Orsza 1514 - a 1515AD woodcut

 Salvete omnes,

so yet another anniversary of 9-11 -  in the link my old post about my experiences that day - pacem aeternam to all the victims 

a quick return to the Orsza battle and victory over the Muscovy ..

 so probably the very first image of the battle appeared in 1515AD in printed  poem written by Andrzej Krzycki, Kotwicz coat of arms, who was queen Barbara Zapolya secretary, Ad Divum Sigismundum Poloniae regem et Magnum Ducem Lithuaniae semper invictum post partam de Moskis victoriam Andree Krziczki inclite coniugis sue Cancelarii carmen, Kraków 1515, 

the printer was Jan Haller and they published  this poem in Krakow, then the capital of the Polish state.

perhaps Polish commander hetman Janusz Swierczowski, Traby coat of arms, on the left while horsemen of opposing armies are dueling between the armies 

there is a horse drummer next to the Polish hetman

emjoy

valete

Notes Upon Russia - Sigismund von Herberstein - saddles etc

 Salvete Omnes, 

 

ten years ago I posted some quotes from Sigismund Herberstein's Notes Upon Russia et al. (Major's Translation)  then and now available on Archive.
Today I am going to add more text from that translation and the plates from the Latin original - wiki gallery.

 

Muscovy two-headed eagle is high on the news totem-pole these days, and their deeds are absolutely  not of kind and pleasant type to be proud of, but quite on the contrary  they bring death and destruction, misery and cold and perhaps hunger...

Saddles - of two types

***
 and may God and good willed people bring peace to the people of Ukraine

Valete

Orsza 1514 -2022

 Salvete Omnes,

 

and as every year on this day we commemorate the 2nd battle of Orsza 1514AD.

King Zygmunt I Stary (Sigismund I the Old) and his army commanded by prince Konstanty Ostrogski, Ostrogski coat of arms, and hetman Janusz Swierczowski, Traby coat of arms,  won resounding victory over grand prince Vasili III and his  Muscovite army(augmented with the Tatar allied and converted recently into Orthodox Christianity).

 Our king lost Smolensk, his largest and most needed fortress, to Vasili III and his commander Lithuanian Michal Glinski in July 1514- perhaps a 80 thousand strong Muscovy army , with camp followers, servants and retainers, invaded our king's eastern realms in the Spring of 1514Ad.
Polish historian and prolific researcher of this period  prof. Marek Plewczynski puts some blame on the Lithuanian commander prince Ostrogski, who perhaps like the ancient Cuncator tried the tactic of  hanging on  awaiting for the expected large number of Polish Crown troops, but before they could have come to the rescue the fortress of Smolensk fell to mighty charm or magic spelled by prince Glinski. The stronghold at Orsza, however,  defended by Jan Spargeld with resolve and under much less assault than Smolensk withstood perhaps a weaker Muscovite siege and repelled their assaults until king's army came in August.

Having gathered his nobles, retainer, mercenaries and volunteers it was at Minsk in Grand Duchy of Lithuania where our king reviewed his armies before seeing them go east: 

 - 15 thousand Duchy horse - commanded by prince Ostrogski and prince Jerzy Hercules Radziwill.

 - 14 thousand crown horse (heavy lancers, early hussars and light horse armed with crossbows and bows and some early firearms perhaps, and 3 thousand crown  infantry -  this Crown contingent was commanded by Swierzowski, 

 -2,5 thousand court horse, and several thousand of Polish lords private volunteer retinues- commanded by Wojciech Sempolinski, Nalecz coat of arms.

Perhaps as many as 38 thousand horse and men including unknown number of guns, plus many thousands of camp followers and retainers had gathered at Minsk to march onto river and seek a return of captured Smolensk to our lord king's domain.

