Polish Way: The Light Cossack Cavalry in the Era of Military Revolution

Can we place those transformations in the context of fast and deep ones, the model of which would be a counterpart of the military revolution? From today's perspective the periods given are not impressive; they can even seem slow. The point of reference, however, was the Middle Ages and here the comparison shows clearly the considerable dynamics of the transformations. The scope of the changes can be understood if we refer to medieval weapon studies. The Polish establishments indicate that the re-armament of the knights took place on average every 70 years (1290, 1360, 1430 and the turn of the 16th century) . This was an effect of the experience acquired in military campaigns, and the period of 22 years to create a new type of cavalry is a very dynamic process, three times as fast as the medieval pattern.

The military transformation in Crown consisted of four stages:

1) a new geopolitical situation: a new period of incessant Tatar raids begins (from 1468 onwards);

2) a political decision: introduction of a permanent army protecting borderlands (obrona potoczna from 1492 onwards);

3) actions of the high command: forming a new defensive strategy 1520-1529;

4) development of a tactical innovation consisisting in creating a new type of light cavalry (cossacks) and standardization of the armament of the troops (1550).

The article concentrates on stages 3 and 4 of the transformations, i. e. the strategy and the tactical innovation. The former are visible as early as the beginning of the 16th century, but they become increasingly clearer at the end of the 1520s. Finally, a system was developed which was comprised of three defensive lines (see: Fig. 1). The first consisted of more than a dozen or several dozen people vedettes. They could be over 500 kilometers east of Lviv, deeply in the lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. They were moved by c. 150-200 kilometers away from the previous solutions. They were supposed to detect an imminent raid, estimate the forces and report to the military authorities. At the borderline of the Crown operated a several-hundred-people group of the field guardians, which could destroy small raids and was the first to take real defensive actions. Only in the interior of the country, near Lviv, the main camp was established, which was to be a concentrated point gathering of the pospolite ruszenie (mass mobilization) and volunteers who had heard about the threat. A great role therein was played by Jan Tarnowski and Mikolaj Sieniawski, and then -- by Bernard Pretwicz. They moved both the second and the third line far towards the borderline. It is worth emphasizing that whereas in 1502 the camp was to be near Lviv, in 1520 it was set up at the distance of 64-97 kilometers, and in 1569, it was as far as 134 kilometers east of Lviv. The second line was situated c. 225-283 kilometers away from Lviv.

Along with the new strategic solutions, tactical innovation began to develop. For a very long period in the Crown by the 1530s the mixed composition of units had prevailed:

heavy cavalry or lancers, medium heavy cavalry or hussars and light cavalry or mounted shooters. An extremely important element was the process of standardization of the units, so that they could fully use their potential and, simultaneously, could be adapted to different tactical needs. Hussar units were formed as early as 1548-1550, and at the same time (1549-1550) it occurred in cossack cavalry.

The aforementioned transformations were preceded by the creation of the most effective type of light cavalry. It turned out to be the cossack cavalry, which consisted of borderland people armed very similarly to the Tatars, with Lithuanian and Muscovite influences: they possessed bows (firearms and crossbows had been abandoned), sabers and spears called rohatyna, and were protected with mail armour. In other words, the most effective was to fight the enemy with his own weapon. The principal asset of those units was their mobility and speed of operation, which they owed to fast horses; therefore they preferred the Tatar tactics, involving raining the opponents with arrows. In our opinion, this model had been developed by Bernard Pretwicz by 1542, and in other rotas it was adopted by the late 1540s.

Bernard Pretwicz was an agent leading to creating standardized cossack units. Those troops first emerged under his command only in 1537, but in five years they superseded all soldiers armed differently. A standardized cossack rota came into existence as early as 1544 (80 %), and then -- in the period 1549-1550 (90 %). The whole process was definitely concluded in 1557 when actually all his soldiers were armed in the cossack way. It is important to note that both the standardization of the hussars and the cossack units was not a top-down state action or orders of the army's commanders-in-chief. It was due to the battlefield experience of mid-rank commanders (rotmistrzes and starosts). The cossacks in no time gained importance. As early as 1573, it was decided to recruit 2,000 men of cavalry, including 1,000 cossacks, and four years later 2,859 of the quarter cavalry (jazda kwarciana) there were 2009 riders armed in the cossack way. In general, by 1648, it had been the most numerous formation after the hussars, and from that year onwards it became the most important .

The successes of Daszkiewicz and his successor Pretwicz, as well as those of several other commanders in his generation, allowed, in a longer time perspective, to move the settlement zone first by a few dozen, and then by a few hundred kilometers south-eastwards, deeply into the so-called Wild Fields (Dzikie Pola). This facilitated obtaining victuals and enabled to move military camps further, which additionally strengthened the defensive element. The cossacks were considered indispensable not only in the south-eastern borderline. Their effectiveness in reconnaissance-diversionary-pursuit operations was recognized by the contemporaries since in the 1550s Duke Albert Hohenzollern decided to recruit several hundreds of cossacks for his army. Before that (at the end of the 1520) John Zapolya had been toying with this intention. We can even make a statement that the borderland soldiers-cossacks were prototype of the Lisowczycy known in the 16th century throughout Central Europe, not only from Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn's painting (The Polish Rider, 1655 in the Frick Collection, New York). Their successes in the battel- fields at Humienne and Zawada (1619), Vienna and White Mountain (1620) or Khotyn (1621) were matched by the really “Tatar” horror which they inflicted successfully paralyzing the enemy.

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