This is a very condensed summary of an article by Dmitri Byeloussov, on
http://rus-imperia.ru
I nearly fell off my chair upon reading Byeloussov’s stunning revelation, supported by abundant references from the Middle Ages to present-day scholars.
We know that the Catholic papacy instigated crusades in the Near East, which were not devoid of ulterior motives cloaked in religious motifs. Some of us know that one such crusade against the ‘infidels’ was actually deployed against Constantinople, headquarters of the ‘other branch’ of Christendom and, more importantly for the papacy, a major and wealthy center of international trade and politics.
But there were also certain other crusades, information about which is meticulously kept under wraps in the west - four crusades over close to two centuries, aimed at the lands inhabited in northern Europe… by Slavic people.
One pope was especially zealous in the matter - Gregory IX (1145-1241).
-He urged crusaders in 1232 to march on Novgorod.
-In 1236 he announced a crusade against the pagans of eastern Baltic lands, Russians and other Slavic nations.
-In 1237 a papal bulla called upon Sweden’s archbishop to organize a crusade in the same region against the Em, Karelians and Russians, all very united in resisting against Catholic expansion, and thus seen by Rome as ‘enemies of the cross’.
-An envoy specially commissioned by pope Gregory organized a meeting in 1238 between the Danish king Valdemar II and the head of the Teutonic order, to form a coalition against Russian Estonia. It was agreed that one third of the Russian lands seized would go to the Teutonic order, and the rest to the Danish king.
‘Crusades’ were at core aimed at conquest and annihilation under the guise of Christianization. Against the Slavs as against the Muslim ‘infidels’, it is abundantly clear that ‘religion’ and the whipped up fanaticism of rank-and-file crusaders against ‘enemies of the cross’ were the tool par excellence to acquire territory, in this case in certain highly desirable lands of the north-western Slavs and their allied tribes. Crusaders were promised land as a reward for destruction and murder. So much for Christian values.
The crusade motif against the Slavs, and especially the Russians, would continue in various forms over the centuries, all the way to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 - witness the fact that his army was actually less than 50% French - the rest being German, Polish, Austrian, Croatian, Dutch, as well as south-European and even Arab. This was not a war between the two countries of France and Russia.
WWII also qualifies as a ‘crusade’! Pope Pius XI as early as February of 1930 called upon all Christians of Europe to unite and launch a crusade against the young Soviet Union. Hitler’s attacks of 1941 involved not only German soldiers - the Wehrmacht included over two million soldiers from fifteen European nations, mainly volunteers (as befits the crusader profile).
But let’s return to the middle ages.
Pope Eugene III (1145-1153) produced a bulla in 1147 approving a crusade against the Baltic Slavs, openly promising excellent lands to the crusaders as their reward. Over some thirty years, the Slavs under their heroic king Niklot, who would be the last to reign in that area (died in 1160), fought several attacking waves of assorted Germans, Danes and Saxons, from 1147 to the most intense phase in the period 1160-68.
Eventually the crusaders would attack the island of Ruyan, the spiritual center of the pagan Baltic Slavs and the center of their maritime control of the Baltic sea. The holy city of Arkona hosted the main shrine, and was also the site where shrine warriors trained, men considered to be holy and dedicated to the warrior arts for life. These constituted a small but powerful standing army of 300 knights on white war horses. Such an association of shrine and expert martial warriors existed nowhere else in the western world. (See my previous post on the martial Russian tradition that exists to this day).
Arkona stood by a sheer white cliff that held enormous Nature-spirit power for the Slavs. I should add that its name ‘white stone Alatyr’ and its mystical potency would remain alive in Russian folklore through the centuries.
Throughout the attacks and counter-attacks of the 1950s, none of the sides marked any decisive victories. But with the death of king Niklot in 1160 the morale of the Slavs faltered. Ruyan would finally be defeated in 1168. All of the territories it governed, and its maritime dominance of the Baltic sea, were lost to the western ‘crusaders’. Twelve churches were built on the island, and by 1405 the last woman who spoke a Slavic tongue died. This protracted ‘crusade’ removed the Slavic nations of the area, and turned their lands over to the conquerors.
Remarkably, an earthquake (a strange occurrence, given that the Baltic zone is not prone to such events) shook the island in 1308, whereby the old city and the whole shrine disappeared into the sea. It is said that the Russian nation will resurrect when Arkona recovers the old toppled deity Sventovit. Is this what motivated some Polish neo-pagans in 1997 to erect a wooden statue of the four-faced deity at the edge of the island?
Several crusading episodes aimed at lands east of the Baltic, towards the region of Novgorod, a rich trading city. What would be the ‘Northern crusade’ officially began in 1193 with pope Celestinus III’s call for forceful Christianization of all pagans in that area. It went on up to 1230.
In all the above crusades, the Slavs were largely killed off, to be replaced with colonizing contingents of north-western Europeans (Germans, Danes…). The ancient Nature-based pagan culture was completely obliterated.
Byeloussov states that four ‘crusades’ annihilated the flourishing Slavic people of those regions.
A fifth and final ‘crusade’ followed, biting deeper into Russian territory, but this one was not to be won by the ‘crusaders’.
The fateful period of 1232-1242, with its many attacks and counter-attacks, brought forth the famous but considerably distorted (by western/westernized history) figure of Alexandr Nevsky, a major hero of Russian history. Nevsky’s army was 30-50% smaller than that of his opponents. The decisive event in this crusade was the ‘Battle of Ice’ in April of 1242 on frozen lake Chudsky, which ended in victory for the Russians.
