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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Uhlan

Uhlan \Uh"lan\, n. [G. uhlan, Pol. ulan, hulan, from Turk. ogl[=a]n a youth, lad; of Tartar origin.] [Written also ulan, and formerly hulan.]

  1. One of a certain description of militia among the Tartars.

  2. (Mil.) One of a kind of light cavalry of Tartaric origin, first introduced into European armies in Poland. They are armed with lances, pistols, and sabers, and are employed chiefly as skirmishers.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
uhlan

type of cavalryman, 1753, from German Uhlan, from Polish ułan "a lancer," from Turkish oghlan "a youth." For sense evolution, compare infantry.

Wiktionary
uhlan

n. (context historical English) A lancer, a soldier armed with a lance in a former light cavalry unit of the Polish, Prussian/German, Austrian, and Russian armies.

Wikipedia
Uhlan

Uhlans (in Polish: "Ułan"; in ; "Ulan" in German) were Polish and Lithuanian light cavalry armed with lances, sabres and pistols. The title was later used by lancer regiments in the Russian, Prussian, and Austrian armies.

Uhlans typically wore a double-breasted jacket ( kurtka) with a coloured panel (plastron) at the front, a coloured sash, and a square-topped Polish lancer cap ( rogatywka, also spelt chapka, chapska or schapska). This cap or cavalry helmet was derived from a traditional design of Polish cap, made more formal and stylised for military use. Their lances usually had small, swallow-tailed flags (known as the lance pennon) just below the spearhead.

Usage examples of "uhlan".

Branicki was killed, his Uhlans began to ride about the town swearing to avenge their colonel, and to slaughter you.

Uhlans, and had made out my pardon, so I felt bound to go and thank him.

Nearer and nearer in disorderly crowds came the Uhlans and the French dragoons pursuing them.

Then they all turn into windmills: the monks, the knights, nuns, couriers and lansquenets, the Prussian grenadiers and Natzmer uhlans, the Merovingians and Carolingians, and in between, popping like weasels, our midgets.

In whose brain was it that the legend grew Of Maenads shrieking in this avenue, Of watch-fires burning, Famine standing guard, Of long-speared Uhlans in that palace-yard!

This officer is one of the few survivors of a regiment of Austrian volunteers, uhlans, two squadrons of which he himself commanded.

The regiment of Haller hussars and two of volunteer uhlans were almost destroyed in that terrible charge.

The volunteer uhlans of the Kaiser regiment had already given up the idea of breaking through the square formed by the battalion, in the centre of which stood Prince Humbert of Savoy, when they were suddenly charged and literally cut to pieces by the Alessandria light cavalry, in spite of the long lances they carried.

When the uhlans got near the colonel, and when they had seen him lying down in agony, they all planted their lances in his body.

Still these are facts, and no one will ever dare to deny them from Verona and Vienna, for they are known as much as it was known and seen that the uhlans and many of the Austrian soldiers were drunk when they began fighting, and that alighting from the trains they were provided with their rations and with rum, and that they fought without their haversacks.

In the afternoon of the day following the departure of the French troops, a number of uhlans, coming no one knew whence, passed rapidly through the town.

V The next morning we unexpectedly fell on an outpost of uhlans four leagues away.

Do you know who killed the two Uhlans who were found this morning near Calvaire?

About an hour later he noticed two more Uhlans who were returning home, side by side.

The moving object suddenly came nearer, and twelve Uhlans were seen approaching at a gallop, one behind the other, having lost their way in the darkness.