2 Burleigh, History, Privilege and Conspiracy

European History Quarterly
http://ehq.sagepub.com History, Privilege and Conspiracy Theories in Mid-fifteenth Century Prussia

Michael Burleigh European History Quarterly 1984; 14; 381 DOI: 10.1177/026569148401400401 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ehq.sagepub.com
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Michael Burleigh
History, Privilege and Conspiracy Theories in Mid-fifteenth Century Prussia
or the Order of the Hospital of the Blessed House of Jerusalem was founded as a of the German Virgin Mary field hospital outside Acre in 1191. Within a few years it was reconstituted as a military religious order with an eclectic Rule derived from those of the Templars and Hospitallers. From the thirteenth century, following the eradication of the crusader presence in Palestine in 1291, the Order ruled three major groupings of territory. Its lands and complexes of rights in the Empire, Prussia and Livonia were in turn sub-divided into bailiwicks and commanderies. The three major provinces were under the aegis of respectively a German Master, the Grand Master (who resided in Prussia), and a Livonian Master. The Grand Master was the titular head of the entire corporation. In Prussia, which is our present concern, the Order ruled a complex society consisting of German colonists and the subjugated native Prussian population. The former received the generous terms of settlement and extensive liberties that were a feature common to many medieval colonial societies. These liberties and the opportunities for economic advancement open to the setilers ensured that there was little questioning of the Orders effective monopoly of political power. In the fourteenth century, the Order reached the zenith of its prosperity and prestige. Armed expeditions into Lithuania coupled with a spell at the Grand Masters court at Marienburg became almost de rigueur for the more venturesome members of the European knightly class. None of this was destined to continue. The Union of Krewa (1385) brought together the formidable military resources of Poland and Lithuania while simultaneously opening up Lithuania to Polish missionaries. From the early fifteenth century the Order was forced to reconsider its relations with Prussian society as a whole and with the relatively highly privileged German settlers in particular. The Orders increasing fiscality accelerated the
The German Order
European History Quarterly (SAGE, London, Beverly Hills and New Delhi), Vol. 14
(1984), 381381-99
382
of the Prussian Estates. Questions were articulated about the nature of the regime that had hitherto gone unasked. What was the Order doing in Prussia if the native Prussians had long since been brought into political subjection and the Orders external opponents converted (at least notionally) to Christianity? To whom was the Order ultimately justiciable? If it was impossible to get justice from the Order then should one resort to the judicial self-help that was common across the Empire? Why was membership of the Order closed to its subjects in Prussia? The benefits to be derived from the rule of the Order were becoming less than self-evident. The first half of the fifteenth century in Prussia was punctuated by four major wars. In 1410,1414, 1422 and 1431-3 parts of the country were ravaged by invading armies. These wars were fought between Catholic Prussia and Catholic Poland-Lithuania for purely secular ends. They had nothing of the character of crusades. To combat the superior resources of the Poles and Lithuanians, the German Order was obliged to hire mercenaries. Since its own damaged and depleted material resources were insufficient to cover their fees, the Order embarked upon the systematic and deliberate undermining of the privileges of townsmen, gentry and peasants alike. At a time of general economic dislocation occasioned by repeated warfare, the Order murdered townsmen who resisted its grasping fiscality, eroded tenurial security and increased the labour services of the peasants. Among the unlooked-for results of this assault were the formation of a League of townsmen and gentry in March 1440 designed to defend their privileges and liberties and, fourteen years later, the Leagues rejection of the rule of the Order in favour of the I long-range lordship of the King of Poland. This paper is concerned with some of the issues that were at stake in this conflict between the Order and a number of influential subjects in Prussia. Three themes have been chosen for discussion here. Firstly, the failure to establish effective conciliar and judicial representation of the Estates; secondly, the development of contrasting perceptions of Prussian history by both the Order and the Estates; and, thirdly, the adoption by both sides of closely related conspiracy theories to account for the ideologies of their political opponents. Of course these were not the only reasons why a sizeable section of the Prussian upper class decided to go to war with the German Order in February 1454. None the less, in so far as they typify successive stages in the developing conflict they seem worth isolating in this rather artificial way.
development
383 The foundation of the League of townsmen and gentry coincided with a time of unprecedented upheaval within the Order. In the summer of 1439 Grand Master Paul von Rusdorf and the German Master Saunsheim found themselves on opposite sides over an electoral dispute concerning the Mastership of Livonia.2The original issue was rapidly superseded by a conflict over the authenticity of a series of Statutes which, had they been regarded as genuine, would have dramatically increased the power of the German Master in the affairs of the Order as a whole at the expense of the Grand Master. Both men sought to have their views confirmed by external authorities Eugenius IV, King Sigismund and the Council of Basle-and, equally dangerously, both sought to undermine the power base of the other. Early in 1438 Rusdorf decided to absolve Saunsheims subordinates from their obedience in the event of his refusal to submit in person to the Grand Master in Prussia. The German Master retaliated by seeking to involve the Prussian towns in the affair. In a letter to the towns of Elbing and Konigsberg dated 15 September 1439, Saunsheim castigated the misrule of bruder Pawel and suggested that the towns should pressurize Rusdorf into making an4 equally humiliating personal submission to himself in the Empire.4 In order to counter Saunsheims attempts to fish in these troubled waters, Rusdorf summoned representatives of the East Prussian Chapters of Balga, Brandenburg and Konigsberg to a secret meeting at the Orders demesne of Einsiedel near Heiligenbeil. Solidarity was to be hammered out in private and Rusdorf hoped to emerge armed with unconditional support for the conflict with the German Master. In the event, he got nothing of the kind. The representatives of the Chapters declined to make any statement on the conflict. They did, however, demand the summoning of a General Chapter to consider their own grievances and their plans for the reform of the Order. Disobedience shortly became rebellion: in February 1440 the Chapter of iKonigsberg ousted their Commander (and Marshal) Rabenstein.5 The rebels grievances found their way into Saunsheims lengthening catalogue of complaints against Rusdorf and into the hands of the Prussian Estates to whom both parties in the Prussian conflict appealed for support. The Orders image was not further enhanced by either the rebel Chapters plea to the towns for protection in the event of an attack upon them by the Grand Master or by the need to involve the towns in issuing letters of safe conduct to enable the German Master of the Order to explain his case in Prussia.
