So the Royal Guard advanced like a wall, shielding their lord with their bodies. But this time the king could not be restrained and stood in the front rank. Yet they had barely formed up when the German banners were already so close that the coats of arms on shields could be clearly distinguished. The sight of them could send a shiver through the bravest hearts, for these were the very flower and choice of knighthood. Clad in splendid armor, mounted on enormous horses like aurochs, not weary from battle in which they had not yet taken part, rested, they flew like a hurricane with thunder, roar, and rustle of banners and pennants, and the Grand Master himself flew before them in a wide white cloak that, unfurled to the wind, looked like the enormous wings of an eagle.
The Master had already passed the king's retinue and was riding toward the main battle, for what did a handful of knights standing aside mean to him, among whom he neither suspected nor recognized the king! But from beneath one banner a gigantic Niemiec broke away, and whether recognizing Jagiello, or lured by the king's silver armor, or finally wanting to display his knightly courage, he lowered his head, leveled his lance, and charged straight at the king.
The king spurred his horse and, before anyone could stop him, also charged toward him. And they would surely have clashed fatally had it not been for Zbigniew z Oleśnicy, the young royal secretary, equally skilled in Latin as in martial arts. Holding a broken lance shaft, he came at the Niemiec from the side, struck him on the head, shattered his helmet, and knocked him to the ground. “At that moment the king himself struck him with the blade in the exposed forehead and deigned to kill him with his own hand.”
Thus died the famous Niemiecki knight Dypold Kilkieritz von Dieber. His horse was seized by Kniaz Jamont, and he himself lay mortally stricken in his white jupon over steel armor and gilded belt. His eyes grew dim, but his legs still kicked the earth for a time until the greatest human pacifier, death, covered his head with night and quieted him forever.
Knights from under the Chełmno banner leaped forward to avenge their comrade's death, but the Master himself blocked their way, shouting, “Herum! herum!” and drove them to where the fate of that bloody day was to be decided—that is, to the main battle.
And again a strange thing happened. Mikołaj Kiełbasa, standing closest to the field, indeed recognized the enemies, but in the dust cloud the other Polish Banners did not recognize them, and thinking it was Litwa returning to battle, they did not hasten to meet them.
Only then did Dobko of Oleśnica leap out against the charging Grand Master and recognized him by his cloak, his shield, and the large reliquary he wore on his chest over his armor. But the Polish knight did not dare to strike the reliquary with his lance, though he vastly exceeded the Master in strength, so the Master knocked his blade upward, wounded his horse slightly, then after passing each other they wheeled around and galloped off, each to his own side.
“Niemcy! The Master himself!” cried Dobko.
Hearing this, the Polish Banners sprang from their places at full speed toward the enemies. First Mikołaj Kiełbasa struck with his men, and the battle blazed up anew.
But whether because the knights of the Chełmno Land, among whom there were many of Polish blood, did not strike wholeheartedly, or because nothing could stop the fury of the Poles, suffice it to say that this new attack did not have the effect the Master expected. For he thought it would be the final blow dealt to the king's power, yet soon he saw that it was the Poles who pressed forward, advanced, struck, smote, took those squadrons as if in iron pincers, and his own knights rather defended themselves than attacked.
In vain he encouraged them with his voice, in vain he drove them with his sword into battle. They defended themselves, and defended themselves stoutly, but they lacked both the impetus and the fervor that seizes victorious armies and that inflamed Polish hearts. In dented armor, covered in blood and wounds, with notched weapons, with no voice left in their chests, the Polish knights nevertheless rushed in frenzy toward the densest clusters of Niemcy, and the latter began either to rein in their horses or to look behind them, as if wanting to know whether those iron pincers had not yet closed, which were embracing them ever more terribly, and they retreated slowly but continuously, as if wishing to slip out unnoticed from the deadly grip. And then from the forest side new shouts suddenly rang out. It was Zyndram of Maszkowice who had led and released the peasants into battle. Scythes screeched against iron, armor thundered under flails, corpses began to fall thicker, blood streamed onto the trampled earth, and the battle became like one immense flame, for the Niemcy, realizing that only the sword could save them, began to defend themselves desperately.
