What happened at the Battle of Kliszów?
On 19 July 1702, near the village of Kliszów about 12 km from Pińczów, King Charles XII of Sweden defeated the Saxon army of King Augustus II and the Polish Crown army of Grand Hetman Hieronim Lubomirski. Charles marched around the allies' marshes, the Polish cavalry charged without success and left the field, and the Saxons were routed with the loss of their artillery and baggage. About three weeks later Charles held Kraków.6
Kliszów was one of the first battles of the Great Northern War fought on the lands of the Commonwealth, and it opened the way to Kraków for Charles XII. In Poland it is often called the last battle of the winged hussars. The wider war is told in our guide to the Great Northern War, and the hussars in our guide to the winged hussars.7
A king hunting a king
The Great Northern War began in 1700, when Augustus II, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, joined Russia and Denmark against Sweden and his Saxon troops marched into Swedish Livonia. Charles XII struck back quickly. In November 1700 he broke the Russian army besieging Narva, a victory told in our story of the Battle of Narva.8
Instead of pursuing the Russians, Charles turned on Augustus. In the summer of 1701 he crossed the Western Dvina near Riga under the eyes of the Saxon army and drove it off. He then declared that he would not make peace until Augustus lost the Polish crown.9
In 1702 the Swedes marched deep into the Commonwealth. In May they entered Warsaw without a fight.10
Augustus, then in Kraków, gave up hope of a settlement and decided to fight. According to Bain, his general Jacob Heinrich von Flemming saw a chance in the small size of the Swedish army and urged him to strike before it was reinforced.11
Two armies near Pińczów
The Saxon army marched out of Kraków and camped near the village of Kliszów, about 12 km from Pińczów. There the Polish Crown army under Grand Hetman Hieronim Augustyn Lubomirski joined it.12
Charles came south from Warsaw with part of his army and called up the corps of General Mörner, which reached the Swedish camp only on the evening before the battle, tired by long forced marches.13
The numbers differ widely. Waldemar Kowalski gives Augustus 18,000 to 20,000 men against 12,000 Swedes, and Tadeusz Korzon gives Augustus 21,000, about 11,000 of them Saxons, with Poles, Tatars and Wallachians. R. Nisbet Bain counts 19,000 Saxons and about 6,000 Poles against about 10,000 Swedes, while the Swedish relation of the battle puts the Polish Crown army alone at 12,000.14
Even the date has two forms. Polish and German authors date the battle 19 July 1702, while Swedish accounts give 9 July. From 1700 Sweden used a calendar of its own, one day apart from the Julian calendar and ten days behind the Gregorian one.15
Charles turns the marshes
On the morning of the battle the Swedes formed up and marched through woods toward the allied camp, reaching sight of it about noon. The position was strong. Marshes covered its front, a deep morass curved in a half circle behind the camp, and guns on a rise commanded the approaches.16
Charles saw that a frontal attack had no chance. He turned his army to the left, toward higher ground near the allied right wing where the ground was free of marsh, and the allies had to shift their own line to face him.17
He also placed infantry between his cavalry squadrons on the wing that faced the Poles. Marcin Białas, reviewing Marek Wagner's monograph on the battle in 2014, writes that this regrouping on the field and the oblique attack that followed came decades ahead of the skilled coordination of infantry and cavalry in later 18th-century warfare.18
Fighting began at about two in the afternoon. As the Swedish attack on the allied right started, Charles's brother-in-law, Duke Frederick IV of Holstein-Gottorp, was hit by a cannon shot. Korzon writes that he fell dead at once, while the Swedish relation says he was carried to a cottage nearby and died a few hours later.19
The Polish charge and Lubomirski's retreat
Lubomirski's cavalry stood on the far right of the allied line. The hussars and the pancerni charged the Swedes, but they met infantry with pikes and muskets set between the squadrons. Kowalski describes two failed charges, the Swedish relation says the Poles stood two shocks but not a third, and Bain writes that they took one volley and galloped off.20
The Polish army then left the field and fell back to the nearby village of Kije. Its departure uncovered the Saxon right wing.21
