What happened at the Battle of Khotyn in 1673?
The Battle of Khotyn was fought on 11 November 1673 on the Dniester. Grand Crown Hetman Jan Sobieski led the army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth against Hüseyin Pasha's Ottoman army, entrenched in a fortified camp beside the Khotyn fortress. After a night of freezing rain, the Poles stormed the ramparts at dawn and the hussars charged through the breaches; the Ottoman army was destroyed, many drowning when a bridge over the Dniester collapsed. The victory made Sobieski a national hero and helped him become king.5
In 1672 the Ottoman Empire had taken Kamianets and forced humiliating terms on Poland. A year later, on a frozen November morning, Hetman Jan Sobieski answered with one of the most brilliant victories in Polish history, at Khotyn on the Dniester.6
Who won the Battle of Khotyn and why?
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth won. Sobieski struck Hüseyin Pasha's army before the other Ottoman corps could join it, kept his troops in battle order through a night of sleet that left the defenders frozen and exhausted, then stormed the camp at dawn with infantry, artillery and cavalry working together. The Ottoman army was trapped against the Dniester and destroyed.7
Revenge for Kamianets
In 1672 the Ottomans captured the fortress of Kamianets in Podolia, and the Treaty of Buchach forced Poland to give up Podolia and pay the sultan a yearly tribute of 22,000 thalers, which made the Commonwealth a vassal in all but name. The Sejm refused to ratify it, and in 1673 the Commonwealth raised an army to fight back. It found the Ottoman army of Hüseyin Pasha entrenched in a large fortified camp beside the old fortress of Khotyn.8
The Sejm of spring 1673 ended the feud between King Michał and the "malcontents," the faction to which Sobieski belonged, and voted taxes for a new army. Sobieski had asked for 60,000 men with strong artillery and infantry. What the Commonwealth actually raised is counted differently: the Wilanów Palace Museum says the deputies funded about 43,000, Polskie Radio puts the Polish and Lithuanian forces of the campaign at nearly 40,000, and Marek Groszkowski at 46,500, of whom 37,500 came from the Crown and 9,000 from Lithuania. Hüseyin Pasha's camp stood on the plateau in front of Khotyn castle, on the right bank of the Dniester, on the very site of the Polish camp of the 1621 battle.9
At the Sejm the hetman also set out how the war should be fought. He wanted an alliance of Christian states against the Ottomans, above all with Muscovy and the Emperor, and help from the pope, but, as the historian Teresa Chynczewska-Hennel told Polskie Radio, he was a realist who believed the Commonwealth had to count first on its own strength. No ally came, and the army that marched in 1673 was the Commonwealth's alone.10
Sobieski came to the campaign with a strong record against the Commonwealth's southern enemies. In October 1667 he had held a fortified camp at Podhajce against a much larger Cossack and Tatar army, and in the autumn of 1672, while the peace of Buchach was being negotiated, he had led a few thousand horsemen against the Tatar raiding parties and freed many of the captives they were driving away.11
The march into Moldavia
The Ottomans had split their forces. Besides Hüseyin's army at Khotyn, a corps under Kaplan Pasha stood near Iași, about 160 km away, and further Ottoman troops held Kamianets. If they joined, the Commonwealth army would be in grave danger, so Sobieski resolved to strike between them before they could unite.12
First he had to bring along Michał Pac, the Grand Hetman of Lithuania and his political rival, who at a council on 24 October refused to serve under him. According to the Wilanów Palace Museum, Sobieski then offered to give up the command himself, provided the two armies attacked together, and the gamble worked; Polskie Radio counts winning over the stubborn Pac among the hetman's achievements in the campaign.13
The army crossed the Dniester into Moldavia and approached Khotyn from the south through difficult, wooded country in autumn rain and mud. The Moldavian hospodar Stefan Petriceicu came over to the Polish side with his men, 1,500 of them by the Wilanów Palace Museum's count and some 4,000 to 5,000 by Polskie Radio's, and Wallachian troops followed during the fighting.14
On 9 November the army reached the camp. The next day the infantry of Jan Motowidło and of a colonel whom the sources call Jan Denhoff or Jan Wojciech Dennemark climbed the ramparts but, left unsupported, it was driven back. The attack at least showed Sobieski how the Turkish left was held.15
Two commanders, two plans
Sobieski's boldest decision was the route. Instead of facing Khotyn from the Polish bank, he took the army over the Dniester and came at the camp from the Ottoman side, from the south. It was a risk, because Kaplan Pasha's corps could have fallen on his flank, but it promised surprise and cut the camp off from the other Ottoman forces. Groszkowski adds that the hetman gave up any idea of a long siege: his men had little food and had borrowed money from the Moldavian hospodar a week before the battle.16
The Ottoman side went into the campaign weaker than in 1672. The Crimean khan refused to join, pleading a Kalmyk raid on his lands, and Polskie Radio notes that the empire was short of money after the previous year's campaign and its commanders and soldiers had little appetite for another. In Groszkowski's reading, Hüseyin meant to hold his camp until Kaplan Pasha came to relieve him. That help never came: reports soon reached Sobieski that Kaplan was not marching on Khotyn at all.17
How many soldiers fought at Khotyn in 1673?
