After the Polish–Lithuanian victory, both swords were taken as a war trophy by King Władysław II to Kraków, Poland's capital at the time, and placed in the treasury of the Royal Wawel Castle.

With time, the two swords became treated as royal insignia, symbolising the monarch's reign over two nations: the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

As both sides were preparing for the battle in the morning of 15 July 1410, two heralds carrying two unsheathed swords were announced to King Władysław II.

The heralds had been sent by the grand master to Władysław II and Vytautas, but since the latter was busy making his troops ready for the battle, it was only the king, accompanied by his closest aides, who received the envoys.

The Grand Master Ulryk sends you and your brother (...) through us, the deputies standing here, two swords for help so that you, with him and his army, may delay less and may fight more boldly than you have shown, and also that you will not continue hiding and staying in the forest and groves, and will not postpone the battle.

Hence the envoys' speech was considered grossly boastful and impudent, as can be seen from a letter sent by Jan Hus to King Władysław II where the Bohemian religious reformer praised the Polish–Lithuanian victory at Grunwald as a triumph of humility over pride.

Immediately afterwards, one of the bishops assisting in the ceremony handed the Grunwald Swords to the king who in turn passed them on to the Crown (i.e., Polish) and Lithuanian sword-bearers (miecznicy).

[4] After Prussia ceded Kraków, by the terms of the Third Partition of Poland, to the Habsburg Empire in 1796, the swords were retrieved from the devastated treasury by historian Tadeusz Czacki who handed them over to Princess Izabela Czartoryska.

The Grunwald Swords were placed among other patriotic souvenirs in the Temple of the Sibyl, her private museum established in the garden of the Czartoryski Palace in Puławy.

Most of the collection from the Temple of the Sybil had been evacuated to France shortly before the uprising broke out, but the Grunwald Swords were hidden in a parish priest's house in the nearby village of Włostowice (now part of Puławy).

In 1853, after the priest's death, the house was searched by Russian gendarmes, or security police, who confiscated the swords as illegal weapons and took them to the fortress of Zamość.

[4] Being reminded of Polish military victories over the Teutonic Order used to stir German sensibilities to such an extent, that the inclusion of the Grunwald Swords on a 1938 postage stamp commemorating King Vladislaus Jagiełło and Queen Jadwiga resulted in a formal diplomatic protest of Nazi Germany.