Each Prussian clan chooses a leader as the uprising spreads.
The Sambians are led by Glande, the Natangians by the German-educated Herkus Monte, the Bartians by Diwanus, the Warmians by Glappe, and the Pogesanians by Auktume; the Pomesanians, the westernmost of the Prussian clans, do not joint the uprising.
The uprising is also supported by Skalmantas, leader of the Sudovians.
However, there is no one leader to coordinate efforts of these different forces.
The Prussians besiege the many castles that the Knights have built.
Inferior to the Western Europeans in siege tactics and machinery, the Prussians rely on siege forts, built around the castle, to cut the supplies to the garrisons.
The Teutonic Knights cannot raise large armies to deliver supplies to the starving garrisons and smaller castles begin to fall.
These the Prussians usually destroy, manning just a few captured castles, notably one in Heilsberg, because they lack technology to defend them and organization to provision and supply stationed garrisons.
The first reinforcement to the Teutonic forces arrives in early 1261, but is wiped out on January 21, 1261 by Herkus Monte in the Battle of Pokarwis, near present day Ushakovo.
On August 29, 1261, Jacob of Liège, who had negotiated the Treaty of Christburg after the first uprising, is elected as Pope Urban IV.
Having an inside’s knowledge of events in Prussia, Urban especially favors the Teutonic Knights: in three years of his papacy, he will issue twenty-two papal bulls calling for reinforcements.
However, the reinforcements will be slow to arrive as dukes of Poland and Germany are preoccupied with their own disputes and the Livonian Order is fighting the Semigallian uprising.
