VICTIMS OF THE BALTIC CRUSADE  

William L. Urban  

(This essay won the Vitols Prize for the best article printed in the Journal of Baltic Studies in 

1998) 

    The term, the Baltic Crusade, is today understood to refer first of all to the crusading 
program in medieval Livonia (modern Latvia and Estonia) and secondarily to those in 
Finland, Prussia and Lithuania. The campaigns undertaken by a variety of nationalities 
(primarily German, but also Swedish, Danish, Polish, English and French) extended over 
three centuries. The first goal was to protect missionaries and merchants, the second to protect 
the converts to Christianity, the third to extirpate barbaric practices--piracy, highway robbery, 
infanticide and human sacrifice. These goals, together with the spiritual benefits of crusading 
and the Christian duty to protect the weak and downtrodden, would have been familiar to any 
medieval audience addressed by the friars and bishops who recruited crusaders. These goals 
are less well-known today: in the age of victimology, the emphasis is on those who were 
attacked by the crusaders: the victims. Who were these victims? What makes them victims? 

    The emphasis that our culture places on victims may be stronger than usual today, but it is 
traditional. Western intellectual culture is often sympathetic toward those who have lost out in 
political and military struggles, especially if the defeated peoples can be identified with a 
more natural, more idyllic world than the contradictory and artificial societies of the West. 
This came forcefully to my attention twenty years ago, when the publicity flyer for The Baltic 
Crusade noted that the "objects of the Baltic Crusade" were "victims in the march of conquest 
and trade."

(1)

 I had not intended to make that point quite so prominently, but the publicity 

agent surely had his fingers on the public pulse when he tied that phrase to a citation about the 
natives having lived "quiet lives like their ancestors, in which the cycles of birth, marriage, 
and death, plenty and famine, victory and defeat in war, and the monotony of daily work 
repeated themselves unnoted by outsiders." In short, innocent children of nature had been 
ravaged by cruel civilization. However prescient that may have been of today's cultural wars, 
the situation in the medieval Baltic was much more complex than literate barbarians 
oppressing barbarian illiterates. Today, the publicity agent would surely have used the word 
victim.

(2)

 

    Three immediate problems arise applying victimization theory to the Baltic Crusade: 1) 
The dynamics of a crusade that lasted three and a half centuries and involved so many peoples 
do not lend themselves to easy simplification. Moreover, the outcomes were so different from 
the original intents that one might use them as examples of the Law of Unintended 
Consequences. 2) Recent studies, especially that by Robert Bartlett, suggest that 
characteristics of the Baltic Crusade which were once considered specifically German were, 
in fact, more widely European, more "Frank" than we had imagined.

(3)

 3) The comparison of 

the Baltic natives, with their tribal organization and their noble chiefs, with other peoples 
around the world and across time confuses the issues. 

Origins of the Baltic Crusade  

    The Baltic Crusade had several origins: 1) Missionaries (mostly but not exclusively 
Germans) to the Baltic peoples discovered that if they were successful in attracting converts, 
they frightened the native shamans (the pagan priesthood) who then agitated among the tribal 

leaders and the most convinced believers in the old gods to kill or expel the foreign priests 
and their converts. 2) Merchants (again, mostly Germans, but also Scandinavians, who came 
to Visby on Gotland for trade) wanted protection from native pirates and access to local 
markets along the Baltic coastline, up the Daugava (Dvina, Düna) River, and in Rus' 
[Novgorod, Pskov, and Polotsk]. 3) Western princes (Sweden, Denmark, Poland) and prelates 
eager to expand their domains saw the crusades as a convenient excuse and a means of 
obtaining outside military help. 4) Popes and papal legates were concerned that the peoples of 
this region would be left outside Christendom completely, or, almost as bad, would fall into 
the schismatic errors of the Orthodox Church; the salvation of souls became mixed with the 
contest for power in the Holy Roman Empire. 5) Local conditions and great personalities put 
events into motion and determined the direction of that movement. For example, the Bishop 
of Uexküll (later Riga) made an agreement with the Liv tribesmen to provide protection 
against the Lithuanians, on the condition that the Livs would pay the taxes necessary to pay 
the workmen who built a stone castle and support the mercenary troops recruited by the 
bishop, and that they would undergo baptism; when the natives reneged on the agreement, he 
called for help from the merchants of Gotland, who took the cross on his behalf. This bishop's 
successor founded a crusading order, the Brothers of the Sword, who provided troops to 
protect his diocese through the long northern winter after the bulk of the crusaders had 
returned home. The Brothers of the Sword later carved out a state for themselves from the 
Christian territories in Livonia (as did the Teutonic Order in Prussia), and the traders who 
settled in Riga created a commercial empire.

(4)

 6) An aggressive combination of nobles, 

clerics and merchants was prepared to risk itself on the frontiers of Europe--Spain, the Holy 
Land, Poland and the Baltic. The knights were especially important. Not just because of their 
military superiority, which was short-lived, but because of their vigor.

(5)

 This upstart nobility 

was ambitious and daring--pan-european in its origins and attitudes, its men were good at war, 
its women were eager for profitable marriages. Similarly, merchants were heroically active in 
their search for new markets. Together, these rising classes opened up the Baltic in ways that 
monarchs and prelates were able to exploit.

(6)

 

    This process of state-building was so pronounced, at least in retrospect, that it was perhaps 
inevitable that modern historians should make comparisons with superficially similar events 
elsewhere.

(7)

 In place of this, however, we might consider looking at the crusade through the 

eyes of contemporaries, to see it as an international peace-keeping force. As such, it faced all 
the problems that modern peace-keeping efforts have: who is in command, where does the 
money come from, and who provides the volunteers; lastly, what do you do when you 
succeed? and what do you do when success seems just out of reach? 

