Among many dramatic events of the Northern War, the battle of Warsaw, which took place in the heat of the summer on 28th–30th July (New Style) 1656, is still being described and discussed. There is a number of reasons why the said event is so absorbing both for the historians and amateurs: this was a battle of daring manoeuvres and of exotic units, which used a variety of tactics and fought in difficult terrain. Many nations evoked later the memory of the struggle. August Riese believed that this was the battle “where banners of Prussia received the first laurel of glory” and the very name of “Brandenburg” was introduced to the history of the world.

There are numerous books and articles on this fight, yet the work that in my opinion should occupy the first place is a book by Mirosław Nagielski Warszawa 1656, which constitutes an in-depth study of the battle based on the archival research and synthesis of earlier investigations. For the English-speaking audience the best introduction to the circumstances of the fight is the description made by Robert I. Frost.

In the summer of 1656 the situation was not beneficial to the Swedish side. Although King Charles Gustav was supported by the new ally – the Elector of Brandenburg and his army, the guerrilla-war weakened the Swedes significantly. In contradistinction to the Poles, they suffered a great loss while replenishing depleted regiments.

The Polish-Lithuanian army consisted of about 40,000 soldiers, including the Tatars auxiliary forces of about 2,000 warriors. As it turned out later, during the fight, probably the main problem of the said army was its insufficient number of elite, heavy cavalry troops – hussars, which appears to be downright bizarre since the Polish- Lithuanian army was renowned for the abundance of horse and the skilled use of such troops in the battles. However, the long-term war destroyed the units which were most expensive to maintain – the heavy cavalry.