Albert headed the armed forces that forcibly converted the pagan indigenous population of the eastern Baltic region to Christianity as a result of the Northern Crusades.

The patent was granted on 28 March 1199, and in the beginning of spring 1200 he embarked for Livonia with a fleet of 23 vessels and more than 1,500 armed crusaders.

In 1200, Bishop Albert led a crusade in Livonia, providing the starting point to create an ecclesiastical State.

These rights led him to create an annual summer expedition from Lübeck to Livonia called the "perpetual crusade".

[2] Together with merchants from the Baltic Sea island of Gotland, Albert founded Riga in 1201,[3] where a small community of Hanseatic traders from Lübeck held a tentative trading encampment.

[1] He successfully converted many Livs under their leader Caupo, offering them protection against neighboring Lithuanian and Estonian tribes; Albert also subjugated Latvian principalities of Koknese, Jersika and Tālava later on.