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| == Background == | == Background == | ||
| ]'', 1228]] | ]'', 1228]] | ||
| In the 13th century, ] was ruled by members of the ]. These dukes asserted their power by fortified strongholds. The major stronghold of the area was at the location of present-day Gdansk's Old Town. The adjacted town-like settlement emerged into a town and was granted ] by duke |
In the 13th century, ] was ruled by members of the ]. These dukes asserted their power by fortified strongholds. The major stronghold of the area was at the location of present-day Gdansk's Old Town. The adjacted town-like settlement emerged into a town and was granted ] by duke Swantipolk or ] (''Zwantepolc de Danceke'') in 1224. | ||
| After the ], the last member of the Samborides died in 1294, disputes over succession arose. Involved in internal dynastic conflicts, Mestwin had promised his duchy to ], for aiding him in his struggles with his brother, Wratislaw. Yet, in the 1282 ] he also promised Pomerelia to his ally ], duke and later king of Poland. The ], who also held claims regarding Pomerelia, had inherited ] from ], thus gaining a foothold on the left bank of the Vistula.<ref>David Abulafia et al., The New Cambridge Medieval History, 1999, Vol.5 </ref> | After the ], the last member of the Samborides died in 1294, disputes over succession arose. Involved in internal dynastic conflicts, Mestwin had promised his duchy to ], for aiding him in his struggles with his brother, Wratislaw. Yet, in the 1282 ] he also promised Pomerelia to his ally ], duke and later king of Poland. The ], who also held claims regarding Pomerelia, had inherited ] from ], thus gaining a foothold on the left bank of the Vistula.<ref>David Abulafia et al., The New Cambridge Medieval History, 1999, Vol.5 </ref> | ||
| At the beginning of the 14th century, the region was plunged into war involving local Pomeranian nobility and the principality of ] to the west, which had acquired rights by the ] of 1269. Brandenburg's claim to the harbour city and Pomerania was |
At the beginning of the 14th century, the region was plunged into war involving local Pomeranian nobility and the principality of ] to the west, which had acquired rights by the ] of 1269. Brandenburg's claim to the harbour city and Pomerania was partially based on a treaty of ], ] between the ] and ], promising the ] territory to the ]n crown in exchange for ], although it never was finalised. | ||
| == Teutonic Knights called in == | == Teutonic Knights called in == | ||
| In Summer of 1308, a Pommerian rebellion led by |
In Summer of 1308, a Pommerian rebellion led by ] magnates<ref name="rzygacz">{{pl icon}} </ref> in the city unseated the small forces loyal to King ] present there since 1306, and allied with ] | ||
| <ref>], ]: A history of Poland, 1979 </ref> who entered the town, but not the castle which was held by a small garrison loyal to the king.<ref name="rzygacz"/> They, and the city's Pomeranian judge and ], Bogusza, on the advice of the Dominican prior Wilhelm,<ref>]'s Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, Dzieje miast Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej: Polska w słowie i obrazach, 1928 </ref><ref name="rzygacz"/> appealed to the ] in Prussia for assistance.<ref name="Gieysztor">], ], ], ], and ]. ''History of Poland''. PWN. Warsaw, 1979. ISBN 8301003928</ref> | <ref>], ]: A history of Poland, 1979 </ref> who entered the town, but not the castle which was held by a small garrison loyal to the king.<ref name="rzygacz"/> They, and the city's Pomeranian judge and ], Bogusza, on the advice of the Dominican prior Wilhelm,<ref>]'s Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, Dzieje miast Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej: Polska w słowie i obrazach, 1928 </ref><ref name="rzygacz"/> appealed to the ] in Prussia for assistance.<ref name="Gieysztor">], ], ], ], and ]. ''History of Poland''. PWN. Warsaw, 1979. ISBN 8301003928</ref> | ||
Revision as of 20:49, 2 July 2008
The Teutonic takeover of Danzig (Gdańsk) on 13 November 1308 refers to the incorporation of the city into the Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights. The knights moved into the fortress as an ally of Poland, thought to aid the Poles in their war for Pomerelia inheritance with the Margraviate of Brandenburg, that had already seized all of the city but the fortress. Instead, the Teutonic Knights kept the city and soon conquered surrounding Pomerelia for the next 200 years, until the Prussian Confederation seceded from the Order after the Thirteen Years War. The takeover therefore marks the beginning of tensions between Poland and the Teutonic Order.
| Polish–Teutonic Wars | |
|---|---|
Background
In the 13th century, the Pomerelian duchy was ruled by members of the Samborides. These dukes asserted their power by fortified strongholds. The major stronghold of the area was at the location of present-day Gdansk's Old Town. The adjacted town-like settlement emerged into a town and was granted Lübeck city rights by duke Swantipolk or Swietopolk II (Zwantepolc de Danceke) in 1224.
