The Battle of Stoczek was fought on 14 February 18312, ten days after the Russian army invaded the Kingdom of Poland to crush the November Uprising. Near the small town of Stoczek, east of Warsaw, General Józef Dwernicki's corps met two regiments of Russian mounted rifles under General Fyodor Geismar, who tried to attack from two directions along narrow forest roads. Polish uhlans charged and broke the first Russian column, then, after a first attack was beaten back, routed Geismar's own regiment and captured eight guns. Polish losses were light. It was the first Polish victory of the war and was celebrated across the country.
In February 1831 a Russian army of more than 100,000 men marched into the Kingdom of Poland to put down the November Uprising. The first good news for the insurgents came from a forest clearing near a small town east of Warsaw, where General Józef Dwernicki set his uhlans on a Russian vanguard.
Invasion
The November Uprising broke out in Warsaw on 29 November 18303, and in January 1831 the Polish Sejm dethroned Tsar Nicholas I as King of Poland3. In early February Field Marshal Hans Karl von Diebitsch led the Russian army across the border. On its flank advanced a division of mounted rifles under General Fyodor Geismar, a veteran with a reputation as one of Russia's best vanguard commanders.
Dwernicki waits at Stoczek
Against him moved the corps of Brigadier General Józef Dwernicki, a veteran cavalryman of the Napoleonic wars4, with about 4,700 men. Learning that the Russians were near, Dwernicki drew up his troops on high ground at the northern edge of Stoczek, his cavalry covering the roads, his six light guns in the centre and his infantry in squares beside them. Geismar decided to attack at once from two directions, sending General Pashkov with one regiment along one road1 while he led the other himself.
The first column breaks
The Russian columns had to wind through narrow forest tracks and deploy under Polish artillery fire. Dwernicki sent his uhlans against Pashkov's regiment before it could form up. The Russian squadrons received the charge standing, firing their carbines instead of countercharging, and were broken; their retreat along the forest road was blocked, and some riders are said to have drowned in a pond as they fled.
The charge on Geismar
Geismar's own regiment had barely deployed when the Poles turned on it. A first charge by four squadrons was thrown back by canister1 and musket fire, but a renewed attack, led according to Polish accounts by Dwernicki himself at the head of a squadron of krakus light cavalry, swept the Russians away. In the narrow forest road the retreat became a rout, and the Russians lost eight guns and many prisoners, while the Poles counted only about 46 killed and 59 wounded.
A victory for morale
Stoczek did little to slow the Russian advance on Warsaw, which was halted only at Olszynka Grochowska later that month. But as the first victory of the war it was greeted with jubilation in Warsaw, and Dwernicki was promoted to general of division5. The battle lives on in patriotic songs such as "Grzmią pod Stoczkiem armaty" ("The guns thunder at Stoczek"), and a monument raised in 1931 stands on the battlefield.