Grunwald Swords

The Grunwald Swords (Polish: miecze grunwaldzkie, Lithuanian: Žalgirio kalavijai) are a pair of simple bare swords sent as a mocking "gift" by Ulrich von Jungingen, the Grand Master of the Order of Teutonic Knights, to King Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland and Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania. The swords were sent on 15 July 1410, just before the Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg), as a symbolic invitation to engage Jungingen's forces in battle. After the Polish–Lithuanian victory, both swords were taken as a war trophy by King Władysław II to Kraków, Poland's capital at the time, and placed in the treasury of the Royal Wawel Castle.

With time, the two swords became treated as royal insignia, symbolising the monarch's reign over two nations: the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. They were probably used in coronations of most Polish kings from the 16th to the 18th centuries. In private hands after the partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the 18th century, they were lost without a trace in 1853. They have remained, however, a symbol of victory and Poland's and Lithuania's past, and an important part of national identity of the two nations.

The battle of Grunwald was part of the Great War fought during 1409–1411 between a Polish–Lithuanian coalition led by King Władysław II and Grand Duke Vytautas (Alexander) on one side and the Teutonic Order aided by West European knights and led by Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen on the other side. It was the decisive battle of the war and one of the largest in medieval Europe.

As both sides were preparing for the battle in the morning of 15 July 1410, two heralds carrying two unsheathed swords were announced to King Władysław II. According to Jan Długosz's chronicle, they bore the coats of arms of their respective masters: a black eagle in a golden field of King Sigismund of the Romans, and a red griffin in a silver field of Duke Casimir V of Pomerania. The heralds had been sent by the grand master to Władysław II and Vytautas, but since the latter was busy making his troops ready for the battle, it was only the king, accompanied by his closest aides, who received the envoys. The heralds spoke in German while the royal secretary, Jan Mężyk of Dąbrowa, served as an interpreter. They delivered, according to Długosz, the following message:

Your Majesty! The Grand Master Ulryk sends you and your brother (...) through us, the deputies standing here, two swords for help so that you, with him and his army, may delay less and may fight more boldly than you have shown, and also that you will not continue hiding and staying in the forest and groves, and will not postpone the battle. And if you believe that you have too little space to form your ranks, the Prussian master Ulryk, to entice you to battle, will withdraw from the plain which he took for his army, as far as you want, or you may instead choose any field of battle so that you do not postpone the battle any longer.

— Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen's envoys, according to Jan Długosz, Annales...

As they spoke, Teutonic forces did, in fact, withdraw from previously occupied positions. The king accepted the swords and, according to the letter he later wrote to his wife, responded with the following words:

We accept the swords you send us, and in the name of Christ, before whom all stiff-necked pride must bow, we shall do battle.