    Of course, not all the motives of the various crusaders can be praised or even considered 
well-intentioned. Sometimes the motives were so mixed or so obscure that we should be very 
cautious about making judgments; sometimes they were so obvious (mercenaries out to earn a 
living, nobles wanting estates, prelates wanting power and fame, missionaries hoping to earn 
their place in heaven, and probably a few who were mentally disturbed, personally 
disorganized, or running away from problems at home) that we can understand why some 
contemporaries advocated alternative policies, or even abandoning the crusades altogether. 
Moreover, the leaders of the crusades faced some difficult choices. They did not have the 
luxury of picking troops to fill the ranks on the basis of moral qualities; they needed every 
warrior they could recruit, and (within limits) the bigger and meaner, the better. To put it 
bluntly, the crusaders would rather achieve victory through the used of flawed sinners than die 
in the company of saints. 

    Without question, many crusaders were sincere in their Christian beliefs and saw no 
contradiction between hearkening to the call of the Church and advancing their own interests. 
However, this did not mean that others did not see those contradictions and comment on them. 
We are able to criticize the motives of individual crusader leaders today because their 
contemporaries criticized them; churchmen in particular disagreed with military policies even 
when the success of the holy war was still in doubt. 

False Comparisons with America  

    Superficially, there were some similarities between the Balts and the woodland Indians of 
North America: at the end of the twelfth century the Baltic peoples were still organized in 
tribes, remained pagan and were somewhat backward in their economic and mercantile life. 
The climate was not hospitable--the growing season was short, the soil sandy, and the variety 
of local products very limited. Trade was not a likely source of wealth, either, since there 
were neither large towns nor dependable markets nor a mercantile tradition beyond 
rudimentary trade with visiting Russian and western visitors (and only the Germans and 
Scandinavians had the cloth and iron that local consumers wanted). On the other hand, the 
Baltic peoples were much more advanced politically and economically, and in the thirteenth 
century were able to reduce quickly the difference between their technological and 
organizational skills and those of the West.

(8)

  

    If there is a comparison to be made between the New and the Old Worlds, it lies in the 
willingness of oppressed peoples to fight the dominant native peoples. As Henry of Livonia 
wrote in the early thirteenth century, explaining why the Letts were eager to have crusader 
protection against invasions from the south: 

The Lithuanians were then such lords over all the peoples, both Christian and pagan, dwelling in those 
lands that scarcely anyone, and the Letts especially, dared live in the small villages. Not even by leaving 
their houses deserted to seek the dark hiding places of the forest could they escape them. For the 
Lithuanians, laying ambushes for them at all times in the forest, seized them, killing some and capturing 
others, and took the latter back to their own country.

(9)

 

    Livonians were threatened from the north by Estonians, who, like the Vikings, used their 
longboats to cross the Baltic in search of prisoners and booty. Henry's description of Oeselian 
pirates encountered by crusaders off the coast of Gotland: 

They had recently burned a church, killed some men and captured others, laid waste the land, and carried 
away the bells and belonging of the church, just as both the pagan Esthonians and the Kurs had been 
accustomed to do heretofore in the kingdom of Denmark and Sweden

.

(10)

 

    Historians, hard-pressed for time and space, have often condensed the complex and 
sometimes contradictory human story into familiar forms: the Drang nach Osten, imperialism, 
exploitation, and genocide. Critics of the crusade range from idealistic to nationalistic to 
politically correct.

(11)

 However, a sufficiently deep investigation into the Baltic Crusade will 

show that it, like most human endeavors, has nuances, even contradictions. 

Just and Unjust Wars  

    When medieval men heard of gross injustice, and had some ability to correct it, they knew 
that it was a sin to refrain from action. For many years now westerners have been less sure of 
right and wrong; perhaps we are wiser in knowing that good intentions are insufficient to 

produce a just outcome of any effort; perhaps we are only more tolerant of evil. However, it 
may be possible now, at the end of the 20

th

 century, that the link between ancient wrongs and 

modern rights has become sufficiently weak that we will entertain an alternative description 
of the crusade in the Baltic--one which will hopefully avoid the extremes of defending every 
action of the crusaders and justifying every reaction of the native peoples. Then we can decide 
who are the victims, and why.  

The Baltic Peoples  

    Medieval society had a more obvious military foundation than do modern societies. 
Consequently, it should be no surprise that Baltic society before 1200 represented a military 
culture in which young men and aspiring chieftains demonstrated their courage and ability 
through participation in or leading raids on the least powerful of their neighbors. In fact, 
without the booty and slaves obtained in these wars, it is hard to imagine young men of the 
warrior class starting out on a successful career.

(12)

 The pagan religion sustained and justified 

this militarism: the gods had to approve of every proposed expedition, they shared in the 
booty won by their adherents, and they welcomed the dead who rode straight to them from the 
funeral pyre. Among the motives which persuaded Germans and Scandinavians to leave their 
comfortable homes and travel across the seas to crush paganism was a hatred of this kind of 
militarism. Henry of Livonia filled his chronicle with references to pagan raids, robbery, theft, 
and human sacrifice; papal bulls, alternately appealing and ordering, urged Christians to hurry 
to the rescue of the Church in the Baltic or to contribute money (even in those days good 
intentions were expensive). Henry concluded his book with a hymn of praise both to those 
who fought and to the Queen of Heaven, in whose name they had sacrificed lives and 
treasure: 

To vanquish rebels, to baptise those who come voluntarily and humbly, to receive hostages and tribute, to 
free all the Christian captives, to return with victory--what kings have hitherto been unable to do, the 
Blessed Virgin quickly and easily accomplishes through Her Rigan subjects to the honor of Her name. 
When this is finished, when it is done, when all the people are baptized, when Tharapita is thrown out, 
when Pharoah is drowned, when the captives are freed, return with joy, O Rigans. Brilliantly triumphal 
victory always follows you. Glory be to the Lord, praise to God beyond the stars.

