What is Czarniecki famous for?

For harrying the Swedish invaders of the 1650s with raids, ambushes and fast cavalry marches, for the victory at Warka in April 1656 with Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski, and for storming Kolding and crossing to the island of Als in Denmark in 1658.

The Deluge (potop) was the Swedish invasion of Poland-Lithuania that began in 1655 under Charles X Gustav. It overran much of the country before being pushed back in several years of hard fighting, ended by peace in 1660.

Why is Czarniecki in the Polish national anthem?

Józef Wybicki's song of the Polish Legions, written in Italy in 1797 and later made the national anthem, recalls in its third verse Czarniecki's return across the sea from the Danish campaign to save the homeland.

Did Czarniecki win every battle?

No. He was a master of the small war, but when Charles X Gustav forced him into a pitched battle he usually lost, as at Gołąb in 1656. His great open-field victories, such as Warka and Polonka, came against detached forces or with allies.

How did Czarniecki die?

He died on 16 February 1665 at Sokołówka, near Brody, of a wound taken on his last campaign in Ukraine, at Stavyshche according to some accounts and Lysianka according to others. He had been made Field Crown Hetman only weeks before.

Where is Czarniecki buried?

In the crypt of the parish church he founded in his birthplace, Czarnca, near Włoszczowa in central Poland.

Stefan Czarniecki: The Commander Named in Poland's Anthem

Q: Who was Stefan Czarniecki?

He was a Polish cavalry commander (probably 1599 to 1665), Voivode of Ruthenia and later of Kyiv, and in the last weeks of his life Field Crown Hetman, famous for his raiding war against the Swedes in the Deluge and his 1658 campaign in Denmark.

Quick answer

Who was Stefan Czarniecki?

Stefan Czarniecki (probably 1599 to 1665) was a Polish cavalry commander who rose from the middling gentry to Voivode of Kyiv and Field Crown Hetman. He is best known for the raiding war with which he harried the Swedish invaders of the Deluge in the 1650s, for his victory at Warka in 1656, and for his 1658 campaign in Denmark, which the Polish national anthem recalls. He died on 16 February 1665, a few weeks after finally receiving the hetman's baton.

Stefan Czarniecki was the commander who would not accept that the war was lost. When Sweden overran Poland-Lithuania in 1655 and much of the country submitted, he went on fighting with a war of raids and ambushes, striking Swedish detachments and vanishing before the enemy could concentrate. He was beaten more than once when the Swedes forced him to stand and fight, but he kept coming back, and he ended the war leading Polish troops across the sea to Denmark. That campaign put his name into the words of the Polish national anthem.¹

Early life

The year of his birth is not known for certain. Most historians settle on 1599, while some give 1604. He was born at Czarnca, near Włoszczowa in what was then the Sandomierz voivodeship, the son of Krzysztof Czarniecki and Krystyna Rzeszowska, a gentry family of the Łodzia coat of arms that had held Czarnca for generations. Several of his brothers had gone into the army before him, and for a younger son of modest means a soldier's career was the obvious road.²

How he began is uncertain, because the sources say little about his early service. Historians assume that he rode with the Lisowczycy, the notorious Polish light horse who served the Habsburgs at the end of the 1610s, and that he fought the Ottomans at Khotyn in 1621. By the early 1630s he was a lieutenant in a cossack-style cavalry company, and in 1637 he took part in putting down the Cossack rising of Pavlo Pavliuk.³

Full-length portrait of a gray-bearded Stefan Czarniecki in a red coat, holding a mace — Stefan Czarniecki in a full-length portrait by Brodero Matthisen, 1659, painted while he was in Denmark (Royal Castle in Warsaw). Public domain

Against the Cossacks, 1644 to 1654

His first real fame came in 1644, when his charge in the battle against the Tatars at Okhmativ was noticed across the army. Four years later the great Cossack rising of Bohdan Khmelnytsky broke out, and at Zhovti Vody in 1648 Czarniecki was taken prisoner. Released, he fought at Berestechko in 1651 and at Batih in 1652. In a raid into Ukraine in the early 1650s he was badly wounded in the palate.⁴ › Battle of Berestechko, 1651

The Deluge, 1655 to 1657

In 1655 Charles X Gustav of Sweden invaded the Commonwealth and swept across it in the catastrophe Poles remember as the Deluge (potop). That autumn Czarniecki defended Kraków against the Swedes and gave the city up only when no help came from outside, marching his troops out on terms. The surrender left a stain: Histmag and Polskie Radio both note the charge that 60,000 złoty meant for his soldiers' pay never reached them.⁵ › Siege of Jasna Góra 1655

Baroque portrait of a long-haired king in armor with an ermine-lined red cloak and a baton — King Charles X Gustav of Sweden, whose invasion of 1655 began the Deluge and who beat Czarniecki at Gołąb in 1656. Public domain

He avoided big battles against the regular Swedish army and instead waged a war of movement, based on fast cavalry and on cooperation with armed peasants, cutting off foragers and small detachments. When Charles X Gustav did catch him, he lost: at Gołąb in February 1656, and later at Kłecko and Kcynia.⁶

