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Polish Winged Cavalry

When you look at the insignia of the Polish Armored Corps of the Second World War, you will see a nearly vertical, slightly curved, abstract wing, and you will be reminded of the glorious Polish military traditions of the old days from which this emblem is derived, because this huge wing made of wood frames and plumes was the symbol of the Polish Winged Cavalry unit. This unit, which was established in the early sixteenth century and lasted until the middle of the eighteenth century, had numerous monumental victories, especially against the Grand Duchy of Moscow, the Swedes, the Tatars and the Turks.

Introduction

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they continued to exist in romance and legend, enjoying the invincible heft that posterity has celebrated. But the truth is that they, like all troops of all times, have won the joys of victory as well as savored the bitterness of defeat, especially when they encountered well-trained musketeers. The Winged Hussars of Poland should not be confused with another class of hussars, the hussards, which developed in Hungary and are the ancestors of the hussars which have been very popular in the armies of various countries, including also the Polish army, since the eighteenth century. The Polish winged cavalry also originated in Hungary, but they grew up on Polish soil and were transformed: they were no longer just lightly armed stragglers, but a brilliant blend of Eastern and Western European cavalry elements, building on the strengths of both local traditions and contemporary innovations. They were both heavy and light cavalry, heavily armored and swift, and could choose different tactics to meet the changing needs of the battlefield. The winged cavalry were often organized into squadrons of 150-200 men in dense knee-to-knee columns, with excellent horsemanship allowing them to charge in dense formation, and their long lances ensuring that their opponents were pierced first, so that the huge impact brought devastating blows to the enemy. After the charge they entered the melee with swords or firearms. The breastplate and carbine cavalry of Western Europe in this era were too accustomed to the dull tactics of riding in line to the front of the line to fire their firearms and then galloping back to the rear of the squadron to reload, and the bold charges of the winged cavalry would always knock them out of action. At the same time, the winged cavalry could easily defeat cavalry from the east, as they were fast and maneuverable enough to match them, but were better armed and had firearms to back them up. Origin? Polish Winged Cavalry

Until the end of the fifteenth century, Poland's armament and military power was Western European, but at the same time, the inevitable political and cultural contact with the East began to quietly change the direction of the Polish army. The conscription of nobles with feudal obligations began to give way to the recruitment of mercenaries, both from the homeland and from abroad. In the wars against the Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Tatar khans, the kings of the Jagiellon dynasty in the United Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania reorganized the Polish army to make it more suitable for fighting in the vast steppes in the East, which were divided by swamps and rivers. The heavy cavalry of the medieval type, covered head to toe in layers of armor and armed with heavy mounted rifles, proved to be unsuitable for such terrain, in contrast to the Serbian and Hungarian hussars of the time of Matthias Corvinus, a type of lightly armored cavalry that excelled against the Turks in such terrain, and which was introduced into the Polish army. Polish army. These hussars have been mentioned several times in manuscripts describing Polish-Lithuanian armies of the early sixteenth century. They are described as cavalry warriors with lance, saber and shield, and are mostly called "Racowie" (Serbian), Hussar, or Gussar, which is the earliest Serbian word for "bandit", although there are also some Hungarian references to Hussar, or Gussar. Hussar, or Gussar, originally meant "bandit" in Serbian, although there were also some Hungarian names. These hussars served not only in the Polish army, but also in the service of the Holy Roman Empire, and Hungarian-style hussars are most commonly depicted in woodcuts in the first-century books of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, especially in the books of Theuerdank and Weisskunig. However, the best pictorial history of the early 16th century Hussar units comes from a 162cm x 232cm oil on wood panel painted around 1520. The painting depicts the Battle of Orsha on September 8, 1514, in which the Polish-Lithuanian coalition defeated Grand Duke Vasily III of Moskva. The painting is generally faithful to the historical facts, although the unknown painter seems to have artistically exaggerated the armor and weapons of the soldiers, and it seems that he must have been quite familiar with the style of paintings by Albrecht Dürer and the Great Lukas Cranach (both great German painters). In the painting the Polish-Lithuanian coalition army consists of old-fashioned knights in full armor, infantry, artillery, light mounted archers and new-fashioned hussars, while on the side of the Grand Duchy of Moscow there is a full complement of heavily armored Boyer cavalry. The painting depicts the hussars of that time from several angles: crossing the Dnieper River in platoons of three-four men, charging, fighting and pursuing. Their basic weapon was the mounted rifle, which, unlike the heavy rifle, was of the same thickness at the front and back, and had a crossed flag at the tip of the rifle. The mounted lance was either mounted on a deliberate notch in the shield when charging, or held as such, "half above the horse's ears". Their shields were typical of the Hungarian style, made of wood in a peculiar asymmetrical shape, with one corner pointed and raised to one side, and painted with stripes of bright colors. However, there were also hussars who used French round shields (rondaches) with spikes in the center. The sabers they used were also Hungarian, but unfortunately not many of them are seen in the paintings, but most of them are in large sheaths covered with gold and silver. Some of them, probably the officers of the hussars, carried a scepter (buzdy-gan mace, buzdy-gan from the Turkish word for "club") in their belts. Their mounts are covered with a horse coat and a cage with a heavy chewing head. The shape of the saddles is not visible in the painting, although the stirrups, which are almost circular in shape with a small ball underneath, are clearly visible. The spurs have a rather strange appearance, being fastened to the boots by means of large pieces of metal covering the tops of the rider's feet, and we can find no specific physical object resembling this, though there are several oil paintings and engravings by Dürer which have much the same appearance. Their headgear could be described as colorful, the most common of which was a hat apparently made of black felt in the style of a Victorian tall bowler hat. The lower portion of the hat's barrel is usually decorated with a gold-plated metal ring, and a plume of feathers is attached to the metal seat. In addition, there are a variety of other styles in the painting: conical hats with the same plume, Hungarian-style flat hats with vertical brims, hats with large draped pieces, and early berets, which were quite popular at the time. The hussars in the painting are unarmored, relying on the protection provided by a short hemmed joupanes with a laminated lining, which reached the knees but was only buttoned to the waist. A few hussars wore a short cloak with long sleeves, a Hungarian style called "mente" (the originator of the ornate, tight-fitting cloak of the later hussars). Some of the hussars, probably officers, wore decorative ribbons woven from horsehair around the necks of their horses. Rise? Polish Winged Cavalry

