Castle plan: A-upper castle, B-middle castle, C-low
castle, 1-bridge, 2-gate and Bridge Towers, 3-outer defensive walls, 4-moat,
5-St Nicholas Gate, 6-Shoemaker Gate, 7-Sparrow Tower, 8-Wicket Gate,
9-nameless tower, 10-Toward Town Tower, 11-nameless tower, 12-Nad Piekarnią
Tower, 13-Podstarościego Tower, 14-Vogts Tower, 15-Powder Tower, 16-hexagonal
tower, 17-Szarysz Tower, 18-Clock Tower, 19-Kęsa Tower, 20-Maślankowa Tower,
21-St Lawrence Gate
HEADQUARTERS OF THE TEUTONIC KNIGHTS
On 18 July 1410, Heinrich von Plauen arrived in haste at
Malbork Castle, located on a branch of the River Vistula, 25 miles from the
Baltic Sea. This was the principal base of the Order of Teutonic Knights, and
the administrative centre of the Baltic state these warrior monks had carved
out while pursuing the conversion of the pagan tribes of north-east Europe.
Word had reached von Plauen of a terrible battle in which the grand master of
the Order and other leading knights had been slain. Acting leader, he had
travelled as fast as he could, with the two thousand soldiers he had held back
at his own castle of Schwetz, upriver to the south-west. He put the interest of
the Order first, leaving Schwetz at the mercy of the invading Polish-Lithuanian
army in a desperate bid to secure Malbork. At around the same time, the
garrison at Malbork was further reinforced by nearly 1,500 survivors of the
battle; a small complement of the force which had suffered such losses. These
men were in a desperate state. All were weary and many displayed wounds
sustained in the fighting three days earlier. They relayed blood-curdling
accounts – which did nothing to cheer the already despondent garrison – of one
of the largest and most murderous battles fought anywhere in medieval Europe.
In fields near the village of Tannenberg, among the streams
of the Mazurian marshes, the Teutonic Knights had suffered a catastrophic
defeat at the hands of the Polish king. Some 8,000 of their soldiers had been
killed, another 14,000 taken captive, and hundreds of their most important
members did not rise from the battlefield. If spirits were not low enough at
Malbork, as news of the disaster travelled north with the bedraggled survivors,
a wagon arrived at the castle gates. In it were the bodies of the Order’s
highest-ranking officials, the men who had led the Teutonic Knights only days
earlier on the fateful march east to cover the movements of the vast enemy
army. Among them were Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen, Grand Marshal
Friedrich von Wallenrode, and Grand Treasurer Thomas von Merheim – wrapped in
clean white sheets and dressed in purple robes in preparation for a dignified
burial at Malbork.
The task now faced by von Plauen was a daunting one. For
some time it had been clear that the huge invading army of the
Polish-Lithuanian alliance was not interested in half measures. They sought
nothing less than a comprehensive victory over the Teutonic Order. To achieve
this, victory on the battlefield was only the first step. They knew they had to
capture and destroy the heavily fortified castle at Malbork, the aim being the
end of the state the Order had ruled for nearly two centuries along the shore
of the Baltic Sea.
Such was the scale of the allied triumph at Tannenberg that
their momentum seemed unstoppable. With Teutonic castles surrendering left and
right to the forces of King Władysław II of Poland and Grand-Duke Vytautas of
Lithuania – Olsztyn, Morag, Preussmarkt and Dzierzgoń among numerous others –
many among the garrison at Malbork were resigned to defeat and ready to give up
the castle without a fight. At this point, von Plauen took it upon himself to
turn things around, to motivate the substantial garrison he now commanded to
hold onto the great castle for the sake of the Teutonic Order he had vowed to
defend.
WARRIOR MONKS
The year 1099 saw the success of the First Crusade by
European Christians to recover Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim control.
It established a precedent, and an ambition, which would persist for the next
two hundred years – and a militant approach to conquering and converting the
‘heathen’ which would last longer than that.
