Lisowczycy - Epilogue

Epilogue

After the conflict with the Ottomans was settled, many Lisowczycy, then under the command of Stanisław Stroynowski, were taken into German employment during the mayhem of the Thirty Years' War, mostly in support of the Roman Catholic Emperor, against his Protestant enemies. Their indiscipline and pillaging became legendary, and they devastated the nearby German lands of the Holy Roman Empire, especially Silesia. The local population often believed it was being attacked by Tatar hordes or non-European barbarians. Eventually, after the French declined to employ Lisowczycy mercenaries, and other sides of the conflict turned them down as well, in 1622 Stroynowski decided to officially disband the unit and return to the Commonwealth.

However, the Lisowczycy proved to be a pestilence wherever they went, and soon most of its members formed bandit groups, pillaging the Commonwealth and German countryside and burning down the town of Radomsko. Condemned by the szlachta and by many sejmiks, they were increasingly hunted down by local government forces and militias. Stroynowski's group was destroyed in 1624, and he himself was executed two years later.

The last time that companies using the Lisowczycy name took part in a major war was during the late 1620s, when they were temporarily reformed to fight in Poland's continuing conflict against the Swedes in Polish Prussia, yet another stage of the Polish-Swedish War - the same conflict that set Aleksander Lisowski on the path to forming the unit that was to bear his name. These Lisowczycy were finally disbanded by an act of the Sejm, in 1636.

Even after the formation was disbanded, its members were respected (or at least, feared) even beyond the Commonwealth. Soon, their atrocities were forgotten and their exploits as the defenders of the Commonwealth and faith against the Orthodox, Protestants and Muslims turned them into a legend which lives on to this day.