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THE BALTIC PROBLEM
89
high religious ideals of that time. They had to give a
triple oath of lifelong obedience to their superiors and swear
to poverty and chastity. In their fortresses and castles
they lived an austere life of prayer, and waged battle
whenever they were called upon to fight. It was a hard task to
convert the Baltic pagans, and in the fifteenth century
crusades were preached in Northern Germany under the
auspices of Rome for the Christianising of the Baltic shores.
These efforts helped the Order of the Livonian
Sword-bearers to foster emigration from Germany and to become
a powerful State, which, however, had to defend itself
against insurrections and the growing weight of the
Mos-covian Tsars, Poland, and Sweden. The Order, under the
leadership of the Herrmeister Walter von Plettenberg,
inflicted many a defeat upon the Moscovians, but Ivan the
Terrible succeeded in devastating and subjugating the land.
The State of the Livonian Order was hard pressed on three
sides by the Moscovians, the Poles, and the Swedes, until
in 1561 the last Herrmeister, Gotthard Kettler, had to
surrender the Order, albeit securing for himself Courland as
Temporal Dukedom suzerain to the Crown of Poland under
the Kettler and, later, the Biron Dynasty. The last of
the Ivettlers married the niece of Peter the Great, Anna
Ivanovna, and died suddenly, or was murdered, soon after
the marriage ceremony, near Petrograd. His widow then
resided in Courland until she was called upon to ascend the
throne of Russia. During her time in Courland she had a
liaison with an adventurer Buren, or Biron, whose ancestors
hailed from Mecklenburg. This man was later made Duke
of Courland through the instrumentality of the Empress
Anna. He did not belong to the Baltic stock, and his
immoral career cannot, therefore, reflect as a discredit on
them.
The Livonian Order ceased to exist in 1561 ; Livonia
at first became a Polish province, thence, after a series of
fierce wars between Poland and Sweden, it passed into the
hands of the latter, and subsequently was lost to Russia by
Charles XII in the eighteenth century, after his disastrous
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