(13)

 

    The native peoples, of course, took somewhat different views of much of this. Their 
perceptions were as mixed as those of the Christians, reflecting the situation of their 
individual tribes and personal circumstances. For example, the choices made by many native 
elders (seniores) in the early years of the crusade were expressions of traditional foreign 
policies intended to bring in wealth from plunder and to ward off attacks by all outsiders. 
Some may find it difficult, of course, to think of political units smaller than a state having 
foreign policies, but there is no reason to think that Baltic tribesmen could not understand 
their situation or evaluate their choices.

(14)

 

    At first the native peoples did resist the crusaders fiercely, even those tribes which later 
became their staunchest allies. This was largely because the Christian military machine was 
dependent on money--and because donations from the Holy Roman Empire were available 
only in crisis times, the only reliable income imaginable was taxes and tithes paid by the 
natives;

(15)

 booty obtained in warfare was much desired, but any reader of the Old Testament 

knew that God's favor could not be depended upon year in and year out. The taxes and tribute 
were less than German peasants paid, but Germans lived in a richer land, their manorial 
system was more effective at using technological advances, and they had been burdened with 
payments and services over a longer period of time, so that their introduction to them had not 

come as a sudden innovation as they did to Baltic farmers; moreover, German peasants and 
burghers, living in a more complex society, appreciated more fully what they got for their 
money--protection from the ravages of war, churches, hospitals, roads and bridges, and so 
forth. 

    There is little doubt that the crusaders would have failed quickly in establishing a 
permanent presence in the Daugava River valley if the Livs there, and later the Letts, had not 
seen that cooperation with the foreigners was in their long-term interest. "Divide and rule" 
may have been the crusaders' policy, but the divisions were ready-made. In a militarily 
backward, quarreling land the crusaders made alliances with the weaker tribes against the 
stronger, until the whole country came under their control. Only the strongest native peoples--
the Russians and the Lithuanians--could defend themselves against the combined forces of 
traditional enemies and the crusaders. 

    The period 1200-1300 was filled with struggles which are often called wars of conquest.

(16)

 

These were terribly long and cruel contests--as one might expect when the two sides were 
sufficiently evenly balanced that no one was ready to admit defeat quickly. Brutalities in these 
cruel wars were committed by westerner crusaders, immigrant German knights and burghers, 
native nobles, militiamen and irregulars; and by raiders from Rus' and Lithuania. Native 
troops were responsible for gathering loot, rounding up prisoners, and searching fields for 
hiding places and refuges. At such times they had ample opportunities to commit atrocities 
unobserved; they had ample reason to do so, too. Their already ancient hatred of other tribes 
was fanned by the memory of recent injuries and insults until it burned at a white heat.

(17)

  

    To cite Henry of Livonia again: 

Russin, who was the bravest of the Letts...made plans against the Esthonians.... They killed those whom 
they found, both women and children, together with three hundred of the better men and leaders of that 
province, not counting innumerable others. Finally, on account of the exceedingly great slaughter of the 
people, the tired hands and arms of the killers failed them....Collecting many spoils from all the villages, 
they took back with them beasts of burden, many flocks, and a great many girls, whom alone the army was 
accustomed to spare.

(18)

 

    For most Livs and Letts assisting the crusaders against traditional enemies was a more 
logical act than fighting to the death or fleeing into the interior--as some tribesmen close to 
Russia and Lithuania did. The Semgallians were occasionally allies of the crusaders against 
Lithuanian domination, and the Kurs joined the Christians for that same reason. Of the 
peoples inhabiting Livonia, only the Estonians, who lost the dominant position they had 
enjoyed in their region, had reason to see the conquest as a thorough and complete disaster.

(19)

 

Logic, alas, is a poor guide to public opinion in the thirteenth century. Just as today people 
have such diverse opinions about policies and even such different assessments of their own 
well-being that political scientists and professional politicians frequently fail to guess how 
public opinion will react to their proposals, that was undoubtedly true in the Middle Ages. 
The death of relatives, the loss of one's cattle and homes were surely as important as 
complaints about taxes and government regulations; yet we have little to base judgments 
upon. While an armed uprising might seem the ultimate form of peasant resistance, the more 
we know about any medieval rising, the less we seem to able to fit it into a pattern. There 
were, nevertheless, discernible patterns in Livonia and Prussia: tithes and taxes, labor 
services, and military duties; famine and plague, floods and other natural disasters which 
might suggest that the ancient gods were angry; enforced changes in family organization, 
veneration of the dead, and religious ritual; ambition, opportunism, personal quarrels, family 

ties and clan obligations; and a suspicion that the pagans might be winning (in which case one 
avoided invasion and reprisals by a swift reversal of allegiance). In short, a more complex 
story than simply a desire to throw the foreigners out.

(20)

 

    To the south, the Prussians suffered an even more thorough defeat than the Livonians: their 
fate was resettlement to areas which could be more easy supervised and protected. The 
Teutonic Knights then invited in German, Polish and Pomerellian immigrants to fill the lands 
left empty and to settle hitherto uninhabited swamps and forests.

(21)

 By the seventeenth 

century the Prussian population had been absorbed into the German and Polish peoples. For 
two centuries following the conquest, however, their military skills--like those of the 
Estonians--made them valued subjects; consequently, little was done to change their customs 
and way of life.

