Naval war on Lake Constance 1632–1648
Naval warfare on Lake Constance refers to the fighting that took place on Lake Constance from 1632 as part of the Thirty Years' War (1618 to 1648) . Almost all the lakeshore at this time dominant powers - the north and east the Catholic Habsburg Further Austria and in the northwest and west up to the lake along with the allied Kingdom of Sweden and the Kingdom of France had advanced troops of the Protestant duchy Württemberg - tried for strategic reasons the hegemony about the Lake Constance area. Only the partly Catholic, partly Protestant areas of the Old Confederation (today's Switzerland ) that dominated the south bank retained an uncertain neutrality due to this division.
The changing course at this secondary theater of the Thirty Years' War brought neither of the two parties any clear success, the Protestant side (reinforced by France) could not seriously endanger the imperial possessions in the long term, the imperial succeeded in maintaining their positions by and large and inflict heavy losses on the enemy. The Swedish / Württemberg naval rule in the last two years of the war no longer had any further-reaching significance.
initial situation
On July 6, 1630, in the first months of the thirteenth year of the war, the Swedish King Gustav II Adolf (* 1594, † 1632) entered the Thirty Years' War with his landing on Usedom , under the pretext that the Protestant countries that were in the Had suffered many defeats in the course of the war, wanting to support. After Gustavus Adolphus had made alliances with France, Brandenburg and Saxony , the Swedes began their advance into southern Germany. The military leader of the Bavarian Army of the Catholic League, Johann T'Serclaes von Tilly , could not stop the advance of the Swedes into southern Germany, was badly beaten and mortally wounded in September 1631 in the Battle of Breitenfeld and again in April 1632 in the Battle of Rain am Lech . The main Swedish army was able to advance to Munich in May 1632 and then withdrew to Nuremberg, where the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Army Albrecht von Wallenstein inflicted losses on the Swedes in September 1632 in the battle of the Alte Veste , but was unable to defeat them. As a result, in November 1632 there was the battle of Lützen , in which Gustav II Adolf was killed. During this time, other parts of the Swedish army reached the Lake Constance area with the help of Württemberg and French. In the Protestant common rule Thurgau and the city-state Schaffhausen they could expect benevolent neutrality, the Catholic facing location Abbey of St. Gall supported the imperial side. Since at that time the imperial forces had stationed a superior flotilla on Lake Constance by 1634 , they controlled most of the lake area, which was important for the supply of besieged places.
The naval war
Swedish War (1630-1635)
- In April 1632, the allied Swedes and Württembergians under Major General Patrick Ruthven reached the shore of Lake Constance and attacked the imperial fortifications from the land. The imperial Radolfzell surrendered without a fight on October 25th . The garrison fled across the lake, the conquerors seized civilian vessels, armed them and also built their own warships. Under the command of the Imperial Colonel Sergeant Weiss from the Gallas foot regiment , who received the title “Admiral for Lake Constance”, a fleet of initially twelve armed barges was set up in Lindau . The trading centers in Lindau, Konstanz , Überlingen , Bregenz , Meersburg , Mainau and Langenargen contribute to the costs . An initial success of this flotilla was the landing of the Swedish ship "Bachofen" off the Mainau.
- When a Swedish army under the generals Gustav Karlsson Horn and Carl Gustav Wrangel besieged Constance in September / October 1633 , marching over Swiss territory and the Rhine bridge Stein am Rhein in violation of neutrality , despite the support of Protestant Swiss, they were able to use the imperial flotilla the attack can be repelled. The Swedes hijacked several transport ships on the way from Constance to Lindau. In return, when a Swedish land position near Münsterlingen was bombarded in September, a Swedish ship was captured. Three imperial boats manned by snipers attacked Swedish batteries on the Seerhein . An imperial hunting ship had to turn back when leaving Constance due to hits from enemy beach batteries. A few days later in October a land battery near Bottighofen was captured by an imperial landing party. On October 1, 1633, an attack by the Swedes on the city walls of Konstanz failed in which over 1000 Swedes and Würtembergers died. On October 5th, the Swedes ended the unsuccessful siege of Constance, defended by Maximilian Willibald von Waldburg-Wolfegg , because of the arrival of an Imperial Spanish army under General Johann von Aldringen and Gómez Suárez de Figueroa, duque de Feria . During the time of siege, Catholic Switzerland supplied the imperial family with supplies, disregarding neutrality. In November a Swedish ship was hijacked near Radolfzell and Gaienhofen Castle was recaptured, which made it possible to bombard Radolfzell.
