TEUTONIC KNIGHTS, one of the more celebrated of the military and religious orders to which the crusades gave birth. The sufferings of the Christian soldiers at the siege of Acre excited the sympathy of certain merchants of Bremen and Liibeck, who ren dered such important services by the erection of hospitals and otherwise, that duke Frederick of Swabia, with the sanction of pope Clement III. and the emperor Henry VI., enrolled them in an order of knighthood, aS the Teutonic knights of St. Mary of Jerusa lem. Only Germans of noble birth were made admissible to the order, the original founders having probably been ennobled before being enrolled. The members were at first all laymen, but priests were soon admitted as chaplains; and there was also added about 1221 a class of half-brothers similar to the serving-brothers of the Templars and Hospitallers. The habit of the order was a white mantle with a black cross; and the knights took vows of poverty and chastity, which in later times were not very strictly interpreted. Their first seat was Acre. On the overthrow of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the grand master removed to Venice, and from thence in 1309 to Marienburg. on the banks of the Vistula. In 1237, this order became united with the Brethren of the Sword in Livonia. In the course of the 13th c., the Teutonic knights were, with the sanction of the pope, engaged in a bloody war to enforce Christianity on the heathen nations inhabiting the southern shores of the Baltic, which resulted in the acquisition by the order of Prussia, Livonia, Courland, and other adjoining territories. Warriors
from all parts of Europe in that and the following century joined their standard, includ ing Henry IV. of England, accompanied by 300 attendant knights and men-at-arms. The conquests of the order raised it to the rank of a sovereign power, with a territory extending from the Oder to the Baltic, and embracing a population of between two and three millions, the grand master having his seat at Marienburg in Prussia. The decline of the order began in the 15th c., and its fall was brought about partly by internal dis sensions, and partly by the attacks of neighboring states. Sigismund of Poland wrested w. Prussia from the knights; and Albert of Brandenburg, who was chosen grand mas ter in hopes of his aiding the order against Poland, ended an unsuccessful,,war with Sigismund by an arrangement, according to which the territories of the order in e. Prussia were formed into a duchy, to be held by Albert and his successors. Mergen theim in Swabia then became the scat of the grand master, who was recognized as a spiritual prince of the empire. At the peace of Presburg in 1805, the emperor of Austria obtained the rights and revenues of the grand master; but in 1809 the order was abol ished by Napoleon, its lands passing to the sovereigns in whose dominions they lay. The Teutonic order, however, still continues to preserve a titular existence in Austria.