STONE MARKER AND THE BATTLEFIELD LOOKING DOWN FROM THE STILL EXISTING 1227 RAMPARTS
Excerpted from my book OUR SUMMER IN ESTONIA AMAZON.COM
In addition to staying at an authentic manor house, I had other
historical interests for visiting Muhu. This island was the last mainstay
and defender of ancient pagan Estonian freedom, a freedom that
finally succumbed on this island to the forces of crusading Christianity
represented by the German knights and the Danish king. There had
been many confrontations between the two cultures, during the ever
expanding German and Danish influence in the first two decades of the
13th century. From Riga the German knights expanded by land northwards
into Estonia, while the Danes encroached from the sea, establishing a
settlement at today’s capital, Tallinn, which means Danish Town. The
native pagan Estonians sometimes accepted baptism as a convenience,
but later would reject their fealty to Christianity, and continued their
marauding ways, much to the dismay of the Baltic German knights.
Considering the Estonians untrustworthy, the Knights were ready for a
showdown. Having subdued most of present day Estonia, in February,
1227, a force of 20,000 warriors, led by the crusading Knights of the
Sword, marched over the frozen Baltic Sea and laid siege to the marauding
pagans in their stronghold on Muhu Island. It took six bitter winter days
of battering siege warfare for the Knights to finally breech the ice-slicked
twenty-five foot ramparts, and once through those defenses, showed no
mercy. No longer trusting in Estonian heathen promises, all of them,
men, women, and children were slaughtered.
Crossing over the ice once more the victorious force invaded the
last pagan Estonian stronghold on Saaremaa. Having witnessed the fate
of those on Muhu, the remaining Estonians asked for mercy, and were
granted their lives in exchange for Christian baptism and swearing fealty
to the ruling Knights of the Cross and the Danish king. This turning
point in Estonian history is marked by a simple monolith where the
stronghold on Muhu was located, the bastion’s stones long ago being
removed for other building purposes. Only the weed covered ramparts
remain to give testimony to the epic struggle that occurred there almost
800 years ago.
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