He maintained close relations with Poland because of the Turkish advance and the Polish contest with the Teutonic Knights.
He thought of going on the crusade to Barbary; but instead, in July 1390, went to serve with the Teutonic knights in Lithuania.
Like the knights of other orders, the Teutonic knights lived a semi-monastic life under the Augustinian rule; and in the same way they admitted priests and half-brothers (servientes) into their ranks.
The crusaders of northern Germany never went to the Holy Land at all; they were allowed the crusaders' privileges for attacking the Wends to the east of the Elbe - a fact which at once attests the cleavage between northern and southern Germany (intensified of late years by the war of investitures), and anticipates the age of the Teutonic knights and their long Crusade on the Baltic. The crusaders of the Low Countries and of England took the sea route, and attacked and captured Lisbon on their way, thus helping to found the kingdom of Portugal, and achieving the one real success which was gained by the Second Crusade.
On the 1 The Crusades in their course established a number of new states or kingdoms. The First Crusade established the kingdom of Jerusalem (I too); the Third, the kingdom of Cyprus (1195); the Fourth, the Latin empire of Constantinople (1204); while the long Crusade of the Teutonic knights on the coast of the Baltic led to the rise of a new state east of the Vistula.
