2 September in military history: the Battle of Khotyn, 1621

The fighting began on 2 September 1621, when Ottoman troops attacked the Commonwealth's fortified camp at Khotyn on the Dniester, and the peace was agreed on 9 October. Khotyn lay in northern Moldavia and is today in Ukraine.

The army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under Jan Karol Chodkiewicz, Grand Hetman of Lithuania, and after his death on 24 September under Stanisław Lubomirski, with the Zaporozhian Cossacks under Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny, against the Ottoman army led by Sultan Osman II himself.

The Ottoman army appeared on the hills facing the camp and attacked at once, striking first at the Cossack camp. The attack was beaten back. That night a council of war talked Chodkiewicz out of an open-field battle and chose to defend the camp from behind its ramparts.

Estimates differ. The Museum of Polish History puts the Ottoman army at about 100,000, the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine at 150,000 Turks and Tatars, and Józef Tretiak at about 150,000 Ottoman fighting men plus up to 60,000 Tatars. Tretiak puts the Commonwealth's army at about 65,000, including some 30,000 Zaporozhian Cossacks.

Osman II gained nothing from the campaign. It damaged his relations with the janissaries, and in May 1622 they deposed him and killed him in the Yedikule fortress, the first regicide in Ottoman history according to the Museum of Polish History.