Page:The Book of Orders of Knighthood and Decorations of Honour of All Nations.djvu/60

26 the loss of Acre, the head-quarters of his Order. He so adroitly managed the opening crusade against the heathen Prussians, that thousands from all lands and countries rallied under his flag, by which the Order received an immense increase in members and property, from Germany, Italy, Sicily and Hungary. The war was successfully carried on under his General, Balk, who within a few years built the towns of Pulen, Thorn, Marienwerder, Elbing, and others. The Order soon possessed large districts of land on the Baltic Sea, governed by a Land Master, while the Grand Master fixed his residence at Marburg in Hessia.

During these complicated but fortunate events, the Order had assumed a new form and character. Instead of the original names of 'Brothers' and ' Hospitalers,' the Knights were now called Masters, and, indeed, acted as such in the strictest sense of the term. They became imperious, tyrannical, despotic, and led a voluptuous and luxurious life at the expense of their Prussian subjects, who figured as the most wretched, oppressed, and miserable creatures in Europe. Nowhere in Europe was bondage carried to such a cruel extent as under the rule of these German Knights, who were intoxicated by war, and plunged in sensual enjoyments. Hence the continued insurrections, devastations of towns and lands, complaints, treaties, and difficulties; hence the despised decrees of the Pope and the Emperor, the incessant disputes with the clergy and bishops of rank, and the subversion of the rules, statutes and laws of the original Constitution, which form the greatest portion of the history of the Order, and which finally resulted in prostration and an exhaustion of its strength and power, especially after the terrible battle near Tannenberg against the Poles and Lithuanians, (15th July, 1410), in which the Grand Master, Ulrich of Jungingen, and thirty thousand of his followers, lost their lives.