The Battle of Nördlingen

SEP 06 1634 · 12:00

Spanish tercios and Imperial forces crush the Swedish-Protestant army at Nördlingen, September 1634. Place: Nördlingen, Swabia Figures: Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Spain · Ferdinand, King of Hungary (the future Emperor Ferdinand III) · Gustav Horn, Swedish commander (captured) · Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, Swedish-Protestant commander The Cardinal-Infante's March The Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, brother of Philip IV of Spain, has marched the Army of Flanders from Milan up the Spanish Road in the summer of 1634, eight thousand veteran tercio infantry brought to reinforce his Habsburg cousin. He joins the Hungarian-Imperial army outside the besieged free city of Nördlingen at the end of August. The combined force, perhaps 33,000, faces Horn and Bernhard with a Swedish-Protestant army of roughly 25,000, much of it raw. Horn attacks on the morning of 6 September up the slopes of the Albuch hill, where the Spanish tercios are entrenched in depth behind hastily dug field works. The Swedes assault fifteen times. Each time the Spanish squares hold, reload, and break the Swedish brigades coming up the broken ground. By midafternoon the Swedish left has fragmented. The Imperial cavalry sweeps in across the plain; Horn is taken prisoner; perhaps 12,000 of his men are killed and 4,000 captured. Spain Is Still Spain The strategic consequences are immediate. Sweden's hold on southern Germany evaporates in weeks; the Protestant Union collapses; Saxony begins the negotiations that will produce the Peace of Prague the following May. The Heilbronn League, Oxenstierna's project for organizing the Protestant estates under Swedish leadership, ceases to function. The tactical lesson of Breitenfeld is partially un-taught: a disciplined Spanish tercio in prepared positions, properly supported, can still break a Swedish-style assault. And Spain, which the Protestant pamphleteers had buried as a continental power, is visibly not buried. The Cardinal-Infante marches on into the Spanish Netherlands and reinforces the army that will hold the Low Countries for another decade. The war, however, does not end. Within seven months Richelieu will see exactly what Nördlingen means for the European balance, and France will enter the war directly to prevent the Habsburg recovery from completing itself. Video: Spanish tercios and Imperial brigades crush the Swedish army. The end of Swedish dominance in Germany.