What happened at the Battle of Humenné?
In November 1619, early in the Thirty Years' War, a large force of Lisowczycy, Polish light horsemen recruited with King Sigismund III's quiet blessing to help Emperor Ferdinand II, crossed the Carpathians and defeated the Transylvanian army of George Rákóczi near Humenné in today's eastern Slovakia. At the decisive moment Rákóczi's men broke ranks to plunder the Polish camp, and the Polish horsemen turned and routed them. When the news reached Prince Gabriel Bethlen of Transylvania, who was besieging Vienna, he lifted the siege, which is why Polish historians call the campaign the first relief of Vienna.1
Sixty-four years before John III Sobieski rode to the relief of Vienna, another Polish army helped save the Habsburg capital without ever coming near it. It was not the royal army but a band of freebooting horsemen with a reputation for courage and plunder, sent across the mountains so that the king could help the emperor while pretending not to.2
Who won the Battle of Humenné and why?
The Lisowczycy won. Walenty Rogawski's horsemen slipped through the Carpathian passes behind George Rákóczi's Transylvanians, and when Rákóczi's infantry broke ranks to loot the Polish camp, the Polish banners turned and routed them. Rákóczi's army was routed, and the news of his defeat soon drew Gabriel Bethlen away from Vienna.3
Background: Vienna besieged
In the autumn of 1619 the Habsburgs were in trouble. The Bohemian revolt that opened the Thirty Years' War had spread to Silesia and Moravia, and the rebels had driven out the imperial troops. Gabriel Bethlen, the prince of Transylvania and a vassal of the Ottoman sultan, invaded Upper Hungary and Slovakia and took Pozsony, today's Bratislava, in October. By the end of the year his Hungarians and the Bohemian army stood before Vienna. Lolo dates the start of the siege to 27 October; Anton Gindely, the Prague historian of the war, has the Bohemian army crossing the Danube at Pressburg on 21 November and reaching Vienna at the end of the month.4
The war had begun in Bohemia in 1618, when the Protestant estates rose against the Habsburgs; in 1619 they offered the Bohemian crown to Frederick V, the elector Palatine and leader of the Protestant Union, and looked to him and to the Dutch for help.5 › Battle of White Mountain, 1620
Bethlen was a vassal of the sultan, and that made him doubly dangerous. In Vienna there was fear that Ottoman troops might follow him, and Ferdinand warned the Poles that the Transylvanian rising could drag the Commonwealth itself into a quarrel with Turkey.6
Emperor Ferdinand II looked for help wherever he could find it. In Germany he turned to the Catholic League of Duke Maximilian of Bavaria. In Poland his envoy, Count Michael Adolf Althan, spent the summer and autumn of 1619 lobbying the king, the senators and the great officers of the Crown, and the emperor's brother, Archduke Charles, the bishop of Breslau, pressed the same case.7
King Sigismund III Vasa was willing. He had made a family pact with the Habsburgs in 1613 that the Polish Sejm never ratified but that he treated as binding. He would not intervene openly. After consulting Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski he settled on a quieter solution: to send the emperor the Lisowczycy.8
Armies and commanders
The Lisowczycy, also called elears, were light cavalry formed by Aleksander Lisowski during the wars with Muscovy. They were not part of the regular army, drew no steady pay and lived largely by plunder, and they were famous both for daring and for cruelty. Back from Muscovy, they were plundering the south-eastern borderlands of the Crown, so sending them to the emperor got rid of a problem at home while helping the Habsburgs at the same time.9
They had only just come home. The truce of Deulino had ended Prince Władysław's war with Muscovy, and Pieńkowski counts the truces with Muscovy and Sweden among the reasons the king could now turn west at all.10
Their founder, Colonel Aleksander Lisowski, had led them on deep raids into Muscovy in the years of the Dymitriads; after Lisowski's death they rode with Prince Władysław's expedition to Moscow, where, in Kersten's words quoted by Pieńkowski, they distinguished themselves by great courage and no less cruelty, often acting on their own without regard for the hetmans.11
To keep up the appearance of neutrality, the recruiting was left to a Hungarian magnate living in Poland, György Drugeth of Homonna. Beaten by Bethlen's forces, he had fled to Poland and wanted his estates back. Even before they marched, the Lisowczycy plundered the country around Krosno and Biecz in October, to the loud anger of the local nobility. Their commander in the field was Walenty Rogawski.12
Their opponent was George Rákóczi, Bethlen's ally. Ronikier and Pieńkowski give him about 7,000 men: 2,500 heavy cavalry, 2,500 Hungarian light horse and 2,000 infantry. The Lisowczycy numbered about 10,000 in Ronikier's count and 8,000 to 10,000 in Pieńkowski's. Gindely, who calls them Polish Cossacks, puts them at about eleven thousand, enlisted with the help of the king and some of the nobles.13
Two commanders, two plans
