The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth won a stunning victory at Klushino in 1610, when a small army under hetman Stanislaw Zolkiewski, spearheaded by the winged hussars, beat a far larger Russian and mercenary force. The win opened the road to Moscow and briefly put a Polish prince on the path to the Russian throne.
In the summer of 1610, deep in Russia's Time of Troubles, a small Polish-Lithuanian army met a much larger Russian and mercenary force at Klushino. Led by the hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski and spearheaded by the winged hussars, the outnumbered Poles won a stunning victory that opened the road to Moscow, and for a brief moment placed a Polish prince on the path to the Russian throne.
Russia's Time of Troubles
Russia was in chaos, its throne contested amid famine, pretenders and civil war, the period known as the Time of Troubles. The Polish king Sigismund III intervened, besieging Smolensk.1 A large Russian army, stiffened by foreign mercenaries hired with Swedish help2, marched to relieve the siege. To intercept it, the hetman Żółkiewski advanced with a far smaller force built around his cavalry.2
Outnumbered at Klushino
At Klushino the odds were heavily against the Poles, perhaps several to one, and much of their infantry and artillery had not arrived. What Żółkiewski had was the husaria, the winged hussars, the finest heavy cavalry in Europe. He chose to attack at once, before the enemy could deploy3 their advantage in numbers and guns.
The hussars charge
The hussars charged again and again into the Russian and mercenary lines, some companies charging eight or ten times over several hours. The foreign mercenaries, unpaid and unwilling, wavered and then defected or fled, and the Russian army disintegrated.1 Żółkiewski's outnumbered force had shattered a host many times its size, one of the great feats of the winged hussars.
A Pole toward the Kremlin
The victory was decisive. Moscow's boyars, their field army destroyed, agreed to accept the Polish prince Władysław as tsar4, and a Polish garrison entered the Kremlin3, one of the very few foreign forces ever to hold Moscow's fortress, and the last before Napoleon in 1812. But King Sigismund's ambitions and religious demands wrecked the deal5; the occupation soured, a Russian uprising drove the garrison out in 16121, and the chance slipped away.
