It appears that about 1128 a wealthy German, having participated in the siege and capture of Jerusalem, settled there, and soon began to show pity for his unfortunate countrymen among the pilgrims who came, receiving some of them into his own house to be cared for. When the work became too great for him there, he built a hospital, in which he devoted himself to nursing sick pilgrims, to whose support he likewise gave all his wealth. Still the task outgrew the means at his command, and in order to increase his charity he began to solicit alms. While he took care of the men, his wife performed a like service for poor women pilgrims.

Soon they were joined by many of their wealthier countrymen who had come to fight for the Holy Land. Presently they "banded themselves together, after the pattern of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and united the care of the sick and poor with the profession of arms in their defence, under the title of Hospitalers of the Blessed Virgin." These Teutonic Hospitalers continued their work, in hospital and field, until the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187, and the conqueror, in recognition of their benevolent services, consented that some of them should remain there and continue their work. Out of these lowly beginnings grew one of the most powerful and widespread of the military religious orders.

It was during the siege of Acre, 1189-1191, that the Teutonic Order received its final and complete organization as one of the great military religious orders of Europe. The German soldiers suffered great miseries from sickness and from their wounds, and as their language was not understood by the French and other European contingents of the crusading army, they were left untended and friendless. To meet this want, some citizens of Bremen and Lubeck provided a sort of field hospital, and devoted themselves to the care of their wounded and sick countrymen. These were soon joined by others, and by the brethren of the Hospital of the Blessed Virgin at Jerusalem, whom Saladin had banished from the city, and the little body came to be known by the designation of the Teutonic Knights of the Hospital of the Blessed Virgin at Jerusalem.

It is said that the order owed its constitution to Frederick, Duke of Swabia; but there is much obscurity, and little authentic record to determine this or to furnish particulars of the transaction.

The order seems, however, to have been confirmed by Pope Celestine III, the constitution and rules of the Templars and Hospitalers being taken as the model for the new order, Henry de Walpot being the first master. This appears to have happened about 1190, though some authorities maintain that it was not till 1191 or even later. While, therefore, the three great orders had much in common, there was this difference in their original foundation. The Hospitalers were at first a nursing order, and gradually became military; the Templars were always purely and solely military; while the Teutonic Knights were from the first both military and nursing.

Contemporary chroniclers compare the Teutonic Knights with the mystic living creature seen by Ezekiel, having the faces of a man and of a lion, the former indicating the charity with which they tended the sick; the latter, the courage and daring with which they met and fought the enemies of Christ.

The Teutonic Knights continued their care of the sick soldiers till Acre was taken in July, 1191, by the united forces of Philip Augustus, King of France, and Richard Coeur de Lion, King of England. After the capture of Acre by the Christian army, Henry de Walpot purchased a site within the city, and built a church and hospital for his order, the first that it possessed. To these buildings were gradually added lodgings for the members of the order, for pilgrims, and for the soldiers which were enlisted to assist the knights in the field.

All this cost a large sum of money; but, as many wealthy Germans had enrolled themselves as knights, means were not wanting as the occasion for them occurred and the requirements of the order developed. Among the greatest of the earlier benefactors was Frederick, Duke of Swabia, who contributed money and aided the progress of the order by his influence, and, when he died at Acre, was interred in the church of the knights. Contemporary writers speak in the highest terms of his virtues, saying that he lived a hero and died a saint.

At this period and for the rest of its history, the constitution of the Teutonic order embraced two classes of members—the knights and the clergy—both being exclusively of German birth. The knights were required to be of noble family, and, besides the ordinary threefold monastic vows, took a fourth vow, that they would devote themselves to the care of the sick and to fight the enemies of the faith. Their dress was black, over which a white cloak with a black cross upon the left shoulder was worn. The clergy were not necessarily of noble birth, their duties being to minister to the order in their churches, to the sick in the hospitals and on the field of battle.

To these two classes, who constituted the order, were added serving brethren, called Heimlike and Soldner, and in Latin, Familiares. Many of these gave their services gratuitously from religious motives; others received payment and were really servants. The knights selected their esquires from among the serving brothers. All these wore a dress of the same color as the knights, that they might be known at once to belong to the order.

The original rules of the order were very severe. All the members lived in common; they slept in dormitories on small and hard beds; they took their meals together in the refectory, and their fare was meagre and of the plainest quality. They were required to attend the daily services in the church, and to recite certain prayers and offices privately. They were not permitted to leave their convent, nor to write or receive letters, without permission of their superior. Their clothes, armor, and the harness of their horses were all of the plainest description; all gold, jewels, and other costly ornaments being strictly forbidden. Arms of the best temper and horses of good breed were provided. When they marched to battle, each knight had three or four horses, and an esquire carried his shield and lance.

The grand master was elected from the class of the knights only. Next in rank to him was the preceptor, or grand commander, who had the general supervision of the clergy and serving brethren, and who presided in chapter in the absence of the grand master. Next to the preceptor came the marshal, who acted as lieutenant-general in the field of battle under the grand master. The third dignitary was the grand hospitaler, who had the superintendence of the hospitals and of all that related to their management. The fourth officer was the trappier, who supplied the knights with their clothing and accoutrements. And, lastly, there was the treasurer, who received and paid all the money that passed through the hands of the order. All these officers were removable, and were commonly changed every year.

As the order extended, new functionaries were required and were appointed; namely, provincial masters of the several countries where the order obtained possessions, who took rank next after the grand master; and there were also many local officers as particular circumstances required. The grand master was not absolute, but was obliged to seek the advice of the chapter before taking any important step, and if he were necessarily absent, he appointed a lieutenant to act for him, who also governed the order after the death of the grand master till his successor was elected.

After the death of Saladin disputes arose among his sons, and the opportunity was seized of commencing a new crusade, the history of which is well known, and in which the Teutonic Knights took an active part. At this time (1197) Henry VI, Emperor of Germany, gave the knights the monastery of the Cistercians, at Palermo, in Sicily, and several privileges and exemptions—a transaction that caused considerable disagreement between the Pope and the Emperor. The knights were, however, finally confirmed in possession of the monastery, and it became the preceptory or chief house of the order in Sicily, where other property was gradually bestowed upon the knights.

Henry de Walpot, the first grand master, died at Acre, in 1200, and was succeeded by Otho de Kerpen, who was an octogenarian at the time of his election, but full of vigor and energy, which he displayed by devoted attention to the duties of his office, and personal attendance upon the sick in the hospitals. During the mastership of Otho de Kerpen, an order of knighthood arose in the north of Europe, which was afterward incorporated with the Teutonic order. Livonia, a country situated on the borders of the Baltic, was at this time still pagan. The merchants of Bremen and Lubeck, who had trading relations with the inhabitants, desired to impart to them the truths and blessings of Christianity, and took a monk of the name of Menard to teach them the elements of the faith. The work succeeded, and Menard was consecrated bishop, and fixed his see at Uxhul, which was afterward transferred to Riga.

The mission, however, as it advanced, aroused the jealousy and suspicion of the pagan nobles, and they attacked and destroyed the new town, with its cathedral and other buildings. The Bishop appealed to his countrymen for help. Many responded to his call, and, as there was at that time no crusade in progress in Palestine, the Pope (1199) was persuaded to accord to those who took up arms for the defence of the Christians in Livonia the same privileges as were given to those who actually went to the Holy Land.

In consequence of these events a military religious order was founded, to assist in this war, called the Order of Christ, which was confirmed by Pope Innocent III, in 1205. The knights wore a white robe, upon which a red sword and a star were emblazoned. They maintained a vigorous and successful conflict with the heathen, till circumstances rendered it desirable that they should be incorporated with the Teutonic Knights.

In the mean time the Latins had seized Constantinople, and set up Baldwin, Count of Flanders, as emperor, and divided the Eastern Empire among themselves. The Teutonic Knights received considerable possessions, and a preceptory was founded in Achaia. Some time afterward another was established in Armenia, where also the order had obtained property and territory in return for service rendered in the field. The order also received the distinction of adding to their bearings the Cross of Jerusalem.

The valor of the knights, however, and the active part which they took in all the religious wars of the day, cost them dear, and from time to time their numbers were greatly reduced; so much so that when Herman de Salza was elected grand master (1210) he found the order so weak that he declared he would gladly sacrifice one of his eyes if he could thereby be assured that he should always have ten knights to follow him to battle with the infidels. The vigor of his administration brought new life to the order, and he was able to carry on its mission with such success that at his death there were no less than two thousand German nobles who had assumed the badge of the order and fought under its banner. Large accessions of property also came at this time to the knights in Hungary, Prussia, Livonia, and elsewhere.

In 1214 the emperor Frederick I decreed that the grand master should always be considered a member of the imperial court, that whenever he visited it he should be lodged at the Emperor's expense, and that two knights should always have quarters assigned them in the imperial household. In 1221 the emperor Frederick II, by an imperial act, took the Teutonic order under his special protection, including all its property and servants; exempted them from all taxes and dues; and gave its members free use of all pastures, rivers, and forests in his dominions. And in 1227 Henry commanded that all proceedings in his courts should be conducted without cost to the order. The King of Hungary also, seeing the valor of the knights, endeavored to secure his own possessions by giving them charge of several of his frontier towns.

It would be unnecessary, as it would be tedious, to repeat all the details of the crusades, the varying successes and defeats, in all of which the Teutonic Knights took part, both in Syria and in Egypt, fighting side by side with their brethren in arms, the Templars and Hospitalers. They continued also their humane services to the sick and wounded, as the following curious contemporary document shows. It forms part of a charter, obtained by one Schweder, of Utrecht, who says that, being at the siege of Damietta, "he saw the wonderful exertions of the brethren of the Teutonic Order, for the succor of the sick and the care of the soldiers of the army, and was moved to endow the order with his property in the village of Lankarn."

