- há 11 horas
Categoria
📚
AprendizadoTranscrição
00:01A land of mists and of mystery, where the cross had yet to reach.
00:08Beyond the pagan frontier of medieval Europe, where the old gods confronted the new.
00:15Christian Crusades, but far from the deserts of Palestine.
00:20A wilderness of forests, ice and snow.
00:24The Northern Crusades.
00:26The Crusades didn't only go east to the Holy Land, they went northeast to the Baltic.
00:33Lost castles, last stands, no quarter asked nor giving.
00:39It's a war with no holds barred.
00:42A war nearly two centuries long, fought by one of the most powerful military orders.
00:48One of the most important religious military orders.
00:53A savage war, and an inhuman trade.
00:57These people had been slaves of the devil.
01:00They are now the slaves of God.
01:04For God, and for the empire, they bore the cross of Christ.
01:09The brothers of the German hospital of Saint Mary, who became the order of the Teutonic Knights.
01:23The Black Cross of the Teutonic Knights is one of the icons of the Christian Crusaders in the medieval period.
01:31They were one of the major military orders in the latter years of the Crusader era.
01:36They came into being almost a century after the taking of Jerusalem in the First Crusade.
01:42When the first of the new military orders were formed.
01:45The Templars and the Hospitallers.
01:52The Teutonic Order is quite different from either the Templars or the Hospitallers.
01:57They did combine the Hospitaller and military functions from an early time in their history.
02:02The Templars and Hospitallers recruited from numerous nations across medieval Europe.
02:07Mostly in France, Italy and England.
02:10But the Teutonic Order was different.
02:14The brothers of the German hospital of Saint Mary.
02:19The Teutonic Knights are the only order that are known as a Teutonic Order, as a German Order.
02:27The others are not known as French Orders or whatever.
02:30The German Order rose to eventually become one of the most powerful of the Middle Ages.
02:36They grew into far more than just a military order.
02:39They became virtually an independent, autonomous state.
02:45Their zenith was in the 15th century.
02:48By which time the whole of Europe had changed so much since the days of the original Kingdom of Jerusalem.
02:55The written word, trade and gunpowder had brought new ideas, emergent nations and new alliances.
03:05Inevitably, today the word Teutonic evokes images of the worst of the 20th century.
03:11The imagery and romanticised legends of the order were appropriated by the Nazis to enhance the myth of their Aryan
03:18heritage.
03:20It would be wrong to put into this period some of the racist attitudes that developed later and which are
03:30sadly still around.
03:31It was not like that.
03:33On the other hand, the German Knights, and they were mostly Germans, did see themselves as superior.
03:39But this was on the basis of culture and religion and so on.
03:44During the Second World War, places associated with this mythical Aryan past became targets for the enemies and eventual overthrowers
03:53of the Third Reich.
03:55And so, much of what remained of the original Teutonic order was lost.
04:00It's the job of professional historians to see back beyond the associations of the 20th century.
04:07To find what factual evidence remains and build up an unbiased picture of this period in European history.
04:15Especially in the order's historical heartland.
04:18Teutonic order created a very modern and rich structure here in Prussia, in the Baltic region.
04:30As an eternal enemy of the Polish state, of the Polish kingdom in the Middle Ages.
04:36And this history was so fascinating.
04:39The wars, the battles, diplomacy, politics.
04:43So, when I decided what to do in my life, it was simple for me to be a historian of
04:56the Teutonic order.
04:57To know its history and to explain why so small group of knights built so powerful state in medieval Europe.
05:13It's a vast and complex area of study.
05:17The historians now are bringing dedicated research to shed new light on the real story of the Teutonic Knights.
05:25The order's origins lay in the Third Crusade.
05:29Through the 1180s, the Muslim leader Salah Adim had steadily regained most of what the First Crusaders had established in
05:37Palestine just over 80 years before.
05:39Including the Holy City of Jerusalem.
