72 PIAST
sounded every hour from the tower of St. Mary's Church, commemorates the
death of the city watchman who was pierced through the throat by a Mongol
arrow as he raised the alarm.
The Teutonic Knights constituted a problem of longer duration. Invited to
the country almost casually in 1226 on the private initiative of Konrad of
Mazovia, they soon raised the principal threat to the stability and integrity of
the Polish lands. They called themselves Deutscbritter, or German Knights, but
were known in Poland, from the black cross on their white mantles, as the
Krzyzacy, the 'Black Crusaders'. The full name of their organization was 'The
Order of the Hospital of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the German House of
Jerusalem', and their adventures in Europe were prompted by the fall of
Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187, and by the failure of the Third Crusade.
Reconstituted as a chivalric order in 1198 with headquarters at Acre, and later
in Venice, they loaned their services to any princely ruler who would pay for
military help against the unbeliever. In 1224-5, they made a brief appearance in
Transylvania, and brought themselves to the notice of the Piast princes. At that
very moment, Konrad of Mazovia was suffering from a serious shortage of man-
power. Already engaged in a major programme of conversion and subjugation
directed against the pagan Prussian tribes to the north of his borders, he was try-
ing to rule Mazovia, Kujawy, Sieradz, and Leczyca, and to bid for the throne of
Cracow. When the Prussians responded to his ministrations with a salvo of
bloody raids and revolts, the minor knightly order, the Brotherhood of
Dobrzyn, which he had settled in 1209 on the Prussian frontier, could not cope.
The apostolic see of Prussia, which he had founded in 1215 with the aid of the
Cistercians of Lekno, was supposedly in danger of collapse. His expedition of
1222-3, mounted with the combined forces of Mazovia, Silesia, Malopolska,
and Pomerania, failed to have an effect. The situation was not desperate. But by
exaggerating the danger of a Prussian invasion, Konrad was able to justify his
appeal to the Teutonic Knights. In 1226 he resolved to invest them with the
District of Chelmno (Kulm), and in 1228, the contract was sealed. Two years
later, under their Landsman, Herman von Balk, the knights arrived and began
their task with a will. For fifty years, they harried the Prussians with fire and
sword, until by 1288 the furthest fastnesses of the Prussian lands were con-
quered. By then, the Order had grown far beyond the control of its original
patron; it had become a power of continental importance and possessed a state
of its own. Konrad of Mazovia was no saint. He practised all the vices of the
medieval warlords. He had murdered his Wojewoda from jealousy, and he, too,
understood his Christian faith as a licence for murder. Yet even he could not
have dreamed of the monster which grew from the teeth which he planted in his
own garden. (See Map 6.)
The process whereby the Teutonic State was established betrayed a remark-
able fund of energy and unscrupulousness. From the start, brute force was
abetted by diplomacy, by legalistic wizardry, and by the gift of sound adminis-
tration. Already in 1226 in the Golden Bull of Rimini, the Grand Master