It was during the siege of Damietta that the famous St. Francis of Assisi visited the crusading army, and endeavored to settle a dispute that had arisen between the knights and the foot soldiers of the army, the latter being dissatisfied and declaring that they were unfairly exposed to danger as compared with the mounted knights.

In 1226 the grand master was selected by the emperor Frederick and Pope Honorius to be arbitrator in a dispute that had arisen between them. So well pleased were they with his honorable and wise counsel that, in recognition of his services, he and his successors were created princes of the Empire, and the order was allowed to bear upon its arms the Imperial Eagle. The Emperor also bestowed a very precious ring upon the master, which was ever afterward used at the institution of the grand master of the order. Again, in 1230, the Grand master was one of the principal agents in bringing about a reconciliation between the Emperor and Pope Gregory IX, whose dissensions had led to many troubles and calamities.

It has already been mentioned that the King of Hungary bestowed upon the knights some territory on the borders of his dominions, with a view to their defending it from the incursions of the barbarous tribes in the vicinity. The King's anticipations were amply realized. The knights maintained order in the disturbed districts, and by their presence put an end to the incursions of the predatory bands who came periodically to waste the country with fire and sword. The land soon smiled with harvests, and a settled and contented population lived in peace and quietness.

But no sooner were these happy results attained than the King took a mean advantage of the knights, and resumed possession of the country which they had converted from a desert to a fruitful and valuable district. The consequence was that the wild tribes renewed their invasions, and the reclaimed country once more lapsed into desolation. Then again the King made the border country over to the knights, who speedily reasserted their rights, and established a settled government and general prosperity in the dominion made over to them. This grant and some others that followed were confirmed to the order by the bull of Pope Honorius III in 1222.

A few years after this the Duke of Poland asked the aid of the order against the pagan inhabitants of the country that was afterward Prussia. These people were very savage and barbarous, and constantly committed horrible cruelties upon their more civilized neighbors, laying waste the country, destroying crops, carrying off cattle, burning towns, villages, and convents, and murdering the inhabitants with circumstances of extreme atrocity, often burning their captives alive as sacrifices to their gods. The grand master consulted with his chapter and with the Emperor on the proposed enterprise, and finally resolved to enter upon it, the Emperor undertaking to secure to the order any territory that they might be able to conquer and hold in Prussia. Pope Gregory IX, in 1230, gave his sanction to the expedition, and conferred on those concerned in it all the privileges accorded to crusaders.

In the following year an army invaded Prussia and erected a fortress at Thorn, on the Vistula, on the site of a grove of enormous oaks, which the inhabitants looked upon as sacred to their god Thor. This was followed, in 1232, by the foundation of another stronghold at Culm. A successful campaign followed, and the castle of Marienwerder, lower down the Vistula, was after some reverses and delays successfully built and fortified. The grand master then established a firm system of government over the conquered country, and drew up laws and regulations for the administration of justice, for the coining of money, and other necessary elements of civilization. Other fortified places were built which gradually developed into cities and towns. But all this was not effected without many battles and much patient endurance, and frequent defeats and checks.

Nor did the knights forget the spiritual needs of their heathen subjects. Mission clergy labored among them, and by their instruction, and still more by their holy, self-denying lives, they succeeded in winning many to forsake their idols and become Christians.

The order received an important accession to its ranks at this time (1237) by the incorporation into it of the ancient Order of Christ, in Livonia, which had considerable possessions. This was followed shortly afterward by an agreement between the order and the King of Denmark, by which the former undertook the defence of the kingdom against its pagan neighbors.

In 1234 the order received into its ranks Conrad, Landgrave of Thuringia and Hesse, a man who had led a wicked and violent life, but, being brought to see his errors, made an edifying repentance, and became a Teutonic Knight, and afterward was elected grand master. This Conrad was brother to Louis of Thuringia, who was the husband of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. After the death of Elizabeth, the hospital at Marburg, where she had passed the latter years of her widowhood in the care of the sick, was made over to the Teutonic Knights, and after her canonization a church was built to receive her remains, and placed under the care of the order.

In 1240 the knights received an earnest petition from the Duke of Poland, for aid against the Turks, who were ravaging his dominions, and by the enormous multitude of their hosts were able to defeat any army he could bring into the field. The knights accepted the invitation, and took part in a series of bloody and obstinate battles, in which they lost many of their number. They had also a new enemy to encounter in the Duke of Pomerania, who had been their ally, but who now sided with the Prussians against them. In the war that ensued the Duke was defeated, several of his strongholds were taken, and he was obliged to sue for peace.

A few years afterward, however (1243), the Duke recommenced hostilities, and with more success. Culm was besieged by him, and the greatest miseries were endured by the inhabitants, the slaughter being so great in the numerous conflicts before the walls that at last very few men remained. The Bishop even counselled the widows to marry their servants, that the population of the town might not become extinct. The war was continued for several years with varying fortune, till a peace was at last concluded, principally through the mediation of the Duke of Austria.

About this time a disputed election caused a schism in the order, and two rival grand masters for several years divided the allegiance of the knights, till Henry de Hohenlohe was recognized by both sides as master. During his term of office successful war was carried on in Courland and other neighboring countries, which resulted in the spread of Christianity and the advance of the power of the order. At the same time, the Teutonic order took part in the crusades in Palestine, and shared with the Templars and Hospitalers the successes and reverses there.

It would be tedious to enter upon all the details of the conflicts undertaken by the order against the Prussians and others; suffice it to say that the knights, though often defeated, steadily advanced their dominion, and secured its permanence by the erection of fortresses, the centres about which cities and towns ultimately arose. Among these were Dantzic, Koenigsberg, Elbing, Marienberg, and Thorn.

By the year 1283 the order was in possession of all the country between the Vistula and the Memel, Prussia, Courland, part of Livonia, and Samogitia; commanderies were established everywhere to hold it in subjection, and bishoprics and monasteries were founded for the spread of Christianity among the heathen population. In the contests between the Venetians and the Genoese, the Teutonic Knights aided the former, and in 1291, after the loss of Acre, the grand master took up his residence in Venice.

About this time the Pope originated a scheme for the union of the three orders of the Hospitalers, the Templars, and the Teutonic Knights, into one great order, purposing at the same time to engage the Emperor and the kings of Christendom to lay aside all their quarrels, and combine their forces for the recovery once for all of the Holy Land. Difficulties without number, which proved insuperable, prevented the realization of this scheme. Among these was the objection raised by the Teutonic Knights, that while the Hospitalers and Templars had but one object in view—the recovery of Palestine, their order had to maintain its conquests in the North of Europe, and to prosecute the spread of the true faith among the still heathen nations.

In 1309, when all hope of the recovery of the Christian dominion in the East had been abandoned, and no further crusades seemed probable, it was determined to remove the seat of the grand master from Venice to Marienberg. At a chapter of the order held there, further regulations were agreed upon for the government of the conquered countries, some of which are very curious, but give an interesting picture of the state of the people and of society at that period. Thus it was commanded that no Jew, necromancer, or sorcerer should be allowed to settle in the country. Masters who had slaves, and generally Prussians, prisoners of war, were obliged to send them to the parish church to be instructed by the clergy in the Christian religion. German alone was to be spoken, and the ancient language of the country was forbidden, to prevent the people hatching conspiracies, and to do away with the old idolatry and heathen superstitions. Prussians were not allowed to open shops or taverns, nor to act as surgeons or accoucheurs.

The wages of servants were strictly settled, and no increase or diminution was permitted. Three marks and a half a year were the wages of a carpenter or smith, two and a half marks of a coachman, a mark and a half of a laborer, two marks of a domestic servant, and half a mark of a nurse. Masters had the right to follow their runaway servants, and to pierce their ears; but if they dismissed a servant before the end of his term of service, they must pay him a year's wages. Servants were not allowed to marry during time of harvest and vintage, under penalty of losing a year's wages and paying a fine of three marks. No bargains were to be made on Sundays and festivals, and no shops were to be open on those days till after morning service.

Sumptuary laws of the most stringent nature were passed, some of which appear very singular. At a marriage or other domestic festival, officers of justice might offer their guests six measures of beer, tradesmen must not give more than four, peasants only two. Playing for money, with dice or cards, was forbidden. Bishops were to visit their dioceses every three years, and to aid missions to the heathen. Those who gave drink to others must drink of the same beverage themselves, to avoid the danger of poisoning, as commonly practised by the heathen Prussians. A new coinage was also issued.

The next half-century was a period of general prosperity and advance for the order. It was engaged almost incessantly in war, either for the retention of its conquests or for the acquisition of new territory. There were also internal difficulties and dissensions, and contests with the bishops. In 1308 the Archbishop of Riga appealed to Pope Clement V, making serious charges against the order, and endeavoring to prevail upon him to suppress it in the same way as the Templars had lately been dealt with. Gerard, Count of Holstein, however, came forward as the defender of the knights. A formal inquiry was opened before the Pope at Avignon in 1323. The principal charges brought forward by the Archbishop were, that the order had not fulfilled the conditions of its sovereignty in defending the Church against its heathen enemies; that it did not regard excommunications; that it had offered insolence to the Archbishop, and seized some of the property of his see, and other similar accusations. The grand master explained some of these matters, denied others, and produced an autograph letter of the Archbishop's, in which he secretly endeavored to stir up the Grand Duke of Lithuania to make a treacherous attack upon some of the fortresses of the knights. The end of the matter was that the case was dismissed, and there is little doubt that there were serious faults on both sides.

