The Military Order Of The Duchy Of Warsaw

Time Period: Pre-WW1
Year of Institution: 1811-1814
Country: Poland (Duchy of Warsaw)

The Military Order Of The Duchy Of Warsaw 1811-1814 is a military medal of the Duchy of Warsaw.

The Duchy of Warsaw, also known as Napoleonic Poland, was a Polish client state of the French Empire established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807, during the Napoleonic Wars. It comprised the ethnically Polish lands ceded to France by Prussia under the terms of the Treaties of Tilsit. It was the first attempt to re-establish Poland as a sovereign state after the 18th-century partitions and covered the central and south-eastern parts of present-day Poland. The duchy was held in personal union by Napoleon’s ally, Frederick Augustus I of Saxony, who became the Duke of Warsaw and remained a legitimate candidate for the Polish throne.

The duchy’s armed forces were completely under French control via its war minister, Prince Józef Poniatowski, who was also a Marshal of France. The duchy was heavily militarized, bordered as it was by Prussia, the Austrian Empire, and Russia, and it was to be a significant source for troops in various campaigns of Napoleon. The duchy’s army, initially consisting of 30,000 of regular soldiers, were to rise to over 60,000 in 1810, and by the time of Napoleon’s campaign in Russia in 1812, its army totalled almost 120,000 troops (out of a total population of some 4.3 million people).