order. In a few weeks no less than eighty-one thousand seven hundred
and forty-six persons perished. There were also about this time
certain visions of hermits and others, which threatened terrible
judgments upon the order, because, while it professed to exist and
fight for the honor of God, the defence of the Church, and the
propagation of the faith, it really desired and labored only for its
own aggrandizement.
It was said, too, that it should perish through a goose (_oie_), and
as the word "Huss" means a goose in Bohemian _patois_, it was said
afterward that the writings of Huss, or more truly, perhaps, the work
of the goose-quill, had fulfilled the prophecy in undermining and
finally subverting the order. There were also disputes respecting the
taxes, which the people declared to be oppressive, and finally, in
1454, a formidable rebellion took place against the authority of the
knights.
Casimir, King of Poland, who had long had hostile intentions against
the order, secretly threw all his weight into the cause of the
malcontents, who made such way that the grand master was forced to
retire to Marienberg, his capital, where he was soon closely besieged.
Casimir now openly declared war, and laid claim to the dominions of
the knights in Prussia and Pomerania, formally annexing them to the
kingdom of Poland.
The grand master sent petitions for aid to the neighboring princes,
but without success. The kings of Denmark and Sweden excused
themselves on account of the distance of their dominions from the seat
of war. Ladislaus, King of Bohemia and Hungary, was about to marry his
sister to Casimir, and the religious dissensions of Bohemia and the
attacks of the Turks upon Hungary fully occupied his attention and
demanded the employment of all his troops and treasure; and finally
the capture of Constantinople by Mahomet at this very time (1458)
seemed to paralyze the energies of the European powers.
The grand master, Louis d'Erlichshausen, thus found himself deserted
in his time of need. He did what he could by raising a considerable
body of mercenaries, and with these, his knights, and the regular
troops of the order, he defended himself with courage and wonderful
endurance, so that he not only succeeded in holding the city, but
recovered several other towns that had revolted.
But his resources were unequal to the demands made upon them, his
enemy overwhelmed him with numbers, his own soldiers clamored for
their pay long overdue, and there was no prospect of aid from without.
There was nothing left, therefore, to him but to make the best terms
he could. He adopted the somewhat singular plan of making over
Marienberg and what remained of the dominions of the order to the
chiefs who had given him aid, in payment for their services, and he
himself, with his knights and troops, retired to Koenigsberg, which
then became the capital of the order. Marienberg soon afterward came
into the hands of Casimir; but the knights again captured it, and
again lost it, 1460.
War continued year after year between Poland and the knights, the
general result of which was that the latter were defeated and lost one
town after another, till, in 1466, a peace was concluded, by the terms
of which the knights ceded to Poland almost all the western part of
their dominions, retaining only a part of Eastern Prussia, with
Koenigsberg for their capital, the grand master acknowledging himself
the vassal of the King of Poland, with the title of Prince and
Councillor of the kingdom.
In 1497 the order lost its possessions in Sicily through the influence
of the Pope and the King of Aragon, who combined to deprive it of
them. It still retained a house at Venice, and some other property in
Lombardy. In 1511 Albert de Brandenberg was elected grand master. He
made strenuous efforts to procure the independence of the order, and
solicited the aid of the Emperor to free it from the authority of
Poland, but without success. The grand master refused the customary
homage to the King of Poland, and, after fruitless negotiations, war
was once more declared, which continued till 1521, when peace was
concluded; one of the results of which was the separation of Livonia
from the dominion of the order, and its erection into an independent
state.
All this time the doctrines of Luther had been making progress and
spreading among all classes in Prussia and Germany. In 1522 the grand
master went to Nuremberg to consult with the Lutherans there, and
shortly afterward he visited Luther himself at Wittenberg. Luther's
advice was decided and trenchant. He poured contempt upon the rules of
the order, and advised Albert to break away from it and marry.
Melancthon supported Luther's counsels. Shortly after, Luther wrote a
vigorous letter to the knights of the order, in which he maintained
that it was of no use to God or man. He urged all the members to break
their vow of celibacy and to marry, saying that it was impossible for
human nature to be chaste in any other way, and that God's law, which
commanded man to increase and multiply, was older than the decrees of
councils and the vows of religious orders. At the request of the grand
master he also sent missionaries into Prussia to preach the reformed
doctrines. One or two bishops and many of the clergy accepted them,
and they spread rapidly among the people. Services began to be said in
the vulgar tongue, and images and other ornaments were pulled down in
the churches, especially in the country districts.
In 1525 Albert met the King of Poland at Cracow, and formally resigned
his office as grand master of the Teutonic order, making over his
dominions to the King, and receiving from him in return the title of
hereditary Duke of Prussia. Shortly afterward he followed Luther's
advice, and married the princess Dorothea of Denmark. Many of the
knights followed his example. The annals and archives of the order
were transferred to the custody of the King of Poland, and were lost
or destroyed during the troubles that subsequently came upon that
kingdom.
