High Middle Ages · Europe · Politics

1246

Prussian Confederation founded in Thorn

1246

Knights and town magistrates in the Teutonic order's lands formed a league to defend their privileges against the order's increasingly heavy hand. Over decades the confederation would grow into a formidable political force that eventually invited Polish intervention. The tensions between colonist towns and the military-monastic government prefigured the broader late-medieval conflict between urban autonomy and feudal authority across northern Europe.