Roughly 30,000 Polish and Lithuanian troops faced about 25,000 to 30,000 Ottomans. The Museum of Polish History counts about 22,000 Crown and 8,000 Lithuanian soldiers, 15,500 of them cavalry, and Groszkowski gives the same 22,000 and 8,000, while estimates for the whole army of the 1673 campaign run to about 40,000 or more. Moldavian and Wallachian troops changed sides.18
The freezing night
Sobieski brought his army up close to the camp and kept it in battle order through the night of 10 to 11 November, in freezing rain and wind. The Polish troops suffered, but the Ottoman soldiers, many of them from warmer lands, suffered more.19
The whole army stood in battle order, with the Lithuanians on the left wing and the Crown troops in the center and on the right. By morning many of the frozen Ottoman soldiers had left their posts, and they did not expect an attack that day.20
Storming the ramparts
At dawn on 11 November the Polish infantry and dragoons attacked the ramparts and broke into the camp. Through the breaches poured the cavalry, led by the winged hussars under Stanisław Jabłonowski. An Ottoman cavalry counterattack was beaten back.21
The Polish guns opened fire around eight in the morning, and almost the whole army went forward, with Sobieski on foot at the head of his dragoon regiment. The ramparts were taken within about 15 minutes, and the infantry leveled the earthwork and filled the ditch under fire so that the cavalry could pass. Bosnian and Rumelian sipahis counterattacked the infantry and were held by cavalry under Dymitr Wiśniowiecki. Then Jabłonowski led the decisive hussar charge from the right wing, which drove the Turks from the ramparts deep into the camp. Accounts of its size differ: the Museum of Polish History speaks of seven hussar banners of about 750 men, while Groszkowski counts 15 banners of about 1,200.22
The collapse at the bridge
The Ottoman army broke and fled toward the bridge over the Dniester, which collapsed under the weight of the fugitives. Thousands were killed or drowned, and only a few thousand got away. Hüseyin Pasha himself escaped from the battlefield and reached Kamianets.23
A last attempt by Soliman Pasha of Bosnia to break out with several thousand horsemen was stopped by Wiśniowiecki's men. Many fugitives threw themselves from the high rocks above the Dniester, and the overloaded bridge, under Polish artillery fire, gave way. The light horse of Atanazy Miączyński and Roman (or Jerzy) Ruszczyc then crossed the river and pursued those who had got over.24
How many died at Khotyn in 1673?
The losses were lopsided. Polish and Lithuanian dead are put at about 1,500. Groszkowski estimates that nearly 20,000 Ottoman soldiers were killed or wounded, the Wilanów Palace Museum writes that of about 30,000 men only some 4,000 survived, and the Museum of Polish History that most of Hüseyin's army was killed or taken prisoner. The victory was not cheap or certain: Sobieski himself wrote that inside the camp his army had been "twice close to defeat."25
The road to the throne
By a twist of fate, King Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki had died in Lwów the day before the battle. The victor of Khotyn returned as a national hero, and in May 1674 the nobility elected him king as Jan III Sobieski, with the backing of France. Nine years later he would lead the relief of Vienna.26
Why did the victory at Khotyn not end the war?
There was no money to keep the army in the field, and it broke up. Sobieski wanted to march south and winter his troops along the Danube, but Michał Pac took the Lithuanians home, the Moldavian and Wallachian rulers left, and after news of King Michał's death the Crown officers refused to march further. The Ottomans rebuilt their army, and the war dragged on for three more years.27
Polish troops took Khotyn castle on 13 November. A smaller force stayed in Moldavia and garrisoned Khotyn and Suceava, but it could not hold the country, and by the start of 1674 it had fallen back. Russia used the Polish-Ottoman war to strengthen its hold on Ukraine. When peace came at Żurawno in 1676, the Commonwealth no longer had to pay the tribute of Buchach, but Kamianets stayed in Ottoman hands.28
Is the Battle of Khotyn of 1673 the same as the one in 1621?
No. Both were fought at the fortress of Khotyn on the Dniester. In 1621 a Polish-Lithuanian army held a fortified camp there against the sultan's army. In 1673 the roles were reversed: Sobieski attacked an Ottoman army dug in on the site of that old Polish camp, behind what the Wilanów Palace Museum calls the "old Chodkiewicz trenches."29
The earlier siege is told in our article on Khotyn 1621. Both battles belong to the long series of the Commonwealth's wars with the Ottoman Empire, surveyed in the wars of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.30
Remembering Khotyn
Khotyn was the last great victory the Commonwealth won on its own, without the help of allies, as it would not be at Vienna. The historian Tadeusz Korzon praised Sobieski for leading "both young and old soldiers" to fame despite the nation's dilatoriness and disorder, and Polskie Radio's historian Teresa Chynczewska-Hennel calls it one of the greatest triumphs of Polish arms.31
The battle was also fixed in print and in fiction. Romeyn de Hooghe engraved a large bird's-eye view of it; the plan above is a smaller copy published later by Pieter van der Aa. Henryk Sienkiewicz closed his novel Pan Wołodyjowski with Khotyn as revenge for the fall of Kamianets, sending Sobieski "into the sultan's lands" with 31,000 horse and foot. For the Ottoman side of the story, see the greatest battles of the Ottoman Empire.32
