GalleryPalestine, however, was already occupied by the Templars and Hospitallers, so that the Teutonic Order, as it increased, made war not only in the East, but in various parts of Europe, especially in Germany and Lithuania, and was quite ready to unite with the Brethren of the Sword in forming a new Livonian branch of the Teutonic Knights, to be presided over by a Master, who was himself to be under the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order.
For many years this unholy alliance of the cross and sword continued, the knights burning whole villages that had relapsed into idolatry, and making out of free-born men the most wretched slaves. Meanwhile another power was growing up, known as the Hansa, or Hanseatic League, a commercial confederacy of towns, which combined to offer armed resistance to impediments to trade, whether from rapacious princes and robbers on land, or pirates on water. Among the towns which joined the league were the Russian Novgorod and the Livonian Dorpat; Revel also, and Riga—Riga from 1253 refusing to recognize the authority of the bishops and knights. Further sources of weakness to the orders were their luxury and internal dissensions.
The outward cause, however, of the collapse of the knightly régime was the advance of the Russian, Swedish, and Polish forces, who crossed the borders almost simultaneously. The only question for the Livlanders was to which of the intruders they should submit, and it ended in the knights purchasing peace, and the undisturbed possession of Kourland, as a fief of the Polish crown, by surrendering Esthonia to Sweden and Livonia to the Poles. But this brought not peace to Livonia; for Russians, Swedes, and Poles now met and fought on its soil, so that in 1629 Livonia also became a Swedish province, and so remained until, with Esthonia, it was given up, in 1721, to Peter the Great. Kourland was also swallowed up by the Muscovites, and thus came into existence as they now are, Kourland, Livonia, and Esthonia; which three, with the government of St. Petersburg, make up what are called the Baltic Provinces of Russia.
Into these provinces not one Englishman in fifty, I suppose, who travels to the Russian capital by rail dreams of turning aside. But why not? They are by far the most intellectual portions of Russia, as I have been frequently reminded in Siberia and other parts of the empire; for when, on meeting a more than commonly able officer or professional man, I have asked whence he hailed, the answer usually has been, “From the Baltic provinces.” Here an Englishman who speaks German may feel nearly as much at home as in Prussia or Switzerland, and may study the many curious questions connected with a Lettish and Esthonian peasantry living with a Teutonic aristocracy, and all governed by autocratic Russia. Regardless, however, of any such attraction, I had four times rushed headlong from the frontier to St. Petersburg, or vice versa; but on my last visit I turned aside to see something of the commerce of Riga, the University of Dorpat, and the antiquities of Revel, some account of which is placed before the reader in the following pages.
Leaving London on Tuesday morning, July 21st, with Mr. Herbert Allcroft, and proceeding by Cologne and Berlin, we reached the Russian frontier on Thursday afternoon, and very early next morning we were upon the confines of Kourland, the southernmost of the Baltic provinces, the total area of the four being about as large as that of England and Wales. Kourland is the smallest, and is hardly so large as Belgium. Its western end forms a seaboard for 150 miles, whilst eastward it is squeezed in like a wedge between the provinces of Vitebsk and Kovno. No mountain wall or range of heights breaks its surface, the highest spot being only 700 feet above the sea, whilst hundreds of small lakes and rivers water its broad, fruitful plains, stretching from the marshy banks of the Niemen to the southern slopes of the Lower Dvina, as the latter is called, to distinguish it from the Upper Dvina, that flows toward Archangel.
Except on the northern headland, and the narrow tongue we crossed by rail, corn fields are everywhere seen. Some of the dunes are wooded with fir, birch, and oak; but, for the most part, the pine forests have shrunk into small woods and