05:43At the Battle of Hatim, Salah Adim had also virtually destroyed the main force of the original military order.
05:51The Knights Templar.
05:52In 1189, the three most powerful monarchs in Western Europe set out to retake the Holy Places for Christianity.
06:01Richard I, the Lionheart of England.
06:05Philip II of France.
06:07And Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor of Germany.
06:12The Crusade reversed many of Salah Adim's gains, though Jerusalem itself was not recaptured.
06:20Worse, Frederick Barbarossa died before he even reached the Holy Land, causing many of his leaderless soldiers to return home.
06:29But not all.
06:31Some continued on to honour their commitment and their dead Emperor.
06:37You have the survivors of the German part of the Third Crusade reach the Holy Land and attach themselves to
06:47the French and to the English.
06:49Because they are too few and now too disorganised, too vulnerable to really operate on their own.
06:55It is they who become the Teutonic Knights after the Crusade.
07:02In the newly recaptured Crusader city of Acre, these Knights established themselves as the brothers of the German Hospital of
07:11St. Mary.
07:13From the end of the 12th century and through the 13th, the brothers received sanction from the Pope and thus
07:20became the Teutonic Knights.
07:23Like the Templars and Hospitallers before them, the order created its own rule, the guide and laws by which its
07:31brothers had to abide.
07:33And in this lies a factor that helps historians today in researching the Teutonic Knights, by comparison with the other
07:40two major military orders.
07:43They were a much more literate order than the other two, perhaps because they started off using the vernacular.
07:49Being almost entirely of one nationality, the Teutonic order wrote down its rules and histories in vernacular German, the language
07:58of the everyday brothers.
08:00Rather than the more exclusive language of the clergy and papacy, Latin.
08:05Although the other two start off with their documents in Latin and then translate them in the vernacular,
08:10the Teutonic order appeared to have started with material in the vernacular and then translated it into Latin for wider
08:15distribution.
08:16So they produced more material than either the Templars or the Hospitallers did for their own brothers to read saints'
08:24lives and histories.
08:25The Templars never wrote down their own history and the Hospitallers' legend made outrageous claims.
08:32The Teutonic Knights, by contrast, were more realistic.
08:37They didn't make up the myths like the Hospitallers did. They stuck to recent history.
08:43So in that respect they come across as being quite a rational order rather than one that invents miracles.
08:49Although their stories do have miracles in them, but they feel like an order much more has their feet on
08:53the ground.
08:55The city of Acre was the capital of the Crusader state for almost exactly a hundred years,
09:02until once more resurgent Muslim forces recaptured most of the Holy Land.
09:08Acre was the last city to fall.
09:11Most of the remaining members of the other military orders, including the Templars and Hospitallers,
09:16went down fighting on the wall, but not the Teutonic Order, with their perhaps more rational ethos.
09:25All the military orders who existed in Acre at the time of the final siege and the fall of Acre,
09:32they all fought and the city fell.
09:35We know, however, that the Teutonic Knights' headquarters, which they called their convent,
09:39actually negotiated its surrender to the victorious Muslims, the Mamluk army, which had broken in,
09:47and the survivors left.
09:50So in a way, the Teutonic Knights went out with a bit of a whimper rather than a bang.
09:56However, once Acre had fallen and the survivors had reached Cyprus,
10:01which is where most of them went, they all had the same problem.
10:05What to do now?
10:08All the military orders had to reassess and look for new purpose,
10:13new frontiers where they could defend Christendom or expand it.
10:18For the Teutonic Order, the distant East had been reluctantly abandoned.
10:24Its new goal lay much closer to its homelands in Germany.
10:29The Crusades were not just a phenomena of the Middle East.
10:33Crusading didn't just go east to the Holy Land.
10:37It obviously went south into what is now Spain and Portugal.
10:41But the most dramatic of these other Crusades were the Northern Crusades in the Baltic.
