Battle of Raszyn

The first battle of Raszyn, which took place on April 19, 1809, pitted the armies of the Austrian Empire and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw in the context of the wars of the Fifth Coalition, in which Napoleonic Wars, and ended with the defeat of the Austrian army.

The Austrian army, under the command of Archduke Ferdinand, invaded the Grand Duchy of Warsaw in April 1809. Polish troops, commanded by Prince Józef Antoni Poniatowski, resisted the Austrian attack on Warsaw, defeating them at Radzymin and reconquering parts of former Poland, including Krakow and Lviv, with the defeat of the Austrians in the nearby towns of Góra and Grochóv.

For this victory, General Józef Antoni Poniatowski was awarded the "Legion of Honor", an honorary saber and lance.

After the battle

After the Austrian retreat across the marshes, Prince Poniatowski ordered his forces to retreat towards Warsaw. However, since the city's fortifications were in very poor condition and the Saxon expeditionary force was retreating towards their country, Poniatowki decided to leave Warsaw undefended and retreat to the nearby fortresses (especially Modlin and Serock). He was left in the capital with a small troop to resist the enemy who was besieging it, acting as a distraction maneuver for the Austrians, who thus neglected other fronts. During the following weeks, General Henryk Dąbrowski's troops defended Polish territory and besieged the city of Lviv with cavalry. Finally, Poniatowski left only a small force near Warsaw to prevent the Austrians from leaving the capital, and moved with the rest of his forces southward, conquering the city of Kraków.

On October 14, 1809, the Treaty of Schönbrunn was signed between Austria and France, in which it was agreed that the former would lose approximately 50,000 km² of territory, inhabited by more than 1,900,000 people. The territories annexed by the Grand Duchy of Warsaw included the lands of Zamość and Kraków, as well as 50% of the revenue from the Wieliczka salt mines.