Crusader Castles of the Teutonic Knights (2)

The death of Bishop Albert in 1229 lifted the one restraining hand on the Swordbrothers’ activities. On a more legitimate level Kurland (Kurzeme) was conquered and converted by them in 1230, but the view was being formed at a high ecclesiastical level that the Swordbrothers had outlived their usefulness. A newly appointed papal legate, Bernard of Aulne, decided that they should be suppressed. But when he tried to recapture the Danish castle at Reval from them he was defeated and taken prisoner. This was hardly the way to treat the Pope’s representative.
Master Volkwin of the Swordbrothers began to worry about the Order’s future, and came upon a possible solution. In Prussia another order of knighthood had begun a campaign against natives that was being conducted in a similar manner to the wars that the Swordbrothers had waged in Livonia. They were the Teutonic Knights, who had been invited into Prussia by a Polish nobleman. Volkwin proposed that the Swordbrothers should be absorbed into the new, powerful and promising Teutonic Order. When the request was received a delegation from the Teutonic Knights went to Livonia on a tour of inspection, and reported back that the Swordbrothers were not worth bothering with.
There was more than a little touch of hypocrisy about the Teutonic Knights’ denunciation of the Swordbrothers. The Teutonic Order had only become active in Baltic affairs after being kicked out of Hungary for similar acts of territorial aggression! Nor were their methods of raiding pagan villages, slaughtering the men and carrying off women and children as captives much different either. But the Teutonic Knights had their future to consider. Prussia was a fresh start, and to be saddled with the responsibility of the Swordbrothers’ failures was not in their long-term interests.