Thread by @akoz33

1/29 #OTD in 1813, on the last day of the Battle of Leipzig, died drowned in the river Elster the commander of the forces of the Duchy of Warsaw, Marshal of the Empire, Prince of Bohemia and Poland and Poland's national hero, Prince Józef Poniatowski.

2 Poniatowski was half Czech and half-Polish. His mother, a Czech aristocrat, was one of Maria Theresa's court ladies.His father was a brother of Poland's last king Stanisław August Poniatowski.Young Józef joined the Austrian imperial army and took part in a war against the Turks

3 In 1789 when new Polish army was being formed, he was asked by his uncle,the King of Poland, to switch to Polish service in the rank of general.He did it after asking Emperor Francis II to release him from his oath, which the latter did. Poniatowski would spend much of his life

4 fighting against the Emperor.
In 1792 during the Poland-Russia war caused by Russia's desire to stop attempted reforms that would strengthen the Polish state, Stanisław August asked his nephew to take over the command of the entire army.

5 The Prince was reluctant as he was inexperienced and had never commanded forces of this size, but accepted. At this stage he was a typical, Austrian-style slow and cautious commander - this would change dramatically in the future under the influence of Napoleonic ideas.

6 In spite of that, he managed to achieve the first major Polish military since the days of Jan Sobieski in the battle of Zieleńce. His overjoyed uncle established the Virtuti Militari order, which to this day is the highest Polish military distinction. Prince Józef was its

7 first recipient. The king however soon after lost heart and belief in the possibility of victory and although the army was undefeated, accepted the Russian demands. This lead to the Second Partition of Poland. This in turn lead to the Kościuszko Uprising, in which the Prince

8 played an important military role, in spite of the suspicions his aristocratic background and relation to the now discredited King aroused.
In 1806 when Napoleon created the Duchy of Warsaw,he chose the Prince to be its War Minister. However, the supreme military power lied in

9 the hands of Marshal Davout. The stern and austere marshal initially distrusted Poniatowski but gradually changed his mind. At the same time Ponatowski became Davout's military disciple, adopting much of his approach to strategy and military organisation. There is a

10 fascinating description of this in John Gallaher's biography of Davout.

11 The first chance Poniatowski had to display his new skills and military maturity was the campaign of 1809. The Duchy of Warsaw was invaded by a large Austrian army lead by Archduke Ferdinand Karl Joseph of Austria-Este.
In this war Poniatowski displayed a new, one

12 could say "Clausewitzian", grasp of strategy. As the Austrian's advance on Warsaw, the smaller Polish Army met them in a bloody and indecisive battle of Raszyn. In the battle the Prince, although usually a cavalryman, lead the most famous of the several bayonet charges that

13 he lead personally. Here is the charge in Andrzej Wajda's film "The Ashes" based on a book by Stefan Żeromski. (Poniatowski leads the charge without taking out the pipe from his mouth).

14 Although the Austrians were beaten off, Poniatowski withdrew towards Warsaw. The Austrians prepared to lay siege to the city. Poniatowski sent envoys to negotiate surrender while the Polish army secretly left Warsaw to invade the Polish territories Austria had sized during the

15 First and Third Partitions. Poniatowski understood that the fate of the war will be decided elsewhere (at Wagram) so the strategic aim was to achieve a superior bargaining position at the final settlement. By the time the Austrians entered the deserted Polish capital, the

16 the Polish army having crossed into Galicia was advancing on the ancient Polish capital Kraków, which Austria took in the Third Partition. When the Austrians realised what happened, they abandoned Warsaw and rushed after Poniatowski. It was too late however. Just in front of

17 Kraków Poniatowski faced the final obstacle - the Russian Army. NOminally allied with Napoleon, it did everything possible to obstruct the Poles. Poniatowski ordered a cavalry charge against the Russian's who were blocking his entrance

18 to the city and they dispersed. Napoleon's victory at Wagram meant that the Poles got too keep all the territories they managed to occupy & the size of te Duchy doubled.
Poniatowski commanded a corps during the war with Russia in 1812 and performed superbly, especially at

19 Borodino. In spite of suffering huge losses, like the rest of the Grande Armée, Poniatowski's Polish corps was the only one that managed to retain all of its cannons.
After the failure of the 1812 Campaign the situation of the Polish Army became extremely difficult. Prussia

20 and Austria were determined to destroy it, for the saw it was the symbol of the nation and inspiration to resistance. Russia, however, at this point had different plans. Tsar Alexander was courting Polish officers with promises of restoring independent Poland. The Prince

21 received several such approaches. He gave his famous answer "a man can lose his fatherland and still keep his honour but a man who loses his honour has no fatherland". He reported to Napoleon who, clearly surprised to see him, appointed

22 him commander of the VIII Corps and gave him the Marshal's emoluments and status though not yet the baton.

Poniatowski's VIIIth Corps played a crucial role in the battle of Leipzig (during which Napoleon finally gave Poniatowski his marshal's baton). On the 18th

23 of October, the Corps reduced only to 2,500 men (less than half of original strength) was maintaining a stalemate against enemies of many times their size. In the evening of that day Napoleon ordered a retreat. The Polish Corps was supposed to fall back into the city of

24 Leipzig and continue the defence. However, on the 19th Lindenau bridge was demolished prematurely, with most of the Polish forces and the Prince trapped on the wrong side. The Prince, wounded many time, drove his horse into the Pleisse but was to weak to hold the reigns. He

25 was rescued by a French captain, but when he recovered, got hold of another horse and rode into the Elster. He was shot again and drowned.
In 1817 a statue of the Prince was commissioned from Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvalsen. Tsar Alexander agreed that it would stand in

26 fron of th Governer's Palace. The statue is modelled on the famous statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. However, it was finished only after Poland's November Uprising against Russia and the new tsar Nicholas I withdrew his consent. The

statue was taken out of Poland and only returned after independence in 1922. However, the sympathy for Poland aroused in Saxony by the November Uprising caused another monument to commemorate the Prince to be built in Leipzig.
This monument was blown up by the Nazis on the day

of their invasion of Poland in 1939. The Warsaw statue was also blown up in December 1944.
They were both restored after the war although the one in Leipzig (significantly )had to wait for the fall of communism and is much less impressive than the old one.