Who was Jan Tarnowski?

Grand Hetman of the Crown of Poland (1488 to 1561), victor of the Battle of Obertyn in 1531.

What did Tarnowski win at Obertyn?

He defeated a much larger Moldavian army under Petru Rareș and recovered the province of Pokuttya for Poland.

What was Tarnowski's treatise?

A work on the art of war, printed in 1558, describing how to organise, supply and command an army.

What other victories did Tarnowski win?

In 1535 he captured the fortress of Starodub during the war with Muscovy.

Where is Jan Tarnowski buried?

In Tarnów Cathedral, beneath a Renaissance tomb.

Jan Tarnowski: the hetman who won at Obertyn

Jan Tarnowski was the great Polish commander of the Renaissance. At Obertyn in 1531 he defeated an army three times larger than his own¹, and late in life he set down what he had learned in one of the first Polish books on the art of war.

A Renaissance knight

Born in 1488 into one of the most powerful noble families of Poland, Tarnowski travelled widely as a young man and gained military experience abroad before rising in the service of King Sigismund the Old. In 1527 he became Grand Hetman of the Crown², commander of the Polish army.

Portrait of an elderly bearded king in a fur collar and black cap — King Sigismund the Old, whom Tarnowski served as Grand Hetman, in a portrait by Lucas Cranach the Younger from around 1553 to 1556 (National Museum in Kraków). Public domain

Obertyn, 1531

When the Moldavian ruler Petru Rareș seized the borderland of Pokuttya, Tarnowski met his much larger army at Obertyn on 22 August 1531³. Defending a fortified wagon camp, his troops beat off³ the Moldavian assaults and then routed them with a cavalry counterattack, recovering Pokuttya.

Sixteenth-century woodcut of a fortified wagon camp ringed by ranks of soldiers — The Battle of Obertyn in a woodcut from Marcin Bielski's chronicle, printed in Kraków in 1564: the Polish wagon camp surrounded by the Moldavian army. Public domain

War with Muscovy

In 1535, during the war with Muscovy, Tarnowski led a Polish army that captured the fortress of Starodub⁴. He remained one of the most influential men in the kingdom, serving as castellan of Kraków⁴.

Sixteenth-century woodcut of soldiers storming a fortified town — The siege of Starodub in 1535, a woodcut from the same 1564 chronicle by Marcin Bielski. Public domain

The theorist

Tarnowski's treatise on the art of war, printed in 1558⁵, set out his ideas on organising, supplying and commanding an army, including the use of the wagon camp. It shaped Polish military thinking for generations.

Legacy

Tarnowski died in 1561 and was buried in Tarnów Cathedral, beneath a monumental Renaissance tomb⁶. He is remembered as one of the founders of the Polish art of war.

Tall marble and stone Renaissance tomb with recumbent effigies set into a church wall — The Tarnowski tomb monument in Tarnów Cathedral, the Renaissance work of the Italian sculptor Giovanni Maria Padovano, made between 1561 and 1573. CC0 (public domain)

Sources and notes

Numbered notes in the text point to the works below.

Wikipedia, “Battle of Obertyn” ↩
Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Jan Tarnowski” ↩
Marek Plewczyński, Wojny i wojskowość polska w XVI wieku, t. I: 1500–1548 (Inforteditions, 2011). ↩ a b
Włodzimierz Dworzaczek, Hetman Jan Tarnowski. Z dziejów możnowładztwa małopolskiego (Instytut Wydawniczy PAX, 1985). ↩ a b
Jan Tarnowski, Consilium rationis bellicae, printed in Tarnów, 1558. ↩
VisitMalopolska (Małopolska Region), “Tombstone of House Tarnowscy in the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Basilica, Tarnów” ↩
Wikipedia, “Jan Tarnowski”
Wikipedia, “Jan Amor Tarnowski”