10:50The Northern Crusades, which took place around the Baltic,
10:54were concentrating on converting the pagan peoples around the Baltic to Christianity,
11:01because they hadn't been converted to Christianity,
11:03and taking over valuable territory.
11:06The Baltic region in the Middle Ages, relative to the parts of Europe it bordered,
11:12was a wilderness.
11:14Settlement had changed relatively little since Viking times.
11:18Society was tribal and clan-based.
11:21Yet running through the region were important trading routes.
11:27From the Baltic Sea, all the way along the Great Rivers,
11:31to the Black Sea and far beyond.
11:34Furs, ivory, silver, gold.
11:38The neighbouring and expanding kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, Poland and the German Empire
11:44had all made inroads into the Baltic, at least since the 12th century.
11:49The Christian cross was a convenient ban.
11:54They're not trying to recover territory that had been Christian.
11:57They're trying to take over territory that wasn't Christian,
12:00and they say, win it for Christ.
12:03Or at least, the Latin church will take it over.
12:06Or to be a little bit more blunt, the merchants of the Baltic area will take it over,
12:10because these areas open the door into the vast trade routes of Central Asia.
12:16For the military orders and the church, what made this easier to contemplate
12:22was that the Baltic peoples, so close to Western Europe, were still far from Christian.
12:29Paganism survived in north-eastern Europe for a very, very long time,
12:36well into the 14th century.
12:39The eastern shoreline of the Baltic, that's what's now the Baltic states,
12:43but also Finland, this was pagan territory, well into the 12th century for all of it.
12:52And then it becomes the new crusade frontier.
12:57So the crusade idea, as it were, got a second wind, a second life in the Baltic.
13:04The distant Holy Land was forgotten, with so many unrepentant pagan states
13:10so close to the European heartland.
13:12And so the crusading idea was reborn.
13:17The Northern Crusades went on for much, much longer than the Holy Land Crusades did.
13:25They became a way of life, almost self-perpetuating.
13:30And in fact, the Northern Crusades went on for so long,
13:34that they structured the whole of the eastern Baltic around them.
13:40So what exists today, the states which exist today,
13:45and the tensions which still exist today, can be traced back to the Northern Crusades.
13:52One state in the region did not survive to this day as a sovereign nation.
13:58When the Teutonic Knights were aiming to expand towards the Baltic,
14:02Prussia lay directly in their sights.
14:04It's now associated with Germany.
14:07But in the 13th century, Prussia was ferociously independent.
14:12And it bordered Christian Poland.
14:15The Prussians, the original Prussians, are not Germans.
14:20They are another Baltic people.
14:22The Poles didn't seem to be able to cope with these very fierce pagans
14:28on their northern frontier.
14:30So they invited in Western Knights to help them.
14:34The Teutonic Knights filled this gap.
14:37The Poles would have liked to have got their hands on Prussia.
14:40They brought the Teutonic Order in to help them, which possibly was a mistake.
14:45All the main military orders faced the problem of being dependent on existing nations.
14:51For the Templars, always under the eye of the French kings, it led to their downfall.
14:56The Hospitallers perhaps learned from this and based themselves on the island of Rhodes.
15:03Prussia was the opportunity the Teutonic Knights had been waiting for
15:07to establish their own territorial state.
15:11Start from scratch if you can.
15:14This they were able to do in the Baltic area by getting a castle, one castle, from the King of
15:22Poland,
15:23because he needed their help.
15:25But on the agreement, only on the agreement, that they were independent in this one castle.
15:32And it was from this one castle that the whole of the Teutonic Knights' state,
15:37which was quite big eventually, grew.
15:41The fortress of Khulm was on the Polish frontier facing the pagan Prussians.
15:47The Teutonic Knights took over the castle and began an extraordinary period in the history of the military orders.
15:57Over more than a hundred years, the Teutonic Order built up and consolidated what became virtually an independent medieval state.
