Lwów Eagles

Lwów Eaglets (Polish: Orlęta Lwowskie) is a term of affection applied to the Polish teenagers who defended the city of Lwów (Ukrainian: L'viv) in Eastern Galicia, during the Polish-Ukrainian War (1918–1919).

The city now known as the Ukrainian Lviv (Polish: Lwów) was before the breakdown of the Austro-Hungarian empire known as Lemberg, the capital of one of the Habsburg dominions, namely the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. Poles were the prevailing ethnic group in the province overall, but in the eastern Galician territories Ukrainians were a majority (65%), and Poles a significant minority (22%) dominating the cities along with Jews. In Lemberg, according to the Austrian census of 1910, 51% of the city's population were Roman Catholics, 28% Jews, and 19% Ukrainian Greek Catholics. 86% of the city's population spoke Polish and 11% Ukrainian.

In the final days of the collapsing Habsburg empire, on November 1, 1918, Ukrainian soldiers from Austrian army units occupied Lemberg's public buildings and military depots, raised Ukrainian flags throughout the city and proclaimed the birth of a new Ukrainian state. While the Ukrainian residents enthusiastically supported the proclamation, the city's significant Jewish minority remained mostly neutral towards it and the Polish residents, the majority of the city's inhabitants, were shocked to find themselves in a Ukrainian state. Reacting to this military revolution, Poles rose up throughout the city. Polish forces, initially numbering only about 200, organized a small pocket of resistance in a school at the western outskirts, where a group of veterans of the Polish Military Organization put up a fight armed with 64 outdated rifles. After initial clashes, the defenders were joined by hundreds of volunteers, mostly boy scouts, students and youngsters. More than 1000 people joined the Polish ranks in the first day of the fighting.

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