Lesser known, but pivotal battles that saved the Christian West
History changes on small acts: an encouragement for our day
I just came back from a week long camp with my boys, and am gearing up to start the new school year. Very busy, so I thought I’d publish a thread I had posted a year ago. The date now is very appropriate, as well: a little earlier than the first weekend of September, but smack in the middle of another important battle that raged a full 102 years ago!
It isn’t just awesome history, either, but it has a lesson for us today.
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Every year during the first weekend of September, my hometown in Belgium, Sint-Niklaas, celebrates their annual ‘Bevrijdingsfeesten’.
Liberation Festival.
We commemorate being liberated by British (Canadian) and Polish troops with a fair, fireworks and one of the largest balloon festivals in our country.
The 4th Armoured Brigade, together with the 44th Royal Tanks Regiment (RTR) and B-Company of the 2nd King’s Royal Rifle Corps (KRCC), as well as the Polish 1st Armoured Division under General Maczek. The Polish troops tried to minimize victims by flanking cities, instead of storming them. This forced the German troops to withdraw, or be cut off completely.
The Germans called the army of Gen. Stanisław Maczek the Black Devils. Maczek himself often said that “the Polish soldier fights for the freedom of all nations, but dies only for Poland”.
Gen. Stanisław Maczek
Colonel Stanislaw Koszutski of the 2nd Tank Regiment remembers a “warm welcome in Gent, tank units in the Belgian flower fields of Ghent, St.-Niklaas and Antwerp, all to the way to the river Scheld.”
“The shots were still heard in the outer quarters of the conquered cities, when on the central market square music sounded and people danced in the bars. The population organized balls and the graves were covered with flowers. They spontaneously and intensively prayed in the churches for us and for Poland.”
He was a brilliant commander, with a heart for the people he fought for. The Dutch city of Breda, for example, was particularly important for both the Germans and the allies, strategically placed in the center of the advance through the Netherlands.
The Germans had well prepared their defenses, but the Black Devils of Maczek needed only a few hours of intense fighting to clear the job. They, again, encircled the city, and entered from the east, completely surprising the Germans.
Maczek forbade the use of artillery and air support, which spared the city from destruction. This came at the cost of 150 of his troops, as he captured at least 600 Germans in that same engagement.
The end of the war, however, was bitter for him, as he was unable to persuade the higher brass to spare Poland from the Russians. Maczek remembered in the following way his conversation with Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery:
“I highlighted clearly, the main essence of the issue and from the perspective that the majority of the armoured division were men from ‘Kresy’, Poland’s Eastern Borderland region. I myself, was born in Lwów, which had never, not even during the time of Poland’s three partitions, been under the rule of Russia, and now, it was so uncritically, being given to Russia…
To this, Montgomery interrupted me, with a smile and said that in that case, everything was perfectly arranged, because I could now be a Russian general. That was too much for me.”
As all soldiers who fought with the British, the new Communist regime in Poland exiled the general. He lived out his days in Scotland, and at his request, was buried in a war cemetery in Breda, next to his fellow soldiers.
Soldiers of the Polish 1St Armor Brigade at the Market Square in Sint-Niklaas, Sep 1944
So, today I want to honor the Poles.
They saved Europe not once, not twice, but at least 3 times.
The first time, famously, under King Jan Sobieski III and his Winged Hussars, on September 11, 1683 (yes, that same date in 2001 was not chosen by accident! It marks the decisive turning point when the Ottoman menace to Christian Europe was finally halted).
Vienna was besieged by Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha, with over 150,000 troops (and 40,000 Crimea Tatar cavalry, as well as other units, placing their total troops from 200,000 up to 300,000), defended by a mere 11,000 soldiers, and any citizen volunteer they could get. It was the big prize for the Ottomans, and the gateway to the rest of Europe.
Political infighting led to the French to withhold aid to their Habsburg rival (they had just annexed the Alsace region, the latest in a long series of back and forths).
So King Sobieski came down, leaving his own country virtually undefended, with his elite Winged Hussars, heavily-armoured shock cavalry, nicknamed the ‘Angels of Death’. On the way he gathered Imperial troops, per the treaty that was reached in the preceding year.
