The Livonian Crusade refers to the German and Danish conquest of medieval Livonia, the territory constituting modern Latvia and Estonia, during the Northern Crusades. The lands on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea were the last corners of Europe to be Christianized.
On 2 February 1207, in the territories conquered, an ecclesiastical state called Terra Mariana was established as a principality of the Holy Roman Empire, and proclaimed by pope Innocent III in 1215 as a subject of the Holy See.
After the success of the crusade, the German- and Danish-occupied territory was divided into six feudal principalities by William of Modena.
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“This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.”
—Harold Wilson, Lord Riveaulx (1916–1995)
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