Pilénai

February 25th is the anniversary of the 1336AD mass suicide at Pilénai, a hill fort in Lithuania, where 4,000 brave defenders took their own lives rather than surrender to the Teutonic Knights. Balderdash! But let me explain why.

When you mention the Crusades most people default to Outremer, the Holy Land, where the Templar and Hospitaller orders maintained a strong presence. But there were other Crusades and other orders. Spain had the reconquista and the Knights of Calatrava and it was accorded the same conditions by the Pope as service in Jerusalem. You could win indulgences, shrive yourself of sins, and even clear your debts. The siege of Lisbon in Portugal was one of the few Christian victories of the second crusade. In Germany the Teutonic Order secured crusader terms and conditions for their conversion (at the point of a sword) of the pagan peoples of the region that now constitutes Prussia/Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

It is called the Northern Crusades, and ran from the Wendish Crusade in 1147 until it fizzled out in the early 15th Century as it dawned on the religious leaders that the Catholic/Roman Christians such as the Teutonic and Livonian orders were fighting Orthodox Russian Christians of the church in Constantinople rather than pagans. The “crusades” had become a massive land grab as the Germans and Russians grasped their opportunities to expand into the region. Further North the Swedes saw the way the wind was blowing and conquered large sections of what is now Finland. The Northern Crusades gave way to the Northern Wars between Prussia, Denmark, Poland, Lithuania, Sweden and Russia.

In most of Europe war is a summertime affair. Grass is the fuel for horses and large cavalry armies were only able to campaign when the grass was plentiful. Snow and ice in the winter made it difficult to move and most armies hunkered down in the cold of winter. Spring and autumn rains turned roadways into a sea of mud, and farmers were needed for spring planting and autumn harvest, so wars were fought in summer.

War in the Baltic states was a bit different. The Romans never stretched their influence into these lands so they were devoid of straight roads. Moving about was difficult in the Summertime. Strangely enough it was the winter when travel was easiest. The many lakes, rivers and streams of the baltic region freeze solid in winter. In the process they become flat highways that facilitate travel by a cavalry army as long as you have crampons on your horseshoes.

So it was in February of 1336 in the winter campaign season when the Teutonic order moved in force against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. When the powerful Teutonic army was spotted the people of the region fled to the hillfort at Pilénai. The Duke, Margiris, attempted to rally his forces but he was quickly over-run. It is at this stage the legend becomes divorced from reality.

The legend is that the stout hearted Lithuanians, seeing they had no hope, bravely committed mass suicide, thus denying the hated Germans booty or slaves. This is a founding legend of the Lithuanian people. There is nothing like a great massacre or sacrifice to build national pride. The Jews did it at Masada. In India the British gifted them the Amritsar massacre. Ireland has two Bloody Sundays, one in Dublin in 1921 and one in Derry in 1972.

I say the legend of Pilénai is balderdash because it was not Jonestown in Guyana where Jim Jones calmly lined up his followers and dispensed cyanide in Koolaid. Pilénai was undoubtedly a scene of chaos. Frightened peasants scrambling up the hill from all sides pursued by the Teutonic soldiers. When they saw the scene anyone with a horse tried to escape. Margiris attempted to establish a cordon but the attacking troops hurled stones and flaming brands into the defensive lines.

Instead of the defenders deciding to burn their property to deny it to the attackers the fires were probably started by the attackers. The defenders may have thrown the peasants belongings into fires as a means of keeping the Teutonics at bay. What we know is that many peasants and very few soldiers found themselves trapped by a powerful German army on a hillfort from which they could not escape. The peasants came from four different regions and were in no way a united people. Some may have committed suicide. Some died defending the hill. Some were captured and taken prisoner.

But that will not do for a national legend. The 4,000 men, women and children were transformed into 4,000 brave Lithuanian soldiers. The chaos was transformed into resolve and decision. The agency for the victory was stripped from the Teutonic knights and the Lithuanians were celebrated for their sacrifice. This is how legends are born.

