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Swedish King Charles X Gustav in skirmish with Polish Tartars near Warsaw 1656. The Commonwealth’s sudden implosion, which brought Swedish armies to the Hungarian border and Muscovite troops to the Vistula, reverberated far beyond northeastern Europe. For the Habsburgs, the Swedish victories represented a real threat to the fragile peace achieved in 1648 since the […]

Despite the quality of the Swedish army, Charles was actually rather vulnerable. When he turned north at the end of October, he left Wittenberg in Cracow to control southern Poland with only 3,000 men, apart from those scattered in garrisons across a wide area, supplemented by 2,000 Poles of dubious loyalty. When they abandoned him, […]

The Battle of Kircholm, one of the major battles in the Polish-Swedish War, was fought on September 27, 1605, (or the 17th according to the Old calendar then in use in Protestant countries). The hussars launched a devastating charge against the enemy which ended the battle in the decisive victory of the Polish-Lithuanian forces. It […]