- In April 1634, the Swedes under General Horn besieged Überlingen. The imperial flotilla was strengthened and provided troops and supplies to the besieged city by water. The Swedish positions around Überlingen were shelled by about 20 warships, the Swedes brought some boats overland via Schaffhausen into the lake for relief despite official Swiss neutrality. As a result, the Thurgau lakeshore was blocked by imperial hunting ships. In May the Swedes recovered a sunk ship and captured another off the Mainau. A large cargo ship equipped with cannons in Constance and other smaller units joined the auxiliary fleet, whereupon the Swedes broke off the siege. At the same time Buchhorn (today Friedrichshafen ) was taken by them and renamed Gustavsburg. They founded a shipyard there and built the largest Bodensee warship, the "Drottning Kristina" , with 22 cannons. The new ship, reinforced with additional units, hijacked five transport ships with war material, while the imperial soldiers were busy securing the eastern sea area and the Swiss shore. The imperial flotilla was placed under the command of Colonel Christoph Karl Waldburg-Wolfegg and had to oppose the five Swedish warships. In July, raids on the Swedish-occupied places Radolfzell and Buchhorn failed due to poor preparation. The outpost Kloster Löwental was captured, but had to be cleared again, whereupon the Swedes burned it down. After the Battle of Nördlingen , which was lost for Sweden , Buchhorn and Radolfzell were evacuated, all Swedish ships sunk and the troops withdrawn from the Lake Constance area.
Swedish-French War (1635-1648)
- In the years 1635 to 1642, the Lake Constance area remained without major fighting, only the last Protestant base, the fortress Hohentwiel west of Radolfzell, caused unrest. Konrad Widerholt , the commander of the fortress, took Überlingen by surprise, but soon had to withdraw. In the years that followed, Widerholt attacked Catholic towns or permanent places occupied by the Habsburgs.
- In January 1643 the Württemberg and French conquered Überlingen, and the Protestant side again had a base on the lake. The Swedes left the main burden of the war in the Lake Constance area to their allies for some time, Konrad Widerholt, the fortress commander of Hohentwiel, became commander in chief. The allies equipped six armed ships, but a hunting ship from Constance was able to raise a freighter from Überlingen. The new admiral from Lake Constance was the defender of Constance, Maximilian Willibald von Waldburg-Wolfegg, who immediately had the port of Überlingen blocked. In order to be able to defy the soon 16 warships of the Württemberg and French, Wolfegg demanded the setting up of a standing flotilla for maritime surveillance, which the Imperial War Commissioner Count Königsegg refused due to lack of money. The imperial could therefore not prevent the enemy from conquering further bases on the lake shore. The desolate defenses of the Mainau were no longer suitable to defend against a landing and the units stationed there were withdrawn. The conquest of further merchant ships by the enemy in June prompted the imperial family to bring all private ships to safety in Constance. The exhausted and war-weary citizens of the riverside cities increasingly refused to bear the costs of building new ships, fortifying ports, raising troops and equipping them. An attempt to take Überlingen by surprise in September failed due to betrayal; Citizens of the city who stood by the imperial family were executed.
- In April 1644 Bavarian troops enclosed Überlingen and forced the surrender on May 20 with free withdrawal of the Württemberg-French garrison. Although the Protestant side no longer had a port of call for their ships, the well-organized raids from the hinterland made them an ever-increasing threat to the imperial positions. The pirate war could also flare up again at any time due to captured ships, which is why the Catholic commanders imposed a ban on entering the Swiss ports ( Stein am Rhein and Schaffhausen ) by their own merchant ships and required all Swiss merchants to transfer their cargo to imperial ports.
- In January 1645, Mainau was captured by a coup d'état by Württemberg troops, but could not be held. An attack by Protestants on Reichenau in March failed because a storm drove the ships to the Swiss bank. Their attack on Radolfzell, which took place a few days later, was successful, whereupon the imperial forces again ordered civil shipping to be blocked in order to prevent enemy capture.
- An imperial cargo ship was brought up by some enemy hunting ships off Buchhorn and used in Immenstaad for their own purposes. The imperial responded by ordering all civilian merchant ships back to Lindau, as the Swedes again interfered increasingly in the sea war. The appearance of strong Swedish / French troops under General Wrangel on the eastern shore of the lake at the end of 1646 meant a renewed danger for the imperial cities. Bregenz is attacked as the allies' preferred target.
