Gone Medieval - Grunwald: How Poland broke the Teutonic Knights

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

In July 1410, the formidable Teutonic Knights, rapacious crusaders clad in heavy plate armour, faced a massive Polish-Lithuanian alliance. After an insulting taunt involving two unsheathed swords, the Battle of Grunwald erupted into a bloody, day-long melee. Matt Lewis and Dr. Aleks Pluskowski to explore this epic medieval clash.MORETeutonic KnightsListen on AppleListen on SpotifyThe Last PagansListen on AppleListen on SpotifyGone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcastHistory Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original TV documentaries, with a new release every week, PLUS early access ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve in. into rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories big and small that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were. We've gone medieval.

It's high summer, July 1410. And in an open meadow deep in the Prussian countryside, thousands of fighting men stand abreast, melting under the heat of the morning sun. Hitted out in plate, cloth and mail, they're ready to indulge in the butchery. of war. Hearts, throb, heads, pound, beads of sweat weave through the folds of weathered faces. They're being made to wait. Across the grassy plain, their opponents were arrayed in martial splendour. Their standards bear the sign of the cross, but coloured charcoal black, the emblem of the Teutonic knights. For over 200 years, these rapacious crusaders have squeezed northern Europe dry. seizing land and coin to satiate their gluttonous territorial appetites,

all supposedly in the name of their benevolent god. And now they face the combined forces of another burgeoning Christian power, a union of two proud kingdoms, Poland and Lithuania, bound together in opposition to the cross-clad horsemen from the far west. The uneasy standoff is broken when two riders burst forth from the treasurer, burst forth from the Teutonic throne. Together, they carry two unsheathed swords. But this is not some lonely charge

or the breaking of nerve. Instead, it's a gift, an offering. The two swords are for His Majesty, King Wadiswav II of Poland, sent by Grandmaster Ulrich von Jungingen, and they're delivered with a sting. Delay less, fight more. The challenge is accepted. Soon the meadow erupts into chaos. Thousands of men collide in one of the largest and bloodiest battles of the Middle Ages.

By sunset, the Teutonic Order has been shattered. Its grandmaster lies dead. And the two swords, intended as an insult, have become trophies of victory. I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval. Today we're exploring the Battle of Group. Runevald, one of the medieval world's greatest military clashes and a battle whose legacy still resonates across Europe more than 600 years later. How did the Polish-Lithuanian alliance defeat one of medieval Europe's most formidable military powers? Why did this battle become such a defining moment in Polish and Lithuanian history? And what happened to those two legendary swords? To help us answer those questions, I'm joined by Dr. Alexander Puskovsky, Professor of medieval archaeology at the University of Reading,

an author of The Black Cross, a history of the Baltic Crusades. Welcome back to Gone Medieval, Alex. Thanks for having me back. It's great to have you back. We're going to talk today about the Battle of Groomwald, and this is largely the result of a conversation with someone I had at work

who wanted to know why we hadn't done one of the most important battles in Polish history, so hopefully you can explain why we should all have heard about the Battle of Groomvalt. To kick us off, can you just tell us kind of where and when are we when we talk about the Battle of Grunwald? Okay, so where we're in, what at the time would have been southern Prussia, what today is northern Poland, northeastern Poland,

not too far from the border between the Kingdom of Poland and the Teutonic Orders territory or state of Prussia. And the battle took place on the 15th of July in the year 14th. and lasted all day from morning till the late afternoon. Wow, which is quite a considerable length of time for a battle. Yeah, a long time, and you can imagine it would have been exhausting, massively exhausting, and actually that's one of the features of the battle. And we're going to get into lots of detail about why it happened, why it happened there,

and what happened on the day. But can you just also give us a sense of why this is considered so important, particularly in Poland, but I guess in a wider European context too? Yeah, so the battle is very well. one of the largest battles of the European Middle Ages, and we can argue one of the most consequential in terms of its symbolism, but also its later ramifications. I guess from a military perspective, it's a devastating defeat for the Teutonic Order and its allies. The Grandmaster and most of the Order's brethren who are present at the battle are killed. For Poland, it represents the defeat of this

powerful force and a high point in Polish-Lithuanian power. And I think we'll talk a bit more about that later on. In terms of European history, it really does mark the decline of one of medieval Europe's distinctive institutions, the Teutonic Order. It really is the beginning of the end. And conversely, the rise of Poland, Lithuania, as this major European force, what becomes the largest state in Europe. So it is really sort of epoch-making as a symbolic watershed. The battle itself is perhaps less immediately consequential, as we'll discuss. But it's more its symbolism and how it was later imagined and projected. Yeah, yeah.

And we're calling it the Battle of Grunval, but I have seen it given a couple of other names, Tannenberg and things like that. Is there a correct name for it? Is there a reason it has several different names? Yeah, so there's no... universally correct name. The preferred name depends on language and national traditions. Grunwald is the Polish name for the battle, and that itself is a German name that just means green forest. Actually, to make it a bit more confusing, it had a different name before that.

