page_title: Bartoszyce
section_title: Middle Ages
hierarchical_section_title: Bartoszyce / History / Middle Ages
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Bartoszyce - miasto w woj. warmińsko-mazurskim, w powiecie bartoszyckim
context_page_description: Bartoszyce is a town on the Łyna River in northeastern Poland, with 23,482 inhabitants. It is the capital of Bartoszyce County within the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship.
context_section_description: Around 1241 the Teutonic Knights (the monastic German Order) constructed a castle on the left shore of the Łyna River on the border between the Old Prussian regions of Natangia and Bartia. The castle was part of the district (Komturei) of Balga. It was first composed of stone houses, palisades, and earthworks and later built of bricks. 
  Besieged by the native Old Prussians for four years during an uprising beginning in 1260, the castle was destroyed in 1264. The Order rebuilt it shortly afterward, but it was besieged by another Baltic group, the Sudovians, in 1273. After the Old Prussian uprisings ended, the Knights rebuilt the Ordensburg out of stone from 1274–80. During the 14th and 15th centuries, the castle was managed by the Komtur (administrator) of Balga.
  Thereafter, a settlement developed near the castle on the right shore of the Alle River opposite the castle. First documented in 1326 under the name Rosenthal, it received town privileges from the Teutonic Grand Master Luther von Braunschweig in 1332. After that the name was changed to Bartenstein and the settlement of Rosenthal below the castle on the left shore of the river was relocated, as the left side had become too endangered by warfare. Poles settled in sizeable numbers in Bartenstein from the 14th to the 17th century. The town's Polish residents used the Polish names Bartoszyce and Barsztyn. The town's Teutonic Order administrator (German: Komtur), Henning Schindekopf of Balga, began construction of a wall around the town in 1353.
  During the Thirteen Years' War between the Prussian Confederation, allied with the Polish Crown, and the State of the Teutonic Order (1454–66), the town sided with Poland and the Confederation. The Teutonic castle was destroyed at the beginning of the war and was not rebuilt afterward. However, the residents of Bartenstein became reconciled with the Teutonic Knights in 1460. After the peace treaty signed in Toruń (German: Thorn) in 1466, the town came under Polish suzerainty as a fief, remaining part of the State of the Teutonic Order. To stabilize the Order's financial situation, the Order sold the ruined castle's farmyard and meadows to Wend von Eulenburg in 1469; the entire manor of Bartenstein was sold in 1513 to Heinrich Reuß von Plauen (not the Grand Master).
caption: Gothic Saint John the Evangelist church, built after 1332, and expanded 1360–80 and during the 15th century
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