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Brian L. Davies,
Prof. of History,
University of Texas at San Antonio (USA)
THE LISOVCHIKI IN MUSCOVY, 16071616
An important new study by David Parrott argues that historians assumption that mercenary forces must have been less reliable (costlier, more corrupt and inefficient) than state-recruited and state-administered armies has led
them to underestimate the importance of private military enterprise in European
warfare in the 1590s1630s. Parrott points out that even the Swedish army of
Gustav II Adolf could not rely entirely on Swedish canton-raised militia, so
that by 1629 Gustav II Adolf had to take about 16 000 mercenaries into his
army, some of them troops released from service of bankrupt Denmark, many
of them men newly raised on contract by German and Scottish enterprisers
(Parrott D. The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in
Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. P. 118,
126). Reliance on hired troops was common further east in Europe, too. The
emergency confronting Muscovys Tsar Vasilii Shuiskii forced him to employ
several thousand Swedish-raised mercenaries, and there was a long tradition of
royal resort to hired troops in Poland-Lithuania, where restrictions on the use of
the pospolite ruszenie and the budget and size of the kings Wojsko kwarciane
had pushed the last two Jagiellonian kings and King Stefan Bathory to hire
large numbers of foreign mercenaries for short periods. A factor further promoting military enterprise was the frequency of private military adventures that did
not have the blessing of any legitimate monarch, such as the Magnate Wars in
Moldavia and the involvement of Polish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian magnates
in the First and Second Dmitriads in Muscovy.
One of the most interesting private forces in the Time of Troubles were the
Lisovchiki (Lisowczycy). They were formed in 1607 from mutinous PolishLithuanian troops outlawed by King Sigismund III after the Rokosz, and led
into Muscovy by their commander Alexander Lisowski, who augmented them
with cossack volunteers and renegade Muscovite servicemen and brought them
into the service of False Dmitrii II. The Lisovchiki participated in most of the
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major battles of the period of the Second Dmitriad, including the long siege
of Troitse-Sergeev Monastery. Lisowski then obtained pardon and brought
his regiment them over to King Sigismund III in 1610. From 1613 to 1616
the Lisovchiki conducted daring and devastating flying raids across Muscovy.
Polish historians have been very interested in the Lisovchiki from 1843, when
Maurycy Dzieduszycki devoted a two-volume study to them; they were used in
the construction of Polish Sarmatist ideology, and they have been romanticized
in Polish historical painting (Jozef Brandt) and popular literature (Ossendowski,
Sujkowski, Korkozowicz). Rembrandts painting The Polish Rider is said to be
a portrait of a Lisovchik.
The founder and first commander of the Lisovchiki, Alexander Josef
Janowicz Lisowski, was born near Vilnius sometime between 1575 and 1580.
His forebears had emigrated from Ducal Prussia to Zmudz. The Lisowskis were
middling szlachta but had some important political connections in Lithuania and
Poland: Alexanders brother Szczesny was marszalek dworu to Cardinal Jerzy
Radziwill, and his brother Krzysztof was a dworzanin in the service of King
Sigismund August (Dzieduszycki M. Krotki rys dziejw i spraw Lisowczykov.
T. I. Lww, 1843. S. 14; Tyszkowski K. Aleksander Lisowski i jego zagony na
Moskwe // Przeglad Historyczno-Wojskowy 1932. Vol. 5. Nr. 1. S. 2; Wisner H.
Lisowczycy. Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1976. S. 22).
Aleksandr Lisowskis first military service was in Moldavia in 1599, during Chancellor Jan Zamoyskis campaign to install Ieremia Movila as puppet hospodar of Moldavia. Lisowski began as a simple soldier in the private
army of Jan Potocki, starosta of Kamieniec; in 1600 he fought at the battle
of Teleajan, Zamoyskis great victory over Prince Mihei Viteazul (Wisner H.
Lisowczycy. S. 23; Dzieduszycki M. Krotki rys T. I. S. 1719). The 1593
1617 Magnate Wars in Moldavia were not only contemporaneous with much
of the Time of Troubles in Muscovy; they provided some important precedents
for Polish intervention in the latter. The Magnate Wars offered an excuse for
sejmik-organized cavalry choragwie to break rules forbidding campaigning
abroad; they were waged contrary to the interests of King Sigsimund III, fought
by the private armies of magnate adventurers (the Potockis, Koreckis, and
Vyshnevetskys, with whom the Movila clan was allied by marriage); and they
revealed the tensions between szlachta forces and Ukrainian and Zaporozhian
cossacks, the latters interest in continuing fighting against the Tatars eventually
aligning them with Viteazul and thereby threatening to embroil Poland in war
with the Turks. To prevent further cossack interference with Polish operations
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a call to volunteers from across the Commonwealth to join his regiment without pay and campaign in Muscovy in support of Hetman Chodkiewicz. When
he started this campaign in May he had just 600 horse, but his pulk increased
to over 2000 men by September. That year Lisowskis campaign again took
the form of a flying raid across a vast distance, starting from Briansk, circling
through Viazma, Rzhev, Tver and nearly as far north as Sol Galitskaia before
turning south through Shuiia, Suzdal, Kolomna, and Tula and dashing west
back to Seversk. Once again his strategy focused on burning towns, plundering monasteries, and moving fast enough to avoid interception by Dmitrii
Pozharskii and other Muscovite commanders (Tyszkowski K. 1) Aleksander
Lisowski S. 1426; 2) Materialy do zycoriusa Aleksandru Lisowskiego //
Przeglad Historyczno-Wojskowy. Vol. 5. Nr. 1. 1932. S. 101102; Wisner H.
Lisowczycy. S. 4264). These raids may have been inspired by the success
of Krzysztof Radziwills 1581 corps volante expedition, which covered over
1400 kilometers and nearly captured Ivan IV at Staritsa (Kupisz D. The PolishLithuanian Army in the Reign of King Stefan Bathory // Warfare in Eastern
Europe, 15001800. Ed. Brian Davies. Leiden and Boston: EJ Brill, 2012.
P. 8890). Lisowski was preparing another campaign from Starodub when he
fell from his horse and died of a stroke on 11 October 1616.
His regiment continued under his name, and the Lisovchiki actually
achieved their greatest fame in Polish historiography and popular culture for
operations they conducted after his death, when they were under the command
of Stanislaw Czaplinski and then Walenty Rogawski. After 1617 the Lisovchiki
withdrew from Muscovy and took station at Brailov in Podolia. In 1619 and
1620 they took hire under Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand II, who used them in
Hungary against Bethlen Gabor, as a counterweight to Gabors hussars; they
also raided in Moravia, where they killed Lutheran noblemen and pastors. Their
service with the Emperor was permitted by King Sigismund III because this was
a way to honor his obligations to the Emperor without committing to a full-scale
intervention by Polish Crown forces and thereby risking war with the Turks; it
also had the advantage of removing the Lisovchiki from Commonwealth soil
(Gajecky G., Baran A. The Cossacks in the Thirty Years War. Vol. I. Rome:
PP. Basiliani, 1983. P. 29, 30, 32, 40). After Zolkiewskis disastrous defeat by
the Turks at Cecora in 1620 the Emperor released the Lisovchiki from service
so they could return to the Commonwealths Podolian frontier and join the
forces of Chodkiewicz and Sahaidaczny in their great stand against the Turks at
Khotin. Ten companies of Lisovchik I about 1200 horse fought at Khotin
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