Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 778 Teutonic Knight
The whole thing is unquestionably very strange for those German war criminals of WWII who tried to escape East Germany as much as possible, no matter where they originally lived.Compared with West Germany, which appeases war criminals, East Germany can be said to have dealt with war criminals more thoroughly.

So it is strange that a person like this who retains the anti-guerrilla war medal has chosen to live in East Germany, at least it is unlikely that normal people would take such a big risk to do so.

"It's such a puzzling combination, I think we may need some more detailed clues—" Jeanne sighed after thinking for a while, "By the way, what is written in this lighter?"

"It's an ancient German slogan "Keep chastity, abstain from self-abnegation, be faithful until death, and swear to be poor", followed by a poem praising the Teutonic knights who died in battle at Lake Chud." Liang En said after translating it.

"However, unlike the officially circulated version, this poem has been rewritten. In it, the knights who died in battle are called martyrs, and they are praised for occupying the vacant seat left by Lucifer after the fall and becoming angels in heaven."

"There is no doubt that this statement is non-Christian, since a martyr can become a saint who can perform miracles, but not an angel."

"Although the Teutonic Knights spread Catholicism to the ancient Prussians, they were also influenced by the ancient Prussian religion." Joan of Arc nodded after hearing Liang En's comments.

"At least in my eyes, they are pragmatists. Compared with the Knights Templar or the Knights Hospitaller, their piety is really hard to describe."

Two years before Joan's birth, the famous Battle of Grinwald broke out.The 3.9-strong Polish-Lithuanian coalition under the command of King Vladislav Jagiello fought a decisive battle with an army of about 2.7 Teutonic Knights near Tannenburg and Grinwald.

The Teutonic Knights lost their elite in this battle, 8 knights were killed, 2 were captured, and most of the leaders including the Grand Master of the Knights von Jungingen were killed.

Since then, the Teutonic Knights have never recovered, and Poland gradually regained its lost territory, and gained towns such as Gdansk and the mouth of the Baltic Sea.

The Battle of Tannenberg dealt a devastating blow to the Knights, and its significance was similar to that of the Battle of Harding to the Kingdom of Jerusalem.The country of the Knights has thus embarked on a path of decline.

After the disastrous defeat in the foreign war, the Knights Kingdom fell into civil strife from top to bottom.The peasants were dissatisfied with the excessive taxation of the Knights, and rose up to resist; the power struggle within the Knights intensified; cities and local nobles became more and more centrifugal because of paying high taxes.

In this case, the Teutonic Knights Joan had seen with her own eyes gave her a very bad feeling, so she naturally didn't think highly of them after hearing Liang En talk about the Teutonic Knights.

In the long time that followed, the Knights went from bad to worse. In 1440, 53 nobles and 19 cities established the Prussian Alliance in Marienburg to resist the arbitrary rule of the Knights.

In 1453, the Prussian Union formed an alliance with Poland, which triggered a 13-year war that lasted until the signing of the second Torun Peace Treaty in 1466 (13-year war).

This peace treaty caused the Knights to lose a large amount of territory, including Fort Marien.Politically, the Knights have to admit their submission to Poland, which has caused great controversy within the Knights.

The German branch hoped to gain support from the Holy Roman Empire and the Holy See. In 1494, the head of the German branch admitted to surrender to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I.

Affected by external and internal troubles, the Knights Kingdom at this time has come to an end.Luther's religious reform brought the Knights once again to a watershed in history.

In 1511, the 21-year-old Albrecht from the Hohenzollern family was elected as the 37th Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, and he was also the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights as a military order.

At the suggestion of Luther, the famous religious reformer at that time, Albrecht resigned from the post of Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, secularized the Knights’ Kingdom and changed it to a Principality, and carried out religious reforms in the Principality.

The conservative forces within the Knights and the Catholic nobles in Germany were very dissatisfied with his conversion, but in 1527 he married the daughter of King Frederick I of Denmark, the northern power, and the opposition had nothing to do with him.

Albrecht's conversion brought the Teutonic Knights' history as a military order to an end.Prussia, which originally belonged to the country of the Knights, had been Protestantized by Albrecht, Livonia was occupied by Poland, Estonia was annexed by Sweden, and the Kingdom of the Knights no longer had a territory of its own.

In 1809, after Napoleon invaded Germany, he announced the dissolution of the Teutonic Knights as a military organization, and the Knights only had a place in Austria.Until 1834, the Emperor of Austria rebuilt the Knights and made it a religious charity.

In 1929, the Teutonic Knights were reorganized into a purely religious Knights, and its name was also changed from OT (Teutonic Knights, Ordo Teutonicus) to DO (German Knights, Deutscher Orden)

Today, the German Legion is a charitable organization that has established many clinics and initiated many tourism and archaeological projects in Israel.

Currently the German Mission has about 1000 members, including 100 Catholic priests, 200 nuns, and 700 staff.These priests and nuns can be found all over the continent.

From this perspective, the original goal of the Teutonic Knights returned to the Middle Ages when it was first established, which was to provide spiritual and medical help to Germans abroad.

"But there is a question, why did the other party engrave information related to the Teutonic Knights in the lighter." After complaining about the Knights, Joan asked curiously. "If I remember correctly, the two are incompatible."

Many people think that the Teutonic Knights have some kind of special connection with Germany. After all, during World War II, their national flag, military flag and a series of things, for example, the shape of the famous Iron Cross came from Teutonic knight.

Especially for people on the Chinese side, the earliest they accepted the history of Western Europe was the history from the former Soviet Union, and in this part of history they mainly adopted the Teutonic Knights that the Poles said were the earliest ancestors of German militarism. Voice.

Therefore, even Liang En subconsciously felt that these people should work hand in hand with Spicy in the Second World War when he first studied the issue of the Teutonic Knights.

But in fact this is not the case. After Austria was annexed by Shampoo Germany in 1938, the Deutsche Brigade was designated as an illegal organization and banned.

Spicy Crisp Despite the extensive use of the Teutonic Knights' emblems and symbols, and Himmler also imitating the Teutonic Knights to establish a secret organization within the Guards, the Teutonic Knights were defeated by Germany throughout World War II. prohibit.

Fortunately, Mussolini took in the exiles of the German Regiment for some unknown purpose, allowing this organization to survive in that chaotic era and to be rebuilt in the following years.

In other words, the real Teutonic knights and crispy Germany in World War II can be said to be incompatible.So it feels very eerie to find such traces of incompatible parties in one place.

"Incongruent places often hide secrets." Liang En looked at these two things and said, "So I believe these things are not as simple as they seem, and there should be some secrets hidden."

(End of this chapter)