Shortly after this initial Crusade, two religious orders
formed which sought to protect the increasing number of pilgrims now flocking
to the Holy Land. Known as the ‘Knights Hospitaller’ and the ‘Knights Templar’,
they combined the aggressive fighting skills needed to provide military
protection, with a spiritual and ascetic life becoming to those in holy orders.
Then, at the point when they were losing their initial impetus, they were
joined by a third organisation. In 1190, the Order of Teutonic Knights was
created, not by clerics, but by the German merchants of Bremen and Lubeck.
Redirecting their focus from the Holy Land to the pagan
lands of the Baltic, the Knights launched a ‘northern Crusade’. This would
become an outlet for the zeal of Christian warriors now that the Levant – the
hinterland of the eastern Mediterranean shore – seemed lost. This campaign
received wide support in Christendom, and chimed with the ethos of the medieval
German Church, which encompassed a militant element. The Holy Roman Emperor
authorised the conquest of Prussia as part of the Empire’s policy against
heathen nations. And the Pope issued a bill granting the Order rights of
conquest over land won.
The Knights quickly overran the lower reaches of the River
Vistula, building their first castles during the 1230s, of timber and earth
banks. In a land of rivers, swamp and forest, a scanty supply of good building
stone meant it was used only for foundations. Over the following decades they
expanded their control along the Baltic coast. The Order’s close ties with
German merchants ensured a steady stream of colonists who were attracted by
privileges; the influx fostered an attitude to the non-German population which
was increasingly ruthless. Towns were established and castles built, or
rebuilt, from brick. The business of constant warfare and hospitality demanded
a regular source of income so that the Knights became deeply involved in the
economy of the lands they occupied, trading particularly in wheat, wool and
amber. In 1283, the Order established its own state, which became the dominant
political and economic force in the region.
Aggressive expansion motivated the Knights even when
religious conversion was not a justification. During the fourteenth century, at
their height, Pomerania to the west was targeted in a bid to link the Teutonic
state with the German lands. In 1308 the important Baltic port of Gdańsk was
captured. Then, to counter papal criticism by proving their crusading role was
paramount, the Knights turned eastwards to the vast state of Lithuania, which
covered much of present-day Russia from the Baltic to the Ukraine.
The harsh Baltic winters meant campaigns differed from those
elsewhere in Europe. Cavalry had to ride in single file, through trenches cut
deep in the snow. But in the dense forests of Lithuania, where most campaigning
took place during the fourteenth century, winter was often preferred for raids
because visibility was clearer after the deciduous leaves had fallen. Frozen
rivers became ‘winter roads’, facilitating deep penetration into the pagan
lands. Later in the year forest undergrowth hampered movement, while melt-water
swelled the rivers, turning their banks to mud and taking a heavy toll on
horses.
The Crusade lasted nearly a century, bringing bloodshed as
well as much valuable booty for the knights. They overwhelmed the lands of
pagan communities up to the River Dnieper and almost as far as Moscow,
launching campaign after campaign deep into the dense forests of Lithuania.
They were assisted by a steady flow of Crusaders from Western Europe. With
Christendom defeated in the Holy Land, knights from France, Spain and England
travelled east to support the work of the Teutonic Order. Henry Bolingbroke,
later Henry IV, was present with three hundred men at the siege of Vilnius in
1390, and numerous other Englishmen had joined this northern Crusade during the
fourteenth century. Visiting knights were entertained generously at a
rapidly-growing network of over 120 castles, of which Malbork, having moved to
the centre from the state’s western edge as its territory expanded, became the
principal. They were distinguished from most medieval castles in Europe by two
characteristics: they were as much monastic as military structures, and they
were largely built not of stone but of red brick.
For all the Order’s attempts to claim a divine purpose,
however, it was clear that evangelical objectives were no longer foremost.
Territorial domination and economic control of the Baltic lands took precedence
over the enforced conversion of pagans to Christianity – and, inevitably, the Knights’
policy of aggressive expansion had led to confrontation with Poland, their most
powerful neighbour; a country which longed for access to the Baltic Sea.
