Baltic Tribes – Last Pagans of Europe

The Baltic States under the Teutonic Order

When Jerusalem was conquered by the Muslim troops under Saladin in 1187, this led to a moral and economic crisis for wide circles of the Western European elites. Fighting all pagans became the most important task of chivalry, and to this end, associations of knights, called orders of chivalry, sprang up in Western Europe. Many of their members were later-born sons of nobility without hereditary claims, but with enormous ambition. Like the monks of the ecclesiastical orders, they vowed chastity, personal poverty, obedience to the leadership of the order and committed themselves to a life according to Christian ideals. Their real task as “warriors of God”, however, was the fight against the pagans.

Since the Crusades in Palestine did not prove successful, many sovereigns and the Pope soon turned their attention to the northeast, to the last pagan territories of Europe.

In 1198 the Teutonic Order was founded, which soon spread mainly in what is now Poland. At about the same time, Bishop Albert, a native of Bremen, sailed from Lübeck even farther east and in 1201 built the fortress of Riga at the mouth of the Düna River. In order to defend his new foundation and to gain further territories, he founded the Order of the Brothers of the Sword in 1202, which as his fighting force covered the Baltic States with war. In a few decades, the Brothers of the Sword were able to bring the territory of present-day Estonia and Latvia – the historical territories of Courland, Livonia and Estonia – under their rule. 

After a heavy defeat against the Lithuanians in 1237 at the Battle of Saule, the Brothers of the Sword were united with the Teutonic Order, which thus enormously expanded its territory, the so-called Teutonic Order State.

From 1230, the Teutonic Order itself had taken up the brutal struggle of conquest against the pagan Balts, first turning against the Old Prussians, whose settlement areas lay on the coast between the Vistula and the Memel, and quickly conquering a large territory. With the takeover of the territories of the Brothers of the Sword, between 1230 and 1561 the Teutonic Order state included the territory of Old Prussia, Livonia, present-day Estonia and Latvia.

During the battles, which lasted for decades, the West Baltic peoples of the Old Prussians, Sudovians and Galindians, among others, were almost wiped out in the course of the 13th century, and the few survivors were assimilated during the Middle Ages. Around 1230, German settlers also began to immigrate to the Teutonic Order state, founding some of today’s major cities there, such as Riga and Tallinn. For centuries, the German upper class constituted the urban bourgeoisie and the large landowners in present-day Estonia and Latvia, while the “native” population were largely serf peasants.

Only the Lithuanians were able to resist conquest and forced Christianization by uniting their individual tribes into a powerful grand duchy, which later merged with Poland and eventually became part of it.

Like the crusades for Constantinople and Jerusalem, the conquests in the Baltic States were carried out with great brutality. Once subjugated and forcibly converted to Christianity, the Baltic population was reduced to the status of lawless serfs. The knights of the Teutonic Order did not see themselves burdened by moral concerns, since according to the values of the time they could invoke not only the right of the conqueror, but also the support of the church.

The brutality of the knights is described in the chronicle of Henry of Latvia: “They killed from morning to evening whom they found, both women and children … until the hands and arms of the killers finally grew tired of the monstrous murder of the people.”

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