Briefly, it was referred to as Grunfeld Greenfield. But someone in the Royal Chancellery in Krakhof, the capital of Poland, either made a mistake or made a deliberate change, and it became quickly known as Grunwald. And then the first sources that really write about this, that we'll talk about in a bit, start using the word Grunvelt. So then this becomes popular, and then it gets adopted by 19th century Polish painters and writers. But it really does depend on what you're reading. And so the historians, the international historians, reading Polish literature, would start using this name, whereas the other name you refer to, Tannenberg, which is the German name, which basically means fir tree hill, which is a name that's given to a nearby village that

the name itself is later changed into Polish, into something else. But this then becomes part of a German tradition. So those reading, the German histories would then start using this name. And then we got a third name, Jalguilis, which is the Lithuanian name. And that, is just the Lithuanian version of Polish Grinveld. So it really depends what you read, but I would say Grunval probably is the most popular just because the polls have written the most about it, and we've got the big film from the 1960s that popularized the battle on the big screen. I think the only one to do so, actually. So that's why Grunval probably is the one that we all use, although in Germany, Tannenberg is still used. Yeah. And what kind of sources do we have?

for reconstructing the events leading up to the battle and the battle itself? Are we relying on chronicles? Do we have kind of letters? Do we have some archaeology from the battlefield, maybe? Yep. So we've got all of those things. The two main sources are Polish. We've got this so-called chronicle of the conflict, which is written by an eyewitness not long after the battle. We don't really know who he is, but someone high up in the Polish state. But only an abridged version of that survives in a 16th century copy. The most famous account was written by this person called Jan Dwargosh as part of his annals of the Kingdom of Poland.

Now, he was actually born five years after the battle, but his father had fought at the battle. He was a minor nobleman who served in the Krakow Regiment. And so Jan would have grown up in a household where the battle would have been treated as part of family memory. By the time he was writing, He was an important member of a royal court. He was a tutor to the Polish king's son. He was involved in diplomatic negotiations between the Teutonic order and the Polish crown. So he was writing many decades after the events, maybe speaking to very elderly eyewitnesses and obviously writing from a bias political viewpoint. He also produced this really colorful manuscript called the Bandaria Prutanorum, which just basically translates to Russian banners. He read that in 1448, and it's this beautifully illustrated inventory of a captured

banners of the Teutonic Order's Army that were taken as trophies back to Krakow and stored in the castle. So that gives us a nice detail commentary on the organization of the Orders Army. And then we've got a few German sources, a few chronicles, as you said, which are less detailed. There's something called the older Grandmasters Chronicle, which is basically a history of the Teutonic Order's Grandmasters, written again from the order's viewpoint. And the writers there really had to explain how such a disaster could have befallen in the institution that had this divine mandate. So they emphasized all sorts of things that you don't see in the Polish chronicles. You're right in saying that there's a lot of correspondence. There are letters within

the Teutonic Orders archives, but also letters to the papacy letters between different rulers, discussing or referring to the battle. And then we've got the archaeology, which really kicks off in the late 1950s as the museum on the supposed battlefield sites being built. The museum's opened in 1960 on the 550th anniversary of a battle. And the excavations focus on an area that later we know is the Teutonic orders camp, where they find mass graves, where we have a few hundred individuals excavated with signs of battle trauma, as well as pits of chard and burnt remains. There are disagreements about the exact location of a battlefield that's defined the archaeology. And these are disagreements between Polish scholars and German scholars about where exactly the

battlefield was. It was probably spread out over several places for reasons that will become clear a bit later on. And then we've got the first big metal detectoring survey, taking place in 2014. So the archaeology of battlefields, it's quite a late development. Initially, they don't find much because they're looking in the wrong place. Later on, in subsequent years, they find fragments of weapons, axes, armor, crossbow bolts, and that sort of shifts where people think the battle took place. And these have been happening sort of year and year out. They've been finding more arrowheads, more crossbow bolts, coins, bits of dress accessories, worn by the Teuton Accord of, for example, have inscriptions, Ave Maria, and things like this.

But actually, most of the armour and the weapons probably would have been collected at the time. And anything that was buried would have been dug up by farmers and recycled in subsequent centuries. So there's relatively little in terms of the archaeology. Yeah. It sounds like a battle that's fairly well served by the evidence, though. We've got a fairly strong range of sources that we can draw on. So we've talked a little bit about one side in this battle is the Teutonic Knights. I wonder if you can give us a kind of a potted history of why the Teutonic Knights have ended up here.

