definition for: #WingedHussars

The winged hussars, or Polish Hussars, were one of the main types of the cavalry in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth between the 16th and 18th centuries. When this cavalry type was first introduced by the Serbian and Hungarian mercenary horsemen at the beginning of the 16th century, they served as light cavalry banners in the Polish army; by the second half of the 16th century and after Stephen Báthory's reforms, hussars had been transformed into heavily armored shock cavalry. Until the reforms of the 1770s, the husaria banners were considered the elite of the Polish cavalry. They reached a milestone at the Battle of Vienna in 1683, a battle most recently highlighted in the novel THE BOY WHO WANTED WINGS: LOVE IN THE TIME OF WAR.