The Teutonic Knights began, like the other orders, in the Holy Land — a German field hospital raised at the siege of Acre around 1190 and made a military order by 1198, its brothers in white mantles marked with a black cross. But their crusade moved north. By the 1220s they had left the Levant for the Baltic, invited to make war on the pagan Prussians, and there they did what no other order managed: they conquered a country and kept it, ruling a church-run state of stone castles across Prussia. That empire of monk-knights lasted until a Polish-Lithuanian army broke it at Grunwald in 1410, killing the Grand Master and most of his command.

This flagbearer rides in the order's white, his surcoat and his horse's caparison worked with black and gold crosses, carrying a square banner quartered with crosses and gold crescents — a personal coat of arms rather than the order's plain black cross (and the crescent here is a Western heraldic charge, not an Eastern one). He belongs with the other great brotherhoods — set him beside the Templar and the Lazarene to muster the military orders, and with the German crusade of Emperor Barbarossa. His order was, after all, born at the siege of Acre that Richard the Lionheart won in 1191. In a diorama he heads a wedge of white-mantled knights, the black cross leading the charge.

Model: MK208 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set