Battle of Grunwald (1410): Poland-Lithuania Defeats the Teutons

The Battle of Grunwald, fought on 15 July 1410 in Prussia, was one of the largest battles of medieval Europe. The combined army of Poland and Lithuania under King Wladyslaw II Jagiello and Grand Duke Vytautas defeated the Teutonic Knights, killing their Grand Master, Ulrich von Jungingen, and most of their leaders. The victory broke the military power of the crusading Order and became a lasting symbol of national pride in Poland and Lithuania.

Background: crusaders on the Baltic

The Teutonic Order was a German military religious order founded during the crusades. From the 1230s it conquered the pagan Prussians and built a powerful state on the south-eastern Baltic coast, ruled from the great castle of Marienburg (now Malbork). For more than a century its knights also raided pagan Lithuania, attracting volunteers from all over western Europe.

The Union of Krewo of 1385 changed the situation. Lithuania’s ruler Jogaila married Queen Jadwiga, became king of Poland as Wladyslaw II Jagiello and accepted Catholic baptism for his people. The Order lost its main justification for war, but it continued to dispute the Polish-Lithuanian claim that Lithuania was now Christian.

The main point of conflict was Samogitia, a region in north-western Lithuania that separated the Order’s lands in Prussia from those in Livonia. The Order had gained it by treaty, but in 1409 the Samogitians rebelled with support from Vytautas. When Poland made clear it would back Lithuania, Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen declared war on 6 August 1409.

After some fighting in 1409, a truce arbitrated by King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia lasted until 24 June 1410. Both sides used it to recruit soldiers, gather supplies and seek allies. The Order hired mercenaries from across the Holy Roman Empire, while Sigismund of Hungary, who had signed an alliance with the Order, threatened Poland from the south but did not intervene in force. Jagiello and Vytautas planned a bold joint invasion aimed directly at Marienburg.

In late June the Polish army crossed the Vistula at Czerwinsk on a pontoon bridge that had been built in secret upstream and floated down the river. There it joined Vytautas’s Lithuanian and Ruthenian forces, which included a contingent of Tatars. Mercenaries and volunteers from Bohemia and Moravia also took part. The combined army then marched north into Prussia.

The armies

The Polish-Lithuanian army was the larger. Modern historians commonly estimate it at roughly 27,000-39,000 men, with the Teutonic army at roughly 20,000-27,000. The Order’s force included its own knight-brothers, numbering only a few hundred, together with Prussian vassals, mercenaries and western “guests” who had come to fight with the Order.

The Polish army was organised into banners, units of mounted troops under the flags of lands, nobles and the king. Our main source, the chronicle of Jan Dlugosz, lists 50 Polish banners and 40 Lithuanian ones. Dlugosz wrote decades later, but his father fought in the battle and he drew on eyewitness accounts.

Course of the battle

On the morning of 15 July the armies faced each other across fields near the villages of Grunwald, Tannenberg (now Stebark) and Ludwigsdorf (now Lodwigowo). The Teutonic army had arrived first and waited in battle order. Jagiello delayed, hearing Mass while the Order’s troops stood in the summer heat.

According to Dlugosz, the Order then sent two heralds with two unsheathed swords, an insulting invitation to come out and fight. The “Grunwald swords” became famous in Polish memory; they were kept among the royal treasures in Krakow for centuries but have since been lost.

The battle opened around midday. Vytautas’s Lithuanian and Tatar cavalry on the right wing attacked first. After about an hour of hard fighting, much of the Lithuanian wing withdrew from the field, pursued by part of the Teutonic army. Historians still debate whether this was a planned feigned retreat, a tactic familiar from steppe warfare, or a real collapse. Three Smolensk banners held their ground and protected the Polish flank.

In the centre and on the left, the Polish knights fought the Teutonic main force. At one point the great banner of Krakow fell, but it was quickly recovered. Lithuanian troops then returned to the field. Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen led his reserves in a final charge, aiming at the king himself; a German knight reached Jagiello but was struck down by the royal secretary, Zbigniew Olesnicki.

The Teutonic army was encircled. Ulrich von Jungingen was killed, and the Order’s camp was stormed. Fighting and pursuit continued into the evening. Many of the Order’s soldiers died in the camp or in the surrounding woods, and the allied army remained on the battlefield for three days, burying the dead and gathering prisoners and loot. The bodies of the Grand Master and senior officers were returned to Marienburg for burial.