-
384 The
lordship was 6 League in 1440.~
in
no
position
to obstruct the
founders of the
In terms of the Orders relations with its subjects, the foundation of the League was merely a signpost on the road to ruin. The regime had certain intrinsic characteristics which were liable to be adversely perceived if conditions in general deteriorated. One factor in particular cast a lengthy shadow over relations between rulers and ruled: the latter were effectively excluded from membership of the corporation. With very few exceptions, the Order did not recruit from the local population; when it did, those exceptions rarely reached high office.~Postulants were admitted in the twelve bailiwicks in the Empire and were then sent out to Prussia where, by virtue of their membership of the Order, they became part of the ruling group. That, by a subtle perversion of the idea of active hospitality, was what the Order was for. When in 1449 the provincial Commander of the bailiwick of Altenbiesen informed the local nobility that his houses could support no more of their number he was asked indignantly why does one need the Order any more if it shouldnt be a hospital and abode for the nobility?&dquo; The government of Prussia was in the hands of a small group replenished, so to speak, by recruits whose political and social consciousness had been formed elsewhere. Self-evidently perhaps, a celibate military religious Order did not generate familial ties with the local population. These isolating circumstances were exacerbated in the fifteenth century by a shift in the nationalities represented in the Order, resulting in an increased proportion of south Germans occupying high office. The predominantly Low German and Middle High German speaking settlers and their descendants were governed by an alien oligarchy whose social perspectives had been formed elsewhere and which, by its very existence, blocked their own political aspirations. Once, so one hostile chronicler has it, the Order had been governed by men from Westphalia, the Rhineland, Saxony, Brunswick, Munster or the see of Hildesheim: indeed, it was possible then for Prussians to enter the Order. The Order had also avoided recruiting children on the strength of patronage or the nobility of their birth. Relations between subjects and rulers had deteriorated because of the ascendancy within the Order of men from the high tongue, in other words Swabians, Bavarians and Franconians whose chief characteristics were arrogance, cupidity and violence. 10 They were men who had learned their politics in a hard school where self-conscious knightly Leagues or membership
385 of a military religious Order were ways of surviving the grinding action of princes and towns. The attitudes they brought to Prussia did not incline them to any spirit of compromise with the Estates of their
destination.&dquo;I
Knightly arrogance was liable to become doubly insufferable when fused with the aggressive assertion of clerical privilege. Effectively that intoxicating cocktail put paid to all attempts to create consensual institutions, whether in the form of a mixed territorial council or a mixed court of appeal. The former was first essayed by Heinrich von Plauen in October 1412, mainly to facilitate the collection of taxes to fulfil the reparations clauses of the First Treaty of Thorn (1 February 1411). 12 Its members - sixteen were to be nominated by the townsmen and thirty-two gentry their oath, they were to had taken Grand Master. Once they their taxes and, if necessary, to approve persuade the localities to pay the Order solely to settle the was created more. The council by in a convenient account with Poland way. Nothing is known about its it has been plausibly suggested with the indeed Estates; relationship that the Grand Master saw it as a means of by-passing the Estates
-
altogether.3
The idea
was
revived, in a different form, by the Estates in 1430.
They suggested a council consisting respectively of six representatives of the Order, bishops and their cathedral Chapters,
and gentry. The choice was to lie with the Estates as well as the Grand Master. While Rusdorf did not object in principle to this plan, he pointed out that it would be difficult to win the sympathies of his subordinates for a body in which the Estates would have numerical parity with the Order.4 Two years later the Grand Master proposed a scaled down version of the same idea. He would augment the Orders own ruling council with four representatives of the gentry and townsmen. Having nominated the former, Rusdorf invited the towns to submit four candidates. They refused.S The representatives of the Estates would have been outnumbered by the Order and the clergy (who were invariably members of the Order), while the oaths and letters of commission required of the representatives suggested a suspiciously large transference of power from the Estates to the council. The Estates were also intent upon the establishment of a higher court, in which they were represented, for the resolution of questions of privilege and cases involving members of the Order or the prelates. Like the Landesrat, the Richttag was a concession made
towns
386
by the Order during an hour of need, in this case the war of 1431-3 with Poland. During a Diet at Elbing in November 1432 Rusdorf suggested the holding of a court of appeal where cases would be heard by the Grand Master, prelates, senior officers of the Order and members of the Grand Masters recently augmented council. The Estates protested that such a court would be partial and therefore worthless from their point of view. 16 Accordingly, they were given the verbal assurance that they would be represented in future meetings of the court. It should be noted, however, that the Order steadfastly refused to give any written guarantees as to the future composition of the court or the frequency with which it should meet. 17 Consequently, in the following years no courts of appeal appear to have been held. Men could not be compelled to visit a court of appeal. The Estates, however, could continue in their efforts to have the court reconstituted. 18 Under persistent pressure from the Estates, the much-harassed and physically ailing Rusdorf conceded defeat in 1440.~ In June of that year, it was decided that the court of appeal should include sixteen judges with four each from the Order, prelacy, towns and gentry. They were to take an oath to the effect that they would deliver their judgements without fear or favour.2 Following three postponements, the court finally met in late June 1441. Its first, and apparently last, judgement of a dispute between the peasants of the Kammeramt Mehlsack and the oppressive cathedral Chapter of Frauenburg has survived. 21 By 1441 the issue of appeals had become closely connected with the aims of the League. Indeed this was a direct consequence of the Orders dilatory and non-committal handling of the whole issue. The main clause of the charter of foundation outlined a system of appeals which effectively mediatised the position of the Grand Master. Failing satisfaction at the hands of the Grand Master, from whom he should first seek justice, an appellant should take his case to an annual court of appeal the Richttag whose existence was assumed to have been conceded. If that court were postponed or subjected to interference, the appellant (if he were a knight) should address himself to the most senior knights of the Culmerland or, (if he were a townsman) to the towns of Culm and Thorn. Both of these bodies could then summon other towns or districts to hear the case. Ominously, the League members added that acts of interference against the course of justice that they had outlined would not go