And they struggled on still uncertain of victory, until huge clouds of dust unexpectedly rose on the right side of the battle.
“Litwa is returning!” Polish voices roared joyfully.
And they were right. Litwa, which was easier to scatter than to defeat, was now returning and with inhuman clamor raced like the wind on their swift horses into battle.
Then several Komturs, led by Werner von Tetlingen, rushed up to the Master.
“Save yourself, lord!” cried the Komtur of Elbląg with pale lips. “Save yourself and the Order before the circle closes.”
But the knightly Ulrich looked at him grimly and, raising his hand to heaven, cried:
“God forbid that I should leave this field where so many brave men have fallen! God forbid!”
And shouting to his men to follow him, he threw himself into the whirl of battle. Meanwhile Litwa arrived, and such confusion, such a whirl and tumult arose that the human eye could no longer distinguish anything.
The Master, struck in the mouth by the point of a Lithuanian sulica and twice wounded in the face, fended off blows for a while with a weakening right hand; finally, thrust in the neck with a rohatina, he fell like an oak to the ground.
A swarm of warriors clad in hides completely covered him.
Werner von Tetlingen fled with a few banners, but around all the remaining banners the iron circle of royal troops closed. The battle turned into a slaughter and a defeat for the Krzyżacy so unheard-of that in all human history few like it have occurred. Nor in Christian times, since the battles of Romans and Goths with Attila and of Charles Martel with the Arabs, had such mighty armies fought each other. But now one of them lay for the most part like a mown field of grain. The banners that the Master had last led into battle surrendered. The Chełmno men stuck their pennons into the ground. Other knights dismounted as a sign that they wished to go into captivity and knelt on the blood-spattered earth. The entire banner under which the foreign guests served did the same together with its commander.
But the battle still raged, for many Krzyżackie banners preferred to die rather than beg for mercy and captivity. The Niemcy now formed, according to their battle custom, into a huge circle and defended themselves like a herd of wild boar surrounded by a pack of wolves. The Polish-Lithuanian ring girded that circle like a snake coils around a bull's body, and tightened ever more. And again arms flashed, flails thundered, scythes screeched, swords cut, spears stabbed, axes and okszas slashed. The Niemcy were felled like a forest, and they died in silence, grim, huge, fearless.
Some, having lifted their visors, bid each other farewell, exchanging a last kiss before death; some threw themselves blindly into the boiling battle, as if seized by madness; others fought as if in a dream; still others killed themselves, driving a misericorde into their own throats, or, abandoning their neck guards, turned to their comrades with the plea: “Strike!”
Polish fury soon shattered the great circle into a dozen smaller clusters, and then it was again easier for individual knights to slip away. But on the whole, even these broken groups fought with fury and despair.
Few knelt begging for mercy, and when the terrible onslaught of the Poles finally scattered even the smaller clusters, even individual knights did not want to surrender alive into the hands of the victors. It was a day of the greatest defeat for the Order and for all Western knighthood, but also of the greatest glory. Beneath the gigantic Arnold von Baden, surrounded by peasant infantry, a rampart of Polish corpses formed, and he, mighty and unconquered, stood over it like a boundary post dug into a hill, and whoever approached within sword's length died as if struck by lightning.
Finally Zawisza Czarny Sulimczyk himself charged him, but seeing the knight without a horse and not wishing to strike him from behind against knightly law, he also dismounted and began to call to him from afar:
“Turn, Niemcze, and surrender, or else face me!”
And Arnold turned and, recognizing Zawisza by his black armor and the Sulima on his shield, said to himself:
“Death approaches, and my hour has struck, for no one escapes him alive. Yet if I should defeat him, I would gain immortal glory, and perhaps save my life.”
Having said this, he sprang toward him, and they clashed like two storms on the corpse-strewn ground. But Zawisza so cruelly surpassed everyone in strength that unfortunate were the parents whose children happened to meet him in battle. Indeed, under the stroke of his sword the shield forged in Malbork shattered, the steel helmet burst like a clay pot, and the brave Arnold fell with his head split in two.
