InfoAnda - Tabards on, visors down: fans relive 1410 Battle of Grunwald

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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail More Yahoo! Services Account Options New User? Sign Up Sign In Help Yahoo! Search web search Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Asia Pacific World Tabards on, visors down: fans relive 1410 Battle of Grunwald AFP - 1 hour 20 minutes ago Send IM Story Print GRUNWALD, Poland (AFP) - – Thousands of fans of the Middle Ages on Saturday donned their tabards and lowered their visors to relive the heady days of 1410, when a Polish-Lithuanian army smashed the Teutonic Knights. On the real site of the Battle of Grunwald, some 2,200 reenactors clashed head on as they marked the 600th anniversary of what is seen as a tide-turning moment in the region's history. Battling in stifling heat, the knights, archers, cavalry and halberd-wielding footmen were watched by what police said was a crowd of up to 200,000. Grunwald, in northern Poland, is a magnet for fans of all things medieval, who flock here every July to don itchy flax clothes, codpieces and chainmail, quaff mead, and enjoy a good ruck. The battle is serious stuff. Although the knights' swords are blunted, they barely pull their blows in a full-throttle skirmish. "I got this in training yesterday," a knight named Janek told AFP, pointing to a plaster cast on his left arm which was just visible under his armour. "But it didn't stop me getting stuck right in again today," he added, grinning as he lurched to his feet with a clunk of metal. Serious injuries are relatively rare, with dehydration and heat-stroke a greater worry, participants said. The battlefield rang out to the sound of bombards -- early cannons -- whose blast and acrid black-powder smoke failed to faze the horses of a charging unit of lancers. Nearby, Monika Iwanska, 17, carried a wooden bucket of water to a group of slumped knights. The only concession to modernity was a clutch of drinking straws -- supping water through a visor is not exactly simple. "It's my first time here," Iwanska said. "I got into this because my boyfriend's a knight." "The atmosphere's really great. But it's about more than that, because I really like the Middle Ages and you learn of lot about the past by living it for real," she added. Tomasz Konopka, commander of a "banner", or medieval military unit, kept staunchly in character, haranguing his troops. "Form up! You call that a line?," he yelled, whacking an errant knight with the flat of his sword. The original battle on July 15, 1410, helped speed the decline of the mainly-German Order of the Teutonic Knights, warrior-monks who wielded power along the Baltic coast from the 13th century. Victory fuelled the rise of a powerful Polish-Lithuanian united state which lasted four centuries, and the battle enjoys iconic status in both nations today. Jaroslaw Struczynski, who acts as the Teutonic Knights' Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen, was booed by the crowd as he rode sneering onto the field. "I figured someone had to play him," said Struczynski ahead of the battle. Von Jungingen died in the battle, so Struczynski, one of the founders of the reenactment, has had to hit the deck more than a dozen times. What started as a low-key gathering of Polish Grunwald fans in the early 1990s has spiralled into an ultra-authentic event which organisers say is Europe's largest knightly reenactment. Along with participants playing peasant levies and camp-followers -- who take the total number to 6,000 -- the knights spend a week camping out living history-style. The event draws participants from across the region, with Poles and Lithuanians fighting alongside Ukrainians, Russians and Belarussians, as well as reenactors from France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Britain. Sweltering in his armour was Russian reenactor Dmitry, dressed as a warrior from the western Russian city of Smolensk, which sent units to fight the Teutonic Knights 600. "This gear weighs 30 kilos (66 pounds)," he said. The hordes of tourists cheered on their armoured heroes Saturday. "I've been to the battlefield before to see the monument to Grunwald, but seeing the reenactment for the first time brings the original event to life. I know the history of Grunwald and I've read books about it, but this feels like the real thing," said Jozef Pecka, 71, from Poznan in western Poland. The memory of Grunwald helped keep the dream of freedom alive when the Polish-Lithuanian state was wiped out at the end of the 18th century. The two only reemerged as independent nations after World War I. "Grunwald means a lot to me, just like any Polish patriot," said Pecka. 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