Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/776

 338 They had divined the truth. The Lithuanians, whom it was easier to disperse than to conquer, were returning, and, with an unearthly uproar, they rushed, like a whirlwind, on their swift horses to the conflict.

Then some comturs, and at the head of them Werner von Tetlingen, raced up to the Grand Master.

"Save thyself, lord!" cried the comtur of Elblang, with pallid lips. "Save thyself and the Order, before their circle encloses us!"

But the knightly Ulrich looked on him gloomily, and waving his hand toward heaven, he cried,—

"May God not permit me to leave this field on which so many brave men have fallen! May God not permit me!" And, shouting to his men to follow, he hurled himself into the density of the battle. Meanwhile the Lithuanians had rushed up, and such a chaos and such a seething began that in it the eye of man could distinguish nothing.

The Grand Master was struck in the mouth by the point of a Lithuanian lance and twice wounded in the face. He warded off blows for a time with his failing right hand, but thrust finally with a spear in the neck he fell to the earth, like an oak tree.

A crowd of warriors dressed in skins covered him completely.

Werner von Tetlingen with some regiments fled from the field of battle, but an iron ring closed around all the remaining regiments, a ring formed of Yagello's warriors.

The battle turned into a slaughter, and the defeat of the Knights of the Cross was so exceptional in all human history that few have happened which we might compare with it. Never in Christian times, from the days that Romans struggled with Goths, or with Attila, and Charles Martel with the Arabs, did armies fight with each other so mightily. But now, like reaped grain, one of the two forces lay on the field for the greater part. Those regiments which the Grand Master had led last to the battle surrendered. The Helmno men planted their flags on the ground. Other Knights sprang from their horses, in sign that they were willing to go into captivity, and knelt on the blood-covered earth. The entire regiment of Saint George, in which foreign guests served, surrendered also, with the Knight leading it.

But the battle continued yet, for many regiments of the Order chose to die rather than beg for captivity or quarter.