The nationalist Irish song below, written in 1844 evokes the suicidal defense of Thermopylae by the 300 Spartans, and the three Romans who defended the Pons Sublicius; Spurius Lartius, Titus Herminius and Horatius Cocles. It conjures up the old pagan belief that an act of human sacrifice can win the favour of the Gods.

A Nation once again; by Thomas Osborne Davis

When boyhood’s fire was in my blood
I read of ancient freemen.
For Greece and Rome who bravely stood,
three hundred men and three men.
And there I prayed I yet might see
our fetters rent in twain
and Ireland, long a province be
a nation once again.

It whisper’d too, that freedom’s ark
and service high and holy
would be prepared by feelings dark
and passion vain or lowly.
For freedom comes from God’s right hand
and needs a godly train
and righteous men must make our land
a nation once again.

So as I grew from boy to man
I bent me to that bidding.
My spirit of each selfish plan
and cruel passion ridding.
For thus I hoped some day to aid
oh, can such hope be vain
when my dear country should be made
a nation once again.

A nation once again,
a nation once again,
and Ireland, long a province be
a nation once again!

-=o0o=-

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Teutonic Order

In terms of fame the Teutonic order of Knights tend to come third after the Templars and the Hospitallers.  Certainly in the Crusades of the Holy Lands they maintained only a modest presence.

The key focus for the Teutonics was the pagan tribes of the Baltic in the areas now populated by Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Russians and Finns.  Their mission was to bring these peoples to God and they did this at the point of a lance.

Understandably the Baltic tribes did not just lie down and accept their fate.  The Northern Crusades were long, drawn out, bitter affairs.  Progress was measured in yards.  Campaigning was possible in the normal Spring/Summer season when grass was available to feed horses.  In a quirk of climate much of the fighting took place in the winter.  Frozen rivers and lakes in this area of the world make veritable highways through the dense forest and scrub.

So it was that in the winter of 1336 a force of Teutonic Knights besieged the Samotigian hill fort of Pilénai.  Accounts hold it that the defenders of the fort alone numbered 4,000 not counting women and children.  The Teutonic Knights must have numbered many thousands because the inhabitants of Pilénai realised that they could not defend themselves from the besieging army.

In a grand gesture of defiance the Lithuanians set fire to their own fort to deny it to the Crusaders.  Then, on this day, Feb 25th 1336, they committed what is the largest mass suicide in history.

 

A Song of Suicide; by Robert William Service

Deeming that I were better dead,
“How shall I kill myself?” I said.
Thus mooning by the river Seine
I sought extinction without pain,
When on a bridge I saw a flash
Of lingerie and heard a splash . . .
So as I am a swimmer stout
I plunged and pulled the poor wretch out.

The female that I saved? Ah yes,
To yield the Morgue of one corpse the less,
Apart from all heroic action,
Gave me a moral satisfaction.
was she an old and withered hag,
Too tired of life to long to lag?
Ah no, she was so young and fair
I fell in love with her right there.

And when she took me to her attic
Her gratitude was most emphatic.
A sweet and simple girl she proved,
Distraught because the man she loved
In battle his life-blood had shed . . .
So I, too, told her of my dead,
The girl who in a garret grey
Had coughed and coughed her life away.

Thus as we sought our griefs to smother,
With kisses we consoled each other . . .
And there’s the ending of my story;
It wasn’t grim, it wasn’t gory.
For comforted were hearts forlorn,
And from black sorrow joy was born:
So may our dead dears be forgiving,
And bless the rapture of the living.

 

Vampire Crusaders

Le Giaour by Vernet

On Dec 12th 1408 Sigismund of Luxembourg, King of Hungary, founded the Societas Draconistarum (Order of the Dragon) one of the most evocative of the Military Chivalric Orders of the middle ages.

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We are all familiar with the larger orders such as the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller and the Teutonic Knights. The smaller chivalric orders are less well known, but abounded all across Europe. Spain and Portugal had many orders, the best known being the Knights of Calatrava. The Baltic States had a number of orders in the Northern Crusdades against the Pagans, with the Livonian Sword Brothers playing second fiddle to the Teutonic order.