The times were indeed full of violence, cruelty, and crime. The annals abound with terrible and shameful records, bloody and desolating wars, and individual cases of oppression, injustice, and cruelty. Now a grand master is assassinated in his chapel during vespers; now a judge is proved to have received bribes, and to have induced a suitor to sacrifice the honor of his wife as the price of a favorable decision. Wealth and power led to luxury and sensuality, the weaker were oppressed, noble and bishop alike showing themselves proud and tyrannical. There are often two contradictory accounts of the same transaction, and it is impossible to decide where the fault really was, when there seems so little to choose between the conduct of either side.

The conclusion seems forced upon us that human nature was in those days much the same as it is now, and that riches and irresponsible authority scarcely ever fail to lead to pride and to selfish and oppressive treatment of inferiors. When we gaze upon the magnificent cathedrals that were rising all over Europe at the bidding of the great of those times, we are filled with admiration, and disposed to imagine that piety and a high standard of religious life must have prevailed; but a closer acquaintance with historical facts dissipates the illusion, and we find that then as now good and evil were mingled.

The history of the order for the next century presents little of interest. In 1388 two of the knights repaired to England by order of the grand master, to make commercial arrangements with that country, which had been rendered necessary by the changes introduced into the trade of Europe by the creation of the Hanseatic League. A second commercial treaty between the King of England and the order was made in 1409.

The order had now reached the summit of its greatness. Besides large possessions in Germany, Italy, and other countries, its sovereignty extended from the Oder to the Gulf of Finland. This country was both wealthy and populous. Prussia is said to have contained fifty-five large fortified cities, forty-eight fortresses, and nineteen thousand and eight towns and villages. The population of the larger cities must have been considerable, for we are told that in 1352 the plague carried off thirteen thousand persons in Dantzic, four thousand in Thorn, six thousand at Elbing, and eight thousand at Koenigsberg. One authority reckons the population of Prussia at this time at two million one hundred and forty thousand eight hundred. The greater part of these were German immigrants, since the original inhabitants had either perished in the war or retired to Lithuania.

Historians who were either members of the order or favorably disposed toward it, are loud in their praise of the wisdom and generosity of its government; while others accuse its members and heads of pride, tyranny, luxury, and cruel exactions.

In 1410 the Teutonic order received a most crushing defeat at Tannenberg from the King of Poland, assisted by bodies of Russians, Lithuanians, and Tartars. The grand master, Ulric de Jungingen, was slain, with several hundred knights and many thousand soldiers.

There is said to have been a chapel built at Gruenwald, in which an inscription declared that sixty thousand Poles and forty thousand of the army of the knights were left dead upon the field of battle. The banner of the order, its treasury, and a multitude of prisoners fell into the hands of the enemy, who shortly afterward marched against Marienberg and closely besieged it. Several of the feudatories of the knights sent in their submission to the King of Poland, who began at once to dismember the dominions of the order and to assign portions to his followers. But this proved to be premature. The knights found in Henry de Planau a valiant leader, who defended the city with such courage and obstinacy that, after fifty-seven days' siege, the enemy retired, after serious loss from sorties and sickness. A series of battles followed, and finally a treaty of peace was signed, by which the order gave up some portion of its territory to Poland.

But a new enemy was on its way to inflict upon the order greater and more lasting injury than that which the sword could effect. The doctrines of Wycklif had for some time been spreading throughout Europe, and had lately received a new impulse from the vigorous efforts of John Huss in Bohemia, who had eagerly embraced them, and set himself to preach them, with additions of his own. Several knights accepted the teaching of Huss, and either retired from the order or were forcibly ejected. Differences and disputes also arose within the order, which ended in the arrest and deposition of the grand master in 1413. But the new doctrines had taken deep root, and a large party within the order were more or less favorable to them, so much so that at the Council of Constance (1415) a strong party demanded the total suppression of the Teutonic order. This was overruled; but it probably induced the grand master to commence a series of persecutions against those in his dominions who followed the principles of Huss.

The treaty that had followed the defeat at Tannenberg had been almost from the first disputed by both parties, and for some years appeals were made to the Pope and the Emperor on several points; but the decisions seldom gave satisfaction or commanded obedience. The general result was the loss to the order of some further portions of its dominions.

Another outbreak of the plague, in 1427, inflicted injury upon the order. In a few weeks no less than eighty-one thousand seven hundred and forty-six persons perished. There were also about this time certain visions of hermits and others, which threatened terrible judgments upon the order, because, while it professed to exist and fight for the honor of God, the defence of the Church, and the propagation of the faith, it really desired and labored only for its own aggrandizement.

It was said, too, that it should perish through a goose (oie), and as the word "Huss" means a goose in Bohemian patois, it was said afterward that the writings of Huss, or more truly, perhaps, the work of the goose-quill, had fulfilled the prophecy in undermining and finally subverting the order. There were also disputes respecting the taxes, which the people declared to be oppressive, and finally, in 1454, a formidable rebellion took place against the authority of the knights.

Casimir, King of Poland, who had long had hostile intentions against the order, secretly threw all his weight into the cause of the malcontents, who made such way that the grand master was forced to retire to Marienberg, his capital, where he was soon closely besieged. Casimir now openly declared war, and laid claim to the dominions of the knights in Prussia and Pomerania, formally annexing them to the kingdom of Poland.

The grand master sent petitions for aid to the neighboring princes, but without success. The kings of Denmark and Sweden excused themselves on account of the distance of their dominions from the seat of war. Ladislaus, King of Bohemia and Hungary, was about to marry his sister to Casimir, and the religious dissensions of Bohemia and the attacks of the Turks upon Hungary fully occupied his attention and demanded the employment of all his troops and treasure; and finally the capture of Constantinople by Mahomet at this very time (1458) seemed to paralyze the energies of the European powers.

The grand master, Louis d'Erlichshausen, thus found himself deserted in his time of need. He did what he could by raising a considerable body of mercenaries, and with these, his knights, and the regular troops of the order, he defended himself with courage and wonderful endurance, so that he not only succeeded in holding the city, but recovered several other towns that had revolted.

But his resources were unequal to the demands made upon them, his enemy overwhelmed him with numbers, his own soldiers clamored for their pay long overdue, and there was no prospect of aid from without. There was nothing left, therefore, to him but to make the best terms he could. He adopted the somewhat singular plan of making over Marienberg and what remained of the dominions of the order to the chiefs who had given him aid, in payment for their services, and he himself, with his knights and troops, retired to Koenigsberg, which then became the capital of the order. Marienberg soon afterward came into the hands of Casimir; but the knights again captured it, and again lost it, 1460.

War continued year after year between Poland and the knights, the general result of which was that the latter were defeated and lost one town after another, till, in 1466, a peace was concluded, by the terms of which the knights ceded to Poland almost all the western part of their dominions, retaining only a part of Eastern Prussia, with Koenigsberg for their capital, the grand master acknowledging himself the vassal of the King of Poland, with the title of Prince and Councillor of the kingdom.

In 1497 the order lost its possessions in Sicily through the influence of the Pope and the King of Aragon, who combined to deprive it of them. It still retained a house at Venice, and some other property in Lombardy. In 1511 Albert de Brandenberg was elected grand master. He made strenuous efforts to procure the independence of the order, and solicited the aid of the Emperor to free it from the authority of Poland, but without success. The grand master refused the customary homage to the King of Poland, and, after fruitless negotiations, war was once more declared, which continued till 1521, when peace was concluded; one of the results of which was the separation of Livonia from the dominion of the order, and its erection into an independent state.

All this time the doctrines of Luther had been making progress and spreading among all classes in Prussia and Germany. In 1522 the grand master went to Nuremberg to consult with the Lutherans there, and shortly afterward he visited Luther himself at Wittenberg. Luther's advice was decided and trenchant. He poured contempt upon the rules of the order, and advised Albert to break away from it and marry. Melancthon supported Luther's counsels. Shortly after, Luther wrote a vigorous letter to the knights of the order, in which he maintained that it was of no use to God or man. He urged all the members to break their vow of celibacy and to marry, saying that it was impossible for human nature to be chaste in any other way, and that God's law, which commanded man to increase and multiply, was older than the decrees of councils and the vows of religious orders. At the request of the grand master he also sent missionaries into Prussia to preach the reformed doctrines. One or two bishops and many of the clergy accepted them, and they spread rapidly among the people. Services began to be said in the vulgar tongue, and images and other ornaments were pulled down in the churches, especially in the country districts.

In 1525 Albert met the King of Poland at Cracow, and formally resigned his office as grand master of the Teutonic order, making over his dominions to the King, and receiving from him in return the title of hereditary Duke of Prussia. Shortly afterward he followed Luther's advice, and married the princess Dorothea of Denmark. Many of the knights followed his example. The annals and archives of the order were transferred to the custody of the King of Poland, and were lost or destroyed during the troubles that subsequently came upon that kingdom.

A considerable number of the knights refused to change their religion and abandon their order, and in 1527 assembled in chapter at Mergentheim to consult as to their plans for the future. They elected Walter de Cronberg grand master, whose appointment was ratified by the Emperor, Charles V. In the religious wars that followed, the knights fought on the side of the Emperor, against the Protestants. In 1595 the commandery of Venice was sold to the Patriarch and was converted into a diocesan seminary; and in 1637 the commandery of Utrecht was lost to the order. In 1631 Mergentheim was taken by the Swedes under General Horn.

