(This session was played two months ago before my disappearance. All I have is a few pictures, a page of scribbled notes, and a hazy memory...so if this appears disjointed...you are probably right.)
By 1438, the Teutonic Knights were growing restless. Unfortunately, so were the Livonians.
XVII: INTO THE BEAR DEN
On March 30, 1438 the delegate from the Livonian Brotherhood spoke to his fellows at Konigsberg.
Brothers!
While we acknowledge the concerns of some common folk over secular matters such as the Sound Due, I come to you today with an opportunity to serve Christ and the Holy Father. While we have dealt with the merchants of Novgorod, a graver threat has arrived. The Muscovites, they who refuse to bend their knee to Rome if they aren't pagan entirely, have broken the compact they signed when Novgorod fell. Now they seek to expand at their expense, which would matter not if it did not pose a grave threat to the Brotherhood as well as your holdings in Karelia.
My Lords, there can be only one answer and that is to purify this land in fire. The Livonian Brotherhood marches on Moscow! Will you attend to your oaths and join us!?"
Goaded by the hint they might not honor their oaths, the Teutonic Knights joined the war along with Saxony against Moscow, Ryazan, Tver and Pskov. Otto von Plauen, a grandnephew to the Hochmeister after Tannenberg, gathered fifteen thousand swords and marched towards Pskov, hoping to drive them from the war.
The first blow would fall on Karelia though. In that far northern outpost, Kommander von Sieber had spent the past several years building up his holdings and puzzling over a possible northeastern passage. He'd heard rumors that Portugal sought a southern passage around Africa to India and Cathay, and thought he could do as well. This changed when five hundred Muscovite cavalry met his own five hundred troops and, after a bitter battle in subfreezing weather, retreated.
Throughout that summer, as von Plauen continued his preparations, Livonia paid for their pride. First the Brotherhood, perhaps thinking to rob their Teuton masters of a prize, marched into Pskov with six thousand men. To their surprise, Pskov responded with every able bodied man and male child in the city and surrounding villages - some twenty-thousand strong. This wasn't a battle in the conventional sense, with setpiece armies, but more a mass melee occuring over half a square mile that resulted in Livonian defeat. Meanwhile, fourteen thousand from Tver and Muscovy advanced into Ingermanland to retake what they considered Rus territory.
In October 1438, von Plauen finally advanced into Pskov. There his army met four thousand Muscovites - the Pskov forces had joined the siege of eastern Livonia. The German used his cavalry advantage to turn the Muscovy line and pin them against the walls of the city.
That should have been the end of it, but as the Teuton moved his army, like a large chess set, into position to finish off the Rus with a minimum of damage twelve thousand from Ryazan crested the hills around the beleaguered city and slammed into the Knights' flanks. Shocked and dismayed, von Plauen retreated.
XVIII: RUFFLED FEATHERS
Back in Germany, Kommander von Darmstad of Holstein, having never forgotten the glories earned fighting Novgorod twenty years before, used the general's failure to supersede him. With the support of a concerned Hochmeister von Russdorf, Darmstad boarded ships with Holstein's army and sailed for Riga to link up with the beleaguered army. He arrived in late November, and on Christmas Day, 1438 began besieging Pskov.
This was what German and Danish dissidents had hoped for. On January 3, 1439 a committee of disaffected knights and merchants announced Holstein's independence. Denmark recognized them on the 11th, but not before Kommander von Hagen, gleeful at the opportunity to show up his lifelong rival, sailed from Skane to retake the provincial capital.
Von Hagen arrived on February 11. Snipers, expert crossbowmen from concealed positions trained by Swiss and Venetian mercenaries, contested their landing at Kiel. The German retreated, but only a few miles north landing north of Schleswig four days later. There von Hagen waited for the snows to melt.
In April, von Hagen's three thousand infantry, supported by the loyal knights of Holstein and Skane (some five thousand cavalry) met eight thousand local men, German 'patriots' who found Teuton influence in the area dangerous, covert Danish supporters and mercenaries. The 'Holstein' army, disunited in command and tactics, surged across the field. The heavy cavalry on von Hagen's center and right slowly pushed back the rebels and they abruptly broke.
General von Hagen advanced on and took Hamburg after a token siege that summer. The merchants of the Hanseatic League, displeased that Holstein's independence still hadn't been regained by the Teutonic Knights, voiced their displeasure.
XIX: TWILIGHT
With Ingermanland in Muscovite hands, General von Darmstad thought it vital that he knock Pskov out of the war and so bring it to a satisfying conclusion. He knew that Kommander von Sieber had retaken Karelia in Spring 1439, but also knew it was a matter of time before the Muscovites pushed him right back out.
