The ancestral units to the regiment were created mainly as means of defending the Polish interest and the interest of the ethnic Poles living in Kresy at the end of World War I. Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Belarusians, and even Anarchists competed for the sovereignty over the area.

The 13th Regiment was formed out of the cavalry units of the Lithuanian and Belarusian Self-Defence on December 27, 1918, on the estate of a Mr. Pośpieszek.

On December 28, the regiment was moved to the garrison at Vilnius and was stationed in the barracks in the Antokol district.

It became officially part of the Polish Armed Forces in June 1919, receiving its name and number.

The regiment was nationally famous because its commander, Major Władysław Dąbrowski, was a Zagończyk [pl].

[5] On June 29, 1919, in Vilnius, General Edward Rydz-Śmigły handed over the regiment's new banner to a small delegation from a combat area.

After a failed attempt at seizing territory in Ukraine beyond Kiev, many soldiers from the disbanded Tatar Uhlan Regiment, (named after Colonel Mustafa Achmatowicz, a renowned eighteenth-century Lithuanian Tatar cavalryman), joined the "Wilno Regiment".

In late 1921, the regiment patrolled the Polish border with Lithuania and was stationed for a brief period in Głębokie, at present Hlybokaye in Belarus.

The unit was led for a short time by Captain Bazyli Marcisz and podpułkownik Jan Tarnowski [pl].

During the symbolic ceremony of the burial of the heart of Marshal Józef Piłsudski in the Rasos cemetery in Vilnius, a detail[clarification needed] from the 1st Tatar Squadron fired a three-volley salute.

Uniforms were adorned with miniature banners, pink in colour, with a slim cornflower-coloured stripe in the middle.

On September 9 and 10, the brigade lost many men and much equipment while retreating across the Vistula river near Maciejowice.

The largest remnant of the regiment became part of the Independent Operational Group Polesie under the command of Major General Franciszek Kleeberg.