What is the Crusading Order doing in the northeast of Europe? Okay. So as you said, the Teutonic Order are a crusading order. They're a German-speaking Catholic military institution, and they've built their territorial state on the southern and eastern Baltic coast. And this took place over much of a 13th century. They were actually invited to the region by the Polish Duke of Mazovia, Conrad, in 1230, and joined or started to lead the Crusades against his neighbours, the pagan Prussians. They conquered the region. They then joined the Crusades in what became Livonia, so modern Estonia and Latvia,

from 1237. And so this is where they carved out their core Baltic territories. And once they'd conquered these, They focused their attention on a region that is part of Western Lithuania today called Samogisha, and then the region of Lithuania itself that became a Grand Duchy in the mid-13th century. And they so launched tons of attacks across their frontiers to try to conquer these last pagan regions. And these were part of their crusading mission. But we've got a second side to the hostility.

you may think, well, why did they get involved against Poland? In 1308, sorry, the Teutonic Order were invited by one of the Polish leading dukes to defend the city of Dainsk or Danzig in German against the Margraves of Brandenburg. And the order ended up for complicated reasons taking control of the city and then annexing the region. And so successive Polish kings always wanted to recover the city and its region. And at the time in the 14th century, this escalated into a full-blown war, relations deteriorated. To cut a long story short, a peace followed, and the Polish kings were not powerful enough really to challenge the order's rule throughout much of a 14th century, until they began to enter into an alliance with Lithuania.

and that really tipped the balance. So we've got kind of a century of rivalry of tension on that border between these two factions before we get to the Battle of Greenbelt. So on the other side then we've got the Kingdom of Poland and we've got the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. How have they come to be working together? So the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Yor Gaila, was looking for an alliance to bolster the defence of his realm. And he thought of various options, but the best. best one was to marry the Polish monarch. Incidentally, she was called King at the time,

but it's just a Polish term to emphasize her right to the throne. This was an individual called Yad Viga in exchange for agreeing to Christianize Lithuania, return all Polish lands. The Lithuanians are taken in formal wars. You've got to remember Poland, Lithuania were also rivals, politically speaking, and then attaching Lithuania to the crown of Poland. So this agreement was sort of developed in 1385. The following year in February, the Grand Duke converted to Catholicism, took the baptismal name of Wadiswaf, which is a popular royal name, particularly chosen in honor of his bride's great-grandfather, Wadiswaf the first. They married three days later. He was crowned the following month and became known as Wadiswaf, the second Yagewa. And Yagewa is basically the

Polish rendering of Yorgaela. And it's the word, it's the name that becomes most commonly associated with him as he then becomes joint ruler with his wife until her death, and then he becomes the sole ruler. So this is how Poland and Lithuania become united. And then after that, we've got essentially joint rulers. And by joint rulers, I mean we've got two separate rulers agreeing to rule together. We've got the Grand Dukes and the Polish kings, but eventually in the 16th century, this becomes merged into a single post

of a joint ruler of the Commonwealth for Lithuanian and Polish Commonwealth. The idea of having two rulers agreeing to rule a territory together seems like a bit of a recipe for disaster. Yes, there were definitely many tensions because the other big figure in Lithuania is Yorgaiela's cousin, who is the son of the former Grand Duke of Lithuania. And this individual's name is Vietelthus.

And he's a very interesting figure, a very popular figure in Lithuanian history, because he was involved in a civil war with his cousin, and he was supported by the Teutonic Order at various points. So various people were switching sides as Vytaeltax's, in Jorgayla struggled for command of Lithuania. But at the end, they resolve their differences, and both would in fact fight together against the order at Grunwald. So ultimately, there was a compromise,

and Yul Gaila agreed that Vitaltus could be Grand Duke of Lithuania, providing he acknowledged him as his superior ruler. So you've got then this dual structure that seems to work, but really does depend on the personalities involved, And of course, the Lithuanian nobility are not massively happy. They're fearing a loss of independence, a growing Polish dominion. And in fact, Polish influence does eventually grow, particularly in the 16th century, when both are merged into this single state.

So you're right, there would have been tensions. It was difficult. Yeah. And I guess there's that question as well of the conversion to Christianity. So, you're Geller, do we have any sense of how genuine that was? because I guess there's an issue here in that it creates this Polish-Lithuanian state, which bolsters the position of Lithuania politically by making this religious decision. But the other side of that also is it sort of removes the rationale for the crusading Teutonic Knights to be there if the population is named Christian.

And this creates a real legitimacy crisis for the order, because obviously they can't now legitimately attack a Christian state. That doesn't stop them, of course. and they basically say that the conversion is a sham, it's fake, and that Poland is heretical for helping pagans against a sacred crusading institution and against the church. And we can imagine that many knights continue to believe this, because the order continues its attacks against Lithuania, and many European knights continue to join its mini-crucades.

And it takes a while for people to accept actually, No, Lithuania is Christian and is under the protection of the papacy. It's joined the Christian club. So, especially after the defeat of a Teutonic order at Grinveld, it becomes really clear, well, they can't be defeated if they have this heavenly mandate. So people start to question it and the order start to lose this legitimacy in the eyes of European rulers and European nobility. But on the ground, as you said, we don't have this overnight conversion.

We never do in the history of Christianity. So this is quite a slow and gradual process, especially in the rural areas of Lithuania, where pagan practices continue for generations, for centuries in some cases, almost becoming like this creolized form of religion with Christianity. So in a way, the order was correct in saying that we don't have this instant, genuine conversion to Christianity. Politically, it was the astute thing to do. Yeah.