16:06And far enough from the German Emperor, and even further from the Pope, that they could do as they pleased.
16:14Some of what remains of the Teutonic State can still be seen across the modern-day Baltic countries.
16:21A state required a capital, and in modern-day Poland, Malberg Castle is a reminder of the Teutonic Order's strength
16:30and influence.
16:31For any Teutonic warrior who had seen the Holy Land, he would have thought the warfare in the Baltic drastically
16:38different.
16:41The environment, the ecology of the area, was so different that you can imagine warriors who had some experience of
16:51the Middle Eastern Crusades,
16:53having a certain mindset, finding themselves in the Northern Crusades, trying to use this method of warfare,
17:01and then having very quickly to modify it, because that world is totally, totally different.
17:09We have an image of Crusaders fighting in armour in the arid terrain of the Middle East.
17:16Water supplies for armies was a constant problem.
17:20The military orders of the Kingdom of Jerusalem spent decades learning how to campaign in such conditions.
17:28Transfer this to the Baltic area.
17:31There are large areas, not only of Martian forests, but also of heath land.
17:37Relatively dry, relatively open.
17:40That's the bit you can get through.
17:43But you only have to go relatively few kilometres.
17:47You'll find yourself in another forest, and then you have to hack your way through it.
17:50You can't really make a road, because by the time you come back to do a similar campaign the following
17:55year,
17:56it's all overgrown again.
17:57So a large part of these raiding campaigns were just hacking your way through the undergrowth.
18:04Their opponents, too, were different to those the Crusaders faced in the Holy Land,
18:08where war was propagated on both sides by knights, or at least noble and professional soldiers.
18:16Wars in Prussia and Livonia were against an enemy who didn't play by the same sort of rules as the
18:23Arabs and the Turks.
18:24The Turks and the Arabs were from the same sort of warrior background.
18:30When you're fighting against the pagan Prussians, they are warriors,
18:33but they don't mind burning their captives alive on their horses, for example,
18:38and the Muslims wouldn't do that.
18:39So it's more of a war with no holds barred, and a much more violent war than that in the
18:46Kingdom of Jerusalem
18:47and the other Crusader states.
18:50In Palestine, warfare had been dominated by cavalry.
18:55The military orders came into being as horsemen who could protect the pilgrim routes from Western Europe,
19:01ranging long distances along the frontiers, protecting against enemy raiders.
19:07In Prussia, though, this role was reversed.
19:11In the Baltic, the kind of warfare that they were conducting was really just a development of raiding.
19:20A classic strategy of the Middle Ages was what was known as a chevauché,
19:24which is like a flying column of cavalry and its supports, used to raid and put pressure on a population.
19:32And, of course, that's what happened in the Baltic states a lot.
19:37The chevauché was used to great effect by English troops during the Hundred Years' War,
19:43where they would penetrate for miles through enemy-held territory, plundering and causing chaos as they went.
19:49For the Teutonic raiders, it was the ideal way to destabilise Prussia and to gradually take it over.
19:57But it also brought another commodity beyond just looted food or silver.
20:02This is a form of economic warfare.
20:07You're destroying the enemy's crops. You're capturing their livestock. You're capturing their people.
20:14So, in fact, taking captives as slaves was very, very important for both sides.
20:22So we have these Christian knights, members of a military order, on slave raids.
20:29It's a mistake to think warfare is ever clean.
20:33When it's being done under a religious banner, by not just the Teutonic order,
20:38but several neighbouring Christian kingdoms, for us looking back now, it's even harder to accept.
20:45The Northern Crusades look much more like colonialism than the Crusades to the Holy Land,
20:52because those that go there are going to trade and take slaves to exploit the area.
21:01They did settle there. They did set up holy sites there to bring in pilgrims,
21:06but it's not land that's traditionally been Christian.
21:09And the emphasis was on getting resources out for the benefit of Germany, Denmark, Sweden.
