On 5 October 1672, according to two diaries kept in his camp, Grand Hetman Jan Sobieski set out from Krasnystaw with a small force of cavalry to hunt down the Tatar raiding parties, the chambuls, that were carrying off captives from southeastern Poland after the Ottoman invasion. That night he marched through heavy rain toward Krasnobród. Over the next ten days his column broke Tatar bands at Narol, Niemirów, Komarno and Petranka near Kalush and freed thousands of captives. The ride could not undo the losses of 1672, sealed in the Treaty of Buczacz, but the Wilanów Palace Museum writes that it made Sobieski famous. Also on this day: the battle of the Thames, 1813.
A kingdom caught unprepared
In 1672 the Ottoman army invaded the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and took the fortress of Kamieniec Podolski. Wojciech Kalwat of the Wilanów Palace Museum describes a state caught unready, sliding into civil war, its king, Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki, unwilling to enlarge the army for fear of strengthening his rival, Sobieski. The historian Tadeusz Korzon writes that on 2 October Polish commissioners sent to treat with the enemy watched the horde of Nuradyn Sultan ride out to plunder and take captives before peace was made.1
On 4 October a raiding party chased a company of horse from Krynica, near Zamość, up to Sobieski's camp at Krasnystaw. Sobieski wrote to the king that he left his camp in safety and went against the enemy with his cavalry at once, because everyone agreed it was heading "prosto ... na osobę WKMci", straight for Your Majesty's person (our translation). The camp moved back to Krupa. According to the camp diary known as the Dziennik pogromu, Sobieski himself spent that night at Krasnystaw with the cavalry.2
Sobieski sets out
On 5 October, the Dziennik records, "the Lord Marshal marched toward Zamość, where the enemy had appeared" (our translation). Sobieski was then Grand Marshal and Grand Hetman of the Crown. A second camp diary, the Diaryusz expedycyi, has him set out that morning "to cut across the enemy's tracks" (our translation); the column covered five mil (old Polish miles) and halted half a mil from Zamość. The Dziennik and Korzon put the first rest at Sitaniec, from where Sobieski invited the Cossack leader Hanenko, at Zamość, to join him; Hanenko had already left. A Cossack named Zawisza brought in prisoners, who, the Diaryusz says, told of Tatar raiding parties on their way home, and the column turned toward Krasnobród in the night.3
The Diaryusz writes of "so small a handful of men, for there were not more than two and a half thousand of us" (our translation). Korzon calls it "a very small number of soldiers", 3,000 to 4,000 men with twice as many horses (our translation), and quotes a letter of Prażmowski to Cardinal Altieri that speaks of only 4,000. The Wilanów account gives some 3,000. Korzon quotes Beaumont, a Frenchman who rode with Sobieski, on a "flying camp without baggage, each man with two horses" (our translation). Sobieski wrote: "All that night I marched on without stopping in a fierce rain" (our translation). According to the Dziennik, on the same day the cavalry captain (rotmistrz) Atanazy Miączyński, sent out days earlier, routed the murzas Ag and Zor near Rawa and recovered several hundred captives.4
Battle of Krasnobród
5 October 1672 · 354 years ago
Krasnobród, Narol, Niemirów
In the night of 5 to 6 October, Hanenko reached the camp of Tatars and Cossacks at Krasnobród first and attacked in the dark. Sobieski wrote that many Tatars escaped into the woods, but all the captives were freed and the woods were thick with dead; the Dziennik credits Hanenko with taking cattle and horses and killing three or four men; Korzon writes that Hanenko reportedly freed some 2,500 captives. At first light on 6 October Sobieski had the woods searched; the raid's commander, Zatyusza, was killed.5
That day he fell on two returning raiding parties at Narol and drove them until dark, cutting them down and drowning them in the Tanew river. Both diaries put the captives freed there at about 2,000 or more. After a night march he caught the force of Dziambet Girey Sultan near Horyniec and Niemirów on 7 October and scattered it. For that day Sobieski wrote of more than ten thousand freed ("kilkanaście tysięcy"), the Dziennik of about 12,000, the Diaryusz of nearly 20,000.6
