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Brian L. Davies,
Prof. of History, University of Texas at San Antonio (USA)
THE LISOVCHIKI IN MUSCOVY, 1607-1616
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 1590s-1630s. 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 Demnark, 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 ModemEurope. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. P. 1-18, 126). Reliance on hired troops was common further east in Europe, too. The emergency confronting Muscovy’s 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 king’s 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 Polish-Lithuanian 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
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 Sannatist ideology, and they have been romanticized in Polish historical painting (Jozef Brandt) and popular literature (Ossendowski, Sujkowski, Korkozowicz). Rembrandt’s 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 bom 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: Alexander’s 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 dziejow i spraw Lisowczykov. T. I. Lwow, 1843. S. 14; Tyszkowski K. Aleksander Lisowski ijego zagony na Moskwe //PrzegladHistoryczno-Wojskowy 1932. Vol. 5. Nr. 1. S. 2; WisnerH. Lisowczycy. Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1976. S. 22).
Aleksandr Lisowski’s first military service was in Moldavia in 1599, during Chancellor Jan Zamoyski’s 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, Zamoyski’s great victory over Prince Mihei Viteazul (Wisner H. Lisowczycy. S. 23; Dzieduszycki M. Krotki rys... T. I. S. 17-19). 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 .v£&//;//7i-organizcd 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 VyshncYCtskys. with whom the Movila clan was allied by marriage); and they revealed the tensions between szlachta forces and Ukrainian and Zaporozhian cossacks, the latter’s 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
in Moldavia Zamojski eventually ordered Field Hetman Stanislaw Zolkiewski and the Ukrainian magnate Kirik Ruzhynsky to campaign in Ukraine to crush the armies of Nalivaiko and Loboda (Semenova L. E. Kniazhestva Valakhiia i Moldaviia konets XIV - nachalo XIX v. Moskva: Indrik, 2006. S. 171-173; Hrushevsky M. History of Ukraine-Rus’. T. 7: The Cossack Age to 1625. Trans. Bohdan Struminski. Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1999. P. 166.)
In 1604 the newly-crowned king of Sweden, Charles X, challenged Sigismund III Wasa by invading Livonia. Lisowski was among the Polish Crown officers in Livonia joining their troops in confederatio and mutinying over pay arrears. The mutineers proceeded to despoil Crown and magnate estates in Livonia and Lithuania in compensation. In a letter of 10 December 1604 Lithuanian Field Hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz denounced Lisowski as «a godless man and a rebel». Lisowski was sentenced to deprivation of szlachta privileges and banishment from the Commonwealth. But instead of emigrating he joined the Zebrzydowski Rebellion against the King (also called the Rokosz, 1605-1607). In the Rokosz he joined the regiment of his patron Janusz Radziwill and fought at the Battle of Guzow (July 5 1607) as the rot-mistrz of a choragiew of mounted cossacks (WisnerH. Lisowczycy. S. 27-33; Grabowski R. Guzow 5 VII 1607. Zabrze: Wydawnictwo Inforteditions, 2005. S. 78). The Rokoszanie were soundly defeated at Guzow, but the King found it advisable to complete the suppression of the Rokosz by offering amnesty to the rebellion’s most important leaders. Such amnesty was not extended to Lisowski, however, because of his previous involvement in mutiny in Livonia. After Guzow Lisowski took about a hundred men and crossed the frontier to Starodub.
A continuing controversy in the historiography of the Troubles is the question of whether the attachment of several Polish, Lithuanian and Ukrainian colonels to the new army of False Dmitrii II in 1607 represented a camouflaged military intervention by King Sigismund III, or represented private initiatives undertaken by certain magnates without the king’s approval. Jarema Maciszewski placed this question at the center of his famous 1968 study, and Igor Olegovich Tiumentsev has recently re-examined it through a close analysis of the diary and papers of Jan Sapieha, Hetman of False Dmitrii II’s hired troops (Maciszewski J. Polska a Moskwa 1603-1618. Opinie i stanowiska szlachty polskiej. Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1968. S. 37-38, 50-51, 74-75, 112-113, 116-167; Tiumentsev I. O. 1) Inozemnye soldaty na sluzhbe Lzhedmitriiu n, 1607 - nachalo 1610 gg. // Inozemtsy v Rossii v XV-XVII vekakli.
