Józef Poniatowski
Józef Poniatowski was the nephew of the last king of Poland, commanded the army of the Duchy of Warsaw for Napoleon, was made a marshal of France on the battlefield of Leipzig, and drowned in the Elster three days later covering the retreat after the bridge had been blown with his corps on the wrong side; he is the only foreigner among the marshals and the one every Pole knows. He was born in Vienna in 1763, the son of an Austrian field marshal and the nephew of Stanisław August, served in the Austrian army against the Turks and was wounded, and came to Poland in 1789 to build the army the Four-Year Sejm had voted. He commanded it in the war of 1792 against Russia, won at Zieleńce, and resigned when the king went over to the Russian side. He fought under Kościuszko in 1794 as a volunteer and, after the third partition, lived in Warsaw under Prussia as a private man, which the patriots did not forgive until 1806, when Napoleon arrived and asked him to raise a Polish army. He became minister of war of the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807, and in 1809, when Austria attacked the duchy while Napoleon was busy on the Danube, he gave up Warsaw, marched into Galicia behind the Austrians, took Kraków, and doubled the duchy at the peace. In 1812 he led the Fifth Corps, thirty-six thousand Poles, into Russia, fought at Smolensk and Borodino, and brought a few thousand back. He rebuilt a corps for 1813 and stayed with Napoleon when the Austrians and everyone else advised him to leave. At Leipzig he held the southern suburbs for three days, was made marshal on 16 October, and on the 19th, wounded three times and with the bridge gone, rode his horse into the river and did not come out. His body was found by a fisherman five days later. Napoleon said he had been the true king of Poland. He was buried in the Wawel among the kings in 1817, and the statue Thorvaldsen made of him in Warsaw was destroyed by the Germans in 1944 and recast.
- Lived: 1763 CE – 1813 CE
- Nationality: Polish
- Roles: general, marshal
