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I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and

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conscientious objector, I'm a former libertarian who

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now sits comfortably on the left. Hi,

0:53

I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and

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recovering lobbyist. But today I'm an

0:58

unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats

1:00

to democracy. And I'm producing. Well

1:27

I mean if it does come to ITV as a series

1:29

it's already got a title because in Russian it's known as

1:31

the Massacre on the Ice, which I think would be a

1:33

great sequel to Dancing on Ice. And it's

1:36

also a very fair description of the

1:38

moment that the Russian hero, Prince Alexander

1:40

Nevsky's army descended on their enemy. And

1:43

the battle had begun at sunrise when one

1:45

of Nevsky's sentries spotted the approach of the

1:47

Teutonic Knights. We'll get onto that. What happened

1:49

next is not entirely clear because there are

1:51

lots of contradictory sources and chronicles, but some

1:54

sources suggest that Nevsky's army lay in wait

1:56

and ambush the enemy flanks, others that they first

1:58

engage the invading force off the ground. the

2:00

ice with a flurry of arrows and then

2:02

released hidden cavalry, again onto their flanks. In

2:04

any case, their flanks were pinned in, the

2:06

enemy were forced across the frozen lake. When

2:09

Nefsky's forces really set about them, the Chronicle,

2:11

the life of Alexander Nefsky, describes it thusly,

2:13

it was an unprecedentedly fierce battle. The crack

2:15

of bulking spears, the sounds of clashing swords

2:17

and axes filled the air. Blood soon covered

2:19

the battlefield and red streams began to flow

2:22

over the ice. The ice could not be

2:24

seen for it was covered with a weight

2:26

of blood. Yes, I mean basically

2:28

the too long don't read moral here

2:30

is don't fight Russians on a frozen

2:32

lake because they are going to win.

2:35

But the time of year, here we

2:37

are in April, is crucial in

2:39

this story because yeah, it's spring but

2:41

it's not yet summer. i.e. the rivers

2:44

are still frozen over, the paths are

2:46

still accessible, you can get over streams

2:48

and lakes but it's no

2:50

longer winter either, it is bearable to move

2:52

men around the Russian countryside without too many

2:55

of them dying just from the elements. But

2:58

we'll get to all that. Let's first,

3:00

as Rebecca parked, describe

3:02

who the German Teutonic Knights

3:04

were. Their full title was the

3:06

Order of Brothers of the German House of St Mary

3:08

in Jerusalem. They were the

3:10

German equivalents of the Knights Templar.

3:13

They established Prussia and they fancied

3:15

a piece of Novgorod which was

3:17

the principality over which Alexander Nefsky

3:20

was ruler. Yeah, this incursion into

3:22

Russia was one of a series of

3:24

what were called the Northern Crusades and

3:26

the main target were the Baltic Kingdom,

3:28

Lithuania, Latvia etc who were still largely

3:30

pagan. In fact the Teutonic Knights embarking

3:32

on these so-called Crusades, sometimes called Summer

3:34

Warriors because this was basically something a

3:36

German noble could do in the holidays

3:38

unlike making the Arjus Journey to the

3:40

Middle East to combat the heathens there.

3:43

Go have your blood run across the ice, what

3:45

a great holiday that would be. Lads

3:48

on tour. But

3:50

hold on, pagans, you said they

3:52

were Orthodox Christians. So

3:56

the Teutonic Order, the Orthodox Christians of Russia

3:58

were no better than pagans. pagans or

4:00

the muslims in the middle east, in fact

4:03

they were almost worse because they were heretics

4:05

rather than merely ignorance. They weren't people who

4:07

just needed to be shown the word of

4:09

Jesus Christ, they had already seen it and

4:11

they turned it into something different and that

4:13

was even worse if you like, being a

4:15

pagan. And of course the orthodox christians in

4:17

Russia felt the same way, contemporary accounts refer

4:19

to these invaders as godless germans. But

4:22

the Teutonic Order by this stage

4:24

was spread very thin because they

4:26

had actually taken on what remained

4:28

of another order called the Sword

4:30

Brethren in a sort of mergers

4:32

and acquisitions kind of a fashion

4:34

and that led them with this

4:36

really broad territory that they were

4:38

trying to defend along a very

4:40

lengthy border stretching from the Polish

4:42

frontier to Lake Pypus in Russia.

