Marienwerder is perhaps
the greatest Lithuanian victory.
Never again would the Teutonic Knights
hold the rivers here at Kaunas.
Never again would they penetrate as far east into Lithuania.
Within the German Empire and the papacy,
questions were asked of the order
and its seemingly endless war in the Baltic.
- By the time you get to the late 14th century
with the conversion of the big powerful Duchy of Lithuania
to Christianity, there's no more pagans to fight.
But the Teutonic Order is still there,
and it will be there for several more centuries.
So what's it for?
Its raison d'etre seems to have disappeared.
Its main initial raison d'etre has disappeared.
No more pagans to fight.
- [Narrator] Just over 20 years later,
some 50 miles west of Kaunas,
the fate of the order was sealed.
(weapons clattering)
The Germans called it Tannenberg.
The Poles, Grunwald.
To the Lithuanians, Zalgiris.
Teutonic troops faced
an opposing allied Lithuanian and Polish army.
- The Teutonic Knights overreached themselves
and were destroyed at the Battle of Tannenberg
by a combinations of Poles and Lithuanians and so on.
But that was really a political misjudgment
as much as a military failing.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] The Teutonic army was defeated.
It was a crushing victory for the Lithuanians and Poles,
the greatest ever inflicted
on the Christian military order.
- The end of the Teutonic Order is at the hands
of fellow Christians.
(somber music)
- [Narrator] In 1929, the Teutonic Knights
as a military order were once and for all dissolved.
Yet the order remains today
as a charitable organization in many countries.
With the benefit of hindsight and history
it can now perhaps be seen in perspective.
- I think that the Teutonic Order is still important
in the religious life of the people in Western Europe.
For Polish people,
Teutonic Order is not only a eternal enemy.
Now we can say that Teutonic Order
was a element of the medieval life in Europe.
(somber music continues)
(dramatic music)