1410 Etcetera
People have been banging on about the Battle of Grunwald a lot this week. As far as I can make out, it happened 600 years ago and was something to do with Tectonic Knights and a packet of Marlboros. My wife sometimes accuses me of being disinterested in Polish history but this is not true: closing my eyes and snoring lightly are both typical signs of fascination in English people. Just to prove her wrong, I’ve taken everything I know about Polish history, reinforced it with several minutes of Internet research, and put together this definitive Okiem Angola guide to Poland’s past.
Ancient times
Early Polish humans migrated into the great Central European plain thousands of years ago. There were probably dinosaurs, mammoths and a lot more Fiat 126s around than there are now. The first Polish humans didn’t build houses because none of them had melduneks. It was several hundred years before somebody invented paper, writing and rubber stamps and they could get down to business with their documents in order. One of the first Polish humans was a guy named Lech, who invented beer. He had a brother called Russ, who invented alcoholism, and another brother called Czech, who invented talking like a five year old and putting jam on everything—they were an influential family.
Kings and Christianity
By a huge stroke of luck the first King of Poland was called Mieszko the First; had it been his brother Bronisław the Fourteenth, things would have become very confusing very quickly. In those days the guy with the biggest beard got to be king—it was a beardocracy. Mieszko’s first wife was a Czech lass who converted him to Christianity. Mieszko began spending less time drinking with the lads, got his beard trimmed and bought some new shirts in pastel colours. After a few months of this Mieszko’s wife mysteriously died in a tragic accident with a giant axe and the king married a woman he abducted from a monastery—why he went looking for a wife in a monastery is something we will never know.
Even more luckily the greatest king of the period was called Kazimierz the Great. Every Pole knows this sentence about Kazimierz the Great: “Zastał polskę drewnianą a zostawił murowaną” which means something like: “He saw Poland was made of wood and got stoned.” Kazimierz reigned for 37 years and spent much of this time getting married. He managed to marry four times, despite living in a period when divorce was impossible. Historians believe he achieved this by turning up at the church with a new bride and several burly men who would have earnest theological discussions with the bishop in a back room.
Perhaps because he got married so many times Kazimierz also invented the Kraków stag party. In 1364 he invited his mates the Holy Roman Emperor, the kings of Hungary, Denmark and Cyprus and some other lads he’d met on a management training course in Katowice for 20 days of boozing. They called it the Congress of Kraków so their wives wouldn’t get suspicious. Most Kraków residents don’t realise that those gangs of English men who descend on the city for debauchery are, in fact, historical reenactors.
The Jagiellonians
Jadwiga and Władysław met on Sympatia.pl, which is why he didn’t know she was only eleven. Władysław listed his hobbies as worshipping trees, drinking beer and ruling Lithuania. Jadwiga put “being a virgin, building universities and kittens.” Even though she was a chick, Jadwiga was crowned King of Poland, which caused several Polish grammarians to spontaneously explode. When Jadwiga’s mother found out she was dating a pagan she threatened to take away her horse keys unless the lad got himself baptised—that’s how Lithuania became Christian.
Today, Władysław Jagiełło is famous as the man who started the Jagiellonian Dynasty and began a golden age in Polish history. He also holds the world record for the most ł’s in a name. Jadwiga became a saint because she left a footprint in the side of a church and brought a dead guy back to life. Why she didn’t do more of the bringing-people-back-to-life thing and less of the footprint-in-stone thing is unknown—maybe she didn’t want to get typecast.
A bit later
Poland became rich and powerful and had a war with the Tartars that seems to have lasted for about 9,000 years. It all started when a Kraków fireman decided it would be a good idea to climb a tower and blow a trumpet every hour so that nobody could get more than 59 minutes sleep at a time. Exactly why this war took so long is a mystery: I’ve seen these Tartars and they’re just guys with pointy hats dressed in horse costumes. Later some Swedes turned up and caused a flood, somehow.
I haven’t read the next chapter in Norman Davies yet, but I believe it’s something about Poles going to America and inventing Chicago.