The Battle of Guzów ( pl, Bitwa pod Guzowem) took place on 5 July 1607, at the village of
Guzów in
Szydłowiec County
__NOTOC__
Szydłowiec County ( pl, powiat szydłowiecki) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Masovian Voivodeship, east-central Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local gove ...
,
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The confrontation was between the forces of the
Zebrzydowski Rebellion (10,000
infantry and 600
cavalry
Historically, cavalry (from the French word ''cavalerie'', itself derived from "cheval" meaning "horse") are soldiers or warriors who fight mounted on horseback. Cavalry were the most mobile of the combat arms, operating as light cavalry ...
under
Mikołaj Zebrzydowski
Mikołaj Zebrzydowski (1553–1620) of Radwan coat of arms, voivode of Lublin from 1589, Grand Crown Marshal between 1596–1600, voivode of Kraków from 1601. He is famous for an armed rebellion against King Sigismund III Vasa, the Zebrzydowsk ...
and
Janusz Radziwiłł) against the Royalists supporting King
Sigismund III Vasa (9,100 infantry, 3,200 cavalry, and 24
cannon), under the command of
Polish Grand Crown Hetman (commander-in-chief)
Stanisław Żółkiewski and the
Lithuanian Hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz.
Conflict
The "Zebrzydowski rebellion" was waged by a large number of Polish-Lithuanian nobles (
szlachta
The ''szlachta'' (Polish: endonym, Lithuanian: šlėkta) were the noble estate of the realm in the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth who, as a class, had the dominating position in the ...
) who had many grievances against the Swedish-born King, who concerned himself with regaining the throne of
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
. The Royal Army was originally sent to pacify the rebels. However, a full-scale battle ensued in the village, with 200 casualties, and it ended with the Royalists routing the rebellious factions.
During the next twelve months new "insurrections" burst forth all over the country; and peace was only restored by the proclamation (1609) of a general amnesty, which punished nobody and decided nothing. The growing unwillingness of the Grand Hetman Żółkiewski "to shed the blood of our brethren" was the cause of this unsatisfactory solution. The helpless King was obliged to concur, and henceforth abandoned all his projects of constitutional reform.
2007 mention
A Polish politician resurrected this battle after 400 years. In a newspaper interview on March 16, 2007 with
''Rzeczpospolita'', the opposition leader
Jan Rokita, who was expected to win the September 25, 2005 Polish elections,
said:
In other words, the Battle of Guzów has to be repeated with the current government of President
Lech Kaczyński defeating the opposition. The government will not accept that their position is wrong. However, in the long run, some of them will wise up and concede when none of their conservative plans are implemented.
Notes
As with many historical battles, the exact details of force composition, tactics, and the actual course of the battle are lacking and sometimes contradictory.
The area around the village of Guzów also saw action during
World War I. See:
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References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Battle of Guzow
1607 in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
Conflicts in 1607
Guzow