4:44

And this really set the stage

4:46

for the conflict between the Teutonic

4:48

Knights and then the quite

4:50

long suffering people of Russia who

4:52

were already being buffeted from the other

4:55

direction by the Mongols. Yeah so

4:57

when the Teutonic Order invaded Novgorod in the autumn

4:59

of 1240 they occupied

5:01

several cities with their force which was

5:03

made up of German knights, the former

5:05

sword brethren of Latvia, several hundred professional

5:07

soldiers from Germany and Denmark and about

5:09

a thousand Estonian foot soldiers whose status

5:11

is a little bit ambivalent, they possibly

5:13

were conscripted into being there. But Nevsky

5:15

wasn't actually there when this happened because

5:17

the aristocracy had forced him into exile

5:19

so at this point he was hurriedly

5:21

recalled and asked to assemble an army.

5:24

It numbered around 6,000 in the end

5:26

so they did outnumber the invaders but

5:28

in order to keep the heroic

5:30

elements alive Russian accounts have tended

5:32

to emphasise them as a ragtag

5:34

army, god fearing, patriotic peasants ready

5:36

to lay down their lives for

5:38

the heroic Prince Alexander Nevsky and

5:40

the church. Nevsky and his brother

5:42

Andre were at the head of the army

5:45

and they had already driven the Teutonic occupied

5:47

out of the city of Skov at this

5:49

point when they sort of massed at Lake

5:51

Pypus in an attempt to draw the enemy

5:53

out and finally confront them on the ice

5:55

or possibly actually just on the bit

5:57

before the ice. frosty

6:00

ground. Yeah, because one of the accounts

6:02

that I saw which makes sense is

6:05

that the tactic was exhaust

6:07

the enemy, be defensive,

6:10

get them really tired, but of course you

6:12

know the territory better and you've got more

6:14

men, then seemingly retreat but

6:16

actually drag the enemy to the shore,

6:19

then you can face the attacking enemy as

6:21

it stumbles to cross the ice. Yeah,

6:24

the kind of entwining of military and religious

6:26

pride encapsulated in this battle has made it

6:29

loom far larger in the Russian imagination than

6:31

the actual action would warrant. Yeah, it's one

6:33

of the battles that form the legacy of

6:35

Alexander Nevsky as a Russian hero, although Russia

6:38

as a state didn't exist at the time.

6:40

You know, he'd guided the country through this

6:42

troubled period, first driving up Swedish invaders, managing

6:44

to keep the Mongols at Bell and then

6:46

defending the Orthodox Church. He began to be

6:49

venerated immediately after his death and he was

6:51

canonised as an Orthodox saint in 1547. His

6:55

relics have attracted pilgrims for centuries and

6:57

there was of course also the movie

6:59

Alexander Nevsky by Sergei Eisenstein released in

7:01

1938. His

7:04

final half hour depicts the battle on

7:06

Lake Pippus. It was a not so

7:08

subtle allegory for Nazi Germany. Commissioned

7:11

by Stalin personally, that film. Yeah,

7:13

and appropriately for the Stalinist era, it

7:15

really minimises the role of religion on

7:17

Nevsky's side. It portrays him more as

7:19

almost like a folk hero. They really

7:21

minimise his status as descendant of the

7:23

Orthodox Church and play up the evil

7:25

Catholic side, the German bishop in the

7:27

film actually where they might have decorated with

7:29

swastikos. It's not the most subtle allegory.

