The Grunwald Monument

 

The Teutonic Knights (more correctly, the Teutonic Order) was a German Catholic company of knights founded during the Crusades in the early 12th century, and under the control of the Pope. It was initially based in Jerusalem from whence, through conquest and bloodshed - copious amounts of each - it spread throughout the Middle East and ultimately through northern and eastern Europe. At its peak it controlled a trading empire that stretched around almost the entire Baltic Sea coast. By the late 14th century, at the height of its power, it was the dominant European force and incredibly wealthy, ruling that huge territory from a network of massive castles spread thoughout the coastal towns and cities it controlled. Their castle at Malbork in Poland remains the biggest of its kind in the world when measured by square meterage and is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the countries most visited tourist attractions, housing a museum, extensive grounds and a hotel within its massive walls.

Making an empire that big and maintaining it is no easy task, especially given the animosity and, perhaps, hatred felt by conquerers from the ordinary people in the lands they had absorbed. This was certainly the case within the eastern Baltic area, where the proud peoples of Poland and Lithuania rebelled against Teutonic rule, and in 1407 launched a war against the Teutonic Knights to regain their lost territory. The conflict came to a head in 1410, at the Battle of Grunwald, where the massed armies of Poland and Lithuania, led by the Polish and Lithuanian rulers, King Władisław II Jagiełło and Grand Duke Vytautas respectively, allied to several groups of vassals and regions of their countries, as well as a number of groups of mercenaries from countries even further afield (including today's Ukraine and Belarus) engaged with the Teutonic Knights led by their Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen. It was one of the biggest battles ever fought in Medieval Europe, with Polish forces numbering up to 39,000 men and the Teutonic Knights up to 27,000 men.

The conflict took place on 15 July 1410, and no accurate number of dead and wounded has ever been calculated (record keeping not being considered important in those times). What is certain is that the Grand Master and most of the senior Knights were killed, and the previous invincibility of the Order destroyed. It continued its trading activities until its final disolution in 1810, but never again with its pre-Grunwald strength and power. The battle is still celebrated every year with mock battles and chrch services at Grunwald, and also in Ukraine and Belarus.

 I had been aware of some of this history for some time, since I read Norman Davies' superb two volume God's Playground: A History of Poland (which deals in detail with the battle and its aftermath) when I first moved to Poland twenty-odd years ago, and Malbork castle has been close to the top of my Places To See In Poland List ever since, but I still haven't managed it. I've been past the castle several times, on trains between Warsaw and Gdansk (the track runs right past it) and it is certainly a very impressive building still. Maybe next year...

There are also excellent and informative Wikipedia pages dedicated to the Knights, the Battle itself and some of the leading participants, with maps and diagrams describing the entire bloodbath - they are for sure worth a look (and I am indebted to them in preparing this essay).

Anyway, back in May this year, I was fortunate enough to spend a weekend in Olsztyn and the nearby rail junction town of Dzialdowo visiting friends, so on our way home we took a detour to visit the Grunwald monument. It was a nice drive on a hot and sunny Sunday afternoon, through rolling farmland, dotted with pretty villages and forests. It's a nice part of the country. The Monument and battle site stands on its own, a few kilometers away from the surrounding villages, and from the specific route we followed it appeared quite suddenly on our left, with little forewarning. 

  

 There is a big car and coach park that at that time was quite empty, so we were able to park in splendid isolation a few paces from the gift shop, cafeteria and toilet block. We didn't use the cafeteria but spent some time looking at the stuff in the gift shop. Replica Polish knight costumes and helmets in a variety of sizes, up to and including adult XXL, were hanging on rails both inside and out, and many replica swords, proper metal ones as well kid's plastic toys, were in a kind of umbrella stand: the best of them was, on closer examination, actually an umbrella - I'd love to see someone try to take it on London's Central Line to the City on a wet day. There were, too, many postcards, fridge magnets, coffee cups, beer mats - all the usual tourist tat - and quite a big selection of hard- and soft-back books dedicated to the battle, histories of the Teutonic Order and of Poland, but not a single volume was in English. I found that very disappointing, considering the importance of both the site and the battle.

