Battle of Raszyn (1809)
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
| Battle of Raszyn, a 1913 painting by Wojciech Kossak | |||||||||||||||||
| Battle of Raszyn | |||||||||||||||||
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| Conflict | Napoleonic Wars | ||||||||||||||||
| Date | April 19, 1809 | ||||||||||||||||
| Place | Raszyn, Poland | ||||||||||||||||
| Result | Austrian defeat | ||||||||||||||||
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The first Battle of Raszyn was fought on April 19, 1809 between armies of Austria and the Duchy of Warsaw as a part of the War of the Fifth Coalition in the Napoleonic Wars. The Austrian army was defeated.
The Austrian army under the Archduke Ferdinand invaded the Grand Duchy of Warsaw in April, 1809. Polish troops under Prince Józef Antoni Poniatowski withstood the Austrian attack on Warsaw defeating them at Radzymin and reconquered parts of former Poland including Cracow and Lwów by beating the Austrians at near the villages of Góra and Grochów.
General Józef Antoni Poniatowski was presented grand-aigle de la Légion d'Honneur, a saber of honor and a lancer's shako for this victory.
After the battle
After the Austrian army withdrew to the other side of the swamps, prince Józef Poniatowski ordered his forces to withdraw towards Warsaw. However, since the city fortifications were in a very bad shape and the Saxonian expeditionary force withdrew towards their homeland, Poniatowski decided to leave Warsaw undefended and withdraw to several fortresses located nearby (most notably to Modlin Fortress and Serock). The capital was seized with little opposition, but it was a Pyrrhic victory since the Austrian commander diverted most of his forces there at the expense of other fronts. In the following weeks Greater Poland was defended by the Corps of General Henryk Dąbrowski and the Polish cavalry seized Lwów. Finally, Poniatowski left only a small force near Warsaw to prevent the Austrians from leaving it and moved the rest of his forces southwards, which led to capturing the city of Kraków.
On October 14, 1809, the Treaty of Schönbrunn was signed between Austria and France. According to it the earlier state lost approximately 50 000 square kilometres of land inhabitated by over 1 900 000 people. The territories annexed by the Duchy of Warsaw included the lands of Zamość and Kraków as well as 50% of income of the Wieliczka salt mines.
