It was effective per se, but it had a lot of bullshit laws.

like for example prohibiting civvies from fishing.

You end up relying almost entirely on people taking vows to replace knights

yeah you had the Grosse freier and kleine freier

Instead of having a new knight some 18-21 years after you fuck your wife

they would let loose the little knight during their border raids which is the best they could do.

Along the river Neman.

So once you take some heavy losses of knights, you have lost a lot of elite troops with combat experience, and the only way to replace them is to have someone decide he wants to be poor and never have sex

Soviet history books portray them as blitzkrieg era krauts, which is bullshit. the tech on both sides were pretty much equal.

Probably identified them with Nazis

Yeah, that was the idea.
first recorded usage of gunpowder in europe: Battle of Crecy 1346. First recorded usage of gunpowder in GDL: Siege of Georgenburg, 1382

If you ever see the old russian film about Alexander Nevsky, the kraut helmets have hands on the top as their ornaments, and the actors held them when not wearing in such a way, that they would mimick sieg heiling.

Tannenberg lost them 8,000 knights. That's worse than Agincourt which devastated the French nobility. If France couldn't recover even having 10 kids each, then that's certainly a kick in the nuts to a monastic order.

I'm familiar with it but haven't watched it

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5u7tN3v6zuQ/Ut4Mp1fcOLI/AAAAAAAAXE8/MzkhawAjSmU/s1600/Nevsky+4.png

the correct name for the 1410 battle is Grunwald.

as there was a WW1 engagement in the same area too.

that is referred as Tannenberg

Durbe, another famous battle cost Livonians 150 knights. Knights alone. now add 10 retainers to them.

each.

I remember that name from Kingdom Come Deliverance

funny thing, Hussites declared Vytautas to be the king of Czechia.

I'd rather lose 150 than 8,000

You can at least hire mercenaries to replace 150

or use local auxilliaries.

You lose 8,000 monastic knights you're done

You ain't coming back from that

but still, at the time Livonian order, was pretty much fucked, so that battle was a killing blow to them

they never recovered from that.

They did tried to send reinforcements to the teutons centuries later during the iirc 13 years war between Poland and Teutons, but the reinforcement force was massacred in Samogitia, because ofc they were.

as the Livonian Brothers of the Sword were a small order, mainly created to protect the Hansa Union merchants.

spreading the word of Christ was secondary objective to them.

and according to the texts we have, they showed less faggotry and douchebaggery than Teutons.

Alson not only the rank and file knights were killed in Grunwald @Ragnarok , but pretty much their whole entire leadership.

Only a single Komtur survived.

and managed to defend Marienburg, or Malbork if you're polish.

Well I mean you can move people up if need be. But a knight is something extremely hard to replace. Equipment alone was expensive.

but then again, the united GDL and Polish army that besieged it wasn't a siege army, as in they had no siege engineers

And when the bulk of your army is based on feudal levy... you can't get a knight from that. A farmer can't do that shit

the plan was "ok we won, hey I know let's go besiege their capital" and people just rolled with it.

A komtur can be replaced with another senior knight with administrative experience.