It was September 1914, and the Reichswehrs Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg was celebrating his recent victory over two numerically-superior Russian armies in the Masurian lakes region of northeastern (Russian-occupied) Poland. He declared that his recent victory had wiped away the 504 year old stain of defeat inflicted on the Germans by the Slavs, and the battle was significantly named after a nearby village, Tannenberg. Eventually a monument was erected on the battlefield in the 1920s by the Germans and Hindenburg himself was buried there although in 1944 as Soviet troops advanced across Poland the monument was dynamited by retreating Wehrmacht forces and his body brought back to the Reich. Naming the battle after Tannenberg had a powerful tonic effect on German propaganda in World War I; what was it about the original Battle of Tannenberg that held such sway over Germans?
Tannenberg was one of the great epic battles of Medieval European history, though it remains little known to many Westerners. While Eastern European history is obscure for many, it is certainly not lacking for excitement. A critical event took place almost six hundred years ago on 15. July, 1410, on the eastern fringes of Christendoms borders that changed much history. Its outcome meant Eastern Europe would not be incorporated into the Medieval German political sphere, it meant that feudal political structures were being eclipsed by more modern forms of state, it meant the final end of crusaders in Europe.
Like all good epic battles, Tannenberg is still being fought today by the combatants descendants in history classrooms and books. For starters, the three main participants in the battle the Poles, Germans and Lithuanians, cant even agree on how to call it. The battle took place between three villages Grunwald, Stebark (Tannenberg) and Lodwigowo. The Poles call this famous battle Grünwald, Germans Tannenberg, and Lithuanians Zalgiris (after a nearby river). The details of the battle have been equally obscured by propaganda and distortions from all sides, though some facts are known.
The Combatants:
Teutonic Order: Founded in the last decade of the 12th century by merchants from Bremen and Lübeck as a hospital monastic order for the German Crusaders at Acre, the Order of the Hospital of St. Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem (the German Order for short) rapidly evolved into a fighting order in the doomed Fifth Crusade. The Teutonic Knights were booted out of Jerusalem, partially by the Moslems and partially by their involvement in the Friedrich II imperial controversies, and they filtered back to Hungarian Transylvania where they tried to set up an autonomous state of their own before the Hungarian king Endre II kicked them out in 1225. In the meantime a Polish duke, Konrad of Mazovia, had contacted the Order about helping him repel pagan Baltic attacks against his duchy in Poland. The Teutonic Order, led by its legendary leader Hermann von Salza, migrated northwards to the eastern Baltic coast where they set about slaughtering and converting the native Baltic peoples, called Prussians. (The Germans eventually took on the name Prussians themselves.) In time the Order established itself along the entire eastern Baltic coast and ruled over their lands from several powerful fortress-cities, Thorn (modern Torun), Kulm (Chelmno) and Marienburg (Malbork), and eventually captured the critical port city of Danzig (Gdansk). Soon the Order began seizing Polish, Russian and Lithuanian lands, and expanding its power in all directions in the name of a crusade against paganism although Poles and Russians were Christians. By 1410 the Order was ruled by a skilled but rash Grand Master, Ulrich von Jungingen.
Poland, Lithuania: Poland had been a powerful kingdom founded in the mid-10th century (and Christianized shortly thereafter) that had, after a particularly strong and successful king, fallen into disarray and disintegration in the mid-12th century. The kingdom spent nearly two centuries fighting powerful centrifugal forces until a chance flirting with the Anjou dynasty in the 14th century brought unexpected bounty. Lithuania was founded by a small Baltic tribe in the 13th century and rapidly expanded into a massive land empire that stretched to the Black Sea. Despite early successes against Rus, the Tartars and other enemies Lithuania began to crumble in the 14th century. The Lithuanians turned to a traditional enemy, their western neighbor Poland, and a deal was struck. Lithuania was to become (Western) Christian, and the 26 year old Lithuanian ruler Jogaila (Polish Jagiello) married the 12 year old Polish Anjou queen Hedwig (Polish Jadwiga), becoming king of Poland as well as leader of Lithuania in 1386. Poland and Lithuania would become increasingly united under this Anjou-Lithuanian dynasty over the next several centuries, a union that would last until 1795. When Jagiello accepted the Polish crown he set Lithuania up as a Grand Duchy headed by his hot-headed cousin, Vytautas (Polish Witold), who would be a major player in the battle.