King decided to stay with 4 thousand soldiers at the fortified camp at Borysow, on the Berezina River, while the combined king's army marched having forded Berezina and forced, with artillery fire,  the vanguard of the Muscovite army to quit the vicinity of Berysow on August 27 and then the royal army marched after the enemy toward Orsza and Dnieper. On the 28 of August Polish vanguard led by Jan Pilecki defeated a Muscovite rearguard ambush, and our royal army continued on the Orsza Road to the Bobr River crossing where at this ford another action was fought, where starost of Rohatyn Jan Boratynski defeated 2000 strong Muscovite command and took their commander, voivode Kiselich(?), prisoner.  During another action by the royal vanguard rotmaister (Captain) Jan Sapieha's command defeated  another Muscovy command.
Voivode Ivan Chelyadnin, who now commanded the entire Muscovy grand prince's field army in this area of war, aided in his command by prince Mikhail Golitza and prince Dymitr Bulgakov withdrew across the Dnieper keen on attacking royal army during their fording of the big river, always a difficult and dangerous maneuver in warfare  for the fording command.

  and so the opposite armies stood, then during the night of 7-8th of September our royal army engineers built two wooden pontoon bridges, on top of wooden large kegs,  the whole royal army crossed fast and the battle joined and the men with lances, bows and arrows, swords, matchlocks and halberds, pikes and axes in hand went to achieve victory.

Ostrogski has become the field victor of this battle  - being supposedly the commander of the combined echelons of the royal army - and here we see this brave Ruthenian as he was seen in this 1540s? Radziwill family painting - now at the Polish National Museum at Warsaw.

Polish heavy lance cavalry and their commander 

early hussars

so let us celebrate with some imagery from the period or near in time period, with some caveat  - our king was unable to recover hie lost city of Smolensk, the most important fortress in that part of  the Grand Duchy of Lithuanian Ukrainian (borderland) zone with the Grand Duchy of Muscovy. It took   circa100 years and a decisive action by our king's namesake Zygmunt, but the III (and his grandson), who campaigned in Grand Duchy of Muscovy and captured Smolensk. 

 ..

 

Valete

Smolensk 1634 and March 1...

 Salvete Omnes,

 

in Poland the Day of the Damned Soldiers is celebrated on March 1. After 1944 - the beginning of the occupation of Poland by the USSR, and patriotic Polish fighters fought the Soviet Union and their servile Polish security forces.
Gloria Victis.

 

And going back to 1634AD, our king, Wladyslaw IV, vanquished completely Russian Muscovite armies at Smolensk.

War in Ukraine, the Russian invasion of that poor country, is becoming more and more like a typical XXI century war (like Iraq 2002-16, Afghanistan, Israel over the Palestine, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Kurdistan etc)- atrocities, powerful technologically driven weapons,  misinformation and propaganda, but also a fog of war.

This map - so  it is an attempt, by the Finnish military researchers, to observe incomplete and delayed developments on this war of aggression and imperial ambitions. 

 

 Ukraine needs some Polish winged hussars but

our Western leadership (POTUS will deliver SOTU today) is 'sin cojones'...
My friend Paul Zambrzycki( and owner of Persjarnia company ) with sponsorship from  OLD Poland Bakery from NYC and with help  from friends from Krakow's Kur Fraternity  went across the Polish-Ukrainian border into Ukraine with a food-truck full of food and hot coffee and tea. The lines of Ukrainian refugees - women and children in cars, trucks, buses and vans - are long, last night they were about 50km long going to each of the border crossings  (Medyka and Hrebenne are two largest border crossing between the two countries).

So let us pray for peace in Ukraine and pray for the Ukrainian peoples...

Valete

Smolensk - March 1, 1634 - triumph of Polish Vasa king

 Salvete Omnes,

today in Poland there is the Day of the Damned Soldiers - the anti-communist  and anti-Soviet resistance - however with 'mysharonacirrus' around us there is no much celebration nor happiness. These resistance fighters, symbolized by Witold Piecki and 'Inka,'  persisted for many years after 1945, but countless thousands of great Polish patriots were murdered in that herculean struggle against the greatest evil of those days  - Gloria Victis. 

But less than four centuries ago this day was of happiness and relief.

     for it is today that we mark the anniversary of the His Majesty Wladyslaw IV's victory over the Muscovite Russian army of Mikhail Borysovych Shein at Smolensk - 1st of March 1634 -  where after unsuccessful siege of Polish-Lithuanian town of Smolensk this Muscovite army surrendered  to our king's relief army.

 

This was epic victory and upon a peace treaty with the Grand Duchy of Muscovy  in 1634  our Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth reached the following size: 

The borders as seen of the map lasted only 20 years and then 12 years of wars followed...

