Battle of Kobyłka, 1794: the Lithuanian rearguard before Praga

Kobyłka is today a town on the northeastern edge of Warsaw. In the autumn of 1794 it was a village with a church and a manor house on the road along which the Lithuanian army of the Kościuszko Uprising was falling back to the capital. The battle fought there and in the woods of today's Zielonka on 26 October was the last of the uprising before the storming of Praga.²

Background: after Maciejowice

The uprising had broken out in Kraków in March 1794 under Tadeusz Kościuszko, a year after the Second Partition, and in mid-April it spread to Warsaw, whose people and garrison drove out the Russian troops in fierce street fighting. Through the summer the insurgents held the capital against Russian and Prussian armies.³

In October 1794 the uprising led by Tadeusz Kościuszko suffered its worst blow: at Maciejowice Kościuszko's army was defeated and he himself was wounded and taken prisoner by the Russians. The Lithuanian corps of Lieutenant General Stanisław Mokronowski, operating in northern Mazovia, now crossed the Bug and fell back toward Warsaw in several columns.⁴

Behind them came Alexander Suvorov. On 25 October, at Stanisławów, he joined forces with the corps of General Fersen, the victor of Maciejowice, while Derfelden's corps came up from Grodno; Bartoszewicz reckons the united army at about 35,000 men. Suvorov then marched on Warsaw by way of Kobyłka, where he expected to meet Mokronowski's columns on their road from the Bug, and attacked them with his own troops rather than a detachment.⁵ › Tadeusz Kosciuszko

Armies and commanders

The divisions of General Jan Meyen and General Arnold Byszewski covered the retreat. Franciszek Jóźwicki, writing in the weekly Idziemy, puts them at about 5,500 men, worn out, hungry, poorly armed and partly sick; Frederick Anthing's history of Suvorov's campaigns, published in 1799, at about 5,000. They were mostly infantry with a few guns.⁶

Their commander-in-chief, Lieutenant General Stanisław Mokronowski, was no newcomer. When Warsaw rose in April he had been named commander of the armed forces of the Duchy of Masovia, and in the following weeks he organized the insurgent army around the capital and its defenses; the historian Jarosław Dudziński judges that he served the uprising well in that post. By the autumn he led the Lithuanian corps.⁷

Against them came Suvorov's cavalry and light troops: Cossacks, horse chasseurs, dragoons and hussars, with battalions of jägers behind them. Jóźwicki counts about 7,000 Russians. Suvorov led in person, with General Pavel Potemkin, and the cavalry columns that would decide the day were commanded by Brigadier Islenev and General Shevich.⁸

The battle in phases

The Cossacks. The fighting began early on 26 October. The Russian advance guard of Cossacks and horse chasseurs struck first and was met with heavy fire, and Jóźwicki writes that this first attack was beaten off.⁹

The breakup. Then the weight of the Russian cavalry came on, and the insurgents gave way. They did not run: the infantry fell back in close columns along the forest roads toward Warsaw, and the fighting spread from the church at Kobyłka into the woods of today's Zielonka. The Russians pursued each column separately through the trees, with dragoons dismounting to fight where horses could not pass.¹⁰

One column, with Colonel Wolan, was caught in the woods and surrounded; it laid down its arms. Anthing counts 380 prisoners there, Wolan and 24 officers among them.¹¹

Turning point: the last stand near Zielonka

The largest column, General Byszewski's, about 2,500 men by Podhorodecki's count and some 3,000 by Anthing's, took the main road toward Warsaw with the guns that were left. Suvorov sent his cavalry around both of its flanks. The column was broken into pieces, but its infantry fought back and drove off the first attacks.¹²

At last, hemmed in on all sides, Byszewski led his men off the road onto low wooded hills near today's Zielonka and made a stand. The ground kept the Russian horse at bay, so the cavalry dismounted and attacked with sabers and bayonets alongside the jägers. Both accounts describe a bitter fight in which the insurgents refused to surrender until they were overwhelmed. About 400 men were taken there, with some 25 to 30 officers and General Byszewski himself, wounded; the Russians took the guns as well.¹³

The whole action lasted four hours by Anthing's account and about five by Podhorodecki's.¹⁴

Aftermath

About 450 insurgents were killed, most of them in the last clash near Zielonka. The number of prisoners is put at about 800 men and some 50 officers by Podhorodecki, 800 men and 44 officers by Jóźwicki and 850 by the Polish Press Agency's history site; the historian Kazimierz Bartoszewicz puts the whole loss at 1,500 men and all nine guns. The Russian account describes its own losses as very light; Podhorodecki doubts it and suspects the dead were played down.¹⁵

That evening Suvorov set up his headquarters in the manor of Kobyłka, whose owner, Count Unruh, gave a dinner for the victors to which the captured officers were invited, Byszewski among them. What became of the men is told differently: Podhorodecki says Suvorov released almost all the prisoners, while Anthing has them marched off under escort.¹⁶

Kobyłka was a defeat, but not a useless one. The resistance of the rearguard let most of Mokronowski's corps get through the woods to Praga, the suburb of Warsaw on the right bank of the Vistula, and take part in its defense. Mokronowski himself, once he reached Praga, gave up his command.¹⁷

The defeat also opened the road to the capital. Suvorov's army camped around Kobyłka for some days to prepare, and on 4 November 1794 it stormed Praga, whose long earthworks, defended under General Józef Zajączek, were far too extensive for the troops that held them. Suvorov attacked in several columns at once, the defenses were broken, and his guns destroyed the bridge to Warsaw, so that many of those who tried to escape drowned in the Vistula.¹⁸

The killing that followed is remembered in Poland as the Massacre of Praga. Its toll was never established: the Polish Press Agency's history site puts the number of people killed at 13,000 to 20,000, most of them civilians, while Bartoszewicz, weighing contradictory reports, estimated some 6,000 killed and wounded in the fighting, 10,000 prisoners and 7,000 people murdered. Anthing, writing for Suvorov's admirers, records 3,400 prisoners and describes the rest killed or drowned before the eyes of Warsaw.¹⁹

Legacy and memory

The uprising did not survive the fall of Praga. Kobyłka is remembered as the last stand of the Lithuanian army of the uprising before that end, and as a battle shared by the two nations of the old Commonwealth: at the anniversaries Polish officials speak of a sacrifice from which both a free Poland and a free Lithuania grew.²⁰ › The Battle of Racławice, 1794

Visiting Kobyłka today

The fallen were buried in the cemetery of Kobyłka. For the 200th anniversary in 1994 a plaque to the soldiers and insurgents was placed there, and for the 222nd anniversary a second plaque, in Lithuanian, was unveiled beside it on the initiative of the Embassy of Lithuania. The anniversary is marked each October at the Old Cemetery, with a Mass and commemorations.²¹