Battle of Rajgród, 1831: Giełgud opens the road to Lithuania

By the spring of 1831 the uprising that had broken out in Warsaw the previous November was in trouble. On 26 May the Polish army lost the hard-fought battle of Ostrołęka. Insurgents were also fighting the Russians in Lithuania, and the Polish commander in chief, Jan Skrzynecki, ordered a corps to march there to help them.²

The task went to General Antoni Giełgud. The editors of the November Uprising generals' reports, who published his account of Rajgród, sketch his career: a native of Samogitia, he had fought in Napoleon's wars, raised an infantry regiment at his own expense in 1812 and was made a brigadier general in 1818. In the uprising he distinguished himself at Wawer, Białołęka and Olszynka Grochowska and was given command of the 2nd Infantry Division.³

He was a soldier with an unusual record of honors. Napoleon made him a colonel, and Tsar Alexander I later awarded him the Order of Saint Stanislaus, second class; he also held the Knight's Cross of the Virtuti Militari. Now, in the uprising against Russia, he was sent to carry the war into his native Lithuania.⁴

Marching north

Giełgud left Łomża on 25 May and headed for the line of Stawiska, Szczuczyn and Grajewo, where he was joined by the detachment of Colonel Wacław Sierakowski. The historian Tomasz Gąsowski, in the lexicon of Polish battles published by Znak, gives his corps 14 battalions of infantry, 7 squadrons of cavalry and 26 guns.⁵

On the Russian side, General Osten-Sacken had orders to take Łomża. At dawn on 29 May he left his fortified position at Rajgród, leaving two regiments of Moscow infantry in the town. Gąsowski puts his corps at 8 battalions, 4 squadrons, 3 sotnias of Cossacks and 14 guns.⁶

Four hours at Rajgród

Near the village of Miecze the Russians ran into the cavalry of Giełgud's vanguard. Taken by surprise, they began to fall back toward Rajgród. By Lake Czarne a fight developed; Giełgud strengthened his left wing and threw the enemy back.⁷

As the beaten Russians streamed back to Rajgród, General Henryk Dembiński sent two squadrons of Poznań cavalry after them. Led by Major Franciszek Mycielski, the charge broke down under the fire of the Russian infantry in the town, and Mycielski was killed. The Polish infantry pressed on, and after four hours of fighting Rajgród was taken. Osten-Sacken ordered a retreat toward Augustów, leaving the road to Lithuania open.⁸

A complete victory

Giełgud reported to the National Government from near Suwałki. In his handwritten report, which bears his signature, he wrote that his men had fought with the greatest zeal and won a complete victory. He counted 1,200 Russian prisoners and some 200 Polish dead, among them Major Mycielski, and complained that the retreating enemy was plundering and destroying stores of food. Gąsowski gives the Russian losses as 800 killed and 1,200 taken prisoner.⁹

The Lithuanian national encyclopedia, in its biography of Giełgud, notes the victory over a Russian force near Rajgród as the opening of his march into Lithuania.¹⁰

Lost chances

The victory, in the editors' judgment, eased the blow of Ostrołęka and let Giełgud march on Vilnius. But his pursuit was slow, and he lost touch with the insurgents, so the Russians were not cut off from the road to Grodno.¹¹

In June Giełgud joined the corps of General Dembiński in Lithuania and was made commander in chief of the insurgents there. The Lithuanian encyclopedia records that he set up a provisional Polish central government for Lithuania at his headquarters and restored insurgent authority in the counties. On 11 June he ordered Chłapowski and Dembiński to march on Vilnius, hoping the Russians would abandon it without a fight; instead his attack was beaten back at Paneriai on 19 June.¹²

He then tried to hold a line between the Neris and the Šventoji and raised new regiments in Samogitia, but on 8 July his army failed to take Šiauliai. With the road back to Poland cut, he divided his forces and led them toward the Prussian border, and on 13 July 1831, during the crossing, he was shot dead by one of his own officers, Captain Stefan Skulski.¹³