(22)

 

    The Lithuanians had been moving toward greater unity and the creation of a national state 
before the crusaders arrived, but the need to work together in defending the country 
undoubtedly hastened national unification. The formation of the first kingdom, in fact, was 
achieved with crusader help in 1251. However, the development of Lithuania into an ethnic 
state was hindered by the combination of pagan militarism and the collapse of Kievan Rus' 
under the Mongol onslaught. Many Russians, seeking help against Tatar attack and Polish 
invasions, were willing to accept Lithuanian help/administration/overlordship. As a result, in 
the fourteenth century Lithuania grew to become the largest state in Europe, and arguably the 
most multi-cultural. Eventually, it was the religious question that determined the future.

(23)

 By 

chosing Roman Catholicism in 1387, Duke Jogaila alienated some of his Orthodox subjects; 
eventually his successors lost the bulk of their lands in Rus' even as their boyars succumbed to 
the attractions of the Polish language and culture. The failure of the effort to balance eastern 
and western traditions and still retain a national identity has left its imprint on modern 
Lithuanian attitudes and politics: whoever is so incautious as to bring Polish-Jewish Wilna to 
mind is sure to be reminded that the proper name is Vilnius and whoever mentions Russian 
influence will be told that Lithuanians are not Slavs.

(24)

 

    One might wonder what purpose is served by the glorification of a military past being 
combined with a view of oneself as the perennial victim, but one has only to look at the names 
twentieth-century Lithuanians have given their children: not from the Catholic saints' 
calendar, not for communist heroes, but mythological and historic names from the pagan past. 
Memory of the ancient past has made possible the survival of the nation through centuries of 
Polonization and Russification. The Teutonic Knights serve as the national enemy--one which 
could be safely criticized through those long eras when the rulers were Poles and Russians. 

The Fate of the Livonians  

    Had the native peoples of Livonia joined in a common effort against the crusaders in the 
early days, while their levies from abroad still arrived irregularly and soon departed, the 
crusaders could never have held their foothold at Riga. As it happened, the native peoples 
were both very democratic and very short-sighted--they mistrusted the ambitions of talented 
leaders who called for preventive war and they feared their neighbors' leaders even more than 
they did their own. It was easier to bend to the winds of history for a while, because the 
chances were that the newcomers would go away or eventually let down their guard long 
enough to be chased off. This had happened before. 

    One of the most attractive features of native society along the Baltic coast was its lack of a 
feudal system. However, this proved to be a fatal flaw when the crusader challenge required 
strong leadership over a long period, access to resources (especially money) which could be 
raised only by taxation, and the ability to maintain garrisons in strategic castles far from the 
villages and fields. Tribal leaders (seniores) were unable to persuade the clan elites to 
surrender power to them, just as the stronger tribes had been unwilling to promise the weaker 
that the future would be more than a return to the status quo. That the Lithuanians had no 
intention of sharing power with the lesser peoples of the north was demonstrated after the 
Estonians rose in rebellion in 1343. Potential rebel leaders in Livonia approached the 
Lithuanian Grand Duke, offering to revolt and become his subjects if he would recognize 
them as nobles. His response was gruff: peasants you were, peasants you shall remain. Then 
he beheaded them.

(25)

 

    What were the choices for the surviving native leaders? On the one hand, after the 
crusaders had demonstrated an unexpected prowess at pitched combats and sieges, the 
seniores saw no means of avoiding military defeat; those who chose to become Christian 
knights or ministeriales would rise in honor and wealth, and the rest could continue to act as 
tribal leaders for their lifetimes and pass down their positions to their heirs. The chronicles 
and documents are filled with names of native leaders, the important roles they played in 
political and military decisions, and their exploits on the battlefield. 

    Though sources mentioning the native nobility are frustratingly few, we know quite a bit 
about them. First of all, they never had been a true nobility--the bishops attempted to make 
the seniores into a service nobility, but the native elders, unlike feudal knights, had neither the 
incomes from manors or taxes to equip themselves as heavy cavalry or the expertise to serve 
as ministeriales. It was easier for the bishops to import poor German ministeriales and give 
them a tax fief.

(26)

 Secondly, losses in battle were terrible. The death of Caupo removed the 

one Liv who seemed to be making the transition to full equality with the Germans. 
Undoubtedly, some widows of prominent leaders, especially in Estonia, married newly-
arrived German knights.  

    Race or ethnic origin was never a problem in medieval Germany for arranging marriages, 
and even religious differences seldom stood in the way. All that was important was class. 
Since the ministeriales of the crusading era were roughly equal to the seniores, intermarriage 
was no problem from the German point of view. In fact, given the knights' poverty (which 
would make it impossible to bring wives from home) and their desire to establish some claim 
upon land, marriages were likely common in Danish Estonia, Dorpat, and Oesel-Wiek in the 
era before records become abundant. In contrast, relatively few German nobles settled in the 
lands comprising modern Latvia until much later, and the ones who did tended to be wealthier 
than the knights in Estonia. Though some of these knights could have afforded to import 
wives from Germany, several (including the Bishop of Riga's brother) married local women. 
These were not love matches any more than would have been arranged marriages back home; 
they were cold-blooded family alliances, useful to all parties.

(27)

 

    Native nobles who did accommodate to the newcomers faced less formidable barriers to 
assimilation than nineteenth-century historians assumed. At least one became a knight in the 
Teutonic Order and others became part of the German-speaking nobility.

(28)

 As contemporary 

practice in Poland toward Germans demonstrated, tension between ethnic groups did not 
prevent immigration or intermarriage. Medieval nationalism cannot be equated exactly with 
its modern counterpart. Moreover, it is very important to remember that the new rulers did not 

attempt to make sweeping changes in local society: farmers were not forced into manors; the 
three-field system may have existed before the conquest, but in any case the two-field system 
remained dominate; and the newcomers were unable to recruit or train a sufficient number of 
priests to make more than superficial changes in religious thought and practice. 

