The Battle of Warsaw which took place on 28-30 July 1656, between armies of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the one side and of Sweden and Brandenburg on the other, was an important battle of the Northern Wars. More specifically it was a battle of the war between Poland and Sweden in years 1655-1660, a period also known as The Deluge. In it an inferior Swedish-Brandenburg force gained a famous victory over the Polish-Lithuanian forces, though in the long term the victory achieved little. Polish-Lithuanian losses were not significant, and even though Swedish forces were able to reoccupy Warsaw, they had to abandon it soon afterward.
The Polish-Lithuanian forces, commanded by king John II Casimir, consisted of about 25,000 regulars, 2,000 Tatars and 10-13,000 from the noble levy (pol. pospolite ruszenie), alltogether about 40,000 men of which only about 4,500 were infantry and the rest cavalry.
The allied army of Sweden and Brandenburg, commanded by king Charles X of Sweden, was only 18,000 strong. It had 12,500 cavalry and only 5,500 infantry, which was unusual for the Swedes who typically relied on their excellent infantry forces for victory. John Casimir ferried his army across the Vistula and met the approaching allied force on the right bank, about 5 km to the north of the suburb of Praga. On the first day the allies mounted a conventional frontal assault which was not successful. The battle was decided on the second day by a daring manouver of the highly mobile allied army, which wheeled around Polish-Lithuanian right flank and consolidated a new position which made the situation of their opponents untenable. A countercharge by Commonwealth cavalry was not strong enough to break the allied force and rescue the situation. John II Casimir decided that the battle was lost and on the third day withdrew his army across the single bridge over the Vistula, as his cavalry escaped north and south along the river.