And I guess it's an act of kind of self-preservation on behalf of the Teutonic Order, really, isn't it? Because they've spent 200 years trying to convince these people to become Christians. And you would think they could take the win when they turn around and say, okay, we're Christians now. But actually, the Teutonic Order don't want to manage themselves into irrelevance. And so they're like, no, no, no, no, no. You need to be the right kind of Christians. Exactly. Yeah, they want to have a rationale for existing, or at least validity for maintaining their state and for their economic model.

you're right. It's the right kind of Christians which from the order's perspective is on their terms and under their rule. And of course then it becomes a big argument about who is better place to convert the Lithuanians and particularly this group in the West, the Samagishans. And eventually the polls are handed this responsibility by the papacy and the Teutonic Order are not very happy about this. So of course, this is a simmering issue that continues into the 15th century. Yeah. And we've had this kind of, you know, a century really of conflict between these two sides, during which it feels like very little has actually changed. No one really has the upper hand or is making vast amounts of progress during that time. Has something changed by the beginning of

the 15th century that means that something significant can happen now? What you have is the Teutonic Order finally getting their hands on Samogisha, this frontier region. And they take it essentially because of complicity from Lithuanian rulers, especially during the civil war between Yagayla and his cousin Vitaltus. So Samagisha is promised to the order, given to the order in various treaties, who build castles, establish themselves, and then face a series of uprisings. Now, these uprisings, these are local uprisings, are secret.

critically supported by the Lithuanian rule as a Lithuanian nobility and by the Poles, of course, and then the order retains the upper hand, manages to establish its control again. So you've got sort of a lot of what we can call real politic happening. And it's not until 1408 and really 1409 that you've got another big uprising. And then the Lithuanians come out openly in support of this, as do the polls. and then the Teutonic Order, led by the Grandmaster, basically have a preemptive strike against Poland in the summer of 1409. So that is really the beginning, the spark that starts the whole war that culminates in this big battle. Interesting. So it's kind of, it's a victory, or what might have felt like a victory for the Teutonic Order, that actually creates the circumstances that will drag it down.

It's that kind of Samagishan uprising and the reactions to it that ultimately lead us to the Groomvalt. Yes, that's right. And the Teutonic Order are not expecting a joint invasive force because then what subsequently happens. There is a brief peace treaty and then Poland and Lithuania take the initiative and invade the orders, Prussian lands, really under secret. And the order are not prepared. I mean, they're prepared for a conflict, but they anticipate this taking place in both Poland and Lithuania, and so they're not expecting a joint coalition force to face them, or one that is so incredibly organized. The sources talk about how the Polish ruler Yorgaela, Yorgaela, is incredibly well coordinated as a commander and manages to march his army incredibly effectively to meet the order's forces. So this challenge to the order's authority is somewhat unexpected.

So you're right in that sense. It does sort of backfire against the order. And as we get closer to the actual battle itself, how much do we know from the sources that we have about the composition of each army? I guess we imagine the Teutonic Knights, you know, in their armour and on their war horses as a kind of elite, heavy cavalry force. How accurate is that as a view of them? That is partially accurate.

it. The Ordiz Army numbers, maybe 16,000 men. Some historians favor higher figures, 18,000. We know that medieval sources are notoriously misleading, but we do know they're organized into what I call banners, as are the Poles, and they had 51 of these regiments. But the actual Teutonic knights themselves, so the brothers, are just a small elite force within this army, maybe only 250 them. So the rest includes what I call half-brothers and mainly the older subjects who are obliged to provide military service. This includes members of the indigenous Prussian nobility, town nobility, rural levies and guest knights, mostly from the Holy Roman Empire. So it's a composite army, but one that is commanded by the orders brethren and their higher officials.

And I think that's something our listeners will have heard before in terms of the Knights Templar, that they act as these kind of organizers, the focal points. There aren't huge numbers of them, but what they're very good at doing is instilling discipline and organising the rest of the army. That's right. And they were noted for their discipline, but also for their fighting prowess. You have to remember the order has been fighting for Lithuanians and the Samogishans for over a century.

They're battle-hardened. Okay, we have obviously multiple. generations of individuals, but many of their commanders spend time on the front line or moving between posts in Eastern Prussia on the frontier. So they know who they're up against and they even adopt some of their weaponry used by the Lithuanians and some of their tactics. So they are incredibly flexible. But they do have this reputation because of their investment in heavy cavalry as these heavy plate armoured knights. But they also invest a lot in crossbows and even in field artillery. In fact, there's some of the earliest European powers to do so.