-
unrevenged.22
Neither the Order
nor
the
prelates
could countenance this
387
unilateral arrogation of the right to hear appeals. Bishop Franz of Ermland was the first to declare that the League was in contravention of ecclesiastical privilege. Franz was an intemperate Silesian who had studied canon law in Prague. He and his cathedral Chapter were also at loggerheads with all sections of society within the see of Ermland. In 1440 the peasants of Mehlsack rebelled against the exactions of the cathedral Chapter of Frauenburg. In the same year the gentry and townsmen protested in a Diet that the Chapter was refusing to make room in its ranks for their own deserving offspring. 24 Relations between the Bishop and the towns of Heilsberg and Braunsberg were also at a low ebb. In 1444 the Diet of Elbing agreed with the Braunsbergers that if Franz should try to use force to resolve his dispute with the townsmen over the demarcation of their respective jurisdictions, it would become a matter for the League. At root, the Braunsbergers did not want to tread the winding and expensive road to Rome every time they fell out with their lord the Bishop. 24 In Bishop Franzs opinion, it was not the concern of the townsmen whether or not their grievances were heard in or out of Prussia. He was certain, however, that the townsmen were not going to be j udges in their own case. 21 Moreover, if the Braunsbergers sought to involve the League in the affairs of his see, then a general attack on the legality of the League seemed a logical step to take. In April 1446 Franz astonished the Diet at Elbing with a characteristic outburst in which he denounced the League as being against all spiritual and natural law. It was his duty for the episcopal conscience was in turmoil to lead his flock away from error. 26 The speech ensured the undying enmity of the Estates towards the Bishop. In June 1446 they declared that they would rather deal with the Grand Master alone: the Bishop of Ermland should stay at home. 27 From 1446 onwards, the Estates thought they saw the malevolent hand of Bishop Franz at every turn. Where the Bishop led, the officers of the Order were not afraid to follow. The question of the Richttag was raised again at a Diet in Elbing on 23 April 1450. There were stormy exchanges of opinion. The Estates were reminded by the officers of the Order that
-
the lord Grand Master and his Order and all of the brothers of the Order were privileged and exempted by the Holy See and the Emperor That they were only answerable to the Holy Father, the Pope, and were only justiciable m the court of the Holy Father, the Pope, without any intermediate ~urmd~ct~on Neither the Emperor, the King of the Romans, cardmals, patriarchs, archbishops, bishops nor
388
any spiritual or lay judge, except the Holy Father, the Pope, and the Apostolic See could judge them.
Lest the significance of this pompous litany was lost on the Estates, the officers added pointedly that it would be a very strange thing if they should now be the justiciables of their subjects in the towns of Culm and Thorn.2 The Estates were questioned further as to whether they thought that the clergy should be subject to the court of appeal. They answered in the affirmative, pointing to the costs and inconveniences involved when cases were heard by extra-territorial courts. The Estates were told that the clergy owed their exemption from, lay jurisdictions to God, the Pope and the Church; that whoever went against this exemption was also challenging ecclesiastical law and finally, that not even the Grand Master could force the clergy to recognize a court in which laymen sat as judges. 29 These strident statements of clerical immunity might have been tolerated had they been solely defensive. In the Ordensstaat of the fifteenth century however, they were allied with the deliberate destruction of the privileges and liberties of others. Since these had been granted in relatively remote times, it was necessary to present a view of the past that would lend credence to the Orders present political objectives. The conflict over privileges was fought out over alternative and conflicting versions of history. For example, in October 1437 Rusdorf journeyed through the Culmerland, a region that was to become the heartland of the League. At a Diet in Rheden the Culmerlanders presented a comprehensive series of grievances concerning taxes, fishing rights, the mill penny and so forth. The form the resulting clash assumed is as interesting as the individual grievances. Rusdorf began by asserting that the Culmer Handfeste had been granted to the towns of Culm and Thorn alone as opposed to the region in general. He went on to oppose the two towns claim that they had been released from all taxes by a privilege issued by Duke Samborius of Pomerania. He knew of no land that the Order had received from the Duke and in any case, the poundage tax was levied in Danzig which had never been under the lordship of the Dukes of Pomerania.3&dquo; The Estates hastened to draw up a written rebuttal of these claims. They argued that their privileges had been granted to their ancestors in recognition of the sacrifices they had made in the initial conquest of the country. In the laager conditions prevailing in a recently conquered land, immigrant noblemen and pilgrims had of necessity to reside in towns but the privileges had
389 been issued in clear anticipation of their prospective settlement on the land. Therefore, they argued, their privileges were indivisibly valid for those who subsequently dwelt outside as well as in the
towns. 31
The historical revisionism implicit in the Orders argument with the Estates of the Culmerland in 1437 was formulated more sharply and with a more general application in the early 1450s. The Grand Mastership of Konrad von Erlichshausen (1441-9) represented a lull before the storm. In 1442 he enjoined his more rabid subordinates to refrain from wild talk about the League. 