When was the Siege of Kolding?

The Poles attacked on 23 December 1658 and took the castle on 25 December, by the Gregorian calendar used in Poland.

Why were Polish troops in Denmark in 1658?

Denmark had declared war on Sweden in 1657 and allied with Poland. In 1658 a Polish division under Stefan Czarniecki joined Brandenburg and imperial troops to drive the Swedes out of Jutland.

How was Kolding castle taken?

After two dawn assaults failed, the Poles broke in at the third attempt. A dragoon set fire to the powder store, part of the castle blew up with its defenders and the Poles took the rest.

Is Kolding linked to the Polish national anthem?

Indirectly. The anthem recalls Czarniecki crossing the sea, which refers to the crossing to the island of Als on 14 December 1658, days before Kolding.

Did Czarniecki's troops plunder Denmark?

Yes. Short of food, they requisitioned supplies by force, and there was looting and violence. The historian Adam Kersten argued that Danish accounts exaggerated the scale.

Siege of Kolding, 1658: Czarniecki's Poles storm a Danish royal castle

Quick answer

What happened at the Siege of Kolding in 1658?

At Christmas 1658, during the war against Sweden known in Poland as the Deluge, a Polish cavalry division under Stefan Czarniecki, sent to help Denmark, attacked the Swedish-held castle of Kolding in eastern Jutland. The first two assaults at dawn on 23 December were thrown back when the sentries raised the alarm. At the third attempt the Poles broke in; during the fighting a dragoon set fire to the powder store and part of the castle blew up with its defenders. By 25 December Kolding was in Polish hands.¹

By 1658 Sweden had been at war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for three years, in the invasion the Poles call the Deluge. Denmark feared it would be next. The Museum of Polish History notes that King Frederick III decided to strike first and declared war on Sweden on 15 June 1657, and that a Polish-Danish alliance soon followed, meant to take pressure off the Commonwealth.²

The Danes fared badly. Charles X Gustav's army overran the whole of the Jutland peninsula, and in 1658 an allied army of Brandenburgers, Poles and imperial troops marched to relieve Frederick III. The Polish contingent was led by Stefan Czarniecki, the most celebrated commander of the war.³

Five thousand horse go north

Czarniecki's division set out in the autumn of 1658: about 4,500 horsemen according to Jerzy Ronikier's lexicon of Polish battles, about 5,000 men according to a Wirtualna Polska account based on the work of the historian Adam Kersten. Among his officers were veterans of the wars against the Cossacks, Tatars and Turks, among them Mikołaj Skrzetuski and Gabriel Wojniłłowicz.⁴

The campaign's most famous moment came on 14 December, when the allies attacked the Swedes on the island of Als. Brandenburg infantry went first and failed to take the Swedish works; then Czarniecki led his cavalry across the strait. The memoirist Jan Chryzostom Pasek, who rode with him, described the commander crossing himself and riding into the water first, pistols tucked into collars and powder pouches tied round necks. Historians still argue whether the men swam their horses, rode them through the shallows or crossed in boats; the Museum of Polish History allows that they may have done both, while Wirtualna Polska cites another eyewitness, Jakub Łoś, and the Swedish colonel Rutger von Ascheberg, who wrote of boats. The Swedes fell back into the castles of Sønderborg and Nordborg, which soon fell.⁵

Three assaults

From Als the Poles turned on Kolding, the old castle of the Danish kings on the east coast of Jutland. Ronikier writes that Czarniecki attacked on 23 December and meant to take it by surprise. At dawn, under cover of fog, his men crept up to the ramparts and climbed them by lifting one another up. But the sentries saw them and raised the alarm in time, and both this assault and the next were thrown back.⁶

The third attempt succeeded. The Poles broke into the castle and fierce fighting followed. In the struggle, Ronikier writes, a dragoon reached the powder store and lit a fuse; part of the castle blew up with the Swedes defending it, and the Poles took the rest. On 25 December the old royal castle was in Polish hands.⁷

The dates are those of the Polish accounts. Poland had used the Gregorian calendar since the 1580s, while Denmark and Sweden still kept the Julian calendar, then ten days behind, so Danish and Swedish records give earlier dates for the same events.

Glory and plunder

Frederick III sent Czarniecki a letter of thanks dated 24 December 1658, Wirtualna Polska notes, and the Museum of Polish History adds that the king decorated him and that Pope Alexander VII and Emperor Leopold wrote to congratulate him.⁸

The campaign had a darker side. Short of food in a land already stripped by the Swedes, Czarniecki allowed his men to requisition supplies, and the requisitioning turned into plunder, burning and violence against Danish peasants. Kersten, as quoted by Wirtualna Polska, judged that the worst stories came largely from Danish writers who contrasted the Poles with the other allies, and that measured against other European armies of the day the Polish troops behaved fairly decently. Czarniecki punished offenders, Pasek recalled, by having them dragged behind horses around the camp.⁹

Militarily the Danish expedition was a clear success. After a series of defeats, Wirtualna Polska sums up, the Swedish side gave way to the coalition and concluded peace, and the campaign helped bring the Deluge to an end, though it also cooled relations between the Commonwealth and its allies, who resented the Polish troops' conduct.¹⁰

The Poles stayed in Denmark until August 1659, the Museum of Polish History records, leaving a small detachment under Colonel Kazimierz Piaseczyński when they went home. Their crossing to Als passed into the Polish national anthem, in the line about Czarniecki returning across the sea to save the homeland.¹¹