Missed chance? A victory from which no benefits have been drawn? British history professor Robert Frost takes a completely different opinion. Looking at it from a distance, he firmly states:the great triumph at Grunwald changed the history of Europe.
Robert Frost is a specialist in Polish history, lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. In recent years, his research has focused on the subject of the Polish-Lithuanian union. At the request of the esteemed Oxford University Press, in 2015 he published a monumental work aimed at acquainting Anglo-Saxon audiences with the history of the Jagiellonian empire of the modern era. This book has just been translated into Polish and was published under the title Oxford History of the Polish-Lithuanian Union (Rebis 2018).
A fragment of a painting by Artur Olegowicz Orłionov entitled "Halych banners in the Battle of Grunwald 1410".
In such a tailored work, the first military success achieved by joint Polish-Lithuanian forces could not be missing. Frost does write about the battle of Grunwald in 1410 Above all, however, he discusses its consequences in a tone rarely found in Polish publications.
Wasted success?
On the Vistula River, it is accepted to claim that Grunwald was lost. Under the Treaty of Toruń concluded in 1411, Poland regained only a small area of Dobrzyń from the Order. In addition, the Teutonic Knights undertook to pay compensation in the amount of 6 million Praga grosze - approximately nine tons of silver. On the surface, the conditions were not particularly severe, and the prevailing opinion was that it was Kazimierz Jagiellończyk who dealt a decisive blow to the order half a century later.
The peace document of Toruń from 1411
Was it really so? Not according to Professor Frost. In the pages of Oxford history of the Polish-Lithuanian union he describes the Battle of Grunwald as a key turning point in the history of this part of Europe.
The defeat started an internal crisis in the monastic state. Until now, the country enjoyed prosperity, and settlers from Germany were eager to come to Pomerania, tempted by generous privileges and tax exemptions. However, the boom ended on July 15, 1410. As a British historian explains:
Until Grunwald, Teutonic rule was widely accepted [by subjects]. Most of the military service was carried out outside the country; volunteers were paid and they had their share of the spoils captured during trips to neighboring countries. After Grunwald, the situation changed dramatically.
Since then, most of the fighting took place in the monastic state. The enemy regularly ravaged the Prussian lands. The destruction made the local elites increasingly reluctant to the Teutonic Knights or simply unable to fulfill their duty to defend the state for which they were not paid.
Demoralized cadres
Resentment grew among the knights themselves as well. Above all, there was a severe shortage of candidates for new members of the order. The recruitment crisis only deepened, and yet someone had to take the place of those members of the military elite who died on the field of the decisive battle:
The number of religious brothers, who had been around seven hundred before 1409, had dropped to around 400 after the defeat of Grunwald, and accusations of moral decline by the secular clergy began to mount at the same time. and even members of the order itself. Prussia did not attract young Germans anymore.
As a result, more and more of the staff were representatives of local families. They put on monastic robes and then ... entered into sharp conflicts with the monastic hierarchy dominated by visitors from southern Germany.
Władysław Jagiełło in the painting by Michał Godlewski.
The ranks of knights became less and less disciplined, and their numbers continued to decline. The gaps were, of necessity, supplemented with mercenary forces. These, however, cost money, and the order did not even have the means to pay off its obligations towards Jagiełło. A phenomenon that the inhabitants of Prussia had not encountered before was growing:not only greedy, but even predatory fiscalism.
Critical shock
The Teutonic Knights collected more and more taxes, even when these were legally owed to the cities. Heavy charges were imposed on the nobility to cover the military budget. The burdens of the peasantry grew, and the new grants were implemented according to rules that were not very favorable and strictly tailored to the needs of the order ...
As the author of Oxford history of the union of Lublin stated the first acts of repression against the subjects were "a shock to the elite, accustomed to the rule of law and having extensive privileges granted to them by the order itself." The attempt to restrict freedom had to end in rebellion.
And so Grunwald brought about the crisis that started the New Thirteen Years' War. And who led to the final defeat of the law and the division of its lands.
Source:
Trivia is the essence of our website. Short materials devoted to interesting anecdotes, surprising details from the past, strange news from the old press. Reading that will take you no more than 3 minutes, based on single sources. This particular material is based on:
- Robert Frost, Oxford History of the Polish-Lithuanian Union, Rebis, Poznań 2018.