On 26 May 1831, in the November Uprising against Russian rule, Field Marshal Hans Karl von Diebitsch's Russian army caught the main Polish army of General Jan Skrzynecki while it was still crossing the Narew at Ostrołęka. The Russians stormed the burning town and forced the bridges, and Polish counterattacks broke down under artillery fire with heavy losses. In the evening Lieutenant Colonel Józef Bem's horse battery checked the Russians, and the Poles withdrew toward Warsaw. The battle is generally counted a Polish defeat and a turning point of the rising.
A chance missed at Śniadowo
The uprising had broken out in Warsaw on the night of 29 to 30 November 1830. In May 1831, under pressure from public opinion, Skrzynecki led the main army north-east against the Russian Guard, which stood between Ostrołęka and Łomża. According to the city of Ostrołęka's historical account, on 18 May he failed for reasons still unclear to attack the Guard at Śniadowo, and it escaped toward Białystok. His pursuit alerted Diebitsch, who marched with the main Russian army to cut the Poles off from Warsaw.1
The city's account gives Skrzynecki about 30,000 men against Diebitsch's 40,000; the historian Sławomir Leśniewski describes the Russians as somewhat under 40,000. On the evening of 25 May the Poles reached Ostrołęka and began crossing the Narew. Dates here are Gregorian, as used in Poland; Russian accounts of the time, on the Julian calendar, put the battle twelve days earlier, on 14 May.2
The fight for the town and the bridges
On the morning of 26 May, while the crossing was still going on, Diebitsch's leading troops attacked. The town was held by Ludwik Bogusławski's brigade, and the Kurpie Museum in Ostrołęka recalls Russian troops who had already taken the town fighting the 4th Infantry Regiment in the market square while houses burned. The Russians took Ostrołęka and pushed across the bridges, which had not been destroyed, to the right bank of the Narew.3
Leśniewski faults Skrzynecki for choosing to fight there instead of destroying the bridges and withdrawing, and then for feeding in battalions piecemeal. In the afternoon, as Diebitsch brought more troops across, Polish counterattacks drove the Russians back toward the river but were stopped by heavy Russian artillery fire and fell back with heavy losses. A cavalry charge over muddy ground failed, and its commander, General Ludwik Kicki, was killed; General Henryk Kamieński also fell.4
Bem's battery
Around 7 p.m., as the exhausted Polish units began to give way, Lieutenant Colonel Józef Bem brought forward his 4th Horse Artillery Battery of ten guns. Its fire broke the Russian columns massing at the bridgehead and allowed the army to withdraw in order. The city's account says Bem lost half his men and horses and was promoted to colonel and awarded the Virtuti Militari for the action; Leśniewski adds that he was wounded in the hip near the end of the fighting. That night the Polish army marched back toward Warsaw. Bem's later career is told in our biography of Józef Bem.5
The cost
The figures differ from source to source. The Kurpie Museum and the Museum of Polish History's calendar dzieje.pl give Polish losses of about 6,500 men. Leśniewski counts 194 officers and 6,224 men, about 2,000 of them killed, against 172 officers and nearly 5,700 men on the Russian side. The city of Ostrołęka gives 1,800 Poles killed, 2,900 wounded and 1,400 taken prisoner, and more than 5,800 Russians killed or wounded, while the museum's estimate of Russian losses runs from about 4,700 to 5,600.6
The outcome was not decisive on the field, but the battle is generally counted a Polish defeat. The Kurpie Museum and the city both call it a turning point of the uprising: the Russians regained the initiative, and Polish morale suffered badly. Warsaw capitulated on 8 September 1831, as dzieje.pl records, and the city's account dates the end of the rising to October. The full story of the battle is in our article on the Battle of Ostrołęka.7
Also on this day
- 1940: Battle of Dunkirk. With the Battle of France already lost, Allied troops held a shrinking perimeter around the port of Dunkirk against the German advance.
