The Battle of Raszyn

II.

Strategic situation, 1808–1809

The Duchy of Warsaw had existed since July 1807, when the Treaty of Tilsit carved it out of the lands of the Third Partition. Emperor Napoleon made it a satellite of his Continental System, but at the same time allowed the Poles to form their own army, their own administration and their own official language. For all sides — France, Austria, Russia, Prussia — the Duchy was a temporary entity whose fate was to be decided by the conflict to come.

The winter of 1808–1809 passed in preparations. Duke Józef Poniatowski, minister of war and commander-in-chief, was organising the army from scratch. By April five line infantry regiments, three light-horse regiments, field artillery and engineers had been raised. The Polish Army formally numbered more than thirty thousand men, but part was stationed in German lands as support for the French corps. For the Austrian front Poniatowski had fourteen thousand Poles at his disposal, together with a small Saxon detachment under Gen. Polentz (~1,800 men, including 12 six-pounder guns) — nearly sixteen thousand men in all. The Polish and Saxon troops were subordinate to Marshal Bernadotte (XI Corps of the Grande Armée).

Austria chose its moment carefully. Emperor Napoleon was engaged in Spain, and the main French forces were far to the west. An attack on the Duchy of Warsaw was meant to cut off the empire's rear staffs and to push Napoleon into peace talks from a weaker position. The Viennese staff assumed that Archduke Ferdinand would take Warsaw in three weeks and the whole Duchy in six.

III.

Army of the Duchy of Warsaw

The army that Poniatowski led out to Raszyn was young. Most of its officers had experience either from the Polish Legions in Italy or from the Prussian campaign of 1806–1807. Most of the soldiers had no combat experience at all.

Commander-in-chief

Duke Józef Poniatowski, general of division, minister of war

Chief of staff

Gen. Stanisław Fiszer (wounded at Falenty Małe)

Strength

~10,000 infantry · ~3,600 cavalry · ~900 artillery · ~32 Polish guns (with 12 Saxon — ~44 in total)

Vanguard · Falenty

Brig. Gen. Michał Sokolnicki — 3 infantry battalions (1st bn 1st IR Małachowski + 1st bn 8th IR Godebski + 1st bn 6th IR Sierawski in reserve by the alder grove) + 6 guns

Right wing · Michałowice

Brig. Gen. Łukasz Biegański — 3rd Line Infantry Regiment (Col. Edward Żółtowski) + 4 guns

Left wing · Jaworowa

Brig. Gen. Ludwik Kamieniecki — 2nd bn 1st IR + 2nd bn 8th IR + 6 guns

Centre · Raszyn

Saxon Gen. Heinrich von Polentz — 2nd IR (Col. Stanisław Potocki) + 3 battalions of Saxon infantry (Oebschelwitz, Einsiedel grenadiers) + 12 Saxon guns; 5 battalions and 23 guns in the centre in total (the main Saxon corps of Gen. Zezschwitz did not arrive on 19 April)

Reserve · Warsaw road

Col. Konstanty Przebendowski — 1st Mounted Rifles Regiment + 5 horse guns

Forward screen

Lt. Gen. Aleksander Rożniecki — 2nd, 3rd and 6th Uhlan Regiments (~2,340 sabres)

Chief of artillery

Brig. Gen. Jean-Baptiste Pelletier (a Frenchman in Polish service)

The regiments still wore their fresh navy-blue uniforms with amaranth facings — a colour that would become iconic in Polish military tradition. The 8th Line Infantry Regiment, commanded by Colonel Cyprian Godebski, was formed in 1807 at Kalisz as the 4th Infantry Regiment of the Kalisz Legion under Gen. Józef Zajączek; after the Prussian campaign it was garrisoned at Modlin, of whose fortress Godebski was commandant. The regiment arrived at Raszyn on the night of 12–13 April.

III ½.

Cavalry prelude · Janczewice and Wolica · 18 April

The day before the battle — 18 April, in the vicinity of the villages of Janczewice and Wolica, a few kilometres south of Raszyn — there was a cavalry clash that long remained in the shadow of the great battle of the following day, but which casts light on the caution with which Poniatowski prepared the field.