So we know they have these bombards, these sort of early cannons and guns that they position before the main battle line. In the end, these don't have much effect. They end up firing two volleys, doesn't do very much. But nonetheless, they are investing in the latest technology. And what do we know about the Lithuanian and Polish forces in comparison? What are they consisting of? we think the Polish army numbered around 20,000 fighting men. We can savour of knightly status, knights, retainers, but equipped as heavy cavalry with some 6,000 wagons and they probably would have been accompanied by about 10,000 spare horses. So that's a big equine footprint. You can just imagine the size of the army and the convoy going, snaking through into southern

Prussia when they crossed the Vistula. They're organized also into these 51 banners, but these units probably would have been bigger than the orders, so a few hundred in each of these banners. Now, the Lithuanians had maybe between 10,000 and 14,000 men organized into 40 of these banners. The Lithuanian army was really interesting because it was actually quite a diverse, we can even say coalition force, because you have to remember Lithuania had lots of different ethnic groups within its bounds. So we have lots of regional groups that includes Ruthenians, that includes Tartars from the Eurasian steppes. And we would have had different types of weaponry and armour associated with each of these groups. But generally speaking,

we're talking about lighter and more mobile cavalry here. And there are also mercenaries from Bohemia and Moravia, probably a few thousand of those. So very diverse and composites. So very diverse and composite. And that's one of the most impressive things about the leadership of the Polish Lithuanian force was managing this diverse coalition. Yeah, I was going to say, that sounds like we've got a huge advantage of numbers for the Poles and Lithuanians. But against that, you have to balance this greater variety in the types of people who are there, perhaps their motivations for being there, their styles of fighting, their ways of leadership and organisation on a battlefield, which can be

really unwieldy in the moment, can't it? And that's where somewhere like the order might feel, even if they're outnumbered, they have the advantage because they're such a tightly well-organized unit. Absolutely. And when we look at the descriptions of how the commanders operated, we can see this on both sides. And it's really striking that you've got two commanders on the Polish-Lithuanian side operating slightly differently, but with Yagawa having general oversight. And he seems to be incredibly mobile. He moves between different positions. You know, you've got to hand it to the messengers who are conveying various instructions and orders between the various units. I mean, it's incredibly impressive that all of this was coordinated, although just how much was exactly coordinated,

we don't really know. But we can imagine on the basis of the descriptions that we have quite effective coordination in terms of reinforcements, in terms of reserves getting sent up to replace exhausted units. And so the two sides line up on the 15th to July 1410, and we get initially a bit of a standoff. And I wonder if you could tell us the story about the Grunvald swords, which I think has become quite famous. Oh, yes, the two swords.

So the Grandmaster of a Teutonic Order, Ulrich von Jungingen, sends two swords to the Polish King Jaguar. They're brought by these two heralds. And we mostly have this from the Polish accounts, from Yandulgosh, who basically frames this as a taunt, a chivalric insult that is there to goad the poles to fight. He's like, you need these swords to basically help you get into the spirit of things. Why aren't you attacking us? Maybe that's true.

Some have speculated, given the Teutonic order or a monastic institution, that what we actually have is a biblical reference that the swords are a reference to Christ's comment. entry in the gospel of St. Luke, where two swords are a reference to defense by peaceful means. So the order is basically saying, you know, these are two swords that Christ gave us so we can defend ourselves. And maybe it's a justification for the defense. We don't really know that the traditional narrative is the one that is the taunt. And then the two swords are taken off as trophies to Krak off where they're kept in the castle. And then they have a long complex biography they end up vanishing probably into Russian hands in the 19th century

and we don't know where they are. So their fate is unknown. They're probably in Russia if they weren't melted down. Yeah. I quite like the idea of it being atorned. It's kind of, you know, why aren't you attacking us? Do you need some swords maybe? We can help you out with that.

Here's a couple of swords. Come and have a go. That's the popular view, yeah. Yeah. But that just gives us the sense that there is this a bit of a standoff, that both sides are kind of waiting maybe for the other one to move first. Would that make sense in the circumstances? Yeah.

And then you've got these volleys. You know, I guess artillery is the traditional opening of battles once it starts being used on the battlefield. And then you've got the Lithuanian attack. So, yes, you're right. You've got a standoff. And I guess there's a lot to coordinate. And that's, again, something we need to get into our heads. The standoff happens because you've got the,

army and we've we probably are dealing with what 30 40,000 people, many of whom are on horseback spread out over what ultimately end up being multiple mini battlefields and then people trying to coordinate these banners commanders and then the main commanders on each side. So getting everybody lined up coordinating maneuvers is quite complicated. So this probably also explains why you've got a lot of facing off and then reacting to the attacks as they unfold. Yeah. And we're still in a world, I think, as well, where the prevailing military wisdom tends to be that you shouldn't attack first, that the side that attack first will generally lose because any good commander has tried to pick a defensive position. And so why would you

give up that strong defensive position to make the first attack? So both sides are probably thinking, well, I think you see this a lot of medieval battles, don't you? It's kind of, if we move first, we're probably going to lose, so we need a good reason to move first. Yes, no, absolutely. And obviously, both sides are using crossbows and archers. So you've got that present, also in the background in terms of a threat of a cavalry. Not to mention the cannons. Okay, the cannons are ineffective in the end, generally speaking.

But yeah, you've got that worry as well. Yeah, yeah. And I guess at the start of the battle, no one knows the cannon not going to be as effective as you might hope. All you're seeing is the marade in front of you thinking, uh-oh. Yeah, no, absolutely. And we have to remember that the Lithuanians are, okay, they do fight pitched battles, but their history of fighting with the order is more centered on guerrilla warfare in the forests and swamps of Western Lithuania, eastern Prussia, and also sieges. You know, these are armies that are used to sieges, both sides, really. So pitched battles on this scale are quite unusual and quite risky. Yeah, yeah, it's another interesting element to throw into the works. So how does the battle kick off?

