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Reconstructed banners of Belarusian troops that fought in Grunwald battle consecrated in ceremony at Minsk church

A consecration ceremony was held at the Blessed Virgin Mary church in Minsk on Tuesday for recreated gonfalons under which Belarusian troops are believed to have fought in the Battle of Grunwald.

The battle took place on July 15, 1410, with the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Litva (Lithuania) beating the knights of the Teutonic Order.

The Pahonya emblem of the Grand Duchy of Litva is the main element on the banners, artist Mikola Kupava, who took part in the project, told BelaPAN.

“Of course, we do not have sufficient grounds for insisting that the original banners looked like this, but it is Pahonya after all and it is one,” he said.

The state banner of the Grand Duchy of Litva is double sided; it also displays the Blessed Virgin, the artist said.

“Or let us have a look at the banner of the Vilnya Duchy that incorporated a large part of modern Belarus,” he suggested. “The city of Vilna had its own seal and coat of arms. So, we also made two sides, with one depicting Pahonya and the other Saint Christopher, the coat of arms that was given to Vilna along with the Magdeburg rights.”

The Battle of Grunwald, which is viewed as one of the biggest in the Middle Ages, took place near the village of Grunwald, now in northern Poland, on July 15, 1410. On the one side were the Teutonic Knights supported by West European mercenaries, a total of about 27,000 soldiers commanded by Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen. On the other side was a 39,000-strong army of Polish King Wladyslaw Jagiello (Jahajla) and his brother, Grand Duke Vitaut of the Grand Duchy of Litva.

By the end of the day, the Teutonic Knights were defeated. Some 8,000 of them were slain, including the Grand Master of the Order. The forces of the Grand Duchy of Litva, which is broadly viewed in Belarus as the medieval Belarusian state and officially regarded in modern-day Lithuania as the medieval Lithuanian state, used the white-red-white flag, which eventually became one of the state symbols of Belarus after it acquired independence in 1991.

The Teutonic Order never recovered from the defeat. Under a peace treaty signed in Torun in 1411, the Grand Duchy of Litva regained Samogitia, a region in modern-day Lithuania, and Poland won back part of Pomerania.