The Knights of the Cross, Or, Krzyzacy

Henryk Sienkiewicz sets this sweeping historical romance in the Poland of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, when the kingdom stood locked in a long, grinding struggle against the Teutonic Knights. Young Zbyszko of Bogdaniec, headstrong and quick with a sword, falls in love with the maiden Danusia and vows to bring her three peacock crests torn from the Order's own helmets. His hot-blooded attack on a diplomatic envoy nearly gets him put to death and sets in motion a story of vengeance, captivity, and shifting fortunes that moves toward the great clash at Grunwald in 1410. Sienkiewicz fills the pages with tournaments, forest hunts, and border cruelty, and he wrote it partly to stiffen Polish pride under foreign rule. Free to read here in PDF and EPUB.