The winged hussars' most famous battles were Kircholm (1605), Klushino (1610) and Vienna (1683), but their record runs from Orsha (1514) and Obertyn (1531) through Lubieszów (1577), Trzciana (1629), Berestechko (1651), Polonka (1660) and Khotyn (1673). In each the hussars delivered the decisive charge, usually against a far larger army. Their limits showed against entrenched Swedish positions and, by 1702, against flintlock infantry.
Our guide to the winged hussars explains the lance, the wings and the charge. This page does something different: it follows the hussars through their battles, in order, and asks one question of each. What exactly did the hussars do there?
The answer changes over two centuries. The early hussars were light horsemen of Serbian and Hungarian origin; under King Stefan Batory they became heavy lancers; by the end of the seventeenth century they were a costly elite in decline. We also include the days when the charge failed, because the legend is more convincing with its limits.
1. Orsha, 1514: the early hussars
On 8 September 15141, at the Battle of Orsha on the Dnieper, Hetman Konstanty Ostrogski faced a larger Muscovite army. The hussars of this period were still light cavalry, but their manoeuvre was decisive: part of the Polish-Lithuanian horse pretended to flee, drawing the Muscovite cavalry towards a wood where Ostrogski had hidden infantry and guns. The ambush broke the attack and the whole army counterattacked. Contemporary claims of 80,000 Muscovites were propaganda; modern estimates are much lower.
2. Obertyn, 1531: the charge from the tabor
On 22 August 1531 Hetman Jan Tarnowski2 met Petru Rareș of Moldavia at Obertyn with about 6,000 men against an army roughly three times larger. He fought from a ring of wagons, let the Moldavian artillery and assaults wear themselves out, then led his cavalry, hussars among them, out of the camp against the enemy flank. The pattern of defensive firepower followed by a cavalry blow would become a Polish trademark.
3. Lubieszów, 1577: the first great heavy charge
When Gdańsk refused to recognise King Stefan Batory, the city raised an army of burghers and German mercenaries. On 17 April 1577 near Lubieszów3, by Lake Lubiszewskie, a royal force of about 1,450 cavalry and 1,050 infantry3 met a Gdańsk army of some 10,000 to 12,000. The royal hussars, now true heavy lancers, charged and routed it within a short time; the Gdańsk losses ran to thousands. It is often counted among the first great victories of the reformed heavy husaria.
4. Kircholm, 1605: the finest hour
On 27 September 1605 Jan Karol Chodkiewicz attacked the army of Charles IX of Sweden near Riga. With about 3,600 men against about 10,8004, he lured the Swedes off their high ground with a feigned withdrawal, then threw his hussars at them. The Swedish cavalry broke in about half an hour and the infantry was destroyed; Swedish losses are put at around 8,000. Kircholm is the battle that made the hussars a European legend.
5. Klushino, 1610: charge after charge
On 4 July 1610 Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski5 attacked a Russian army reinforced by foreign mercenaries at Klushino. His infantry and guns had mostly not arrived, and the odds were several to one. The hussars charged again and again over several hours, some companies by their own account eight or ten times, until the unpaid mercenaries changed sides or left and the Russian army fell apart. Three months later a Polish garrison entered Moscow.
6. Khotyn, 1621: hussars in defence
At Khotyn in 1621 the hussars fought a different battle. Chodkiewicz's Polish-Lithuanian and Cossack army dug in on the Dniester against the huge army of Sultan Osman II, and for over a month the camp held. The hussars' role was to counter-charge whenever Ottoman assaults reached the ramparts, breaking attacks before they could take hold. Chodkiewicz died in the camp, but the sultan went home with nothing.
7. Trzciana, 1629: a king in danger
Against Gustavus Adolphus the hussars had their hardest opponent. At Gniew in 1626 the Swedish king's entrenched positions and musketry blunted Polish attacks, and for three years Hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski fought a war of manoeuvre. His chance came on 27 June 16296 at Trzciana, when Polish cavalry and imperial troops caught the Swedish rearguard. In a running fight the Swedish horse was routed and the king was nearly captured6. Yet honesty matters here: the war ended months later with the Truce of Altmark, which favoured Sweden.
8. Berestechko, 1651: one of the century's largest battles
From 28 to 30 June 1651 King John II Casimir fought the Cossacks of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and their Crimean Tatar allies at Berestechko. On the third day a Polish attack, with the cavalry led by Prince Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, threw the Tatar wing into disorder and the khan left the field. The hussars here were one part of a large combined army rather than the sole hammer, and the victory, though major, did not end the war.
9. Polonka, 1660: Czarniecki's ambush
In late June 1660 (27 or 28 June, depending on the source) Stefan Czarniecki and Paweł Jan Sapieha caught the Muscovite army of Ivan Khovansky near Polonka in Lithuania. Czarniecki commanded about 4,000 Poles7 and Sapieha about 9,000 Lithuanians7 against a larger enemy. The Commonwealth cavalry, its hussar companies at the core, outflanked the Muscovite line and drove off its cavalry; the abandoned infantry was surrounded and cut down. The victory let the Commonwealth recover much of Lithuania.
10. Khotyn, 1673: through the breaches
On 11 November 1673 Grand Hetman Jan Sobieski stormed the fortified Ottoman camp at Khotyn after keeping his army in battle order through a night of freezing rain. Infantry and dragoons broke into the ramparts at dawn, and the hussars under Stanisław Jabłonowski poured through the breaches. The Ottoman army collapsed, many drowning when the Dniester bridge gave way, and Sobieski was elected king the next year.
11. Vienna, 1683: the last great charge
On 12 September 1683 Sobieski8, now King John III, led the relief army down from the Kahlenberg against Kara Mustafa's besiegers at Vienna. Late in the afternoon thousands of Polish and allied horsemen, the hussars at their head, charged into the Ottoman camp in what is often called the largest cavalry charge in history. Jan Wimmer's study shows how carefully the attack was prepared: the charge struck an army already worn down by a day of fighting.
Where the charge failed
The hussars were not invincible. At Gniew in 1626 and in the Prussian war generally, Gustavus Adolphus taught the Commonwealth that cavalry could not break well-entrenched musketeers supported by guns. The decisive blow came at Kliszów on 19 July 17024, when the Crown hussars charged Swedish infantry of Charles XII and were thrown back: as Robert Frost notes, experienced infantry armed with flintlocks could no longer be broken by cavalry. Rising costs and shrinking numbers did the rest, and the hussars ended as a parade formation, dissolved in 1776.
