Jan Tarnowski: the hetman who won at Obertyn

His battles ran from the Muscovite wars to the Moldavian frontier. As a young man he fought at Orsha in 1514. As grand hetman he won at Obertyn in 1531, took Homel and Starodub from Muscovy in 1535, and in 1538 besieged the Moldavian fortress of Khotyn on the Dniester.²

Early life: a Renaissance knight

Tarnowski was born in Tarnów in 1488. He fought at Orsha on the Dnieper in 1514 (on 8 September, according to Mazur), where the Polish-Lithuanian army defeated a larger Muscovite force, and then took part in the last war with the Teutonic Order and in the fighting against the Turks in Hungary and Podolia.³

Between these campaigns he traveled to Portugal and the court of King Manuel I. The accounts differ. The coin notice of the National Bank of Poland, published by dzieje.pl, dates the journey to 1518 to 1520 and says he fought the Moors in Manuel's service, and Mazur also mentions fighting against Arabs in North Africa. Andrzej Dziubiński, following the Portuguese chronicler Damião de Góis, dates his arrival in Lisbon to 1516 and writes that Manuel knighted him but that he never sailed to Africa.⁴

What was Jan Tarnowski famous for?

Jan Tarnowski is famous above all for the Battle of Obertyn in 1531, where his army of about 5,500 to 6,000 men beat about 17,000 Moldavians and kept Pokuttya for Poland. He is also known for Consilium rationis bellicae of 1558, which the Polish Army Museum calls the most important Polish work of military theory of the 16th century.⁵

How did Tarnowski win at Obertyn?

In 1530 the Moldavian ruler Petru Rareș seized Pokuttya. Tarnowski retook its border castles, routed a Moldavian corps at Gwoździec on 19 August 1531, and on 22 August met the main army at Obertyn. He fortified a hilltop with chained wagons, endured hours of artillery fire, then broke the Moldavians with cavalry and captured their guns.⁶

The Polish Army Museum describes how he provoked an attack on one Moldavian wing and broke it with infantry fire. Rareș misread the move as an attempt to break out and shifted his main force, weakening the cover of his guns; the Museum of Polish History likewise writes that the hetman provoked him into dividing his forces. Polish cavalry took the Moldavian guns and turned them on the enemy, and Tarnowski sent the rest of his horse out through the camp gate.⁷

Moldavian losses are put at almost 7,000 dead by the Polish Army Museum and at more than 7,700 by Mazur, and the Museum of Polish History writes that nearly half of Rareș's army was killed or captured. About 1,000 prisoners and all the Moldavian guns fell to the victors, Pokuttya stayed Polish, and on 7 November 1531 Tarnowski rode in triumph into Kraków. Obertyn is one of the classic Polish victories against the odds.⁸

How large was Tarnowski's army at Obertyn?

Small. Mazur, working from the muster rolls, counts 5,648 men in all, the Polish Army Museum about 6,000 and the Museum of Polish History just over 5,500: some 4,500 cavalry, about 1,150 to 1,200 foot soldiers and 12 guns. Petru Rareș brought about 17,000 men, mostly light horsemen, with 50 guns.⁹

Jan Tarnowski's greatest victories

His greatest victory was Obertyn in 1531, preceded three days earlier by the rout of a Moldavian corps at Gwoździec. In the war with Muscovy of 1534 to 1537 he led the Polish army sent to support Lithuania; with the Lithuanian grand hetman Jerzy Radziwiłł he took Homel and then, in 1535, the fortress of Starodub.¹⁰

The Polish Army Museum names him the victor of Obertyn and the conqueror of Starodub, and the National Bank of Poland's coin notice counts him among the greatest Polish commanders, a judgment echoed by the Norwegian national encyclopedia, which calls him an outstanding commander and strategist. See also our list of the greatest Polish commanders.¹¹

Not every campaign ended in victory. After Rareș raided Podolia and routed Polish border troops on the Seret in early 1538, Tarnowski led an army of close to 20,000 men to besiege Khotyn on the Dniester; historians' estimates range from about 18,000 to 19,400. Negotiations ended the siege before the castle was taken.¹²

What offices did Jan Tarnowski hold?

Tarnowski received his nomination as grand hetman of the Crown, commander of the Polish army, at the Kraków diet of 1527; the Polish Army Museum notes that the document defined the hetman's powers precisely and so completed the shaping of the office. He held it until 1559, and from 1536 he was also castellan of Kraków.¹⁴

In 1540 he built a fortress against Tatar raids at Tarnopol on the Seret River, today Ternopil in Ukraine. It was founded as a private town, and its name comes from his.¹⁵

Character and command style

Both museums describe a commander who waited: at Obertyn the battle opened with an artillery duel of several hours before he provoked Rareș into the decisive mistake. Przemysław Mazur sees in him a bridge between two ages of war. Tarnowski treated the wagon camp as a battle line, with cavalry before its front and rear gates as the two wings, and mixed eastern sabers and Tatar bows with heavy cavalry, swords, handguns and cannon. The Polish Army Museum credits the result to the professionalism of his army, contrasting it with the less well armed Moldavian troops.¹⁶

What was the Consilium rationis bellicae?

Consilium rationis bellicae is Tarnowski's treatise on the conduct of war, printed at Tarnów by Łazarz Andrysowicz in 1558 at Tarnowski's own order and expense. The Polish Army Museum calls it the most important Polish work of military theory of the 16th century, and the historian Zdzisław Spieralski the most outstanding work of Renaissance military writing in Poland.¹⁷

His book outlived him in a curious way. A later treatise, Rada sprawy wojennej (Advice on the Matter of War), long attributed to Jan Zamoyski, follows the Consilium so closely that it can only be a reworking or a separate version of it. Stanisław Herbst argued in 1956 that it was Tarnowski's own redaction, written before the Union of Lublin, and Zdzisław Spieralski agreed in 1957, adding that only the first edition of 1558 is a sound basis for study.¹⁸

How did Jan Tarnowski die?

Jan Tarnowski died on 16 May 1561 at Wiewiórka, near Tarnów, aged about 73, still castellan of Kraków. He was buried at Tarnów, and his coffin is believed to lie in the Tarnowski family crypt beneath the chancel of Tarnów Cathedral, under the tomb monument raised for him and his son Krzysztof.¹⁹

The monument is the work of the Italian sculptor Giovanni Maria Padovano and rises 13.8 meters. VisitMalopolska describes it as the largest of his works, and a PAP report calls it the most monumental two-story tomb in Europe.²⁰

How is Jan Tarnowski remembered today?

Chiefly as the victor of Obertyn and the author of the Consilium. In 2026 the National Bank of Poland issued a gold 500-złoty coin and a silver 10-złoty coin with his portrait in its series on the hetmans of the Commonwealth. Yet the historian Przemysław Mazur observes that Obertyn, though it made Tarnowski famous, never passed into national legend.²²