The Battle
Despite territorial disputes the Order and Poland-Lithuania had actually had fairly peaceful relations in the decades prior to 1410, but this was broken when von Jungingen launched a devastating raid into Samogitia (Prussian-Polish borderlands) in 1409 to quell a rebellion, but also to provoke a Polish response. Von Jungingen did not believe the Poles or Lithuanians would be able to muster a major army or cooperate well (Jagiello and Vytautas did not get along) so he took the opportunity to start a piecemeal war with Poland that would surely end with the Orders confirmed rule of the disputed territories. After months of failed attempts at mitigation by outsiders, von Jungingen indeed got his war.
In fact Jagiello and Vytautas were cooperating on an extraordinary level, meeting secretly at Brzesc (Brest-Litovsk) in December 1409 and drawing up mutual plans for the war. The Polish-Lithuanian union was still quite new and there was an immense amount of distrust between the two countries ruling groups (aristocracy and clergy), but Jagiello and Vytautas understood the danger facing them and they forced cooperation upon their countries.
As was quite usual for Medieval armies, both sides began to collect mercenaries in some cases, both from the same source. Both sides for instance hired Bohemian and Moravian Czechs. Jagiello and Vytautas assembled some 18,000 Polish knights, 12,000 cavalry, a few thousand foot soldiers, some 11,000 Lithuanian and Russian knights, 1500 Tartar cavalry and 4000 Samogitian infantry. The Order in turn marshaled 21,000 cavalry, 6000 heavy infantry (knights), and some 5000 servants trained for battle. Among the Orders knights stood mostly Germans but the Grand Master sent a call throughout Europe for crusade against the pagans, and while the response disappointed him he did receive some English, French, Hungarian, Bohemian, Luxembourgian, Flemish and Dutch knights as well. The Polish-Lithuanian forces out-numbered the Orders but the Orders had far better equipment and training than much of the Polish-Lithuanian force. The Polish-Lithuanian forces had a total of 16 heavy cannon; the Order had more than a hundred. The Polish-Lithuanian forces were an ad hoc collection of units and peasant soldiers, while the Order dressed most of its fighting men in their famous white tunics with large black crosses on the breast.
The leadership on both sides was roughly equal, with the Order mustering such experienced field commanders as von Jungingen himself, Friedrich von Wallenrode (Grand Marshal), and Kuno von Lichtenstein (Grand Commander). For the allies, Jagiello himself was an experienced but cautious commander, while Vytautas had scored numerous victories against the Russians and Tartars, and included luminaries such as Zawisza Czarny (The Black Knight) and Zbyszko z Bogdanca (Zbyszko of Bogdanica) both of whom had fought at Nicopolis in 1398.
The allies were fully assembled on the Wisla (Vistula) River on 2. July, 1410, and they crossed to the eastern bank immediately to begin their invasion of Prussia. They marched northwest to the town of Kurzetnik where they encountered the Orders forces resting on the other side of the Drwece River on the 11th. Wishing to draw the Orders forces away from their main fortresses at Kulm, Jagiello retreated southeastward, then wheeled northward again towards the city of Dabrowno (Gilgenburg). The Orders army was vaguely aware of Jagiellos retreat and decided to flank him from the north, moving towards first Lubawa, then Grünwald. The Polish-Lithuanian forces reached Gilgenburg by the 13th, which they immediately burned to the ground to bait the Order. The allies marched again before dark on the 14th and by dawn on the 15th, they were near Lake Lubien near Grünwald when Von Jungingen managed to catch up to and surprise Jagiello. The surrounding land was heavily forested with few roads, which limited the scope of cavalry but proved excellent for concealing infantry. Here the armies finally met, and resolved to battle.
