It was 1226 when the Polish Duke of Mazowsze, Konrad Mazowiecki invited the Palestine - based Teutonic Order, subject directly to the Pope, into the lands on the river Wisla (Vistula), expecting the Order's help in their struggles against pagan Prussians. The Order was just expelled, 1225, from Transylvania after attempting to place themselves under Papal instead of Hungarian sovereignty.Grand Master Hermann von Salza had brought his first German knights to Poland that same year, with the presumed intention of staying a year or two. Nearly two hundred years later they owned most of the Baltic coast, including the lands of Latvia and Estonia, and showed every intention of soon controlling Lithuania, Poland and Russia. The Teutonic Order received the territory of Prussia, something they failed to accomplish in Hungary, via Golden Bulls from the Emperor and papal edict, which gave them effective carte blanche as owners of a new Christianized state of Prussia, instead of the pagan native land of Prussia.
The Teutonic Knights achieved excellent diplomatic relations with other western countries, and developed a particularly good relationship with the papacy. They seemed destined to control and occupy the whole of Eastern Europe, and acted under a commission signed by the Pope, ordering them to Christianise the pagan lands in the Baltic Region. No matter how they behaved, they could always claim that they acted under Papal authority, and with the approval of God Himself.
Their first Christianising mission in the 13th century involved the Prussians, a tribe which controlled the amber trade along the Baltic. The Prussians fought against takeover of their territory. The Teutonic knights dealt with them in a most effective way: they eliminated them almost completely. Those who remained alive were forbidden to marry so that no further Prussian children would be forthcoming. Centuries later, when Prussia was a proud and famous name among Europeans, there was hardly a true Prussian alive, and the archaic Prussian language slowly died out under Teutonic occupation.
