The Swedes achieved a tactical victory in that they escaped destruction by the Poles, who were unable to get to the Swedish army entrenched behind the Welnianka River, and various ditches and swamps.

In the spring of 1656, Hetmans Stefan Czarniecki and Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski were sent with their forces to Greater Poland, in order to support anti-Swedish insurrection, which had begun there.

King Charles X Gustav, who had just managed to escape encirclement in the confluence of the Vistula and the San river, decided to head to Greater Poland, with 10,000 soldiers.

The King himself left with 2,000 soldiers towards the besieged Gdańsk, while the remaining 8,000 under Gustav' brother, Adolph John I, Count Palatine of Kleeburg, continued to chase the Poles.

When news of Charles Gustav's departure to Royal Prussia reached Polish commandants, they decided to face the Swedes in an open field.

According to the battle plan of Czarniecki, two Polish cavalry regiments (under Mariusz Stanislaw Jaskolski and Jacek Szemberk) were to engage the Swedes on a dike across a swampy stream called Welnianka, near the village of Brzozogaj.