Polish-Teutonic War (1519-1521)

Denarius with a portrait of Sigismund I

In the late 90s of the XV century, in the Teutonic Order, which from the Second Torun Peace in 1466 was a vassal of the Kingdom of Poland , the idea arose of electing the great masters only from among the imperial princes (with it , “Reichsfürst”), who, as subordinates of the German emperor, could to avoid holding a homage ceremony in relation to his overlord - the king of Poland. The Teutonic Order was also subordinate to the Holy Roman Empire and the Pope , which gave Maximilian I , who was fighting the Jagiellons for influence in Central Europe , a chance to use the crusader state for his own purposes. In 1501, he officially forbade the Grand Master Frederick of Saxony to homage and pay tribute to King Jan Olbracht , before that Frederick managed to evade the ceremony on his own.

In 1505, Pope Julius II issued a log with a demand for the Crusaders to pay tribute to Alexander Jagielloni , but already in 1510 he withdrew the decision, appointing an arbitration court in Poznan . In 1511, the nephew of the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania Sigismund I Albrecht of Brandenburg-Ansbach , was elected as the Grand Master, which was supposed to help resolve the Polish-Teutonic contradictions. At the talks in Torun, the primacy of Poland, Jan Lasky, unsuccessfully tried to negotiate with the Pomezansky bishop, Giob Dobenecki, about the conditions for carrying out homage. Understanding the inevitability of a war with Poland, Albrecht began to look for allies and initiated negotiations with Emperor Maximilian I.

In 1512, the Grand Duke of Moscow Vasily III invaded the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , connected by a personal union with Poland, which marked the beginning of the Moscow-Lithuanian War (1512-1522) . The Grand Master, who as a vassal of Poland was obliged to provide her with military support, refused to provide assistance. Albrecht's violation of the conditions of the Second Torun Peace gave Poland a casus belli with the Order.

In 1514, Vasily III and Maximilian I entered into an alliance against Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. However, at the Vienna Congress of 1515, Sigismund and Maximilian concluded an agreement under which the emperor, in exchange for certain concessions from Poland, recognized the conditions of the Second Torun Peace and broke the alliance with Moscow. The issue of homage to Albrecht was postponed for five years.

On March 10, 1517, a Russian-Teutonic union treaty was concluded in Moscow. Basil III pledged to transfer money to Albrecht to hire 10,000 foot soldiers and 2,000 horsemen, after which they should jointly attack Poland and the Grand Duchy. The Grand Duke of Moscow took the Teutonic Order under his protection , about which he did not fail to inform the king of France Francis I.

Realizing that power was on his side, Albrecht demanded that the King of Poland return Royal Prussia and Warmia , as well as payment of compensation for the “fifty-year Polish occupation ” of these lands at the rate of 30,000 guilders per year. In response, on August 20, 1518, the bishop of Plock, Erasmus Tsiolek, spoke at the Reichstag in Augsburg with the anti-Tutan philippic .

In 1519, the Prussian Landtag , and then on December 11 and the Polish Diet , decided to start a war with the Order and introduce new taxes on hiring soldiers. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania refused, waging war with Moscow , to provide military assistance to Poland.

Polish troops of about 4,000 soldiers under the command of the great hetman of the crown, Nikolai Firlei, were concentrated in a camp near Kol . In order to strengthen defenses, additional troops were sent to Gdansk and Torun . The Czech mercenaries were led by Jan Zherotinsky . The Poles marched through Pomezanie to Königsberg , besieged Marienverder and Prussiche Holland , however, without siege artillery, which was supposed to come later, it was impossible to take the castles; The Polish privateer fleet began a blockade of the order ports: Königsberg and Pillau . Meanwhile ( January 1 ), the Crusaders took Warmian Braunberg .

March 18 , after bringing artillery from Krakow , Marienverder was taken, April 29 - Prussiche Holland, but the troops under the command of Janusz Sverchovsky failed to return Braunberg. at the same time, from the south, the State of the Teutonic Order was attacked by the Mazovian troops, Gdansk regiments launched an attack on Balka and Memel .

