Qualla: Battle of Kircholm

Battle of Kircholm: Introduction

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Philipp Hertzog, CC BY-SA 3.0. Three to one. That was the math facing Jan Karol Chodkiewicz at dawn on 17 September 1605, looking up the slope at the Swedish army of King Charles IX drawn up on a ridge near the small Livonian town of Kircholm — modern Salaspils, eighteen kilometers southeast of Riga. The Swedes had nearly 11,000 men and eleven cannons. Chodkiewicz had 1,000 infantry, 2,600 cavalry, and five guns. The Polish Crown had refused to fund the campaign; Chodkiewicz had pledged his own fortune to pay his soldiers' wages. His men had not slept properly in days. By noon, what remained of the Swedish army would be running for the Daugava River, drowning by the hundreds as they tried to cross. The Swedes had lost between five thousand and eight thousand killed. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had lost about a hundred. The whole thing took half an hour.

Read more: Battle of Kircholm on Qualla

Image: Philipp Hertzog | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Kircholm: The hetman who paid his own soldiers

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit January Suchodolski, Public domain. Jan Karol Chodkiewicz held the title Great Hetman of Lithuania — supreme commander of the Grand Duchy's armed forces — and he had inherited the kind of structural problem that destroyed European armies of the period. The Sejm, the Polish parliament, had voted no funds for the def...

Read more: Battle of Kircholm on Qualla

Image: January Suchodolski | Public domain

Battle of Kircholm: A morning march in the rain

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adamklimowski, CC BY-SA 4.0. Charles IX had brought a modern force, by the standards of the day. His infantry were drawn up in seven or eight independent squares — pikemen in the center, musketeers at the corners — arranged in a checkerboard with intersecting fields of fire. Cavalry from Sweden, Germany, and...

Read more: Battle of Kircholm on Qualla

Image: Adamklimowski | CC BY-SA 4.0

Battle of Kircholm: The feint

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wojciech Kossak, Public domain. Chodkiewicz spent hours doing nothing. He sent out light cavalry to skirmish, drawing scattered fire. He let the Swedes look down at his obviously inferior numbers and grow confident. Then, at the moment he chose, his entire line began to retreat — slowly at first, then faster, i...

Read more: Battle of Kircholm on Qualla

Image: Wojciech Kossak | Public domain

Battle of Kircholm: What lances do to running men

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Metrophil, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Swedish infantry, exposed in the center after their cavalry collapsed, faced something almost no European army of the period could withstand: hussar lances closing at a gallop into formed but disordered ranks. The squares broke. The killing happened mostly in the retreat — th...

Read more: Battle of Kircholm on Qualla

Image: Metrophil | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Kircholm: A victory that could not be exploited

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrijko Z., CC BY-SA 4.0. Charles IX abandoned the siege of Riga and sailed back across the Baltic, surrendering control of northern Latvia and Estonia. It was one of the most complete tactical victories of the seventeenth century. And the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth could not capitalize on a single bi...

Read more: Battle of Kircholm on Qualla

Image: Andrijko Z. | CC BY-SA 4.0