The Order of the Teutonic Knights fought perhaps the most successful of all the crusades along the shores of the eastern Baltic creating a ‘Knights kingdom’ and laying the ground work for the future Prussian state, founding over one hundred towns and over one thousand villages. This monumental achievement would endure for over seven hundred years, three hundred years longer than the so called ‘New World’ has been in existence. One British historian has noted that the Order’s ‘settlement of Prussia was the outstanding colonial achievement of the Middle Ages’ and went on to add ‘It is this uniformity of law and administration, co-coordinating foreign policy, internal government, church affairs, trade and industry which gives substance to the claim that Prussia was the first modern state.

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