Legates of Pope Leo X stood up for the Order, accusing Poland of “shedding Christian blood” and “fighting the Christian army” in the face of the threat of invasion of the Tatars . All this was in the hands of Albrecht, who was awaiting the arrival of the Landsknechts from the Empire.

In July 1520, the crusaders launched an offensive. The fighting was carried out in Warmia, Mazovia, the Lomzhin land was ravaged. In August, the Order forces besieged Lidzbark , but were unable to take the city. In August, reinforcements arrived in Germany in the amount of 19,000 horsemen and 8,000 infantry under the command of Wolf von Schoenberg, which struck at Great Poland . On October 12, they began shelling Miedzyrzecz , which soon surrendered.

Sigismund Stary convened a “salt destruction” ( Polish pospolite ruszenie ) in Wagrowiec and strengthened the Poznan garrison. To prevent a possible blockade of the Polish troops located in East Prussia, on November 2, the king came to Bydgoszcz . Now the main blow of the crusaders was aimed at Gdansk, to which troops from the east were also drawn. In order to prevent the union of two order armies, the head of Malbork, Stanislav Kosceletsky, took all the crossings across the Vistula . The Crusaders took Valch , Chojnice , Starograd , Tczew and on November 8 began shelling Gdansk from Biskup Hill . On November 9, Polish reinforcements approached the city under the command of the governor of Kalisz Jan Zaremba. Albrecht did not have enough money to pay the mercenaries who refused to fight until they were paid a salary, and went to Oliva .

On November 28, the 12,000th horse-drawn Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under the command of Firlej recaptured Chojnice, at the same time the Czechs and Gdansk took Tczew and Starograd. Zaremba from Gdansk attacked German mercenaries. Landsknechty retreated in the direction of Puck , undergoing constant attack from the Kashubians .

Meanwhile, problems began in Poland. The king was forced to dissolve the battered Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and there was no money to hire a new army. Using the opportunity, the crusaders in the beginning of 1521 took Nove-Miasto-Lubavsk and advanced to the Plock region. On January 15, the Teutonic Order troops approached Olsztyn , and on January 26 the assault on the Olsztyn Castle began, which turned out to be unsuccessful. The defense of the fortress was led by Nikolai Copernicus ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]} , who prepared for the battle ahead of time and on his own initiative wrote down 20 small guns from Elblлонg ^[5] .

The new emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V, called on the parties to immediately cease hostilities. The Polish ambassador to the Empire, Jerome Lasky, tried to impose his position on Karl, but during the Ottoman invasion of Hungary on April 5, 1521, the Kingdom of Poland and the Teutonic Order signed a ceasefire for four years. The parties also agreed to refer the conflict to the arbitral tribunal of Charles V and the Hungarian king Louis Jagiellon .

Imperial mediation yielded no results, and in 1525 the ceasefire expired, while Albrecht could no longer count on support from the Empire. The decisive was the meeting of Albrecht with Martin Luther in Wattenberg , on which Luther advised the great master to marry, secularize the Order and become its secular ruler. Albrecht accepted this idea, as did the idea of Protestantism .

On April 8, 1525, the parties signed a peace treaty in Krakow. Most of the possessions of the Teutonic Order in Prussia were declared the secular duchy of Prussia, vassal to Poland. Grand Master Albrecht became the hereditary ruler of the duchy. On April 10, at the Old Market in Krakow , a ceremony was held to homage the Duke Albrecht I to King Sigismund I the Old. The Teutonic Order, which elected a new master, continued to exist, but it did not play any significant role.

• Biskup m . Wojna pruska, czyli walka zbrojna Polski z Zakonem Krzyżackim z lat 1519-1521. - Olsztyn, 1991.
• Biskup m . Wojny Polski z zakonem krzyżackim (1308-1521). - Gdańsk, 1993.
• Tyszkiewicz J. Ostatnia wojna z Zakonem Krzyżackim 1519-1521. - Warszawa, 1991.

• (English) Treaty of Kraków // Polska.pl.
• (Polish) Traktat krakowski (inaccessible link) // Polska.pl
• (Polish) Wojny polsko-krzyżackie // Encyclopedia WIEM .