Polish rulers, based in their capital at Kraków, became
bitterly hostile to the expansionist Teutonic state, but their military
campaigns against it were intermittent and unsuccessful. In 1386, however, the
situation changed. The grand duke of Lithuania accepted the crown of Poland as
Władysław II, having converted to Christianity himself and married that
country’s queen. Together they united the two states of Poland and Lithuania
against the common enemy sandwiched in between. At the same time, divisions
grew within the Teutonic state between the monastic knights and the German
settlers, creating an opportunity for its enemies. In 1410, an attempt would be
made to halt the Order’s expansion once and for all.
Plan of middle and upper castle from the end of the
14th / beginning of the 15th century by A.Franaszak, K.Solak
THE CONSTRUCTION OF MALBORK CASTLE
For centuries conquest has been consolidated by military
construction, and this was certainly the case in Teutonic Prussia, where a
network of castles was created denser than anywhere else in Europe (each within
a day’s march of another to ensure that relief was at hand). In the late
thirteenth century – as Edward I built Conwy and other great castles to tighten
his grip on Wales – at Malbork, work began to assert the authority of the
Teutonic Knights over their expanding state.
Tracing its history, however, is difficult. Whereas there
are royal records detailing the construction of the castles at Conwy and
Harlech and the earlier English royal castle at Dover, no documents survive to
illuminate the building of Malbork. Historians are forced to rely on architectural
detailing in an effort to understand the construction phases of this vast
castle. Nevertheless, much can be deduced.
When the first part of Malbork to be built – the ‘Upper’
castle – was begun in 1276, the region lay on the western extremity of Teutonic
Prussia. Under the German commander Heinrich von Wilnowe, work began on a
fortified religious settlement which could consolidate the rule of the Order in
an area which had recently witnessed a failed uprising by the local population.
Unlike many earlier castles of the Order, which depended on locally-available
resources, this was not to be built from wood. Skilled craftsmen were brought
from Germany – brick-makers and layers, glaziers, carpenters, blacksmiths –
while basic labourers were commandeered locally. Brick walls were constructed
on foundations of hard rock that rendered mining very difficult. At Malbork –
on the banks of the River Nogat, flowing north-east from the Vistula into the
Vistula Lagoon – the first 4 to 7 feet of walling was built on massive boulders
taken from the bed of the adjacent river, in-filled with smaller stones.
The castle was finished by about 1300. Its first phase took
the form of four wings with three storeys, high pitched roofs – steeply angled
to cast off the snow – and built around a square cloistered courtyard. A
fortified quadrangle of this sort constituted a recurring design among Teutonic
castles. It encompassed a church, chapter house, dining hall, kitchen and
dormitories. This combination of elements was not found together in Western
Europe: a holy cloister within a formidable military enclosure, a monastery
within a castle. The style was austere, in keeping with the Order’s code which
eschewed frippery in favour of a hard life of prayer and military rigour. In their
hall the brothers ate communally: simple fare, consumed in silence or in
contemplation of a lesson read aloud, unless the presence of visiting Crusaders
justified an exemption. Hospitality as well as worship and defensibility was at
the core of the castle’s purpose.
An outer court accommodated support staff and services,
protected by a moat and a curtain wall. The ground floor rooms, massively
vaulted, were used for storage of food, drink, weapons and other materials, all
necessary for the lifestyle of the knights. A prison was built conveniently
adjacent to the guard room, perhaps intended for high-status prisoners. The
kitchen vault was supported on a line of circular columns, with the principal
hearth served by a flue that rose above the roofline of the castle. The serving
areas were placed on one side, with a dumb-waiter on the other to transfer food
to the second-floor dining hall with its seven windows and central columns
supporting painted vaulting.
Of the four wings, two had dormitories on the first floor
which slept some sixty people, while another twenty or so officials and
dignitaries slept in smaller rooms in a third wing. From the mid-fourteenth
century they were served by a detached lavatory tower, the dansk tower, linked
to the castle by a first-floor corridor. This was originally built of wood and
later rebuilt in brick on an arcaded support in the late nineteenth century. It
was probably also intended as a final resort during a siege; towers with this
dual function were a recurring feature in Teutonic castles. Another survives at
Toruń, while the communal lavatory tower at Kwidzyn, with its arcaded corridor
to the fortress, is another remarkable example.