Gen. Aleksander Rożniecki, at the head of twelve squadrons of uhlans (the second, third and sixth regiments) struck at the Austrian vanguard of Gen. Mohr (eight squadrons of Imperial Hussars No. 1) supported by the cavalry division of FML Schauroth (sixteen squadrons: Palatine hussars No. 12, Szekler No. 11, Sommariva cuirassiers No. 5, Lorraine No. 7). The fight was bitter — the Austrians had numerical superiority, but the terrain — a network of marshes and narrow defiles — cancelled out their advantage.

The 2nd Uhlan Regiment of Col. Tadeusz Tyszkiewicz distinguished itself, covering the retreat of the Polish cavalry behind the Raszynka and beating the Szekler hussars. Both sides claimed victory. The strategic result, however, was unambiguous: Rożniecki had gained time, the Polish infantry had managed to take its positions at Raszyn, and Archduke Ferdinand spent the night at Tarczyn, twenty kilometres from the field of the actual battle.

The next morning Rożniecki was again retreating before Mohr, this time straight onto Poniatowski's line — so that by the nineteenth hour the cavalry was already behind the ponds, and the Austrian hussars within range of the Polish canister battery.

IV.

VII Austrian Corps

Archduke Ferdinand Karl Joseph of Austria-Este was twenty-eight years old and entirely certain that the campaign would be over in six weeks. The corps entrusted to him numbered some 28–30 thousand men in the field (an establishment strength of approximately 33–38 thousand) — one infantry division under FML Mondet (three brigades: Civalart, Trautenberg, Pflacher), one cavalry division under FML Schauroth (Gehringer's hussar brigade, Speth's cuirassier brigade), Gen. Mohr's vanguard and Branowatzky's mixed brigade. Ninety-four guns in all.

Austria was alone in this battle. Contrary to earlier assumptions, Saxony — though geographically neighbouring Austria — was bound to the Duchy of Warsaw by a personal union and a political alliance within the Napoleonic bloc. The small Saxon detachment of Gen. Polentz (3 infantry battalions, a hussar squadron, 12 guns) appeared on the Polish side, took position in the centre — around the village of Raszyn — and fought shoulder to shoulder with the Poles.

The weakness of Ferdinand Karl of Austria-Este — as later Viennese reports would reveal — was an excessive certainty of his own numerical superiority. He had not expected Poniatowski to choose a battlefield on terrain where numbers mattered less than position. Nor did he value the Polish ally — the Saxons, few though they were, with their 12 guns in the centre delivered to the Austrian column attacking Raszyn that evening the decisive volley of canister at a range of five hundred metres.

Not without irony — among the thirty thousand Austrians marched about seven thousand Poles from Galicia, conscripted into the army of the partitioning power (among them the de Ligne regiment). At Raszyn they fired at Poles on both sides of the Raszynka: on the Polish side — with the amaranth facings of the Duchy; on the Austrian side — in the white uniforms of the empire.

V.

The battle plan

Poniatowski chose Raszyn for three reasons. First — the strip of terrain was cut by two causeways through the network of ponds and marshes: the Falenty causeway between the ponds at Falenty (forward outpost) and the Raszyn causeway in Raszyn itself (the main crossing in the centre). Anyone wishing to march from the south on Warsaw had to take both. Second — the marshy ground on either side of the causeway made any wide flanking by the Austrian cavalry impossible. Third — the village of Falenty with its masonry farmsteads gave the Polish artillery redoubts a first line of cover. The choice was not desperation but cool reconnaissance — two bottlenecks at which three battalions could halt a division, provided it could not work around them.

Poniatowski's dispositions were simple and considered. Sokolnicki with the vanguard held Falenty (1st bn of the 1st IR Małachowski + 1st bn of the 8th IR Godebski, in reserve the 1st bn of the 6th IR Sierawski at Falenty Duże by the alder grove). Kamieniecki with the second battalions of the 1st and 8th IR covered the left wing at Jaworowa. Biegański with the whole 3rd IR of Żółtowski stood on the right wing at Michałowice. The centre — the village of Raszyn — was occupied by the Saxons of Gen. Polentz together with the Polish 2nd IR of Col. Potocki; their 12 Saxon guns and the Polish battery formed the firepower backbone. Rożniecki with three uhlan regiments screened the front, Przebendowski with the 1st Mounted Rifles Regiment stood in reserve behind Raszyn. The army's baggage train had been withdrawn across the Vistula the day before — Poniatowski did not intend to risk its loss.

