Who won the Battle of Khotyn in 1621?
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its Cossack allies won a defensive victory at Khotyn on the Dniester in autumn 1621, holding for over a month against a vast Ottoman invasion led by Sultan Osman II. The failed campaign so humiliated the young sultan that it cost him his throne and his life.
In the autumn of 1621, a Polish-Lithuanian and Cossack army dug in near Khotyn on the Dniester and held for over a month against a vast Ottoman invasion led in person by the young Sultan Osman II. The Ottomans could not break them, and the failed campaign so humiliated the sultan that it cost him his throne and his life, a rare case of a battle abroad triggering a regicide at home.1
The Ottoman storm
Flush from a victory over the Poles the year before, and provoked by Cossack raids on the Black Sea coast, Sultan Osman II gathered an enormous army, well over a hundred thousand strong, to invade the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Against this the aged hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz, victor of Kircholm, took command of a much smaller Polish-Lithuanian force, joined by a large body of Cossacks.2
The fortified camp
Chodkiewicz had planned to meet the Ottomans in the open field, but the other commanders talked him out of it, and the army fought a defensive battle from a fortified camp beside the Dniester, near the castle of Khotyn. For over a month the Ottomans hurled assault after assault at the entrenchments, while the defenders, and above all the Cossacks, beat them back again and again. Chodkiewicz himself died during the siege, but the line held.3
The sultan checked
As autumn wore on, the Ottoman army was worn down by casualties, disease and the coming cold, unable to storm the camp or starve it out. With winter closing in and his troops exhausted, Osman II agreed to a peace that essentially restored the old border. The great invasion had achieved nothing, and the sultan returned home empty-handed.4
The price of failure
The humiliation was fatal to Osman II. Blaming the janissaries and planning to reform them, the young sultan provoked a revolt of the very troops he intended to curb. In 1622 the janissaries deposed and murdered him, the first regicide in Ottoman history. Khotyn checked Ottoman expansion in the north and became a celebrated moment in Polish memory.5
Sahaidachny and the Cossacks
Khotyn was won as much by the Cossacks as by the Polish army: the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine writes that they bore the brunt of the fierce fighting from 2 to 28 September and were instrumental in saving the Polish forces from destruction. Tens of thousands of Zaporozhian Cossacks under Hetman Petro Sahaidachny arrived on the eve of the battle and pitched their own camp beside the Polish one. Sahaidachny died the following year of wounds suffered in the battle. After Chodkiewicz's death in the camp, command passed to Stanisław Lubomirski, who saw the defense through to the peace.6
Who commanded at Khotyn in 1621?
Grand Hetman of Lithuania Jan Karol Chodkiewicz led the Commonwealth army, with Stanisław Lubomirski as his deputy and Prince Władysław Vasa in the camp to smooth disputes among the commanders. Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny led the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and Sultan Osman II commanded the Ottoman army in person. After Chodkiewicz died on 24 September 1621, Lubomirski took over.7
According to the Museum of Polish History, the choice of a Lithuanian hetman followed the disaster at Cecora in 1620, which had left the Crown without its own hetmans: Stanisław Żółkiewski was killed there and Stanisław Koniecpolski taken prisoner. The same account says the bedridden Chodkiewicz handed command to Lubomirski himself shortly before his death. Chodkiewicz's career is traced in our list of the greatest Polish commanders.8
How many soldiers fought at Khotyn?
No exact count survives, and estimates differ. The Commonwealth and its Cossack allies are usually put at about 60,000 to 70,000 men, roughly half of them Cossacks. The Ottoman army, with its Tatar allies, is estimated at about 100,000 to 150,000.9
After Cecora the Sejm voted to raise 60,000 soldiers, but slow tax collection meant the Commonwealth could field only about half that number. The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine credits Sahaidachny with about 40,000 Cossacks, while the Museum of Polish History puts the Cossacks who reached Khotyn on the eve of the battle at about 30,000. The month-long defense earns Khotyn a place among the greatest sieges in history.10
What did the Treaty of Khotyn decide?
The peace agreed on 9 October 1621 gave neither side new territory. Both sides promised to restrain raids across the frontier, and the Commonwealth accepted Ottoman overlordship of Moldavia. The Ottoman army began to withdraw the same day, and the peace was formally confirmed in 1623 in a document issued by Osman's younger brother, Murad IV.11
The wording let both courts claim success: according to the Museum of Polish History, gifts for the Crimean khan named in the Polish text appeared as tribute in the Ottoman version. For Osman II the campaign was a defeat that turned him against the janissaries, who overthrew and killed him in May 1622. The original Ottoman document, almost five meters long, is kept in the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw, according to PAP.12
Is Khotyn 1621 the same battle as Khotyn 1673?
No. In 1621 a Commonwealth and Cossack army defended a fortified camp against the sultan for over a month. On 11 November 1673 Hetman Jan Sobieski did the reverse: he stormed an entrenched Ottoman camp under Hüseyin Pasha in a dawn attack and destroyed its army. That victory helped carry him to the throne the next year.13
According to the Museum of Polish History, the Ottomans of 1673 were camped on the ground where the Polish camp of 1621 had stood; the Ottoman army numbered about 25,000 to 30,000 and Sobieski's about 30,000, far fewer than in 1621. Read the full story of the Battle of Khotyn in 1673, or see how the hussars fought in both battles in the winged hussars' greatest battles.14
