Battle of Praga (1794)

Part of: Kościuszko Uprising

The Praga Massacre
(painting by Aleksander Orłowski , 1810)

date	November 4, 1794
place	Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, Republic of Poland-Lithuania
output	Defeat of the Poles

Parties to the conflict
Russia	Rzeczpospolita
Commander
Alexander W. Suvorov	Józef Zajączek
Troop strength
up to 22,000 men	up to 20,000 men
losses
unknown	up to 23,000, including 6,000 soldiers, the rest civilians

The Battle of Praga of November 4, 1794 refers to the military conflict between the troops of the Russian Empire and the Rzeczpospolita in the eastern suburb of Warsaw, Praga , during the Kościuszko Uprising , which was directed against the partition of Poland . Most English-language sources summarize the Russian-Polish conflict over the Polish capital Warsaw under the name Massacre of Praga , the Poles call it Rzeź Pragi , which roughly translates as the slaughter of Praga .

On the eve of the battle

After the Battle of Maciejowice , the leader of the uprising, General Tadeusz Kościuszko , was taken prisoner by Russia. The resulting power vacuum in Warsaw and the demoralized city population prevented General Józef Zajączek from being able to finish the fortification of Warsaw in time, both in the east and in the west. At the same time, the victorious Russians made their way towards the Polish capital.

The armed forces of the Russian Empire and the Rzeczpospolita

The Russian armed forces consisted of two corps under Generals Alexander Suvorov and Ivan Fersen . Suvorov took part in the Russo-Ottoman War of 1787–1792 , as well as in the heavy fighting in Polesia and finally in the Battle of Maciejowice. Fersen fought the insurgents for a few months, but was also supported by new reinforcements from the Russian Empire. The Russian generals each had around 11,000 war-trained men under arms.

The Polish armed forces consisted of different branches of service. Apart from the scattered remains of the Kościuszko army after the battle of Maciejowice, they consisted of a large number of inexperienced city militia from Warsaw, Praga and Wilno , a Jewish regiment under Berek Joselewicz , as well as civilians and peasants. The Polish force was divided into three battle lines, each covering a different part of Praga. The main area was commanded directly by General Józef Zajączek, the northern by Jakub Jasiński , while the southern was under the command of Władysław Jabłonowski . The Polish commander had a total of up to 20,000 men under arms.

The battle for the Polish capital

The Russian soldiers reached the outskirts of Warsaw on November 3rd, 1794. Immediately upon arrival, they began to fire the Polish positions with artillery . This made the Polish commanders suspect that the opposing troops were preparing for a long siege. However, General Suvorov preferred a swift and concentrated attack on the Polish defenses to a long and bloody siege.

At 3:00 a.m. on November 4, Russian troops reached the positions directly opposite the Polish positions and two hours later began an assault on the ranks of the Poles. The Polish defenders were taken by surprise, so that their lines of defense could not be held, apart from a few pockets of resistance. General Zajączek, wounded during the fight, left his post, leaving the rest of his forces unmanaged. The Poles then withdrew to the center of Praga, finally towards the Vistula . The heavy street fighting lasted for four hours and ended in the almost complete annihilation of the Polish armed forces east of the Vistula. Only a small part of it was able to escape the encirclement by crossing over to the western bank of the Vistula.

The massacre

The assault of Russian troops against Praga (painting by Aleksander Orłowski)

After the battle, the Russians began to plunder and burn down the entire suburbs of Warsaw, seen as bloody revenge for the previous annihilation of the Russian garrison of Warsaw during the uprising there in April 1794, which took place in the capital of the Polish after the Second Partition of Poland in 1793 Kingdom was stationed. More than 4,000 Russian soldiers and civilians were killed at the time. Almost the entire area of Praga was looted and razed to the ground, and many of its residents were murdered. The number of victims is difficult to quantify, but today it is assumed that up to 23,000 dead on the Polish side. Suvorov himself wrote that all of Praga was covered with dead bodies and blood flowed in rivers.

After the battle

After the Battle of Praga, the commanders of Warsaw and most of its inhabitants were so demoralized that General Tomasz Wawrzecki withdrew his remaining troops on November 5th to the south towards the Subcarpathian Mountains in order to spare Warsaw the fate of Praga, where they were disbanded on November 16. After the last main contingent had withdrawn, the Polish capital was captured by the Russian troops with almost no resistance, and the Kościuszko uprising had thus failed. It is said that after the battle, General Suvorov wrote a letter to the Russian empress consisting of only three words: " Hurray - Praga - Suvorov ". The Empress of Russia replied just as briefly: “ Bravo Field Marshal, Katharina ”. With that she had promoted him to the rank of Russian field marshal for the victory over the Poles .

literature

Simon Dixon: The Modernization of Russia, 1676-1825 , Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-521-37961-X
Jerzy Lukowski, Hubert Zawadzki: A Concise History of Poland , Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-521-55917-0
John P. Ledonne: The Grand Strategy of the Russian Empire , Oxford University Press US, 2003, ISBN 0-19-516100-9
Donald H. Reiman, Neil Fraistat: The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Johns Hopkins University Press , 2004, ISBN 0-8018-7874-8
Marc Ferro: The Use and Abuse of History: Or How the Past Is Taught to Children , Routledge, 2003, ISBN 0-415-28592-5
Norman Davies : God's Playground , Columbia University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-231-05351-7
John T. Alexander: Catherine the Great: Life and Legend , Oxford University Press US, 1999, ISBN 0-19-506162-4
Isabel de Madariaga: Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great , Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., 2002, ISBN 1-84212-511-7
Norman Davies: Europe: A History , Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-19-820171-0

Individual evidence

↑ Eberhard Zänker: Johann Gottfried Seume . Faber & Faber Verlag, Leipzig 2005, p. 139-143 .