The Teutonic Order held the center and right, and put its Western guest knights on its left opposite the Lithuanian and Tartar forces. (Some speculate today that this was done because the foreign volunteers felt more comfortable fighting against the pagan Lithuanians and infidel Tartars than the Christian Poles.) The allies put the Lithuanians, Russians and Tartars on the right flank under Vytautas (who participated directly in the battle), while the Poles held the center and the left flank was composed of Bohemians, Moravians and Moldavians. A major component of the allied plan involved hiding the mass of foot soldiers in the forest between the Lithuanians and Poles.
Von Jungingen committed his first error at 5.00 a.m. as he surprised the allies but restrained his forces to chivalrously allow them to ready themselves for the battle all the while keeping his own soldiers at the ready, deprived of food or water after a long arduous march. He then committed his next blunders, by ordering large camouflaged pits dug in front of his infantry as protection against the allied cavalry but all this did was force his own infantry back to a position from which they couldnt properly support the Orders own cavalry. The pits effectively protected the Poles, not the Order. The pits also forced von Jungingen to put his formidable artillery far forward, in an exposed position beyond the help of his infantry.
The allies waited. There is much controversy about exactly why Jagiello waited Was he hesitant? Were his forces simply not ready? Was he piously engaged in prayer? Was there a grand strategy? but we will probably never know why. For modern Poles, Jagiellos hesitancy is explained as a brilliant strategy to keep the Orders forces waiting in the hot sun, without water an effect his delay did indeed have and for Germans his actions are the sign of an unconfident and bumbling commander. After several hours with no action, von Jungingen sent courtiers to Jagiello at 8.30 a.m. to try to get things moving, and Jagiello finally motioned for the battle to start.
The allies struck first, sending out their light cavalry who overran the Orders artillery position, in a stroke depriving von Jungingen of his artillery advantage. However, these light cavalry were soon repulsed by fierce resistance from the Orders infantry and after a charge from the Orders heavy cavalry the Tartars fled the battlefield, along with some Lithuanians and Russians. The bulk of the Lithuanian forces remained under Vytautas, and there is some modern speculation about whether this was a panicked rout or a clever ruse to draw the Orders heavy cavalry into the battle early on; this will also likely never be resolved.
[Narrative interrupted here for spacial reasons. Continue on to Part II:]
Tannenberg was one of the great epic battles of Medieval European history, though it remains little known to many Westerners. While Eastern European history is obscure for many, it is certainly not lacking for excitement. A critical event took place almost six hundred years ago on 15. July, 1410, on the eastern fringes of Christendoms borders that changed much history. Its outcome meant Eastern Europe would not be incorporated into the Medieval German political sphere, it meant that feudal political structures were being eclipsed by more modern forms of state, it meant the final end of crusaders in Europe.
Like all good epic battles, Tannenberg is still being fought today by the combatants descendants in history classrooms and books. For starters, the three main participants in the battle the Poles, Germans and Lithuanians, cant even agree on how to call it. The battle took place between three villages Grunwald, Stebark (Tannenberg) and Lodwigowo. The Poles call this famous battle Grünwald, Germans Tannenberg, and Lithuanians Zalgiris (after a nearby river). The details of the battle have been equally obscured by propaganda and distortions from all sides, though some facts are known.
