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