7:32

This is where we get a lot of the imagery as

7:34

old as trapped beneath the ice and dying. But Eisenstein

7:36

said in interviews that he actually got

7:39

his imagery for that from Paradise Lost,

7:41

which is incredible when you consider how tautemic it is

7:43

for Russians when they think

7:45

of this incident. And you know, it's

7:48

not surprising that they play down the religious

7:50

war because the religious war, as we've said

7:52

before, when we talk about Christians fighting each

7:54

other, it's actually so thin, isn't it? When

7:56

you're actually talking about the theology of what

7:58

they're fighting about, it's... Should our

8:00

priests have beards? Do we want our

8:02

churches to have benches? Shall we make

8:04

the sign of the cross with three

8:06

fingers or five? That's what hundreds of

8:08

people are dying for! But

8:11

of course it's really about

8:13

political power, it's not about theology at all,

8:15

it's about do we want to be governed

8:17

from Rome. Yeah I mean Alexander himself rode

8:20

home in triumph with a bunch of money

8:22

and lots of horses and armour and plenty

8:24

of prisoners as well. But at this stage

8:27

you know he was kind of pondering his

8:29

future, even in triumph because even though

8:31

yes he'd had this major victory

8:33

over the other version of Christianity,

8:35

the Mongols remained an

8:37

incredible threat to the east and

8:40

Alexander really spent the rest of

8:42

his days trying to keep a

8:44

piece of sorts with the Mongols

8:46

just to preserve Novgorod. As for

8:48

the Teutonic order, the knights just

8:50

basically were like yeah whatever, let's

8:52

keep crusading and continued to find

8:54

new enemies to fight. They were

8:57

regarded as having a sort of

8:59

unrestrained arrogance even despite this

9:01

defeat at Lake Peipus which some

9:03

people have said shows their

9:05

sort of broad hubris and others have

9:07

said displays the fact that

9:09

actually this wasn't maybe as big a battle

9:11

as the later Russian propaganda likes to suggest.

9:14

Although that might have been part of the

9:16

political calculation of Nevsky as well, you

9:18

know we we can call it a massacre but actually we're

9:20

going to let them go over the hill again, which he did,

9:23

he let a lot of them ride off because

9:25

he wanted a lasting piece, they didn't come and have

9:27

another krakat in Novgorod again. Yeah exactly

9:29

and there are definitely reasons why

9:31

you don't want to poke that

9:33

particular bear and you know but

9:35

for the Teutonic order they didn't

9:38

seem to learn very much you

9:40

know thousands of knights would be

9:42

killed at battles that they instigated

9:44

in Poland and in Lithuania and

9:47

the Teutonic order from those battles

9:49

never really totally recovered its former

9:51

glory. They didn't understand really when

9:54

they were beaten. Yeah

9:57

and also they didn't know how to quit when they

9:59

had christianized them. This ended the

10:01

order's attempts to destroy the Orthodox Church

10:03

and forcibly convert the Slavic Christians to

10:05

Catholicism. From that point onwards,

10:07

they focused on Christianizing the holdout pagan states of Europe.

10:10

But the last one was Lithuania, which formally

10:12

adopted Christianity in 1387. And

10:15

you might think this would be a perfect moment to say,

10:17

job done, freeze frame, what did the Teutonic Knights go on

10:19

to do afterwards? But they didn't. They carried

10:21

on, you know, until they finally bit off more than

10:23

they could do by taking on the Kingdom of Poland

10:25

and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Again,

10:28

both Christian states by this point. And

10:30

they were defeated at the Battle of Grunwald

10:32

in 1410. That was one of the largest

10:34

battles in the medieval era and finally destroyed

10:36

the order that probably should have destroyed itself several

10:38

decades before at that point. So to reiterate, don't

10:40

fight Russians on a frozen lake because they are

10:42

going to win. And

10:46

so another week of retrospecting ends.

10:49

But next week begins a day

10:51

early. And club retrospectors! Join

10:54

us now to get an exclusive episode every

10:56

Sunday. patreon.com

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