The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth won a crushing victory at Kircholm near Riga in 1605, when a force of about 3,600 men1, led by the winged hussars, routed a Swedish army roughly three times its size, its charges breaking the Swedish cavalry in about half an hour. It became the most famous triumph of the Commonwealth's legendary heavy cavalry.
On a rainy September day in 1605, near Riga, a Polish-Lithuanian army of only about 3,600 men faced a Swedish force perhaps three times its size. Once the hussars charged, the Swedish cavalry broke within about half an hour; the Swedes were routed and slaughtered, and the battle became the most famous triumph of the Commonwealth's legendary winged hussars.
The war for Livonia
Kircholm was fought during the long struggle between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden2 for control of Livonia, on the Baltic coast. A Swedish army under King Charles IX was besieging Riga3 when the Lithuanian hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz marched to relieve the city with a far smaller force, most of it cavalry.
The hussar army
The heart of Chodkiewicz's army was the husaria, the Polish-Lithuanian winged hussars: heavy lancers who charged home in tight formation with long lances that outreached any infantry pike4 or enemy cavalry. Chodkiewicz drew the confident Swedes down from their strong position by feigning a retreat, tempting them onto open ground where his horsemen could strike.
The charge and the rout
When the trap was set the hussars charged. In a series of shattering attacks they broke the Swedish cavalry, rolled up the infantry3, and turned the battle into a massacre. By most accounts, after hours of skirmishing, the cavalry fight was decided in about half an hour3; the stranded infantry was destroyed afterwards, in some three hours of battle all told. Swedish losses ran to many thousands, while Commonwealth casualties were remarkably light, one of the most lopsided results in the era's warfare.
The most celebrated charge of the winged hussars
Kircholm is remembered as the moment the winged hussars reached the peak of their art. Their weapon was the charge: a wall of armoured lancers riding knee to knee, driving hollow lances far longer than any infantry pike into an enemy who could not strike them first. At Kircholm that charge was delivered again and again until a Swedish army of pikemen and mounted reiters came apart. Historians still rank the attack among the greatest cavalry charges in history, in the same company as the relief of Vienna in 1683.
Word of the victory travelled far. According to tradition, congratulations reached Chodkiewicz from rulers across Europe, and the battle passed into legend as proof that a small, superbly led Commonwealth army could shatter a far larger foe. It is the victory most often invoked when the husaria are called the finest heavy cavalry of their age.
A legend, and its limits
Kircholm sealed the reputation of the winged hussars as the finest heavy cavalry in Europe, and Chodkiewicz's victory was celebrated across the continent. Yet the Commonwealth could not follow it up: short of money and troops, it failed to drive Sweden out of Livonia for good5, and the wars along the Baltic dragged on for decades.