Origins and creation
When the Grande Armée crossed the Niemen in June 1812, part of the Lithuanian population greeted it with enthusiasm, seeing in the Emperor a possible guarantor of their future against Russia. Napoleon meant to exploit the moment: several bodies of troops were raised in the former lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and one of them entered the Guard.
On 5 July 1812 a decree created a third regiment of lancers of the Imperial Guard, in the tradition of the Polish light horse. Command fell that same day to Brigadier General Jan Konopka, until then major of the 1st Polish Lancers of the Guard. Two senior officers, Kazimierz Tański and Józef Chłusowicz, assisted him from 1 and 3 August.
The unit had no time to take root. It was born in the field, at the pace of events in Russia, and its brief existence hung entirely on that first year of war.
Organisation and strength
On paper the regiment numbered 1,280 men, 62 officers and 1,218 troopers divided into five squadrons of two companies. In practice only four squadrons were raised, two of them at Warsaw and two at Grodno.
Recruitment was meant to be aristocratic. Volunteers had to equip themselves at their own expense, uniform and horse included, and the decree set the height of mounts between four feet six and four feet nine inches. Pay was that of the 2nd Lancers of the Guard. Napoleon followed the matter closely: on 29 September 1812 he wrote to Maret that the colonel had apparently obtained 1,200 horses, and had him ordered to send five hundred on the march as soon as they were available. According to the sources, the regiment probably never received an eagle.
During the campaign it was attached to the 7th Corps, the Saxon corps of the Grande Armée, operating on the southern flank of the deployment.
Uniform, arms and recruitment
The volunteers came from landowning families, aged eighteen to forty. Guy Dempsey notes that Polish landowners and sons of landowners were admitted without Lithuanian origin being required; many recruits were students of the University of Vilnius, eager to show their attachment to the Emperor.
In a country at war a clothing store could not be opened. Lieutenant Cichocki, in charge of supply, dealt along the road with the inhabitants of the villages passed through. The dress followed that of the 1st Polish Lancers: crimson czapka with copper plate and white plume, blue kurtka with crimson lapels, differing in detail by brass or gilt buttons and yellow or gold piping. The historian Alain Pigeard sees it as probably the finest of all the regiments raised in Lithuania, well mounted and dressed with great luxury.
That splendour was part of the corps' identity: it spoke as much of its troopers' social rank as of their wish to be recognised as soldiers of the Guard.
Deeds of arms
In October 1812, at Grodno, General Konopka received orders to lead two squadrons to Minsk. Rather than take the most direct route, he decided to halt at Slonim, where his family owned a residence. The lancers were quartered there for several days, despite the reservations of Major Tański, whom Konopka sent back to Grodno.
On the night of 19 October, Russian troops under General Eufemiusz Czaplic, of Admiral Chichagov's army corps, surprised the cantonment. Resistance was fierce, as heavy losses among the officers attest, but the regiment was beaten. Konopka, wounded, was captured with 55 officers and non-commissioned officers, five trumpeters and 186 light horsemen; the rest were killed or wounded. The sources disagree on the total: Paul Lindsay Dawson counts 14 officers and 253 troopers taken prisoner, Dempsey 249 prisoners including 14 officers. The corps' papers and accounts were lost, along with considerable equipment.
The two other squadrons, formed at Grodno under Major Tański, and the survivors of Slonim now made up the whole regiment, reduced to about five hundred men. In January 1813 sixty Lithuanian gendarmes reinforced it.
Legacy and memory
The 3rd Lancers thus knew neither a great pitched battle nor a famous charge. It was officially dissolved on 22 March 1813, its elements being transferred to the 1st Lancers of the Guard, though the merger took effect only on 11 April.
Its story sheds light on a lesser-known side of 1812: Napoleon's effort to mobilise Lithuania, and the fragility of that support once the army fell back. It also recalls that an elite unit can be destroyed not in the fire of a battle but by an imprudent halt behind the front.
