Siege of the Starzec River

Part of Ostryanyn Uprising

Date	June 22 – August 8, 1638
Location	Hradyzk, Ukraine
Result	Polish–Lithuanian victory

Belligerents

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

Cossacks

Commanders and leaders

Mikołaj Potocki

Stanisław Potocki

Dmytro Hunia

Strength

8,000
15 artillery

12,000

The siege of the Starzec River was a siege of the Cossack rebel camp and camp led by Dmytro Hunia, conducted between June 22 and August 8, 1638, during the Ostryanyn uprising, by Crown troops led by Field Hetman of the Crown Mikołaj Potocki and the Voivode of Podolia Stanisław Rewera Potocki.

Siege

The Cossack rebels, supported by the local peasants for the previous months, had very skillfully prepared a camp with a wagon train based on the banks of the Dnieper, marshes and marshy meadows. Such a prepared place destroyed the chances of a charge by the Polish cavalry and had to mean a siege and shelling of the camp with cannons. Only small horse skirmishes were fought with the Cossacks making raids from the camp . At the end of July, the Polish cavalry defeated a two thousand strong Cossack unit under the command of Yakonenko, trying to break through to the wagon train. This decided the fate of the Cossack camp.

The siege ended with the capture of the Cossack camp on August 8. The leaders of the rebellion were captured on the orders of Hetman Mikołaj Potocki, and groups of peasants and the remnants of the Cossacks were released, but upon their return, the local gentry units murdered most of the rebels, remembering the rapes and destruction carried out by the rebels earlier.

References

^ Serczyk, Władysław A. (1984). Na dalekiej Ukrainie: dzieje kozaczyzny do 1648 roku (Wyd. 1 ed.). Kraków: Wydawn. Literackie. ISBN 978-83-08-01214-7.
^ Władysław Konopczyński: Dzieje Polski nowożytnej, tom I, wydanie I, Warszawa 1936, wiele wznowień.
Borowiak, Albert (2010). Powstanie kozackie 1638. Bitwy / Taktyka. Zabrze: Wydawnictwo Inforteditions. ISBN 978-83-89943-53-8.

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