Tadeusz Kościuszko won the Battle of Racławice on 4 April 17941, defeating a Russian force under General Alexander Tormasov near Kraków. The decisive moment came when peasant scythemen charged and captured the Russian guns. It was the first great victory of the Kościuszko Uprising2 and a powerful symbol of Polish resistance, though the uprising was crushed later that year.
In March 1794 Tadeusz Kościuszko proclaimed an uprising in Kraków against the powers that had partitioned Poland. Days later, at the village of Racławice, his small army, joined by peasants armed with scythes, met a Russian force, and won a victory that Poles have celebrated ever since.
A country partitioned
By 1793 Russia and Prussia had carved up much of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Second Partition. In March 1794 Kościuszko, a veteran of the American War of Independence3, returned to Kraków and proclaimed a national uprising.
The uprising begins
Kościuszko reinforced his few thousand regulars with peasant recruits raised by the insurrection's levy. Around two thousand joined4, many armed with scythes straightened into pikes. On 4 April his army met a Russian corps under Alexander Tormasov near Racławice, north-east of Kraków.
The charge of the scythemen
As the fighting developed, Kościuszko personally led the peasant scythemen1, the kosynierzy, in a charge against a Russian battery. They overran the guns before they could do much damage, and the Russian line gave way. Tormasov withdrew, leaving his artillery behind.4
Bartosz Głowacki
One of the scythemen, Wojciech Bartosz Głowacki, became a national hero. According to the famous story, he smothered the fuse of a Russian cannon with his cap5 before it could fire. Kościuszko rewarded him with promotion and freedom4, and he died of wounds later that year.
Why Racławice mattered
Racławice gave the uprising its first victory and its most enduring image: peasants and soldiers fighting side by side. Militarily it changed little, and the uprising was crushed in the autumn after the defeat at Maciejowice6 and the storming of Warsaw's Praga district. Poland was then wiped off the map in the Third Partition of 1795. A century later the battle was immortalised in the giant Racławice Panorama, now displayed in Wrocław.