Henryk, the Komtur of Człuchów, the same most bitter enemy of the Polish people, who had sworn that he would have two swords carried before him until he dyed them both in Polish blood, was now sneaking away from the field like a fox slipping out of a hunters' surround, when suddenly Zbyszko of Bogdaniec blocked his way. The Komtur cried out at the sight of the raised blade: “Erbarme dich meiner!” (have mercy on me) and clasped his hands in fear. Hearing this, the young knight could not stop his hand and momentum, but he managed to twist his sword and strike only with the flat on the Komtur's fat, sweaty snout. Then he tossed him to his squire, who put a rope around his neck and dragged him like an ox to where all the Krzyżackie prisoners were being herded.
And Old Macko still searched the bloody battlefield for Kuno Lichtenstein—and the fortunate fate of that day for the Poles finally delivered him into his hands in the thickets where a handful of knights fleeing the terrible rout had hidden. The sunlight reflecting from their armor betrayed their presence to the pursuit. They all fell to their knees at once and surrendered immediately, but Macko, having learned that the Grand Komtur of the Order was among the prisoners, ordered him brought before him, and removing his helmet, asked:
“Kuno Lichtenstein, do you recognize me?”
And he frowned and, fixing his eyes on Macko's face, said after a moment:
“I saw you at the court in Plock.”
“No,” answered Macko, “you saw me before! You saw me in Krakow, when I begged you for the life of my nephew, who was sentenced to lose his head for a reckless attack on you. Then I vowed to God and swore upon my knightly honor that I would find you and meet you in mortal combat.”
“I know,” replied Lichtenstein, and pouted his lips proudly, though at the same time he turned very pale; “but I am now your prisoner, and you would dishonor yourself if you raised your sword against me.”
At that Macko's face drew together ominously and became completely like a wolf's muzzle.
“Kuno Lichtenstein,” he said, “I will not raise my sword against an unarmed man, but I tell you this: if you refuse to fight me, I will have you hanged on a rope like a dog.”
“I have no choice, stand!” cried the Grand Komtur.
“To the death, not to capture,” Macko stipulated once more.
“To the death.”
And after a moment they clashed before Niemiecki and Polish knights. Kuno was younger and more agile, but Macko so far surpassed his opponent in the strength of arms and legs that in the blink of an eye he threw him to the ground and pressed his knee onto his stomach.
The Komtur's eyes bulged in terror:
“Mercy!” he groaned, spitting saliva and foam.
“No!” answered the implacable Macko.
And pressing the misericorde to his opponent's throat, he thrust twice, and the man gave a terrible rattle; a wave of blood gushed from his mouth, death throes shook his body, then he stiffened, and the great pacifier of knights, death, quieted him forever.
The battle turned into slaughter and pursuit. Whoever did not wish to surrender died. Many battles and encounters occurred in those times, but no living man remembered such a terrible rout. Not only the Order of the Krzyżacy fell at the feet of the great king, but all of Niemcy, which had supported that Teutonic “vanguard” with its most splendid knighthood, eating ever deeper into the Slavic body.
Of seven hundred “white cloaks,” who led as commanders of that Germanic flood, barely fifteen remained. Over forty thousand bodies lay in eternal sleep on that bloody field.
The countless banners that at noon still flew over the immense Krzyżackie army all fell into the bloody and victorious hands of the Poles. Not one remained, not one was saved, and now the Polish and Lithuanian knights cast them at the feet of Jagiello, who, raising pious eyes to heaven, repeated with a moved voice: “God so willed!” The foremost prisoners were also brought before the king's majesty. Abdank Skarbek z Gór brought the Duke of Szczecin, Casimir; Trochowski, a Czech knight—the Duke of Oleśnica, Konrad; and Przedpełko Kopidłowski of the Dryja coat of arms, brought Jerzy Gersdorf, fainting from wounds, who under the banner of Saint George had led all the knightly guests.
