After several years of relative quiet, the Crimean Tatars, united after a civil war, began raiding the Polish border in strength in the early 1640s.
[2] In response, Polish military commander, Grand Crown Hetman, Stanisław Koniecpolski, ordered his forces to concentrate near Vinnytsia for 27 December.
[7] Other notable Polish participants in the battle included Marcin Kalinowski, Samuel Korecki, Stefan Czarniecki, Stanisław Potocki, Jan Zamoyski, and Krzysztof Grodzicki.
[12] The battle was the Commonwealth's greatest victory over the Tatars in the first half of the 17th century, and it brought international fame to Koniecpolski, who had not only predicted the time and place of the Tatar attack but had destroyed their forces before they could deploy their usual tactic of splitting their main forces into multiple highly-mobile units (czambuls).
[15][16] He set out his strategic views in a plan titled "Dyskurs o zniesieniu Tatarow krymskich" (Discourse on Destruction of the Crimean Tartars).