As early as the first half of the sixteenth century, several squadrons of hussars had begun to don armor, presumably to allow them to replace the heavily-armored knight battlefield shock role that had begun to creep out of the field at that time. We can see the whole process of the heavy transformation of the hussars into winged cavalry in the rolls and lists of the Polish army of the time, which are quite well preserved and divided, because at that time these rolls were the basis for the payment of compensation and pensions to soldiers for loss of equipment or casualties. At first only the cavalry's primary armament was recorded, including helmets, body armor, shields, and lances. In the second half of the sixteenth century, the records of armaments such as sabers, straight swords, javelins, tomahawks, bows, and arrow pouches appeared in the dossiers. The use of panther, tiger, bear and wolf furs is also mentioned in the documents after 1550, according to which, when they were not clad in animal skins, the hussars wore a special cloak thrown over the shoulders, called "killm". The earliest records of winged cavalry wings appear in the same period. These wings were made of eagle feathers, crane feathers or ostrich feathers, and if ostrich feathers were used, they were usually dyed red, green or blue. Undoubtedly these wings are still an imitation of those of the Turkish Deri cavalry, but the style is a Polish creation, the body of which consists of a straight strip of wood painted red or covered with crimson velvet and clad in copper, in which are drilled rows of good-sized holes, into which the feathers are inserted to form a large wing. A metal rod was riveted to the lower end of the wooden bar, which was inserted in a socket in the back armor. Some winged cavalrymen were unarmored throughout the sixteenth century and later (see Figure 4), so if warriors did not have armor or were not wearing back armor, one or a pair of wings could be inserted into the back bridge of the saddle. However, since the winglets fixed to the back of the saddle would have prevented straddling the horse, they would have had to be replaced by someone else once the warrior was mounted. In fact unarmored winged cavalrymen were not uncommon. Stefano della Bella, who had carefully observed the cavalry of a visiting Polish mission in Rome in 1633 and in Paris in 1645, [Footnote 3] produced a fine copper-plate engraving of a winged cavalryman without an inch of armor, with a tall ostrich-feather wing-gear behind his saddle (see fig. V). It seems that at that time, both armored and unarmored winged cavalrymen existed, and only the wing ornament was the signature feature of this type of soldier. That said, the exact role of this winged decoration has not been fully explained until now. Some say that in battle, the soughing sound of the wind blowing through the winged decorations scares the enemy's horses, but even the sound of thousands of winged decorations at the same time would be drowned out by the loud noise of the battlefield. It has also been explained that the winglets provide protection against the usual lasso attacks of the Eastern cavalry, especially the Tartars, but after a good survey, you'll strike that explanation out as well. In fact the most definite and only function of this wing decoration was to create a strong visual to psychological impact. Images of warriors encased in layers of armor, with huge winged wings stuck behind their backs and the furs of fierce beasts draped over their shoulders, all give a sense of transcendence that can set off a swirling wave of emotions in the viewer's mind: horror, respect, hostility, or envious admiration. On the battlefield, it's hard to say what role these bulky, bulky objects fixed rigidly behind the rider's back could really play. Perhaps we can infer that winged cavalrymen rarely - if not at all, and perhaps in great battles they would have been in full costume - carried these winged ornaments on the battlefield, reserving them mainly for use on the parade ground or in ceremonial celebrations. In any case, not long after the halfway point of the sixteenth century, most of the winged cavalry evolved into heavily armed warriors, but the heavy equipment and accoutrements slowed them down in turn, and just when it looked as if the winged cavalry was going to be mercifully eliminated in the footsteps of the heavy knights of the past, Stephen Batory, Duke of Transylvania, who was elected King of Poland in 1576, took the Polish army to task for its success in the war. Batory) undertook a deep and effective reform of the Polish army. Stephen Batory was a commander-in-chief of outstanding military genius, who had waged a series of wars against the Duchy of Moskva with brilliant victories, and had planned a huge expedition against the Turks, but just as it was about to begin the Polish king suddenly died and did not see the realization of this great goal. The result of Bartoli's reform of the winged cavalry was the creation of a new army of great agility and discipline. In terms of equipment, he permanently abandoned the old heavy helmets, wooden shields and large saddles of the medieval knights, replacing them with "zischägge" (zischägge) or other types of light, open-faced helmets with a lobster-like layered neck protector and a single piece of noseguard across the brim. The main weapons of the time were light helmets of the lobster style or other styles, locking armor and light half-armor worn on the outside, or only half-armor and locking armor arm guards, special saddle stirrups with a strong oriental style, and long-necked spurs. The saber is still the main melee weapon, but nowadays, in addition to the saber, the winged cavalrymen often attach a heavy saber (German: pallash, Polish: Koncerz, in fact a heavy bayonet similar to the Western European estoc, which is very useful when charging, and the saber is good for melee - paraphrased) to the side of the saddle. Two wheel-flint pistols or a wheel-flint sabre were inserted in holsters in front of the saddle. The war hammer and scepter were still the favorite weapons of the officers. The length of the mounted lance was shortened and a long spear flag hung from the front end, and during a charge, the countless flapping and fluttering of the small, brightly colored flags was a picture both magnificent and terrifying in the eyes of the enemy. The equipment? Polish Winged Cavalry in Battle

