On 14 February 1831, near the small town of Stoczek east of Warsaw, the corps of General Józef Dwernicki routed two regiments of Russian mounted rifles under General Fyodor (Teodor) Geismar. It was the first significant clash of the Russian campaign against the November Uprising and the first Polish victory of the war. Polish losses were light, while the Russians lost guns and prisoners. The battle did not stop the Russian advance on Warsaw, but it did much to lift Polish morale.
The invasion
The November Uprising broke out in Warsaw on 29 November 1830, and on 25 January 1831 a joint sitting of the Sejm and Senate voted to depose Nicholas I as king of Poland. Early in February a Russian army moved into the Kingdom of Poland. Sebastian Bartos and John P. Dunn put the invading force under Field Marshal Hans Karl von Diebitsch at 114,000 men in eleven columns. On 9 February Diebitsch formed flank guards to cover his advance along the Brest to Warsaw road, among them a cavalry division under Geismar.1
Against it stood the corps of Józef Dwernicki, a cavalry veteran of the Napoleonic campaigns, with fourteen squadrons of uhlans and mounted rifles, three infantry battalions and a battery of horse artillery. Dwernicki had long pressed for an expedition east of the Bug to raise Volhynia and Podolia, as Maciej Trąbski and the Museum of Polish History portal dzieje.pl both describe. His plan for a surprise attack on the Russians nearby was foiled when Cossack scouts took one of his men prisoner and warned Geismar.2
Two columns in the forest
Geismar decided to attack at once from two directions. General Pashkov led one regiment of mounted rifles with four guns down a narrow forest road from the north, while Geismar came by way of Toczyska with a second regiment and six guns. Dwernicki drew up near the village of Zgórznica, north of Stoczek, with his guns on a hill covering both roads, his infantry on their flanks and his cavalry ready to strike at troops coming out of the woods. The narrow forest tracks forced the Russians to deploy under Polish artillery fire.3
Polish uhlans under Major Franciszek Russyan charged Pashkov's column. According to Bartos and Dunn, the Russian horsemen met the charge with carbine fire instead of countercharging, fired too soon, and broke; some fell into a pond and drowned. Geismar's regiment arrived in time to save Pashkov's from complete destruction, and its six guns began to batter the Polish infantry. Dwernicki answered with a cavalry attack, throwing his reserve, a krakus squadron and two squadrons of uhlans, against the Russian flank, so that Geismar's men were struck from three sides and broke. The battle probably lasted about thirty minutes.4
Counting the cost
The figures differ. According to Bartos and Dunn, Dwernicki reported 34 Polish dead and claimed 400 Russians killed, 230 taken prisoner and 10 guns captured, while Russian sources admit 280 casualties and eight guns lost. Trąbski writes that after Stoczek Dwernicki sent five of the eleven guns he had taken to Warsaw, which earned him a European reputation as a supplier of cannon.5
The full story of the battle is told in our article on the Battle of Stoczek.
A victory for morale
Bartos and Dunn judge that in tactical terms Stoczek was no calamity for Russia: Geismar still had enough men and guns to fight again, and Diebitsch's flank was not exposed. Its weight was political: as the first major battle of the war, it greatly lifted morale in Warsaw. Dwernicki was soon promoted to general of division, and Trąbski notes that soldiers who had distinguished themselves at Stoczek later received the Virtuti Militari. The Russian advance went on and was checked only on 25 February in the great battle at Grochów, fought for the alder wood of Olszynka Grochowska.6
Trąbski dates his next victory, at Nowa Wieś, to 19 February, five days after Stoczek. He then marched south and east toward Volhynia, but in April 1831, surrounded by Russian forces, he crossed into Austrian territory. His life is told in our biography of Józef Dwernicki.7
Also on this day
- 1797: Battle of Cape St. Vincent. A British fleet under Sir John Jervis attacked a larger Spanish fleet under José de Córdoba off Cape Saint Vincent in Portugal, in the War of the First Coalition.
