Malbork Castle

Founded at Acre in 1191, the Teutonic Order lost that last major Crusader stronghold in 1291 and moved its headquarters to Venice, then into Prussia. The castle on the Nogat went up after the conquest of Old Prussia of about 1222–1274, to hold the country down once the Order had crushed the Great Prussian Uprising in 1274. Timber was felled and brick stockpiled from 1278, and the first commandery castle rose from about 1280 under Commander Heinrich von Wilnowe.

Two towers carried the early defence, the gdanisko thrown out beyond the walls to the south-west as lookout over the new town and final point of retreat, the Klesza tower holding the opposite corner. When the Old Town was founded to the south in 1286, its walls were joined to the castle's into one defensive system.

The conquest of Gdańsk and Eastern Pomerania in 1308 shifted the Order's weight north-west, and its administrative centre moved to Marienburg from Elbing. In 1309 Grand Master Siegfried von Feuchtwangen transferred his headquarters from Venice to the Prussian part of the monastic state, to this site on the Nogat in the Vistula delta. Quartering the brethren who followed him meant expansion after expansion, until the castle was three linked fortresses — High, Middle and Lower — divided by dry moats and towers, its outer walls enclosing 21 hectares, four times the ground within Windsor Castle, and holding some 3,000 brothers in arms.

The allies invaded Prussia in July 1410 meaning to take Marienburg, and the Order stood in their way at Grunwald on 15 July. The defeat left most of the Teutonic leadership dead or captured, and the victors then spent three days on the battlefield. That was time enough for Heinrich von Plauen, Komtur of Schwetz, who had not fought at Grunwald and held some three thousand men in reserve there, to reach Marienburg and take charge of its defence; whether he moved on Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen's pre-battle instructions or on his own initiative to fill the void is not clear. Hohenstein, Osterode and Christburg gave up without resistance as the allied army came on at about fifteen kilometres a day — a slowness modern historians count among the great Polish–Lithuanian mistakes of the war, and which the Polish historian Paweł Jasienica suggested might have been deliberate, to leave the Order humbled but not destroyed, though no primary source settles it.

The main force arrived on 26 July. The day before, Plauen had the town outside the walls burned, denying the besiegers shelter and clearing the ground in front of the castle. What followed was not pressed hard. Jagiełło, confident Prussia had already fallen, began handing out land among his nobles and sent troops off to pick up small castles left without garrisons until only eight remained in Teutonic hands, and the defenders were left free to communicate: envoys reached Sigismund of Hungary and Wenceslaus, King of the Romans, who lent money for mercenaries and promised Bohemian and Moravian reinforcements by the end of September, while the Livonian Order sent five hundred men as soon as its truce with Lithuania ran out. The besiegers had prepared for a capitulation, not a siege — short of ammunition, low in morale and struck by dysentery, with the nobles wanting home for the harvest and the mercenaries wanting their pay. Vytautas's Lithuanians pulled out first, and the siege was lifted on 19 September; before leaving, Jagiełło threw up a stronghold at Stuhm to the south to keep the pressure on.

The Knights took their fortresses back through the autumn until only Thorn, Nessau, Rehden and Strasburg were left in Polish hands, though Jagiełło beat them again at Koronowo on 10 October. Plauen was elected Grand Master in November on his standing as the man who saved Marienburg. He wanted to fight on and was pushed by his advisers into negotiation instead: the Peace of Thorn of 1 February 1411 cost the Order only minimal territory and is reckoned a diplomatic victory for it — the siege and the treaty together a disappointing end to Grunwald.

Chronicles record that during a later siege, in the summer of 1411, a traitor inside hung a red flag from the Summer Refectory window to mark for the besiegers the single pillar carrying its vault; the eighty-kilogram ball missed by six centimetres, and a fragment is still lodged in the wall above the fireplace. That siege wrecked the Wróbla tower and the western wings of the Middle Castle.

Plauen answered in earth and brick: a new eastern line, the Plauen Rampart, was raised between 1411 and 1414 and extended between 1441 and 1449.

The next attempt came from inside Prussia. The Prussian Confederation had asked Emperor Frederick III to mediate its quarrel with the Order in 1452; he banned the Confederation instead on 5 December 1453 and ordered it to obey. Its Secret Council sent a formal act of disobedience to the Grand Master on 4 February 1454, the rebellion began two days later, and within weeks almost all Prussia except Marienburg, Stuhm and Konitz was clear of Teutonic rule, most of the captured Ordensburg castles pulled down at once. Grand Master Ludwig von Erlichshausen took refuge in Marienburg and sent to the Order's allies across Europe for help.