Why Lubomirski withdrew is still argued. Korzon calls it treachery done to please the Sapieha family, his in-laws, who sided with Charles. Bain records Lubomirski's own excuse, a rumor that Charles and Augustus were plotting to ruin Poland, while Kowalski cites the hetman's complaint about Swedish obstacles, poor reconnaissance and heavy enemy fire.22
The historian Radosław Sikora, as quoted by Kowalski, argues that musket fire did not stop the second charge. In his view wooden obstacles of sharpened crossed beams, chevaux de frise, kept the lances from reaching the Swedish infantry. Chevaux de frise appear in the Swedish relation as well, there in front of the Saxon infantry.23
The Saxons broken
With the Poles gone, the Swedes attacked the Saxon right wing and scattered it after a hard fight, in which Flemming was wounded twice.24
The heaviest fighting came on the other flank. The Saxon left crossed the marsh and fell on the Swedish right in front, flank and rear. Carl Gustaf Rehnskiöld and the other generals there held the line with the guard cavalry, and the Swedish horse finally drove the Saxon cavalry into the morass behind the camp, where many of the riders died.25
In the center the Swedish infantry broke the Saxon foot and took its guns. Bain writes that Charles sent cavalry squadrons to help his infantry and that the battle was over by half past four. The Swedish relation speaks of four hours of fighting, after which Charles entered the allied camp at six in the evening to the sound of kettledrums and trumpets.26
Losses and trophies
The Swedish relation gives 300 Swedes killed and 800 wounded, and the enemy's loss as nearly 2,000 killed and wounded besides 1,700 prisoners. A note in the English edition of 1740 cites Pufendorf's count of 4,000 Saxons killed and 2,000 taken, not counting the Poles. Bain gives the allies 3,300 killed and wounded and the Swedes about 2,000.27
The Saxons lost their artillery and baggage. The Swedish relation lists 48 guns found in the camp, the same number Kowalski gives, and says that Augustus's own equipage, with his mules, plate and war chest, was found stuck in the mud behind the camp.28
Some trophies survive in Sweden. The Army Museum in Stockholm keeps a kettledrum in the state trophy collection whose catalogue entry reads "Erövrad i slaget vid Klissow 1702", captured at the battle of Klissow 1702.29
From Kliszów to Altranstädt
Augustus fled by Pińczów toward Kraków, and the Poles made for Sandomierz. Korzon writes that Augustus did not dare to defend Kraków and went on to Sandomierz himself.30
About three weeks after the battle Charles took Kraków by a bold trick. Bain and Adlerfeld both tell how he came to the gate with a small party and called out in French to open it, after which the Swedes forced their way in and the garrison gave up.31
The victory did not end the war in Poland. In July 1704, under the pressure of Swedish troops, a small assembly of nobles near Warsaw proclaimed Stanisław Leszczyński king.32
Charles finally reached Augustus in his own country. In September 1706, with the Swedish army in Saxony and Charles at Altranstädt near Leipzig, Augustus had to accept the Treaty of Altranstädt, by which he gave up the Polish crown to Stanisław. Charles then turned east against Russia, a road that ended at Poltava in 1709.33
Kliszów in memory
In Poland Kliszów is often called the last battle of the winged hussars. The archaeological bulletin of the provincial heritage office in Kielce, following Marek Wagner, puts it more carefully, as one of the last battles in which the hussars played a significant role. In the early 18th century the hussars turned to ceremony, appearing mainly on parade and above all at funerals. Their earlier victories are ranked in the winged hussars' greatest battles.34
For Bain the honor of the victory belonged entirely to Charles XII, because the tactics used at Kliszów were the king's own. Białas, reviewing Wagner, places the battle among the first clashes of the Great Northern War on Polish soil and calls it an interesting example of new tactical solutions.35
The field itself is being searched. In 2024 the Świętokrzyska Grupa Eksploracyjna, a regional exploration association, began surveying it, and the provincial heritage office reports that the work goes on with metal detectors under the expert supervision of the Regional Museum in Pińczów. Most finds are parts of soldiers' weapons and uniforms. The office's bulletin describes an iron flintlock with its original flint still in the jaws, probably from a pistol. In 2024 the searchers said that the mass graves of the dead had not yet been found.36