A considerable number of the knights refused to change their religion
and abandon their order, and in 1527 assembled in chapter at
Mergentheim to consult as to their plans for the future. They elected
Walter de Cronberg grand master, whose appointment was ratified by the
Emperor, Charles V. In the religious wars that followed, the knights
fought on the side of the Emperor, against the Protestants. In 1595
the commandery of Venice was sold to the Patriarch and was converted
into a diocesan seminary; and in 1637 the commandery of Utrecht was
lost to the order. In 1631 Mergentheim was taken by the Swedes under
General Horn.
In the war against the Turks during this period some of the knights,
true to the ancient principles of their order, took part on the
Christian side, both in Hungary and in the Mediterranean. In the wars
of Louis XIV, the order lost many of its remaining commanderies, and
by an edict of the King, in 1672, the separate existence of the order
was abolished in his dominions, and its possessions were conferred on
the Order of St. Lazarus.
When Prussia was erected into a kingdom, in 1701, the order issued a
solemn protest against the act, asserting its ancient rights over that
country. The order maintained its existence in an enfeebled condition
till 1809, when it was formally abolished by Napoleon. In 1840 Austria
instituted an honorary order called by the same name, and in 1852
Prussia revived it under the designation of the Order of St. John.
PHILIP OF FRANCE WINS THE FRENCH DOMAINS OF THE ENGLISH KINGS
A.D. 1202-1204
KATE NORGATE
When Richard "the Lion-hearted" died in 1199, he left no son
to follow him on the throne of England and to claim
possession of the vast French fiefs of the Plantagenet
family. These fiefs, which covered more than half of France
and made their undisputed lord more powerful than the French
King himself, became at once a source of strife.
John, nicknamed "Lackland," the youngest brother of Richard,
succeeded him in England and in Normandy without dispute.
But their little nephew Arthur was already Count of
Brittany; and the other French possessions of the
Plantagenets--Anjou, Maine, and Touraine--declared for
Arthur in preference to John.
At this time France was ruled by Philip Augustus, who ranks
among the shrewdest and ablest of all her monarchs. Dreading
the vast power of the Plantagenets, he naturally sought to
divide their domains by upholding Arthur. This unhappy lad,
only twelve years old, was made a mere pawn in the savage
game of his elders. His tragic fate is powerfully depicted
by Shakespeare in his _King John_.
After some fighting and several sharp political moves and
countermoves, John and Philip came to terms, May 18, 1200,
by which the French King conferred almost all of the
disputed fiefs on John. Constant bickering, however,
continued. John had to do homage for his fiefs, and his
French vassals took every opportunity to appeal from him to
Philip, as their overlord.
Finally, when the moment seemed propitious, Philip demanded
from his overgrown vassal certain Norman castles as a sort
of guarantee of good behavior. This led up to the war in
which the Plantagenets lost all
their French domains, and became lords only of England.
It was arranged that John and Philip should hold a conference at
Boutavant. John, it appears, kept--or at least was ready to keep--the
appointment; but Philip either was, or pretended to be, afraid of
venturing into Norman territory, and would not advance beyond
Gouleton. Thither John came across the river to meet him. No agreement
was arrived at. Finally, Philip cited John to appear in Paris fifteen
days after Easter, 1202, at the court of his overlord the King of
France, to stand to its judgment, to answer to his lord for his
misdoings, and undergo the sentence of his peers. The citation was
addressed to John as Count of Anjou and Poitou and Duke of Aquitaine;
the Norman duchy was not mentioned in it. This omission was clearly
intentional; when John answered the citation by reminding Philip that
he was Duke of Normandy, and as such, in virtue of ancient agreement
between the kings and the dukes, not bound to go to any meeting with
the King of France save on the borders of their respective
territories, Philip retorted that he had summoned not the Duke of
Normandy, but the Duke of Aquitaine, and that his rights over the
latter were not to be annulled by the accidental union of the two
dignities in one person.
John then promised that he would appear before the court in Paris on
the appointed day, and give up to Philip two small castles, Thillier
and Boutavant, as security for his submitting to its decision. April
28th passed, and both these promises remained unfulfilled. One English
writer asserts that thereupon "the assembled court of the King of
France adjudged the King of England to be deprived of all his land
which he and his forefathers had hitherto held of the King of France,"
but there is reason to think that this statement is erroneous, and
derived from a false report put forth by Philip Augustus for political
purposes two or three years later. It is certain that after the date
of this alleged sentence negotiations still went on; "great and
excellent mediators" endeavored to arrange a pacification; and Philip
himself, according to his own account, had another interview with
John, at which he used all his powers of persuasion to bring him to
submission, but in vain. Then the French King, by the advice of his
barons, formally "defied" his rebellious vassal; in a sudden burst of
wrath he ordered the Archbishop of Canterbury--evidently one of the
mediators just referred to--out of his territories, and dashing after
him with such forces as he had at hand, began hostilities by a raid
upon Boutavant, which he captured and burned. Even after this, if we
may trust his own report, he sent four knights to John to make a final
attempt at reconciliation; but John would not see them.
