Battle of Czarny Ostrów, 1657: the end of Rákóczi's Polish adventure

Background: a crown for the taking

By 1657 the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had been at war with Sweden for two years. The Swedish invasion of 1655, remembered in Poland as the Deluge, had been partly turned back, but in the eyes of its enemies Poland still looked ready to fall. The History of Transylvania of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences lists what they saw: Charles X Gustav's troops deep inside the country, the Tsar's armies on the offensive again, and Cossack and peasant revolts across much of its territory.²

Sweden went looking for allies to finish the job. One was George II Rákóczi, Prince of Transylvania, a vassal of the Ottoman sultan. By the Treaty of Radnot of 6 December 1656 he and Charles Gustav agreed to partition the Commonwealth: Rákóczi was promised the Polish crown and a much reduced kingdom, up to a line through Warsaw. Britannica notes that he went to war in defiance of the Turks, who had suzerainty over Transylvania.³

To contemporaries, the History of Transylvania argues, the venture looked natural enough. Poland was the principality's commercial gateway to the industrial west, and its trade routes ran the same way as the army. Rákóczi also wanted to expand his personal power, and he was already planning a confrontation with the Habsburgs in Hungary.⁴

Armies and commanders

Rákóczi crossed the Carpathians in January 1657. The History of Transylvania gives him about 13,000 Transylvanians, to be joined in Poland by some 20,000 Cossacks and 6,000 troops from Moldavia and Wallachia; the Muzeum Historii Polski confirms Moldavian and Wallachian contingents and Cossacks sent by Bohdan Khmelnytsky. The diarist Jan Chryzostom Pasek, who fought against him, wrote mockingly of forty thousand Hungarians and Wallachians and as many Cossacks again; the figure is his flourish, not a count.⁵

Against him stood Polish field armies under three commanders: Potocki, Czarniecki, whose harrying war had already worn down the Swedes, and Lubomirski, Grand Marshal of the Crown. The lexicon of Polish battles published by Jagiellonian University historians names Czarniecki, Lubomirski and the Grand Lithuanian Hetman Paweł Sapieha. They could also count on the Crimean Tatars, then Poland's allies.⁶ › Stefan Czarniecki

The campaign in phases

From Lviv to Warsaw

Rákóczi failed to take Lviv, then plundered Lesser Poland, sacking towns and castles such as Dukla, Lesko and Odrzykoń, and marched north to join the Swedes. Together with Charles Gustav he took Brest, where the Transylvanians left a garrison, and then entered Warsaw.⁷

Then the war turned against him. In June Denmark declared war on Sweden, and Charles Gustav hurried west to meet the new enemy, leaving Rákóczi on his own. At the same moment the Habsburg emperor Leopold I sent troops to help the Poles, and they laid siege to Kraków, where Transylvanian troops formed part of the garrison. The Polish population, the History of Transylvania notes, had turned to an effective resistance that harassed the invaders without pause.⁸

Lubomirski strikes at Transylvania

The decisive blow came from an unexpected direction. While Rákóczi was deep in Poland, the Grand Marshal led his own army over the mountains into Transylvania itself. Pasek describes him burning and laying waste wherever he went and taking a large ransom from Rákóczi's mother. The prince could not leave his own country undefended. He abandoned Warsaw and turned southeast for home, with Polish forces closing in on every side.⁹

Czarny Ostrów, 20 July 1657

Rákóczi's army halted among the marshes near Czarny Ostrów, on the Southern Bug in Podolia. The historian Ludwik Kubala, following the diary of Czarniecki's chaplain Adrian Pikarski, writes that the Polish vanguard under Machowski and Prince Dymitr Wiśniowiecki went after it there on 20 July and killed a large number of camp servants; Leszek Szymowski also dates the decisive battle at Czarny Ostrów to 20 July. The other sources say little about the fighting itself; what they agree on is the result. The defeated prince fell back with what was left of his army to the nearby town of Międzybóż, where he found himself surrounded; Kubala has him leave his heavy baggage behind and march off that same night. The lexicon describes the episode as a siege, with the Transylvanians encircled by the Polish and Lithuanian armies.¹⁰