    The seniores in the lands ruled by the Teutonic Order retained their traditional roles to such 
an extent that churchmen accused the knights of not doing all they could to Christianize the 
peoples under their control.

(29)

 Archaeologists, judging by the relative dearth of western 

artifacts found in the villages around the castles, believe that the native culture in isolated 
settlements must have been completely unaffected by the western presence for several 
centuries. On the other hand, they think that the quality of life may have declined 
significantly: the dead were buried with fewer luxury items, the garbage heaps contain more 
bones of game, suggesting that the people had to augment their meager diet by hunting. 
Christian rule brought peace to the countryside for long periods of time, which, being spared 
the ravages of war, should have been prosperous; one might, therefore, infer that this decline 
in the standard of living was due to taxation.

(30)

 Nevertheless, our knowledge of the era is far 

from satisfactory. The prosperity of cities everywhere was partly achieved at the expense of 
the countryside. More work needs to be done in the fields of archeology, climate change, 
agriculture, mercantile trends, and disease to determine what the level of exploitation in the 
Baltic was, compared to exploitation in the Holy Roman Empire or Scandinavia. 

    Despite frequent assertions that slavery and serfdom were an immediate result of the 
conquest, slavery was not a viable institution in the Baltic,

(31)

 and serfdom did not become 

common until the early sixteenth century.

(32)

 However, from the beginning some tribes were 

required to pay double tribute as punishment for having revolted; later, many individuals were 
probably deprived of their rights for crimes or failure to pay taxes and debts, and numerous 
prisoners-of-war were settled on estates as serfs.

(33)

 Nevertheless, the Teutonic Knights 

understood that serfs make poor soldiers, and since they had no choice but to employ native 
militia units in their armies, they had to put some limits on their exploitation of the free 
farmers and the warrior class. This self-imposed limitation was all the more important 
because there was no way the Masters of the Order could face Russian and Lithuanian armies 
if they had to worry constantly about the loyalty of the militia units nor could they effectively 
conduct offensive operations without the native knights' enthusiastic help in scouting and 
foraging. Surprising perhaps, modern critics who are outraged by the crusaders' interference 
with native customs and ancient religions fail to note that the medieval critics often accused 
the Teutonic Knights of having done too little to change the traditional way of life and 
thought; modern popular critics tend to repeat old accusations.

(34)

 Perhaps this is one more 

example of the lag between scholarship and common knowledge; on the other hand, this 
might simply be resistance to unpleasant facts which run contrary to currently fashionable 
stereotypes.

(35)

 

    The unpleasant truth is that peasants were oppressed everywhere; and with a callousness 
that transcended linguistic and ethnic boundaries. The German oppression of Estonians, Livs, 
Letts, and Kurs did not, in the eyes of most contemporaries, seem to have been particularly 
onerous.

(36)

 The major exceptions to this view come from political enemies, whose self-

serving motivations were so transparent to contemporaries, and from Franciscans, whose 
tendencies to dabble in heresy and to oppose the traditions of the established Church made 
their testimony questionable at the time.

(37)

 Doubtless, there were great injustices--indeed, we 

can cite many specific examples of misdeeds only because the Christian society of that era 
was outraged by real and perceived criminal behavior, and because Christian society had 

built-in means of seeking redress of grievances: contemporaries reported the misdeeds in hope 
of having them corrected. On the other hand, the new society of immigrants and converts was 
more complex than we usually think, and it seemed to work better than might have been 
expected.

(38)

 

The Conquerors 

   

 The conquerors did not transplant unchanged the customs and habits of their homeland. 

Right from the beginning, they had to learn new languages, which brought them into close 
contact with the cultures of their new homeland. The myth that newcomers refuse to learn the 
minimum necessary for communication defies common sense and everyday experience; 
moreover, in the case of the Baltic it is contradicted by the historical evidence.

(39)

 In many 

ways the immigrants left behind the parochialism of the homeland and adopted new customs 
reflecting a pan-European noble culture. Wherever one went on the peripheries of Europe one 
met with similar names, a common coinage, a universal method of writing charters, similar 
methods and goals of education, and a practically interchangeable knighthood, commercial 
class, and clergy. Bartlett calls this "the Europeanization of Europe." In short, diversity gave 
way to universalism and uniformity.

(40)

 In the long-run this was to the benefit of everyone, but 

it was not universally a benefit, and those who dominated the Baltic lands tended to have 
more opportunities to adapt and felt less sense of loss in making the adaptations necessary to 
flourish in the future. The descendants of the victors came to believe that victory had given 
them the right to oppress those their ancestors had defeated.

(41)

 

    The "knightly-clerical-mercantile consortium" that was responsible for the outward 
expansion of Europe from the eleventh century onward established patterns and created 
techniques for conquest, colonization, and Christianization that made possible European 
expansion after 1492.

(42)

 That consortium made Latvia and Estonia a part of the West; it 

contributed to the westernization of Lithuania. This may not always have been a gain, but it 
was not always a loss. Even in the short-run, there were natives who considered themselves 
winners; and in the long-run, there are relatively few Balts who today would prefer that their 
culture had been Russified.

(43)

 

    The question through the centuries, for Balts and other numerically small peoples, was not 
how to avoid being a victim, but how to make the best of a bad situation. This raises more 
questions than can be answered here, questions such as the price of accommodation and 
assimilation: Are the benefits worth sacrificing one's language and culture, one's accustomed 
ways of earning a living, and leaving farm and family for an uncertain future in the city? Will 
those who benefit from the status quo, being the most respected members of a farming 
community, even an oppressed one, gain more than they lose in the process of change? Will 
the dominant group let members of the oppressed peoples in? These philosophical points 
remain tremendously important for much of the world population. But they are not the same 
as using the memory of past oppression to obtain political advantages today. Historical 
victimization is not a dispassionate look at the past. It is not using the past to explain the 
present. (As if the wrongs of the 13

th

 century explain much about the late 20

th

 century.) It is a 

political statement that distracts from the present. 

