94 The Great War five hundred years ago the Poles triumphed over the Teutonic Order, won the first great victory over the German force which was sweeping Slavdom eastward and laid the foundations of that Poland which, under Sobieski, was to save Europe from the Turk and in its expiring days to give Napoleon as the champion of the French Revolution so many soldiers and at least one marshal of France. Gruenwald was in no sHght degree the victory of the Slav over the German ; it put a limit to that extension of German power and culture which had driven the Slav from the Elbe to the Vistula: to what could the champion of the Pan- Slav cause refer with more appropriateness? What Napoleon promised and could not quite bring himself to do Nicholas now undertook. His promise was intended to have its effect upon the Poles of Posen who wore the Prussian uniform. To be heard by the Czechs, the Serbs, the Slovaks, the Slovenes, the Croats, who wore the Hapsburg uni- form. Even the Rumanians, who claim Roman, not Slavic origin, could find in it a suggestion that, when all Slavs were coming into their own, they might hope to step over into Transylvania and Bukovina and " redeem " some millions of " Romans " who are the unwilling subjects of Austrian or Hungarian tyranny. Obviously it was intended to disrupt Austrian armies and stimulate treason in Prussian forces. Poland restored, even with its frontiers of lan- guage alone, would give Europe a new state of nearly 25,000,000 inhabitants. It would take from