32 Simultaneously, however, he sought to prise the League apart by removing sources of grievance and by exploiting the conflict of economic interest between the towns and gentry over the issue of foreign mercantile access to the Prussian hinterland.33 Neither of these approaches to the problem had much success. The Grand Masters last hours were passed in an atmosphere of resignation and failure. On his death-bed he was alleged to have warned his brother officers: if you elect Heinrich Reuss von Plauen, youll certainly have war. If you elect my nephew Ludwig, he will do what you want. Konrad expressed a preference for the Commander of Osterode. However, he added wearily that all was hopeless since the officers present had already settled the matter in a secret meeting at Mewe and had agreed that whoever was elected would destroy the League.34 In March 1450 the worst scenario was realized. Ludwig was elected Grand Master. He quickly became dependent upon the advice of his maternal uncle Heinrich Reuss von Plauen, the spokesman of the most implacably hawkish members of the Order. From 1450 onwards, the ruling trio of Ludwig, Heinrich and Bishop Franz, aided by shrill-sounding academic jurists, sought the condemnation of the League by external authorities as a prelude, if need be, to its eradication by force. The language used by both sides became increasingly irrational. A change of tempo was soon apparent to the Estates. In 1452 they unfavourably contrasted the present government of the Order with the regimes of Rusdorf and Konrad von Erlichshausen. Ludwig, they said, had belaboured them with papal Bulls, imperial and princely letters and had had it announced from the pulpits and monasteries everywhere that on account of the League we were heretics and impious Christians.35 In June 1452 the councillors of Culm wrote to their counterparts in Danzig warning them of the imminent arrival of further papal documents whose effect would be to destroy their privileges and if that happened we would be like
390 serfs (sam egene lewthe), though God forbid. 16 Seven months later, one of the Orders intellectual functionaries took it upon himself to reinterpret Prussian history in the service of the Orders present political objectives. From Vienna the Estates learned that Dr Peter Knorre, an advocate of the Order and Chancellor of Duke Albrecht Achilles of Hohenzollern, had breezily declared that we [the Prussians], were all pagans and that we were won by the sword and therefore we were more like serfs or people one bought. Our forefathers did not help us win the country but they [the Order], had won it and thus they will have us as serfs.17 According to Knorre there had been no initial partnership so no claims to privilege could be made on the basis of one. Not to be outdone in this line of academic radical-reactionary sophistry, another jurist, Dr Blumenau, made an improbable analogy between Lucifer who wanted to seat himself next to the Almighty and the members of the League who, since they had ignored ecclesiastical censure, were liable to forfeit their lives and property. Such extravagances of language were readily reported in Prussia and lost nothing in the
telling. 38
Faced with so blatant an attempt to re-write the past, the adherents of the League could do little more than stress the joint nature of the conquest and settlement of Prussia while contrasting the present regime with what they took to be the more felicitous circumstances of the fourteenth century. Early in 1451 the Estates informed the papal legate, Perez, whose legation to Prussia had been stage-managed by the Grand Master and his procurators in Rome, that their ancestors had spilled their blood with the lordship to bring one hundred miles of pagan territory into the Catholic Faith. 39 In a tract of 1453 entitled The Origins of the League they spoke once more of their ancestors sacrifices. They had come to Prussia to fight pagans and in recompense had received precisely those privileges which the Order was now eroding through the imposition of illegal taxes and the redefinition of the terms of tenure.40 In the Danzig Chronicle of the League the present regime was contrasted unfavourably with the happier times enjoyed under Heinrich Dusemer or Winrich von Kniprode in the fourteenth century. Moreover, in a series of thumbnail sketches of recent Grand Masters, Ludwig came off worst. While Rusdorf was clever and sharp, Konrad wise, pious, experienced and goodnatured, Ludwig was arrogant and headstrong. As we saw above, however, personalities alone were not to blame. The rot had set in with the
391 insidious rise to powerof a south German oligarchy which had severed such linguistic, cultural and social ties as existed between the Order and Prussian society at large. 41 This increasingly bitter debate about the past was soon accompanied by a much cruder presentation of the conflict. A regime that could so blithely pass over the fact that it owed its existence to merchants from Lubeck and Bremen or that the conquest of Prussia had been a joint-stock undertaking soon came to be susceptible to a conspiracy theory of its present problems. In other words, the conflict was personalized and the wider issues at stake were conveniently deemed to exist only in the minds of a malevolent minority. In a letter dated 12 November 1453 Ramschel von Krixen, a provincial judge and founder member of the League, informed Hans von Baisen, one of the most eminent men in Prussia, that certain members of the Order had said that matters would never be right in Prussia until three hundred of them [members of the League], are put to the sword since the rest are just simple people and led on by this three hundred. 42 Such remarks were quickly seized upon by the Orders opponents who in turn were ready to identify particular culprits. For example, in December 1453 the Vogt of Leipe reported to the Grand Master on gatherings in Thorn and Liessau in the Culmerland. The town councillors had encouraged the citizenry to ponder the Orders analogy between the League and Lucifer although here the words of Dr Blumenau were significantly attributed to the more prominent figures of Bishop Franz and the Commander of Elbing. It was the sort of remark they were thought likely to make. Rhetorically, the councillors demanded now will you be bond or free? The citizens cried that they would not be serfs (Do schregin sy alle, sy wellen nicht egin seyn). 41 Moreover, the Orders murderous designs on the lives of the three hundred supposed conspirators were reported with documentary proof. In an enclosure, the Vogt had equally dismal tidings from the meeting of the gentry of Liessau. Clearly in a blood-thirsty mood,the gentry expressed the wish that the Commander of Elbing and Bishop Franz should be quartered and hung up along the highways. Someone ventured the opinion that a former Grand Master had said that the Order would never lack money, only wise counsel. Another retorted that the present officers could not advise how to run a cowshed let alone an entire country (sy kunden nicht recht fur einen kustal raten, wy sy dan fur ein gancz lant ratten sulten)14 Both history and direct experience encouraged the Estates to take
392 the Orders threats seriously. The actions of the lordship were not calculable: they had a record of violence. Given the immense difficulties of bringing members of the Order to justice, it is not surprising that the Estates neither forgot nor forgave anything. For example, in April 1411 Heinrich von Plauens eponymous brother the Commander of Elbing had had three Danzig councillors murdered because of their refusal to vote taxes which the Order was then demanding. The Commander had also silenced one of the victims irate female relatives by telling her that unless she held her peace he would have her put in a sack and drowned.45 Many years later, in May 1453, the Commander of Danzig reported a conversation he had had with Wilhelm Jordan who was about to lay four of the towns grievances before the including this one in Vienna. The Commander had informed Jordan that it Emperor wasnt necessary to remember those people, they were long since dead. Jordan replied coolly that while that was true, he had been ordered by the council to raise the issue .4 The murders figured prominently in every Danzig chronicle and in every statement of the
