The Winged Hussars

For close to two hundred years, one sight could decide a battle before contact: a line of armored horsemen with feathered wings rising behind them, lances lowered, gathering speed. The Winged Hussars of Poland-Lithuania were among the most feared shock cavalry in Europe, and they charged home when almost no cavalry dared.

Key points

• The winged hussars were elite Polish heavy cavalry, famous for the feathered frames worn behind them.
• Their main weapon was a very long lance, the kopia, about as long as an infantry pike and far longer than most cavalry lances.¹
• They delivered a massed shock charge that few formations of the day could withstand.
• Their most famous moment was the charge that helped break the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683.

The lance and the wings

Their signature weapon was the kopia, a hollow lance often longer than an infantry pike, made to shatter a line on impact and then be thrown away for sword and pistol. Behind the rider rose the famous wings, wooden frames set with eagle or ostrich feathers. Historians still argue over exactly when they were worn in battle rather than on parade, and over what they were for, whether to unnerve enemy horses, to make a rushing sound, or simply to look magnificent. The evidence on both questions is weighed below. What is beyond doubt is their effect on the imagination, then and now.²

How the wings were worn

The first reports of hussars wearing huge feathered wings date from soon after 1550, a fashion most likely borrowed from the Ottoman deli horsemen. The Polish form was its own, though. Eagle, crane or ostrich feathers were set in a row into holes drilled along a wooden batten, which was painted or covered in crimson velvet and trimmed with brass. Metal rods riveted to the batten slotted into holders on the backplate of the armor. A hussar without a backplate could fix one wing, or a pair, into holders on the cantle of his saddle, something he could only do once mounted. The wings were never a compulsory part of the kit, and not every hussar wore them.³

What they were for is where evidence and legend part company. The art historian Zdzisław Żygulski, a curator at the National Museum in Kraków, dismissed the noise theory: the rustle of even a thousand wings would be lost in the din of battle. He rejected the lasso theory too, saw the wings as a purely psychological weapon, and concluded that hussars probably took them into battle only rarely, keeping them mainly for parade and ceremony.⁴

Other historians disagree. Radosław Sikora, who has written widely on the hussars, argues that the wings frightened enemy horses unused to the sight, an effect he says experiments have confirmed, and that they made a unit look larger than it was. Brzezinski notes that nearly all period accounts give frightening the enemy and his horses as the reason. As for the famous sound, Polish arms scholarship points to another source: the lance pennant, a narrow silk streamer 2.5 to 4 meters long whose flutter was meant to scare enemy horses.⁵

The hussar's weapons, from lance to war hammer

The kopia: the winged hussar lance

The kopia was the hussar's defining weapon, and its length is best given as the published ranges rather than a single figure. Brzezinski gives about 4 to 5 meters, Polish museum scholarship 4.5 to 5.5 meters, and a Polish state education resource 4 to 6 meters, while some popular accounts round it up to about 6. Surviving lances from the late 17th and 18th centuries average about 5 meters.⁶

The secret was the construction: two halves of fir, hollowed out and glued together, so the lance rarely weighed more than about 3 kilograms. A wooden ball protected the hand at the grip, and the butt rested in a leather socket tied to the saddle. On impact the lance usually splintered, and that was accepted as part of the charge; even a broken shaft stayed dangerous before the hussar reached for his sword.⁷

Below the head flew the pennon, the proporzec. Nine original silk hussar pennons survive in the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw. Two of them, from the late 17th century, measure 390 centimeters long and 71 centimeters wide at the shaft, and the other seven are slightly longer. The red and white pennons of the Stockholm Roll above are only one scheme. Green and red, blue and green, black and white, and yellow and white were also used, sometimes in checks or zigzags.⁸

Sword, saber, pistols and hammer

Next came the koncerz, a long, straight, narrow sword made mainly for thrusting and able to punch through armor. It was not worn at the belt but tied to the saddle. The saber, the szabla, remained the hussar's principal sidearm for cutting at close quarters, and some men tied a heavier saber or a straight-bladed pałasz to the saddle as well. In the second half of the 17th century a distinct hussar saber appeared, with a thumb ring on the hilt.⁹

Holsters at the front of the saddle held two wheellock pistols or a short wheellock carbine, for fights where cold steel was not enough. Officers favored the war hammer, the nadziak, and the buzdygan mace, and axe-hammers such as the czekan belonged to the same family of horseman's weapons. To see how this kit worked in the field, follow the hussars through their greatest battles, from Kircholm to Vienna.¹⁰