On the fourth side of the courtyard lay the chapter house
and the great church – always the most important structure for this monastic
order, and especially so here, where it would become the Order’s primary church
in Prussia. Its entrance is striking, with a line of five recessing columns and
capitals and figured arches set in a vaulted bay. Richly painted, and decorated
with glazed clay tiles of animals, this lavish portal illustrates the Last
Judgement and has been known since at least the fourteenth century as the
‘Golden Gate’. The church is divided into two parts – the nave of the 1280s,
and an apse extension of the early 1330s. Vaulting runs over both nave and apse
(and also in the chapter house) dating from 1331–44: the earliest ribbed vault
in the Baltic coastal region, influenced perhaps by the recent development of
English chapter houses like York and Wells.
The remodelled church became the growing organisation’s
spiritual centre – surmounted now by a slender bell tower. Outside stood the
patroness of the Order: a 26-foot stucco relief of the Virgin Mary with the
child Jesus, richly-coloured and clad in elaborate Venetian mosaic work.
Marienburg, as Malbork was then known, means ‘the fortress of Mary’, and the
life of the warrior monks was organised around the festivals associated with
the Virgin. In the early fourteenth century the grand master commanded every
member to recite a Salve Regina or an Ave Maria every hour of the day, while
other Teutonic castles – Marienwerder, Frauenburg – also invoked her
protection. Below the apse is the ground floor chapel of St Anne which was set
aside for the tombs of the grand masters. Thirteen were buried here from 1341 –
including Ulrich von Jungingen, slain on the fields near Tannenberg.
The continued expansion of the Teutonic state meant that
what was initially an outpost relatively near the border had quickly moved
towards the heartland. In 1308, less than a decade after Malbork’s first
incarnation was completed, the Knights conquered the port city of Gdańsk and
the adjacent region of Pomerania. They massacred many of the local inhabitants
and imported large numbers of German settlers. Shortly after this, the
headquarters of the Teutonic Order was moved from Elblag (Elbing to
German-speakers) 15 miles south to the more secure town of Malbork. A year
later this shift was confirmed when the grand master of the Order also
transferred his base to Malbork from Venice – the latter location, convenient
when shipping men to the Holy Land had been the Knights’ primary purpose, was
less useful now that the Baltic was their principal theatre.
This move by the head of the Teutonic Order was accompanied
by a rise in the number of knights visiting Malbork en route to or from attacks
against the Order’s enemies. Further expansion was required if the castle was
to provide enough accommodation of suitable quality for these visitors. From
1310, the Upper Castle was extended by a Middle Castle, with an imposing
gatehouse and three wings surrounding a much larger courtyard. This was major
work that would continue into the second half of the fourteenth century. The
new building included a sequence of rooms for visiting knights and honoured
guests, and a great hall for their meals and entertainment. A new outer castle
was also developed to the east, with stables, barns, granaries, a bakery,
foundry and workshops, spread across a vast courtyard. This covered almost the
same area as the town of Malbork on the other side of the Upper Castle. At the
same time a permanent bridge, flanked by towers, was built across the river.
The new Knights’ Hall could hold some four hundred guests,
and was one of the great secular apartments of medieval Europe – its fine
painted walls lit by large windows and crowned by a complex vaulted roof.
Leading up a stair from the hall, as in any great medieval residence, were the
private apartments of the lord, in this case the grand master. Developed in
three stages as the Teutonic Order grew in importance during the fourteenth
century, from a relatively modest lodging it became one of medieval Europe’s
outstanding palaces – no less so for being set within a highly defensive
complex. This is particularly apparent from the riverside, where an elaborate
frontage rises through four storeys to a wall-walk crowned by a high pitched
roof. It is decorated with arcading, traceried windows, six-sided turrets and
panelled battlements in stone and brick, a stark contrast to the military
façades of the Upper Castle and the relative simplicity of the Knights’ Hall
nearby. Having the grand master’s private palace here in the Middle rather than
the Upper Castle, meant he could more easily entertain his guests and preserve,
in the Upper Castle, a serenity in keeping with its quasi-monastic function.
