Jan Karol Chodkiewicz

Jan Karol Chodkiewicz
Painting by Leon Kapliński
Coat of arms	Chodkiewicz coat of arms
Spouse(s)	Zofia Mielecka Anna Alojza Ostrogska
Issue
Zofia Mielecka Hieronim Chodkiewicz Anna Scholastyka Chodkiewicz
Noble family	Chodkiewicz
Father	Ivan Hieronimowicz Chodkiewicz
Mother	Krystyna Zborowska
Born	1560 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Died	September 24, 1621 (aged 60–61) Chocim

Jan Karol Chodkiewicz (c. 1560 – September 24, 1621) (Belarusian: Ян Караль Хадкевіч, Jan Karal Chadkievič, Lithuanian: Jonas Karolis Chodkevičius) was a famous military commander of the Polish-Lithuanian army (from 1601 Field Hetman of Lithuania, from 1605 Grand Hetman of Lithuania) and one of the most prominent noblemen of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Biography

He was the son of Jan Hieronimowicz Chodkiewicz, Ruthenian rooted castellan of Vilnius and Krystyna Zborowska, daughter of famous Polish aristocratic family from Wielkopolska. After being educated at Vilnius University he went abroad to learn the science of war, fighting in Spanish service under Alva, and also under Maurice of Nassau. In 1593 he married the wealthy Zofia Mielecka, by whom he had one son who predeceased him. His first military service in Poland was against the Nalyvaiko Cossack uprising as lieutenant to hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski, and he subsequently assisted hetman Jan Zamoyski in his victorious Wallachian campaign.

Honours and dignities were now showered upon him. In 1599 he was appointed the Elder of Samogitia, and in 1601 Field Hetman (commander-in-chief) of the Lithuanian army.

Jan Karol Chodkiewicz

Chodkiewicz's first claim to fame were his victories in 1600 during the Moldavian Magnate Wars, where he defeated Turks and their allies, serving under the command of the Polish Chancellor and Hetman Jan Zamoyski. A year later, in 1601, he accompanied Zamoyski north, to Latvia, where he commanded Lithuanian army in a victorious battle of Kokenhausen in the war against Sweden for possession of Livonia. He was appointed acting commander in chief of Lithuania after Zamoyski's return to Poland in 1602. Chodkiewicz, despite inadequate supplies and little support from the Commonwealth Sejm (parliament) and King Sigismund III, brilliantly distinguished himself, capturing fortress after fortress and repulsing the duke of Södermanland, afterwards Charles IX, from Riga. In 1604 he captured Dorpat (Tartu), defeated the Swedish generals at Biały Kamień in 1604, and was rewarded with the rank of Grand Hetman (supreme commander) of Lithuania's army. Criminally neglected by the diet, which turned a deaf ear to all his requests for reinforcements and for supplies and money to pay his soldiers, Chodkiewicz nevertheless more than held his own against the Swedes. His crowning achievement was the great victory near the Dvina River in the Battle of Kircholm (modern Salaspils, Latvia) on September 27, 1605, when with barely 4000 troops, mostly the famous heavy hussars, he annihilated a threefold larger Swedish army; for which feat he received letters of congratulation from the Pope, all the Catholic potentates of Europe, and even the sultan of Turkey and the shah of Persia.

Yet this great victory was virtually fruitless, owing to the domestic dissensions which prevailed in the Commonwealth during the following five years. Chodkiewicz's own army, unpaid for years, abandoned him en masse in order to plunder the estates of their political opponents, leaving the hetman to carry on the war as best as he could with a handful of mercenaries paid out of the pockets of himself and his friends. Chodkiewicz was one of the few magnates who remained loyal to the king, and after helping to defeat the Sandomierz rebellion (rokosz) against the Grand Duke of Lithuania and Polish king in 1606-1607, a fresh invasion of Livonia by the Swedes recalled him thither, and in 1609 once more he relieved Riga besides capturing Pernau.

Jan Karol Chodkiewicz painted by Juliusz Kossak

Meanwhile the war with Russia broke out (the Dimitriad wars), and Chodkiewicz was sent against Moscow with an army of 2,000. Moreover, the diet neglected to pay for the maintenance even of this paltry 2,000, with the result, that they mutinied and compelled their leader to retreat through the heart of Russia to Smolensk. Not till the crown prince, Władysław arrived with tardy reinforcements did the war assume a different character, Chodkiewicz opening a new career of victory by taking the fortress of Dorogobuzh in 1617. During that campaign, among many officers under Chodkiewicz's command, was future hetman, Stanisław Koniecpolski.

Jan Karol Chodkiewicz (in red) at Chocim, 1621

The Dimitriads had no sooner been ended by the treaty of Deulino than Chodkiewicz was hastily dispatched southwards to defend the southern frontier against the Turks, who after their victory at the Cecora had high hopes of conquering Poland altogether. An army of 160,000 Turkish veterans led by Sultan Osman II in person advanced from Adrianople towards the Polish frontier, but Chodkiewicz crossed the Dnieper in September 1621 and entrenched himself in the fortress of Chocim right in the path of the Ottoman advance. During the battle of Chocim for a whole month the Commonwealth hetman resisted the sultan's 200-thousand army, repelling all its assaults till the first fall of autumn snow compelled Osman to withdraw his diminished forces. But the cost of victory was dearly paid for by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. A few days before the siege was raised the aged Grand Hetman died in the fortress on September 24, 1621.

Ancestry

Anna of Riazan

Fyodor Bielski

Chodko Jurewicz

Jaroslav Holwczynski

Jaunuta Bielska

Ivan Chodkiewicz

Elzbieta Hlebowiczowna

Melchior Szemet

Wasylissa Holowczynska

Aleksander Chodkiewicz

Anna Szemetowna

Hieronim Chodkiewicz

Krystyna Zborowska

Jan Hieronimowicz Chodkiewicz

Jan Karol Chodkiewicz

Bibliography

• (Polish)Korrespondencye Jana Karola Chodkiewicza poprzedzone opisem rękopismów z archiwum radziwiłłowskiego, znajdujących się w Bibliotece Ordynacyi Krasińskich połączonej z Muzeum Konstantego Świdzińskiego ("Corespondences of Jan Karol Chodkiewicz") Władysław Chomętowski, 1875
• (Polish)Leszek Podhorecki "Jan Karol Chodkiewicz 1560-1621", MON, Warszawa 1982 ISBN 83-11-06707-4
• (Polish)Wanda Więckowska-Mitzner "Karol Chodkiewicz", Książka i Wiedza, Warszawa 1965
• (Polish)Tomasz Bohun "Moskwa 1612", Bellona 2005, ISBN 9788311106444
• (Polish)Zygmunt Boras "Poczet hetmanów polskich i litewskich",

See also

• Lithuanian nobility

References

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Chodkiewicz, Jan Karol". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.