 A little further along the block, next door to the obligatory Church, was the entrance to the Monument site itself. This is a quite extensive park on the green rolling hills where the battle took place, and throughout the park are scattered various monuments. These not only commemorate the battle but also other notable historical sites and events from more recent Polish history. Most notable (to me, at any rate) is a monument, essentially a pile of rubble, that commemorates an action taken by the Nazis during the War. To them, the Teutonic Knights were heroes, examples to their own dreams of conquest, and when they occupied Krakow and made it their administrative capital in 1939 a statue and momunent celebrating the battle of Grunwald was a target and duly demolished. Its replacement at Grunwald uses rubble taken from the city post-war, and it is labelled accordingly, describing what happened in Krakow and why.

 A little further along the block, next door to the obligatory Church, was the entrance to the Monument site itself. This is a quite extensive park on the green rolling hills where the battle took place, and throughout the park are scattered various monuments. These not only commemorate the battle but also other notable historical sites and events from more recent Polish history. Most notable (to me, at any rate) is a monument, essentially a pile of rubble, that commemorates an action taken by the Nazis during the War. To them, the Teutonic Knights were heroes, examples to their own dreams of conquest, and when they occupied Krakow and made it their administrative capital in 1939 a statue and momunent celebrating the battle of Grunwald was a target and duly demolished. Its replacement at Grunwald uses rubble taken from the city post-war, and it is labelled accordingly, describing what happened in Krakow and why.

 At the top of a rise and overlooking the battlefield is a big paved area that depicts the place as it would have been in 1410 from that particular view point. There were three or four hamlets, not much more than individual farms but expanded now to small villages and towns, more or less atthe corners of the battlefield and depicted by small blocks representing their buildings. Marked clearly were the pre-conflict locations of the various combatant armies, cleverly done to indicate the size and numbers of each army. Each muster was on an elevated spot of land, so to fight the armies would have had to charge downhill and meet in the natural bowl of the fields. Here and there single points indicate where major turning points of the battle happened - the key one is probably the spot where the Teutonic Grand Master met his end, leaving his forces leaderless and doubtless demoralized. With the battle plan as a guide, finding the spot was easy: it's marked now by a single large stone with an engraved plaque commemorating the incident, and lies in a small dip in the rolloing countryside, close to a fence separating the Memorial site from a vast field of btilliant yellow rapeseed plants.

 I stood in the middle on the hollow at the centre of the battlefield and surveyed the battlefield from the perpective of a participant, looking around. It was not hard to imagine what it must have been like (I've seen many movies where the kind of bloody hand-to-hand fighting that must have occurred is depicted...some good, some bad), nor to have an inkling of the terror and uncontrolled bladder and bowel voiding that probably happened as the yelling and cursing participants clashed arms there in the summer sun, nor to feel the pain of limbs suddenly severed, heads crushed and bowels ripped out. But perhaps I have a particularly active imagination, because no-one else in our party seemed to be so moved...

We spent perhaps an hour wandering around, then returned to the car park - a couple of coach loads of tourists had by this time arrived and more cars, so the place was getting more crowded: we probably had the best of it, as it had been quiet and mostly empty to allow for free and undisturbed thought - , and headed home.

 The Grunwald Monument is the sort of thing Poland does very well. Perhaps because of its turbulant past, the country remains very aware and proud of its history. Its literature is full of works that relate to the way life was back in the day, the epic poem Pan Tadeusz, set in a manor house in the glory days of the old Polish-Lithuanian Confederation that was at the time the biggest such alliance in the whole of Europe, is probably the most famous example (it remains still a mandatory text in schools and Polish kids can recite entire segments of it word perfect). Lists of its past monarchs, good and bad, are equally Must Have and form the basis of many a tv quiz question (rarely answered incorrectly).

 Other Poles who have gone on to make their mark in the wider world - like the astronomer Mikołaj Kopernik (Copernicus), the composer Fredric Chopin and the scientist Marie Curie - are revered. Even places of tragedy are still respected - the tragic but resepctful museums at the concentration camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz; Wolfschantz, Hitler's bunker deep in the Mazurian forest; even Chopin's birthplace and childhood home (a small unassuming cottage in rolling farmland west of Warsaw) are fascinating and well-travelled detinations that tend to receive as many, sometimes more, Polish visitors than tourists and are worth the journey and admission fees.

Grunwald is rightly celebrated as a major victory that altered the future of Europe itself, and deserving of the splendid Monument that commemorates it - and the site is well worth the trip.