In the war against the Turks during this period some of the knights, true to the ancient principles of their order, took part on the Christian side, both in Hungary and in the Mediterranean. In the wars of Louis XIV, the order lost many of its remaining commanderies, and by an edict of the King, in 1672, the separate existence of the order was abolished in his dominions, and its possessions were conferred on the Order of St. Lazarus.

When Prussia was erected into a kingdom, in 1701, the order issued a solemn protest against the act, asserting its ancient rights over that country. The order maintained its existence in an enfeebled condition till 1809, when it was formally abolished by Napoleon. In 1840 Austria instituted an honorary order called by the same name, and in 1852 Prussia revived it under the designation of the Order of St. John.



PHILIP OF FRANCE WINS THE FRENCH DOMAINS OF THE ENGLISH KINGS

A.D. 1202-1204

KATE NORGATE



When Richard "the Lion-hearted" died in 1199, he left no son to follow him on the throne of England and to claim possession of the vast French fiefs of the Plantagenet family. These fiefs, which covered more than half of France and made their undisputed lord more powerful than the French King himself, became at once a source of strife.

John, nicknamed "Lackland," the youngest brother of Richard, succeeded him in England and in Normandy without dispute. But their little nephew Arthur was already Count of Brittany; and the other French possessions of the Plantagenets—Anjou, Maine, and Touraine—declared for Arthur in preference to John.

At this time France was ruled by Philip Augustus, who ranks among the shrewdest and ablest of all her monarchs. Dreading the vast power of the Plantagenets, he naturally sought to divide their domains by upholding Arthur. This unhappy lad, only twelve years old, was made a mere pawn in the savage game of his elders. His tragic fate is powerfully depicted by Shakespeare in his King John.

After some fighting and several sharp political moves and countermoves, John and Philip came to terms, May 18, 1200, by which the French King conferred almost all of the disputed fiefs on John. Constant bickering, however, continued. John had to do homage for his fiefs, and his French vassals took every opportunity to appeal from him to Philip, as their overlord.

Finally, when the moment seemed propitious, Philip demanded from his overgrown vassal certain Norman castles as a sort of guarantee of good behavior. This led up to the war in which the Plantagenets lost all their French domains, and became lords only of England.

It was arranged that John and Philip should hold a conference at Boutavant. John, it appears, kept—or at least was ready to keep—the appointment; but Philip either was, or pretended to be, afraid of venturing into Norman territory, and would not advance beyond Gouleton. Thither John came across the river to meet him. No agreement was arrived at. Finally, Philip cited John to appear in Paris fifteen days after Easter, 1202, at the court of his overlord the King of France, to stand to its judgment, to answer to his lord for his misdoings, and undergo the sentence of his peers. The citation was addressed to John as Count of Anjou and Poitou and Duke of Aquitaine; the Norman duchy was not mentioned in it. This omission was clearly intentional; when John answered the citation by reminding Philip that he was Duke of Normandy, and as such, in virtue of ancient agreement between the kings and the dukes, not bound to go to any meeting with the King of France save on the borders of their respective territories, Philip retorted that he had summoned not the Duke of Normandy, but the Duke of Aquitaine, and that his rights over the latter were not to be annulled by the accidental union of the two dignities in one person.

John then promised that he would appear before the court in Paris on the appointed day, and give up to Philip two small castles, Thillier and Boutavant, as security for his submitting to its decision. April 28th passed, and both these promises remained unfulfilled. One English writer asserts that thereupon "the assembled court of the King of France adjudged the King of England to be deprived of all his land which he and his forefathers had hitherto held of the King of France," but there is reason to think that this statement is erroneous, and derived from a false report put forth by Philip Augustus for political purposes two or three years later. It is certain that after the date of this alleged sentence negotiations still went on; "great and excellent mediators" endeavored to arrange a pacification; and Philip himself, according to his own account, had another interview with John, at which he used all his powers of persuasion to bring him to submission, but in vain. Then the French King, by the advice of his barons, formally "defied" his rebellious vassal; in a sudden burst of wrath he ordered the Archbishop of Canterbury—evidently one of the mediators just referred to—out of his territories, and dashing after him with such forces as he had at hand, began hostilities by a raid upon Boutavant, which he captured and burned. Even after this, if we may trust his own report, he sent four knights to John to make a final attempt at reconciliation; but John would not see them.

The war which followed was characteristic of both kings alike. Philip's attack took the form not of a regular invasion, but of a series of raids upon Eastern Normandy, whereby, in the course of the next three months, he made himself master of Thillier, Lions, Longchamp, La Ferteen-Braye, Orgueil, Gournay, Mortemer, Aumale, and the town and county of Eu. John was throughout the same period flitting ceaselessly about within a short distance of all these places; but Philip never came up with him, and he never but once came up with Philip. On July 7, 1202, the French King laid siege to Radepont, some ten miles to the southeast of Rouen. John, who was at Bonport, let him alone for a week, and then suddenly appeared before the place, whereupon Philip immediately withdrew. John, however, made no attempt at pursuit. According to his wont, he let matters take their course till he saw a favorable opportunity for retaliation. At the end of the month the opportunity came.

At the conclusion of the treaty in May, 1200, Arthur, after doing homage to his uncle for Brittany, had been by him restored to the guardianship of the French King. The death of the boy's mother in September, 1201, left him more than ever exposed to Philip's influence; and it was no doubt as a measure of precaution, in view of the approaching strife between the kings, that John on March 27, 1202, summoned his "beloved nephew Arthur" to come and "do right" to him at Argentan at the octave of Easter. The summons probably met with no more obedience than did Philip's summons to John; and before the end of April Philip had bound Arthur securely to his side by promising him the hand of his infant daughter Mary. This promise was ratified by a formal betrothal at Gournay, after the capture of that place by the French; at the same time Philip made Arthur a knight, and gave him the investiture of all the Angevin dominions except Normandy.

Toward the end of July Philip despatched Arthur, with a force of two hundred French knights, to join the Lusignans in an attack on Poitou. The barons of Brittany and of Berry had been summoned to meet him at Tours, but the only allies who did meet him there were three of the Lusignans and Savaric de Mauleon, with some three hundred knights. Overruling the caution of the boy-duke, who wished to wait for reinforcements from his own duchy, the impetuous southerners urged an immediate attack upon Mirebeau, their object being to capture Queen Eleanor,[33] who was known to be there, and whom they rightly regarded as the mainstay of John's power in Aquitaine. Eleanor, however, became aware of their project in time to despatch a letter to her son, begging him to come to her rescue. He was already moving southward when her courier met him on July 30th as he was approaching Le Mans. By marching day and night he and his troops covered the whole distance between Le Mans and Mirebeau—eighty miles at the least—in forty-eight hours, and appeared on August 1, 1202, before the besieged castle. The enemies had already taken the outer ward and thrown down all the gates save one, deeming their own valor a sufficient safeguard against John's expected attack. So great was their self-confidence that they even marched out to meet him. Like most of those who at one time or another fought against John, they underrated the latent capacities of their adversary. They were driven back into the castle, hotly pursued by his troops, who under the guidance of William des Roches forced their way in after the fugitives, and were in a short time masters of the place. The whole of the French and Poitevin forces were either slain or captured; and among the prisoners were the three Lusignans and Arthur.

Philip was at that moment busy with the siege of Arques; on the receipt of these tidings he left it and turned southward, but he failed, or perhaps did not attempt, to intercept John, who, bringing his prisoners with him, made his way leisurely back to Falaise. There he imprisoned Arthur in the castle, and despatched his victorious troops against Arthur's duchy; they captured Dol and Fougeres, and harried the country as far as Rennes. Philip, after ravaging Touraine, fired the city of Tours and took the citadel; immediately afterward he withdrew to his own territories, as by that time John was again at Chinon. As soon as Philip was gone, John, in his turn, entered Tours and wrested the citadel from the French garrison left there by his rival; but his success was won at the cost of another conflagration, which, an English chronicler declares, was never forgiven him by the citizens and the barons of Touraine.

For the moment, however, he was in luck. In Aquitaine he seemed in a fair way to carry all before him without striking a blow. Angouleme had passed into his hands by the death of his father-in-law on June 17th. Guy of Limoges had risen in revolt again, but at the end of August or early in September he was captured. The Lusignans, from their prison at Caen, made overtures for peace, and by dint of protestations and promises succeeded ere long in regaining their liberty, of course on the usual conditions of surrendering their castles and giving hostages for their loyalty. It was almost equally a matter of course that as soon as they were free they began intriguing against John. But the chronic intrigues of the south were in reality—as John himself seems to have discovered—a far less serious danger than the disaffection in his northern dominions. This last evil was undoubtedly, so far as Normandy was concerned, owing in great measure to John's own fault. He had intrusted the defence of the Norman duchy to his mercenaries under the command of a Provencal captain—whose real name is unknown—who seems to have adopted for himself the nickname of Lou Pescaire ("the Fisherman")—which the Normans apparently corrupted into "Louvrekaire"—and who habitually treated his employer's peaceable subjects in a fashion in which other commanders would have shrunk from treating avowed enemies. Side by side with the discontent thus caused among the people there was a rapid growth of treason among the Norman barons—treason fraught with far greater peril than the treason of the nobles of Aquitaine, because it was more persistent and more definite in its aim; because it was at once less visible and tangible and more deeply rooted; because it spread in silence and wrought in darkness; and because, while no southern rebel ever really fought for anything but his own hand, the northern traitors were in close concert with Philip Augustus. John knew not whom to trust; he could, in fact, trust no one; and herein lay the explanation of his restless movements, his unaccountable wanderings, his habit of journeying through byways, his constant changes of plan. Moreover, besides the Aquitanian rebels, the Norman traitors, and the French enemy, there were the Breton partisans of Arthur to be reckoned with. These had now found a leader in William des Roches, who, when he saw that he could not prevail upon John to set Arthur at liberty, openly withdrew from the King's service and organized a league of the Breton nobles against him.

