Teutonic Knights

The background of the following historical novel are the events which happend between the death of Jadwiga the Queen of Poland in 1399 and the battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg) in 1410. It is the great struggle between the Polish Kingdom and the Ordensstadt, or political state erected by the Teutonic Knights on the shores of the Baltic around the mouths of the Vistula and in the later province of East Russia in the fourteenth and early fiftennth centuries. The first well-known duke of the district located between the rivers Oder and Vistula was Mieszko I. He belonged to the line of the Piast, who continued to hold the power over this region , of varying borders until they died out with Casimir the Great in 1370.
Meanwhile the population crystallized into three main classes: the nobility (szlachta), the peasants, and the townpeople.The nobility was composed of magnates and small landowners. Side by side with them were the clergy, who usually administreted large properities bestowed upon the Church by dukes or other well-to-do nobelman, and constituted a privileged class. The peasants population consisted of freeholders and poor peasants. Tows were founded "under German law" presided over by wojt, or mayor, and governed by their own council, which promulgated statues or passed by-laws. The burghal population, mainly German, was composed of merchants (kupcy), craftsman (rzemieslnicy) organized in gilds (cechy), and laboures (robotnicy). A certain but not large, proportion were Jews, who had found asylum in Poland from the persecutions to which they were exposed elsewhere in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and whose priviliges were confirmed by Casimir the Great. They occupied themselves principally with petty shopkeeping and usury.It was this Casimir who was said to have "found Poland of wood and left it of stone." He built many castles and surrounded many towns with stone walls; erected the famous Market Hall (Sukiennice) at Cracow. Finally in 1364 in Cracow he founded the second university in Central Europe.

After his death the throne was hold by Lewis the Hungarian ,who cared far more for Hungary then for Poland, where he never resided, and then by his youngest daughter Jadwiga. Jadwiga was young, beautiful, and kind and her counsellors advised her to marry Ladislaw Jagiello who was at that time grand duke of Lithuania. Notwithstanding that she was already promissed to a Hapsburg duke. Reasons of the state prevailed the advantage of uniting the two important people, and the hope of bringing the last pogan folk in Europe to the Christian folk; and Jadwiga and Jagiello were married in 1386.

The Teutonic Knights, like the other two chivalric orders, the Templars and the Hospitallers, had been founded during the period of the Crusaders. Only thirty-five years after its first estabishment, the Tautonic Knights Order accepted an invitation from Conrad, Duke of Mazowia, to settle near the south-east of Baltic coast. This was in 1225 when Hermann von Salza was the Grand Master. Shortly after this, in 1237 the Teutonic Knights assimilated the Brethern of the Sword, a military order which had been established to "convert" the "Saracens" of Lithuania, Esthonia, and Courland. In 1291 the executive centre of the order was moved from Acre to Venice, and finally, in 1309, it was established at Marienburg(Malbork), on the Nogat, a tribulary of the Vistula about thirty miles from Danzig (Gdansk) !
For the next hundred years the Knights were engaged in almost continous warfere against the Lithuanians, whom they would most gladly have exterminated, as thay did the Prussians, for the sake of their territory. But the advancement of Germanism had long since come to be the main aim of the Teutonic Knights and the territorial aggrandizement of the anomalous monastic Ordensstaat was of far greater importance as an object of their policy than the spread of Christianity in the Baltic states. The great defeat inflicted on the Teutonic Order at Grunwald (Tannenberg) by the united Poles and Lithuanians on July 15 1410 was a severe blow to its power.

The Battle under The Tannenberg (by Henryk Sienkiewicz)

>>Polish armies came out of the forest and the thickets in battle array. In the front stood the so-called spearhead squadrons composed of the most formidable knights; behind it the main body; and behind that the footmen and mercenary folk. Between the companies opened two long lanes through which passed Zyndram of Maszkowice and Witold ; the latter without a helmet on his head, in shining armour, like an evil-boding star or wind-blown flame. The knights took deep breaths and sat more firmly in their saddles. The battle was about to begin.