The key element of the plan was the topography itself. The Raszyn causeway, running between the ponds, was a bottleneck — the Austrian column, to seize it, had to advance frontally under canister fire. The marshy ground on either side immobilised the partitioning power's cavalry: Sommariwa's cuirassiers and the Lorraine regiment under Schauroth did indeed bog down in the mud at Jaworowa already in the first hours of the battle.

VI.

Act I · Dawn over Falenty · 5:00 a.m.

Fog lay over the marshes and the Raszyn Ponds so thick that soldiers could not see a neighbour five paces away. The Duke rode along his positions before sunrise, accompanied by General Sokolnicki. The first reports came from a reconnaissance party: the main Austrian forces of Archduke Ferdinand are advancing on the march from the Tarczyn area in a strength of nearly thirty thousand. In the centre of the Polish line, in Raszyn itself, the Saxon detachment of Gen. Polentz occupied the village together with the 2nd IR of Col. Potocki — in all, the alliance gave Poniatowski just under sixteen thousand soldiers.

By eight o'clock the fog began to thin. Sokolnicki took up positions at Falenty Małe with the 1st battalion of the 1st Infantry Regiment (Col. Małachowski) and the 1st battalion of the 8th IR (Col. Godebski), in reserve the 1st battalion of the 6th IR (Col. Sierawski) at Falenty Duże by the alder grove. The Polish artillery was silent — Poniatowski had ordered fire withheld until the Austrian column entered canister range.

Sokolnicki took command of the vanguard at his own request — notes Jarosław Czubaty — which, after earlier personal frictions with the Duke, was read as a wish to prove something to the commander-in-chief. A choice that would cost him dearly that day: the first salvo of the Austrian artillery would strike his position, his adjutants, his horses.

VII.

Act II · First blood · 2:00 p.m.

At two in the afternoon the artillery cannonade began — Austrian guns opened fire all along the front, the Polish battery of six guns under Sokolnicki replied. At the same time, the Austrian cavalry of Schauroth — the Palatine hussars and Sommariwa cuirassiers — struck at the Polish left wing near Jaworowa; the charge bogged down in the marshes. Archduke Ferdinand, sure of his advantage, then issued a decision he would come to regret: he ordered Mohr's vanguard to attack on the march, without waiting for the rest of the corps. Five infantry battalions with twelve guns in support advanced on Sokolnicki's positions — a single brigade against three Polish battalions. A decision that cost the Austrian corps nearly two hours in front of a single village.

The fighting in the alder grove was almost hand-to-hand — bayonets, single shots, platoon volleys. The farmsteads of Falenty began to burn — the wooden cottages caught fire from the sparks of musket shots, smoke veiled the field. Sokolnicki ordered the positions to be held. The Austrians attacked time after time, at the cost of heavy losses. After an hour's fight, around 16:00, the 8th IR withdrew from the grove — in the same action Godebski's horse was killed beneath him (the colonel received his first wound then — a bullet in the leg), and the chief of staff of the Polish army, Gen. Stanisław Fiszer, was seriously wounded at Falenty Małe.

About 16:30, Falenty fell into Austrian hands. And then came the moment that entered the national iconography. Duke Józef Poniatowski was in his quarters at Raszyn when word arrived that Sokolnicki was falling back. He mounted at once, ordered three guns brought up from the reserve and emplaced them right in front of the village. On arrival he took his place in the front line with the remnants of Godebski's 8th Regiment and led the counter-attack. The Austrians gave way — briefly, but they gave way. Polish nineteenth- century tradition liked to repeat that the duke of royal blood had a musket in his hand at that moment; cautious modern historiography says: never mind whether musket or sabre — what matters is that he was there.

VIII.

Act III · Godebski at Puchały · 8:00 p.m.

Colonel Cyprian Godebski, forty-four years old, commander of the 8th Line Infantry Regiment of the Duchy of Warsaw, poet and author of "Verse for the Polish Legions", received three wounds that day. The first — a bullet in the leg — in the fight for the alder grove around 15:30. The second — beneath the ribcage — at Falenty Małe around 16:00, when his horse was killed beneath him. After a brief bandaging he returned to command.