These Bretons, reinforced by some barons from Anjou and Maine, succeeded, on October 29, 1202, in gaining possession of Angers. It may have been to watch for an opportunity of dislodging them that John, who was then at Le Mans, went to spend a fortnight at Saumur and another at Chinon. Early in December, however, he fell back upon Normandy, and while the intruders were harrying his ancestral counties with fire and sword, he kept Christmas with his Queen at Caen, "faring sumptuously every day, and prolonging his morning slumbers till dinner-time." It seems that shortly afterward the Queen returned to Chinon, and that in the middle of January, 1203, the enemies at Angers were discovered to be planning an attempt to capture her there. John hurried to Le Mans, only stopping at Alencon to dine with Count Robert and endeavor to secure his suspected loyalty by confirming him in all his possessions. No sooner had they parted, however, than Robert rode off to the French court, did homage to Philip, and admitted a French garrison into Alencon. While John, thus placed between two fires, was hesitating whether to go on or to go back, Peter des Preaux succeeded in getting the Queen out of Chinon and bringing her to her husband at Le Mans; thence they managed to make their way back in safety to Falaise.

This incident may have suggested to John that it was time to take some decisive step toward getting rid of Arthur's claims. According to one English chronicler, some of the King's counsellors had already been urging this matter upon him for some time past. They pointed out that so long as Arthur lived, and was neither physically nor legally incapacitated for ruling, the Bretons would never be quiet, and no lasting peace with France would be possible. They therefore suggested to the King a horrible scheme for rendering Arthur incapable of being any longer a source of danger. The increasing boldness of the Bretons at last provoked John into consenting to this project, and he despatched three of his servants to Falaise to put out the eyes of the captive. Two of these men chose to leave the King's service rather than obey him; the third went to Falaise as he was bidden, but found it impossible to fulfil his errand. Arthur's struggles were backed by the very soldiers who guarded him, and the fear of a mutiny drove their commander, Hubert de Burgh, to prevent the execution of an order which he felt that the King would soon have cause to regret. He gave out, however, that the order had been fulfilled, and that Arthur had died in consequence.

The effect of this announcement proved at once the wisdom of Hubert and the folly of those to whose counsel John had yielded. The fury of the Bretons became boundless; they vowed never to leave a moment's peace to the tyrant who had committed such a ghastly crime upon their Duke, his own nephew, and Hubert soon found it necessary, for John's own sake, to confess his fraud and demonstrate to friends and foes alike that Arthur was still alive and uninjured. John himself now attempted to deal with Arthur in another way. Being at Falaise at the end of January, 1203, he caused his nephew to be brought before him, and "addressed him with fair words, promising him great honors if he would forsake the King of France and cleave faithfully to his uncle and rightful lord." Arthur, however, rejected these overtures with scorn, vowing that there should be no peace unless the whole Angevin dominions, including England, were surrendered to him as Richard's lawful heir. John retorted by transferring his prisoner from Falaise to Rouen and confining him, more strictly than ever, in the citadel.

Thenceforth Arthur disappears from history. What was his end no one knows. The chronicle of the Abbey of Margan in South Wales, a chronicle of which the only known manuscript ends with the year 1232, and of which the portion dealing with the early years of John's reign was not compiled in its present form till after 1221 at earliest, asserts that on Maunday Thursday (April 3, 1203), John, "after dinner, being drunk and possessed by the devil," slew his nephew with his own hand and tied a great stone to the body, which he flung into the Seine; that a fisherman's net brought it up again, and that, being recognized, it was buried secretly, "for fear of the tyrant," in the Church of Notre Dame des Pres, near Rouen. William the Breton, in his poem on Philip Augustus, completed about 1216, relates in detail, but without date, how John took Arthur out alone with him by night in a boat on the Seine, plunged a sword into his body, rowed along for three miles with the corpse, and then threw it overboard. Neither of these writers gives any authority for his story. The earliest authority of precisely ascertained date to which we can trace the assertion that Arthur was murdered was a document put forth by a personage whose word, on any subject whatever, is as worthless as the word of John himself—King Philip Augustus of France. In 1216—about the time when his Breton historiographer's poem was completed—Philip affected to regard it as a notorious fact that John had, either in person or by another's hand, murdered his nephew. But Philip at the same time went on to assert that John had been summoned to trial before the supreme court of France, and by it condemned to forfeiture of all his dominions, on that same charge of murder; and this latter assertion is almost certainly false. Seven months after the date assigned by the Margan annalist to Arthur's death—in October, 1203—Philip owned himself ignorant whether the Duke of Brittany were alive or not.[34] Clearly, therefore, it was not as the avenger of Arthur's murder that Philip took the field at the end of April. On the other hand, Philip had never made the slightest attempt to obtain Arthur's release; early in 1203, if not before, he was almost openly laying his plans in anticipation of Arthur's permanent effacement from politics.

The interests of the French King were in fact no less concerned in Arthur's imprisonment, and more concerned in his death, than were the interests of John himself. John's one remaining chance of holding Philip and the Bretons in check was to keep them in uncertainty whether Arthur were alive or dead, in order to prevent the Bretons from adopting any decided policy, and hamper the French King in his dealings with them and with the Angevin and Poitevin rebels by compelling him to base his alliance with them on conditions avowedly liable to be annulled at any moment by Arthur's reappearance on the political scene. If, therefore, Arthur—as is most probable—was now really dead, whether he had indeed perished a victim of one of those fits of ungovernable fury in which—and in which alone—the Angevin counts sometimes added blunder to crime, or whether he had died a natural death from sickness in prison, or by a fall in attempting to escape,[35] it would be equally politic on John's part to let rumor do its worst rather than suffer any gleam of light to penetrate the mystery which shrouded the captive's fate.

John's chance, however, was a desperate one. A fortnight after Easter, 1203, the French King attacked and took Saumur. Moving southward, he was joined by some Poitevins and Bretons, with whose help he captured sundry castles in Aquitaine. Thence he went back to the Norman border, to be welcomed at Alencon by its count, and to lay seige to Conches. John, who was then at Falaise, sent William the Marshal to Conches, to beg that Philip would "have pity on him and make peace." Philip refused; John hurried back to Rouen, to find both city and castle in flames—whether kindled by accident or by treachery there is nothing to show. Conches was taken; Vaudreuil was betrayed; the few other castles in the county of Evreux which had not already passed, either by cession, conquest, or treason, into Philip's hands shared the like fate, while John flitted restlessly up and down between Rouen and various places in the neighborhood, but made no direct effort to check the progress of the invader. Messenger after messenger came to him with the same story: "The King of France is in your land as an enemy; he is taking your castles; he is binding your seneschals to their horses' tails and dragging them shamefully to prison; he is dealing with your goods at his own pleasure." John heard them all with an unmoved countenance, and dismissed them all with the unvarying reply: "Let him alone! Some day I shall win back all that he is winning from me now."

It was by diplomacy that John hoped to parry the attack which he knew he could not repel by force. Early in the year he had complained to the Pope of the long course of insult and aggression pursued toward him by Philip, and begged Innocent to interfere in his behalf. Thereupon Philip, in his turn, sent messengers and letters to the Pope, giving his own version of his relations with John, and endeavoring to justify his own conduct. On May 26th, Innocent announced to both kings that he was about to despatch the abbots of Casamario, Trois Fontaines, and Dun as commissioners to arbitrate upon the matters in dispute between them.

These envoys seem to have been delayed on their journey; and when they reached France they, for some time, found it impossible to ascertain whether Philip would or would not accept their arbitration. When at last he met them in council at Mantes on August 26th, he told them bluntly that he "was not bound to take his orders from the apostolic see as to his rights over a fief and a vassal of his own, and that the matter in dispute between the two kings was no business of the Pope's." John meanwhile had, on August 11th, suddenly quitted his passive attitude and laid siege to Alencon; but he retired on Philip's approach four days later. An attempt which he made to regain Brezolles was equally ineffectual. Philip, on the other hand, was now resolved to bring the war to a crisis. It was probably straight from the council at Mantes that he marched to the siege of Chateau Gaillard.

Chateau Gaillard was a fortress of far other importance than any of the castles which both parties had been so lightly winning, losing, and winning again, during the last ten years. It was the key of the Seine above Rouen, the bulwark raised by Richard Coeur de Lion to protect his favorite city against attack from France. Not till the fortifications which commanded the river at Les Andelys were either destroyed or in his own hands could Philip hope to win the Norman capital. And those fortifications were of no common order. Their builder was the greatest, as he was the last, of the "great builders" of Anjou; and his "fair castle on the Rock of Andelys" was at once the supreme outcome of their architectural genius, and the earliest and most perfect example in Europe of the new development which the crusaders' study of the mighty works of Byzantine or even earlier conquerors, quickened and illuminated as it was by the exigencies of their own struggle with the infidels, had given to the science of military architecture in the East. During the past year John had added to his brother's castle a chapel with an undercroft, placed at the southeastern corner of the second ward. The fortress, which nature and art had combined to make impregnable, was well stocked with supplies of every kind; moreover, it was one of the few places in Normandy which Philip had no hope of winning, and John no fear of losing, through treason on the part of its commandant. Roger de Lacy, to whom John had given it in charge, was an English baron who had no stake in Normandy, and whose personal interest was therefore bound up with that of the English King; he was also a man of high character and dauntless courage. Nothing short of a siege of the most determined kind would avail against the "Saucy Castle"; and on that siege Philip now concentrated all his forces and all his skill.