You might know this song by Sabaton about this battle:
With about 47,000 German and Austrian troops from different areas of the Holy Roman Empire (including Saxony, Bavaria, Baden, Franconia and Swabia), and the help of several mercenary regiments of Zaporozhian Cossacks hired by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under Sobieski (crazy troops in their own right, google “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire”, which includes one of the earliest recorded references to “motherf****r”. A timeless rant!
Oh well, let’s post it, anyway. It is too epic. Did it really happen? Opinions vary, but I like to think it did!
Here goes:
Translation from a Polish letter from the leaf of the Sultan of Turkey was written in Chyhyryn by a Cossack in the year of 13 July, first giving the message received, followed by their reply…
AHOI. Sultan the prince the sultan of Turkey, prince of Turkey, of Greece, Macedonia, Babylon, Jerusalem, pasha of Assyria, and of greater and lesser Egypt, king of Alexandria, Armenia and of all the inhabitants of the world, King of Kings, grandson of God, I command you, as a valiant soldier, defender of the peasantry, guardian of the crucified God, great ruler, grandfather of the land, hope and consolation of the busurman [Islamic] peoples, and sorrow and doom for Christians, that you and all men voluntarily surrender.
The same year and the same month from Chyhyryn from the Cossacks to the Sultan.
Sultan, son of the cursed Sultan of Turkey, companion of Satania, hellish abysmal Sultan of Turkey, Greek pedestal, cook of Babylon, armourer of Jerusalem, wheelwright of Assyria, winegrower of greater and lesser Egypt, Alexandrian pig farmer, Armenian archanak, Tatar dog, accursed viper living in the world, thief of Kamenets-Podolsky and all the world, subject of the spider and the scarecrow, bogeyman of the whole world, Turkish district busurman [Muslim], I am equal to the body, slanderer of Satan, whole host of hell, cursed messenger of Satan, enemy of the crucified God and persecutor of his servants, hope and comfort of the busurmen [Muslims], and their downfall and sorrow. We will not yield to you, but we will fight you.
And in another version (there were many circulating on pamphlets, which sadly points at this story being not historic), that early reference:
What the hell kind of knight are you: the devil shits and you and your army eat [it]!
You Alexandrian beerbrewer, Cossack quiver, Podolian hangman, Armenian pig, swine's snout, mare's asshole, butcher's dog! You're not fit to command the sons of Christians, we'll fight you on land and sea, unbaptized brow, fuck your mother!
We don't know the date, we don't have a calendar, but the day with us is the same as with you: kiss our ass!
Back to Vienna.
Sobieski brought 27,000 Polish troops, with 20,000 cavalry and 3,000 Winged Hussars. He started the battle with 70-80,000 troops under his command, against a battle-hardened enemy more than twice or even three times his size…
The battle itself started early, by the Ottomans, who wanted to gain the initiative, and capture Vienna before the relief forces could arrive. But the Duke of Lorraine countered with the Imperial troops and attacked their left flank, slowly advancing in on the main Ottoman force.
The Ottomans, however, held firm, despite taking heavy blows. Meanwhile, the Polish infantry started their advance on the right flank. The Ottomans, however, remained committed to take Vienna, and held some of their elite Janissary and Sipahi regiments back for an attack on the besieged city, even when Mustafa Pasha threw most of his other troops in the counterattack against the Imperial and Polish infantry.
Both the Imperial commander and Sobieski decided to press on, and made important advances. Then, slowly, the Polish cavalry emerged from the hills of the Vienna Forest, slowly, in view of all the infantry and the besieged city. All broke out in loud cheers.
Then, King Sobieski ordered the attack, and charged down in one of the largest cavalry attacks in history, on the already badly hammered Ottomans, with the King at the head of this magnificent charge, amidst his Angels of Death.
The charge broke the Ottoman defenses, tore through their lines, and gave the final blow to the Turks, as the Viennese defenses left their own gates to join the attack, delighted to finally take back the offensive. Within 3 hours, Vienna was saved, the Ottomans and their allies dispersed, and hunted, leaving an incredible baggage train full of riches as plunder and spoil of war.
The Croissant, in France a variety of Viennoiserie (literally a ‘pastry style from Vienna’), which was said to be brought there with Marie Antoinette in 1770, who was born in Vienna, was created to celebrate this very victory over the Ottomans.
