The Artushof in Danzig, here described by the English traveller Peter Mundy who passed through the city in 1640, served as the political and ceremonial meeting place for the St George merchant brotherhood, whose members in Teutonic times had martially excelled in crusades against the Baltic pagan tribes. At the turn of the fifteenth century, the merchants of Danzig, most of German or Flemish origin, had secured dominant positions in the city's economy and in the council. These medieval connotations of knighthood changed their meaning, however, in the same measure as the alienation between the burghers and their Teutonic masters intensified, before Danzig switched allegiance to the Polish crown and shouldered the main burden of the war against the Order.