The war which followed was characteristic of both kings alike.
Philip's attack took the form not of a regular invasion, but of a
series of raids upon Eastern Normandy, whereby, in the course of the
next three months, he made himself master of Thillier, Lions,
Longchamp, La Fertéen-Braye, Orgueil, Gournay, Mortemer, Aumale, and
the town and county of Eu. John was throughout the same period
flitting ceaselessly about within a short distance of all these
places; but Philip never came up with him, and he never but once came
up with Philip. On July 7, 1202, the French King laid siege to
Radepont, some ten miles to the southeast of Rouen. John, who was at
Bonport, let him alone for a week, and then suddenly appeared before
the place, whereupon Philip immediately withdrew. John, however, made
no attempt at pursuit. According to his wont, he let matters take
their course till he saw a favorable opportunity for retaliation. At
the end of the month the opportunity came.
At the conclusion of the treaty in May, 1200, Arthur, after doing
homage to his uncle for Brittany, had been by him restored to the
guardianship of the French King. The death of the boy's mother in
September, 1201, left him more than ever exposed to Philip's
influence; and it was no doubt as a measure of precaution, in view of
the approaching strife between the kings, that John on March 27, 1202,
summoned his "beloved nephew Arthur" to come and "do right" to him at
Argentan at the octave of Easter. The summons probably met with no
more obedience than did Philip's summons to John; and before the end
of April Philip had bound Arthur securely to his side by promising him
the hand of his infant daughter Mary. This promise was ratified by a
formal betrothal at Gournay, after the capture of that place by the
French; at the same time Philip made Arthur a knight, and gave him the
investiture of all the Angevin dominions except Normandy.
Toward the end of July Philip despatched Arthur, with a force of two
hundred French knights, to join the Lusignans in an attack on Poitou.
The barons of Brittany and of Berry had been summoned to meet him at
Tours, but the only allies who did meet him there were three of the
Lusignans and Savaric de Mauléon, with some three hundred knights.
Overruling the caution of the boy-duke, who wished to wait for
reinforcements from his own duchy, the impetuous southerners urged an
immediate attack upon Mirebeau, their object being to capture Queen
Eleanor,[33] who was known to be there, and whom they rightly regarded
as the mainstay of John's power in Aquitaine. Eleanor, however, became
aware of their project in time to despatch a letter to her son,
begging him to come to her rescue. He was already moving southward
when her courier met him on July 30th as he was approaching Le Mans.
By marching day and night he and his troops covered the whole distance
between Le Mans and Mirebeau--eighty miles at the least--in
forty-eight hours, and appeared on August 1, 1202, before the besieged
castle. The enemies had already taken the outer ward and thrown down
all the gates save one, deeming their own valor a sufficient safeguard
against John's expected attack. So great was their self-confidence
that they even marched out to meet him. Like most of those who at one
time or another fought against John, they underrated the latent
capacities of their adversary. They were driven back into the castle,
hotly pursued by his troops, who under the guidance of William des
Roches forced their way in after the fugitives, and were in a short
time masters of the place. The whole of the French and Poitevin forces
were either slain or captured; and among the prisoners were the three
Lusignans and Arthur.
Philip was at that moment busy with the siege of Arques; on the
receipt of these tidings he left it and turned southward, but he
failed, or perhaps did not attempt, to intercept John, who, bringing
his prisoners with him, made his way leisurely back to Falaise. There
he imprisoned Arthur in the castle, and despatched his victorious
troops against Arthur's duchy; they captured Dol and Fougères, and
harried the country as far as Rennes. Philip, after ravaging Touraine,
fired the city of Tours and took the citadel; immediately afterward he
withdrew to his own territories, as by that time John was again at
Chinon. As soon as Philip was gone, John, in his turn, entered Tours
and wrested the citadel from the French garrison left there by his
rival; but his success was won at the cost of another conflagration,
which, an English chronicler declares, was never forgiven him by the
citizens and the barons of Touraine.
