Battle of Wittstock

Battle of Wittstock
Part of the Thirty Years' War
Battle of Wittstock
Date 4 October 1636 Location Wittstock, Brandenburg Result Swedish victory
Belligerents
Sweden	Holy Roman Empire Saxony
Commanders and leaders
Johan Banér Lennart Torstensson Alexander Leslie James King	Graf von Hatzfeldt John George I
Strength
17,000, 60 guns	18,000, 32 guns
Casualties and losses
3,500 dead or wounded,	5,000 dead, wounded or captured

The Battle of Wittstock was fought on 4 October 1636, near Wittstock in northern Germany, during the Thirty Years' War. A Swedish army commanded jointly by Johan Banér and Alexander Leslie won a decisive a combined Imperial-Saxon army, led by Count Melchior von Hatzfeld and John George I, Elector of Saxony.

Background

The Holy Roman Emperor, with his Saxon and Roman Catholic allies, was fighting for the control of northern Germany against the Swedes and an alliance of Protestant princes opposed to Habsburg hegemony. The Swedes were also allied to the French, but the latter played no part in the battle. The Imperial main army was screening the Swedish army behind the Elbe while a smaller army under General Klitzing was overrunning Brandenburg. Field Marshal Johan Banér commanding the main Swedish army was joined by Field Marshal Alexander Leslie commanding the Army of the Weser which comprised German, Scottish and (at least one) English regiments. Together they crossed the Elbe with a surprise march and met their opponents in the forested hilly landscape slightly south of Wittstock.

The Imperial army was larger in strength than the Swedish army, but at least one-third of it was composed of Saxon units of questionable quality. The Swedish artillery was considerably stronger, leading the Imperial commanders to maintain a largely defensive position on the hill tops.

Battle

The Imperial forces decided to wait for the Swedes on a range of sandy hills, the Scharfenberg. A part of the Imperial front was further defended with six ditches and a wall of linked wagons. Their commanders waited for some time for the Swedish troops to appear on the open fields to their front. Instead, the Swedish army was turning the Imperial left flank, moving behind the cover of a series of linked hills. The Imperial troops were forced to redeploy their lines to set up a new front.

The battle was begun by small forces detached in detail to secure the hills. The Swedes, under Banér had problems moving up reinforcements through marshy ground, but battle was eventually joined along a wide front.

Initial Swedish attack

Banér and Leslie had detached one-fourth of the army under Lieutenant-General James King and Major-General Torsten Stålhandske to take a long detour around the Imperial right flank. They found the traverse difficult and slow, leading Banér's troops to take heavy casualties and begin to retreat. Alexander Leslie moved five of his regiments to his relief taking heavy casualties in the process with the Scottish and English regiments being particularly badly mauled. Nonetheless they were able to relieve Banér in time for King's cavalry to finally outflank the Imperial troops causing a rout.

Swedish breakthrough

With Major General Vitzthum in the reserve refusing to engage the Imperials, his role was taken by Major-General John Ruthven (Leslie's son-in-law) who had been so deployed for just such an emergency. Now attacked on two fronts and with the reserve brigades engaged, the Imperial forces, having lost all their artillery, retreated under the cover of dusk in full rout.

Aftermath

In the accounts of the battle preserved in National Archives of Sweden, Johan Banér accredits the victory to Field Marshal Leslie. Leslie, in his personal correspondence to the Swedish Chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna, was clearly horrified at the losses sustained by his army and implies that there had been disagreement about the wisdom of Banér's tactics before the battle. A third report, by James King conforms with Leslie's, but also contains additional information. All three have been transcribed, translated and published in English. Nevertheless, Wittstock was a resounding victory for the Swedish forces and corrected any delusions harboured by the Imperials that they were a spent force after the earlier battle of Nördlingen.

Sources

• Guthrie, William P. (2003), "The 1636 Campaign", The Later Thirty Years War: From the Battle of Wittstock to the Peace of Westphalia, Contributions in Military Studies, vol. 222 (illustrated ed.), Greenwood Publishing Group, pp. 43–61, ISBN 978-0313324086
• Gruppe, Gisela (2012). Kaiser, Elke (ed.). Missing in action during the Thirty Years’ War: Provenance of soldiers from the Wittstock battlefield, October 4, 1636. An investigation of stable strontium and oxygen isotopes in Population Dynamics in Prehistory and Early History: New Approaches Using Stable Isotopes and Genetics. De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3110266306.
• Murdoch, Steve; Zickermann, Kathrin; Marks, Adam (2012). "The Battle of Wittstock 1636: Conflicting Reports on a Swedish Victory in Germany". Northern Studies. 43: 71–109. Archived from the original on 8 July 2022. Retrieved 28 December 2014.
• Trueman, Chris (16 February 2011), Thirty years War
• Wilson, Peter (2009). Europe's Tragedy: A History of the Thirty Years War. Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0713995923.