Summary 

    The first goal of the Baltic Crusade had been to protect missionaries and merchants. The 
second was to protect the converts. These goals had been largely achieved by 1230, certainly 

by 1300. Although the tribes which had been dominant before the crusaders arrived were not 
pleased with their new status as subjects of foreign rulers, tribesmen who had been their 
traditional victims had benefitted. A third goal, to extirpate or drive underground practices 
which contemporary Christians considered primitive and barbaric--piracy, polygamy, the 
exposure of infants, human sacrifice, the worship of idols and the honoring of the spirits of 
the dead--had been accomplished, at least as far as open, public practice was concerned. 
Whether or not some of these practices had even existed outside the imagination of 
propagandists, whether or not the rituals had been misunderstood by western observers, was 
less important to thirteenth-century men and women than the perceived need to bring all 
peoples into the Church, into the culture of Christendom, where their immortal souls would 
benefit from the Salvation offered to all believers and defenders of the true faith.

(44)

  

    In the end, we find the victims of the Baltic Crusade to be more numerous and disparate 
than we once believed: pirates, highway robbers, slave-catchers and cattle thieves; pagan 
priests whose saw their monopoly threatened, true believers who feared for the future of their 
tribe and their culture; competing imperialists and ambitious dynasties; peoples who were 
seeking to maintain a tenuous independence by using outside assistance against whatever 
enemy seeming to be most dangerous at the moment; oppressed peoples who saw in the 
crusaders a means of revenging themselves upon ancient enemies and acquiring wealth and 
status; and some who just got in the way of the sweeping change in the balance of power in 
the Baltic.  

    Victimization in history is real. There were winners and losers, and even the winners 
suffered losses. Victimization as a modern political strategy is also real. It is the foundation 
for all demagoguery; and some groups have had sufficient success in publicizing their 
suffering that other groups have felt obliged to match them. This comparative victimization is 
not healthy. It has a negative influence on individual and group attitudes; it threatens to revive 
aspects of nationalism and racism better buried away and forgotten; and it dulls the public 
mind to more recent and correctable injustices. One does not want to forget the past, but one 
should not want to relive it either. The way out of victim status is to rise above it, not to 
wallow in it. The way forward is forward, not backward. 

Notes  

1. The Baltic Crusade (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1975. [Much to be preferred is the] Second 
edition, revised and enlarged. Chicago: Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, 1994). [Also note much 
enlarged and revised editions of The Livonian Crusade (2004) and The Samogitian Crusade (2006), also 
published by the Lithuanian Research and Studies Center. Both have been translated into Lithuanian.]

 

2. There is a short-hand process which makes each of us notice certain phrases and miss others; and in the age of 
victimization, the word victim is the one we see, a word which, moreover, implies moral superiority. Somewhat 
akin to Rousseau's noble savage confronting corrupt civilization. Given the current fashionableness of 
victimization today, perhaps the word victim is carrying too much freight to be applied to the crusading 
movement in any way other than to inform the already ideologically committed how they should respond to the 
subject. That way they could be spared the effort of careful reading and reflection. But it is a word worth 
studying in the context of real situations. 

 

3. Robert Bartlett, Making of Europe. Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950-1350 (Princeton, 1993), 
101; these ideas are implied in Eric Christiansen, The Northern Crusades: The Baltic and the Catholic Frontier 
1100-1525 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1980). 

 

4. Friedrich Benninghoven, Der Orden der Schwertbrüder (Cologne-Graz: Böhlau, 1965); Bartlett, Making of 
Europe, 91-92, 194-196, 266-268. 

 

5. Bartlett, Making of Europe, 72-76. 

 

6. Bartlett, Making of Europe, 24, 44-47, 192-193, 233-234. 

 

7. Magnus Mörner, "The Baltic Republics--Some Comparative Historical Perspectives," and Ilgvars Misans, 
"National and International Tradition in the Writing of Latvia's Medieval History," Towards a New History in 
the Baltic Republics (ed. Magnus and Aare R. Mörner. Gothenburg, 1993), 9-44, 59-75. 

 

8. S.C. Rowell, Lithuania Ascending. A pagan empire within east-central Europe, 1295-1345 (Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 1994), for the Lithuanians' creative response to the western challenges and eastern 
opportunities; also ft. 5. 

 

9. Henry of Livonia (translated James Brundage. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1961), XII, 2; Michał 
Giedroyć notes in "The Arrival of Christianity in Lithuania: Early Contacts (Thirteenth Century)," Oxford 
Slavonic Papers, 18 (1985) [New Series, XVIII], 7, that the Lithuanians under Ringaudas were potentially 
capable of challenging the Germans but were not yet aware of their own strength. Henryk Paszkiewicz, The 
Origin of Russia (London: Allen & Unwin, 1954), 185-187, 192, for the Lithuanians' evil reputation in this era; 
Bartlett, Making of Europe, 303-304. 

 

10. Henry, VII, 1; note also, Henry, X, 15: "The Wends, indeed, were humble and poor at that time, because they 
had been driven out from the Windau, a river of Kurland." 

 

11. In 1961, Brundage wrote, 20-21: "The ultimate importance of Henry's chronicle lies not merely in its 
significance for German and general European history, but in the fact that it demonstrates clearly the mistakes 
and misfortunes which attended this medieval effort to impose the 'blessings' of a technologically more advanced 
and superior culture upon a 'backward' people." 