Who moves first? Okay, so the Lithuanian flank led by Veltas attacks first, and then you've got fierce fighting developing on the orders left flank, and then much of the Lithuanian force withdraws from the battlefield, and this is where we come to this idea, is this a deliberate faint, is this a maneuver the Lithuanians learnt from the Tartars, or is this a genuine retreat? The feint could have been a later interpretation.

Most of this sort of analysis and commentary we have to remember is much later on when people are reflecting on how the battle went and also on the valor of the people involved. You know, this becomes really important for family memory among the Polish and Lithuanian nobility. So everybody then has their own version of which regiment did what and how heroic they were. So we have to, you know, take all of this with a pinch of

salt, but we do know that the Lithuanian force withdraws and the order pursues them. And then the three Lithuanian regiments from Smolensk, this is named in the sources, actually withstand the orders attack, protecting the Polish flank. And the Polish centre and the right continue fighting and absorb the brunt of the order's attack. And then the Lithuanians return and counterattack, pushing back the order. And this is where really the order's artillery is lost, because the orders forces are pushed back and maybe some 150 metres the artillery is just left amidst the Lithuanian countercharge. And that is, should we say, the fateful point where the Grandmaster Ulrich gathers the remaining units, maybe some 16. No reserves are available at this time and attacks the

Polish army's flank, but the manoeuvre is noticed and the Grandmaster and the other officials are killed by the regiment from Krakow. At that point, a lot of people have said, oh, you know, the Grandmaster dies, this results in a collapse in morale. Probably most don't know that has happened in the melee. Most would have not seen this happen. But what is actually happening at the same time is that the Polish and Lithuanian forces are in a sort of present and they're encircling the order's army that's dwindling. And when they see this, there is a route. And this is pursued by the Polish and Lithuanian cavalry. And that's really where a lot of the killing takes place during this retreat. So that's a rough sketch of how the battle goes.

But we have to remember that what we've got is lots of mini confrontations spread out across this series of battlefields. And, you know, you've got multiple charges from either side, which are then replenished by reserves, and then people are resting and getting back and then going back into the fray. And this seems like continuous fighting over the period of a day. But what you've got is multiple separate. charges and attacks that eventually exhaust the people involved, if you think about the timescale, and also increasing numbers of casualties, especially among the horses, the bodies are piling up. And so this changes the nature and the character of battlefield. So there is no

single moment where we can go, oh yes, you know, the battlefield turned on this moment. It was almost this process of exhaustion and attrition. And eventually the Polish Lithuanian side gets the upper hand. Yeah. And so I guess the fact that it lasts for so long, and as you say, it becomes more about attrition than fighting ability, maybe, favors the Polish Lithuanian side

because they have those much larger numbers and the ability to kind of keep going longer than the Teutonic order can. That's right. Yeah. And that faint becomes really interesting. I guess because the Lithuanians are on the winning side, they can tell the story about the retreat, however they like.

And I guess it's hard to get to the bottom. bottom of, isn't it? Because the Mongols are famously fond of a feigned retreat, and that could be a tactic they've encountered from conflicts with the Mongols. But we also see something similar happened at Hastings in England in 1066. The Normans kind of run away, but because they win the battle, they're able to say, oh, no, no, we didn't really mean to run away. It was a deliberate feint. So I guess it's a bit of the victors being able to write the narrative. That's right. Yeah, we will never really know the truth in that sense. We can observe from the accounts what probably happened in terms of the movements of these various units. But for the motivation and

reasoning, the so-called retreat actually was constrigible beyond even the Lithuanian camp. You know, what does that mean? Does that mean that some of the Lithuanians just continued retreating? It sounds like a bit of an excessive faint, although it did draw the orders cavalry after them. Difficult to know, you know, you're right in saying that the Lithuanians have a lot of experience of fighting with and alongside the Tartars and the eastern parts of the Grand Duchy. And of course, we know there are a few thousand Tartas probably in the Lithuanian army itself. So it is entirely plausible that's playing a role. Yeah, yeah.

And so how bad a defeat should we consider this to be for the Teutonic Knights? Because not least the number of casualties, the number of brothers of the order who have been killed. must have been fairly devastating for them. Yeah, it was really bad. Maybe some 8,000 are killed on the order's side, with then many thousands captured. Only about seven brothers survive, roughly out of the 250.