-
Leagues case.4
Another name that occurred in the Estates catalogue of crimes committed by the Order was that of the landowner Heinrich Skolim. His name appears in a general list of grievances presented during a Diet in April 1450. 48 The grievance in question concerned the Skolim familys settlement in a local court of a property dispute arising from death and divorce. Konrad von Erlichshausen denied the legality of the settlement on the grounds that the lands in question constituted a fief and that therefore Heinrich Skolim had no right to dispose of them. His lands were declared confiscate as a fine. Skolim then set about the task of securing justice against this arbitrary decision which also, incidentally, represented a challenge to the provincial courts of the Culmerland where the original settlement had been made. It was an uphill struggle. It led, via a court of arbitration presided over by Bishop Franz of Ermland - as to whose impartiality Skolim not unreasonably had grave doubts to an appeal to the imperial court and ultimately to Heinrich Skolims lonely declaration of private war against the Grand Master. This ensured that by 1450 Heinrich Skolim was in no position to appeal to the Estates about anything at all. The last documents which indicate that he was alive are three letters, in the archives of the Order, which he dictated in 1446 from a deep and dark dungeon where he lay heavily chained (in mechtige eysen gespannen). In the letter to his
-
393
wife Clara he told her to act as if he were already dead. He anticipated a sudden, hole-in-the-corner sort of death but asked his wife to have him buried as if he had died honourably. That they were going to kill him was not in doubt. It had become only a question of method and timing. He enclosed a testament to tidy up his worldly affairs. Some of the debts were quite vivid in his mind one old Mark for Master Lawrence the butcher others had become a matter of vague recollection. He set a ceiling not to be exceeded in these cases. None of these communications reached the addressees and Heinrich Skolim vanished from the scene at the same time as they were written. 49 But it was not necessary for the Estates to cast their minds back even this far to find evidence for the Orders predilection for the violent resolution of the grievances of its opponents. In June 1453 there was a maladroit attempt to abduct or murder the emissaries of the League en route for Vienna. Responsibility for the Moravian ambush was widely laid at the door of the Order, an impression that the Orders intensive surveillance of the emissaries did nothing to correct. 50 In January 1454 the Grand Master had to reassure Hans von Baisen that he had not hired an assassin to do away with him. 51 When it was rumoured that the Order was planning to eliminate three hundred people this had to be taken seriously. In a document advising future policy dated 1453, the Grand Master was told to list the names of his opponents so that they could be the more easily expropriated for defying imperial condemnation of the League.52 In the Ordensstaat this was no utopian suggestion. A regime that could use lesser officers to spy on the activities of their superiors 53 or which encouraged denunciation of deviants also disposed of a communications and intelligence system that kept Marienburg aware of the meetings and movements of the Orders external opponents. The positions adopted by different speakers in assemblies were sometimes with elaborate statistical meticulously recorded forwarded to the headquarters. 54 Sometimes it sand extrapolations is possible to see intelligence-gathering at work. For example, in a letter dated 13 February 1453 the Commander of Osterode reported the arrival of Mathis von Melen, a member of the League, in his locality. The latter had apparently promised the Grand Master that he would make no trouble for the Order on account of the League yet was now busily recruiting on its behalf. The Commander said that he would have him put under observation (ich wil em die wol under ougen stellen)S5 Precise lists, with names named, of positions taken
-
394
at meetings of the League, were forwarded to Marienburg.56 The officers of the Order were particularly interested in the purpose of cross-border traffic. In March 1453 the Vogt of Leipe took a keen interest in the movements of Gabriel von Baisen and Tilman vom Wege who had gone to Wroclaw (Breslau). He recommended that arrangements be made to ascertain the purpose of these journeyings. 17 The House-Commander of Thorn was well-placed to glean intelligence from across the frontier. In a report dated 9 June 1453 he said that he had learned from a Pole that the Estates had offered Prussia to the King of Poland and that only the forebodings of the cardinal bishop of Cracow had dampened the enthusiastic reception of the offer. In an unconsciously ironic inversion of the conspiracy by numbers theory, the House-Commander reported that the Poles had researched the Orders numerical strength in Prussia and had come up with the figure of three hundred. By further calculation the Poles had decided that they could match every brother with three hundred of their own men.~ There was rather more justification for this statistical isolation of what the Poles contemptuously called den krewczigern than there was in the brethrens delusive belief that they were fighting a rootless and isolable minority. 59 Within a year, the Order and the League were at war. Those houses of the Order situated in large towns were easily subjected to a form of economic strangulation. The Commander of Thorn described the chill onset of hostilities in a letter dated 4 February 1454. Heavily armed urban militiamen had taken up their stations on the town gates. The townsmen had cut access to the Orders demesnes; supplies of food, fodder and wood were dependent upon the whim of the town council. Communications with the outside world had to pass through the hands of the Burgermeister. There was no room left for those with one foot in either camp; the Commanders lay scribes had been alienated from him by threats from their fellow townsmen.60 On 6 February a town servant from Thorn arrived in Marienburg with a letter of defiance about his person. Within twenty-one days every house of the Order, with the exceptions of Marienburg and Stuhm, had been taken by the forces of the League. 61The main exponents of confrontational policies had a rude awakening to the realities of power within Prussia. Bishop Franz collected his treasure together and set out for Rome. He died en route at Wroclaw. ~2 Plauen narrowly evaded capture by Bohemian mercenaries in the employ of the town of Elbing; his
