Rostok, and other cities of the Hansa league, offering the rights and privileges of that organisation and of the town of Riga, to all artisans, mechanics, and traders who should care to settle in his principality--an invitation which was eagerly responded to. In the wars waged by him against the Order, both in Prussia and Livland, one figure is very conspicuous--that of David, _starosta_ of Grodno, who appears in the Teutonic Chronicles under the picturesque title of Castellan von Garthen. It was this boyarin who held the troubled border against the incessant attacks of the Knights of Mary, and led many a foray into their territory.[57] One of the most notable of these was in the winter of 1322-23, when the cold was so severe that even the forest trees were nearly killed, and men erected inns on the ice of the Baltic Sea for the travellers to and from Germany and the nearest Skandinavian lands--this self-same winter came the Lit’uanians following hard on a raid-march of the Cross Brethren, burning and wasting from Dorpat to Memel, and returning through the bleak and frozen march-lands with great spoil of cattle and 5000 prisoners. Truly a winter to be remembered.[58] Victory did not blind Gedimin to the advantages of a durable peace with the Order, to secure which he was even ready to adopt the faith of the foes he had so often conquered. [Sidenote: 1323] Accordingly, at his initiative, a peace was compacted between the various units which existed side by side in the East sea provinces; the Archbishop of Riga, the Bishop of Oesel, the towns of Riga, Revel, and Dorpat, the Teutonic Order, and the principality of Lit’uania, entered into a religious, territorial, and commercial treaty one with another, and Gedimin wrote to the Pope (John XXII.), to inform him that he was ready to become a Christian and to recognise the supremacy of the Holy See. Gladly did the French Pontiff prepare to receive this important lamb into the Catholic fold, and at the same time put a limit to the Teutonic conquests in the Baltic lands, and two legates (the Bishop of Alais and the Abbot of Puy) were dispatched forthwith to Vilna. But in the meanwhile Gedimin had had a lesson as to the value of “the true faith of a Christian,” and informed the disconcerted churchmen that he intended to die in the beliefs of his fathers, and would have none of their religion or their Pope. “Where,” he demanded, “will you find more crime, more injustice, violence, corruption and usury, than with the Christians, particularly with the priesthood and the Knights of the Cross?” Travel is said to enlarge and educate the mind, but it was scarcely necessary to come all the way from Avignon to learn that. [Sidenote: 1324] The Order had not considered itself bound by a compact with a pagan, and, in alliance with the unwilling Bishops of Oesel and Dorpat, had burst into the Lit’uanian lands and plundered the capital, Vilna; in return for which treachery, or elasticity of honour,