The Knights, under the leadership of
Heinrich von Plotzke, agreed to aid Bogusza, and a force of 100 knights and 200 supporters, led by
Günther von Schwarzburg, arrived at the castle around August. While historians agree that the castle as well as the adjacent town were in the hands of the Teutonic Knights by late November 1308, the number of casualties and the extent of destruction is debated. Peter Oliver Loew writes that for a long time German historians accepted the version of events given by Teutonic Knights, and didn't accept a high number of people murdered, with the number given between 60 and 100 victims According to Peter Oliver Loew the exact numbers can never be established,
Ethnicity of the town's inhabitants According to
Peter Oliver Loew, there were German as well as Slavic inhabitants of the town. According to Śliwiński & Możejko (2017), prior to the massacre, most residents had come from the Northern German city of
Lübeck. Śliwiński & Możejko (2020) add that the majority of them originally hailed from
Westphalia,
Lower Saxony, and the
Rhineland and had previously settled in Lübeck before relocating to Gdańsk, while a minority were of Slavic (Pomeranian) origin. Loew (2024) writes that the townspeople who resisted the Teutonic Order were chiefly of German descent. According to
Kazimierz Jaśinski, the Knights captured the town with the help from some of the German burghers, who constituted a very small minority within the town at the time. According to
Stefan Maria Kuczyński, the German population only achieved the majority after local Polish population was murdered and a new settlement was built by Teutonic Knights.
Teutonic Knights entering the town According to
Błażej Śliwiński at the time of events, Gdańsk with surrounding settlements had around 2000 to 3000 inhabitants. The forces of the order had arrived in two columns: one re-inforced the Polish garrison in the castle, the other one marched against the town from the south and raised a siege. In the castle, conflict arose between the Teutonic and Polish knights, with the latter opposing a takeover by the former. According to
Halina Wątróbska, half of the town was promised to the Teutonic Order in return for aiding Bogusza's men. The Teutonic Knights then moved in, defeated the Brandenburgers and had the townspeople accept
Łokietek as their
suzerain. However, on 13 November they "took over the whole town, thereby killing everyone who defied their will."
Udo Arnold says that a dispute between the castle's garrison and the Teutonic knights arose when the Brandenburgers were about to leave. While the dispute was about the co-ordination of further action and unsettled payment, Arnold says that it was at the same time that "the order's policy changed from providing aid towards annexing Pomerelia and buying up existing legal claims," which was opposed by the population of Danzig. This was answered by the order on 13 November "by the uncompromising levelling of the greater part of the town."
Ulrich Nieß says that as a consequence of the appearance of Teutonic Order forces in the castle, the Brandenburgers left, and soon left also the initial Pomerelian and Kuyavian garrison of the castle after a dispute with the Teutonic Knights. The town, though still preferring Brandenburg rule, offered asylum to the garrison, and in relying on its Lübeck law charter refused to allow the Teutonic Knights to enter and to follow an order to lay down its fortifications. On 13 November, the order's forces with personal involvement of Plotzke forced their way into the town, though no larger battle took place. The order then held a tribunal in the town and ordered large-scale demolishments of its buildings.