Such a victory was actually an impossibility, considering the depleted and demoralized state of Nevsky’s army. But the impossible occurred, due to a circumstance studiously kept secret in official historiography, but revealed by the historian-ethnologist-archeologist Lev Gumiliov (a major proponent of Eurasianism in the mid-twentieth century).
Nevsky was supported in his war by none other than the dreaded Tataro-Mongols, those reputedly infamous hordes of invaders, pillagers and murderers who even reached into Europe after their campaigns across Asia (including Russia).
This interesting ‘detail’ requires some unpacking, for how could it be that fierce Mongols would come to the rescue of Nevsky’s Russians?
For one thing, historians have heavily distorted the ‘Mongol’ reality, first of all with the frightening false name ‘Tataro-Mongols’. The actual name was Mogols, and the Mogol army included many Russians. The Mogols were the descendants of Gengis Khan and his people, and were rather less barbarian than their ‘Mongol’ reputation made them out to be. Note that the name ‘Mogol’ also applies to the dynasty that ruled over India (16th to 18th centuries) - including the very great emperor Akbar whose unifying reign was a high point in the history and art of that country - under the slightly modified title of ‘Moghul’. In particular, under Akbar, the esoteric tenets of both Hinduism and Muslim-Sufism were found to be highly convergent, and mutual respect for all religions was fostered to a point never regained since.
There is iconography, as well as references in old chronicles (Marco Polo and others) to show that the ‘Mongols’ did not look ‘Mongoloid’ at all, but rather Slavic including blue/green/grey eyes and blond or ginger hair, the men sporting the kind of abundant facial hair seen mostly on, well, Russian faces.
Back to our crusade now. The Mogols and the Russians had a mutual defense agreement, based on the understanding that the aggressors were from the west, those Europeans lusting after the lands to the east. This is exactly the opposite of the assertions of official history about Asian hordes keen to dominate the west. In fact both Russians and Mogols clearly perceived the threat to their culture, lands and way of life that came from the greedy west and its deceitful religion. The Mogols’ tribal assembly of 1235 decided to send a large contingent of warriors to push back the Catholic aggressors, under the leadership of several princes descended from Gengis. This contingent doubled or tripled the ranks of Nevsky’s army.
On the western side, most of the battles in this crusade were fought by the very numerous army of Hungary (at the time a large kingdom).
By the time the Mogol reinforcements arrived, it took all of two months (such were their warrior skills and efficiency) for the joint Russian-Mogol army to get rid of the invaders, at considerable cost to the latter both in lives lost (including lives of high-ranking prelates), and in humiliated greedy pride. After which, Khan Baty, the leader of the Mogol warriors, sent notification to all European kings and princes, to the German Holy Roman emperor and to the pope, demanding that they pay obeisance to the Mogol empire. The German Holy Roman emperor Friedrich II, playing humble, replied to the effect that he could serve as the Khan’s falconer.
If this alliance of Russians and Mo(n)gols sounds far-fetched, it is actually corroborated by countless references in Russian folklore, mainly in the grassroots version of history contained in ‘bylini’ - a word with no equivalent in English, meaning ‘what was in the past’ rather than the more abstract idea of ‘history’. In these chronicles of the grassroots, there is virtually no reference to the ‘Mo(n)gols’ from the east as the terrifying hordes alleged by official history - but there are very frequent mentions of the western enemy. In other words, the common sense of down-to-earth people clearly named what they feared the most, the danger to their culture that originated in the west. This makes for a stunning contrast to the distorted official Russian history, formalized (to the western standard) by high-ranking German intellectuals busy westernizing the culture of the Tzarist empire. For the latter, evil necessarily came galloping with those hordes from the pagan east.
That official history remained largely unquestioned in the Soviet era. Only in the past couple of decades has it been challenged by a growing crew of unbiased, mostly very scholarly, researchers respectful of what the archival and ethnographical material actually says.
With this foray into the theme of ‘crusades’, we see that medieval Russian history stripped of its falsifications at the hands of clergy and foreign historians begins to look extremely different from its distorted versions known to Russians and to foreign researchers.
It reveals a consistent pattern otherwise occulted by official narratives - a very old antagonism between Russia/the eastern Slavs and the west. Seen in this light, it is erroneous to view the ongoing conflict in the region of the Ukraine as a local war between Slavs. The present Russian leadership has been stating more and more clearly that the conflict is between Russia and the west, and is nothing new.
The present crusade against the Russians has simply lost the veneer of ‘Christianization’ replaced by varieties of virtue signaling. The latest news has the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for the Russian president accused of war crimes. Another variation of ‘danger from the west’…
The crusades we know nothing about
This new information coming to the light is one of many,, I always felt that the ancient Russia is going to reclaim its promised land. I am trying to recover my own Teutonic crusade past around the Southern Spain with the Moors, there is not much truth around it,,,, I truely believe that there are many horrible crusader truths coming to light,,, we are in for a dna and spiritual cosmic ride,,,, and it’s about time !!!!!!! if we are to find peace. Many blessings to those Truth Seekers. Margaret Schaar.
I would also like to add more to this Crusader story,,, I am so aware that Mary, mother of Jesus has been used as Patron of so many Crusader groups, hence,,, the sacred feminine has been used and abused over and over to empower these sick religious powers,,, so much has to be healed, there are layers upon layers of it. Margaret Schaar.