Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Thursday 29 April 2021

A Sword from the Battle of Grunwald?


LifeSceince Essentials has a report about the discovery of a sword together with the remains of its accompanying daggers and belt fittings that may have been used at the battle of Grunwald - or Tannenberg I - on July 15th 1415. The illustrated article can be read at Medieval sword unearthed in Poland might be from Battle of Grunwald

Fought between the Teutonic Knights and their allies on the one side and the conjoined forces of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and their allies on the other the battle was the most significant event of the 1409-11 war between the Order and Poland-Lithuania. This large battle with substantial casualties, especially for the defeated Knights, took place on the borderlands of Poland and East Prussia, and the battlefield itself is just inside the latter. 

Weapons from the area keep being discovered and I posted last year about the discovery of some axes thought to have been used at the battle in Weapons from the Polish past


Wikipedia has a detailed article on the battle with maps and all the usual links at Battle of Grunwald

Grunwald is one of those battles in the later middle ages that proved definitive of nationhood for both sides - Bannockburn, Aljubarrotta, Agincourt, Nancy, Mohacs - and ones whose legacy was to be more than mere memory but one that lives on. The Wikipedia account of the aftermath and legacy brings this out very well.

In the twentieth century Grunwald was to be recalled in 1914 by the choice of the name Tannenberg for the first major battle on the Eastern Front. The German victory was seen as avenging the Teutonic Knights slain 504 years before.

Such use of history has not abated and modern Polish-German relations, and German- Lithuanian, German-Belarusian and German-Russian relations are often seen by the victorious side of 1410 through the Grunwald-Tannenberg prism. The commemoration of the battle has become something of a celebration of the victors’ identity and I recall from Polish-made television programmes for children the Teutonic Knights being the perennial bad guys in historical and sci-fi dramas.


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