Most of the higher officials are killed. The grandmaster, grand marshal, numerous commanders, are leaders, the political leaders of the order's Prussian state. So it is pretty disastrous in that sense. And I think a large number are killed when the army's fleeing because they're funneled down three roads through this quite marshy terrain. And you can imagine that they're cut down there and then in the orders camp on the basis of the archaeology. Actually, it's one of the really useful things about the excavations at the end of the 50s, is that these mass graves that are found in the area of the orders camp suggests that a lot of the killing, even a massacre

took place at the orders camp at the end of a battle. And what's left of the Teutonic Knights will retreat back to their humongous castle at Marienburg, but the Poles and Lithuanians kind of follow them and lay siege to that. So how does that play out for the Teutonic Order? remarkably well, this is actually a turning point in the war and it stools what may have been a catastrophic defeat. Had the Polish Lithuanian army taken, Marianne, or Melborg, its Polish name, that could have been it for the Teutonic Order. They would have decapitated the order's political centre and maybe that would have been the beginning of the end. But they advanced on the castle quite slowly.

They took a number of other castles on the way. those were handed over because many of the orders officials believed that their cause was lost. And in fact, in Marionburg, yes, there was a panic. But the crucial figure here was Henry of Plowen, Heinrich von Plowen, a commander of a small castle in southern Prussia called Schfetz. And he actually acted remarkably quickly. He rode to Marienburg, assumed command, gathered the survivors, organized the defense, organized food, and art. artillery, strengthened the castle's defenses, and the besieging army just didn't bring enough with them. Obviously, they were worn out after Grunveld. They didn't have enough artillery to

maintain a successful siege. As the weeks past, food became scarcer for both men and horses, and disease starts to spread among the army as well. And so this becomes a problem. And ultimately also we have the motivations now of the two rulers of the Polish-Athuanian coalition. And Vitaltus is actually deep down more concerned with securing Samogisha and Lithuania's frontier. Yagewa wants to recover Polish lands that were taken by the order and this isn't doing him any good. So after roughly two months, they withdraw and the order hold on to Maureenberg. It's not the very end of the war, but it is the end of attempting to seize the Order's capital. Yeah, yeah. The Teutonic Order is still kind of a bit too strong to fall at this

point. So how does the war ultimately come to an end? So the order tried to get the upper hand again by recruiting a fresh army in the Empire, and they do, a relatively small one, but they end up confronting the Polish army later on that year in October, 10th of October and 1410. It's a bit of an exhausting conflict. There are three breaks in the fighting. The polls lose maybe only 100 men. The order lose a few thousand in terms of casualties and prisoners. And eventually they realize that this isn't going anywhere. So you've got then these negotiations, where the Teutonic Order eventually sign what's called the Peace of Torn in February 1411. And that is a treaty that marks the history of relations between the Teutonic Order, Poland, Lithuania,

where they recover, Poland recovers the land that was taken on its frontiers by the Teutonic Order. And Lithuania regains Samogisha for the lifetime. of the Polish and Lithuanian rulers. More importantly, the order has to pay these massive war reparations, and this is really a crippling sum that has a massive long-term impact. And so should we consider Grunvald to be kind of responsible for the decline of the Teutonic Knights? It may be in combination with that treaty that punishes them, or is there more to the fall of the Teutonic Knights than just simply losing kind of one battle

and not coming out the war very well. We've got maybe the increasing acceptance that the Christianisation of the region is done and it's happened now. The move towards the Reformation and things like that, they just aren't crusading orders around like that anymore. Is it one thing that leads to the downfall of the Teutonic Knights or is there more than one factor at play?

There's more than one factor. It is elevated later on to this big symbolic defeat, but if we look at it in detail, It may be a symbolic beginning of the order's decline, but the battle itself isn't a cause of decline in a real sense. Yes, it did destroy much of the orders experienced leadership, but this is quickly replaced. It didn't result in the capture of the order's political center and headquarters, and the order regains its strength and control over its territories pretty quickly. It does dent the Order's aura of, if you like, invincibility as these, you know, divinely ordained crusaders. So people do begin to question the Order's ability on the battlefield. And also it's

divine mandate. Like you said, Christianisation of Lithuania is making people think twice. And this, if you like, solidifies that in their minds. And they go, okay, well, wouldn't the order be better off doing things like fighting the Turks, for example, which are real enemies of Christendom as opposed to the Lithuanians who are under the protection of a papacy. And as you mentioned, these crippling financial commitments that in the long term create or accelerate, because we already have these tensions with its own subjects, particularly in the cities. And we've also got an internal decline within the order. By the 15th centuries, higher officials of the Teutonic order are beginning to, live almost separate lives where they are, how shall we say it, there's an element of corruption

going on, they are using surpluses from their lands to supply their own personal treasuries. It's a sort of privatization that we see happening on the order's lands in Livonia as well. And some people even begin to accuse the order of greed. You know, what happened to that vow of poverty they took as these fighting monks? they're also accused of breaking their vows of celibacy, and this tarnishes their reputation, and they have a real problem with recruitment over the course of the 15th century. So they start to have to rely on mercenaries, which, you know, you have to pay. And if you don't have the money or insufficient money, that creates a problem.

And mercenaries can abandon you or change sides, which creates, you know, a problem for the orders, military security. So all of these things come together. And I guess Grunvald, that war associated with it, the Great War from 1409 to 1411, really is one of these points that highlights this fragility. Yeah, yeah. And Grunvald has gone down, as we've discussed, as really significant, important European battle. Do you think it deserves to be maybe better known than it is? Particularly, I wasn't aware of the Battle of Grunval before we talked about it ahead of this.