 

12. The Livonian Rhymed Chronicle (trans. Jerry C. Smith and William Urban. Bloomington: Indiana University, 
1977 [Uralic and Altaic series, 128]), p. 61: "If we manage to hold the field and checkmate the Brothers, we will 
burn fine armor and horses for our gods.... We will bring sorrow to those proud Kurs, and the wives and 
children, horses and cattle, maids and servants, shall all be ours. We will divide the wealth which they have 
hoarded these many years among all who participate in the raid, both young and old." [A much improved 
translation has been printed by the Lithuanian Research and Studies Center in Chicago, 2000]

 

13. Henry, XXX, 6. 

 

14. Urban, "The Military Occupation of Semgallia," Baltic History (Columbus: Ohio State, 1974), 21-34. 

 

15. Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 5, 304-305. 

 

16. Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 85-105, does not shrink from the words "conquest" and "conqueror". He has 
here an especially insightful section on The Literature of Conquest which mentions Livonia often. 

 

17. Henry, IX, 4: The Semgallians, after helping slaughter 1200 Lithuanians, came upon the Lithuanian 
commander sitting in a cart, wounded; they "cut off his head and put it on one of their wagons which they loaded 
only with the heads of Lithuanians, and went into Semgallia. They killed a great many of the Esthonian captives 
with the sword, since they too were enemies." 

 

18. Henry, XII, 6. 

 

19. Bartlett, Making of Europe, 301: "Not all native leaders were hostile. In many cases outsiders were invited in 
and encouraged by local aristocrats eager to gain an edge in their own competitive arena;" Johnson, "The 
German Crusade on the Baltic," A History of the Crusades, vol. 3 The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries 
(Madison: Wisconsin, 1975), 561, notes: "The piecemeal nature of the conquest and occupation made impossible 
effective coordinated resistance." 

 

20. For an overview of the medieval economy, Juhan Kahk and Enn Tarvel, An Economic History of the Baltic 
Countries (Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell, 1997), 26-36. 

 

21. The origins of the crusade here are to be found in Polish expansionism. When the Polish monarch found that 
his feudal levies could overrun areas of Prussia, but were unable to hold them, he looked around for knights who 
were willing to stay in the occupied territories permanently; by inviting in crusading orders and founding new 
ones, he and the Bishop of Prussia hoped to resolving the twin problems of warding off Prussian attacks into 
Poland and conquering that land for themselves and Christianity. Christiansen, The Northern Crusades,100-101; 
Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades. A Short History (New Haven and London: Yale, 1987), 161-163; Alan 
Forey, The Military Orders from the twelfth to the early fourteenth centuries (Toronto and Buffalo: Toronto, 
1992), 32-37. 

 

22. Complaints of neglecting the religious education were more than matched by accusations of unjustly forcing 
Christianity on unreceptive peoples. 

 

23. See essays in La cristianizzazaione della Lituania (ed. Paul Rabikauskas. Vatican: Libreria Editrice 
Vaticana, 1989); Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 312, on the Lithuanian response to the crusader challenge, 
forming a centralized state while reemphasizing the traditional pagan religion: "Its gods were old, but its guns 
were new." 

 

24. Textbook writers remain unimpressed. For example, an American western civilization text with very good 
coverage of east-central Europe, Stanley Chodorow et all, The Mainstream of Civilization (1994), 342. 

 

25. Hermanni de Warteberge, "Chronicon Livoniae," Scriptores rerum Prussicarum (6 vols. Leipzig: Hirzel, 
1861-1874), II, 72; Peter Rebane, "The Jüriöö Mäss (St. George's Night Rebellion) of 1343," Baltic History, 40. 

 

26. Landed nobility possessed sufficient property or income-producing activities to support itself. Service 
nobility earned its income by performing governmental duties and being ready to fight in a lord's cause--the 
duties of the Vogt (advocate) was to be the judge in civil and criminal cases, oversee the bailiffs in the villages, 
collect taxes and rents, train the militia, and fight as heavy cavalry. In Germany these duties were customarily 
performed not by true nobles, but by ministeriales. In the 13

th

 century this knightly class, of peasant and middle-

class ancestry, was pushing its way into the ranks of the lower nobility. Latvians and Estonians, even those 
raised in the families of seniores, had few opportunities to learn the skills that Germans acquired almost 
effortlessly from parents and male relatives, and too little income to equip themselves with horse and armor and 
to train to fight as a knight. 

 

27. Bartlett, Making of Europe, 55-56, 197 discusses marriage between newcomers and former elites in several 
frontier areas; Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers, and Infidels. The Church and the Non-Christian World, 1250-1550 
(Philadephia: Pennsylvania, 1979), 159-160, has a note on the irrelevance of modern ideas of racism for 
understanding the medieval world; see also Anatol Lieven, The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and 
the Path to Independence (New Haven and London: Yale, 1993) for intermarriage of German and Liv nobles. 

 

28. Ritterbrüder im livländischen Zweig des Deutschen Ordens (Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau, 1993), 744; one 
might note the provocative statement by Bartlett, Making of Europe, 297: "One paradoxical result of this 
difference in Christian policy regarding paganism and Islam [extirpation of the former, tolerance of the latter] 
was the fact that the native inhabitants in the Mediterranean area were much more clearly recognizable as a 
subordinate and colonial population than many of those in the north and east. In pagan eastern Europe the choice 
was a sharp one between resistance and conversion, and many shrewd native dynasties and élites chose the 
later." 

 

29. The accusations raised against the Teutonic Order at hearings presided over by papal legates went 
deliberately unanswered: the grandmasters had learned not to debate their actions, but to challenge the authority 
of the inquisition. Consequently, the hearings presented only one side of the story, included statements which 
were false or misleading, but have been relied upon by generations of nationalist or anti-Catholic historians as a 
true and accurate recounting of events. 

