Stefan Czarniecki was a 17th-century hetman (military commander), famous for his role in driving the Swedish army out of Poland after an occupation that had left the country in ruins and is remembered by Poles as the Deluge. With the outbreak of a Dano-Swedish War, he continued his fight against Sweden in Denmark, from where he "returned across the sea" to fight the invaders alongside the king who was then at the Royal Castle in Poznań. In the same castle, Józef Wybicki, started his career as a lawyer (in 1765). Kościuszko, mentioned in a stanza now missing from the anthem, became a hero of the American Revolutionary War before coming back to Poland to defend his native country from Russia in the war of 1792 and a national uprising he led in 1794. One of his major victories during the uprising was the Battle of Racławice where the result was partly due to Polish peasants armed with scythes. Alongside the scythes, the song mentioned other types of weaponry, traditionally used by the Polish "szlachta", or nobility: the sabre, known in Polish as "szabla", and the backsword.