The Teutonic Knights in Latvia

Every great historical movement has been associated with collateral currents set up by the people who had found it advantageous to put the selfish proceedings of their own under the shelter of the leaning ideas of the time. Also the conquest of Latvia by the Teutonic Knights might be regarded as debased re-echo of the great crusading drama. It would be impossible to trace in the Teutonic action in Latvia that sense of religious duty and spirit of chivalry which were displayed by the Christian Knights in the long struggle with the Islam. It was German adventurers, not always free from a shadow of a criminal past, that came to Latvia looking there for fortune and easy life. Assisted by German monks and merchants and directed by the Holy See, they started the conquest of the country and reduced the native population to slavery. As it was advantageous to show this enterprise as being in harmony with the predominant spirit of the time, the knights called it "Convention of the pagans to Christianity."This general view held by the writer in regard to the nature end significance of the Teutonic rule in Latvia, has determined the scope and the direction of the present outline as well as the selection of facts important to the course of following events. The occurrences have been placed in a chronological order as far as they are concerned with the conquest of the country during the thirteenth century, for it was the sole period when the succession of events gradually led to some final result achieved by the Knights. The following centuries of the Teutonic rule presented no advance toward the formation of a political community, and therefore they are but of small interest to the political history. The unceasing civil war in which various Teutonic parties were busily engaged did not give that period a character of a linear development, but rather that of a circular movement. Owing to these circumstances, the Teutonic history during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries might be regarded as a complex of episodes of mutual warfare the only significance of which consisted in their final result, i.e. in the loss of the Teutonic independence. In our narrative we have quoted the typical episodes of that civil war and we have made an attempt to define its most important tendencies, supporting our generalizations by the facts and events which took place at that period.