21:20Since the Knights Templar became the first military order,
21:23the technology of war had also changed considerably.
21:27Technology and technological advantage and superiority
21:31was as key to medieval warfare as it is to modern warfare.
21:36In the early days of the Kingdom of Jerusalem,
21:40knights fought dressed little different to Viking warriors, with virtually the same weapons.
21:45The Teutonic Knights of the early 15th century were unrecognisable for the original Templars.
21:52And you're talking about people with full plate armour,
21:56exactly the kind of armour that was worn at Agincourt, for example,
22:00and heavily armoured horses as well, conducting warfare usually against much more lightly armoured opposition.
22:10As with all the military orders,
22:12knights, the main armoured soldiers who comprised the Teutonic Order's core battlefield troops,
22:18were relatively few in number.
22:22Yet in the Northern Crusades, the armoured knight on horseback could never dominate in the terrain of the Baltic.
22:29They needed the support of infantry.
22:32Who were these infantry?
22:34Well, some of them were sergeants, brother sergeants.
22:37Others were mercenaries.
22:38Others were low-status associates of the order.
22:45There were also levies from the towns under the control of the orders.
22:52But one kind of weapon gave infantry even more killing power.
22:59In the 15th century, there's no doubt that infantry becomes stronger in relation to cavalry.
23:06And because they possess more missile weapons and they're capable of standing their ground.
23:12Here again, technology was on the side of the Teutonic Order.
23:17This was not just their castle building activity and the speed and effectiveness of that.
23:23It was also things like siege machines and, almost above all else, crossbows.
23:31English longbowmen had proved time and again that disciplined infantry,
23:35armed with missile weapons, could dominate the medieval battlefield.
23:40Yet the longbow took years of training to master.
23:43Whereas the crossbow was simpler to use.
23:46It was a level that almost anyone could learn to use relatively quickly.
23:51Like the firearms of future centuries.
23:55To understand the role of the crossbow armed infantry,
23:59it might be good to see them as a sort of early form of musketeer.
24:05These are not repeating weapons.
24:07It takes time to reload, span, aim, shoot.
24:12So you need teamwork.
24:15You have a front rank, you have loaders.
24:17It's also not like longbow archery.
24:21And certainly not like the archery techniques of Asia and the Middle East,
24:25where they are shooting rapidly and they shoot and they shoot and they shoot.
24:29It's not like that with a crossbow.
24:31It's one aimed shot.
24:33Punchy.
24:35Hugely powerful.
24:36Takes time to reload.
24:38Prussia was steadily overwhelmed and its lands came under Teutonic control.
24:44It was a process of penetrating as far as they could through the Prussian interior.
24:49Then establishing small forts, bases from which they could operate.
24:54These were often in remote areas with building materials in short supply.
25:00The first castles, if they were in an important location, would then be rebuilt with more permanent materials.
25:09Sometimes stone, but most typically of brick.
25:13Because this is a low-lying marsh area, you don't find much good stone.
25:20Brick isn't normally thought of as being a medieval material, even though it had been around since Roman times.
25:26And perhaps still less for building castles.
25:30But bricks could be either made in country or transported quickly on the rivers.
25:35It meant forts could be thrown up quickly by teams of bricklayers.
25:40Almost like sandbag defences in 20th century war.
25:44Those forts and castles gradually grew in scale until they reached the size of the magnificent remnants that we have
25:52now in Poland and elsewhere.
25:55It took many years and huge resources.
25:59But Marlborg Castle, the Teutonic Knights' capital, was steadily built up and expanded into one of the greatest fortresses of
26:07any of the military orders.
26:10Yes, Marlborg is the biggest brick castle in the world.
26:16The Teutonic Order started construction works at the end of the 13th century and finished in the first half of
26:25the 15th century.
26:26So more than 120 years, more than 6 million bricks were used to build this castle.
26:34It's about 20 hectares.
26:37And this castle in the Middle Ages was never taken by the enemy forces.
