Kingdom of Poland cavalry - uhlans and chasseurs a cheval 1815-31

 Salvete Omnes,

The very end of November brings back the story of the November Uprising of 1831, when during the night of 29th to 30th of November, a 80-plus company of  cadets and second lieutenants marched out of their barracks in Warsaw and aided by their civilian co-conspirators attacked the Belvedere Palace( the seat of the king's representative) and the Arsenal of Warsaw. In process they murdered 6 Polish army generals (out of the 30-plus of the whole number of the Polish army generals at this time).  Numerous pubs and alcohol magazine had been broken in and the inhabitants of the Old Town Warsaw got drunk and for the next two days there was mayhem in the city center.  Instead of putting the rebellious cadets and young officers on trial the ruling Polish elites could not decide on any concrete course of action, and faced with the Russian armies marching onto Warsaw in the winter of 1831 had to fight the war against their king  (well, the parliament, in the act of mass formation psychosis,  deposed the king, cutting off any road to 'salvation') and his armies, which had to end in failure due to the lack of any international support and especially due to the Russian supremacy in the field and in logistics (eg the problem of horses for cavalry and artillery for the Polish army).  Thus ended the Army of the Kingdom of Poland established by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and since 1832 the kingdom existed in the name only, without any special Polish army, laws nor Polish symbols until 1916, with the Russian direct rule and with the Russian army and police forces policing the territory.

Congress Poland or de jure Kingdom of Poland was a state established on the ruins of the Duchy of Warsaw (minus the Greater Poland, Kujawy, Torun, and Free City of Gdansk/Danizg that were re-attached to Prussia, and Free City of Krakow as a separate Polish entity) joined with the Russian Empire by the person of the king (personal union), first it was tsar Alexander I who was crowned the king of Poland in 1815 (nota bene, he discovered that the Prussian monarchy destroyed by melting historic Polish royal crowns and regalia in 1818-11) and then his brother tsar Nicholas II, crowned the king of Polish Kingdom in 1829. Grand Duke Constantine was king's representative and the commander-in-chief of the kingdom's army residing at the Belvedere Palace in Warsaw. 
Kingdom had its own army - colonel Bronislaw Gembarzewski wrote and illustrated a very nice monograph on the kingdom's army in 1900s-20s.

The army consisted of the regular regiment and  guard regiments, which included:

one guard regiment of the chasseurs  a cheval (strzelcy konni) (renamed to 5th reg of the chasseurs a cheval in January 1831)

one battery of horse artillery.

the Cavalry of the line or Cavalry Corps of Polish Kingdom, commanded by general Aleksander Rozniecki,  consisted of:

the chasseur a cheval division - four regiment of  chasseurs named: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th .

from the left - 1,st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th regiment

3rd chasseur - stable uniform

1st reg. chasseurs  in their field  uniform

3rd chasseur regiment -field uniform

4th chasseur - horse trumpeter 

the Uhlan/lancer  division's regiments were  named:

1st uhlan, 

2nd uhlan, 

3rd uhlan, 

4th uhlan.

.

2n uhlan regiment - lancer in his stable uniform

Each cavalry division was divided into 2 brigade, each brigade consisted of one uhlan regiment and one chasseur a cheval regiment.

Each cavalry regiment was divided into two divizions, each divizion consisted of 2 full squadrons. A full squadron had 160 soldiers, 13 NCOs and 8 officers. Each squadron was divided into two half-squadrons, and each half-squadron was divided into 4 platoons, in turn platoons were divided into thirds, each third was divided into 3 'rotas.' The 1st and 4th platoon had the best men, then the 3rd could pick from the remainder of all men and the 2nd had to take whoever was left. There platoons were commanded by the platoon commanders and 3 officers 'ou-or-rota', who sort of were to oversee but did not interfere. Squadron formed in two lines, the first line had the best men and best looking horses. For the marching order, the squadron marched in threes (or like the Russians in 6-men abreast ).

The uhlans/lancers were armed with lances and sabres, each squadron had 1 carbine-armed platoon, or equally possible was the arrangement where there were 4 carbine-armed rotas in each platoon of the squadron. The flanking carabine-armed uhlans were supposed to form in two skirmish lines and even to dismount  and defend the squadron, when necessary. They were trained to do these tactics with the use of trumpeters and their signals.

The chasseur a cheval (szaserzy) regiments, beloved of grand duke Constantine,  were armed with a sabre, a cavalry carbine, and a pair of pistols. although they were taught infantry drills and fire drills of the infantry, they were horse-fighting 'dragoons,' using essentially the same tactics as the lancers.

Additionally , every regiment had one more reserve squadron of 100 men. NCOs and officers, where recruits were trained and schooled. (Tokarz, Armia Krolestwa Polskiego 1815-30).

