The story of the next two centuries in Russia is really the story of the growth of the country from this seed. Other Slavonic peoples that grew powerful at the same time as, and in some rivalry with, Russia, were the Poles and Lithuanians. The latter were a fierce barbarous people. Probably they were a branch of the Slavonic family, but less civilised than the {212} others and a constant menace both to Poles and Russians. [Sidenote: Teuton and Slav] Now you will perhaps remember that at the time of the second Crusade, that is in the middle of the twelfth century, a body of knights raised to go to Palestine requested the Pope's leave to go instead against a tribe called the Wends, who were pressing in upon Germany through the country that now is Prussia. The Wends were a pagan people and the Pope's leave was granted. This body of knights were called the Knights of the Sword, but they were absorbed later by the larger body called the Teutonic Order. This Order got possession of extensive territory along the south shore of the Baltic, and there the knights and their retainers maintained themselves--a Teutonic force lying between the Slavs and the ports on the Baltic. That was a position which was tolerably sure to lead to trouble. Several times in course of this great story we have seen a foreign army invited into a country and establishing itself there in a manner quite unexpected by the hosts. Actually it was on the invitation of one of the grandees of Poland that these Teutonic knights came to settle on their borders. They were established to the north of Poland, and on the eastern side they were bounded by the Lithuanians. And against these Lithuanians they would naturally fight, according to the purpose with which their order had been founded, because the Lithuanians were pagans until about halfway through the thirteenth century. At that time their ruler was converted to Christianity, and proclaimed Christianity as the State religion; and early in the next century they made an alliance with the Poles, their kinsmen. The Poles had been very hardly beset during the early part of the fourteenth century by those Teutonic guests who had come in on their invitation, but they heavily defeated the knights in 1332, and by their alliance with the {213} Lithuanians they became strong. The Teutonic Order had henceforth to stand on the defensive, trying, but in vain, to hold the lands that it had won.