This defeat, made possible through the strong leadership skills of King Sobieski and his elite Heavy Cavalry (actually already obsolete at that point, given the advances in artillery, yet absolutely perfect for that one, pivotal battle), was instrumental in saving Europe from further Muslim advances and threats, and marked the beginning of the decline in their power and influence.
Next, we have the mostly unknown but very heroic and vital stance of Poland in the aftermath of World War I.
Despite being pulled back and forth between warring neighbors, the Poles kept their sense of liberty. Even in the early 1900s they remained captive, divided by Russia, Prussia and Austria. With those powers in complete disarray, 1918 proved a turning point, and as the armistice was signed in that train cabin in Compiegne, Jędrzej Moraczewski and his cabinet proclaimed the formation of the new Polish Republic.
With incredible destruction in population, buildings, crops, and economy, caused by ever fluctuating front lines, and disease spreading, the Polish people were jubilant, nonetheless. As Europe tried to make sense of what just had happened, caused by nation states, the Poles where enthusiastically starting to rebuild their own.
The challenges were many.
As historian Adam Zamoyski described:
“One area which reveals in microcosm the difficulties involved was defense. In 1914, the male population had been drafted into three different armies. Not only did each of these have its own identity, structures and operational methods, not to mention language and weaponry, they had also spent the past four years fighting each other. There was also a fourth ‘army’; Polish Legions which had fought alongside the Austrians, been disbanded in 1916, re-formed and then morphed into an underground military organization. Poland thus inherited a number of incompatible former Russian, German and Austrian units, and fundamentally subversive but highly motivated Legionary formations, as well as a pool of soldiers from one or other of the three imperial armies. These were joined in 1919 by the French-uniformed “Blue Army”, consisting of American and Canadian Poles and Polish prisoners of war from the German and Austrian armies on the Western Front. Their armament was equally varied, and supplying each unit with the correct ammunition constituted a major headache.
Yet most of the men were volunteers fired by a determination to put their country back on the map and to keep it there. Nor was there much time to dwell on practical shortcomings. The immediate necessity was to disarm the German troops still occupying most of the area and take control of provinces such as Silesia and Poznania which had been incorporated into the German Empire. Other priorities were to capture the historically Polish cities of Lwów, occupied by Ukrainian units of the Austrian army, and Wilno, taken over by Lithuanian nationalists. And since there were no defined borders, there were armed clashes at every point on the perimeter, particularly in the east.”
One troublesome enemy were the newly formed Bolsheviks. While they had attacked the Tsarist land and power grab in the 1800s, they did not want to give up the Polish territories. Once Lenin defeated the ‘Whites’ by the end of 1919, he started to build up troop strength near the Polish borders, and decided on February 14, 1920, to attack Poland.
The idea was to spread their revolution through all of Europe, now exhausted from such a horrible war, no will to fight any more, and with common people upset with the ruling classes as each nation struggled to rebuild. Attacking Poland was only the first step, Lenin and the Bolsheviks thought. As soon as Germany was reached by the Red Armies, they calculated, the discontent ‘Proletariat’ would rise up against their oppressors, whipped into revolution, and made to side with the Russians, for an easy and decisive take-over of Europe.
But Poland decided to strike first, and Józef Piłsudski, commander-in-Chief, launched a pre-emptive attack on Ukraine, to liberate it from Russian control, and install the Ukrainian leader Ataman Symon Petlura as head of an independent state, friendly to Poland, also shortening the border with Russia by half!
Taking Kiev, however, was a mistake: it gave Lenin the chance to portray the Poles as attacking the Russian Motherland, resulting in a wave of support and volunteers to fight back. Worse, the Western allies saw Ukraine also as integral part of Russia, and accused Piłsudski of adventurism (being tired of war also played a role, no doubt).
The Communist International called on all workers worldwide to boycott any shipment to Poland, depriving them of the arms they tried to buy to re-establish their own Polish army.
Russia counter-attacked, and after some back and forth (including reinforcement by the First Cavalry Army under Budyonny), took back Ukraine. The Poles tried to retreat, losing equipment, men, and worse, morale. Seeing the mutilated corpses of their men and officers, as well as civilians, left by the rampaging cavalry of Budyonny (carrying out revenge on the political and military enemies of the USSR), was shocking, even to troops coming out of WWI.
The Polish army was driven back, but again had their lines broken through, and the Russians, now twice as strong as the Polish army, aimed for Warshaw.
