History Of Estonia 101: Part Four

Since the PMC has been going for some 60 years here in Estonia, during which time we've seen such comings and goings as the regaining of independence, the imminent introduction of the Euro, and the Beatles concerts at the Lauluväljak, we feel fully qualified to present this, a multi part set of posts on the history of Estonia which will appear, now and again as we're given time.
There's unlikely to be anything new for Estonians, who therefore don't need to read on unless they want to check we're not peddling complete mistruths. The sources are likely to be the usual internet sites such as wikipedia and any links that arise therefrom, but this should save the reader some time in finding all this stuff themselves, the one or two books we have on the subject, and maybe the occasional word of mouth stuff.
You might also want to check out our posts about a year ago now, on the Estonian language.
At the very least we hope to dispel any misconceptions of Estonia being a slavic speaking country, being located in the Balkans or being a place with a lot of stones (although this last is in fact true)...

Part four: Of Bishops, Knights, Castles and Kings

After those pesky christians started arriving in large numbers and spoiling everyone's fun,  from the early thirteenth centrury, things started to get particularly hard, not least for the hapless blogger who simply wanted a nice resume of Estonian history and now regrets this series of posts which seem to have taken on a life of their own and which noone's going to read anyway.

The country lay divided loosely between the Danish north and the German south, via the crusades of the Livonian, or Sword Brothers, order for most of the thirteenth, and the first half of the fourteenth, centuries. It would be misleading at this point to think in terms of the modern day Estonian state or that the nation's occupiers were trying to construct the modern day country of Estonia (and exactly the same would apply to contemporaneous France, Germany and most of the rest of Europe). This is medieval Europe. Lands were held as fiefdoms which could cut across linguistic and other boundaries. People didn't even have maps in the modern sense and the whole of the Baltic region was an area which had been up for grabs in effect since Pope Celestine III declared a free for all in 1193. You can read any motives into it that you like, and draw your own conclusions from the fact that the Third Crusade to the Holy Land which had ended only the previous year had failed in its objective to recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims. Lands covering all of the modern day Baltics, the Kaliningrad exclave and parts of Northeastern Poland were all affected.

The 'Duchy of Estonia' comprised the Danish, northern half, which was comparatively short lived so we'll deal with that first. Despite a series of Danish raids on the islands off the west of Estonia going back to the twelfth century, these were not a component of the Duchy.

Lyndanisse (modern day Tallinn) came to be known as 'Reval' and a bishopric was established here by the Danish King, Valdemar II in 1240. Most of the lands were in fact held by German vassals, with Danes and even a few Estonians making up a small minority. The Danes did have some ambitions in expanding eastward against the Votians, once a regional power and closely related to the Estonians, after going to war with the Novgorod state but this came to naught.

As is so often the case with foreign occupations, it was turmoil at home which led to the ulitmate downfall. The death of Christain II of Denmark led to divisions in the Duchy between the pro-Danish and pro-German factions (the latter held much of south Estonia, remember). The Estonians were not slow on the uptake, and in July 1343 the St George's Night Uprising saw wholesale massacre of German settlers, churchmen and the like, and an equally brutal suppression by the German Teutonic order, a far more professional unit than the Livonian order, who effectively took on the Danes' bad debt in the form of the Duchy of Estonia. Actually the Teutonic order were confusingly renamed the Livonian order after absorbing the remnants of the Livonian 'Sword Brothers' following their annihilation far to the south at the battle of Saule, in modern day Lithuania, but we'll stick with the Teutonic appellation for simplicity's sake. One of the last battles on mainland Estonia happened in a location in present day Lasnamäe, which will raise a wry smile to the face of anyone who knows Tallinn.

The last stand was in fact made on Ösel (Saaremaa) which after much to-ing and fro-ing, fell to the Germans in the winter of 1345. The Danes were in fact recompensed by the Germans, some 19 000 Köln marks for the mainland territories, however much that was, it sounds like a lot, although they had to apologise to the Pope for giving up so easily on a territory which had effectively been gifted them by one of his predecessors and which they'd promised never to relinquish.

In fact that wasn't the last of it; Ösel/Saaremaa came back into Danish possession over two hundred years later, in 1572, having been purchased from a German Prince, until 1645 when it was ceded to Sweden. More on that in a later post...

Meanwhile, South Estonia came to be a part of the state of 'Livonia', named after the order of knights (see above) after the papal legate William of Modena said so. This state incorporated most of modern day Latvia as well, and coexisted with several bishoprics, including that of Dorpat (modern day Tartu) and the sprawling Archbishopric of Riga, though not always peaceably, with civil wars blighting most of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, along with the troubles arising from the vacuum left by the departing Danes. As noted, with the obtaining of the Danish lands to the north, two important Hanseatic towns (Riga and Tallinn) came into German possession.

Ultimately, the Teutonic Order went the same way as the Livonian Sword brothers, again at the hands of the Lithuanians, at least in part, following their crushing defeat at the battle of Grünewald by the armies of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth in 1410. The Livonian Landtag was formed in 1419 to resolve the continued bickering and sat at the modern day town of Valga/Valka, then as now on the boundary between Latvian and Estonian ethnic lands. This remained the status quo for the next few decades, until the next chapter in our story and the arrival of a new regional power or two..

Part three is here...