On 27 February 1454 the Poles and their Danzig allies drew a perimeter around the castle with siege equipment, artillery and several thousand men. The knights would not be shut in: they made constant sorties, and at least once broke the besiegers' lines outright, taking guns, supply trains and about three hundred prisoners. The Poles regrouped outside the walls and pressed on under orders to prosecute the siege vigorously.

It was undone eighty kilometres away. On 14 September a relief force of no more than fifteen thousand under Rudolf von Sagan, the Count von Henneberg and Henry von Lauterstein came unseen on the Polish entrenchments at Konitz and broke them, leaving over three thousand dead on the field and carrying off Casimir's entire train. The news reached the siege works before Marienburg as an epidemic broke out there, and the priests told the Prussian troops the sickness was retribution for their disobedience to the Order; they abandoned the lines in the night, leaving baggage, equipment and arms behind, and fled to Prussian Holland and Culm. The Polish garrisons left exposed surrendered at Stuhm, Saalfeld, Liebemühl and Osterode, and their prisoners went into Marienburg's dungeons, the bodies of those who died there thrown into the river. Within the year Casimir brought a fresh army across the Vistula, put at 150,000 men, and the war turned back his way.

What could not be stormed was bought. By 1456 the Order was in severe financial distress and its Bohemian mercenaries long unpaid. Ulrich Czerwonka, the Czech commander holding the castle in pledge against the arrears, agreed to sell and withdraw for 190,000 florins — some 660 kilograms of gold — raised in Danzig by Stibor of Poniec, and Casimir IV Jagiellon entered in triumph on 7 June 1457. The town's mayor Bartholomäus Blume held out three more years until the Poles put him to death in 1460. From 1466 it was the seat of the Royal Prussian authorities and the Commonwealth's principal arsenal in the north.

On 17 July 1626, in the war for the mouth of the Vistula, Gustavus Adolphus brought 7,500 men against it. The deputy starosta Wojciech Pęczławski had 300; the mayor let the Swedes into the town, but the garrison held until 19 July, when the attackers forced the outer bailey from the east. The defenders capitulated on terms and marched out to Grudziądz on 20 July, though Pęczławski was condemned to death in his absence for the loss. The Swedes raised eleven earth bastions and a further line in 1629 that Hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski failed to storm; Polish troops returned only under the truce of 1635. Gustav Otto Stenbock besieged the castle again on 12 February 1656 during the Deluge; it surrendered on 9 March and the Swedes held it until the Peace of Oliva in 1660.

Between the two Swedish occupations the castle nearly burned. Salutes fired for Corpus Christi on 26 May 1644 set the roofs alight over all four wings of the High Castle, over the castle church and the gdanisko; the cloister canopies were damaged and the baroque helm of the tower went up with the clock on it. Gerard Denhoff, appointed steward of Malbork by Władysław IV, repaired it between 1647 and 1649 and rearmed it heavily, with sixty-six guns. When Stenbock came in 1656 the defence was led by the voivode Ludwik Wejher and, after his death, by Jakub Wejher.

The Polish garrison marched out on 12 September 1772 after the First Partition, and the Prussians took possession the next day. From 1774 the High Castle became barracks: almost all the Gothic vaulting was demolished, the Great Refectory became a riding school and the Grand Masters' Palace a textile factory. Demolition was on the table: David Gilly surveyed it for the Prussian Royal Office of Works in 1794 to advise on its use or removal, but his son Friedrich's engravings, published between 1799 and 1803, made the Prussian public rediscover it instead. The army used it as a hospital and arsenal through the Napoleonic Wars; Theodor von Schön began restoring it from 1816–17.

Under Hitler it drew annual Hitler Youth pilgrimages and was the blueprint for the Third Reich's Order Castles. In the fighting of 1945 more than half of it was destroyed, including the east end of the church and the eight-metre Madonna of about 1340 that stood on its façade. The town passed to Poland that year, a fire in 1959 did further damage, and the Castle Museum was founded in 1961. Reconstruction has run since 1962, the church finished at last in April 2016.