CHODKIEWICZ, JAN KAROL (1560-1621), Polish gen eral. In 1599 he was appointed starosta of Samogitia, and in 1600 acting commander-in-chief of Lithuania. In the war against Swe den for the possession of Livonia he repulsed the duke of Suder mania, afterwards Charles IX., from Riga, and in 1604 captured Dorpat. At Kirkholm (Aug. 27, 1605) he annihilated a large Swedish army; but he was hampered always by the Polish diet which denied him adequate supplies, and after helping to defeat the rebels in Poland and to relieve Riga when the Swedes again invaded Livonia, he was sent against Moscow with an army which mutinied for lack of pay and was compelled to retreat to Smolensk. On being reinforced by Prince Wladislaus, however, he took the fortress of Drohobu in 1617, and on the conclusion of the Mus covite war by the treaty of Deulina he was sent to defend the southern frontier against the Turks. He died on Sept. 24, 1621, after he had forced the Ottoman army under the Sultan Osman, to raise the siege of Khotin.
See Adam Stanislaw Naruszewicz, Life of J. K. Chodkiewicz (Pol.) 4th ed. (Cracow, 1857-58) ; Lukasz Golebiowski, The Moral Side of J. K. Chodkiewicz as indicated by his Letters (Pol.) (Warsaw, 1854).