Background
Papal calls for renewed holy war at the end of the twelfth century inspired not only the disastrous Fourth Crusade that sacked Constantinople in 1204, but also a series of simultaneous "Northern Crusades" that are less fully covered in English-language popular history, but which were more successful in the long run. Before the crusades, the region of Livonia was a mixed outpost, a pagan society where merchants from the Hanseatic League encountered merchants of Novgorod, and where Germanic, Scandinavian, and Russian trade, culture, and cults all mingled. Scandinavian rulers and German military knightly orders led by the German Prince-Bishops conquered and resettled the Baltic world and drew it into the Western orbit.
Read more about this topic: Chronicle Of Henry Of Livonia
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