From "The Protestant Order" by Erick Cjeland, copyright 2001, Riga.
The revival of religious fanaticism within the leadership of the Order would continue to guide policy with the new goal of delivering a telling blow to Orthodoxy. For this, the eyes of the Land Masters turned toward Anatolia, toward the seat of the Eastern Church. If Constantinople could be seized Orthodoxy would lose its leadership. It would than be a simple matter, at least theoretically, for the Order to completely usurp the Orthodox Church by appointing a puppet Patriarch or dissolving the office all together.
Islam stood in the way, but this was an afterthought. The Ottoman Turks had remained confined to holdings in Anatolia after their attempts to gain land in the Balkans had failed miserably. While they called themselves an empire they had never become more than a minor player in Europe and their presence in the middle east had been equally insignificant, with the Mamelukes and Persia being the traditional Muslim powers before the arrival of the Germans.
When war was declared against the Ottomans in 1768 the Order was well prepared. Additional forces from as far away as the Baltic had been brought in to strengthen the existing force that consisted primarily of Protestants from Armenia and Daghestan. In addition, Russians were recruited from Novgorod and Moscow to participate in the war, ostensibly to protect the Orthodox Church from the Turk, a protection the Byzantines had not needed for over two full centuries.
The large force made rapid progress against weak Ottoman fortifications, while a smaller force quickly overran their allies in Crimea. By 1770 Crimea had collapsed, ceding Crimea and 85,000 silvers. The Turks surrendered soon after, allowing the Order to acquire Smyrna, Angora, Konya and a trading post in east Africa. A land route to The City was now open.
The Russian regiments were sent to Crimea to stabilize the region, allowing the Order to begin to pursue its true ambitions in the region. In 1772 Byzantium was attacked. The conflict was short and one-sided. The Byzantines were forced to give up their Anatolian holding in Taurus and pay 200,000 silvers. The final insult came when the Order guaranteed their independence a few days after the peace treaty was signed, leaving 50,000 soldiers on the border of Thrace to insure that this "protection" would be carried out.
The focus in the west destabilized the east somewhat, even to the point where local nobility aligned themselves with the remains of the Uzbek Khanate, greatly disrupting the region. The rapid annexation of Uzbek and massive executions in the local leadership restored a fragile sense of control on the eastern lands, even as revolts against the Order continued with alarming regularity in recently claimed Uzbek lands.
The war with the Uzbeks was little more than a side action for the Germans, with the conquest of Byzantium the main goal. A second war with the Eastern Romans began in 1777. The Byzantines had called for Europe for help, but the consequences of fighting the Order over the withered remains of a once great empire was not sufficient to gain little more than sympathy from western nations. Austria, Portugal and the Netherlands dishonored their promises, while England and Mecklenburg gave a formal show of support and than settled a separate peace with the Knights.
Left alone the Byzantines were doomed. The famed walls of Constantinople were totally insufficient by the 18th century and they were easily breeched by the heavy cannons of the Order. Panic ensued as the Knights entered the city, burning and looting with abandon. The treasures of the city were carried off and massive vandalism against the churches, especially the Hagia Sofia, occurred. The Patriarch was captured, tried for heresy and convicted in less than an hour. As punishment, the elderly leader of the Orthodox Church was partially hung, disemboweled, and burnt at the stake. The Order now claimed leadership of the Eastern Church, and their first actions were to begin to dismantle it from within, destroying central authority and promoting divisions.
The defeat of Byzantium would have limited impact the Order's Orthodox subjects. In some ways it would further polarize them against the Order, although some conversions would occur, too. The unrest was limited, however, as the actual effects of the destruction of Orthodox authority would only slowly make themselves felt for the average Russian, may of whom had felt little kinship for their Greek brethren to begin with. Claims of Catholic influence on Greek Orthodoxy would further alienate the Russian Church from the plight of their coreligionists in the south.
The Order's solution to the possible increase in unrest in Russia was the same solution they had for every problem: another war. The Germans began to circulate stories blaming the Poles for the corruption of the Orthodox Church in Greece and parts of Poland proper, even going so far as claiming that the Poles had controlled the Patriarchy, forcing the Order to "liberate" it. At the same time they pointed to alleged Protestant mistreatment in Poland as another excuse for conflict. It's hard to say how convincing such stories were, but war with Poland was quickly becoming inevitable...
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From "The Spirit of Russia" by Fedor Yeremenko, Moscow 1826.
Many men still call for peaceful coexistence with the Order, arguing that making an occasional concession in freedom every now and again is a small price to pay for the relative peace and prosperity that comes with the German yoke on our necks. This is the talk of cowards and traitors and the true Russian man would never trade away our right to self-determination for such imagined benefits.
Consider it. Do we have peace under the Germans? No. They send us to fight in their wars, and these wars are for German aggrandizement. Our young men bleed and die in wars motivated by greed and domination, and those who return are still slaves of the Germans, second class citizens in their own homeland. Such militant energies would be better spend directly opposing the western dogs rather than acting as their puppets and doing evils in their name.
The Ottoman war 1768 is an excellent example of how the Germans have manipulated our people for their own wicked ends. Did any Russian ever have reason to fight the Turk? Had they ever done us any harm? Had they conquered us and forced their false beliefs upon us? No, no, a million times no!
The Germans used our loyalty to Orthodoxy to justify the war, but said loyalty would be better demonstrated by resisting the simplistic and ugly faith of the Germans within our own lands, rather than the errors of a minor Mohammedan nation far from our borders. Still, the authority of the Patriarch held sway with us and would lead us blindly into disaster.
If our fight for a land of our own is to be successful, the throne of Orthodoxy must be restored to our people. I'm not calling for a recapture of marginalized Constantinople, I'm calling for spiritual leaders to emerge from our own ranks, to head Orthodoxy from the heart of our own lands. A foreign Patriarch, subservient to another government cannot understand the true character of Russia or be relevant to us. Nevertheless, we bled for such loyalty.
The destruction of the heart of our Church in Constantinople was the act of demons in human form and I have no doubt that damnation has been earned by all the criminals involved. On the other hand, it offered us an opportunity to assume the leadership in our faith, provided the hated German puppets can be rooted out and dealt with as justice demands. The German evils may yet work for the good of Russia.
We must resist the lies of the Germans! Our working belief should be that everything these devils say is motivated by their own self-interest. It is time for us to attend to our interests and our independence. To this end the purity of our faith needs to be equaled by a unity as a nation. The Germans will try to create artificial enmity between Russia and other lands, as they did with Poland. We paid a horrible price for this deception...
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Next: Taking on the Orange Blob!
Teutonic Order, 1782