395 erstwhile charges had placed a price of 1,000 Gulden on his head dead or alive. Life for those left in Marienburg was also a grim business. Control of the fortress slid ineluctably into the hands of its mercenary defenders. The latter were not above using psychological pressure to extort their fees. The quality of the plate used at table, the size of the portions of food dispensed, and the number of chambers to which the Grand Master had access were all slowly reduced. The arguments over arrears of pay became increasingly acrimonious. After one such meeting, the Austrian mercenary captain Friedemann Panczer happened upon Dr Blumenau outside the Grand Masters chamber. The hapless jurist was cast to the ground and robbed.~3 It required a war of thirteen years duration (1454-66) to rid West Prussia of the debris of the German Order. The Second Peace of Thorn of 19 October 1466 which confirmed the Charter of of 6 March 1454 was largely the result of the Incorporation exhaustion of both sides. Prussia was partitioned. Western Prussia remained within the Kingdom of Poland as an autonomous province called Royal Prussia, with its own Diet. Polish liberties and rights were accorded to Prussia and the ancient privileges of the Prussians were confirmed.64 Eastern Prussia was left to the Order but the Grand Master was obliged to do military service and to take an oath of loyalty to the King. The connection with Poland was further encouraged by the stipulation that the Order should admit Polish knights on an equal basis with Germans. The territories of the Order were thus reduced by about half. This catastrophe was largely the result of the strident and aggressive claims made in the early 1450s. It was also a consequence of the lordships cynical attempts to pretend that acts of violence committed against individuals did not matter; that the past could be manipulated in the service of its present political objectives and that opposition could be contained or deflected by resorting to crude conspiracy theories. These comfortingly delusive patterns of thought were to recur in different circumstances under subsequent Prussian regimes.&dquo;
-
Notes
1 For the formation of the League see M Toppen, ed , Akten der Standetage Preussens (Leipzig 1874-86), vol 2, no 108, 170-6 (Hereafter cited as ASP with the
396
relevant volume number.) On the League in general see M. Biskup, Der preussische Bund 1440-1454 Genesis, Struktur, Tatigkeit und Bedeutung in der Geschichte Preussens und Polen, in K. Fritze et al , eds. , Hansische Studien III, (Weimar 1975), 210-29; Der Zusammenbruch des Ordensstaates in Preussen im Lichte der neuesten polnischen Forschungen, Acta Poloniae Historica (1963), 9, 59-76; K. Górski, La Ligue des Etats et les origines du Regime representatif en Prusse, Studies Presented to the International Commission for the History of Representation and Parliamentary , 23: Album Helen Maud Cam (Louvain & Paris 1960), 1, 174-86. I would Institutions like to thank Professor F. L. Carsten for lending me offprints of the articles by Biskup. For relations between the Order and Prussian society in the fifteenth century see M. Burleigh, Prussian Society and the German Order. an aristocratic corporation in crisis c 1410-66 (Cambridge 1984), Chapters 3 and 5. I would like to thank David Morgan and Professor H.G. Koenigsberger for their critical comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 2. C.A. Luckerath, Paul von Rusdorf, Hochmeister des Deutschen Ordens 1422, Vol. 15of Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des Deutschen Ordens (hereafter Q 41 & S), (Bonn-Bad Godesberg 1969), 177-83. 3 The so-called Orseln Statutes were discussed by A Seraphim in his Zur Geschichte und Kritik der angeblichen Statuten des Hochmeisters Werner von Orseln, Forschungen zur Brandenburgischen und Preussischen Geschichte (1915), 28, 1-82. See especially 6-7, 74-82, for the Statutes and their implications for the power within the corporation of the Grand Master 4. Ibid., 14, for Rusdorfs measures against Saunsheim 2, and ASP no. 79,123f. for Saunsheims interference in Prussia. 5 S. Meyer, Paul von Rusdorf und die Konvente von Komgsberg, Balga und Brandenburg, Altpreussische Monatsschrift (1909), 46, 380f For the deposition of Rabenstein see ASP 2, no. 134, 186. 6 ASP 2, no. 137, 190-5, no. 139, 195-8. For the letters of safe-conduct see ASP 2,
—
nos.
158-9, 229-30.
7 For the exceptions see R. Wenskus, Das Ordensland Preussen als Territorialstaat des 14. Jahrhunderts in H. Patze, ed., Der deutsche Territorialstaat im 14. Jahrhundert (Sigmaringen 1970), Vol 1, 366-70 8 J. Voigt, Geschichte des Deutschen Ritterordens in seinen zwolf Balleien (Berlin 1857-59), 1, 273; see also H H Hofmann, Die Krise des Deutschen Ordens, in T. Mayer, ed., Die Welt zur Zeit des Konstanzer Konzils (Sigmaringen 1965), 73-4 for the degeneration of the Order into dez armen adelss dutscher nation spital und uffenthalt, and Burleigh, op. cit. , 37-41,58-67, for an examination of the relationship between individual poverty and corporate wealth. 9. E. Maschke, Die Inneren Wandlungen des Deutschen Ritterordens in W. F Frhr. Hiller von Besson, Gaetringen, eds., Geschichte und Gegenwartsbewusstsein: Festschrift fur Hans Rothfels zum 70. Geburtstag (Gottingen
1963),262,276.
10. T. Hirsch et al., eds., Scriptores rerum Prussicarum. Die Geschichtsquellen der preussischen Vorzeit bis zum Untergange der Ordensherrschaft Vols. 1-5, (Leipzig 1861-74), 4, 414. (Hereafter SRP ). 11. Maschke, op. cit., 264f. See also M. Hellmann, Bemerkungen zur sozialgeschichtlichen Erforschung des Deutschen Ordens, Historische Jahrbuch (1961), 80, 126-42 and F.R.H. Du Boulay, Germany in the Later Middle Ages (London 1983), 74f., for the socio-political situation of the minor nobility.
397
12. ASP 1, nos. 162-4, 203-6. For the reparations clauses of the Treaty of Thorn see E. Weise, ed., Die Staatsvertrage des Deutschen Ordens in Preussen im 15. Jahrhundert (Marburg 1970, second edition), 1, nos. 84-5, 89-90. 13. The best discussion of the Landesrat is in K. Graske, Der Hochmeister Heinrich von Plauen im Konflikt mit den Stadten des Ordenslandes Preussen, Zeitschrift des Westpreussischen Geschichts-Vereins (1896), 35, 15-16. (Hereafter ZWGV.) There is also a characteristically lucid discussion by M. Toppen in Der Deutsche Ritterorden und die Stande Preussens, Historische Zeitschrift (1881), 46, 445-6. The contributions of E. Lampe, Beitrage zur Geschichte Hemrichs von Plauen 1411-13, ZWGV (1889), 26, 39-40, and E. Weise, Entwicklungsstufen der Verfassungsgeschichte des Ordensstaates Preussen im 15. Jahrhundert, Zeitschrift fur Ostforschung (1958), 7, 5, and Das Widerstandsrecht im Ordenslande Preussen (Gottingen 1955), 27, suffer from a tendency to idealize Plauen and to attribute the demise of the Landesrat to some unproven hostility towards it on the part of his successor Kuchmeister. 14. ASP 1, no. 397, 531. 15. ASP 1, no. 430, 572. For the oath taken by the gentry see no. 434, 576. See also M. Biskup, Die Rolle des Stadte in der standischen Reprasentation des Ordensstaates Preussen im XIV. und XV. Jahrhundert, Preussenland (1977), 15, iv, 60-1 for the opposition of the towns and Biskup, Der preussische Bund, 214. 16. ASP 1, no. 430-3,572-3. 17. ASP 1, no 487 clause 36, 629; see also E. Blumhoff, Beitrage zur Geschichte und Entwicklung der westpreussischen Stande ZWGV (1894), 34, 31. 18. ASP 2, no. 30, 32, 43; no. 30, 35, clause 14; no. 31, 44, clause 8, for the Grand Masters response; no. 33, 49; no. 67, 106 for further demands for a properly constituted Richttag 19. ASP2, no. 82,132; no. 83,133-4. 20. ASP 2, nos. 166, 237-8, 167, 243, for the composition of the court and no. 225, 338-9 for the text of the oath to be taken by the judges. 21. ASP 2, no. 227, 348-50. 22. ASP 2, no. 108,173-4. 23. ASP 2, no. 107, 168-9. 24. ASP 2, no. 369, 601 For the background to the dispute see W. Bruning, Die Stellung des Bistums Ermland zum deutschen Orden im dreizehnjahrigen
Stadtekriege, Altpreussische Monatsschrift (1895), 32, 8-9.