Key people

Wladyslaw II Jagiello (c. 1352/1362-1434), born Jogaila, king of Poland, commanded the allied army. Contemporaries noted his caution and piety; later critics blamed him for not pressing on quickly after the victory.

Vytautas (c. 1350-1430), grand duke of Lithuania, was the more experienced field commander and led the fighting on the right wing.

Ulrich von Jungingen (1360-1410) had been Grand Master since 1407 and pursued a more aggressive policy towards Poland than his predecessors. He died in the battle.

Zawisza the Black (died 1428), a Polish knight famed across Europe for his skill in tournaments, fought in the battle and became a model of knightly honour in Polish tradition.

Heinrich von Plauen (c. 1370-1429), a commander who did not fight at Grunwald, saved Marienburg after the battle and became the next Grand Master.

Consequences

Losses on the Teutonic side were catastrophic. Most of the Order’s senior officers died, along with about 200 of the 250-270 knight-brothers present, and thousands of others. About fifty captured banners were hung in Wawel Cathedral in Krakow; their descriptions survive in a manuscript known as Banderia Prutenorum.

The allies reached Marienburg on 26 July 1410 but could not take it. They lifted the siege on 19 September. The First Peace of Thorn, signed on 1 February 1411, was modest: Samogitia passed to Lithuania for the lifetimes of Jagiello and Vytautas, Poland regained the Dobrzyn Land, and the Order paid a large indemnity.

The real damage was long term. The war debts forced the Order to raise taxes, which alienated its towns and nobles. In 1454 they rebelled and turned to Poland, starting the Thirteen Years’ War. The Second Peace of Thorn in 1466 gave western Prussia to Poland and made the Order’s remaining state a Polish fief.

Legacy

Grunwald became a central symbol of Polish and Lithuanian national identity, especially in the nineteenth century when both nations were under foreign rule after the partitions of Poland. Jan Matejko’s enormous painting of 1878 and Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel The Knights of the Cross (1900) fixed the battle in popular imagination. In 1910 the pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski funded a monument in Krakow for the 500th anniversary; it was destroyed by the German occupiers in 1939 and rebuilt in 1976.

In Germany, the defeat was remembered as Tannenberg. When German forces defeated a Russian army nearby in August 1914, the victory was named the Battle of Tannenberg, partly as symbolic revenge for 1410. In Lithuania the battle is known as Zalgiris, a name later taken by sports clubs, including the well-known basketball team of Kaunas. During the Second World War, a Polish military decoration, the Order of the Cross of Grunwald, was created in 1943 and remained in use in post-war Poland. Today a large re-enactment of the battle takes place on the site each July. It draws thousands of participants and spectators, and a museum stands on the battlefield.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Grunwald destroyed the Teutonic Order. Fact: the Order survived, held Marienburg and lost relatively little land in 1411; its decline took decades.
• Myth: the battle was a clash of Slavs against Germans. Fact: both armies were mixed, including Germans, Czechs, Ruthenians, Tatars and western knights; national readings came much later.
• Myth: Jan Zizka, the later Hussite leader, certainly fought at Grunwald. Fact: this is a widespread tradition, but evidence for it is weak.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1409, May: Samogitia rebels against the Teutonic Order with Lithuanian support.
• 1409, 6 August: Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen declares war on Poland.
• 1410, late June-early July: the Polish army crosses the Vistula at Czerwinsk and joins the Lithuanians.
• 1410, 15 July: Battle of Grunwald; Ulrich von Jungingen is killed.
• 1410, 26 July-19 September: the unsuccessful siege of Marienburg.
• 1411, 1 February: the First Peace of Thorn ends the war.
• 1466, 19 October: the Second Peace of Thorn makes the Order a Polish vassal.
• 1910, 15 July: the Grunwald Monument is unveiled in Krakow.

Why it matters

Grunwald shifted the balance of power in north-eastern Europe from the Teutonic Order to Poland-Lithuania, which became one of the continent’s great powers. It also showed that the Polish-Lithuanian union could work, and it remains one of the most celebrated victories in the history of both nations.