The Combatants:
Teutonic Order: Founded in the last decade of the 12th century by merchants from Bremen and Lübeck as a hospital monastic order for the German Crusaders at Acre, the Order of the Hospital of St. Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem (the German Order for short) rapidly evolved into a fighting order in the doomed Fifth Crusade. The Teutonic Knights were booted out of Jerusalem, partially by the Moslems and partially by their involvement in the Friedrich II imperial controversies, and they filtered back to Hungarian Transylvania where they tried to set up an autonomous state of their own before the Hungarian king Endre II kicked them out in 1225. In the meantime a Polish duke, Konrad of Mazovia, had contacted the Order about helping him repel pagan Baltic attacks against his duchy in Poland. The Teutonic Order, led by its legendary leader Hermann von Salza, migrated northwards to the eastern Baltic coast where they set about slaughtering and converting the native Baltic peoples, called Prussians. (The Germans eventually took on the name Prussians themselves.) In time the Order established itself along the entire eastern Baltic coast and ruled over their lands from several powerful fortress-cities, Thorn (modern Torun), Kulm (Chelmno) and Marienburg (Malbork), and eventually captured the critical port city of Danzig (Gdansk). Soon the Order began seizing Polish, Russian and Lithuanian lands, and expanding its power in all directions in the name of a crusade against paganism although Poles and Russians were Christians. By 1410 the Order was ruled by a skilled but rash Grand Master, Ulrich von Jungingen.
Poland, Lithuania: Poland had been a powerful kingdom founded in the mid-10th century (and Christianized shortly thereafter) that had, after a particularly strong and successful king, fallen into disarray and disintegration in the mid-12th century. The kingdom spent nearly two centuries fighting powerful centrifugal forces until a chance flirting with the Anjou dynasty in the 14th century brought unexpected bounty. Lithuania was founded by a small Baltic tribe in the 13th century and rapidly expanded into a massive land empire that stretched to the Black Sea. Despite early successes against Rus, the Tartars and other enemies Lithuania began to crumble in the 14th century. The Lithuanians turned to a traditional enemy, their western neighbor Poland, and a deal was struck. Lithuania was to become (Western) Christian, and the 26 year old Lithuanian ruler Jogaila (Polish Jagiello) married the 12 year old Polish Anjou queen Hedwig (Polish Jadwiga), becoming king of Poland as well as leader of Lithuania in 1386. Poland and Lithuania would become increasingly united under this Anjou-Lithuanian dynasty over the next several centuries, a union that would last until 1795. When Jagiello accepted the Polish crown he set Lithuania up as a Grand Duchy headed by his hot-headed cousin, Vytautas (Polish Witold), who would be a major player in the battle.
The Battle
Despite territorial disputes the Order and Poland-Lithuania had actually had fairly peaceful relations in the decades prior to 1410, but this was broken when von Jungingen launched a devastating raid into Samogitia (Prussian-Polish borderlands) in 1409 to quell a rebellion, but also to provoke a Polish response. Von Jungingen did not believe the Poles or Lithuanians would be able to muster a major army or cooperate well (Jagiello and Vytautas did not get along) so he took the opportunity to start a piecemeal war with Poland that would surely end with the Orders confirmed rule of the disputed territories. After months of failed attempts at mitigation by outsiders, von Jungingen indeed got his war.
In fact Jagiello and Vytautas were cooperating on an extraordinary level, meeting secretly at Brzesc (Brest-Litovsk) in December 1409 and drawing up mutual plans for the war. The Polish-Lithuanian union was still quite new and there was an immense amount of distrust between the two countries ruling groups (aristocracy and clergy), but Jagiello and Vytautas understood the danger facing them and they forced cooperation upon their countries.
As was quite usual for Medieval armies, both sides began to collect mercenaries in some cases, both from the same source. Both sides for instance hired Bohemian and Moravian Czechs. Jagiello and Vytautas assembled some 18,000 Polish knights, 12,000 cavalry, a few thousand foot soldiers, some 11,000 Lithuanian and Russian knights, 1500 Tartar cavalry and 4000 Samogitian infantry. The Order in turn marshaled 21,000 cavalry, 6000 heavy infantry (knights), and some 5000 servants trained for battle. Among the Orders knights stood mostly Germans but the Grand Master sent a call throughout Europe for crusade against the pagans, and while the response disappointed him he did receive some English, French, Hungarian, Bohemian, Luxembourgian, Flemish and Dutch knights as well. The Polish-Lithuanian forces out-numbered the Orders but the Orders had far better equipment and training than much of the Polish-Lithuanian force. The Polish-Lithuanian forces had a total of 16 heavy cannon; the Order had more than a hundred. The Polish-Lithuanian forces were an ad hoc collection of units and peasant soldiers, while the Order dressed most of its fighting men in their famous white tunics with large black crosses on the breast.