26:43It's staggering to think though, that just 75 years ago, this exceptional castle lay in ruins.
26:51As the Second World War drew to a close, Marlborg Castle was used as a stronghold by Nazi German troops.
26:59It overlooked the railway the Germans were using to evacuate troops from the Russian front.
27:05This, and the castle's associations with the Nazis' Teutonic propaganda, meant that the Red Army spared little thought for Marlborg's
27:13value to posterity.
27:15But since the war, a huge project saw the rebuilding of Marlborg to something like its original architectural grandeur.
27:24Archaeologists and historians work together to interpret what they found in the process.
27:30Karol Poljolsky is a curator at Marlborg Castle.
27:35The Teutonic Order engineers took the decision to build the first part of the castle.
27:45He's exploring here the vaulted chambers beneath the high castle.
27:50The first parts built by the Teutonic Knight engineers.
27:54We are at the moment in the oldest part of the castle in Marlborg.
28:00The construction work started here about 1278-79.
28:06Even this far underground, the walls have been partially restored.
28:10But this reveals detail of some of the original building materials.
28:15We see here the original stones from the 13th century.
28:20Original bricks from the same period.
28:24But here, we can see the modern bricks from the 20th century, used during the reconstruction works.
28:33The Teutonic Order didn't want Marlborg to be simply a stronghold.
28:38They were a religious order, so it was also their convent.
28:43The entrance to the castle's church, the order's cathedral, contained a reminder that as soldiers of God, their original spiritual
28:53home still lay in the far off Holy Land.
28:56This is the Golden Gate, the main entrance to the Teutonic Order's church in the castle of Marlborg.
29:05I am of the opinion that this Golden Gate, this is the gate to the Golden Jerusalem for the Teutonic
29:15Knights.
29:15It was very important to connect their new capital convent, capital castle with the Jerusalem.
29:27Because the Teutonic Order, it was the order of the Saint Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem.
29:35Only members of the Teutonic and military orders, or important churchmen or dignitaries, could pass here into the Church of
29:44Saint Mary.
29:45The main church in the Teutonic Order's state in Prussia.
29:51This is the most important place in the Teutonic Order castle in Marlborg.
29:56And this is the most important church in the Teutonic Order.
30:01The first construction works were done in the 1280s of the 13th century.
30:08And during the 14th century, the church was richly decorated.
30:16Very little survived the Second World War, or the Red Army's occupation in the aftermath.
30:22But it's thought that the Order's holy relics were stored or displayed here, including a tangible link to the crucifixion
30:30itself.
30:31The most precious, the most important was the fragment, the piece of the True Cross.
30:38Because we know that the Teutonic Order received it from the King of France in the 70s, 80s of the
30:4514th century.
30:46It was so important to have relics in the churches.
30:50Because the people need to contact with the saints, with the objects connected with the passion of the Christ.
31:04And it was important to collect for pilgrims who arrived here in the 14th and 15th century.
31:13Pilgrims were vital to the Order, as they brought with them money in the form of donations.
31:19And in return, the brothers showed off the Order's relics.
31:24They included nobles from across Europe, including in 1390, Henry Bolingbroke, future King Henry IV of England.
31:33The raison d'etre of the Order, as they saw it, was holy war.
31:38And pilgrims brought more than just their money.
31:42The Teutonic Order is known also as a military organisation.
31:47We can see here two long swords from the first half of the 14th century.
31:55These swords were found nearby the castle, and they bear the telltale inscriptions of religious warriors.
32:03This sword is very interesting, because we can see here the Jerusalem cross.
32:10This is the symbol of the Crusades. Crusades, of course, Palestine.
32:15But in the 14th century, the knights coming here from Western Europe were crusaders too.
32:26They fought in the name of Christ against the pagans, against the Lithuanians.
32:32Lithuania was the next country that the Teutonic Order coveted and invaded.