As the right bank of the Seine at that point was entirely commanded by the castle and its neighbor fortification, the walled town—also built by Richard—known as the New or Lesser Andely, while the river itself was doubly barred by a stockade across its bed, close under the foot of the rock, and by a strong tower on an island in midstream just below the town, he was obliged to encamp in the meadows on the opposite shore. The stockade, however, was soon broken down by the daring of a few young Frenchmen; and the waterway being thus cleared for the transport of materials, he was enabled to construct below the island a pontoon, by means of which he could throw a portion of his troops across the river to form the siege of the New Andely, place the island garrison between two fires, and at once keep open his own communications and cut off those of the besieged with both sides of the river alike.

These things seem to have been done toward the end of August. On the 27th and 28th of that month John was at Montfort, a castle some five-and-twenty miles from Rouen, held by one of his few faithful barons, Hugh of Gournay. On the 30th, if not the 29th, he and all his available forces were back at Rouen, ready to attempt on that very night the relief of Les Andelys. The King's plan was a masterpiece of ingenuity; and the fact that the elaborate preparations needed for its execution were made so rapidly and so secretly as to escape detection by an enemy so close at hand goes far to show how mistaken are the charges of sloth and incapacity which, even in his own day, men brought against "John Softsword."[36]

He had arranged that a force of three hundred knights, three thousand mounted men-at-arms, and four thousand foot, under the command of William the Marshal, with a band of mercenaries under Lou Pescaire, should march by night from Rouen along the left bank of the Seine, and fall, under cover of darkness, upon the portion of the French army which still lay on that side of the river. Meanwhile, seventy transport vessels, which had been built by Richard to serve either for sea or river traffic, and as many more boats as could be collected, were to be laden with provisions for the distressed garrison of the island fort, and convoyed up the stream by a flotilla of small warships, manned by "pirates" under a chief named Alan and carrying, besides their own daring and reckless crews, a force of three thousand Flemings. Two hundred strokes of the oar, John reckoned, would bring these ships to the French pontoon; they must break it if they could; if not, they could at least cooeperate with the Marshal and Lou Pescaire in cutting off the northern division of the French host from its comrades and supplies on the left bank, and throw into the island fort provisions which would enable it to hold out till John himself should come to its rescue.

One error brought the scheme to ruin, an error neither of strategy nor of conduct, but of scientific knowledge. John had miscalculated the time at which, on that night, the Seine would be navigable upstream, and his counsellors evidently shared his mistake till it was brought home to them by experience. The land forces achieved their march without hinderance, and at the appointed hour, shortly before daybreak, fell upon the French camp with such a sudden and furious onslaught that the whole of its occupants fled across the pontoon, which broke under their weight. But the fleet, which had been intended to arrive at the same time, was unable to make way against the tide, and before it could reach its destination the French had rallied on the northern bank, repaired the pontoon, recrossed it in full force, and routed John's troops. The ships, when they at last came up, thus found themselves unsupported in their turn, and though they made a gallant fight they were beaten back with heavy loss. In the flush of victory one young Frenchman contrived to set fire to the island fort; it surrendered, and the whole population of the New Andely fled in a panic to Chateau Gaillard, leaving their town to be occupied by Philip.

The Saucy Castle itself still remained to be won. Knowing, however, that for this nothing was likely to avail but a blockade, which was now practically formed on two sides by his occupation of the island fort and the Lesser Andely, Philip on the very next day set off to make another attempt on Radepont, whence he had been driven away by John a year before. This time John made no effort to dislodge him. It was not worth while; the one thing that mattered now was Chateau Gaillard. Thither Philip, after receiving the surrender of Radepont, returned toward the end of September, 1203, to complete the blockade.

No second attempt to relieve it was possible. It may have been for the purpose of endeavoring to collect fresh troops from the western districts, which were as yet untouched by the war, that John about this time visited his old county of Mortain, and even went as far as Dol, which his soldiers had taken in the previous year. But his military resources in Normandy were exhausted; the Marshal bluntly advised him to give up the struggle. "Sire," said William, "you have not enough friends; if you provoke your enemies to fight, you will diminish your own force; and when a man provokes his enemies, it is but just if they make him rue it."

"Whoso is afraid, let him flee!" answered John. "I myself will not flee for a year; and if indeed it came to fleeing, I should not think of saving myself otherwise than you would, wheresoever you might be."

"I know that well, sire," replied William; "but you, who are wise and mighty and of high lineage, and whose work it is to govern us all, have not been careful to avoid irritating people. If you had, it would have been better for us all. Methinks I speak not without reason."

The King, "as if a sword had struck him to the heart," spoke not a word, but rushed to his chamber; next morning he was nowhere to be found; he had gone away in a boat, almost alone, and it was only at Bonneville that his followers rejoined him. This was apparently at the beginning of October, 1203. For two months more he lingered in the duchy, where his position was growing more hopeless day by day. At the end of October, or early in November, he took the decisive step of dismantling Pont de l'Arche, Moulineaux, and Montfort, three castles which, next to Chateau Gaillard, would be of the greatest value to the French for an advance upon Rouen. To Rouen itself he returned once more on November 9th, and stayed there four days. On the 12th he set out for Bonneville, accompanied by the Queen, and telling his friends that he intended to go to England to seek counsel and aid from his barons and people there, and would soon return. In reality his departure from the capital was caused by a rumor which had reached him of a conspiracy among the Norman barons to deliver him up to Philip Augustus. At Bonneville, therefore, he lodged not in the town, but in the castle, and only for a few hours; the Marshal and one or two others alone were warned of his intention to set forth again before daybreak, and the little party had got a start of seven leagues on the road to Caen before their absence was discovered by the rest of the suite, of whom "some went after them, and the more part went back." Still John was reluctant to leave Normandy; he went south to Domfront and west to Vire before he again returned to the coast at Barfleur on November 28th, and even then he spent five days at Gonneville and one at Cherbourg before he finally took ship at Barfleur on December 5th, to land at Portsmouth next day.

It was probably before he left Rouen that he addressed a letter to the commandant of Chateau Gaillard in these terms: "We thank you for your good and faithful service, and desire that, as much as in you lies, you will persevere in the fidelity and homage which you owe to us; that you may receive a worthy meed of praise from God and from ourself and from all who know your faithfulness. If, however—which God forbid!—you should find yourself in such straits that you can hold out no longer, then do whatsoever our trusty and well-beloved Peter of Preaux, William of Mortimer, and Hugh of Howels, our clerk, shall bid you in our name."

An English chronicler says that John "being unwilling"—or "unable"—"to succor the besieged, through fear of the treason of his men, went to England, leaving all the Normans in a great perturbation of fear." It is hard to see what they feared, unless it were John's possible vengeance, at some future time, for their universal readiness to welcome his rival. Not one town manned its walls, not one baron mustered his tenants and garrisoned his castles, to withstand the invader. Some, as soon as John was out of the country, openly made a truce with Philip for a year, on the understanding that if not succored by John within that time they would receive the French King as their lord; the rest stood passively looking on at the one real struggle of the war, the struggle for Chateau Gaillard.

At length, on March 6, 1204, the Saucy Castle fell. Its fall opened the way for a French advance upon Rouen; but before taking this further step Philip deemed it politic to let the Pope's envoy, the Abbot of Casamario, complete his mission by going to speak with John. The abbot was received at a great council in London at the end of March; the result was his return to France early in April, in company with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Norwich and Ely, and the earls of Pembroke and Leicester, all charged with a commission "to sound the French King, and treat with him about terms of peace." On the French King's side the negotiation was a mere form; to whatever conditions the envoys proposed, he always found some objection; and his own demands were such as John's representatives dared not attempt to lay before their sovereign—Arthur's restoration, or, if he were dead, the surrender of his sister Eleanor, and the cession to Philip, as her suzerain and guardian, of the whole Continental dominions of the Angevin house.

Finally, Philip dropped the mask altogether, and made a direct offer, not to John, but to John's Norman subjects, including the two lay ambassadors. All those, he said, who within a year and a day would come to him and do him homage for their lands should receive confirmation of their tenure from him. Hereupon the two English earls, after consulting together, gave him five hundred marks each, on the express understanding that he was to leave them unmolested in the enjoyment of their Norman lands for a twelvemonth and a day, and that at the expiration of that time they would come and do homage for those lands to him, if John had not meanwhile regained possession of the duchy. Neither William the Marshal nor his colleague had any thought of betraying or deserting John; as the Marshal's biographer says, they "did not wish to be false"; and when they reached England they seem to have frankly told John what they had done, and to have received no blame for it.

The return of the English embassy was followed by a letter from the commandant of Rouen—John's "trusty and well-beloved" Peter of Preaux—informing the English King that "all the castles and towns from Bayeux to Anet" had promised Philip that they would surrender to him as soon as he was master of Rouen, an event which, Peter plainly hinted, was not likely to be long delayed. This information about the western towns was probably incorrect, for it was on Western Normandy that Philip made his next attack. John meanwhile had in January imposed a scutage of two marks and a half per shield throughout England, and, in addition, a tax of a seventh of movables, which, though it fell upon all classes alike, the clergy included, he is said to have demanded expressly on the ground of the barons' desertion of him in Normandy.