The king and the magnate did not want the same thing. Sigismund's instructions told the horsemen to cross Slovakia and join the emperor's forces against Bethlen. Drugeth, who had joined the venture to recover his own lands and to strike at Bethlen, wanted to fight in Upper Hungary. Pieńkowski notes that the two aims boded ill for the expedition from the start; Lolo describes the plan as a drive south through Slovakia to spread havoc in Bethlen's own lands.14
Rákóczi chose to wait for them in the mountains. He held the hills around Humenné and blocked every crossing of the Carpathians from the Dukla Pass to Wetlina. Rogawski's answer was not to come where he was expected. The Lisowczycy went through smaller passes and came out behind the Transylvanian army.15
The battle in phases
Through the passes. Lolo describes the plan as a march by the Dukla Pass; Pieńkowski thinks the horsemen most likely crossed by the Łupków Pass. Both he and Gindely date the start of the march over the mountains to 21 November. Either way, Rogawski came out behind the enemy near the town of Humenné on the Laborec.16
The date. Ronikier dates the battle to 23 November 1619; Pieńkowski writes that the sources mostly agree it lasted two days, 23 and 24 November, and warns that its course is not fully clear.17
The place. Even the battlefield is uncertain. Ronikier places the decisive fight near the village of Zavda, outside Humenné, and Pieńkowski reconstructs a first day in which part of the Polish force beat Rákóczi's cavalry where the Udava flows into the Laborec. Slovak and Czech historians, he notes, put the battle at Stropkov instead, a reading he thinks the sources do not support.18
The rout that turned. In the decisive fight the Transylvanians at first had the better of it. Their heavy cavalry broke the Polish ranks and the Lisowczycy fled toward their camp. Rákóczi, sure of victory, let his army lose its order, and his infantry burst into the Polish camp and began to loot it. Then the Polish banners turned and charged the scattered enemy.19
Turning point: flight or feint?
Historians read the decisive moment differently. In Ronikier's account the Polish flight was real, and the battle was decided unexpectedly when Rákóczi's infantry stopped to plunder. Pieńkowski reads it as a deliberate ruse: unable to win a frontal attack, the Lisowczycy feigned a retreat in four columns toward their own camp and drew the Transylvanians into a trap. Either way, Rákóczi was routed.20
Sixty-four years before Sobieski, Vienna was saved by men who never saw its walls.
How many died at Humenné?
No one counted the dead with any care. Ronikier writes that Rákóczi got away with only a small band, and Gindely that the Transylvanian army was almost annihilated. None of these accounts gives a figure for the Polish losses.21
Aftermath: the first relief of Vienna
The victory laid Upper Hungary open to the Lisowczycy. Instead of riding on to the emperor, as the king had wanted, they spread out to plunder the country, as Drugeth had wanted. Hundreds of kilometers away, Bethlen heard of his ally's defeat, lifted the siege of Vienna and pulled back into Hungary to defend it.22
Historians weigh the horsemen's share differently. Adam Kersten called the campaign the first relief of Vienna, and both Lolo and Pieńkowski keep the name. Pieńkowski adds that the plague raging among the besiegers counted for as much, and Gindely doubted that the allies could have taken the city at all, since they had no siege guns.23
The raid itself did not last. Hungarian troops gathered against the invaders, the horsemen quarreled among themselves and broke up into separate bands, and by December they were streaming back over the mountains into Poland.24
For Poland the expedition brought little gain and much trouble. The Lisowczycy came home in disorder and plundered again, the nobility of Lesser Poland feared Transylvanian revenge, and in December the king's proclamations ordered them to disperse and ask for no more pay. In January 1620 crown troops under Field Hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski broke them up near Miechów, and those who would not disperse were driven into Silesia, from where, Gindely writes, the king sent them on to the emperor.25
Bethlen protested, and his propaganda persuaded the nobles of Lesser Poland that a Hungarian reprisal was coming; for a time the king feared it too. Sigismund hurried to distance himself from the venture and to assure Bethlen of his good will.26
Legacy and memory
Whether the expedition helped provoke the Polish-Ottoman war of 1620 to 1621, which opened with the disaster at Cecora, is disputed: Pieńkowski counts it among the causes, while Lolo cites the historian Ryszard Majewski, who showed that view to be unfounded.27
Its value is disputed too. Pieńkowski argues that the Lisowczycy saved the Bohemian and Hungarian crowns for Ferdinand, though the Commonwealth gained little from it. Gindely, writing from the imperial side, judged that the horsemen did the emperor little service in battle and much harm by their plundering. Lolo judges the short-term effects favorable for Poland, since the horsemen left the country and the Habsburgs got help that proved useful, and he recalls Kersten's own closing question: did the expedition, whatever its reasons, bring the Commonwealth harm or benefit?28