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Today we think of the Crusades as being particular to the holy land and nothing could be further from the truth. The Crusades represented a clash of cultures with Christian and Muslim states fighting for territory all across Europe.

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The Iberian peninsula was the Western theatre. The remnants of the Christian Vizigothic kingdoms fought for control against the Caliphate and then against Rif muslims such as the Almoravids and the Almohads. The Reconquista culminated in 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella took the Kingdom of Granada and unified Spain under Christian rule.

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A second campaign was waged all across the mediterranean in places such as Algeria, Tunisia, Sicily, Malta, Crete, Cyprus, Rhodes etc to control the maritime trade routes. The key players on the Christian side were the Italian maritime states such as Genoa, Venice, Pisa, Amalfi, Ancona and Ragusa. The Ottoman fleet was the backbone of the muslim navies, but was ably supported by a variety of independent muslim rulers, traders and pirates. Two great battles signalled the ascent of Christian power; the Great Siege of Malta (1565) and the naval battle of Lepanto (1571). In both cases the Spanish Empire, freed of its own crusade, was able to contribute to Christian Victory.

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On the Eastern Front the Christians fared less well. After capturing Jerusalem in the first crusade they established four ‘crusader kingdoms’ collectively known as Outremer; the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli and the County of Edessa. They lost Edessa and Jerusalem to Saladin and then lost all the remaining land over the following years to Baybars, the Mameluke Sultan of Egypt. In 1453 Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, who then flowed into Europe and the Balkans.

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It was the Balkans that became the ‘front line’ of the crusades, the central theatre of the conflict. For Europe the most important single battle in the entire history of the Crusades was the Siege of Vienna in 1529. Under Sulieman the Magnificent the Ottoman Empire reached its high water mark. Had Vienna fallen then all of Eastern Europe could have become Muslim.

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It is in the context of this world that we understand the order of the Dragon, a knightly order for selected nobility who vowed to defend the Christian world against the Turks. As noble knights they were expected to act as the leaders in the defence of Christian lands. It had members in Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary and all across the Balkans. One of the more noted members of the order was Vlad II Dracul. The nickname ‘dracul’ was adopted when he was inducted into the order and means ‘Vlad the Dragon’.

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After the assassination of Vlad Dracul his eldest son, Mircea, was blinded and buried alive. From the confusion that followed arose Vlad III who took a diminutive form of his father’s nickname and called himself ‘Dracula’. He was better known by his people as ‘Tepes’ or The Impaler, for his habit of impaling his muslim enemies. Dracula earned great fame and loyalty from the Romanians of Transylvania for his defence against the Turks.

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Many years later, in the 1890’s Bram Stoker visited the town of Whitby in Yorkshire and was inspired by the gothic nature of the town to write a novel. A Dublin man, Stoker had taken a job as manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London. This gave him access to literary circles where he met Armin Vambery, a Hungarian Jew, traveler and author who was an expert on Ottoman Orientalism. It is undoubtedly from Vambery that Stoker learned of Dracula, and framed the central character of his famous novel. In many portrayals of the story the character of Armin Vambery serves as a model for Van Helsing.

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The Giaour ; by Lord Byron

. . . Unquenched, unquenchable,
Around, within, thy heart shall dwell;
Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tell
The tortures of that inward hell!
But first, on earth as vampire sent,
Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race;
There from thy daughter, sister, wife,
At midnight drain the stream of life;
Yet loathe the banquet which perforce
Must feed thy livid living corse:
Thy victims ere they yet expire
Shall know the demon for their sire,
As cursing thee, thou cursing them,
Thy flowers are withered on the stem.
But one that for thy crime must fall,
The youngest, most beloved of all,
Shall bless thee with a father’s name —
That word shall wrap thy heart in flame!
Yet must thou end thy task, and mark
Her cheek’s last tinge, her eye’s last spark,
And the last glassy glance must view
Which freezes o’er its lifeless blue;
Then with unhallowed hand shalt tear
The tresses of her yellow hair,
Of which in life a lock when shorn
Affection’s fondest pledge was worn,
But now is borne away by thee,
Memorial of thine agony!