Sbomik materialov konferentsiia 2002-2004 gg. Ed. A. K. Levykin. Moskva: Drevnekhranilishche, 2006. S. 270-271, 283; 2) Smutnoe vremia v Rossii nachala XVII stoletiia. Dvizhenie Lzhedmitriia II. Moskva: Nauka, 2008. S. 92-127, 144, 148, 151-152, 154 passim.). Tiumentsev’s study of the army and administration of False Dmitrii II is the most thorough yet produced. He finds that most of the hired troops first assembling under False Dmitrii II’s banner at Starodub in 1607 were Belarus’ian and Ukrainian szlachta organized in companies of petvhorcv (Circassian-style armored lancers); that some of them were Rokoszanie, but many not; that the movement of Rokosz veterans into Muscovy was not encouraged by the King, but strongly forbidden by him; that their colonels and hetmans, including Jan Sapieha, were not operating under the secret instruction of the king or Chancellor Lew Sapieha; that the hired troops brought over to False Dmitrii II by Jan Sapieha in early 1608 were mostly Lithuanian and Belarus’ian szlachta who had served under Chodkiewicz in Livonia and joined in the Confederatio over pay arrears; and that the King strongly disapproved of these adventurers because he saw their involvement in Muscovy as making the pacification of the Rokosz all the more difficult and pulling Muscovy into his war with Sweden.
A summary of Lisowski’s role in the army of False Dmitrii II shows that he arrived sometime before November 1607 with a few hundred men; that he showed himself of value in recruiting to False Dmitrii II’s veterans of the now-dispersed Bolotnikov movement, especially in Seversk region as well as cossacks (some Zaporozhian and Don Host cossacks, some Host-unaffiliated aspirant cossacks from Ukraine and southern Muscovy); that his regiment of Lisovchiki comprised a few companies of husarz lancers and petihorcy but a larger contingent of cossacks, bringing its maximum strength to five or six thousand men in August 1608; that in the scheme of the de facto division of command authority among Ruzhynsky, Zarutsky, and Jan Sapieha, the Lisovchiki generally served under Sapieha, but separated from him after the first siege of Troitse-Sergeev monastery was lifted. The Lisovchiki participated in several of the major battles against the armies of Vasilii Shuiskii (Bolkhov, Karachev, Briansk, Rakhmantsevo, Tver’, etc.) and played a leading role in extending the Tushinite movement towards Riazan’, Kolomna, Iaroslavl’, and the Volga. Over time, however, Lisowski reduced his infantry contingents and artillery in order to maximize his mobility, and this made it more difficult for him to contribute to protracted sieges. The Lisovchiki did participate intermittently in the siege of Troitse-Sergeev Monastery, which long remained an important Tushinite objective not only because of the reputed wealth of its treasury but because
monastery estates offered mercenary companies better prospects for forage and kormlenie. A sign of Lisowski’s frustration at the interminable Troitse-Sergeev siege was his response to the death of his brother beneath its walls: he massacred 202 prisoners taken from a munitions train trying to reinforce the monastery, in response to which the monastery’s defenders executed an equal number of their own prisoners atop their fortress walls. Lisowski ruthlessly suppressed an anti-Tushinite rebellion in Iaroslavl’; Conrad Bussow describes Lisowski as then pushing deeper into the interior, «killing and exterminating all who were encountered on his path: men, women children, dvoriane, townsmen and peasants» (Bussow C. «Moskovskaia khronika» Konrada Bussova // Smuta v Moskovskom gosudarstve. Rossiia nachala XVII stoletiia v zapiskakh sovremennikov. Ed. A. I. Pliguzov and I. A. Tikhoniuk. Moskva: Sovremennik, 1989. S. 350, 355; Budzilo J. Istoriia lozhnogo Dmitriia (iz dnevnika Budily) // Pamiatniki smutnogo vremeni: Tushinskii vor. Lichnost’, okruzhenie, vremia. Dokumenty i materialy. Ed. V. I. Kuznetsov and I. P. Kulakova. Moskva: Izd. Moskovskogo universiteta, 2001. S. 220-221). In 1610 Lisowski gave the commune of Pskov military assistance against de la Gardie’s Swedes, but his foraging and kormlenie exaction around Pskov so alarmed the Pskovichi they decided not to admit his regiment within their walls. The Lisovchiki then settled in at Voronachto feed (Budzilo J. Istoriia lozhnogo Dmitriia... S. 223,287, 290).