ASP2, no. 378,609. 2, no. 432, 693. ASP ASP2, no. 440, 710. ASP 3, no. 69, 164. Ibid., 165. 2, no. 30, 35, clause 18; no. 31, 44, clause 5. ASP 2, no. 30, 38, clauses 1-4. ASP Geheimes Staatsarchiv, West Berlin (hereafter cited as GSA), Ordensfoliant (OF), 16, fol. 376. 33. Biskup, Der preussische Bund, 220-1; Burleigh, op cit., 153-7. 34. SRP 4, 426; K. E Murawski, Zwischen Tannenberg und Thorn. Die Geschichte
des Deutschen Ordens
35. ASP 3, no.
unter
25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.
dem Hochmeister Konrad
von
Erlichshausen 1441-1449
(Gottingen 1953), 377-8.

245, 492
398
36 ASP 3, no 175, 396, for the letters see no. 109, 282, (Margrave Hans of Brandenburg); no 112, 283, (Archbishop of Cologne), no 115, 284, (Margrave Friedrich of Brandenburg); no 118, 285-7, (King Frederick III) all of which were addressed to the council of Danzig Pope Nicholas V wrote in similarly condemnatory terms to the Bishop of Culm who was instructed to make the subjects of his see aware of the penalties involved in their continued adhesion to the League See no 113, 283. 37 ASP4, no 72,99-100 38 ASP 4, no 39, 59; for the reporting of these utterances
in
Prussia
see
see
also no.
47,64;no 61,87,no 101,224,no 116, 242 39 ASP 3, no 91, 242-3, for the background
cit., 162-4
to
the
legation
Burleigh, op.
40 ASP 4, no 17,29-30 41. SRP 4, 411for the favourable depiction of conditions in the fourteenth century The two fourteenth century Grand Masters were said to have had the conventional virtues attributable to medieval rulers; pp 414, 423, 427 for the thumb-nail sketches of the mid-fifteenth century Grand Masters and 413-5 for the characterization of southerners in the Order. 42 ASP 4, no ASP 73, 101, see 3, no also 259, 508 for a rumour circulating in the Culmerland that the Grand Master had said that if Gabriel von Baisen had acted towards earlier Grand Masters as he had acted towards him, Gabnel would have been executed Ludwig von Erlichshausen evidently saw himself as a tolerant figure. 43 ASP 4, no. 101, 224 44 Ibid , 226. 45 SRP 4, 384-401, 377-8, see also E Lampe, Beitrage zur Geschichte Heinrichs von Plauen, 5-11, K Graske, Der Hochmeister Heinrich von Plauen, 1-17, C Krollmann, Die Politik des Hochmeisters Heinrich von Plauen gegen die grossen Stadte, Oberlandische Geschichtsblatter (1910), 3, 81-93; J Leinz, Die Ursachen des Abfalls Danzig vom Deutschen Orden, Jahrbuch fur die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands (1965), volume 13/14, 2f, Burleigh, op cit., 126-7 46. ASP 3, no 398, 657. 47 For example, SRP 4, 424-5 or ASP 4, no 17, 24, clause 24 48 ASP 3, no 68, 143, clause 54, K Górski, Sprawa Skolimów i pierwsza próba zbrojnego opuru przeciw Krzyzakom w Prusach w 1 1443-1444, Zapiski Historyczne
(1955), 20, 217. 49 GSA Ordensbriefarchiv (hereafter cited as OBA), Regesta historico, prepared by E Joachim diplomatica Ordinis S Mariae Theutonicorum 1198-1525 and edited by W Hubatsch (Gottingen 1948-50), 1, ii, nos. 9087 and 9088 (reference here is of course made to the original letters), for the details of the dispute between
Skolim and the Grand Master see Górski, op cit , 198-213. 50. ASP 3, no. 432, 688; no 434, 689-90, no 439, 696; for surveillance reports on the embassy see no. 199, 436; no. 201, 438; nos 202-4, 440-2, no. 209, 447, no 226, 473 51 ASP 4, no 152, 278 52. H Boockmann, Zu den politischen Zielen des DeutschenOrdens in seiner Ausemandersetzung mit den preussischen Standen in Jahrbuch fur die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands (1966), 15, 101, clause 2 53 For example GSA OBA Reg I, no 7785, or 3, no 211, 448-9. ASP 54. For example ASP 4, no 41, 61, no 44, 62, and for lists of those loyal to the
ASP Order 3, no 34, 66, no 228,476-7
399
55. ASP 3, no 305, 578-9. 56. ASP 3, nos. 173, 392-3; 214, 450. 57. ASP 3, no 364,618. 58. ASP 3, no 409, 667 59. P. Simson, Geschichte der Stadt
Danzig (Danzig 1918),
vol.
3, Urkunden bis
1626 , no. 137, 106 60. ASP 4, no 177, 305-6.