Meanwhile the grand master looked at the royal armies which were comilig out of the forest. He looked long at their great force, at their wide-spread wings. like those of a gigantic bird, at the rainhow line of standards waving in the breeze, and suddenly his heart was constricted by sonic
unknown feeling of horror. Perhaps with the eye of his spirit he saw piles of corpses and rivers of blood. Though he feared not man, perhaps he now feared God, holding the scales of victory up
there in the high heavens. For the first time he thought what a dreadful day had dawned for the first time he felt what measureless responsibility he had taken on his shoulders. So his face paled, his lips quivered, and his eyes distilled abundant tears. The commander looked with amazement at their leader.
"What is the matter, lord ?" asked Count von Wende.
"It is indeed a fit moment for tears ! " exclaimed the ruthless Henry, commander of Czluchow.
And the grand commander, Kuno Lichtenstein puffed his check and said "I reprimand you openly, grand master, for now you should raise the hearts of the knights, not weaken them. In truth, we have never seen you so before."
But despite all the master's efforts tears fell continually on his black beard, as though someone else were weeping in him. At length he restrained himself somewhat, and looking sternly at the commanders, cried "To your companies !"
Then each hastened to his own, for he spoke with great authority while he stretched out his hand to his esquire and said: "Give me my helmet."
The hearts of the warriors in both armies were already beating lik hammers, but the trumpets had not yet given the signal for battle.

Suddenly the storm-wind rose. It roared in the forest, tore off thousands of leaves, fell on the field, caught dry blades of grass raised clouds of dust, and threw thm in the eyes of the Teutonic hosts. At the same moment the air was split by the still sound of horns, bugles, and whistles, and the whole Lithuanian wing detached itself like an enormous flock of birds aflight. They rode at once according to their custom at full gallop, their horses' necks out-stretched and ears laid back; and thus, brandishing their swords and javelins, advanced with a dreadful shout against the left wing of the Teutonic Knights. The grand master happened to be there. His emotion had now passed, and his eyes flashed sparks instead of dropping tears. When he saw the rushing mass of Lithuanian troops, he turned to Frederick Wallenrod, the leader on that flank, and said:
"Witold has advanced first. Now begin, you too, in God's name !"
And with a wave of his right hand he set fourteen companies of iron knights amove.
"Gott mit uns !"1 shouted Wallenrod.
The companies lowered their Iances and advanced at first at walking-pace. But as a rock rolled from a height falls with ever-increasing impetus so they : from a walk they increased to a trot, and from that to a gallop and went forward with the terrible, irresistible force of an avalanche, which must crush and wipe out everything that lies in its path. The earth groaned and bent beneath their feet.

The battle might at any moment extend and flare along the whole line, so the Polish companies began to sing the old battle hymn of Saint Wojciech (Adaihert). A hundred thousand iron-clad heads looked up to heaven, and from a hundred thousand breasts there issued one gigantic voice like thunder:

"Godes mother blessed .
Mary, famed by God himself
From thy Son, O gracious lady,
Mother stainless, mother only,
Gain us pardon for our Sins !
Kyrie eleison ! "

And straightway strength came into their bones, and their hearts prepared for death. There was measureless victorious force in those voices and in that hymn, as though in truth thunder had begun to roll in the sky. The lances quivered in the hands of the knights; their standards and pennons trembled; the air shook, the branches in the forest rocked, and the awakened echoes resounded in its depths and called, repeating to the lakes and meadows and to the whole earth far and wide:

" Gain us pardon for our Sins !
Kyrie eleison ! "

Echo repeated in answer : "Kylie eleison !" and meanwhile on the right wing tile battle already riged stubbornly and came ever nearer to the left. The clash of arms the squeals of horses, and the dredful shouts of men mingled with the hymn. But at times the shouts were not so loud, as though the men were short of breath, and in one of these pauses the thundering voices were to be heard yet again :

Adam, Adam, Godes yeoman,
Sitst with God in His high council;
Find a place for for us thy children
There where holy angels reign !
There is joy and there is love.
There the sight of the Creator,
Throned mid angels, without end.
Kyrie eleison ! "

And again echo bore the words "Kyrie eleison !", through the forest. The Shouts on the right wing grew still louder, but none could know or distinguish what was happening there, for Grand Master Ulrich, who was watching the battle from the height had just hurled twenty companies against the Poles.
But Zyndram of Maszkowice rode like a thunderbolt to the Polish spearhead, in which were the foremost knights, and pointing with his sword to approaching clouds of German, shouted so loud that the horses in the front rank actually recoiled on their haunches:

"At them ! Strike !"

So the knights advanced, leaning over their horses' neck with lances levelled. <<