32:38Like the Prussians, the Lithuanians too were Baltic pagans.
32:44Their land as well was of wilderness, even further from Western Europe.
32:49But beyond lay the trade routes to Russia and to Asia.
32:53The distances were greater, and so one kind of transport became even more important.
33:00A striking feature of the Teutonic Knights and their campaigns in the Baltic
33:06was how they used rivers in order to move more rapidly.
33:13The main rivers of the Baltic States area, Northern Poland, were, and to some extent remain,
33:21major arteries of trade.
33:24At the time of the Northern Crusades, they were also major arteries of warfare.
33:30Raiding, counter-raiding, supplying your forces in the field.
33:36In winter, the rivers freeze, even the big ones.
33:41So you end up with a smooth, icy, reasonably accessible route from where you are, deep into the enemy territory.
33:51The order pushed north and east from Prussia, and historians and archaeologists can now trace the routes they took.
33:59That is why most of the castles which survive, the locations, were on rivers.
34:07They're not just scattered around.
34:08This was to secure the rivers, secure crossing points of the rivers, secure junctions of rivers.
34:16These castles were put in places with great thought.
34:20But some of the castles the order built in Lithuania are more than just ruins.
34:27Trakai Castle was built by the Teutonic Knights and has survived intact.
34:32Today, it's one of Lithuania's most important heritage sites.
34:37Like Malbork, it was built from stone and brick,
34:41and it was both a stronghold and an administrative center for the order.
34:46The campaign lasted decades.
34:49The fighting was bitter, bloody, and above all for the Teutonic Knights, expensive.
34:55They needed a breakthrough.
34:57In the 1380s, the order launched an offensive that led to what one historian now regards as the possible beginning
35:06of the end for the Northern Crusades.
35:08In 1384, the Teutonic Knights recaptured a castle at Konas, in what's now central Lithuania.
35:16The confluence of the two rivers here, the Nerys and the Nemunas, makes the site strategically vital.
35:24Control this spot, and you control movement to and from the Baltic Sea on two axes for hundreds of miles
35:32inland.
35:33Both sides knew this was a position they had to hold.
35:37The order immediately began rebuilding the defenses, while the Lithuanian leader, Grand Duke Vitotas, set about laying siege to try
35:47to take the castle before it was completed.
35:51The Teutonic Knights called the new stronghold after their patron figure, the Virgin Mary, Marian Verde.
35:59Its exact site has been lost for centuries.
36:03The peninsula on which it stood has been fought over many times since.
36:07The partially ruined Konas castle that still stands today dates from the period after Marian Verde.
36:14And the remains of earlier fortifications can also still be seen.
36:19It's a confusing puzzle of battlefield archaeology.
36:23Konas historian Vitenis Almanaitis has researched the matter for many years.
36:28In 1362.
36:321362.
36:331362.
36:331362.
36:341362.
36:34Dar nebaigtas statyti pilį apguli didžiulį vokiečių ordino kariuomenė, kuri turėjo daug talkininkų, taip pat buvo atvykę ryteriai ir iš
36:45Anglijos.
36:481362.
36:501362.
36:501462.
36:521462.
36:541462.
36:551462.
36:581462.
37:011562.
37:031562.
37:031562.
37:031562.
37:041562.
37:0520 years later, when Vitotas turned the tables and besieged the Teutonic Knights' Marim Verde,
37:12the fight was no less bloody.
37:15The siege opened with hails of missile fire from both defenders and besiegers.
37:20Both sides used traditional siege engines and notably many new gunpowder weapons.
37:28The Teutonic Knights rained crossbow bolts on the Lithuanians.
37:32But this would be a battle settled by a savage artillery duel.
37:38A chronicle describes that the Lithuanians laid great store in a large trebuchet.
37:44which hammered down huge stone balls on the incomplete brick walls.
37:48The Teutonic gun commander responded and himself laid the shot which destroyed the trebuchet.