The third wound proved fatal. After 19:00, as the Polish-Saxon counter-attack was wresting Raszyn back from Austrian hands, Godebski, despite his two wounds, gathered some two hundred soldiers of the 8th IR and led an assault on the Austrian granary occupied by enemy infantry near the village of Puchały. An Austrian volley from some fifty paces — a bullet in the left thigh. Lieutenant Dobiecki fell beside the colonel.

Sergeant Żórawski loaded the unconscious colonel onto a cart and set out along the Warsaw road in rain and mud. Godebski died on the way, from loss of blood — not on the field of battle, but on the road to the capital that he was defending. He was buried in the Powązki Cemetery, quarter 10-3-30. Contrary to a legend preserved in some accounts, it was not a Prussian bullet — Prussia maintained neutrality in 1809, its troops were not at Raszyn. All three of Godebski's wounds came from Austrian weapons.

Justyna Godebska, the colonel's wife, on hearing of the Austrian attack ran out onto the muddy road to Raszyn, trying to find out what was happening. She met the cart returning to Warsaw. Countess Stanisławowa Potocka sent the widow eighteen thousand zlotys. The government of the Duchy granted her a pension of four thousand zlotys a year. That is what was left of the colonel-poet of the 8th Regiment.

Godebski's death became, for the Polish military tradition, what the end of Lannes at Aspern was for the French. A man of the pen who fell in the uniform of the 8th Regiment — navy cloth, amaranth facings — entered the national iconography for good. January Suchodolski would commemorate his death in the painting "Death of Colonel Cyprian Godebski at Raszyn", now in the collections of the Greater Poland Military Museum in Poznań (a branch of the National Museum in Poznań).

IX.

Act IV · The causeway, Raszyn, counter-attack · 19:00–23:00

About nineteen hundred hours the Poles, in good order, left Falenty and crossed the Raszyn causeway — the only passage through the ponds. Sokolnicki left two guns on his starting positions; one of them was later retaken during the counter-attack. The Austrian battalions of Pflacher and Civalart pushed into the gap between Janki and the alder grove; the 1st battalion of the 6th IR defending Janki withdrew, fearing it might be cut off.

The fighting moved into the village of Raszyn itself. The Saxons of Gen. Polentz with the 2nd IR of Col. Potocki fought a street battle of an hour and a half for the granaries and orchards — the Austrians around 20:00 took part of the village. Then came the moment that shook the Austrian attack: the Polish-Saxon battery — 12 Saxon guns and the Polish position artillery — fired canister at five hundred metres into the Austrian column advancing along the causeway. The column was decimated.

Between 21:00 and 22:00 the Polish and Saxon troops carried out a counter-attack that retook the village of Raszyn from Austrian hands. The Austrians fell back across the causeway — they kept it, but they did not hold the village. Tactically the battle ended in a draw, and the allies had inflicted on the enemy losses nearly twice as great as they had suffered themselves.

At twenty-two hundred hours a council of war was held in the Polish staff. Gen. Zajączek argued for a withdrawal to Toruń. Sokolnicki, Pelletier and Dąbrowski — for the south. Duke Józef chose a middle course: to withdraw the army to the left bank of the Vistula and leave Warsaw open for negotiations. The actual withdrawal began around 23:00 — in good order, with the artillery, and lasted until the morning of 20 April.

The reckoning of the battle must be kept in three columns. Tactically — inconclusive: the Poles held the field, the Austrians took Falenty and part of the causeway; not a single colour was lost. Strategically — a defeat: Poniatowski's operational aim (to halt Ferdinand's corps on the Raszyn line) was only partly achieved; Warsaw fell two days later. Politically and symbolically — the loudest success since the partitions: the army of a two-year-old Duchy stood against a great power whose corps had three times as many guns, and did not break. The mobilisation that followed Raszyn opened the Galician offensive of May 1809 — Sandomierz, Lublin, Zamość, Lviv and Kraków returned to Polish hands within three months.

X.

Act V · The Warsaw convention · 20–23 April

On the morning of 20 April, around nine o'clock, the Austrian vanguard realised that the Poles had abandoned their positions at Raszyn. Confusion broke out in the Austrian staff — a battle thought to have been decided by the seizure of the causeway now had to be played out politically. The same morning the Saxons of Gen. Polentz, in accordance with the earlier order of Marshal Bernadotte, marched off westwards, in the direction of Saxony.

