When was the defense of Lwów?

The street fighting lasted from 1 to 22 November 1918; the Ukrainian siege of the city went on into the spring of 1919.

Who were the Lwów Eaglets?

The young Polish defenders of Lwów, many of them schoolchildren and students, who fought in November 1918. The IPN counts 1,374 pupils and students among the 6,021 people who took part in the street fighting; dzieje.pl gives 6,022 defenders, 1,422 of whom had not turned seventeen.

Who commanded at Lwów in November 1918?

Captain Czesław Mączyński led the Polish defenders and Lieutenant Colonel Michał Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz the relief column. On the Ukrainian side command eventually passed to Colonel Hnat Stefaniv, who ordered the retreat on the night of 21 November.

Who was the youngest defender of Lwów?

Antoni Petrykiewicz, aged 13, wounded at Persenkówka in December 1918, is the youngest recipient of the Virtuti Militari; Jerzy Bitschan, killed on 21 November days before turning 14, also became a symbol of the Eaglets.

How did the fighting end?

A Polish relief column reached the city on 20 November, a joint attack followed on 21 November, and the Ukrainian forces left during the night; on 22 November Lwów was in Polish hands, though the Ukrainians kept it under siege into 1919.

What happened to the Jews of Lwów in November 1918?

In the days after the Ukrainians left, soldiers, men in uniform with no right to it and criminals looted and burned the Jewish quarter. The American Morgenthau mission counted 64 Jews killed; other counts range from about 50 dead, Jews and Christians, in the Polish government inquiry to at least 150.

Can you visit the Cemetery of the Lwów Eaglets?

Yes. The Cemetery of the Defenders of Lwów is part of the Łyczakowski cemetery in Lviv. Wrecked by the Soviet authorities in 1971, it was rebuilt, partly in its old form, between 1989 and 2005.

The Defense of Lwów, 1918: the Lwów Eaglets

By the numbers
Side	Strength	Losses
Polish defenders	6,021 people in the street fighting of 1 to 21 November by the IPN's count (6,022 by dzieje.pl), 1,374 of them pupils and students¹	More than 400 killed by the counts of the IPN and the Polonika Institute, among them 120 school pupils and 76 university students²
West Ukrainian forces	About 1,400 to 1,500 soldiers took the city on 1 November by Ukrainian accounts; on 21 November 4,678 men drew rations, 3,305 of them combat troops, by the count of Stukalina and Lukianchenko³	unknown

Quick answer

What was the defense of Lwów in 1918?

The defense of Lwów was the fighting for the city of Lwów (today Lviv) from 1 to 22 November 1918. As Austria-Hungary collapsed, Ukrainian soldiers seized the city before dawn on 1 November for the new West Ukrainian state. Polish residents, many of them students and schoolchildren, took up arms under Captain Czesław Mączyński and held the western districts for three weeks until a relief column arrived from Przemyśl. On 22 November the Ukrainian forces withdrew, but the war for the city and eastern Galicia went on until July 1919. The young defenders are remembered in Poland as the Lwów Eaglets.⁴

In the first days of November 1918 the old empire of the Habsburgs was falling apart, and two nations claimed the same city. In Lwów the fight for it was taken up not only by soldiers but by schoolboys, university students and women. For the Poles it became the legend of the Lwów Eaglets; for the Ukrainians the November Uprising, the founding moment of their western state. The wider story is told in our guide to Polish independence, 1914 to 1921.⁵

A city claimed by two nations

Lwów was the capital of Austrian Galicia. In 1910, by the figures quoted by the Polish Press Agency, Poles made up 51 percent of its people, Jews 28 percent and Ukrainians 19 percent; the Encyclopedia of Ukraine puts the Polish share at about 60 percent, and the 1914-1918-online encyclopedia the Jewish share at more than 30 percent. Around the city, in eastern Galicia, Ukrainians were the majority, and the Ukrainian national movement counted it as Ukrainian land.⁶