The sultan's camp at Komarno
On 9 October Sobieski found Nuradyn Sultan encamped at Komarno. His men had marched through rain, over crossings so bad, he wrote, "that perhaps there are no worse or greater in the whole world" (our translation). He put his own strength at "two thousand, at most two and a half" (our translation). Sobieski and the Dziennik both count 10,000 Tatars of the horde, besides Lithuanian Tatars, Cossacks and others. For the Lithuanian Tatars the Dziennik gives 4,000 and Korzon 400, a difference that remains unresolved. The Diaryusz gives 20,000 Tatars.7
Sobieski attacked in two wings, Stefan Bidziński, the Crown Guard (strażnik koronny), on the left, he himself on the right. When he began cutting into the enemy's flank, the Tatars fled, and the pursuit went on until dark. Sobieski and Korzon have the sultan's force broken at Bieńkowa Wiśnia. Sobieski counted "at least twenty thousand" captives freed that day, the Dziennik about twenty thousand, the Diaryusz "more than some 40 thousand" (our translation). "In short," he wrote, "the Lord God Himself could not have shown greater grace and blessing than He showed, surely at the pleading of those innocent souls, whose weeping must have pierced the heavens themselves" (our translation).8
The trap in the Bednarów woods
The last chase followed the youngest sultan, Adzi Girey, whom Nuradyn joined with the survivors of Komarno, across the flooded Dniester and past Stryi and Dolina. Learning that they were heading for the Bednarów woods, Sobieski sent word in the night for the local peasants to block the forest tracks. On 14 October he caught them near Petranka. Sobieski dated his report "near Kalush", which Korzon explains as the nearest well-known town (our translation). By his own account it was an hour after sunrise. The Dziennik and Korzon describe his men approaching with banners lowered, so that the Tatars at first took them for their own. Sobieski put the Tatar horse at no fewer than 8,000, besides Cossacks and Turks, and his own at about 1,500; all their banners were taken, which, he wrote, "old histories do not recall" ever happening with the Tatars (our translation). He and the Dziennik each put the captives freed at about ten thousand.9
On 15 October the army heard a Te Deum. The Dziennik ends by praising Sobieski: "almost never sleeping, never undressing, lighting no fire, eating little, barely anything (for in the devastated country a loaf of bread was harder to come by than a thousand Tatars)" (our translation).10
What the raid achieved
Korzon writes that, by Sobieski's own reckoning, more than 44,000 Christian souls were freed, and by the reckoning of Beaumont 80,000. Kalwat also gives 44,000 as Sobieski's own count. The ride could not undo the war. On 16 October, Korzon writes, the Ottoman kaymakam accepted the Polish offer on the tribute, "a zaraz potem spisano i podpisano traktat buczacki", and right after that the Treaty of Buczacz was drawn up and signed (our translation). He lists its price: a yearly tribute of 22,000 red złoty, the loss of Kamieniec with Podolia, and the renunciation of Ukraine.11
In Korzon's account Sobieski beat the Turks at Khotyn on 11 November 1673, told in our article on Khotyn 1673, and was proclaimed king on 21 May 1674. Kalwat writes that the ride made Sobieski famous and that it is considered one of the most glorious episodes in the history of Polish cavalry. More in our biography of Jan III Sobieski and our story of the winged hussars.12
Also on this day
1813: near the Moravian village on the Thames, in present-day Ontario, the American army of William Henry Harrison defeated the British and Indian force of Major General Henry Procter. That evening Harrison reported "a complete victory over the combined Indian and British forces"; Procter called it "the disastrous affair of the 5th inst. near the Moravian Village". Harrison gave his own army as "something above three thousand" and the Indians in the action as "considerably upwards of one thousand". Herbert Goltz writes that the flight of the British troops left about 500 Indians facing some 3,000 Americans. The Shawnee leader Tecumseh was killed. According to Harrison, 601 regulars were taken prisoner; he put his own loss at seven killed and twenty-two wounded, five of whom later died, and the British at twelve killed and twenty-two wounded. More in our article on the battle of the Thames.13
