The Last Battle Of The 30 Years War...!


On May 17, 1648, the last major field battle of the Thirty Years' War took place on German soil!

A combined Franco-Swedish army of 30,000 men under Field Marshal Carl Gustav Wrangel...



...and Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne



... stands at Zusmarshausen near Augsburg...





... against a much weaker army of Imperial and Bavarians (total strength unknown), commanded by Raimondo Montecuccoli...



...Jost Maximilian von Bronckhorst-Gronsfeld...



...uand Peter Melander von Holzappel



The three commanders should exercise the supreme command together, but that is only on paper! Montecuccoli, the Italian in Habsburg service and the Bavarian Gronsfeld fight like tinkers and can't stand each other, thereby exacerbating the weakness of their troops!

So it comes as it must come!

The Swedes and the French, led by Marshal Turenne, probably the best commander of his time, attack - and the Imperialists and the Bavarians try to resist their attacks as best they can.





By the way, there is a diorama of the battle in the Bavarian Army Museum at Ingolstadt...:



Towards the afternoon, however, the resistance of the attacked is at an end, while the Swedes and the French can still throw fresh troops into the fray.

Melander von Holzappel, one of the three commanders of the Imperial and Bavarian units, gets caught up in the fray, is injured by a pistol shot, falls off his horse and is taken to Augsburg as a prisoner, where he succumbs to his injuries a little later.

The ordered retreat sometimes degenerates into wild flight, Montecuccoli, who commands the imperial rear guard, has to dismount and lead his horse through a swamp to save his life, while his rear guard is beaten up by Swedish horsemen.

When the Bavarian Elector Maximilian I.



...hearing about the defeat, but especially about the quarrel between the commanders, he has Gronsfeld arrested and imprisoned!

However, the Bavarian does not want to make peace, because the existing draft treaty provides for equal rights for religions - which the Catholic zealot does not agree with!

So the French and Swedes cross the Danube at Donauwörth...



...and devastate Elector Maximilian's lands until he is willing to make peace! (The Kaiser in Vienna has been there for a long time...!)

Finally, on October 24, 1648, the Acta Pacis Westfalicae is solemnly signed - the Thirty Years' War is over...!





Half of the inhabitants of Germany did not survive the 30-year slaughter...