The kingdom of Poland was torn apart by its neighbours in three deals. 1772, 1793, and 1795 were the dates when Austria, Prussia and Russia took their slices. These handbooks deal with the extremely colourful army that upheld the kingdom until that diplomatic coup. As Poland was an extremely large country by European standards the army was diverse, and an interesting field of study. This first partition of the the study covers those troops raised by the Royal government. The map is quite perfunctory, but the plates are attractive and the diversity of equipment is formidable. ( )

This is one of the better Osprey titles. The text is great. It explains the organization of the Polish army during this period. It gives suitable attention to the various forms of cavalry from winged hussars to cossacks. It also leaves some space for the foot and artillery in Polish units. I'm less wild about the mix of illustrations. While they are beautiful, as one should expect from this series, my personal feeling is they aren't as varied as they could be--and thus are less useful than they could be. ( )