What happened at the Battle of Lutter?
On 27 August 1626, at Lutter am Barenberge in Lower Saxony, the Catholic League army of Count Tilly, reinforced by imperial troops from Wallenstein's army, caught up with the retreating army of King Christian IV of Denmark. When the Danish infantry failed to break the League's center, Tilly's counterattack routed it. Christian fled, his infantry was destroyed, and he fell back to the Elbe with heavy losses.1
The king of Denmark had marched into Germany as the champion of the Protestant cause. A single day's fighting at Lutter am Barenberge ended that ambition. It was the battle that knocked Denmark out of the Thirty Years' War and opened northern Germany to the Catholic armies.2
Background: the Danish war
When the Thirty Years' War broke out in 1618, the Catholic emperor Ferdinand II set out to roll back the Reformation in his lands, and in 1620 his forces crushed the Protestant revolt in Bohemia at the White Mountain. Over the next three years the army of the Catholic League under Count Tilly defeated one Protestant army after another and advanced into northwestern Germany.3 › Battle of White Mountain, 1620
Christian IV, king of Denmark and Norway, decided to intervene. His council of the realm would not back a war against the emperor, so he acted as Duke of Holstein instead, and in 1625 he was elected war leader of the Lower Saxon Circle, a group of north German Protestant states. The Danish historians of Lex see two motives: the Protestant cause, and the wish to take the leading role before Sweden did. Britannica adds the protection of Danish interests in northern Germany.4
He went to war badly prepared. England had promised him subsidies, but Parliament would not vote the money and almost nothing arrived; his army, quartered among his own allies, could not simply live off the land as the Catholic armies did. Against him now stood two enemies: Tilly's League army and a new imperial army raised by Albrecht von Wallenstein. The two Catholic generals were rivals, and Wallenstein paid little attention to Tilly's requests for help.5
On paper the two sides were not far apart. Gardiner reports that Tilly and Wallenstein together were said to command some 70,000 men against 60,000 on the Protestant side, and the 1911 Britannica speaks of only a very slight Catholic superiority in numbers. The difference lay in money and supply: the Catholic armies quartered themselves on enemy country, while the king had to spare his own allies.6
The campaign of 1626
The Protestant plan collapsed in stages. On 25 April 1626 Wallenstein beat Christian's ally Ernst von Mansfeld at the bridge of Dessau on the Elbe. Mansfeld then marched off across Silesia toward Hungary, with Wallenstein following him, and soon afterwards the third Protestant commander, Christian of Brunswick, died. Mansfeld himself did not see the end of the year: his army melted away, and he died on his way toward Venice.7
Tilly, meanwhile, worked his way along the Weser and laid siege to Göttingen, which surrendered on 11 August. Short of money and supplies, Christian then tried a bolder stroke: a march south through the Eichsfeld toward Thuringia, where his army could feed itself and threaten the lands of the League. Tilly drew in the imperial regiments Wallenstein had left behind and went after him, and the king turned back north toward his fortress of Wolfenbüttel and Brunswick.8
The retreat became a chase. From 25 August, Wittich writes, Tilly pressed the Danish rear guard hard; Schiller describes three days of skirmishing. On 27 August, near the village of Lutter am Barenberge, the king had to stand and fight. In Denmark, which still used the Julian calendar, the date was 17 August.9
Armies and commanders
Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, was sixty-seven. Born in Brabant in 1559 and schooled by the Jesuits, he had learned his trade in Spanish service and in the long war against the Turks in Hungary, and in 1610 he entered the service of Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, whose army became the core of the Catholic League. Since 1620 he had won at the White Mountain, Wimpfen, Höchst and Stadtlohn.10 › Battle of Wimpfen, 1622
Christian IV, born in 1577, had been king since 1588 and had ruled in person since his coronation in 1596. Britannica describes him as plucky, hard-drinking and resourceful, a builder of towns and ships. He commanded at Lutter in person.11
The sizes of the two armies are uncertain. The National Museum of Denmark gives each a little over 20,000 men. Schiller, on the other hand, writes that Tilly's army, swollen by Wallenstein's regiments, was the larger, and that this was why the king had tried to avoid battle.12
The battle, in phases
The opening attack. Both armies drew up in order of battle. Who struck first is told two ways. Karl Wittich, Tilly's biographer in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, writes that Tilly attacked first although his ground was the worse, and that the Danes threw the attack back and counterattacked with determination. Schiller writes that the Danes began the attack, with great bravery.13
The king's charges. The Danish assault came close to success. Schiller has Christian leading his men against the enemy three times in person. The League's troops held, and Gardiner adds that the regiments lent by Wallenstein bore themselves well.14
Turning point: the center holds
The battle was decided, in Gunner Lind's summary, when the king's infantry failed to break through the enemy's center. After some wavering the League gained the upper hand and threw the Danish foot into disorder, and Tilly's counterattack drove the royal army from the field with heavy losses.15
The Danish infantry was destroyed. Wittich counts about 2,000 fugitives taken prisoner; Schiller writes that about 4,000 Danes were killed and that the army lost sixty standards and all its artillery, baggage and ammunition, and that several companies who had taken refuge in a building in Lutter laid down their arms. The king got away with his cavalry. Rickard writes that he left the field with fewer than half the troops he had started with.16 › Battle of Fleurus, 1622
Aftermath and consequences
The victory was not followed up. The National Museum notes that the enemy was too exhausted to pursue, and Wittich that Tilly could not stop the king from reaching the Elbe and holding both of its banks downstream of Schnackenburg. Christian fell back to a line along the river.17
Tilly used the autumn to clear the Weser. Wittich lists Hannover, Verden and Rotenburg among the places he took, and Schiller has him master of the Weser and of Brunswick, forcing the king back toward Bremen. Behind the lines the Danish garrisons gave up one fortress after another, as the 1911 Britannica puts it, while Wallenstein, back from Hungary, prepared to carry the war into Holstein.18
Politically the blow was heavier. Wittich judges Lutter the most important of Tilly's victories so far, more for its political and moral effect than its military result. Over the following months Christian's German allies fell away one after another. Wittich names the duke and estates of Brunswick, who made their submission to Tilly within weeks; Schiller adds the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, forced to renounce the Danish alliance.19
In the autumn of 1627 Tilly's and Wallenstein's troops invaded Jutland. In 1629 Christian signed the Peace of Lübeck, which was surprisingly mild: he kept Jutland and his kingdoms, losing only his hold on some German lands, but had to promise not to interfere in the affairs of the empire. The next year the Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus, landed in Pomerania and took up the Protestant cause that Christian had dropped.20 › Battle of Breitenfeld, 1631
Legacy and memory
In Denmark the whole conflict is remembered as Kejserkrigen, the Emperor's War, and remembered badly. The National Museum calls the decision to enter it an incredibly bad one, which ruined Denmark-Norway financially; Britannica writes that it brought disaster on the country and diminished the king's prestige and even his faith in himself as a great captain. Christian reigned for two more decades, lost an eye at the sea battle of Kolberger Heide in 1644, and is still remembered as one of the best-loved Danish kings.21
For Tilly, Lutter was the summit of an unbeaten career. Five years later he stormed Magdeburg, was routed by Gustavus Adolphus at Breitenfeld, and in April 1632 was mortally wounded trying to stop the Swedes crossing the Lech at Rain. He died at Ingolstadt.22 › Battle of Lützen, 1632
The broadsheet at the top of this page, printed in Germany in 1626, shows it from a bird's-eye view and dates the fighting from 24/14 to 27/17 August, giving both the new calendar of the Catholic side and the old one used in Denmark.23