Does it deserve to be better known and does it have a real kind of legacy that we should consider? Absolutely. I think part of the lack of knowledge is that this is, in simple terms, a product of the Cold War, where we have a marked ignorance of central and eastern European history in the West because of these boundaries and because of a propaganda that it's churned out by either side that creates the East. somewhat sort of caricatured versions of history that are mapped onto the status quo at the time and of course onto what happened in the First and Second World Wars. So I think that you haven't heard of this is not surprising because it's not the kind of thing. You know, I grew up in London. I heard about it because it was talked about in my Polish family. It's a big part of Polish history, but it's not something I would have learned at school in London. And yet it marks this massive shift

in the balance of power in Northern Europe, and particularly in East. in Europe. It marks the decline of one of the most important medieval powers in Europe and unusual powers, you know, this crusading order ruling large portions of the Baltic and the emergence of Poland, Lithuania as what would become the biggest European power for a time. So within European history, within Eurasian history, I think it's really important. And also for how it was used during the First and Second World Wars by imperial Germany and by nationalists in Poland and Lithuania and also in Russia, it becomes a big part of the propaganda wars and the motivations for preserving national identity in Central and Eastern Europe. So it's a big part of that story, which of course,

in the West we're also a big part of that story. But I think that ignorance is because of what happened after the Second World War. And people are becoming aware of it because, of course, we have from the 1990s increasing mobility, people are visiting Eastern Central Europe, studying its history, reading about it, visiting as tourists, going to these castles and battlefields. So people are becoming more aware of it. But I think, you know, we need a big Netflix film or TV series to really penetrate the Western imagination and put it on the map, I think. Yeah, sounds like a good idea. I mean, to start a good idea. I mean, to that writes itself, isn't it? You've got Teutonic crusading lights versus the Polish

Lithuanian people. It's begging to be filmed. Yeah, yeah, let's get on it, Alex. Yeah, and I'm I was going to say that to some extent this feels like a legacy of the 20th century when things like that have been hijacked by other forces for other reasons. And do you think that that means that there is a real drive for particularly Polish people, I guess, to try and reclaim this part of their history and set it at the centre of European politics and history where it does belong. Yeah, absolutely. And this goes back to Poland's own political history. After the partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, it disappears from the map of Europe, comes under Russian, Prussian and Austrian rule. It's subdivided.

And so Polish history, especially, glorious battlefield victories become one of the ways in which national identity is preserved. And so Grunval becomes the perfect symbol for Poland defeating a powerful invader, reinforcing that memory of the Lithuanian partnership, which really were the glory days for Poland and Lithuania, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and representing really that kind of national resilience. And you've got these big creative pieces in the 19th, century. Firstly, Jan Matecos painting of the Battle of Grunfeld that you can see in Warsaw painted in 1878. This is a massive patriotic statement during a time when Poland is not an

independent state. And this also inspires the author, Henrik Sienkevich, to publish this book or the Teutonic Knights. This becomes the staple national history of Polish victory against the order and he describes Grunveld. Obviously, this is a patriotic history, not a real history, but it influences how people learn history at school in Poland and also in Lithuania. And then we've got Alexander Ford's film in 1960, again named after Schenkevich's book. And this brings it in for the generations of the 20, the later 20th of centuries. So in Poland, you've got a very clear chain of narratives that fixes this in the Polish national imagination as the great victory. And it is against Germany in their minds because the flip side of this is that the Teutonic

order are appropriated by imperial Germany and then by the Third Reich as if you like, ancestors of German imperialism in the East, which is not what they were, but nonetheless, this This is an image that's taken up on both sides of the divide by the Nazis, by German nationalists and then Polish Lithuanian nationalists, and by Soviet propagandists. So they sort of reinforce each other. So Grunewald becomes reimagined, if you like, as the defeat of Germany. And in fact, the battle for Berlin, the defeat of Nazi Germany is pitched as a second Grunwald in Soviet propaganda, in Polish propaganda, and so it becomes this great revival of Polish identity

after the Second World War. And I think that association is only now slipping away and becoming more connected with the medieval realities of what was going on at the time and the Teutonic order separating from later Imperial Germany and the Third Reich. I mean, I've found this absolutely fascinating. It sounds like an incredible bit of history that we all ought to know a little bit better. And also just the journey that that bit of history has been through throughout the rest of European history, from which it only seems to just be emerging now so that we can all get to know the battle in its own context a little bit better. So thank you so much for joining us, Alex, and sharing your expertise on the Battle of Greenwald.

Thank you very much for having me. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. and if you want to find out more about the Teutonic Knights and the medieval Baltic, then Alex's book, The Black Cross, a history of the Baltic Crusades, is a fantastic starting point. You can also go back and listen to our previous episode with Alex, titled Teutonic Knights. And if you want more on the conversion of Lithuania to Christianity, then you can listen to last year's episode titled The Last Pagans. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday.

So please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the great. greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week at historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Anyway, I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hits.