After the Mestwin II, the last member of the Samborides died in 1294, disputes over succession arose. Involved in internal dynastic conflicts, Mestwin had promised his duchy to Conrad, Margrave of Brandenburg-Stendal, for aiding him in his struggles with his brother, Wratislaw. Yet, in the 1282 Treaty of Kępno he also promised Pomerelia to his ally Przemyslaw II, duke and later king of Poland. The Teutonic Order, who also held claims regarding Pomerelia, had inherited Mewe from Sambor II, thus gaining a foothold on the left bank of the Vistula.
At the beginning of the 14th century, the region was plunged into war involving local Pomeranian nobility and the principality of Margraviate of Brandenburg to the west, which had acquired rights by the Treaty of Arnswalde of 1269. Brandenburg's claim to the harbour city and Pomerania was partially based on a treaty of August 8, 1305 between the Rulers of Brandenburg and Wenceslaus III, promising the Meissen territory to the Bohemian crown in exchange for Pomerelia, although it never was finalised.
Teutonic Knights called in
In Summer of 1308, a Pommerian rebellion led by Święcowie magnates in the city unseated the small forces loyal to King Władysław I of Poland present there since 1306, and allied with Waldemar of Brandenburg who entered the town, but not the castle which was held by a small garrison loyal to the king. They, and the city's Pomeranian judge and castellan, Bogusza, on the advice of the Dominican prior Wilhelm, appealed to the Teutonic Knights in Prussia for assistance.
The Knights, led by Heinrich von Plötzke (and a relative of Gunther von Schwarzburg of the same name) agreed to aid Bogusza, and were to garrison the town for a year. A force of 100 knights and 200 supporters arrived at the castle around August; the Brandenburgers lifted the siege without any combat. The rebellious inhabitants, who supported the Brandegrburgers, however, remained opposed to the Polish-Teutonic takeover. In September, the Teutonic Knights, together with the Polish garrison, begun their own siege of the city. Soon, however, tensions rose, as both sides vied for control; eventually the Polish knights with Bogusza left the town, leaving the siege under Teutonic Knights control.
Controversy
On the night of 12 to 13 November, the knights assaulted the part of the town held by an insurgents; this assault was successful and they did suppress an uprising. A number of people were murdered at that time. The exact figure is not known.
The city's website on its history pages states that "Teutonic Knights..., having captured the castle in 1308 butchered the population. Since then the event is known as "the Gdańsk slaughter ". While this term has not entered into English historiography ( ), it is known in Polish as rzeź Gdańska (). A "Monument commemorates the massacre of the population of Gdansk in 1308."
Norman Davies, in his extensive history of Poland notes that the Knights "drove Waldemar from the city, and calmly slaughtered its inhabitants".
Polish reports spread by Władysław indicated that 10,000 inhabitants were slain in the city (that number was also mentioned in the Papal Bull of 1310), although that number has also been considered greater than the city's population at the time. The accusations of killing up to 10000 people had been made in the course of Poland suing the Teutonic Knights to return Pomerelia, and therefore need to be handled with care, especially as there were parallels to the contemporary prosecution of the Knights Templar. As a result of the suit, the Teutonic Knights were even briefly excommunicated by the pope, yet that decision could have been made for financial reasons as to keep Polish taxes and was reversed soon after. In fact, the Knights moved their headquarters from Venice to the Ordensburg Marienburg. The Knights themselves admitted to killing 16 people. The real number of deaths - likely between overestimated 10,000 and underestimated 16 - is still unknown.
The massacre was used as an argument in determining the ethnicity of the inhabitants; for example Edward Corsi indicates that "we have conclusive proof that before 1308, the population of Danzig must have been Polish as the Teutonic Knights would not have slaughtered 10,000 of their own" . The massacre was the Polish answer to the German claim that Danzig is historically and ethnically a German city. However, the ethnicity of the inhabitants itself is another controversy; as it is not certain all the victims were indeed Polish - it is possible that the Knights massacred some German-speaking supporters of the Polish Kingdom; certainly others were Branderburgian supporters, rebellious against the Polish king. James Minahan wrote that the city inhabitants, for the most part, were Kashubs (a Pomeranian Slavic tribe, now considered part of the Polish people).
