The armies of Poland and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were led by warrior kings and gifted hetmans, and carried into battle by the most feared cavalry in Europe. These are the commanders behind Poland's greatest victories, each linked to the battle that made their name.
Jan III Sobieski. The king whose winged-hussar charge broke the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683.
Jan Karol Chodkiewicz. The Commonwealth hetman who crushed a far larger Swedish army at Kircholm in 1605.
Stanislaw Zolkiewski. The hetman whose victory at Klushino in 1610 carried the war all the way to Moscow.
Tadeusz Kosciuszko. The engineer and general who fought for American independence and led the 1794 uprising for Polish freedom.
Casimir Pulaski. The Bar Confederation cavalryman who became the father of the American cavalry, one of the Polish heroes of the American Revolution.
Stefan Czarniecki. The hetman whose mobile war of raids helped turn back the Swedish Deluge, remembered in the national anthem.
Wladyslaw Jagiello. The king who, with Grand Duke Vytautas, led the Polish-Lithuanian union to victory at Grunwald in 1410.
The Winged Hussars. Not one man but an elite arm, the heavy cavalry that made Polish armies feared across Europe.
Kings, hetmans and the Commonwealth
For centuries Poland was joined with Lithuania in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, an elective monarchy whose armies were led by kings and by hetmans, the standing commanders of its forces. Some of the greatest, like Chodkiewicz, came from the Lithuanian half of the state, and their victories were won by a shared army whose spearhead was the winged hussars. See the battles that made their names in the greatest battles in Polish history.