The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 06: (From Barbarossa to Dante) — Dante Alighieri — John Shaqi
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 06: (From Barbarossa to Dante)
Dante Alighieri · en
In 1410 the Teutonic order received a most crushing defeat at
Tannenberg from the King of Poland, assisted by bodies of Russians,
Lithuanians, and Tartars. The grand master, Ulric de Jungingen, was
slain, with several hundred knights and many thousand soldiers.
There is said to have been a chapel built at Gruenwald, in which an
inscription declared that sixty thousand Poles and forty thousand of
the army of the knights were left dead upon the field of battle. The
banner of the order, its treasury, and a multitude of prisoners fell
into the hands of the enemy, who shortly afterward marched against
Marienberg and closely besieged it. Several of the feudatories of the
knights sent in their submission to the King of Poland, who began at
once to dismember the dominions of the order and to assign portions to
his followers. But this proved to be premature. The knights found in
Henry de Planau a valiant leader, who defended the city with such
courage and obstinacy that, after fifty-seven days' siege, the enemy
retired, after serious loss from sorties and sickness. A series of
battles followed, and finally a treaty of peace was signed, by which
the order gave up some portion of its territory to Poland.
But a new enemy was on its way to inflict upon the order greater and
more lasting injury than that which the sword could effect. The
doctrines of Wycklif had for some time been spreading throughout
Europe, and had lately received a new impulse from the vigorous
efforts of John Huss in Bohemia, who had eagerly embraced them, and
set himself to preach them, with additions of his own. Several knights
accepted the teaching of Huss, and either retired from the order or
were forcibly ejected. Differences and disputes also arose within the
order, which ended in the arrest and deposition of the grand master in
1413. But the new doctrines had taken deep root, and a large party
within the order were more or less favorable to them, so much so that
at the Council of Constance (1415) a strong party demanded the total
suppression of the Teutonic order. This was overruled; but it probably
induced the grand master to commence a series of persecutions against
those in his dominions who followed the principles of Huss.
The treaty that had followed the defeat at Tannenberg had been almost
from the first disputed by both parties, and for some years appeals
were made to the Pope and the Emperor on several points; but the
decisions seldom gave satisfaction or commanded obedience. The general
result was the loss to the order of some further portions of its
dominions.