Warka

A crossing, crafts and beer

Warka’s position on the Pilica encouraged a market town, supported by the river crossing, transport routes and productive farmland. It flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, particularly through shoemaking and brewing. In 1478 Duke Bolesław V granted Warsaw’s councillors a privilege concerning exclusive sales of Warka beer. Seven churches were recorded in the sixteenth century. Its seventeenth-century wartime episodes therefore affected an established craft town. The museum also notes that the origin of Warka’s name remains uncertain¹.

During the Deluge

After taking Warsaw in 1655 the Swedes occupied the castles in the vicinity, including Nieporęt, Czersk, Osieck and Warka, none of which had a garrison².

In April 1656 the corps of Frederick, Margrave of Baden, which had been marching to the aid of Charles X Gustav near Sandomierz, fell back through Warka. The margrave crossed the Pilica, broke down the bridge behind him and halted at Warka, where he waited for the garrison from Radom³. Czarniecki forded the swollen river, sent detachments towards Warka and Czersk and caught up with the Swedes on their march to Czersk³ (Battle of Warka (1656)). According to the museum in Warka, the decisive clash took place on the plain north of the town, near the village of Piaseczno⁴. After the battle Czarniecki wrote to the queen from Warka on 9 April, and Sokolnicki from Czersk on 8 April⁵.

In The Deluge (Potop) Warka appears to Czarniecki's army as a ruin:

W końcu Warka, a raczej jej zgliszcza, bo miasto przed sześciu laty spłonęło było niemal ze szczętem, ukazały się na widnokręgu.

Henryk Sienkiewicz, The Deluge (Potop)⁶

(Our translation: "At last Warka, or rather its ruins, for the town had burned down almost entirely six years before, appeared on the horizon.")

Today

The town commemorates the battle and its victor. In 1956, on the 300th anniversary of the battle, the market square was named after Stefan Czarniecki, and on 24 August 2001 the modernised bridge over the Pilica was named after the hetman. In 2013 an equestrian statue of Czarniecki by Tomasz Górnicki was erected in the market square⁴.

The market changed location

Today’s Stefan Czarniecki Square was not Warka’s first market. The museum identifies earlier centres in Stara Warka and beside the vanished St Anne’s Church; the date of relocation remains uncertain. The present Classical town hall dates from the first quarter of the nineteenth century, following an earlier wooden civic building. The square preserves the battle’s memory, but its buildings do not recreate Warka in 1656. Memorial sites should be distinguished from the historical crossing and battlefield⁷.