Battle of Filipów, 1656: Gosiewski's defeat on the Prussian border

Two weeks earlier the Lithuanian hetman had won the best victory of his career at Prostki and taken a prince prisoner. Now, on an October afternoon by a village on the Prussian border, a few Swedish cannon shots were enough to send his army streaming away to the north, and the prince was free again by nightfall.²

Background: the Deluge and Ducal Prussia

In 1655 Charles X Gustav of Sweden invaded the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the start of the war that Poles remember as the Deluge. Ducal Prussia was a fief of the Polish crown, but its duke, Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, threw in his lot with Sweden. In 1656 he bound himself to Charles X Gustav by treaty, and his troops fought beside the Swedes in the three-day Battle of Warsaw at the end of July.³ › The Wars of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

The Commonwealth answered with an offensive into Ducal Prussia in the autumn of 1656. It was led by Wincenty Gosiewski, Field Hetman of Lithuania, with a Lithuanian division, some Polish troops and an allied force of Tatars. How many men he had is disputed. Andrzej Rachuba, reviewing the debate, sets out three estimates: 12,000 to 15,000 horse according to Wiesław Majewski, about 11,000 according to Jan Wimmer, and only about 8,000 according to Sławomir Augusiewicz, whose count he finds the most convincing.⁴

Prostki and the Tatar raid

On 8 October 1656 Gosiewski beat a Brandenburg and Swedish force under Count Georg Friedrich of Waldeck and Prince Bogusław Radziwiłł at Prostki, near Lyck (today Ełk). Radziwiłł, the Lithuanian magnate who had gone over to the Swedes, fell into the hands of the Tatars.⁵

Then the Tatars spread out across southern Ducal Prussia. Stenbock's diary, written as his army marched through the wrecked villages a few days later, describes burned farms and bodies along the road. The raid has lived on in Masurian memory ever since, though Augusiewicz has argued that much of the later tradition of its scale is legend.⁶

Armies and commanders

On the Commonwealth side stood Wincenty Gosiewski, Field Hetman of Lithuania and Grand Treasurer of the Grand Duchy.⁷

Against him came Field Marshal Gustaf Otto Stenbock with a Swedish corps, joined at Lötzen (today Giżycko) by the Brandenburg troops that had regrouped under Waldeck after Prostki.⁸

The armies were of similar size. Jerzy Ronikier, in the lexicon of Polish battles, gives about 8,500 Lithuanians against about 9,000 Swedes and Brandenburgers. The Swedish report of the battle says prisoners put Gosiewski's strength at 7,000 Lithuanians and Poles, and Stenbock's diary at 7,000 or 8,000.⁹

The Swedish order of battle is known from the engraving's own key and from the documents Augusiewicz edited. The vanguard of Swedish and Brandenburg horse was led by Prince Frederick of Hessen-Homburg and the Brandenburg colonel Joachim Ernst von Görtzke, the left wing came out of the woods first, and the right wing under Philipp, Count Palatine of Sulzbach, was held up on the bad forest roads.¹⁰

A list of the Lithuanian army attached to the Swedish report counts twelve regiments with 118 banners. Rachuba thinks the figure is much exaggerated and that the list may describe Prostki rather than Filipów, and Augusiewicz shares the doubt, noting for instance that Polish sources give Gabriel Woyniłłowicz 15 banners where the list gives him 22.¹¹

Gosiewski waits too long

After Prostki Gosiewski lingered in Prussia without a clear aim and lost time. Rachuba, summing up Augusiewicz's study, is blunt: the hetman made a serious operational mistake. He quarreled with the Tatars over the valuable prisoner Radziwiłł, and the Tatars left him, followed by the Polish units and part of the Lithuanian ones.¹²

The Swedish report heard the same story from prisoners: the Tatars had fallen out with the Poles because they were made to hand Radziwiłł over, and had gone their own way. Augusiewicz, however, doubts that the quarrel was why the Tatars left.¹³

The battle, phase one: the hunt

Stenbock and Waldeck pushed east with their combined army. When prisoners told them that the Lithuanians were camped at Filipów, on the border, Stenbock decided to strike at once with a fast force, a move Rachuba calls efficiently executed.¹⁴

Phase two: surprise at Mieruniszki

On 22 October the Swedish vanguard came on Lithuanian foragers in the village of Mieruniszki, just short of Filipów, and cut them down. The local history of Mieruniszki describes it as a surprise attack on the Lithuanian rear guard, with the Swedes and Brandenburgers holding the initiative from the start. The Swedish documents date it 12 October, by the Julian calendar still used in Sweden, and 22 October in the Western calendar.¹⁵

Stenbock had two guns hauled onto a hill by the village, and they are still marked there on the Swedish engraving of the battle.¹⁶

Turning point: the Lithuanian army gives way

The two sides tell the decisive moment differently. The Swedish report says that the opening shots from the guns on the hill shook the Lithuanians, and that when the Swedish left wing had crossed and a few more rounds fell among them, they broke and fled before the Swedish right wing had even come up through the woods. The local history of Mieruniszki, and Ronikier, describe a deliberate decision: facing the risk of being outflanked, Gosiewski broke off and pulled his main force out to the north, in good enough order to avoid heavy losses.¹⁷

Gosiewski fell back toward Wierzbołów in the north, and by the next day he was writing from near Sejny to the nobility of Podlasie.¹⁸

Aftermath

No reliable totals of the losses survive. The Swedish report claimed about 500 Lithuanians killed and suspected more. Ronikier and the Mieruniszki history say the losses were not heavy, thanks to the timely withdrawal. Among the prisoners was Colonel Konstanty Pokłoński, and the Lithuanians lost part of their baggage.¹⁹

The greatest loss was Bogusław Radziwiłł. Ronikier, the Mieruniszki history and the Swedish report all say he was freed in the battle, and the report has him arriving in Stenbock's quarters that same night. Augusiewicz, as Rachuba reports, suggests a different story: that Radziwiłł escaped from captivity, perhaps with Gosiewski's own help.²⁰

Filipów itself burned. The key of Dahlbergh's engraving says the town was set on fire by the fleeing Lithuanians. The Mieruniszki history, citing a German local study of 1906, says the town was taken and burned and its inhabitants killed.²¹

Rachuba's verdict is that the defeat had little effect on the course of operations but real weight for prestige and propaganda.²²

Legacy and memory

The Swedes made sure the battle was remembered their way. Erik Dahlbergh's engraving, published in 1696 in Samuel Pufendorf's history of Charles X Gustav, claims in its title that ten thousand Lithuanians under Gosiewski were cut down and put to flight. It marks Mieruniszki as "Pagus Mironi", the Swedish guns on the hill above it, and in the woods at the top left the spot "where Prince Radziwiłł is recovered".²³

For a long time the Polish side of the story was told without the Swedish records. Stenbock's campaign diary and a Swedish report of the battle, kept in the Riksarkivet in Stockholm, were published only in 2018, by Augusiewicz, who notes that a surviving list of Gosiewski's regiments attached to them may describe Prostki rather than Filipów. Rachuba had already pointed out that the diary was missing from the debate.²⁴

Gosiewski himself came to a bad end. A few years later he was killed by confederated Lithuanian soldiers who accused him of treason.²⁵

Visiting today

Filipów and Mieruniszki are villages in the Suwałki district of northeastern Poland, close to the old border of Ducal Prussia. The people of Mieruniszki have put the history of the battle on the village's own website.²⁶ › 22 October in military history