Lisowski spent the winter of 1609-1610 at Voronach. His Russians and cossacks having deserted him, he decided to march on Krasnoe with a handful of Lisovchiki (and 800 English and Irish mercenaries he had convinced to defect from de la Gardie), hold Krasnoe for King Sigismund III, and bargain for it the King’s pardon for his role in the Livonian mutiny. Having seized Krasnoe, he got Adam Talosz, kasztelan of Zmudz, to intervene and convince the King and Chancellor Lew Sapieha to pardon him. He also received a reward of 200 gold pieces and permission to take service under Chodkiewicz and raise a new regiment of 1000 horse — without pay, to be remunerated solely by plunder. This regiment soon rose to 2000 horse. (Bussow C. «Moskovskaia khronika»... S. 358;TyszkowskiK. AleksanderLisowski... S. 8; WisnerH. Lisowczycy. S. 39).
After Hetman Chodkiewicz’s withdrawal from Moscow in August 1612 most Polish operations in Muscovy took the form of independently undertaken raids by particular colonels, including Lisowski. In 1613 Lisowski raided the districts of Suzdal’, Kostroma, Iaroslavl’, Pereiaslavl’-Riazan Tula, Serpukhov, and Aleksin, and then returned to his base at Krasnoe. In 1614 the Lisovchiki made a successful sortie on behalf of Andrej Sapieha’s force besieged at Smolensk. For his 1615 campaign Lisowski, now based at Mogilev, issued
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 Lisowski’s campaign again took the form of a flying raid across a vast distance, starting from Briansk, circling through Viaz’ma, 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. 14-26; 2) Materialy do zycoriusa Aleksandru Lisowskiego // Przeglad Historyczno-Wojskowy. Vol. 5. Nr. 1. 1932. S. 101-102; Wisner H. Lisowczycy. S. 42-64). These raids may have been inspired by the success of Krzysztof Radziwill’s 1581 corps volcmte expedition, which covered over 1400 kilometers and nearly captured Ivan IV at Staritsa (Kupisz D. The Polish-Lithuanian Army in the Reign of King Stefan Bathory // Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1500-1800. Ed. Brian Davies. Leiden and Boston: EJ Brill, 2012. P. 88-90). 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 Gabor’s 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 Zolkiewski’s disastrous defeat by the Turks at Cecora in 1620 the Emperor released the Lisovchiki from service so they could return to the Commonwealth’s Podolian frontier and join the forces of Chodkiewicz and Sahaidaczny in their great stand against the Turks at Khotin. Ten companies of Lisovchiki— about 1200 horse — fought at Khotin
in 1621. (Podhorodecki L. Chocim 1621. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Obrony Narodowej, 1988. S. 57, 95; Dzieduszycki M. Krotki rys... T. II. S. 9, 32).
In 1624 Stanislaw Lubomirski, Palatine of Ruthenia, negotiated with Emperor Ferdinand II to send several thousand hired cossacks and Lisovchiki into the Emperor’s service in Silesia, but by then King Sigismund III and the Sejm had lost all patience with the «tumultuous passages» of Lisovchiki, and their Constitution of 1624 abolished the Lisovchik formation. Veteran Lisovchiki did participate in the 1624 Silesian campaign, but as troops in a special cossack corps under Polish Crown officers. Other former Lisovchiki entered the private detaclunents of Commonwealth magnates, and many emigrated to the Zaporozhian Sich and participated in rebellions that had to be put down by Crown Hetman Stanislaw Koniecpolski. (Gajecky G., Baran A. The Cossacks... Vol. II.P 28, 72).
