The Knights of the Cross (Polish: 'Krzyżacy') is a 1900 historical novel written by Polish writer and Nobel laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz.
The novel was written during the partitions of Poland, with most Poles living in the Russian Empire province Privislinsky Krai, formerly Congress Poland. One of Sienkiewicz's goals in writing The Knights of the Cross was to encourage and strengthen Polish national confidence against the occupying power. To circumvent Russian censorship, Sienciewicz placed the plot in the middle age Prussia (region) and the State of the Teutonic Order. He used recent offences perpetrated by the Russian occupiers to fill in the details. His readers knew them well from the newspapers.
The history of the actual German Order of the Teutonic Knights, which from the 13th to the 16th century controlled large parts of the Baltic Sea coast, and its defeat in the Battle of Tannenberg (1410)/ Battle of Grunwald by Poles and Lithuanians serves as the backdrop for the story. The novel also focuses extensively on medieval life and customs in both the cities and the country in medieval Poland.
The Tygodnik Illustrowany serialized the book from 1897-1899 before a first complete printed edition appeared in 1900. The book was originally translated into English by Jeremiah Curtin in 1900, a contemporary of Henryk Sienkiewicz.[1] It has since been translated into 25 languages, and was also the first book to be printed in Poland after the Second World War ended in 1945. By that time, the origin of the Imperial Russian cruelties against Poles depicted in the book were downplayed, and the book was useful to fan anti-German sentiments and the expulsion of Germans.
In 1960 the novel was made into a Polish film of the same name, by director Aleksander Ford.
