Prūsijos gynybos organizavimo principai ir žemėvalda XVI a. pradžioje, remiantis Vokiečių ordino kariniais dokumentais | Land Ownership and Principles of the Organisation of Defence in Early 16th-Century Prussia Based on Military Documents …

Abstract

The results of the Thirteen Years’ War (1454–1466) did not remove the tensions between Poland and the Teutonic Order. A new conflict emerged at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, as the Teutonic Order sought to get rid of the Polish king’s protection of the Order’s dominions in Prussia, established under the terms of the Peace of Thorn (Toruń), some of which were not met at all. The article examines several historical sources prepared for the eventual war in Prussia and published a long ago. These are the Military Regulations (Kriegsordnung) of 1507, and two lists of property owners of the Memel (Klaipėda) Command (Komturei) who were to perform their military obligations, dated by previous research to around 1500 or 1510–1520. The connection between these documents has not so far been examined, although the author of the article assumed the existence of a connection a dozen years ago. The author examines this connection in detail, by discussing the emergence of these documents and the efforts of their initiators to adapt innovations in the organisation of defence borrowed from the Holy Roman Empire to the practices of the Teutonic Order. By examining the content of the sources and the statistical information they provide, the article raises a separate question: to what extent do the statistics generated by these sources make it possible to get details about land ownership in Prussia in the early 16th century.