Battle of Paneriai, 1831: the November Uprising's fight for Vilnius

The November Uprising broke out in Warsaw at the end of 1830, and by the spring of 1831 insurgents were also fighting the Russians in Lithuania. The Polish commander in chief ordered troops to march there to help them. After the defeat at Ostrołęka on 26 May, General Antoni Giełgud, a native of Samogitia who had served under Napoleon, was given the task of marching into Lithuania.²

Giełgud was no novice. In 1812, both biographies note, he raised an infantry regiment at his own expense for Napoleon's war against Russia, and he was made a brigadier general in 1818. In the uprising, according to the generals' reports edition, he fought at Wawer, Białołęka and Olszynka Grochowska before Skrzynecki gave him command of a division. In Lithuania he would also form a provisional Polish government for the province at his headquarters and restore insurgent authority in its counties.³

On 29 May Giełgud beat a Russian force at Rajgród, opening the road north. In Lithuania he joined forces with the troops sent there earlier, among them the small corps of General Dezydery Chłapowski, and he was made commander in chief of the insurgents in Lithuania. The editors of the generals' reports note that his pursuit after Rajgród was slow and that he lost touch with the insurgents, so the Russians were not cut off from Grodno.⁴ › Battle of Ostrołęka, 1831

The march on Vilnius

Vilnius was the prize. In the Lithuanian Encyclopedia's account, on 11 June Giełgud ordered Chłapowski and General Henryk Dembiński to march on the city, expecting the Russian army to leave it without a fight. It did not. By the time the insurgents approached, about 26,000 Russian soldiers with 87 guns were in and around Vilnius, according to the encyclopedia, against 12,600 insurgents with 28 guns. The Polish Press Agency's account gives almost 13,000 on the Polish side and more than 26,000 on the Russian. The Lithuanian portal 15min.lt puts the Russians at 20,000 with 87 guns.⁵

The insurgents came from the direction of Rykantai and Trakai. Where the roads from Kaunas, Trakai and Grodno met, General Dmitry Osten-Sacken's force of about 8,000 men and 30 guns barred the way, backed by the Guards and other troops of Generals Dmitry Kuruta and Stepan Khilkov, about 9,000 men with 28 guns, at the foot of the Paneriai hills.⁶

Four hours on the hills

The fighting on 19 June went badly for the attackers. On their left the insurgents broke into the Russian trenches, but their attempt to push along the valley of the Neris into the enemy's rear was beaten back. The units fought separately, the Lithuanian Encyclopedia writes, without a common command; the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw calls the attack badly coordinated. After about four hours Giełgud ordered a retreat.⁷

The Lithuanian Encyclopedia counts about 600 insurgents killed and another 600 taken prisoner, against 364 Russian dead and wounded. The Polish Press Agency's account sums it up the same way: the Russians kept the insurgents out of Vilnius and inflicted far heavier losses than they suffered.⁸

The end of the rising in Lithuania

Paneriai decided the campaign. Vilnius stayed in Russian hands to the end of the uprising. Giełgud tried to hold a line between the Neris and the Šventoji and to raise new regiments in Samogitia, but on 8 July his army failed to take Šiauliai. With the road back to Poland closed, the corps retreated to the Prussian border. On 13 July 1831, in the confusion of the crossing, Giełgud was shot dead by one of his own officers, Captain Stefan Skulski, and the insurgents were disarmed in Prussia.⁹

In 2001 a monument to the insurgents who fell in the battle was unveiled near the Paneriai cemetery, the work of the sculptor Konstantinas Bogdanas. It bears the date of the battle and the insurgents' motto, For our freedom and yours, in Lithuanian and Polish. The historian Norbertas Černiauskas, quoted at its 190th anniversary, called Paneriai probably the largest battle ever fought for the Lithuanian capital.¹⁰