The battle took place on 15 July 1410. The Teutonic Knights gathered about 15-20 thousand troops, while King of Poland Władysław II Jagiełło and his brother, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Vytautas had about 30 thousand knights and warriors at their disposal. The advantage was on the Polish-Lithuanian side. While the Teutonic army stood in the heat in the open field, Jagiełło delayed the final fight and let his forces rest in the nearby forest.

The clash between the forces was planned as the decisive battle of the Great War between Poland and the Teutonic Order that took place between 1409 and 1411. 

During the beginning of their march Polish and Lithuanian forces had a very important task – to unite their troops before attacking the lands of the Order. The meeting spot was Płock, but the plan had a major obstacle – the Vistula River. 

Just at the time when King Władysław reached Czerwińsk with his troops, he witnessed the arrival of a special pontoon bridge, manufactured by one of his engineers – master Jarosław. Thanks to precise calculation of the marching pace he was able to place the bridge at the right time and coordinate the construction of the bridge. Thanks to that effort it took only 2 days for the Polish forces to get on the other bank of the river and meet Duke Vytautas army.

The united forces marched into Prussia where they met little resistance and sacked a town near the battleground, called Dąbrówno. The next day while Polish troops rested at the banks of Dąbrowa Wielka lake, the Teutonic army was already on the march to meet their enemies. 

Finally, on the 15th of July, the armies met in the field. Polish King wanted to make the Teutonic forces wait and tire in the sun, while his forces remained covered with dense woods. 

The Grand Master, or to be more precise, the heralds of Duke Casimir of Szczecin and King Sigismund Luxembourg of Hungary, who had officially declared war on Poland two days earlier, presented Jagiello and Vytautas with two naked swords. The Poles perceived this gesture as arrogant and started to prepare for battle. 

The battle started with a Lithuanian and Tatar forces attack that was repelled by the Order’s forces after an hour of fierce fighting. Then both Teutonic and allied forces clashed directly with the knights of the Polish Kingdom. 

The Grand Master repeated the charges of his knights three times. During one of them, the Teutonic Knights managed to knock down knight Marcin of Wrocimowic, who held the King’s banner of Cracow, which was recognised as the main flag of the Polish army. Despite this, the Poles did not throw themselves into flight, and the most famous knights mobilised themselves and recaptured the banner. 

Then banner was reclaimed and Poles counterattacked with even more determination. In the next hours, they won the battle killing all top officials of the Order including the Grand Master, Ulrich. All enemy banners were captured, and almost all of the Order’s elite and around 8,000 knights and others fighting on the enemy side were killed.

The battle started an era of Polish-Lithuanian domination in the region and the end of Teutonic Order expansion to the East. 

Here you can watch the full scene showing the battle from a Polish epic history movie “Krzyżacy” (Teutonic Knights) from 1960: 

The commemoration

A story worth telling is the history of the most famous memorials dedicated to the victory in the battle of Grunwald. 

The most important stood in Cracow, funded in 1910 by famous Polish musician Ignacy Jan Paderewski. The signature on the monument said: “To the glory of forefathers – To encouragement of the brothers.”

The ceremony of unveiling of the monument was attended by some 150,000 Poles, and honoured with speeches of many statesmen. 

The founder of the monument, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, said during the ceremony: 

“The work we are looking at was not born out of hatred. It was born out of a deep love of our Homeland, not only of its past greatness and present impotence but also of its bright, strong future. It was born out of love and gratitude to our ancestors, who did not go to the battlefield for loot or conquest, but who, in defence of a good and just cause, took up arms victoriously.”

Unfortunately, the monument was destroyed by the German army in November 1939 after conquering the Polish cultural capital. The occupation authorities were not willing to tolerate a symbol of Polish pride and German defeat. 

On 28 January 1945, a decision was made to reconstruct the monument. It was reconstructed in 1976 according to project by Marian Konieczny.

Another great example of the commemoration of the battle is the monument of King Jagiełło in New York’s Central Park. 

The monument was founded by the Polish diaspora in the US and was supposed to be placed in the Polish pavilion at the World Fair in New York and then to reach a new site in Poland, but because of the start of the World War 2, it was placed in the Central Park in New York instead. The author of the sculpture was Stanisław K. Ostrowski. Until today it remains one of the most important Polish memorials in the US. 

Cover photo: The Battle of Grunwald, the National Museum in Warsaw. Wikipedia, public domain

Tomasz Modrzejewski