During the Cold War, in a polemic with US congressman B. Carroll Reece of Tennessee who had stated "The citizens of Danzig are German as they always had been", Polish politician and writer Jędrzej Giertych replied that the Knights treacherously gained access into the Polish garrison as allies, then turned their arms against the Poles, massacred first the soldiers, then the civilians, 10,000 men, women and children.
Matthew Kuefler noted: "German and Polish historians in the twentieth century tended to have diverging both on the question of whether Pomeralia really "belonged" to Poland and also on the degree of ferocity of the order's conquest".
Further conquest of Pomerelia
The "New Cambridge Medieval History" of 1999 states "when the Poles refused to accept monetary compensation, the Order resolved the ensuing conflict by conquering further towns like Schwetz (Świecie)". The local colony of merchants and artisans was specifically attacked because they competed with the Knights' town of Elbing (Elbląg), a nearby city.. The Knights also attacked Tczew.
Part of the Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights
The Knights then captured the rest of Pomerelia from Brandenburg's troops. In September 1309, Margrave Waldemar of Brandenburg-Stendal sold his claim to the territory to the Teutonic Order for 10,000 marks in the Treaty of Soldin (now Myślibórz), thereby connecting the Order's territory with that of the Holy Roman Empire. Danzig was incorporated into the Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights.
Political aftermath
Previously allied against the Prussians, the takeover triggered a series of conflicts between Poland and the Teutonic Order. The possession of Danzig and Pomerelia by the Teutonic Order was questioned consistently by the Polish kings Wladislaus I and Casimir the Great in legal suits in the papal court in 1320 and 1333. Also, in the 1330s, a war ensued.
Peace was established in the Treaty of Kalisz in 1343; although the Polish kings were able to retain the title "Duke of Pomerania" and were recognized as titular overlords of the crusaders, the Knights retained control of Danzig.
The city under the Order
Development of the city initially stagnated after its capture by the Teutonic Knights. Initially the new rulers tried to reduce the economic significance of Danzig by abolishing the local government and the privileges of the Lübeck traders. This apparently relates to the fact that the city council, including Arnold Hecht and Conrad Letzkau, was removed and beheaded in 1411. Later they had to accept the fact that city defended its independence and was the largest and most important seaport of the region after overtaking Elbing. Subsequently it flourished, benefiting from major investment and economic prosperity in Monastic state of Teutonic Knights and Poland, which stimulated trade along the Vistula. The city had become a full member of the merchant association called Hanseatic League by 1361, but its merchants remained resentful at the barriers to the trade up the Vistula river to Poland, along with the lack of political rights in a state ruled in the interest of the Order's religiously-motivated knight-monks.
See also
- Siege of Danzig
- History of Gdańsk
- Teutonic Order#Against Poland
- History of Pomerania#Eastern Pomerania and Poland
References
- David Abulafia et al., The New Cambridge Medieval History, 1999, Vol.5
- ^ Template:Pl icon Rzeź Gdańska
- Norman Davies, God's Playground: A history of Poland, 1979
- Poland's Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, Dzieje miast Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej: Polska w słowie i obrazach, 1928
- ^ Gieysztor, Alexander, Stefan Kieniewicz, Emanuel Rostworowski, Janusz Tazbir, and Henryk Wereszycki. History of Poland. PWN. Warsaw, 1979. ISBN 8301003928
- www.gdansk.pl
- Lech Krzyżanowski, Gdańsk, Sopot, Gdynia: A Guide to the Triune City, 1974
- Norman Davies, God's Playground: A history of Poland, 1979
- Urban, Thomas. "Rezydencja książąt Pomorskich". Template:Pl icon
- ^ Urban, William. The Teutonic Knights: A Military History. Greenhill Books. London, 2003. ISBN 1853675350
- ^ Matthew Kuefler, The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality,
- Edward C. Corsi: Poland, Land of the White Eagle, 1933,
- David Gordon Copping, Polish-German Relations 1930-1934, Stanford 1948,
- James Minahan, One Europe, Many Nations: A Historical Dictionary of European National Groups, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000, ISBN 0313309841, p.376
- Jędrzej Giertych, Poland and Germany: A Reply to Congressman B. Carrol Reece of Tennessee, 1958, p. 15
- Jędrzej Giertych, Poland and Germany: A Reply to Congressman B. Carrol Reece of Tennessee, 1958, p. 16, 95
- David Abulafia et al., The New Cambridge Medieval History, 1999, Vol.5