From the high end of the Knights’ Hall a stair opens into an
ante-chamber, leading onto the richly decorated reception room, the Master’s
private chapel, and then his bedchamber. Late in the fourteenth century, this
suite was enhanced by a lavish new wing, built facing the river to provide
further reception rooms and two additional dining rooms or refectories. Used in
summer and winter respectively, the latter were used primarily as audience
chambers for receiving envoys and honoured guests. The Summer Refectory used
expensive stone brought from Sweden, with a single pillar supporting the ribs
of a complex radiating vault that rests on corbels between the large windows.
The Winter Refectory had heating vents in the floor and a lower ceiling, but
was similarly vaulted from a central granite column. Its walls were painted
with wreaths of flowers, and figurative or heraldic motifs. This new building
was one of the architectural glories of medieval Europe, at odds with the
wholly military character of the earlier castle, and it marks the zenith of the
Order’s power and authority.
Beneath the grand master’s private residence additional
rooms were created in which the administrative functions of the Order were
carried out – a fundamental concern now that Malbork had become the Knights’
primary seat – and a chancellery responsible for the financial well-being of
the Order was located in offices below the two dining rooms.
By the early fifteenth century Malbork stood much as it is
seen today, with the walled and gated town adding further protection to the
castle. Developed over more than a century, Malbork was now among the largest
fortresses in the world – covering more than twice the area of the town that
protects its western flank. The various stages of building had produced not one
castle but three, within a single gigantic enclosure – a fitting seat of power
for the ambitious Teutonic state.
For all its emphasis on devotion and splendour, the builders
never lost sight of the fact that this was a castle for knights who were not
native to the region and who were always under threat from the surrounding
population and from external invasion. These men relied on networks of such
castles as bases from which to shelter, and mount sorties to quell unrest. From
the time that it became the Order’s primary seat of power, Malbork, in
particular, needed to be thoroughly secure.
Approached from outside it is obvious that this was a
defensive fortress as well as a palace. The entrance to the castle from the
town was joined by a second from across the river. This bridge has since gone,
but the two pyramid-capped gate-towers which commanded this approach from the
mid-fourteenth century still stand. All three castles – High, Middle and Outer
– were surrounded by moats. The entire fortress was ringed with concentric
walls capable of being isolated and defended independently. Most of the corners
were protected by square or rectangular towers, some high enough to serve as
watch-towers or defensive posts. All gates and passages were protected by
drawbridges, portcullises, iron-clad doors, shooting galleries and
machicolations (see Machicolations box). By the second half of the fourteenth
century the castle was among the most impregnable in Europe, and as such was
the obvious target for any army that wished to strike at the heart of the
Teutonic state. But it was not long before it would face the greatest threat in
its history.
In the mid-summer of 1410 the knights assembled a
substantial army in the Outer Castle, in readiness to defend the Order,
according to their oaths. The combined armies of Poland and Lithuania had
crossed its borders seeking a decisive confrontation. It was a daunting
prospect, but confidence remained high: the Knights had known few permanent
setbacks during the previous century and a half, and were instilled with the
conviction that – with God’s and the Virgin’s help – their righteous cause
would triumph.
The knights left Malbork on horseback, attired in their
traditional uniform – a white mantle, emblazoned with a black cross, over body
armour of iron or steel, with plates covering the front and back, which in turn
covered a chain-mail hauberk extending over the body, arms and legs. By their
sides they bore swords which, from the early fourteenth century, had been
enhanced with an extended grip and double-edged blade to help overcome the
increasing weight and robustness of armour. As they rode they unfurled banners
which they believed were God’s as well as their own. They went now to face a
man who, though born a pagan, had fervently embraced the same Christian God.
The strength that each side derived from their faith would only add to the
brutality of the confrontation.