61. SRP 4,431. 62. Ibid.. 63. SRP 4,175. 64. For the Charter of Incorporation of 6 March 1454 see ASP 4, no 244, 366; see also K. Górski The Royal Prussian Estates in the second half of the XVth Century and their Relation to the Crown of Poland Acta Poloniae Histonca (1960), 4, 49f and N. Davies Gods Playground A History of Poland (Oxford 1982), 1, 123-4. I am currently writing a study of the Prussian League. 65. See M. Broszat Zweihundert Jahre deutsche Polenpolitik (Frankfurt am Main 1978), 99-101 for similar sentiments expressed by two successive CommandingGenerals in Posen in the early 1830s. Generals Roeder and Carl von Grolman were concerned to demonstrate that Polish national consciousness was restricted to einige Hundert polnische Guter besitzende Edelleute and that the costs of suppressing the insurrection of 1830 could have been better spent by buying out the entire Polish nobility of the Grand Duchy of Posen.
Michael Burleigh
is Weston Junior Research Fellow at New College, Oxford. He is the author of Prussian Society and the German Order: an aristocratic corporation in crisis c. 1410-66 (Cambridge 1984), and is currently interested in the Prussian Bund and the history of representative institutions in late medieval and early modern
Europe.

2 Burleigh, History, Privilege and Conspiracy

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European History Quarterly

http://ehq.sagepub.com History, Privilege and Conspiracy Theories in Mid-fifteenth Century Prussia

History, Privilege and Conspiracy Theories in Mid-fifteenth Century Prussia

The German Order

lordship was 6 League in 1440.~

revived, in a different form, by the Estates in 1430.

could countenance this

Stadtekriege, Altpreussische Monatsschrift (1895), 32, 8-9.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

dem Hochmeister Konrad

(Gottingen 1953), 377-8.

ASP Order 3, no 34, 66, no 228,476-7

Danzig (Danzig 1918),

1626 , no. 137, 106 60. ASP 4, no 177, 305-6.

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