Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/781

 Rh Wende, who fell at the hand of Povala of Tachev, and more than six hundred bodies of famous comturs and brothers. The servants placed them one by the other, and they lay, like felled trees, with faces looking heavenward, and white as their mantles, with open, glassy eyes, in which rage, pride, the frenzy of battle, and terror had grown fixed. At their heads were planted the captured banners—all of them! The evening breeze now furled, now unfurled the colored banners, and they rustled above those men lying there as if in sleep. From afar, about twilight, were visible Lithuanian divisions bringing in captured cannon, which the Knights used for the first time in open battle, but which had not caused any harm to the conquerors.

Around the king on the eminence, had assembled the greatest Polish knights, and breathing with wearied breasts they looked at those flags, and at those corpses lying at their feet, just as reapers, wearied from heat, look at cut and bound sheaves. Grievous had the day been, and terrible the fruit of that harvest; but now the great, divine, gladsome evening had come.

Hence, immeasurable happiness brightened the faces of the conquerors, for all understood that that evening had put an end to the suffering and toils not only of that day, but of whole centuries.

The king, though conscious of the immensity of that defeat of the Order, looked still as if in amazement before him, and at last he inquired,—

"Is the whole Order lying here?"

To this the vice-chancellor, Mikolai, who knew the prophecies of Saint Bridget, said,—

"The time has come when their teeth are broken, and the right hand cut from them!"

Then he raised his hand, and began to make the sign of the cross, not only on those who lay near, but on the whole field between Grünwald and Tannenberg. In the air, which was bright from gleams after the setting sun, and purified by the rain, they could see distinctly the immense battlefield steaming and bloody, bristling with fragments of spears, lances, and scythes, with piles of bodies of horses and men, amid which were thrust upward dead hands and feet and hoofs; and that sad field of death extended, with its tens of thousands of bodies, farther than the eye could reach. Camp followers were moving about over that