Tannenberg 1410

By 1400 the long running conflict between the Order of Teutonic Knights and Poland and Lithuania was coming to a head, partly as a result of the Order's meddling in the internal politics of its neighbours. In June 1410 King Wladislaw Jagiello of Poland invaded the Order's territory with a powerful allied army including all the enemies of the Teutonic Knights – Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, Bohemians, Hungarians, Tartars and Cossacks. This book recounts how, when the armies clashed on the wooded, rolling hills near the small village of Tannenberg, the Teutonic Knights suffered a disastrous defeat from which their Order never recovered.

Account of two battles fought at Tannenberg, East Prussia (now Poland), the first a defeat for the Teutonic Knights, the second a German victory.

By 1400 the long running conflict between the Teutonic Knights and the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom was coming to a head and in June 1410 the two armies clashed on the rolling hills of Tannenberg.

Crusades covers seven hundred years from the First Crusade (1095-1102) to the fall of Malta (1798) and draws together scholars working on theatres of war, their home fronts and settlements from the Baltic to Africa and from Spain to the Near East and on theology, law, literature, art, numismatics and economic, social, political and military history. Routledge publishes this journal for The Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East. Particular attention is given to the publication of historical sources in all relevant languages - narrative, homiletic and documentary - in trustworthy editions, but studies and interpretative essays are welcomed too. Crusades appears in both print and online editions.

The thirty papers published here record the proceedings of the Third International Conference on the Military Orders. The principal focus on this occasion was the Hospital of St John, but the Templars, Teutonic Knights and other military orders are dealt with too. Many of the papers relate to provincial life, along with contributions on historiography, the papacy, cultural history, and religious life.

This book is a history of the strategy, military equipment and battle-tactics of European armies in the Middle Ages. It gives a detailed analysis of twenty decisive battles, from the Battle of Frigidus in AD394 to the Battle of Varna in 1444, taking in such key battles as Hastings in 1066 and Bouvines in 1214.

Tannenberg non fu che la prima battaglia vinta contro l'Ordine poichè la meta ultima era in realtà la sede del Gran Maestro: il Castello di Marienburg (Malbork in polacco) e questa fortezza fu raggiunta solo il 25 luglio, ben 16 giorni dopo lo scontro a Tannenberg. Il fatto che la battaglia porti poi due nomi non fu un caso. Il luogo dove lo scontro si svolse era chiamato "collina degli abeti" (in tedesco Tannenberg), ma intorno ad esso c'era anche un bosco di alberi bassi, "il bosco verde" (in dialetto prussiano tedesco Grunnwald) ed un villaggio chiamato Grenfelde. La battaglia viene descritta in una "Chronica Conflictus" contenuta negli "Scriptores Rerum Prussicarum" e nelle "Historiae Poloniae" del canonico Jan Dlugosz. Questo prete ha conosciuto tutti i particolari che riporta nei suoi scritti dal padre, che aveva partecipato direttamente alla battaglia, oltre che da molti altri superstiti conosciuti e interrogati sfruttando le amicizie di suo padre. All'inizio del conflitto i Cavalieri erano riusciti a distruggere la destra dei lituani, ma successivamente dovettero gradualmente indietreggiare. Quando il loro coraggioso Gran Maestro Ulrich von Jungingen venne ucciso nel centro della mischia, la battaglia venne allora definitivamente persa. Oltre al Gran Maestro, i teutonici persero almeno 20.000 soldati e 200 cavalieri tra cui il Gran Commendatore Conrad von Liechtenstein, il maresciallo Friedrich von Wallenrod, e molti comandanti ed ufficiali, mentre i polacchi subirono 13.000 perdite fra morti e feriti.