Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/765

 Rh And again the echo "Kyrie eleiso-o-on!" rushed through the pine wood. The shouts on the right wing increased, but no one could see or distinguish what was taking place there, for the Grand Master Ulrich, looking from above at the battle, hurled on the Poles in that moment twenty regiments under the lead of Kuno Lichtenstein.

Zyndram rushed like a thunderbolt to the Polish head legion, in which the very foremost knights were, and pointing with his sword to the approaching host of Germans, he cried so piercingly that the horses in the first rank rose on their haunches,—

"At them!—Strike!"

Then the knights, bending forward over the shoulders of their horses, and pointing their spears out in front of them, started.

The Lithuanians bent beneath the terrible onrush of the Germans. The first ranks, formed of the best armed and richest boyars, fell to the ground as flat as a bridge. The following ones closed in rage with the Knights of the Order; but no bravery, no endurance, no human power could save them from defeat and destruction. And how could it be otherwise, since on one side fought a knighthood completely enclosed in armor, and on horses protected also with armor; on the other, large men, it is true, and strong, but on small horses, and protected themselves by skins only? In vain, therefore, did the stubborn Lithuanians seek to reach the skin of the Germans. Spears, sabres, lance-points, clubs set with flint or nails rebounded from the metallic "plates" as they would from a cliff, or the wall of a castle. The weight of the German warriors and horses crushed Vitold's unfortunate legions; they were cut by swords and axes, their bones were pierced and crushed by halberds, they were trampled by horse-hoofs. Prince Vitold hurled vainly into those jaws of death new legions; vain was persistence, useless was rage, fruitless contempt of death, and rivers of blood were unavailing!

The Tartars fled first, then the Bessarabians with Wallachians; and soon the Lithuanian wall burst, and wild panic seized all the warriors.

The greater part of the Lithuanian troops fled in the direction of Lake Luben, and after them chased the main German forces, making such a terrible harvest that the whole shore was covered with corpses.