Salvete Omnes,
426 years ago, on the morning of October 6, 1620 Crown Grand Hetman Stanislaw Zolkiewski and his army completed their 8 night of fighting retreat (see this post for more detailed description). The entire Crown army was confined to a wagenburg or large wagon train (6 rows of 100 wagons armed with hook guns & small cannon defended by 5,000 soldiers on foot, cavalry horses were led in front of the wagon-train). The troops, their camp servants and horses marched, with wounded in the wagons, for more than 160 km (100 miles). They were about 10 km from the Dniester River, the border of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
They had been marching from the war camp at Cecora, on the Prut River in Moldavia. There, 17-19th of October they fought a pitched battle against Iskander Pasha's army, berlerbey of Silistra, the Ottoman force composed mostly out of the Crimean Tatars and various other Tatar hordes under Khan Temir (Bloody Sword), and some Moldavian & Transylvanian Turkish vassals.
On that morning of October 6, 1620 there was no clear sign that by midnight of that night 6-7th of October the whole army would be disintegrated and all order vanished and hope gone.
Tyche of Fortuna, Goddess of Luck, can be very capricious.
Valete
