As the campaign continued, the Polish army was overwhelmed by the retreating Turkish army at Párkány in the Kingdom of Hungary, and King Jan was cut off from his soldiers. Joining the 47,000 strong Imperial force under Duke Charles of Lorraine, the Poles and Tatars charged from the Kahlenberg, and the relief army won the field against the Turks, Crimean Tatars, and Protestant Hungarian rebels under Imre Thököly. In 1683, honoring his alliance with Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, King Jan set out to relieve the Kaiserstadt Vienna with a force of 27,000 Poles, including several regiments of Lipka Tatars, who wore sprigs of straw upon their helmets to differentiate them from their Turkish allied co-nationals. Earlier during the Swedish Deluge of Poland, 2,000 Tatars served directly under Sobieski’s command, and this offer of amnesty effectively ended the rebellion.Įlected King in the same year and crowned in 1676, Jan III Sobieski made good his promise and through the Sejm restored the ancient rights of the Tatars, and gave them holdings from his personal lands. In 1674 the fortress of Bar was besieged by Jan Sobieski, then Grand Hetman of the Polish Army, who wisely offered to restore to any Tatars who would rejoin the Commonwealth the ancient rights of the Tatar people. Made Bey of the fortress of Bar, Kryczyński was killed by the Tatars under his command rioting against their subjugation by the Turkish Sultan. They continued to serve their common fatherland faithfully, adopting the Civilization of Christendom and many elements of the Polish and Lithuanian Catholic culture, until the disastrous Second Polish–Ottoman War, and the Lipka rebellion in 1672.Īround 3,000 soldiers of the Tatar cavalry rebelled and joined the Ottoman Turks under the leadership of rotmistrz Aleksander Kryczyński. The Muslim Tatars soon become an integral unit of Lithuanian military forces and continued in this role during the time of the various unions of the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which culminated in the Union of Lublin in 1569. Originating in the White Horde, a subdivision of the Mongol-led Golden Horde, in 1397 after a war against the Amir Timur the Tatar Khan Tokhtamysh settled with the remnants of his people as vassals of the Duke of Lithuania, Vytautas the Great. Still others have been simply forgotten by the popular imagination, as is the case of the Lipka Tatars. Some of the battles participants have been marginalized (such as Duke Charles of Lorraine), others such as Emperor Leopold I have been demonized with nationalistic vehemence. ![]() However, the heroic Polish warriors were only part of a much larger force which it seems popular history has forgotten. ![]() Justly renowned as the saviors of Christendom, many remember King Jan Sobieski of Poland and his army, particularly the Wing Hussars, as the heroes of the Battle of Vienna of 1683, and rightly so. Our Tatars are entertaining themselves with falcons they have brought with them they are guarding the prisoners, and are proving to be loyal and trustworthy.
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