The winter of 1438-39 was mild by Rus standards, though still harsh to the sieging German army. Von Darmstad continually asked for reinforcements, depleting the Order's treasury and pool of trained warriors. As winter yielded to spring and summer, he waited in vain for the Livonians to retake their lost land, hoping to keep pressure on the Rus forces. They seemed content to wait in Riga and at one point he wrote von Russdorf:
If it was not that the Order's honor was at stake, I should ask to go home and cry done with a war where our people die, but we cannot hope to gain.
In June 1439 von Darmstad learned of a large Muscovite force passing towards Riga. He knew that if the Livonians fell, then the door would be opened for a massive invasion of the Teuton heartland. Grimly he marched north, but it was a ruse de guerre. The Rus force, some twenty thousand strong, retreated before the smaller German army, drawing them further away from Pskov. Vasily II himself, the Grand Duke of Moscow, used the diversion to march on Novgorod with 22,000 men. After a brief battle with fourteen thousand, the last able bodied men in that merchant city, he fell to sieging the city. Embarassed and angry, von Darmstad returned to Pskov in September.
The twin sieges - Novgorod and Pskov - lasted through most of 1440 to little effect. However von Darmstad's prophecy proved true in one instance. A Tver force of some four thousand men advanced into Karelia, destroyed Sieber's army and left his twitching body on a pole as a warning to those who defied the Rus people. In late September, Novgorod finally fell. One month later, as von Darmstad and Pskov's 'king' worked out the details of a formal surrender, Vasily II attacked the Teuton army.
On October 21, 1440 Kommander von Darmstad, with eleven thousand infantry and seven thousand cavalry, met Grand Duke Vasily of Muscovy in command of nineteen thousand infantry and one thousand boyars. Von Darmstad, confident of victory, deployed with his knights interspersed among the foot soldiers to bolster their spirits.
Assisted by spies from Pskov, eager to maintain their city's independence, Vasily had accurate knowledge of the German's deployments. He set up within the hills surrounding Pskov, with his boyars on the far left. Four thousand footsoldiers would advance on the German horde, convince them of an easy victory, and so lead them into a trap.
Von Darmstad was not such a fool as to think Vasily's army was so small, but he did hope to crush the tiny force before reinforcements could arrive. He himself led a charge with most of the knights. The Rus turned and fled, and in so doing were mercilessly cut down by the Order. Perhaps momentarily blinded by bloodlust, the German allowed himself to be drawn deep into a valley surrounded on three sides by hills, hills that began vomiting Rus soldiers.
The Germans turned to regroup, but in so doing the boyars fell on their rear, shooting arrows not at the knights, but at their horses. Pandemonium ensued, with half the knights turning to fight while others retreated in three different directions. By then the Muscovite footsoldiers arrived, spearing first the horses, then the encumbered knights as they fell.
It is not clear what happened to General von Darmstad. Teuton scholars claim he was taken as a trophy to Muscovy, there succumbing to the savagery one must expect of lesser people. Muscovy did not keep accurate military records at the time, though all accounts of the battle indicate the German horsemen died to a man, shortly by the infantry. This is probably closer to the truth, but their records are mistaken about one thing: Otto von Plauen survived - though Paul Bellizer von Russdorf would never know it. It is said when he heard the news of Darmstad's destruction, the single biggest disaster since Tannenberg, he had uncontrollable, shaking fits. He did not recover, and on January 2, 1441 resigned. He died a week later..
According to Teuton records, as many as one or two thousand broke free of Vasily's trap and retreated into the highlands surrounding Pskov. There von Plauen developed a last ditch plan, to seize several unfortified Muscovite/Tver holdings including Karelia and force them to the table. It may have worked, but the new Hochmeister, Konrad von Erlichshausen, was having none of it. He felt the Teutonic Knights had quite enough of this 'adventure' and only continued the war in an effort to get better terms. He ordered von Plauen to support the Livonian effort to relieve Ingermanland, There he found the city already sieged, though he helped repel a Muscovite relief force in March.
On June 11, 1441 months of diplomacy finally ended the war. It was an unqualified defeat for the proud Teutonic Order, though in retrospect it could have been much worse. Some historians criticize von Erlichshausen for excessive caution and suggest von Plauen's plan must have succeeded. Others, however, point out that Otto von Plauen's military record was hardly stellar before Darmstad arrived, and anyway von Erlichshausen extriated the Order from a war where it hemoragged men and valuable resources.
The Order's council apparently agreed, for on June 14 they sent a terse letter to Riga by way of their delegate there.
"Any more Rus adventures, and you fight alone."