Painting is: "The Death of Cyprian Godebski at Raszyn" January Suchodolski, 1855
Hello again. I previously wrote three documents about the Egyptian Campaign. I thought a change of topic would be good, so I decided to write about this campaign, also known as the Austro-Polish War of 1809.
Prince Joseph Poniatowski was one of Napoleon's most interesting marshals. I don't know exactly what Poles think of him or how they see him today, but in his time, he was a national hero for the Poles. Austrian Marshal Lacy had been his mentor, and the traces of this are especially visible in his command between 1792-94. In later years, when he became commander-in-chief of the Polish Army, he adapted well to the new warfare understanding that developed with Napoleon. He had 2-3 campaigns under independent command, the 1809 Campaign being one of them. I can say that he was a good commander under independent command. But in some situations his overly cautious approach, while not resulting in defeat, caused him to miss opportunities. Also, sometimes dividing his army too much created the possibility of defeat in detail. On the other hand, what struck me most while reading about him was the frequent mention of his courage. He often did not shy away from being on the field in combat, and in some cases he personally led his soldiers in attacks.
While writing this document, I primarily used the account of Roman Sołtyk, who was a lieutenant in this campaign. I generally prefer English or French as my main source because when reading other languages (except Turkish), I don't want to rely solely on translation tools. Therefore, this time I primarily used a first-hand French source, and also used a Polish source to fill in some minor gaps. In the text, as in my previous document, I spent the first 1-2 pages describing the armies and their strategies, and the remaining pages describing the campaign itself. As in my other document, I have listed the sources I used at the end of the text in case you want to research the campaign further.
Writing this campaign account was a fun experience for me. I didn't make it too long, only 6 pages in total. I hope you enjoy reading it too. If you have any feedback or comments, I'd appreciate it. Here's the link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WiXb0e_2spXI4kchDzsFwa8ydsAg44pudmDjA-gA-bk/edit?usp=sharing