Duke Józef Poniatowski took a decision that would become the subject of historians' disputes for the next two hundred years. Rather than defend Warsaw to the last soldier, he resolved to withdraw the army across the Vistula and to sign with Archduke Ferdinand a convention on the surrender of left-bank Warsaw. Warsaw was to be handed over — but the army saved.

Negotiations were conducted on the night of 20–21 April, with the participation of the Council of State of the Duchy. The Poniatowski– Ferdinand meeting took place at 12 Miodowa Street in Warsaw. The convention contained three essential clauses: the protection of the city, the protection of the institutions of the Duchy, and the free departure of the Polish army with all its equipment and weapons. The convention was signed on 21 April. The same day the Austrian vanguard entered the capital; the main forces of the VII Corps entered Warsaw on the following days, up to 23 April 1809.

The decision was autonomous. Poniatowski took it on his own responsibility, with ratification by the Council of State — it was not agreed with Napoleon, who at that moment was preparing for the Battle of Aspern-Essling and whose interest in the Polish front was moderate. The logic of the choice was the simplest: better to surrender an unfortified city and preserve the army than to lose both.

The decision proved capital. Already in May 1809 Poniatowski led a counter-offensive to the south — he took Lublin, Sandomierz, Zamość, Lviv and Kraków. By the end of July the Polish Army was controlling lands significantly larger than before the outbreak of war. The Peace of Schönbrunn (14 October 1809) enlarged the Duchy of Warsaw by some fifty per cent of its territory — three departments from the Third Austrian Partition. The Battle of Raszyn, militarily inconclusive, turned out to be a strategic defeat for Austria.

XI.

Memory

The Battle of Raszyn became the first great legend of the Polish Army of the Napoleonic era. Adam Mickiewicz mentions it in "Pan Tadeusz". January Suchodolski — himself too young to have fought (in 1809 he was twelve years old) — painted its most famous depiction forty-six years after the event: "The Battle of Raszyn" (ca. 1855) and, separately, "The Death of Colonel Cyprian Godebski at Raszyn". The paintings are today in the Greater Poland Military Museum in Poznań (a branch of the National Museum in Poznań) and form the basis of the gigapixel digitisation in this portal. They are artistic reconstructions based on veterans' accounts and oral tradition — painting of the memory of the battle, not an eyewitness document.

After the Napoleonic wars the memory of Raszyn faded. The November Uprising of 1830, the January Uprising of 1863, and finally the recovery of independence in 1918 — each had its own heroes. But 19 April 1809 remained as the first day on which the Polish uniform won its own battle. The navy-blue cloth and amaranth facings of the 8th Infantry Regiment entered permanently into the iconography of Polish freedom.

In 1817 the Subscription Committee commissioned Bertel Thorvaldsen to make a monument of Duke Józef Poniatowski. The Danish sculptor represented the duke after the model of Marcus Aurelius — in a Roman tunic, on a Roman horse — rather than in the uniform of the 8th Regiment, as Aleksander Orłowski or Michał Stachowicz had proposed. The plaster model was made in 1827, the bronze cast in 1832; the monument stood before the Saxon Palace. The Germans destroyed it in 1944, Denmark cast a copy in 1948–1952 and gave it to Poland as a gift. It stands today in front of the Presidential Palace, on Krakowskie Przedmieście — the second narrative pillar of this portal, alongside the Suchodolski painting.

Source bibliography

The text of this narrative is based on thirteen verified sources from the Polish and foreign historiography of the Napoleonic era. Numerical data, chronology and the description of manoeuvres were cross-checked against the monographs of Romański, Pawłowski, Zych, Kukiel and Nieuważny, with Western sources (Gill, Nafziger, Bodart, Smith) and with Sokolnicki's memoir. Page numbers in Polish printed editions may require additional verification.

A full factual audit of this narrative — together with a list of corrected numerical data, hours and names of commanders — was carried out in two rounds on 26 May 2026. The first round focused on forces, casualties and the ordre de bataille; the second — on minute-by-minute chronology, narrative episodes, the authenticity of quotations and iconographic reception. Five quotations that in the first version of the text appeared as apocrypha (attributed to Sokolnicki, Niemcewicz, Poniatowski, an officer of the 8th IR, Thorvaldsen) have been removed from this edition. Some quotations (e.g. "After me, brothers!" by Poniatowski) have been retained with a note as to their literary status. All times indicated in the narrative have an accuracy of ±30 minutes.