Dark locator map with a gold star in a glowing circle marking the approximate site of the Defense of Lwów, the coasts, rivers and lakes of the region, and a small world map inset with the area boxed — The Defense of Lwów: the star marks the approximate site, and the inset shows the area on a world map. Drawn for this article from Natural Earth data, with no modern borders. Location map: © Echoes of Battle (data: Natural Earth, public domain)

As Austria-Hungary went down in defeat, a Ukrainian National Council met in Lwów and in mid-October 1918 (on the 18th by the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, on the 19th by the 1914-1918-online encyclopedia; the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine says the meeting sat on 18 and 19 October) proclaimed a Ukrainian state on the Ukrainian lands of the monarchy, eastern Galicia among them. Its next step was to take power in the city before the Poles could.⁷

The forces

The Ukrainian side had the soldiers. Ukrainian troops of the Austro-Hungarian army, organized in secret for the coup, made up the force that took the city, and the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, a legion of the Austro-Hungarian army, came in from Bukovina as reinforcements on 3 and 4 November.⁸

The Polish side had the city. With most grown men still in the army or in prison camps, the defense fell largely to the young: members of the Polish Military Organization, former legionaries and soldiers of the Polish Auxiliary Corps, students and schoolboys, and women, who formed their own militia and later a Volunteer Women's Legion. The IPN gives 6,021 people who took part in the street fighting from 1 to 21 November, 427 of them women and 1,374 of them pupils and students; dzieje.pl gives 6,022 defenders, 1,422 of whom had not turned seventeen.⁹

Three weeks of street fighting

The night of 1 November. Before dawn on 1 November Ukrainian soldiers occupied the public buildings and military posts of Lwów. Yellow and blue flags went up over the city and proclamations announced the new state.¹⁰

The first Polish posts. Polish resistance began spontaneously that same day, as groups of young people gathered in different parts of the city, and Captain Czesław Mączyński took command of them. The Sienkiewicz school and the Technicians' House became Polish strongholds.¹¹

The Henryk Sienkiewicz school in Lwów, a large brick building with gables and a fence, one of the first points of Polish resistance in November 1918 — The Henryk Sienkiewicz school in Lwów, one of the first points of Polish resistance on 1 November 1918, in a photograph from before 1930. Public domain (Polish photograph published before 1994 without a copyright notice). Semper fidelis, Lwów, before 1930, via Wikimedia Commons.

The battle for the streets. For three weeks the fighting raged around the Sienkiewicz school, the cadet school, the main railway station, the post office, St George's Cathedral, the Hill of Executions and the suburb of Zamarstynów. The Poles held on to roughly the western half of the city, and the Ukrainians attacked again and again without breaking their line.¹²

The Piłsudski Tank, an improvised armored car painted with a white eagle, on a snowy street in Lwów during the fighting of 1918 — The Piłsudski Tank, an improvised armored car built on a truck chassis by the Polish defenders, in a Lwów street during the fighting of 1918. Public domain (Polish photograph published before 1994 without a copyright notice). Semper fidelis, Lwów, before 1930, via Wikimedia Commons.

The city's defenders were soldiers, students and schoolboys, and some of them were only thirteen.

Turning point: the relief from Przemyśl

The decision came from outside. A relief force raised in Kraków retook Przemyśl from the Ukrainians on 11 November, and on 20 November a Polish column under Lieutenant Colonel Michał Tokarzewski-Karaszewicz reached Lwów by rail. On 21 November the defenders and the relief force attacked together. The attack was held, but during the night Colonel Hnat Stefaniv, the Ukrainian commander, ordered a retreat, and most Ukrainian units left the city. Which side had the larger force by then is disputed: the Ukrainian historians Nadiia Stukalina and Svitlana Lukianchenko and the 1914-1918-online encyclopedia say the Poles did, while the Polish historian Magdalena Nowak writes that the Ukrainians still held the military advantage. On the morning of 22 November Lwów was in Polish hands.¹³

