What happened at the Battle of Kobyłka?
On 26 October 1794 Russian troops under Alexander Suvorov caught the rearguard of General Stanisław Mokronowski's Lithuanian corps at Kobyłka, north-east of Warsaw, as it retreated toward the capital. After several hours of fighting the insurgents were beaten, with about 450 killed and hundreds taken prisoner, but their stand let the rest of the corps get away to Warsaw.1
Kobyłka is today a town on the north-eastern edge of Warsaw. In the autumn of 1794 it was a village with a church on the road along which the Lithuanian army of the Kościuszko Uprising was falling back to the capital. The battle fought there on 26 October was the last of the uprising before the storming of Praga.2
Background: after Maciejowice
In October 1794 the uprising led by Tadeusz Kościuszko suffered its worst blow: Kościuszko was defeated at Maciejowice, wounded and taken prisoner by the Russians. The Lithuanian corps of Lieutenant General Stanisław Mokronowski, operating in northern Mazovia, now fell back toward Warsaw. It was pursued by the Russian army of General Derfelden, and then by the army of Alexander Suvorov.3
The divisions of General Jan Meyen and General Arnold Byszewski covered the retreat. According to Franciszek Jóźwicki, writing in the Catholic weekly Idziemy, the Lithuanian army counted about 5,500 men, exhausted, hungry, poorly armed and partly sick, against about 7,000 Russians, many of them veterans of the war against Turkey. On 25 October the insurgents took up positions at Kobyłka, about 16 kilometers from Warsaw.4
26 October: the battle
The fighting began at dawn on 26 October. Jóźwicki describes three phases. First the insurgents beat off an attack by Cossacks. Then a massed Russian attack forced the Lithuanians to give way. Finally they fell back toward the capital, trying to mislead their pursuers. The fighting spread from the Holy Trinity church in Kobyłka through the hamlets of Mareta and Maciołki to the wooded dunes of today's Zielonka. Jóźwicki writes that the left tower of the church was damaged and many peasant cottages burned.5
The local historian Leszek Podhorodecki, writing on the bicentenary, follows Byszewski's column of about 2,500 men with six guns. In his account the Russian advance guards attacked from about 8.30 in the morning, fighting on foot in the woods, and General Pavel Potemkin reached the field at about ten, with Suvorov behind him. The last stand came on low wooded hills by the Długa stream, next to today's Zielonka railway station. The fighting lasted several hours in all, about five by Podhorodecki's reckoning.6
How many died at Kobyłka?
About 450 Lithuanian soldiers were killed. The number of prisoners is less certain. The Polish Press Agency's history site dzieje.pl gives about 850. Jóźwicki counts about 800 soldiers and 44 officers, among them General Byszewski and Colonel Wolan, and Podhorodecki gives Byszewski, Wolan, 48 other officers and about 800 men, of whom Byszewski, 25 other officers and about 400 men were taken in the final clash near Zielonka. According to Podhorodecki the Russians took all the guns of Byszewski's column. The whole of the insurgent cavalry broke away from the infantry and escaped to Warsaw.7
Suvorov reported his own losses as 23 killed, 130 wounded and 224 horses. Podhorodecki doubts the figure and suspects that the number of dead was played down. He also records that Suvorov let almost all the prisoners go, and that at a feast for the victors in the Kobyłka manor house, to which the captured officers were invited, Suvorov raised his glass to them with a toast of reconciliation.8
Why Kobyłka mattered
Kobyłka was a defeat, but not a useless one. The resistance of the Lithuanian rearguard let Mokronowski's corps withdraw and later take part in the defense of Praga, the suburb of Warsaw on the right bank of the Vistula. According to Jóźwicki, Mokronowski himself was sharply criticized after the battle and gave up his command.9
The defeat also opened the road to the capital. Jóźwicki writes that the Russian army halted until 2 November, and on 4 November 1794 Suvorov's troops stormed Praga. dzieje.pl puts the number of people killed in the massacre that followed at 13,000 to 20,000, most of them civilians.10
How Kobyłka is remembered
Kobyłka keeps the memory of the battle alive. For the 200th anniversary in 1994 a plaque to the fallen soldiers and insurgents was placed at the chapel of the Old Cemetery, and for the 222nd anniversary a second plaque, in Lithuanian, was unveiled beside it on the initiative of the Embassy of Lithuania. Speaking at the 2021 commemoration, the head of Poland's Office for Veterans and Victims of Oppression said that close to five hundred soldiers lie in the cemetery. Every October the town marks the anniversary with a Mass, reenactments and historical picnics.11
