"Polish Forces in Germany?" Topic
3 Posts
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ScipioAlba | 04 Aug 2017 3:27 a.m. PST |
I read somewhere that Ferdinand II provided some troops to support the Poles against the Swedes. Did the Poles ever provided forces to Ferdinand II in his war with Sweden? I don't think so, I certainly can't find anything and they seemed quite busy having their own squabbles in the east. Thank you |
GurKhan | 04 Aug 2017 3:51 a.m. PST |
The reference is probably to the Lisowczycy irregular light horse – "From 1619, the Lisowczycy, then stationed near Kaunas (Kowno), were sent by Zygmund III Vasa to aid Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor against the Protestants in the Thirty Years' War" – link |
Daniel S | 04 Aug 2017 1:26 p.m. PST |
The Lisowczycy managed to both enter and exit Imperial service well before the Swedes went into Germany. The Sejm which effectivly had control over both the funding of the army and much of Commonwealth policy had zero interest in fighting the Swedes beyond the borders of the Commonwealth so Sigismund/Zygmunt was powerless to do more than allow the recruitment of a few mercenary units from time to time. On paper the largest piece of Polish support against the Swedes was the transfer of ships of the small Polish Navy to Imperial service but the ships were stuck in the port of Wismar due to the fall of Wallenstein and a Swedish blockade and ended up being captured along with the city by the Swedes. A good illustration of how uninterested the Polish nobility was in fighting the Swedes was the crisis of 1635. Rather than using the new and improved armies raised by Wladyslaw IV to crush Swedens emerging Baltic Empire in Prussia, Livonia and Estonia the Sejm cheefully disbanded the bulk of the army once Sweden had been forced to give up it's rich Prussian conquest in the treaty of Stuhmsdorf. While the Swedish war economy took a serious hit from this the Polish lack of agression made it possible to dispatch the troops raised to defend Prussia to Germany were they were just in time to turn the tide of the war in the Wittstock campaign. |
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