The hire of a mercenary force was of course the object to which the proceeds of both these taxes were destined; but they took time to collect and John soon fell back upon a readier, though less trustworthy, resource, and summoned the feudal host of England to meet him at Portsmouth, seemingly in the first week of May. It gathered, however, so slowly that he was obliged to give up the expedition. Philip was about this time besieging Falaise; he won it, and went on in triumph to receive the surrender of Domfront, Seez, Lisieux, Caen, Bayeux, Coutances, Barfleur, and Cherbourg. He was then joined by John's late ally, the Count of Boulogne, as well as by Guy of Thouars, the widower of Constance of Brittany; and these two, their forces swelled by a troop of mercenaries who had transferred their services from John to Philip after the surrender of Falaise, completed the conquest of Southwestern Normandy, while the French King at last set his face toward Rouen. He was not called upon to besiege it, nor even to threaten it with a siege. On June 1, 1204, Peter de Preaux made in his own name, and in the names of the commandants of Arques and Verneuil, a truce with Philip, promising that these two fortresses and Rouen should surrender if not succored within thirty days. The three castellans sent notice of this arrangement to John, who, powerless and penniless as he was, scornfully bade them "look for no help from him, but do whatsoever seemed to them best." It seemed to them best not even to wait for the expiration of the truce; Rouen surrendered on June 24th, and in a few days Arques and Verneuil followed its example.

Thus did Normandy forsake—as Anjou and Maine had already forsaken[37]—the heir of its ancient rulers for the King of the French.



FOUNDING OF THE MONGOL EMPIRE BY GENGHIS KHAN

A.D. 1203

HENRY H. HOWORTH

The origin and early history of the Mongols are very obscure, but from Chinese annals we learn of the existence of the race, from the sixth to the ninth century, in regions around the north of the great desert of Gobi and Lake Baikal in Eastern Asia. The name Mongol is derived from the word mong, meaning "brave" or "bold." Chinese accounts show that it was given to the Mongol race long before the time of Genghis Khan. It is conjectured that the Mongols were at first one tribe of a great confederacy whose name was probably extended to the whole when the power of the imperial house which governed it gained the supremacy. The Mongol khans are traced up to the old royal race of the Turks, who from a very early period were masters of the Mongolian desert and its borderland. Here from time immemorial the Mongols "had made their home, leading a miserable nomadic life in the midst of a wild and barren country, unrecognized by their neighbors, and their very name unknown centuries after their kinsmen, the Turks, had been exercising an all-powerful influence over the destinies of Western Asia."

But at the beginning of the thirteenth century arose among them a chief, Genghis Khan, the "very mighty ruler," whose prowess was destined to lead the Mongolian hordes to the conquest of a vast empire, extending over China and from India through Persia and into Russia.

Who and what this mighty ruler was, and by what achievements he advanced to lay the foundations of his empire, are told by Howorth, not only with an authoritative fidelity to history, but with a literary art that is no less faithful in its appreciation of oriental character and custom.

Among the men who have influenced the history of the world Genghis Khan holds a foremost place. Popularly he is mentioned with Attila and with Timur as one of the "scourges of God," one of those terrible conquerors whose march across the page of history is figured by the simile of a swarm of locusts, or a fire in a Canadian forest; but this is doing gross injustice to Genghis Khan. Not only was he a conqueror, a general whose consummate ability made him overthrow every barrier that must intervene between the chief of a small barbarous tribe of an obscure race and the throne of Asia, and this with a rapidity and uniform success that can only be compared to the triumphant march of Alexander, but he was far more than a conqueror. Alexander, Napoleon, and Timur were all more or less his equals in the art of war. But the colossal powers they created were merely hills of sand, that crumbled to pieces as soon as they were dead.

With Genghis Khan matters were very different: he organized the empire which he had conquered so that it long survived and greatly thrived after he was gone. In every detail of social and political economy he was a creator; his laws and his administrative rules are equally admirable and astounding to the student. Justice, tolerance, discipline—virtues that make up the modern ideal of a state—were taught and practised at his court. And when we remember that he was born and educated in the desert, and that he had neither the sages of Greece nor of Rome to instruct him, that unlike Charlemagne and Alfred he could not draw his lessons from a past whose evening glow was still visible in the horizon, we are tempted to treat as exaggerated the history of his times, and to be sceptical of so much political insight having been born of such unpromising materials.

It is not creditable to English literature that no satisfactory account of Genghis Khan exists in the language. Baron D'Ohsson in French, and Erdmann in German, have both written minute and detailed accounts of him, but none such exists in English, although the subject has an epic grandeur about it that might well tempt some well-grounded scholar to try his hand upon it.

Genghis Khan received the name of Temudjin. According to the vocabulary attached to the history of the Yuen dynasty, translated from the Chinese by Hyacinthe, temudjin means the best iron or steel. The name has been confounded with temurdji, which means a smith, in Turkish. This accounts for the tradition related by Pachymeres, Novairi, William of Ruysbrok, the Armenian Haiton, and others, that Genghis Khan was originally a smith.

The Chinese historians and Ssanang Setzen place his birth in 1162; Raschid and the Persians in 1155. The latter date is accommodated to the fact that they make him seventy-two years old at his death in 1227, but the historian of the Yuen dynasty, the Kangmu, and Ssanang Setzen are all agreed that he died at the age of sixty-six, and they are much more likely to be right. Mailla says he had a piece of clotted blood in his fist when born—no bad omen, if true, of his future career. According to De Guignes, Karachar Nevian was named his tutor.

Ssanang Setzen has a story that his father set out one day to find him a partner among the relatives of his wife, the Olchonods, and that on the way he was met by Dai Setzen, the chief of the Kunkurats, who thus addressed him: "Descendant of the Kiyots and of the race of the Bordshigs, whither hiest thou?"

"I am seeking a bride for my son," was his reply. Dai Setzen then said that he recently had a dream, during which a white falcon had alighted on his hand. "This," he said, "Bordshig, was your token. From ancient days our daughters have been wedded to the Bordshigs, and I now have a daughter named Burte who is nine years old. I will give her to thy son."

"She is too young," he said; but Temudjin, who was present, urged that she would suit him by and by. The bargain was thereupon closed, and, having taken a draught of koumiss and presented his host with two horses, Yissugei returned home.

On his father's death Temudjin was only thirteen years old, an age that seldom carries authority in the desert, where the chief is expected to command, and his mother acted as regent. This enabled several of the tribes which had submitted to the strong hand of Yissugei to reassert their independence. The Taidshuts, under their leaders Terkutai, named Kiriltuk, i.e., the Spiteful, the great-grandson of Hemukai, and his nephew Kurul Bahadur, were the first to break away, and they were soon after joined by one of Yissugei's generals with a considerable following. To the reproaches of Temudjin the latter answered: "The deepest wells are sometimes dry, and the hardest stones sometimes split; why should I cling to thee?" Temudjin's mother, we are told, mounted her horse, and taking the royal standard called Tuk (this was mounted with the tails of the yak or mountain cow, or, in default, with that of a horse; it is the tau or tu of the Chinese, used as the imperial standard, and conferred as a token of royalty upon their vassals, the Tartar princes) in her hand, she led her people in pursuit of the fugitives, and brought a good number of them back to their allegiance.

After the dispersion of the Jelairs, many of them became the slaves and herdsmen of the Mongol royal family. They were encamped near Sarikihar, the Saligol of Hyacinthe, in the district of Ulagai Bulak, which D'Ohsson identifies with the Ulengai, a tributary of the Ingoda, that rises in the watershed between that river and the Onon. One day Tagudshar, a relative of Chamuka, the chief of the Jadjerats, was hunting in this neighborhood, and tried to lift the cattle of a Jelair, named Jusi Termele, who thereupon shot him. This led to a long and bitter strife between Temudjin, who was the patron of the Jelairs, and Chamuka. He was of the same stock as Temudjin, and now joined the Taidshuts, with his tribe the Jadjerats. He also persuaded the Uduts and Nujakins, the Kurulas and Inkirasses, to join them.

Temudjin struggled in vain against this confederacy, and one day he was taken prisoner by the Taidshuts. Terkutai fastened on him a cangue— the instrument of torture used by the Chinese, consisting of two boards which are fastened to the shoulders, and when joined together round the neck form an effectual barrier to desertion. He one day found means to escape while the Taidshuts were busy feasting. He hid in a pond with his nostrils only out of water, but was detected by a pursuer named Surghan Shireh. He belonged to the Sulduz clan; had pity on him; took him to his house; hid him under some wool in a cart so that his pursuers failed to find him, and then sent him to his own people. This and other stories illustrate one phase of Mongol character. We seldom hear among them of those domestic murders so frequent in Turkish history; pretenders to the throne were reduced to servitude, and generally made to perform menial offices, but seldom murdered. They illustrate another fact: favors conferred in distress were seldom forgotten, and the chroniclers frequently explain the rise of some obscure individual by the recollection of a handsome thing done to the ruler in his unfortunate days.

Another phase of Mongol character, namely, the treachery and craft with which they attempt to overreach one another in war, may be illustrated by a short saga told by Ssanang Setzen, and probably relating to this period of Temudjin's career. It is curious how circumstantial many of these traditions are. "At that time," he says, "Buke Chilger of the Taidshuts dug a pit-fall in his tent and covered it with felts. He then, with his brothers, arranged a grand feast, to which Temudjin was invited with fulsome phrases. 'Formerly we knew not thine excellence,' he said, 'and lived in strife with thee. We have now learnt that thou art not false, and that thou art a Bogda of the race of the gods. Our old hatred is stifled and dead; condescend to enter our small house.'