 

30. Évalds Mūgurevi?ćs, "Wechselbeziehungen der Deutschen und Ostbaltischen Kulturen im Lettland des 13. 
bis 16. Jahrhunderts," Lübecker Schriften zur Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte, 12(1986), 229-39, and "The 

Culture of Inhabitants of Medieval Settlements in Latvia in Livonian Period (the End of the 12th--the [first] half 
of the 16th Century," Fasciculi Archeologiae Historicae, 2(1987), 57-70. 

 

31. Determining what happened to the prisoners-of-war is one of the more frustrating questions facing historians. 
We assume many were sold into slavery, but mention of the slave trade in actual documents is rarer than we 
would expect. See Piotr Górecky, Economy, Society, and Lordship in Medieval Poland, 1100-1250 (New York 
and London: Holmes and Meier, 1992), 59-60. 

 

32. Kahk and Tarvel, An Economic History of the Baltic Countries, 38-39. 

 

33. Sven Ekdahl, "The Treatment of Prisoners of War during the Fighting between the Teutonic Order and 
Lithuania," The Military Orders. Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick (ed. Malcolm Barber. 
Cambridge: Variorum, 1994), 263-269; Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 298-300, for the complexities 
introduced into peasant life by the immigration of new peoples, the wars of religion, and the opening of new 
lands. It was not all retrograde, nor was it all progress. 

 

34. For medieval critics, see Helen Nicholson, Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights. Images of the 
Military Orders, 1128-1291 (Leicester: St. Martin, 1993), 68-79. Alas, her book was so oriented toward the Holy 
Land that she missed the principal criticism of the Teutonic Knights, which began in 1296 and continued without 
abatement for two and a quarter centuries. Also, Alan Forey, The Military Orders from the Twelfth to the Early 
Fourteenth Centuries (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1992), 211-213, in which he remarks, "Critics were, in 
fact, often ill-informed or had only a limited understanding of the orders' situation." 

 

35. Scepticism is a good quality. It is probably the origin of most learned articles, in that a scholar reads a 
statement which does not square with personal experience in the sources and therefore looks into the topic more 
deeply. However, scholarship is filled with obsolete beliefs and interpretations, each of which fitted the 
perceptions of the time. In our era, scholars have reflected our times--with the result that we learn less about the 
Middle Ages than about nationalism, Nazism and Stalinism. 

 

36. Compare the peasant risings, the pogroms, described by Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (New 
York: Harper, 1961), 87-98; by the fifteenth century, this attitude had changed. See Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers, 
and Infidels, 107-119. 

 

37. William Urban, "Roger Bacon and the Teutonic Knights," Journal of Baltic Studies, 19/4(1988), 331-338; 
and "The Teutonic Order at the Council of Constance," Estudios de Historia de la Iglesia y de las Instituciones 
Eclesiasticas en Europa (Barcelona, 1989), XIV, 3043-63. 

 

38. Oswald Backus, "The Impact of the Baltic and Finnic Peoples Upon Russian History," Baltic History, 4, calls 
aspects of this attitude "snobbery;" Michael Burleigh, "The German Knights, Making of a Modern Myth," 
History Today, 35(1985), 24-29; Edgar Johnson, "The German Crusade on the Baltic," A History of the 
Crusades, III (ed. Harry Hazard. Madison: Wisconsin, 1975), 546-49; William Urban, "Der Deutsche Orden in 
amerikanischen Schulbüchern," Beiträge zur Geschichte des Deutschen Ordens (ed. Udo Arnold. Marburg: 
Elwert, 1986), 111-22, and "Baltic Chivalry," The Historian, 56/3 (Spring, 1994), 519-530; Adomas Butrimas, 
"Die Darstellung der deutsch-litauischen Beziehungen im litauischen Geschichtslehrbüchern," Nordost-Archiv, 
Neue Folge, 2/2 (1993), 415-440, especially 439-40. 

 

39. David Kirby, Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period. The Baltic World 1492-1772 (London and New 
York: Longman, 1990), 25-26; also Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 199-202, with a following discursion on 
efforts to achieve language unity wherever that was possible. 

 

40. Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 269-291, 300, 311. 

 

41. Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 312-313, for the process of cultural homogenization; 326-242 for the growth 
of racial feeling and racism; Kirby, Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period, 26-41. Kirby extends his 
analysis to all the shores of the Baltic, demonstrating that the cruel social system was everywhere more or less 
the same. 

 

42. Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 313-314; see also Archibald Ross Lewis, Nomads and Crusaders, A.D. 
1000-1368 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988), who believed that Europe's rise to 
supremacy owed as much to the failure of other great civilizations as to its own achievements--when the 
Mongols retreated, the great civilizations concentrated on reestablishing the familiar patterns of the past, 
sacrificing thereby the potential of the future. [Note William Urban, "The Frontier Thesis and the Baltic 
Crusade" in Crusade and Conversion on the Baltic Frontier 1150-1500. ed. Alan V. Murray. Ashgate, 2001]

 

43. They had that opportunity numerous times, twice in this century, earlier with Ivan the Great and Ivan the 
Terrible, and each time rejected it. Remaining aloof from outside pressures and influence was not an option. At 
least, no other native people in East Central Europe managed to do it. 

 

44. Christiansen comments, The Northern Crusades, 250: "To present these wars as false--either as matters of 
interest disguised as matters of conscience, or simply as misnamed events--is too easy. This type of judgement is 
itself fraudulent. It avoids the unavoidable question of why men who were never reluctant to wage war for profit, 
fame, vengeance or merely to pass the time, without any disguise or pretext, nevertheless chose to claim that 
certain wars were fought for God's honour and the redemption of mankind."