Then came Warka. On 7 April 1656 Czarniecki and Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski caught a Swedish force under Margrave Frederick of Baden at Warka on the Pilica and routed it, a rare open-field victory over the Swedes in a war in which Czarniecki more often had to fight on the run.⁷

In 1657 a new enemy arrived: Prince György II Rákóczi of Transylvania, Sweden's ally, invaded from the south. Czarniecki fought him with success, and when the Transylvanian army was cornered after its defeat at Czarny Ostrów, Rákóczi offered his capitulation to Czarniecki and Lubomirski at Medzhybizh. In the same year he was made Voivode of Ruthenia, his first great senatorial office.⁸ › Battle of Czarny Ostrów, 1657

Beaten whenever the Swedes could make him stand, he never stayed beaten.

The march to Denmark, 1658

Denmark had declared war on Sweden in 1657 and had fared badly. In 1658 a coalition army of Brandenburgers, Imperial troops and Poles marched to the aid of King Frederick III, and John II Casimir gave Czarniecki the command of the Polish contingent. On the march, and later in Denmark, his men were accused of plunder and violence.⁹

On 14 December 1658 the allies attacked across the narrow sound to the island of Als, held by the Swedes. Brandenburg infantry went first and won a foothold, and then the Poles under Czarniecki crossed. How they crossed is still argued over. Jan Chryzostom Pasek wrote in his memoirs that the men swam their horses over with Czarniecki first into the water; other witnesses wrote of boats and barges, and some historians think a swim in December impossible. Either way, the Swedes were driven from Als, and Frederick III sent Czarniecki a letter of thanks.¹⁰

Shortly afterwards the Poles stormed the strongly fortified town and castle of Kolding on the mainland of Jutland.¹¹ › Siege of Kolding, 1658

Dark locator map with a gold star marking Kolding in eastern Jutland, Denmark — Kolding, in eastern Jutland, which Czarniecki's Poles stormed in December 1658. The star marks the approximate site. Location map: © Echoes of Battle (data: Natural Earth, public domain)

Winter painting of Polish horsemen loading horses into boats on a snowy shore below a dark hilltop castle, with smoke rising over the water — Józef Brandt, Czarniecki at Kolding, 1870 (National Museum in Warsaw), an episode of the 1658 campaign in Denmark. Public domain

Against Muscovy and in Ukraine, 1660 to 1665

With peace made with Sweden in 1660, Czarniecki was sent east against Muscovy. That year he and the Lithuanian grand hetman Paweł Sapieha defeated the army of Ivan Khovansky at Polonka in today's Belarus.¹²

His last campaigns, in 1664 and 1665, were fought in Ukraine against Muscovite forces and Cossack risings behind the Polish lines, and they were among the darkest of his career. The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine records that he devastated the Kyiv region, and that he ordered the remains of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky to be exhumed. In July 1664 he became Voivode of Kyiv.¹³

Command style

Czarniecki was above all a cavalry commander. His strength was speed: he moved fast, struck small enemy detachments, used armed peasants as eyes and allies, and refused battle on the enemy's terms. That made him the right man for the Deluge, when the Commonwealth's regular army had dissolved and the Swedes held the towns. His weakness showed in the pitched battles he could not avoid: against the Swedish main army in the field his record was one of defeats.¹⁴

His reputation has another side. His troops were accused of plunder and cruelty against civilians, during the Deluge and above all in Ukraine, and he himself was accused of holding back his soldiers' pay. Polish and Ukrainian historians alike record these charges, and they sit beside the heroic legend.¹⁵

Hetman at last, and death

For decades he had wanted the hetman's baton. He received it at last in January 1665, when he was named Field Crown Hetman. He did not hold it long. He died on 16 February 1665 at Sokołówka, near Brody in today's Ukraine. The cause was a wound taken on his last campaign: the Museum of Polish History's portal says at the siege of Stavyshche, while Histmag points to Lysianka.¹⁶

He was buried in his home village of Czarnca, in the parish church he had founded, where his tomb lies in the crypt beneath the church.¹⁷

Portrait of Stefan Czarniecki — Stefan Czarniecki, portrait by an unknown artist, eighteenth century. Public domain

Legacy and memory

Czarniecki's fame rests most of all on four lines. In July 1797 Józef Wybicki wrote the song of the Polish Legions in Italy at Reggio nell'Emilia, and its third verse invokes Czarniecki crossing the sea to return to Poznań and save the homeland, an echo of the Danish campaign. The song later became Poland's national anthem, and Czarniecki is one of only two Poles named in it, beside General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski.¹⁸ › Jan Henryk Dąbrowski: the general of Poland's anthem

His image as a brave, modest knight who cared for his men was shaped above all by the memoirs of Jan Chryzostom Pasek, who wrote that the king's hopes died with him. A century after his death his descendant Jan Klemens Branicki raised a statue of him in the market square of Tykocin in 1763, the work of the French sculptor Pierre Coudray, which still stands.¹⁹

Meet his peers in the greatest commanders in Polish history, read the whole story of the wars of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or follow the storming of Kolding on 25 December in military history.