Teutonic Knights by William Urban

number of warriors to hold the land securely or preferred a safe and easy life in the interior. When Andrew mentioned this problem to Count Hermann or his emissaries, he was most likely told that a military order such as the Teutonic Knights could protect this endangered frontier, making it possible for the king to go on crusade with a free mind. Although there were other ways that Andrew could have heard of Hermann von Salza and his order – his queen was from the Tyrol, an early base of the order – it seems more than a coincidence that the king invited the Teutonic Knights to come to Transylvania only shortly after signing the marriage contract with Hermann of Thuringia.

    The king promised lands in the endangered region and immunities from taxes and duties; this implied that the military order could bring in settlers and maintain itself from their rents and labour without having to share its hard-won early revenues with the monarch. In effect, Andrew was presenting them that part of Transylvania called the Burzenland. He kept the right to coin money and a claim to half of any gold or silver that might be discovered, but he renounced his claims to taxes and tolls, and his authority to establish markets and exercise justice. This appeared to be a generous offer, and because the officers of the military order had little experience in such affairs, Hermann von Salza accepted the invitation on the assumption that the king’s goodwill would continue into the future.
    Almost immediately a contingent of knights, accompanied by peasant volunteers from Germany, entered the unsettled region and built a series of wood-and-earth forts; the peasants then established their farms and villages, providing the taxes and labour necessary to support these military outposts. Such settlements by religious orders were very common in this era, and the ethnic origin of the peasants generally meant little to the nobles and clerics who profited from their presence. The peasants soon began to harvest reasonably abundant crops, making it easy to attract yet more immigrant farmers from Germany. Only after these tasks had been accomplished did it become apparent that the king’s offer was terribly vague and unspecific. By that time, however, little could be done to change it, because he was absent on the Fifth Crusade.
    Andrew had sailed to the Holy Land in 1217 with a large army, accompanied by Hermann von Salza and a force of Teutonic Knights. Finding the crusaders in Cyprus idle, without much hope of mounting an offensive toward Jerusalem, the king and Hermann von Salza had called all the crusader leaders together and proposed to attack Egypt. If they could capture Cairo, which seemed weakly defended, they could exchange that city for Jerusalem and the surrounding fortresses. First, however, they had to capture Damietta. When that siege did not succeed as quickly as hoped, King Andrew returned home overland, making a truce with the Turks in Asia Minor to permit him safe-passage back to Hungary.
    Meanwhile, the contingent of Teutonic Knights in Transylvania had not been content to act the part of quiet vassals, defending the frontier in a static manner. They were ambitious and aggressive, pressing outward against the Cumans, and they found it easy to occupy new territories, because the nomads had no permanent settlements that might provide centres of resistance. By 1220 the Teutonic Knights had built five castles, some in stone, and given them names that were later passed on to castles in Prussia. Marienburg, Schwarzenburg, Rosenau, and Kreuzburg were grouped around Kronstadt at a distance of twenty miles from one another. These became bases for expansion into the practically unpopulated Cuman lands, an expansion that went forward with such surprising speed that the Hungarian nobles and clergy who previously had shown little interest in the region became jealous and suspicious.
    If the Teutonic Knights had been given another decade, they would