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The Polish-Swedish Wars were two wars fought between Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden between 1600 and 1629. The first stage was the Polish-Sweden War of 1600-1611 and the second stage was the Polish-Sweden War of 1617-1629. It was followed by the Northern Wars in 1655-1660.
Polish-Sweden War of 1600-1611
The conflict beteen Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden can trace its roots to the War against Sigismund, where Sigismund III, at one time king of both the Commonwealth and Sweden, lost the throne of Sweden during the civil war.
In 1601 in the war against Sweden for possession of Livonia, Polish hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz and chancellor [[Jan Zamoyski] were sent to Lithuania to fight the Swedish incursion. Chodkiewicz he was appointed acting commander in chief of Lithuania after Zamoyski's return to Crown 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 Sudermannia, afterwards Charles IX, from Riga. In 1604 he captured Dorpat (Tartu), twice defeated the Swedish generals at Bialy Kamien and near Weissenstein in 1604, and was rewarded with the grand hetman baton of Lithuania. 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 Dvina River in the Battle of Kircholm (Salaspils) on September 27th, 1605, when with barely 5000 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 from the sultan of Turkey and the shah of Persia.
Yet this great victory was absolutely 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 at last en masse in order to plunder the estates of their political opponents, leaving the hetman to carry on the war as best 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 rebels (rokosz) in 1606-1607 in Poland 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 Julisz Kossak To expand and adapt. Work in progress.
Polish-Sweden War of 1617-1629
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