Teutonic Knights by William Urban Page B

trouble as long as King Andrew was alive, but that he could expect great difficulties once Prince Bela mounted the throne. This could be avoided, perhaps, if the order could loosen its ties to the crown. When he returned to Italy he spoke to Honorius III about the problem, and subsequently the pope took the order’s lands in Transylvania under papal protection. In effect, the Burzenland became a fief of the Holy See.
    This action was a fatal mistake. In place of trouble at some future date, Hermann von Salza had to deal with it at once. Andrew ordered the Teutonic Knights to leave Hungary immediately. Not even he was willing to see a valuable province lost, stolen from his kingdom by legal chicanery. The pope intervened as best he could, and Hermann von Salza tried to explain that the act had been misinterpreted, but it was of no use. The Hungarian nobles had their issue, and now the king stood with them. When the Teutonic Knights unwisely refused to leave without a further hearing, Prince Bela was authorised to lead an armed force against them. The order was driven ignominiously from its lands and expelled from the kingdom. Only the peasantry remained, forming an important German settlement until 1945, when their descendants were expelled by the Rumanian government.
    The Hungarians did not replace the Teutonic Order with adequate garrisons or follow up on the attacks on the Cumans, thereby enabling the steppe warriors to recover their self-confidence and their strength. Soon the Cumans were again a danger to the kingdom.
    The Hungarian debacle shook the confidence of the Teutonic Order badly. Many men had given their lives, and much money had been collected with great difficulty to build the fortifications and make the new settlements secure. These efforts were all wasted. The order’s reputation was besmirched. In the recent past many gifts had come from the emperor and the princes – estates in Bari, Palermo and Prague. How many potential donors would consider the stories they heard and then make their donations elsewhere? The answer was not at all certain, although the example of the Tyrolean count of Lengmoos was encouraging – in the midst of the controversy he had joined the order and brought all his lands with him as a gift. Such a knight, reared in the art of the Alpine plateau where German chivalry and poetry flourished a short way from rich and vibrant Italian cities, was a living example of the problem the Teutonic Order faced. It could thrive in Germanic regions, winning recruits and donations from idealistic nobles and burghers, but it had no reason to operate in those areas. To have a purpose for existence the Teutonic Knights had to fight infidels or pagans, and those could be found only on the borders of non-German states. Unfortunately, the nobles and people of those states often had little in common with the members of the Teutonic Order; therefore, hostility rather than sympathy was their natural attitude toward the crusaders once the immediate danger had passed.
    The Mongol Storm blows in from the East
    Already by the time the Hungarian king had expelled the Teutonic Order from the ramparts of the Carpathians, he could hardly have failed to hear reports of the 1223 battle on the Kalka River in south-east Rus’. 6 But it was another fifteen years before the full extent of his error became apparent. The Mongols had won their first battle, then returned home; but in 1237 – 9 it became clear that they were in Rus’ to stay. 7 In the meantime the Polish and Hungarian kings had been expanding into Galicia and Volhynia, the most westerly Rus’ian states. Rumours that the Mongols planned to mount an offensive against Poland and Hungary spread quickly, based partly on Tatar warnings and partly on the assumption that the grand khan was determined to rule over all Rus’ and every steppe tribe. However inaccurate or misleading these accounts may have been, they were indicative of a massive shift in the