Who won the Battle of Klushino?
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth won a stunning victory at Klushino in 1610, when a small army under hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski, spearheaded by the winged hussars, beat a far larger Russian and mercenary force. The win opened the road to Moscow and briefly put a Polish prince on the path to the Russian throne.
On 4 July 1610 a small Polish-Lithuanian army, most of it cavalry, attacked a Russian and mercenary army several times its size at Klushino, deep in Russia's Time of Troubles. Within hours the mercenaries were bargaining for terms, the Russian host had fallen apart, and Moscow itself lay within reach.2
Russia's Time of Troubles
Russia was in chaos, its throne contested amid famine, pretenders and civil war, the period known as the Time of Troubles. The Polish king Sigismund III intervened, besieging Smolensk. A large Russian army, stiffened by foreign mercenaries hired with Swedish help, marched to relieve the siege. To intercept it, the hetman Żółkiewski advanced with a far smaller force built around his cavalry.3
Outnumbered at Klushino
At Klushino the odds were heavily against the Poles, perhaps several to one, and much of their infantry and artillery had not arrived. What Żółkiewski had was the husaria, the winged hussars, the Commonwealth's elite heavy cavalry. He chose to attack at once, before the enemy could deploy their advantage in numbers and guns.4
The numbers show how long the odds were. J. Rickard counts Żółkiewski's army as 5,556 hussars, 679 Cossack horse, 290 Lithuanian horse, only 200 infantry and two small field guns. Against them stood about 30,000 Russians under Dmitry Shuisky and a foreign contingent under Jacob De la Gardie. Estimates for the mercenaries run from about 5,000 to 7,000, a mixed force that included French, Flemish, English, Scottish, Irish, German, Swedish and Finnish soldiers.5
The hussars charge
The Poles arrived after a hard overnight march through the woods. Żółkiewski meant to take the camp by surprise, but his advance was held up before the blow could land. The ground was against them. Fences linking two villages ran across the field, and the hussars could charge only through narrow gaps in them. The mercenary horse answered with the caracole, riding up to fire pistols and wheeling away. Against lance and saber it failed, and the reiters were swept off. Gawron puts the struggle with the mercenaries alone at about three to four hours.6
The hussars charged again and again into the Russian and mercenary lines, some companies charging eight or ten times over several hours, according to the hussar Samuel Maskiewicz. The foreign mercenaries, unpaid and unwilling, wavered and then defected or fled, and the Russian army disintegrated. Żółkiewski's outnumbered force had shattered a host many times its size, one of the great feats of the winged hussars.7
The deal that ended the battle
The end came by negotiation as much as by the lance. With their cavalry gone and the two Polish guns brought up, the foreign infantry talked terms with Żółkiewski. According to Przemysław Gawron of the Wilanów Palace Museum, he offered them service under the king at their existing pay, or free passage home for those who would not take it. On 27 July 1610 Tsar Vasili IV was overthrown in Moscow.8
A Pole toward the Kremlin
The victory was decisive. Moscow's boyars, their field army destroyed, agreed to accept the Polish prince Władysław as tsar, and a Polish garrison entered the Kremlin. But King Sigismund's ambitions and religious demands wrecked the deal; the occupation soured, a Russian uprising drove the garrison out in 1612, and the chance slipped away.9
Klushino today: the battlefield and Gagarin's village
Klushino is still a village. It lies in Smolensk Oblast, near the town of Gzhatsk. In Russia it is famous for a reason that has nothing to do with 1610. Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, was born there on 9 March 1934. Gzhatsk itself now bears his name: it is the town of Gagarin. A replica of the Gagarin family house was built in the village in 1971 and is now a museum.10
So the name carries two very different memories. For Russians, Klushino is the cradle of the space age. For Poles, Kłuszyn is the high point of the hussars, ranked with Kircholm and Vienna among the greatest battles of the winged hussars. Few villages hold a cavalry victory and a cosmonaut's birth in the same fields.
Test yourself on Klushino and its neighbors in the Polish battles quiz, or find the field in Where Was It Fought?