37:56This victory was brief.
38:00The commander was beheaded by a Lithuanian shot.
38:03The Teutonic knights fought on a while longer, but in the end they were forced to surrender the castle.
38:10The Grand Duke was victorious and became Vitotas the Great.
38:15The castle of Marim Verde disappeared from history until perhaps now.
38:21Galbūt, galbūt, galbūt, galbūt, žodžiu, ateityje Marin Verder vietą pasiseks surasti, nes tai buvo didelė mūrinė pilis.
38:33The soldiers from here might have been reversed.
38:39The soldiers should be reversed.
38:41We didn't see anything very special, but in the year 2015 they were very successful.
38:55Time and tides mean that the river banks here are different now than in the late 14th century.
39:01It's likely there was a small island or natural cove which the order exploited for its castle.
39:08The place would be ideal for reinforcement from its ships,
39:11which likely brought in every single brick used to build the defences.
39:16The low water in 2015 revealed clues.
39:24This place is about 500 m. Kauno Pilies.
39:32Upės dugne yra daug senų plytų.
39:36This place is one of the best plytas.
39:43Maybe this plytas is from Kauno Pilies,
39:48which is not yet tolise.
39:50But we can explain the difference.
39:55This plytas is actually from Prusijos.
40:00Prusijos is from Prusijos.
40:03It was a few years ago.
40:05It was a few years ago.
40:07It was a few years ago.
40:10But we know that when we were in Marin Verder,
40:15there were a lot of plytas atvegs from Prusijos.
40:20This plytas is standard.
40:23This is one of the places.
40:27This plytas can be used to be a plytas.
40:29This plytas is from Prusijos.
40:32and this plytas is from Prusijos.
40:34This plytas is from Prusijos.
40:40This plytas is the same.
40:42This plytas is the same.
40:46This plytas is the same.
40:52This plytas is the same.
40:54This plytas is on the same basis.
40:54The promise that even this important,
40:58history-like place will be found.
41:00This plytas exist.
41:04The battle of Mariam Verder is perhaps
41:07the greatest Lithuanian victory. Never again would the Teutonic Knights hold the rivers
41:12here at Konas. Never again would they penetrate as far east into Lithuania. Within the German
41:20Empire and the Papacy, questions were asked of the order, and its seemingly endless war
41:27in the Baltic.
41:29By the time you get to the late 14th century, with the conversion of the big powerful Duchy
41:37of Lithuania to Christianity, there's no more pagans to fight. But the Teutonic order is
41:42still there, and it will be there for several more centuries. So what's it for? Its raison d'etre
41:49seems to have disappeared. Its main, initial raison d'etre has disappeared. No more pagans
41:56to fight.
41:56Just over 20 years later, some 50 miles west of Konas, the fate of the order was sealed.
42:05The Germans called it Tannenberg, the Poles Grunwald. To the Lithuanians, it was Zalgiris. Teutonic
42:14troops faced an opposing allied Lithuanian and Polish army.
42:19The Teutonic Knights overreached themselves and were destroyed at the Battle of Tannenberg
42:24by combinations of Poles and Lithuanians and so on. But that was really a political misjudgment
42:31as much as a military failing.
42:34The Teutonic army was defeated. It was a crushing victory for the Lithuanians and Poles. The greatest
42:41ever inflicted on the Christian military order.
42:44The end of the Teutonic order is at the hands of fellow Christians.
42:52In 1929, the Teutonic Knights as a military order were once and for all dissolved. Yet the
42:59order remains today as a charitable organisation in many countries. With the benefit of hindsight
43:06and history, it can now perhaps be seen in perspective.
43:11I think that the Teutonic order is still important in the religious life of the people in Western Europe.
43:22For Polish people, Teutonic order is not only an eternal enemy. Now we can say that Teutonic order was a
43:36element of the medieval life of the medieval life in Europe.
44:24Transcription by CastingWords
Comentários