On 4 July, Red Army commander Tukhachevsky released a proclamation telling his troops that they were to bring about “World Revolution” by marching over “the corpse of Poland”, and launched another vicious attack.
An appeal to help to France and Britain was answered by a ‘joint mission of assorted politicians and generals’, and a telegram to Moscow to suggest peace talks. The message was clear: no help was to be expected from the West.
The carefully curated mystique of the ‘unstoppable and unforgiving horde’ sowed panic among soldiers and officers alike, and the constant moves and local attacks made counter-planning almost impossible.
Panic spread in the young country, as Western Europeans countries started to pack up their embassies in Warsaw, leaving before the storm hit.
With his army in shambles, without the will to fight, and a population in panic, unable to support that army, Pilsudski knew he needed a miracle. He maneuvered his troops to avoid a main battle, strengthened Warsaw to draw the Russians to it, created a new army group to protect a western attack, and pulled some veteran troops back.
His hard work was paying off, as he managed to call up over 160,000 volunteers, men and women, from all social layers of the country, inspired by the need of their new country. This infused the tired and broken troops with a new hope and strength. The Warsaw defenses held out against the Russians, and the new morale among the Polish stopped the main weapon that Tukhachevsky had deployed so far: the ability to instill fear. This gave Pilsudski the chance to mount his miracle.
Polish reinforcements gathered, equipped, and sent to the endangered front lines.
With 5 division totaling over 50,000 troops, and 4,000 cavalry, divided in 5 autonomous battle groups, he launched his counter-attack, north, and north-east, to the side and rear of all the Russians arrayed against Warsaw.
Russian troops were completely surprised, and crumbled before the strong attack, but found their retreat cut off by the successive attacks of the other divisions, carrying out a five-pronged attack.
The victory was stunning, a complete surprise. The Russians lost over 100,000 troops, died or captured, and most of their equipment and heavy weaponry. Whole army units fled to East-Prussia, where they ceased to be effective through internment in German prison camps.
Soviet regimental flags captured after their rout.
Fierce fighting brought the Poles back to their starting point, and the Russians agreed to negotiations. Poland was saved! This became known as the ‘Miracle on the Vistula’, in what Lenin called "an enormous defeat" for his forces.
Diaries from many participants of the battle attribute the outcome to the Blessed Virgin Mary citing multiple reasons, including widespread national prayer beforehand and subsequent reports of her appearance on the battlefield.
Again, Poland had saved Europe from doom. (With their leader, Pilsudski, again at the head of cavalry!)
Did I say they did so 3 times?
Forget that. Try 4, when Lech Walesa and Pope John Paul managed to break the Russian will in Poland, which signaled a break in their armor, and Thatcher and Reagan exploited that, to end the USSR completely.
No, they are STILL saving Europe. This time, together with the unflappable Hungarians, by saying NO to the meddling of a leftist EU bureaucracy trying to force immigration on them, and mask mandates and other policies that would cost Hungary and Poland their identity, safety and sovereignty. That war isn’t over yet, but their example and successes are noted, and signal, yet again, that tyranny in Europe will not be tolerated. (And their current position regarding the war in Ukraine? Every Pole I have spoken with about that war, still deeply distrusts the Russians. Who can blame them?)
The spirit of Sobieski lives on, to this day.
All honor to the Poles and to Poland.
Niech Bóg błogosławi Polskę!
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To the blackpillers: never give up. Don’t count on or demand miracles, but counter regardless, however bleack your prospects. No miracle big enough can save those who too soon gave up themselves!
This fight is NOT new, has been won before, and will be won again. In the United States today, just the same. The tides have already shifted, and the enemy is panicking.
And even if you disagree: it doesn’t matter. Never give up. Look at our ancestors, in the face of worse odds, and certain, cruel torture and death awaiting failure: take up your responsibility, and move. Act. Vote. Verify. Spread news and info.
Will your and our story be one forgotten in shame, or, like those I recounted above about the Polish people, one of heroic, stubborn resistance, leading to victory?
That choice is ours. Do we sit and wait, or do we act? Feel the storm coming, feel that tidal wave rolling in. No matter if you’re a worker of the first hour, or of the last hour: all hands on deck! Let’s win a massive victory that will be written about for centuries to come!
All is well.
Viva Poland and Hungary!
Beautiful!