| Teutonic Knights | |
 Icon | |
| The Near East | |
|---|---|
| Continent | Europe |
| Unique Units | Teutonic Skilled Knight |
| Technologies | Upgrade Military Create Paladin |
| Maps | Palestine Syria |
| Civilizations | |
Teutonic knight is a minor native in Imperial Empires: The Near East.
History[]
The Teutonic Knights (Ordo Teutonicus or "Orden der Brüder vom Deutschen Haus Sankt Mariens in Jerusalem" in german) existed in the baltic region from the time of the Crusades to the early 16th century, and their order is still in existence today. They were a religious order of monk-knights like the Knights Templar or the Knights Hospitaller.
They were recruited among the nobles of the Holy Roman Empire in central Europe to conquer the lands of the pagan natives of prussia and the baltic states for the pope, with most members serving the order for a certain amount of time before leaving the order again.
They were usually very well-trained in hand-to-hand combat, but they also were proficient as heavy cavalry. As their game counterpart suggests, they often wore a lot of armor, which stemmed from the nature of combat in Europe at the time, which gave the heavily armored fighters a distinctive advantage over their mostly tribal enemies. Although they saw action in the middle-east their main focus remained in the colonisation of the eastern european provinces, where their rule expanded until they were defeated by the unified Poland-Lithuania in the battle of Tannenberg in 1410, which marked the beginning of their decline.
Rumors of the Knights Templar abounded by the end of the Crusade, some being that they found and kept secret great treasures, or that they had recovered the Shroud of Turin, and other such stories.