Teutonic Knights (Teutonic Knights of the Hospital of the Blessed Virgin)

A military-religious order of knights that restricted membership to Germans. They were part of the original Hospitallers , but under Hermann von Salza they split from the main branch and founded their own order, taking on a very distinctive white cloak bearing a stark black cross on the left shoulder. Upon the fall of Acre in 1291 they retired to Venice where Emperor Frederick II commissioned them to convert the heathens in Prussia, Lithuania, and Estonia, becoming a very successful order headquartered in Marienburg from 1309-1509.