A selection of actual late sixteenth to early seventeenth century winged cavalry equipment can be found in museums in Poland itself. The Polish Army Museum in Warsaw, the National Art Collection at Wawel Castle in Krakow, and the Castle Arms in Marburg all contain helmets that were undoubtedly made in Poland itself (see Figure IX). The body of such a typical helmet, made of two iron plates joined together, is not dissimilar to the kettle helmet popular in the Middle Ages [Note 5], except that the flat brim is surmounted by removable nose, ear, and neck guards, and the ear guards are pierced with large, heart-shaped holes so as not to interfere with the sense of hearing. On the eve of World War I a complete wagon was found in the bed of the Vistula River filled with these helmets. Despite some rusting, the shape of the helmets is very well preserved, and all the helmets resemble each other as if they came out of a single mold, undoubtedly from the same armor workshop. Officers' helmets were finely crafted, most of which were often imported from abroad, while the winged cavalry style of armament was also fashionable in Austria and Hungary at the time, which greatly boosted the production of this type of armor. The largest production area of decorated Cheska helmets was in the South German region, especially in the city of Nuremberg. We found two such helmets in the National Art Collection of Wawel Castle. One of them, dating from around 1550, was made for the Tyszkiewicz Family, a Polish family famous for its wide range of luxury goods, and was plated with gold and inlaid with precious stones, making it extremely luxurious (see figure X). The other was originally the property of the Radziwill family, a Hungarian-Turkish style helmet from 1561, but with a typical Renaissance style etching. As for armor, the old Arsenal of Graz in Austria has a large collection of late sixteenth-century winged cavalry breastplates, and good armor survives in the museums of Poland itself, in the cities of Warsaw, Krakow, and Konik. This particular style of half-armor, first made by Italian armorers and called "anima" in Italian, became popular in the 1630s. Its most important feature is that the chest and back armor system by a number of pieces of stripes of steel assembled into a lobster, and then longitudinal straps and a series of rivets in the back of the fixed, low-cost, good flexibility, in the countries of the navy at that time, especially popular, a typical set of wing cavalry light armor includes a chest and back armor of this style and a throat protector. Some surviving Polish armor is adorned with brass roses or other bronze ornaments, but it is possible that these were added at a later date (see Figure XI). Winged cavalrymen would have worn a lock-plate shirt underneath such armor or retained only the lock-plate sleeves, except that, in contrast to the dizzying development of plate armor styles over the centuries, the craftsmanship of lock-plate armor has changed so little, and still consists of riveted iron rings, that it is sometimes difficult to accurately identify from a large pile of lock-plate armor what is late sixteenth-century and what is more than a hundred years later. Poland's museums contain large collections of Hungarian-Polish sabers from the late sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries, when they were used by both Polish infantry and cavalry units, except that the cavalry had slightly longer blades, ranging from about 80-85 centimeters (see Figure XIII). Most of the sabers came from Hungary or Poland itself, but the best ones were imported from the Styria region and Italy, especially from Genoa. These Hungarian-Polish sabers were quite large in comparison to most scimitars of the time, and usually had several blood grooves and raised reinforcing ribs (yelmen), the hilt was covered with black leather, and had a The hilt is wrapped in black leather and has a long iron bar guard. The sheaths are also covered in black leather and iron or copper, sometimes with several heart-shaped openings, according to the personal preferences of the Winged Riders.