Twenty-two nations took part in this battle of the Order against the Poles, and now the royal scribes recorded the prisoners, who, kneeling before the majesty, begged for mercy and for return home for ransom.
The entire Krzyżackie army ceased to exist. The Polish pursuit captured a huge Krzyżacki camp there, and in it, besides the survivors, an uncountable number of wagons loaded with shackles for the Poles and wine prepared for a great victory feast.
The sun was setting. A short, heavy rain fell and laid the dust. The king, Witold, and Zyndram of Maszkowice were just preparing to ride to the battlefield when the bodies of the fallen commanders began to be brought before them. The Lithuanians brought the body of Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen, pierced with sulicas, covered with dust and gore, and laid it before the king, and he sighed mournfully and, looking at the enormous corpse lying supine on the ground, said:
“Here is he who only this morning thought himself above all the powers of this world...”
Then tears began to flow like pearls down his cheeks, and after a moment he spoke again:
“But since he died a valiant death, we shall praise his courage and honor him with a worthy Christian burial.”
And he immediately gave orders that the body be washed carefully in the lake, dressed in beautiful garments, and covered, until the coffin was ready, with the Order's cloak.
Meanwhile, more and more bodies were brought, which the prisoners recognized. They brought the Grand Komtur Kuno Lichtenstein, with his throat horribly cut by a misericorde, and the Marshal of the Order, Friedrich Wallenrod, and the Grand Chamberlain, Count Albert Schwartzburg, and the Grand Treasurer, Thomas Merheim, and Count Wende, who fell at the hand of Powala of Taczew, and over six hundred bodies of distinguished Komturs and brothers. The servants laid them one next to the other, and they lay like felled tree trunks, with faces turned toward heaven and white as their cloaks, with open glassy eyes in which anger and pride, battle fury and terror had frozen.
Above their heads the captured banners were stuck—all of them! The evening breeze alternately furled and unfurled the colored cloth, and they rustled as if to lull the fallen to sleep. In the distance, under the glow of twilight, one could see Lithuanian units dragging captured cannons, which the Krzyżacy had used for the first time in a field battle, but which caused no harm to the victors.
On the hill near the king, the greatest knights gathered and, breathing with weary chests, looked at those banners and those corpses lying at their feet, as weary reapers look at cut and bound sheaves. Heavy was the day and terrible the harvest of that reaping, but now a great, godly, joyful evening was approaching.
So immense happiness brightened the faces of the victors, for they all understood that this was an evening putting an end to misery and toil not only of that day, but of entire centuries.
And the king, though he realized the enormity of the defeat, nevertheless looked before him as if in astonishment and finally asked:
“Does the entire Order lie here?”
To this the vice-chancellor Mikołaj, who knew the prophecies of Saint Bridget, said:
“The time has come when their teeth are broken and their right hand is cut off!!...”
Then he raised his hand and began to bless not only those who lay nearest, but the entire field between Grunwald and Tannenberg. In the air bright with the glow of sunset and cleansed by rain, one could see perfectly the vast, steaming, bloody battlefield, bristling with fragments of lances, rohatinas, scythes, piles of horse and human corpses, among which dead hands, feet, and hooves stuck up—and that mournful field of death stretched with tens of thousands of bodies farther than the eye could see.
Servants bustled about on that immense cemetery, gathering weapons and removing armor from the fallen.
And above, in the crimson sky, flocks of crows, ravens, and eagles already swirled and circled, cawing and rejoicing loudly at the sight of carrion.
And not only the perfidious Order of the Krzyżacy lay there in heaps at the king's feet, but all the German might, which until then had flooded like a wave over the unfortunate Slavic lands, shattered on that day of redemption against Polish breasts.
Macko and Zbyszko returned to Bogdaniec. The old knight lived for a long time yet, and Zbyszko lived to see in health and strength that blessed moment when through one gate the Krzyżacki Master rode out of Malbork with tears in his eyes, and through the other the Polish voivode rode in at the head of troops to take possession in the name of the king and kingdom of the city and the entire land as far as the gray waves of the Baltic.