Jan Henryk Dombrowski, a Polish general, born at Pierszowice, Aug. 29, 1755, died at Winagora, June 16, 1818. He entered the army under Prince Albert of Saxony in 1770, where he rose to the superior grades and became aide-de-camp to Gen. Bellegarde. The diet of Warsaw having voted for the organization of an army of 100,000 men, and recalled all the Poles then in foreign service, Dom-browski joined the Polish forces commanded by Poniatowski in the campaign against the Russians in 1792, served with distinction in 1793, and took part in the insurrection of 1794 under Kosciuszko, but surrendered after the fall of Warsaw. Having rejected offers from both Russia and Prussia, he accepted a commission from the French directory in 1796 to enroll a Polish legion at Milan, and after serving in the Italian campaigns under Bonaparte, Gouvion Saint-Cyr, and Massena, entered the service of the Cisalpine republic in 1802. In 1806 he joined Napoleon at Berlin, published a proclamation calling upon the Poles to rise, and soon entered Warsaw at the head of two national divisions.

He was wounded in the battle of Friedland, to the favorable issue of which he greatly contributed; in 1809 he fought with Poniatowski against the Austrians; in the Russian campaign of 1812 he commanded a division of the grand army; in 1813 his Poles fought bravely in Germany, particularly at Leipsic; and on the creation of the kingdom of Poland by the czar Alexander he was raised to the rank of general of cavalry and senator palatine. He soon after retired to his estates at Winagora, in the grand duchy of Posen, where he occupied himself with arranging his historical memoirs. He bequeathed his manuscripts, together with his library and collection of antiquities, to the society of the friends of science at Warsaw.