The Battle of Raszyn was fought on 19 April 18091, at the start of the Polish-Austrian War. An Austrian corps under Archduke Ferdinand, roughly twice as strong as the army of the Duchy of Warsaw2, marched on Warsaw. Prince Józef Poniatowski met it at Raszyn, where marshy ground and a chain of ponds left only a few causeways to cross. The fiercest fighting was for the village of Falenty, where Colonel Cyprian Godebski, a soldier and poet, was mortally wounded. The Poles held most of their line until dark, then withdrew, and two days later Warsaw was handed over by convention. Poniatowski then carried the war into Austrian Galicia.
In April 1809, while Napoleon's main army was far away, Austria struck at the young Duchy of Warsaw, expecting a quick march to its capital. A few miles south-west of Warsaw, among ponds and wet meadows, Prince Józef Poniatowski chose to fight with an army half the size of the enemy's.
Austria strikes at the Duchy
The Duchy of Warsaw had been created by Napoleon in 1807 from Polish lands taken by Prussia3. When Austria went to war with France again in 1809, it sent a corps of roughly 30,000 men under1 Archduke Ferdinand to knock the Duchy out of the war. Most of the Duchy's best troops were serving in Spain and elsewhere, leaving Prince Józef Poniatowski with only about 14,000 Polish and Saxon soldiers to defend Warsaw.
A line of ponds and causeways
Poniatowski did not want to give up the capital without a fight. He took up a position at Raszyn, where a marshy stream and a chain of ponds could be crossed only on a few causeways and dikes. An advance guard held the village of Falenty in front of the main line, while Polish and Saxon troops covered Raszyn and the flanks.
Falenty and the death of Godebski
The Austrians attacked in the early afternoon of 19 April.2 The heaviest blows fell on Falenty, which changed hands several times. When the Polish battalions there began to give way, Poniatowski himself led a fresh battalion forward, on foot and musket in hand according to tradition1, and retook the village. In this fighting Colonel Cyprian Godebski, commander of the 8th Infantry Regiment and a known poet, was mortally wounded. Austrian attempts to turn the Polish flank near Jaworowo bogged down in the marshes under Polish artillery fire2.
Night and a convention
In the evening fresh Austrian battalions forced their way across the causeway into Raszyn. A Polish counterattack pushed them out of the village, but the causeway stayed in Austrian hands, and the fighting died away around 10 pm2. That night the Saxons left under orders from Dresden, and Poniatowski withdrew. On 21 April he signed a convention handing over Warsaw4, on terms that let the Polish army leave with its arms and stores, while the suburb of Praga across the Vistula stayed in Polish hands.
A defeat that began a campaign
Instead of retreating north, Poniatowski crossed to the right bank of the Vistula, beat off Austrian attempts to cross the river, and then marched south into Austrian Galicia. Polish troops took Lublin, Sandomierz, Zamość and Lwów, and in July entered Kraków. After Napoleon's victory at Wagram, the Treaty of Schönbrunn gave the Duchy a large part of Galicia1, including Kraków. Raszyn is inscribed on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw, and Godebski's death became a favourite subject of Polish painters.