Companions and retainers: how a hussar banner was organized

A hussar company was called a chorągiew, a banner, and it was built out of small private teams. At the heart of each stood the towarzysz, the companion, a nobleman who enlisted with his own poczet: two to five similarly armed retainers, the pocztowi, plus servants. Żygulski describes how each nobleman's riders served under his direct command and fought close to him in battle. Once each poczet was cut to three horses, a 100-horse banner held 33 or 34 poczets and a 200-horse banner 66 or 67.¹¹

Overall banner sizes differ by source and period. Żygulski gives squadrons of 150 to 200 horsemen, while Polish educational sources give 100 to 180. Before 1643 a companion might bring four or five retainers. That year Hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski capped the poczet at two armed men.¹²

The money came from the companion. He had to provide the arms and armor for himself and his retainers, with one exception: the lance, which the state supplied. That was an expensive way to serve. Setting out for the relief of Vienna, Wojciech Stanisław Chróściński bought a horse worth 3,146 złoty, at a time when a hussar's yearly pay was 200 złoty.¹³

The armor matched the price. At the hussars' peak a rider wore a szyszak or a burgonet helmet, a breastplate and backplate, a gorget and shoulder guards. Żygulski describes the szyszak's round skull with an adjustable nose guard, breastplates of bright steel on average 3 to 5 millimeters thick, and separate arm guards of long concave plates shaped to the forearm in the oriental style. A full set rarely weighed more than 15 kilograms. Over the armor went an animal pelt, most often a leopard or tiger, though wolf and bear skins were worn too. Such skins begin to appear in the records just after 1550, the same years as the first reports of the wings.¹⁴

Again and again, the hussars broke forces many times their size.

A charge like a hammer

What made the hussars deadly was discipline as much as equipment. Polish accounts describe a charge that set out in fairly open order, with about 3 meters between horses so that enemy volleys found fewer targets, and closed up, at times knee to knee, only some 60 to 100 meters from the enemy, so that the final blow fell in the tightest possible mass. Brzezinski rejects that open start as contrary to Western cavalry doctrine. Again and again they broke forces many times their size: at Kircholm on 27 September 1605 and Klushino on 4 July 1610, small hussar armies routed much larger ones.¹⁵

They were not invincible, though. Żygulski points out that their reputation for never losing grew up in the national legends of the 19th and 20th centuries, and that like any troops they suffered defeats as well as victories, above all against well-trained musketeers. Brzezinski argues that their wins over pikemen almost always came with help from their own infantry.¹⁶

The charge that saved a city

Their most famous hour came at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. With the Ottoman army pressing the walls of the Habsburg capital, Jan III Sobieski led thousands of horsemen, the hussars at their heart, in one of the largest cavalry charges in history down the slopes of the Kahlenberg, shattering the besiegers and turning back the last great Ottoman advance into Europe. See them in their setting among the greatest early modern battles, or brush up on the terms in our military history glossary.¹⁷

From hired lancers to the last parade, 1500 to 1776

The hussars did not start as armored nobles with wings. They began as light horsemen hired from abroad, and they ended as a ceremonial guard. The main steps:

• 1500. The first four hussars, light horsemen of Serbian origin, are taken into Polish pay. Early rolls call them Racowie (Serbians) and describe them with thin lances, shields and sabers.¹⁸
• 1503. Hussar banners become a regular part of the Polish army, at first as the so-called Rascian banners.¹⁹
• 1576. Stefan Batory becomes King. Under him the hussars begin to turn into heavy cavalry, though they still wear light half-armor over mail.²⁰
• 1577 to 1683. The span often called their golden age, from the Battle of Lubieszów to the relief of Vienna. Follow it battle by battle in the hussars' great victories from Kircholm to Vienna.²¹
• 1702. Kliszów, against the Swedes on 19 July, is their last real engagement. From then on they serve mostly in ceremonial roles.²²
• 1775 to 1776. A Sejm resolution of 1775 ends the hussars as a fighting formation, and in 1776 the hussar and pancerni banners are turned into brigades of national cavalry. Some accounts give 1776 as the year the Sejm abolished the hussars as a fighting formation.²³

Know your Kircholm from your Klushino? Take the Polish battles quiz, then try Guess the Battle.