Turning point: the capitulation

To save himself and his remaining troops, Rákóczi offered to capitulate to Czarniecki and Lubomirski. The sources date it differently: 22 July in the History of Transylvania, 23 July in the lexicon and 24 July by the Muzeum Historii Polski; Kubala has the terms drawn up on 22 July in the camp at Czarny Ostrów and sworn by both sides on 23 July. He promised to withdraw his garrisons from Kraków and Brest, break his alliance with Sweden, leave the Commonwealth and pay 1.2 million in reparations, złoty in the Polish museum's account and forints in the Hungarian one. The Polish Army Museum adds that the commanders were to receive about 2 million and the army 1 million more; the lexicon says he also agreed to hand back all the loot taken in Poland.¹¹

As a pledge for the ransom he had to leave noble hostages behind. Pasek, writing years later, describes them drinking wine and eating off silver at Łańcut at first and, when no ransom came, chopping firewood for the kitchen and ending their lives in misery.¹²

Aftermath: the Tatars and the end of an army

Rákóczi had bought his army's freedom, but not for long. On its way home it was attacked by the Crimean Tatars, who, according to the Muzeum Historii Polski, did not know of the capitulation; Britannica writes that the Turks themselves had ordered their Tatar vassals to drive the Transylvanians out of Poland. The History of Transylvania describes the army as exhausted, with only 3,000 to 4,000 of the original 13,000 still fit to fight. The Tatars first imposed a ransom, then took the whole army captive, about 11,000 men in the Polish museum's count, among them its commander János Kemény, a future prince of Transylvania.¹³

The two Polish museums disagree about Rákóczi himself: the Muzeum Historii Polski says he escaped, while the Polish Army Museum writes that the Tatars took him prisoner. The History of Transylvania supports the first version: the prince left the army to Kemény before the Tatars struck and rode home with an escort of about 300 horsemen, reaching Ecsed in early August. It calls the loss of the army the greatest disaster to befall Transylvania since Mohács.¹⁴

Its verdict on the prince is harsh. He had been raised and educated to rule, it writes, yet the campaign showed him lacking in military knowledge and not fully aware of his responsibilities, and after the disaster he seemed paralysed by the shock.¹⁵

Legacy and memory

For Transylvania the campaign was the beginning of a long fall. The sources differ on the details of Rákóczi's end: Britannica has the diet depose him on Turkish orders in 1657, the History of Transylvania has him forced to abdicate in March 1659. Both agree that he fought to win back his throne and was mortally wounded in battle against the Turks in May 1660, at Gyalu or Szászfenes, as the two sources name it; he died at Várad on 7 June. Britannica sums up his reign: his foreign policy restored Turkish hegemony over Transylvania.¹⁶

For the Commonwealth, Czarny Ostrów removed Sweden's most dangerous ally at the moment when Charles Gustav was tied down by the new war with Denmark. Leszek Szymowski, writing in Rzeczpospolita, calls it the decisive battle of the campaign against Rákóczi and a high point for Lubomirski, a magnate who would later turn his armies against his own king.¹⁷

For Czarniecki it was one more success of the harrying war he waged against the Swedes and Rákóczi alike. A year later he led the Polish troops in the allied expedition to rescue Denmark from the Swedes, and his crossing to the island of Als in December 1658 is the episode remembered in the Polish national anthem.¹⁸ › Siege of Kolding, 1658

Pasek gave the episode its lasting Polish image. He mocked the prince who came to Poland for garlic, as he put it, and went home with a very small escort, leaving his army and his hostages behind; Rákóczi, he wrote, heard only weeping and curses wherever he turned in his own country, for the sons, husbands and brothers lost in the Polish war.¹⁹