"Temudjin accepted the invitation, but before going he was warned by his mother: 'Rate not the crafty foe too lightly,' she said. 'We do not dread a venomous viper the less because it is so small and weak. Be cautious!'

"He replied: 'You are right, mother, therefore do you, Khassar, have the bow ready: Belgutei, you also be on your guard: you, Chadshikin, see to the horse; and you, Utsuken, remain by my side. My nine Orloks, you go in with me; and you, my three hundred and nine bodyguards, surround the yurt.'

"When he arrived he would have sat down in the middle of the treacherous carpet, but Utsuken pulled him aside and seated him on the edge of the felt. Meanwhile a woman was meddling with the horse and cut off its left stirrup. Belgutei, who noticed it, drove her out, and struck her on the leg with his hand, upon which one Buri Buke struck Belgutei's horse with his sword. The nine Orloks now came round, helped their master to mount the white mare of Toktanga Taishi of the Kortshins; a fight began, which ended in the defeat and submission of the enemy."

Once more free, Temudjin, who was now seventeen years old, married Burte Judjin. He was not long in collecting a number of his men together, and soon managed to increase their number to thirteen thousand. These he divided into thirteen battalions of one thousand men each, styled gurans, each guran under the command of a gurkhan. The gurkhans were chosen from his immediate relatives and dependents. The forces of the Taidshuts numbered thirty thousand. With this much more powerful army Temudjin risked an encounter on the banks of the Baldjuna, a tributary of the Ingoda, and gained a complete victory. Abulghazi says the Taidshuts lost from five thousand to six thousand men. The battle-field was close to a wood, and we are told that Temudjin, after his victory, piled fagots together and boiled many of his prisoners in seventy caldrons—a very problematical story.

Among his neighbors were the Jadjerats, or Juriats, the subjects of Chamuka, who, according to De Guignes, fled after the battle with the Taidshuts.

One day a body of the Jadjerats, who were hunting, encountered some of Temudjin's followers, and they agreed to hunt together. The former ran short of provisions, and he generously surrendered to them a large part of the game his people had captured. This was favorably compared by them with the harsh behavior of their suzerains, the Taidshut princes, and two of their chiefs, named Ulugh Bahadur and Thugai Talu, with many of the tribe went to join Temudjin. They were shortly after attacked and dispersed by the Taidshuts. This alarmed or disgusted several of the latter's allies, who went over to the party of Temudjin. Among these were Chamuka, who contrived for a while to hide his rancor; and the chiefs of the Suldus and Basiuts. Their example was soon followed by the defection of the Barins and the Telenkuts, a branch of the Jelairs.

Temudjin's repute was now considerable, and De Mailla tells us that wishing to secure the friendship of Podu, chief of the Kieliei, or Ykiliesse (i.e., the Kurulats), who lived on the river Ergone (i.e., the Argun), and who was renowned for his skill in archery, he offered him his sister Termulun in marriage. This was gladly accepted, and the two became fast friends. As a sign of his good-will, Podu wished to present Temudjin with fifteen horses out of thirty which he possessed, but the latter replied: "To speak of giving and taking is to do as merchants and traffickers, and not allies. Our elders tell us it is difficult to have one heart and one soul in two bodies. It is this difficult thing I wish to compass; I mean to extend my power over my neighbors here; I only ask that the people of Kieliei shall aid me."

Temudjin now gave a grand feast on the banks of the Onon, and distributed decorations among his brothers. To this were invited Sidsheh Bigi, chief of the Burgins or Barins, his own mother, and two of his step-mothers. A skin of koumiss, or fermented milk, was sent to each of the latter, but with this distinction: in the case of the eldest, called Kakurshin Khatun, it was for herself and her family; in that of the younger, for herself alone. This aroused the envy of the former, who gave Sichir, the master of ceremonies, a considerable blow. The undignified disturbance was winked at by Temudjin, but the quarrel was soon after enlarged. One of Kakurshin's dependents had the temerity to strike Belgutei, the half-brother of Temudjin, and wounded him severely in the shoulder, but Belgutei pleaded for him. "The wound has caused me no tears. It is not seemly that my quarrels should inconvenience you," he said. Upon this Temudjin sent and counselled them to live at peace with one another, but Sidsheh Bigi soon after abandoned him with his Barins. He was apparently a son of Kakurshin Khatun, and therefore a step-brother of Temudjin.

About 1194 Temudjin heard that one of the Taidshut chiefs, called Mutchin Sultu, had revolted against Madagu, the Kin Emperor of China, who had sent his chinsang ("prime minister"), Wan-jan-siang, with an army against him. He eagerly volunteered his services against the old enemies of his people, and was successful. He killed the chief and captured much booty; inter alia was a silver cradle with a covering of golden tissue, such as the Mongols had never before seen. As a reward for his services he received from the Chinese officer the title of jaut-ikuri—written "Tcha-u-tu-lu" in Hyacinthe, who says it means "commander against the rebels." According to Raschid, on the same occasion Tului, the chief of the Keraits, was invested with the title of wang ("king"). On his return from this expedition, desiring to renew his intercourse with the Barins, he sent them a portion of the Tartar booty. The bearers of this present were maltreated. Mailla, who describes the event somewhat differently, says that ten of the messengers were killed by Sidsheh Bigi to revenge the indignities that had been put on his family. Temudjin now marched against the Barins, and defeated them at Thulan Buldak. Their two chiefs escaped. According to Mailla they were put to death.

In 1196 Temudjin received a visit from Wang Khan, the Kerait chief, who was then in distress. His brother Ilkah Sengun, better known as Jagampu Keraiti, had driven him from the throne. He first sought assistance from the chief of Kara Khitai, and, when that failed him, turned to Temudjin, the son of his old friend. Wang Khan was a chief of great consequence, and this appeal must have been flattering to him. He levied a contribution of cattle from his subjects to feast him with, and promised him the devotion of a son in consideration of his ancient friendship with Yissugei.

Temudjin was now, says Mailla, one of the most powerful princes of these parts, and he determined to subjugate the Kieliei, the inhabitants of the Argun, but he was defeated. During the action, having been hit by twelve arrows, he fell from his horse unconscious, when Bogordshi and Burgul, at some risk, took him out of the struggle. While the former melted the snow with some hot stones and bathed him with it, so as to free his throat from the blood, the latter, during the long winter night, covered him with his own cloak from the falling snow. He would, nevertheless, have fared badly if his mother had not collected a band of his father's troops and come to his assistance together with Tului, the Kerait chief, who remembered the favors he had received from Temudjin's father. Mailla says that returning home with a few followers, he was attacked by a band of robbers. He was accompanied by a famous crossbowman, named Soo, to whom he had given the name of Merghen. While the robbers were within earshot, Merghen shouted: "There are two wild ducks, a male and a female; which shall I bring down?"

"The male," said Temudjin.

He had scarcely said so when down it came. This was too much for the robbers, who dared not measure themselves against such marksmanship.

The Merkits had recently made a raid upon his territory, and carried off his favorite wife, Burte Judjin. It was after her return from her captivity that she gave birth to her elder son, Juji, about whose legitimacy there seems to have been some doubt in his father's mind. It was to revenge this that he now (1197) marched against them, and defeated them near the river Mundsheh (a river "Mandzin" is still to be found in the canton Karas Muren). He abandoned all the booty to Wang Khan. The latter, through the influence of Temudjin, once more regained his throne, and the following year (1198) he headed an expedition on his own account against the Merkits, and beat them at a place named Buker Gehesh, but he did not reciprocate the generosity of his ally.

In 1199 the two friends made a joint expedition against the Naimans. This tribe was now divided between two brothers who had quarrelled about their father's concubine. One of them, named Buyuruk, had retired with a body of the people to the Kiziltash mountains. The other, called Baibuka—but generally referred to by his Chinese title of Taiwang, or Tayang—remained in his own proper country. It was the latter who was now attacked by the two allies, and forced to escape to the country of Kem Kemdjut—i.e., toward the sources of the Yenissei. Chamuka, the chief of the Jadjerats, well named Satchan, or "the Crafty," still retained his hatred for Temudjin. He now whispered in the ear of Wang Khan that his ally was only a fair-weather friend. Like the wild goose, he flew away in winter, while he himself, like the snowbird, was constant under all circumstances. These and other suggestions aroused the jealousy of Wang Khan, who suddenly withdrew his forces, and left Temudjin in the enemy's country. The latter was thereupon forced to retire also. He went to the river Sali or Sari. Gugsu Seirak, the Naiman general, went in pursuit, defeated Wang Khan in his own territory, and captured much booty. Wang Khan was hard pressed, and was perhaps only saved by the timely succor sent by Temudjin, which drove away the Naimans. Once more did the latter abandon the captured booty to his treacherous ally. After the victory, he held a Kuriltai, on the plains of Sari or Sali, to which Wang Khan was invited, and at which it was resolved to renew the war against the Taidshuts in the following year. The latter were in alliance with the Merkits, whose chief, Tukta, had sent a contingent, commanded by his brothers, to their help. The two friends attacked them on the banks of the river Onon. Raschid says in the country of Onon, i.e., the great desert of Mongolia. The confederates were beaten. Terkutai Kiriltuk and Kuduhar, the two leaders of the Taidshuts, were pursued and overtaken at Lengut Nuramen, where they were both killed. Another of their leaders, with the two chiefs of the Merkits, fled to Burghudshin, i.e., Burgusin on Lake Baikal, while the fourth found refuge with the Naimans.