A historical note (05/21/06)

A historical note

On May 6, 1648, Bohdan Khmelnytsky met and annihilated an advance force of 6,000 Poles near Zhovti Vody on the Right Bank of the Dnipro River. The main Polish force of 20,000 was thrown into a panic and retreats. It was ambushed by the Kozaks and also crushed. Only a few days before the battle, King Wladislaw IV of Poland died, leaving the commonwealth without a king, its commanders and the army.

During the summer of 1648 Poland assembled a large army near Lviv in Western Ukraine, including 8,000 German mercenaries. At the same time Bohdan Khmelnytsky was molding his many followers into a disciplined and well-organized army near Bila Tserkva in central Ukraine. The opposing armies met at Pyliavtsi, deep in the heart of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on September 23, 1648. Here again Polish commanders panicked and fled the field of the bottle, while the rest of their army followed the suit.

At this point nothing got in the way of Khmelnytsky's march into Poland proper and put an end to the Commonwealth once and for all. But Khmelnytsky did not march onto ethnic Polish lands. Instead, he regrouped and brought his consolidated forces back to the Kyiv region.

It has been debated why Khmelnytsky did not finish the job by totally destroying the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Critics of his actions should keep the following in mind. It was the onset of winter, and waging war on foreign soil without logistical support is a recipe for disaster, as Napoleon found out during the winter of 1812 in the snowy forests of Russia. Furthermore, there was hunger and pestilence among Khmelnytsky's troops and the country he left behind lay in the ruins of war.

By pulling back Khmelnytsky saved his army and gave the country a chance to rebuild. It was a wise and prudent move on the part of a great strategist.

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