Crusader Castles of the Teutonic Knights (2): The stone castles of Latvia and Estonia 1185–1560 by Stephen Turnbull
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I enjoyed this a bit more than the previous volume, mostly because Mr Turnbull had described the religious and organisatorial aspects of the Teutonic life and was able to input more about various episodes. Primarily, as the nature of the subject here is the Livonian chapter, these episodes concerned undertakings in the Northern Baltics but some were also relevant in light of the previous volume.
That said, there are things between the two titles which align very well and which don’t at all. For some reason, the dansk (sewage tower) are detailed on only one castle though they were so prominent in Prussia, and I feel the author could have explained why the Swordbrethern/Livonians did not build these. Similarly, there’re a few sentences which come word to word into this volume, such as that on the cogs (which are confusingly written as “cogge”).
Nevertheless, I would recommend this and potentially to more people than Volume 1: the interesting bits of information and stories included herein cover a wider field than the previous book.
