On 7 April 1656, Polish cavalry under Stefan Czarniecki and Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski caught a Swedish relief corps under Frederick, Margrave of Baden, at Warka on the Pilica River and routed it after about two hours of fighting. Swedish histories date the battle to March. On 7 April 1945, US carrier aircraft sank the Japanese battleship Yamato.
A king in a trap
In 1655 King Charles X Gustav of Sweden invaded the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the start of what Poles call the Deluge. Unable to match the Swedes in pitched battle, the Poles under Czarniecki turned to a harrying war of raids on Swedish detachments and rear guards. In March 1656 the retreating Swedish king was caught in the fork where the San meets the Vistula.1
A relief force set out from Warsaw under Frederick, Margrave of Baden. A report printed in Rome, dated at Lwów on 17 April 1656, says instead that the corps was sent from Prussia by Stenbock, the Swedish commander there.2
Day and night in the saddle
Leaving the Lithuanian troops of Sapieha to keep the king hemmed in, Czarniecki and Lubomirski hurried north against the margrave. On the way they routed part of the Swedish force and pressed on day and night until they caught up with him at Warka.3
For his part, Frederick had turned back. Samuel Pufendorf, in his Latin history of Charles X Gustav printed in 1696, and the Swedish historian J. Levin Carlbom both have him reach Janowiec on the Vistula, get news there of the king's movements and turn back toward Warsaw. Both also explain why he was caught: he waited at Warka for dragoons who were late in joining him. He was also slowed by a large baggage train.4
His strength is uncertain. Pufendorf counts 24 cavalry and 10 dragoon standards, and Carlbom quotes Charles X as saying the margrave had only 24 cavalry standards and 10 companies of dragoons. Carlbom estimates about 2,200 men, Władysław Czapliński in the Polish Biographical Dictionary 3,800, Polskie Radio about 2,500, and the Rome report 5,000. For the Poles, Czapliński gives 5,000 men crossing the Pilica, Polskie Radio 6,000 to 8,000 setting out, and Pufendorf 12,000.5
Over the Pilica
According to Polskie Radio, the Poles reached the Pilica at Warka on the morning of 7 April, a few hours after the main Swedish force had crossed it. Carlbom has the margrave leave Warka on the morning of 28 March, with the enemy coming fast behind him. Pufendorf has the Swedes wait a day at Warka and the Poles catch them the next day as they left the town, and prints 28 March in the margin beside these lines.6
The Pilica was in flood, and once across, the Swedes broke down the bridge behind them, counting on the river to hold the Poles up.7
Accounts of the crossing differ. In the Rome report, Lubomirski sent 240 horse, who found a ford, crossed and came back with prisoners; then, having agreed with Czarniecki that he would keep the enemy busy with a feigned crossing, Lubomirski "plunged into the Pilica swimming with all his cavalry" and struck the Swedes from behind a hill (our translation). The Polish annalist Wespazjan Kochowski, in his annals printed in 1688, gives the first plunge to Czarniecki, who spurred his horse and was first to swim the river. Czapliński writes that the Poles crossed by swimming; Polskie Radio, that they found a ford and left a party to repair the bridge.8
Two hours to break
Pufendorf, Kochowski and Carlbom all speak of about two hours of fighting. Pufendorf and Carlbom both say that many of the margrave's men were new recruits, untrained or not yet used to the Polish way of fighting.9
Then the Swedes broke and fled toward Czersk and Warsaw. Peasants from the nearby villages caught or killed many of the fugitives.10
Frederick and Count Schlippenbach shut themselves in the castle at Czersk. The Rome report had the margrave die of his wounds, but Pufendorf, Kochowski and Carlbom all bring him alive to Warsaw.11
Counting the cost
The losses are as uncertain as the strengths. The Rome report counts 4,000 bodies along the two roads and about 250 Swedes taken prisoner, 40 of them officers. Pufendorf writes that 160 were captured, Kochowski counts nearly 400 prisoners besides many officers, and Carlbom puts the whole Swedish loss at about 400 men. Most of the baggage train fell into Polish hands.12
What Warka meant
Strategically, Warka changed little: while the two commanders were away, Charles Gustav got out of the fork of the rivers. Carlbom saw its importance mainly in Czarniecki getting away unharmed with his men into Greater Poland, and in the fuel it gave to rumors and to the rising.13
Polish accounts give it more weight. The Ministry of Education's history materials call it the Commonwealth's first victory in a field battle during the Deluge, and Polskie Radio writes that it showed the Poles they could beat the Swedes in open battle and raised their morale.14
The Swedes soon struck back. Duke Adolf Johan defeated Czarniecki near Gniezno a month later, a battle Carlbom dates to 27 April and Czapliński, who places it at Kłecko, to 7 May. Czarniecki's life is told in our article on Stefan Czarniecki.15
Also on 7 April
1945: US carrier aircraft sank the Japanese battleship Yamato, which had sailed from Tokuyama on 6 April with the light cruiser Yahagi and eight destroyers to attack American forces off Okinawa. The US Strategic Bombing Survey has her capsize, blow up and sink at 1423 after five bomb and ten torpedo hits; the action report of the Japanese 2d Destroyer Squadron, printed in the same volume, logs "1417 Yamato sunk", and the Naval History and Heritage Command gives about 1420.16