For the moment, however, he was in luck. In Aquitaine he seemed in a
fair way to carry all before him without striking a blow. Angoulême
had passed into his hands by the death of his father-in-law on June
17th. Guy of Limoges had risen in revolt again, but at the end of
August or early in September he was captured. The Lusignans, from
their prison at Caen, made overtures for peace, and by dint of
protestations and promises succeeded ere long in regaining their
liberty, of course on the usual conditions of surrendering their
castles and giving hostages for their loyalty. It was almost equally a
matter of course that as soon as they were free they began intriguing
against John. But the chronic intrigues of the south were in
reality--as John himself seems to have discovered--a far less serious
danger than the disaffection in his northern dominions. This last evil
was undoubtedly, so far as Normandy was concerned, owing in great
measure to John's own fault. He had intrusted the defence of the
Norman duchy to his mercenaries under the command of a Provençal
captain--whose real name is unknown--who seems to have adopted for
himself the nickname of _Lou Pescaire_ ("the Fisherman")--which the
Normans apparently corrupted into "Louvrekaire"--and who habitually
treated his employer's peaceable subjects in a fashion in which other
commanders would have shrunk from treating avowed enemies. Side by
side with the discontent thus caused among the people there was a
rapid growth of treason among the Norman barons--treason fraught with
far greater peril than the treason of the nobles of Aquitaine, because
it was more persistent and more definite in its aim; because it was at
once less visible and tangible and more deeply rooted; because it
spread in silence and wrought in darkness; and because, while no
southern rebel ever really fought for anything but his own hand, the
northern traitors were in close concert with Philip Augustus. John
knew not whom to trust; he could, in fact, trust no one; and herein
lay the explanation of his restless movements, his unaccountable
wanderings, his habit of journeying through byways, his constant
changes of plan. Moreover, besides the Aquitanian rebels, the Norman
traitors, and the French enemy, there were the Breton partisans of
Arthur to be reckoned with. These had now found a leader in William
des Roches, who, when he saw that he could not prevail upon John to
set Arthur at liberty, openly withdrew from the King's service and
organized a league of the Breton nobles against him.
These Bretons, reinforced by some barons from Anjou and Maine,
succeeded, on October 29, 1202, in gaining possession of Angers. It
may have been to watch for an opportunity of dislodging them that
John, who was then at Le Mans, went to spend a fortnight at Saumur and
another at Chinon. Early in December, however, he fell back upon
Normandy, and while the intruders were harrying his ancestral counties
with fire and sword, he kept Christmas with his Queen at Caen, "faring
sumptuously every day, and prolonging his morning slumbers till
dinner-time." It seems that shortly afterward the Queen returned to
Chinon, and that in the middle of January, 1203, the enemies at Angers
were discovered to be planning an attempt to capture her there. John
hurried to Le Mans, only stopping at Alençon to dine with Count Robert
and endeavor to secure his suspected loyalty by confirming him in all
his possessions. No sooner had they parted, however, than Robert rode
off to the French court, did homage to Philip, and admitted a French
garrison into Alençon. While John, thus placed between two fires, was
hesitating whether to go on or to go back, Peter des Préaux succeeded
in getting the Queen out of Chinon and bringing her to her husband at
Le Mans; thence they managed to make their way back in safety to
Falaise.
This incident may have suggested to John that it was time to take some
decisive step toward getting rid of Arthur's claims. According to one
English chronicler, some of the King's counsellors had already been
urging this matter upon him for some time past. They pointed out that
so long as Arthur lived, and was neither physically nor legally
incapacitated for ruling, the Bretons would never be quiet, and no
lasting peace with France would be possible. They therefore suggested
to the King a horrible scheme for rendering Arthur incapable of being
any longer a source of danger. The increasing boldness of the Bretons
at last provoked John into consenting to this project, and he
despatched three of his servants to Falaise to put out the eyes of the
captive. Two of these men chose to leave the King's service rather
than obey him; the third went to Falaise as he was bidden, but found
it impossible to fulfil his errand. Arthur's struggles were backed by
the very soldiers who guarded him, and the fear of a mutiny drove
their commander, Hubert de Burgh, to prevent the execution of an order
which he felt that the King would soon have cause to regret. He gave
out, however, that the order had been fulfilled, and that Arthur had
died in consequence.
The effect of this announcement proved at once the wisdom of Hubert
and the folly of those to whose counsel John had yielded. The fury of
the Bretons became boundless; they vowed never to leave a moment's
peace to the tyrant who had committed such a ghastly crime upon their
Duke, his own nephew, and Hubert soon found it necessary, for John's
own sake, to confess his fraud and demonstrate to friends and foes
alike that Arthur was still alive and uninjured. John himself now
attempted to deal with Arthur in another way. Being at Falaise at the
end of January, 1203, he caused his nephew to be brought before him,
and "addressed him with fair words, promising him great honors if he
would forsake the King of France and cleave faithfully to his uncle
and rightful lord." Arthur, however, rejected these overtures with
scorn, vowing that there should be no peace unless the whole Angevin
dominions, including England, were surrendered to him as Richard's
lawful heir. John retorted by transferring his prisoner from Falaise
to Rouen and confining him, more strictly than ever, in the citadel.