Massacre records Soon after the takeover, on 19 June 1310, the Teutonic Knights faced charges that they had committed a massacre in a
bull issued by
pope Clement V: "Latest news were brought to my attention, that officials and brethren of the aforementioned
Teutonic order have hostilely intruded the lands of Our beloved son Wladislaw, duke of Cracow and Sandomierz, and in the town of Gdańsk killed more than ten thousand people with the sword, inflicting death on whining infants in cradles whom even the enemy of faith would have spared." The source of the allegation is unknown. The respective bull contained other charges against the Teutonic Order, resulting from a dispute between its Livonian branch and the citizens as well as the
archbishop of Riga,
Friedrich von Pernstein. According to Ulrich Nieß, von Pernstein was the likely the source of the allegation of the ten thousand massacred. During the inquisition, Moliano excommunicated the Teutonic Knights, but this was reversed in 1313. Under Władysław Łokietek and his successor
Casimir III the Great an additional two lawsuits were filed against the order at the curia, both aiming at the return of Pomerelia. The sites of investigation were
Inowrocław and
Brześć Kujawski in 1320/21 and
Warsaw in 1339. The judges were Domarat, bishop of Poznań, Janisław, archbishop of Gniezno and, Nikolaus (Mikolaj), abbot of Mogilno in the first case and Galhard of Chartres and Peter (Pierre) of Gervais in the second case. Witness and eyewitness reports collected during these cases include mentions of killings during the takeover of Danzig, referred to e.g. as
strage magna or
maxima (great (est) murder/bloodbath), while the Teutonic Order admitted the killing of 15 to 16 Pomerelian knights. In the 15th century, era of the
Polish-Teutonic Wars, medieval Polish chronicler
Jan Długosz in epic prose described the event as a slaughter of Polish nationals, regardless of condition, age or sex. Modern sources are divided as to the actual extent of the massacre though they all agree that mass killings did take place. Historian Matthew Kuefler states: "German and Polish historians in the twentieth century tended to have diverging [views] both on the question of whether
Pomerelia really "belonged" to Poland and also on the degree of ferocity of the order's conquest". The city of
Gdańsk states that "The Teutonic Knights, having captured the castle in 1308 butchered the population. Since then the event is known as the Gdańsk slaughter". In many Polish works, the takeover is referred to as "Gdańsk slaughter" (
rzeź Gdańska).
Norman Davies in
his extensive history of Poland, while not insisting on the number of 10,000 dead, says that the knights "drove Waldemar from the city, and calmly slaughtered its inhabitants", similar descriptions are presented also in some other English books with sections on Polish history.
Jerzy Lukowski in "A concise history of Poland" says that the knights massacred "Lokietek's men".
Błażej Śliwiński says that there was a bloodbath which cost an abundance of lives, though not 10,000, and that such massacres were common in medieval Europe., According to
Peter Oliver Loew, older German historiography was more inclined to trust the Knights' claims and argued that a number of 10,000 is virtually impossible for a medieval town. A number of 60 to 100 was regarded as reasonable. This view was shared by many Polish historians after World War II, however, Błażej Śliwiński's presented numerous pieces of evidence that what occurred was indeed a "bloodbath" with a very high number of victims, although not as high as 10,000, and more likely around 1000. Loew adds that from the source material available to historians, the definite number of casualties is impossible to establish. William Urban says that the number of 10,000 dead has been considered greater than the city's population at the time.
Gerard Labuda and
Marian Biskup (1993) write that the number of murdered inhabitants is not established, but that the victims of the massacre include at least several dozen notable knights and members of nobility as well as significant number of commoners and simple soldiers. Biskup in a later publication from 1993 writes that victims included defenders of the castle and burghers along with members of their families in addition to 100 murdered knights. According to
Maksymilian Grzegorz (1997), German historians tend to minimize the number of murdered victims of the Teutonic Knights, while Polish historians estimate the number at between at minimum 60 to several hundred.
Destruction of the town Historians are divided on whether the townspeople after the takeover had to demolish only the city walls or, in addition, at least part of the town's buildings. Based on recent archaeological findings, Loew says that this conflict is about to be decided in favor of the destruction thesis: "burn marks and clear evidence for planation of the terrain in the early 14th century prove its [the town's] destruction in the years of 1308/09 by the Teutonic Order." According to Ulrich Nieß, the destruction of the town was part of the order's policy of securing its lands from potential inner rivals. Nieß says that the destruction of the city walls was in line with the order's contemporary policy of not allowing their own foundations to be substantially fortified either, and that the refusal of the town to obey to the order's demand to level their walls led to a "policy of hardness" being implemented on the townspeople, who had to evacuate their houses which afterward were burned down. Nieß says that the procurator of the order had himself reported these proceedings to the pope, claiming the burghers evacuated and burned their houses voluntarily (which Nieß strongly denies). Nieß is also pointing out that in the subsequent capture of
Tczew (Dirschau) by the order, the townspeople similarly had to sign an agreement to evacuate their homes, though this was not put into effect. According to Loew, the archaeological evidence suggests that it took a couple of years before new streets and buildings were built on top of the flattened debris of the former buildings, though there probably were areas of the town which had remained unharmed. Referring to records of Danzig burghers taking residence in
Lübeck, Loew says it is likely that most of the former inhabitants left Danzig in 1308. == Aftermath ==