If the Catholics were coming for my pagan ass, I’d be tempted to do myself in too. That’s what 4,000 Lithuanians did in 1336 when a large force of Teutonic Knights was headed their way to murder and/or enslave them for daring to not be followers of Jesus.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: February 25, 1336--
It was called the Lithuanian Crusade, and it lasted decades, because converting and massacring infidels is difficult, time-consuming work. And if they didn’t convert, well, St. Bernard of Clairvaux said in the twelfth century that “Killing an infidel makes an honor to a Christian, because it glorifies the Christ.” Meanwhile, Jesus is all “You-fucking-what-when?”
After the “Pray to our god, dammit!” at sword point had been going on for half a century, the people in Pilėnai, a hill fort in Lithuania, had a pretty good idea that they were going to be in for a bad day when they saw 6,000 bloodthirsty Teutonic Knights come knocking on February 25, 1336. And you thought Jehovah’s Witnesses waking your hungover ass up early on a Saturday was bad.
The details of what happened are limited, because everyone fucking died, and stories of a “valiant defense” have grown in the telling. But these defenders weren’t soldiers. They were mostly regular non-Christian folks who just wanted to be left the fuck alone. But the Word of the Lord would not be denied by anything other than death, so they chose death. And it was a better death than what those who refused to convert had in store. Heretics were burned at the stake.
The Teutons were looking for prisoners to enslave as well as to loot the city, and the Lithuanians denied them both, setting all their property aflame and engaging in mass self-slaughter after their hasty efforts at a defense of the fort proved futile. One story is that an old woman killed a hundred (willing) people with an axe before taking her own life. The resident duke also killed many (also willing) people with his sword, including his wife, before killing himself.
In an effort to be balanced, it’s not like the Lithuanians never did anything bad. They’d been known to raid and pillage the Holy Roman Empire and weren’t exactly nice to the captives they took. It’s basically another example about how humans have always been fucking horrible to each other since way back when some hairy smelly buff dude bashed the brains out of his rivals with a wildebeest femur, declaring himself Penis Numero Uno of the cave and getting all the Daryl Hannah he desired.
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The only thing that makes me wish god or any of his rape-magic babies were real, is knowing the look of unadulterated terror on all the "christian" faces when they hear, on a loop, "You-fucking-what-when?!", as the movie of their life plays in the background, is about to be followed up with all the fire and brimstone they sanctimoniously wished upon others just trying to live their best lives.
To be a fly on the wall... (assuming there are flies in the judgement lobby, or wherever this will happen)
And of course the Catholic hierarchy decided that Bernard of Clairvaux was a saint. Because nothing says "sainthood" to that organization like making others suffer.