The leadership on both sides was roughly equal, with the Order mustering such experienced field commanders as von Jungingen himself, Friedrich von Wallenrode (Grand Marshal), and Kuno von Lichtenstein (Grand Commander). For the allies, Jagiello himself was an experienced but cautious commander, while Vytautas had scored numerous victories against the Russians and Tartars, and included luminaries such as Zawisza Czarny (The Black Knight) and Zbyszko z Bogdanca (Zbyszko of Bogdanica) both of whom had fought at Nicopolis in 1398.
The allies were fully assembled on the Wisla (Vistula) River on 2. July, 1410, and they crossed to the eastern bank immediately to begin their invasion of Prussia. They marched northwest to the town of Kurzetnik where they encountered the Orders forces resting on the other side of the Drwece River on the 11th. Wishing to draw the Orders forces away from their main fortresses at Kulm, Jagiello retreated southeastward, then wheeled northward again towards the city of Dabrowno (Gilgenburg). The Orders army was vaguely aware of Jagiellos retreat and decided to flank him from the north, moving towards first Lubawa, then Grünwald. The Polish-Lithuanian forces reached Gilgenburg by the 13th, which they immediately burned to the ground to bait the Order. The allies marched again before dark on the 14th and by dawn on the 15th, they were near Lake Lubien near Grünwald when Von Jungingen managed to catch up to and surprise Jagiello. The surrounding land was heavily forested with few roads, which limited the scope of cavalry but proved excellent for concealing infantry. Here the armies finally met, and resolved to battle.
The Teutonic Order held the center and right, and put its Western guest knights on its left opposite the Lithuanian and Tartar forces. (Some speculate today that this was done because the foreign volunteers felt more comfortable fighting against the pagan Lithuanians and infidel Tartars than the Christian Poles.) The allies put the Lithuanians, Russians and Tartars on the right flank under Vytautas (who participated directly in the battle), while the Poles held the center and the left flank was composed of Bohemians, Moravians and Moldavians. A major component of the allied plan involved hiding the mass of foot soldiers in the forest between the Lithuanians and Poles.
Von Jungingen committed his first error at 5.00 a.m. as he surprised the allies but restrained his forces to chivalrously allow them to ready themselves for the battle all the while keeping his own soldiers at the ready, deprived of food or water after a long arduous march. He then committed his next blunders, by ordering large camouflaged pits dug in front of his infantry as protection against the allied cavalry but all this did was force his own infantry back to a position from which they couldnt properly support the Orders own cavalry. The pits effectively protected the Poles, not the Order. The pits also forced von Jungingen to put his formidable artillery far forward, in an exposed position beyond the help of his infantry.
The allies waited. There is much controversy about exactly why Jagiello waited Was he hesitant? Were his forces simply not ready? Was he piously engaged in prayer? Was there a grand strategy? but we will probably never know why. For modern Poles, Jagiellos hesitancy is explained as a brilliant strategy to keep the Orders forces waiting in the hot sun, without water an effect his delay did indeed have and for Germans his actions are the sign of an unconfident and bumbling commander. After several hours with no action, von Jungingen sent courtiers to Jagiello at 8.30 a.m. to try to get things moving, and Jagiello finally motioned for the battle to start.
The allies struck first, sending out their light cavalry who overran the Orders artillery position, in a stroke depriving von Jungingen of his artillery advantage. However, these light cavalry were soon repulsed by fierce resistance from the Orders infantry and after a charge from the Orders heavy cavalry the Tartars fled the battlefield, along with some Lithuanians and Russians. The bulk of the Lithuanian forces remained under Vytautas, and there is some modern speculation about whether this was a panicked rout or a clever ruse to draw the Orders heavy cavalry into the battle early on; this will also likely never be resolved.
[Narrative interrupted here for spacial reasons. Continue on to Part II:]