Aftermath: the pogrom and the siege

The Polish victory was followed at once by violence against the city's Jews: from 21 to 23 November by the Morgenthau report, from 22 to 24 November by the Polish police records that the historian Zbigniew Zaporowski studied. The Jewish quarter had lain behind the Ukrainian lines, and the Jewish community had declared itself neutral and formed its own militia; rumors that Jews had fired on Polish troops fed hatred among the soldiers. Soldiers, deserters in uniform and criminals released from the jails looted and burned in the Jewish quarter and killed those who resisted; the 1914-1918-online encyclopedia notes that Ukrainian districts were attacked as well. The American mission led by Henry Morgenthau reported 64 Jews killed and the synagogue burned. Zaporowski sets out the other counts: about 50 dead, Jews and Christians, in the final report of the Polish government's commission of inquiry, 72 names on the list of the Jewish Committee and at least 150 Jews killed in a report of envoys of the Polish foreign ministry. Order was restored only when officers' patrols took control, and the courts later tried those accused.¹⁴

The war over eastern Galicia was far from over. The Ukrainians held the country to the east and south and surrounded the city, linked to Poland only by a narrow corridor along the railway to Przemyśl. Ukrainian guns shelled the center, and more than once, above all in March 1919, the city came close to falling. In March 1919 a relief force reopened the railway to Przemyśl, and the Polish offensives of that spring and summer drove the Ukrainian army east; by July Polish forces held most of eastern Galicia.¹⁵

Legacy: the Eaglets in memory

In the November fighting more than 400 defenders of Lwów were killed by the IPN's count, among them 120 school pupils and 76 university students; dzieje.pl gives 439 killed, with 109 secondary school pupils the largest group of the dead. Among them was Jerzy Bitschan, killed just short of his fourteenth birthday; his mother, Aleksandra Zagórska, was a leader of the women volunteers. Antoni Petrykiewicz, thirteen, was wounded at Persenkówka on 23 December and died of his wounds three weeks later; awarded the Virtuti Militari, he remains the youngest holder of Poland's highest military decoration.¹⁶

Black and white painting of a Polish officer in a cap striding forward with a pistol in the snow beside a roadside cross while soldiers around him fire rifles — Second Lieutenant Józef Mazanowski is hit while defending Persenkówka on the edge of Lwów on 28 December 1918, a painting by Stanisław Batowski made before 1930. Public domain (the painter died in 1946). Stanisław Batowski, via Wikimedia Commons.

Between the wars the Eaglets were held up to young Poles as a model, and in 1920 Józef Piłsudski awarded Lwów itself the Virtuti Militari, which dzieje.pl calls the first city to receive it. The fallen were gathered in the Cemetery of the Defenders of Lwów, a terraced pantheon on the slopes of the Łyczakowski cemetery designed by Rudolf Indruch, a student of architecture at the Lwów Polytechnic.¹⁷ › The Battles That Won Polish Independence

For Ukrainians the same days are remembered as the November Uprising, the birth of the West Ukrainian People's Republic, which united with the Ukrainian People's Republic in January 1919 before Polish forces occupied eastern Galicia that summer. The Allies left the question open for years, and only on 15 March 1923 did the Conference of Ambassadors recognize Polish rule there, with a proviso, the Encyclopedia of Ukraine notes, that eastern Galicia was to be autonomous. Galicia's Ukrainians, the same encyclopedia adds, protested the decision.¹⁸

Visiting Lviv today

After World War II the Cemetery of the Defenders fell into decay, and in 1971 the Soviet authorities wrecked it with tanks and bulldozers and drove a road across part of it. Work to restore it began after 1989, and by 2005 it had been rebuilt, only partly in its old form. Today it can be visited as part of the Łyczakowski cemetery in Lviv.¹⁹