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The second volume of Osprey’s look at castles of the Teutonic Knights deals with Livonia, and actually covers activities before the Knights got involved.

Namely the stone castle of Uexkull is built around 1185 to support the first bishop of the area. The Livionian Brothers of the Sword are founded in 1204, and eventually dismantled and absorbed into the Teutonic Order in 1237, shortly after they got involved in Prussia.

The general history is fairly detailed for the small space available, and runs most of the book. As can be expected from Osprey, there is a good color map showing the competing political claims over the region of Livonia, and the locations of all the castles (generally a belt from Semgallia to the river Aa).

We get a color plate of Uexkull, and one of Fellin while still a timber construction. Ronneburg gets a two-page spread, with some cut away views, and showing an underground main entrance that I wish they’d talked about. One of existing restored places is a later artillery tower addition to Treiden that has a good color photograph and a cutaway illustration plate. Riga castle gets a decent color plate (used for the cover) that nicely shows the typical exterior features of a well-developed castle, but doesn’t give as much room to some of the landscape around a port fortification as I’d strictly like. And finally, there’s a color plate of Arensburg in a winter siege, and a plate of Wenden being bombarded by the Russians in 1577.

This volume has a larger number of plans for the various castles. Presumably, this was of necessity as fewer of them still exist to be photographed, but I really want both, so I fault the first book for too few plans, while I can’t really fault them for a lack of pictures of things that don’t exist. Once again, the photographs are in good shape, and both the color and black and white ones are clear and easy to read. The one partial exception is of the ruins of Ascheraden, of which an older photograph is used, as the shown ruins are now under the Daugava (part also still survives.

On the other hand, one reconstruction is Araisu, which is a wooden fort in the middle of a lake, which is used to provide just a bit more information on wooden fortresses of the area, along with a photograph of a model wooden wall from a museum. So that end gets a bit more attention.

There’s also three models of castles photographed, one of which is particularly nice. (Wenden castle; there’s also two photographs of parts of the actual castle ruins.)

For a companion book to the first volume, it does feel a little off, simply because the emphasis has changed a little with more plans given, but I think that’s an overall plus. Finally, there’s a catalog of twenty-one sites, giving their current (2004) status should you get a chance to visit them.