Valete

Maryna Mniszech from Laszki Murowane & Moscow

Salve,
today let us go back to Europe, and to the lands of the winged hussars.
some years ago I wrote about this painting - showing Polish tsarina Maryna Mniszech going to her coronation  in Moscow. I wrote that that it had been lost.
Well, it has not been lost, but rather the Russian took it ... far away, to Russia, and presently it is kept at the Moscow State Historical Museum.

The canvass was painted (perhaps by Szymon Boguszowicz from Lwow), for the Mniszech family castle at Laszki Murowane during the first half of the XVII century, and then was taken to the Wiśniowiec Palace, the XVIII century opulent  magnate residence of the Wisniowiecki and Mniszech families (destroyed mostly during the Polish-Soviet War of 1920, and some more during the 1939-45 period of the Soviet and German destruction of the cultured Central Europe).

and

a fragment of the above Maryna's coronation painting, showing  splendid garments of the Polish nobility and her own coronation costume

in her betrothal painting there are more fine examples of historic Polish costumes

and finally her husband, tsar Dimitri , in a very royal stance typical of the period,  appearing very martial wearing a  set of armor not dissimilar from those worn by the wealthy winged hussar comrades.

enjoy
ps if you are in Moscow, Russia, try to see if they display these fine and very  Polish XVII century paintings.

Abraham de Bruyn's Grand Duchy of Muscovy horses & riders

Salve,

snow in large parts of Europe, huge hurricane in the eastern United States - crazy ending of the warm season, so let us concentrate on horses and their riders.

Abraham de Bruyn also created beautiful images of riders and horses with their tack, leaders and warriors of the Grand Duchy of Muscovy or simply Muscovy (Lev Gumilev teaches us, in his books, that Russia only starts with the great warrior and first rate statesman tzar Peter I although Western and Soviet/Russian historians tend to give 1547 as beginning of Russia, while in our neck of the woods our Polish-Lithuanina Commonwealth stopped using the name Grand Duchy of Muscovy only in 1764 or so).

Ad rem...
the Great Duke

..
woivode, with the characteristic Tatar drum at his pommel

.
noble (perhaps a boyar or oprichnik ) armed as with a lance like Polish and Hungarian hussars (perhaps the cost-cutting engraver just added these details to spice up the image for and edition aimed at some wealthy patron etc). We know that the Muscovites tried to form a winged hussar unit in XVII century.

..
lesser noblity

..
common horseman fighting as horse archer, as seen in the battle of Orsha painting 

Note the sabre hanging down on the lanyard in two woodcuts (loop of rope or leather thong fixed to the sword hilt, used to hang down the sword from the wrist), facilitating its use when axe was moved to the left hand or earlier when bow was used.

..
Muscovy fighting the Tatars of the Pontic-Caspian steppes always encouraged their settlement, participation in the armed forces and administration aided by the eventual conversion to Christianity.

..
a Tatar and a Muscovite

ps
 let us again quote from von Herberstein's work where he described Muscovite horses and soldiers:

They have small gelded horses, unshod, and with very light bridles, and their saddles are so adapted that they may turn round in any direction without impediment, and draw the bow. They sit on horseback with the feet so drawn up, that they cannot sustain any more than commonly severe shock from a spear or javelin. Very few use spurs, but most use the whip, which always hangs from the little finger of the right hand, so that they may lay hold of it and use it as often as they need; and if they have occasion to use their arms, they let it fall again so as to hang from the hand. Their ordinary arms are a bow, a javelin, a hatchet, and a stick, like a caestus, which is called in Russian, kesteni; in Polish, bassalich*. The more noble and wealthy men use a lance. They have also suspended from their arm oblong poignards** like knives, which are so buried in the scabbard, that they can scarcely touch the tip of the hilt, or lay hold of them in the moment of necessity. They have also a long bridle perforated at the end, which they attach to a finger of the left hand, so that they may hold it at the same time as they use the bow. Moreover, although they hold the bridle, the bow, the short sword, the javelin, and the whip, in their hands all at the same time, yet they know how to use them skilfully without feeling any incumbrance.' Some of the higher classes use a coat of mail beautifully worked on the breast with a sort of scales and with rings; some few use a helmet of a peaked form like a pyramid. Some use a dress made of silk stuffed with wool, to enable them to sustain any blows. They also use pikes.