The times were indeed full of violence, cruelty, and crime.  The annals abound with terrible and shameful records, bloody and desolating wars, and individual cases of oppression, injustice, and cruelty.  Now a grand master is assassinated in his chapel during vespers; now a judge is proved to have received bribes, and to have induced a suitor to sacrifice the honor of his wife as the price of a favorable decision.  Wealth and power led to luxury and sensuality, the weaker were oppressed, noble and bishop alike showing themselves proud and tyrannical.  There are often two contradictory accounts of the same transaction, and it is impossible to decide where the fault really was, when there seems so little to choose between the conduct of either side.

The conclusion seems forced upon us that human nature was in those days much the same as it is now, and that riches and irresponsible authority scarcely ever fail to lead to pride and to selfish and oppressive treatment of inferiors.  When we gaze upon the magnificent cathedrals that were rising all over Europe at the bidding of the great of those times, we are filled with admiration, and disposed to imagine that piety and a high standard of religious life must have prevailed; but a closer acquaintance with historical facts dissipates the illusion, and we find that then as now good and evil were mingled.

The history of the order for the next century presents little of interest.  In 1388 two of the knights repaired to England by order of the grand master, to make commercial arrangements with that country, which had been rendered necessary by the changes introduced into the trade of Europe by the creation of the Hanseatic League.  A second commercial treaty between the King of England and the order was made in 1409.

The order had now reached the summit of its greatness.  Besides large possessions in Germany, Italy, and other countries, its sovereignty extended from the Oder to the Gulf of Finland.  This country was both wealthy and populous.  Prussia is said to have contained fifty-five large fortified cities, forty-eight fortresses, and nineteen thousand and eight towns and villages.  The population of the larger cities must have been considerable, for we are told that in 1352 the plague carried off thirteen thousand persons in Dantzic, four thousand in Thorn, six thousand at Elbing, and eight thousand at Koenigsberg.  One authority reckons the population of Prussia at this time at two million one hundred and forty thousand eight hundred.  The greater part of these were German immigrants, since the original inhabitants had either perished in the war or retired to Lithuania.

Historians who were either members of the order or favorably disposed toward it, are loud in their praise of the wisdom and generosity of its government; while others accuse its members and heads of pride, tyranny, luxury, and cruel exactions.

In 1410 the Teutonic order received a most crushing defeat at Tannenberg from the King of Poland, assisted by bodies of Russians, Lithuanians, and Tartars.  The grand master, Ulric de Jungingen, was slain, with several hundred knights and many thousand soldiers.