In total 6788 officer, NCOs and soldiers and horses as of  the late 1830.

This was the most beautiful, led by the most experienced officer  and best trained army in the Polish history since the Jan III Sobieski's reign(1674-1699).  

Eagle on the uhlan 'czapka' according to Bronislaw Gembarzewski's research

Valete

Bitwa wojny polsko-rosyjskiej Stoczek - 14.II.1831

 Salvete Omnes,

[in Polish]

Tajemnica obrazu Jana Rosena, Bitwa pod Stoczkiem

                                                                             ***

        Wczoraj, czyli w srode popielcowa i w dzien sw. Walentego,  minela kolejna rocznica bitwy pod Stoczkiem, rozegranej miedzy korpusem general Dwernickiego a korpusem rosyjskim gen. Gejsmara - opis bitwy  z danymi eg na portalu historia.org.pl. 

Ponizej, tak  opisal te bitwe kawaleryjska A.K. Puzyrewski, general armii imperialnej rosyjskiej, w pracy "Wojna polsko-ruska 1831r." polskie wydanie Orglebranda z 1899 roku:

.

.

A tak Waclaw Tokarz, w pracy 'Wojna polsko-rosyjska 1831", Warszawa 1930 :

vivat armia polska, vae victis 

Valete

Spring has come - J. Chelmonski

 Salvete Omnes,

War in Ukraine must stop - 

and so our northern Hemisphere has entered the season of la Primavera aka Spring (Wiosna in Polish). But Spring can be also cold, and some late snow storms could make sleigh ride possible or desirable, especially during the two or three previous centuries (the so called cold period started at the beginning of the XVII century and stayed on until recently, where some warming can be seen - but in the XV-XVI centuries there was much warmer in the Polish Kingdom lands)

let us take a look at some canvasses by of of the greatest Polish painters of the Partitions period - Jozef Chelmonski ( Józef Chełmoński 1849-1914AD) .

Valete

Alexander I of Russia and king of Poland on horseback

Salvete Omnes,
the Congress of Vienna and the final 'pogrom' (crushing defeat) of the Napoleon's Grand Armee in 1815 brought changes to our Polish-Lithuanian lands, where Russian armies had already occupied the provinces of the French satellite  state known as Duchy of Warsaw (created and augmented between 1807-09 by Napoleon's sword from some of the partitioned Polish provinces -  nota bene why Napoleon allowed Silesia to remain with Prussia after 1807 may be the greatest puzzle of his chess playing in our part of Europe ).

so in 1815 the victorious Russian sovereign Alexander I Romanov become the king of the realm known as 'Krolestwo Kongresowe' (Congress Poland or Congress Kingdom of Poland).
Hence, some of the former Polish Kingdom provinces achieved a status of a state and were united with Russia by the person of her ruler.
Alexander had flirted with uniting the former  Lithuanian and Belarusian provinces (already in Russian possession de jure and in  fact since AD1772-1795) with this new Polish state, but it is said that United Kingdom and Austria vehemently opposed this idea, while rewarding Prussia with the fictitious created out of Greater Poland known as the Grand Duchy of Poznan (Posen) - you know, perhaps the British allies or the  Hohenzollern arch-thieves wanted to cover the shame of the melting of Polish Crown regalia in 1810-11?). Our ancient capital Krakow was excluded from Congress Poland and a tiny Krakow Republic was created(annexed by Austria in 1846), and although Alexander I was allegedly the mind behind the idea of creating this free statelet (Torun was also on his mind, but again the allies gave the city to thieving state of Prussia) it was imagined and carried through  in face of the opposition from the allied powers to create more complete Polish state and perhaps to deny tsar Alexander even more legitimacy, and perhaps even to prevent Russia's future claims to more Polish provinces, since some of the core of Polish lands were held by force by these two lovely countries -  Austria and Prussia.
Anyway, the good tsar become our king and ruled through his brother, Grand Duke Konstantine
 
(who was married to a Polish aristocrat  Joanna Grudzinska, Grzymala coat of arms). More about this grand duke in some future,
Below a painting by a Polish painter Wiktor Mazurowski (murdered by the SS Nazi RONA forces during the Warsaw Uprising 1944) - combat of the Russian Imperial Guard Cavalry against the French battle of Friedland 1807

So here are some of the equestrian portraits of our king and Russia tsar


 
 
 


 


I have been thinking, given the popularity of the English thoroughbreds in Russia and even Polish breeders, that Alexander might have ridden the English blood horses? But in this painting the mount looks very Spanish


 imperial carraige

and a typical East and Central European mode of travel -

Valete

ps
 images are all from wiki commons