Overview

In The Battle of Grunwald: The Crushing Defeat of the Teutonic Order, Jack Whitaker recounts the dramatic story of one of the largest and most consequential battles of the Middle Ages, the 15 July 1410 clash that shattered the military power of the Teutonic Knights on the fields of Prussia. Beneath the summer sun between the villages of Grunwald and Tannenberg, the armored warriors of the Teutonic Order faced the combined might of King Wladyslaw Jagiello of Poland and Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania in a struggle that would redefine the balance of power in Eastern Europe. Drawing on medieval chronicles, surviving administrative records, and the geography of the battlefield itself, Whitaker reconstructs the tense march to war, the thunder of cavalry charges, and the grinding clash of steel at the center of the field. He brings into focus the fall of banners, the controversial Lithuanian withdrawal and return, and the final charge of Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen, whose death marked the collapse of centralized command within the Order. From the first shock of contact to the encirclement and rout that followed, the battle emerges not as legend but as lived experience, brutal, chaotic, and decisive. Yet Grunwald was more than a single day of violence. Whitaker traces the aftermath that followed, the slow march toward Marienburg, the failed siege of the Order's red brick capital, and the hard negotiations that produced the First Peace of Thorn. He reveals how a crushing battlefield defeat weakened one of Europe's most formidable crusading states and solidified the Polish-Lithuanian union as a rising regional power. This is an immersive account of armored warfare at its height and of a turning point in medieval statecraft. It is the story of knights and kings, of ideology and ambition, and of a battle whose consequences echoed far beyond the Baltic frontier, reshaping Eastern Europe for generations to come.

Full Product Details

9798249395063

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Tab Content 6

Countries Available