Storming of Bregenz by the Swedes in 1646/47; Theatrum Europaeum (1629–1650), Matthäus Merian;
on the left in the picture between the steep face and the lakeshore the "Bregenzer Klause"
on the left in the picture between the steep face and the lakeshore the "Bregenzer Klause"
- A surprise attack on January 4, 1647 by the " Bregenz Klause " brought the Swedes and French the capture of Bregenz, where they found 17 large and small ships and took possession. When they then besieged Lindau, the city was supported by an imperial flotilla from Constance. A few days later Langenargen was lost to the Swedes. The bombardment of Lindau by three Swedish warships was ended by the intervention of three imperial hunting ships; however, land batteries began to bomb the city. Another attack by the Swedes from the sea was again ended by imperial ships. The situation became more and more difficult because the Swedes already owned 20 war vehicles. 17 of these units sailed from Bregenz to Mainau in February, conquered the island with the support of the Württemberg people and found several ships and numerous war material there. An imperial advance on Lindau with 12 ships came to nothing, but the enemy ended the siege voluntarily, as he had enough space with the positions on the Mainau, in Langenargen and on the castle of Gießen, which was also conquered , to be able to seriously disrupt sea trade. However, the Swedes allowed Swiss deliveries to imperial territory to pass unmolested. After Hohenbregenz Castle was blown up, Bregenz was evacuated in March, but Überlingen again fell into Swedish / Württemberg hands. The attempt by nine imperial warships in April to retake the Mainau was rejected; further attacks against Wasserburg and Langenargen from Lindau also failed, although the imperial flotilla had meanwhile grown to 50 vehicles. In July the allies succeeded in capturing four Imperial ships off Constance. At Rorschach, the imperial army captured a cargo ship from Überlingen, while the Swedes captured two ships in return. The Swedish / Württemberg war power ruled every point of the lake with its units, in Lindau, Konstanz and Bregenz six warships were built to counteract this. Attacks on Überlingen and Langenargen in August and September were repulsed, with the Swedes using two newly equipped warships with 16 cannons each, which were superior to the Imperial ships. Under the command of Colonel Volckmar, they had four large warships in addition to a large number of smaller units, with which they could expand their position in command of the sea. Customs and tax revenues (especially for the important salt) were collected from them, Lindau and Konstanz were blocked because they were superior to the more numerously strong imperialists because of better management and armament. The main focus of all parties in this phase of the war is less focused on major naval battles than on the hijacking of heavily loaded enemy vehicles. Here the allies were superior to the imperialists, who suffered from coordination problems.
- In the last year of the war, 1648, in August, an imperial flotilla under Colonel Casper failed to capture two ships off Langenargen. A storm prevented a Swedish attack on Lindau. After the Peace of Westphalia was concluded , all warring parties began to withdraw from Lake Constance on October 24th, only the island of Mainau remained a Swedish base until September 30th. The whereabouts of the ships used will be reported in the next chapter.
Used ship types
The individual types were either rebuilt from 1632, requisitioned and partially refitted, or (back) conquered by the respective enemy and after 1649 either taken over to the imperial customs service (hunting ships), returned to the owners or sold. The whereabouts of most of the ships newly built or captured by the Swedes and Württembergers is not known, apart from a few units returned after the peace treaty, which were also recycled accordingly.
- Hunting ships ( Middle Low German jachtschip , "fast ship") were high-speed rowers with auxiliary sails, mostly larger than commercial vehicles, made of oak wood, sharp (sleek) built on the keel, up to 27 m long, and equipped with a few cannons
- Laden (in dialect " Lädinen ") were large Lake Constance barges (up to 34 m long, 4.4 m wide), made of oak, with a mast, without oars (oars), cargo of about 140 tons, optionally 500 soldiers; armed with cannons during the war
- Half-loaders (in dialect "Halblädinen" or "Segmer") were smaller cargo ships (up to 21 m long, 2.8 m wide), made of oak, also a mast and no oars, cargo up to 100 tons or 200 soldiers; armed with cannons during the war
- Auxiliary ships of various types were requisitioned by civilian shipping for the transport of ammunition, provisions and other goods for replenishment purposes; sometimes they were armed to make makeshift warships
- Platten ( Zillen ) were flat boats that were exclusively rowed, they were used to transport goods and personnel; the maximum carrying capacity of the largest specimens with a length of over 20 m and a 15 man crew was 380 soldiers or 50 horses
Legends and customs
- "The legend of the island guards of Lindau": The wild island guards defended the city against Swedish spies by hanging up every suspect. Eventually they became so dangerous that the citizens lured them into the basement of the powder tower and drowned them there.
- “The feast in front of Lindau”: On October 1st, 1648, a Swedish fleet under commandant Volckmar crossed before Lindau and celebrated a boisterous feast on the ships to make fun of it. Then a grayish storm wind came from a black cloud , scattered the fleet and sank the kitchen ship. The chronicler Father Franz Ransperg wrote: Many of them were even scared into the lining of their pants ...
- “The golden skittles from Hohenems Schlossberg”: The man who showed the Swedes a secret path at the Bregenz Klause was promised the golden skittles from Hohenems Schlossberg for his deed by General Wrangel. According to legend, the traitor has to run through the country forever as a big black dog with plate-sized eyes for his outrage on the former Roman road on the mountain edge.
- The Swedish processions in Überlingen in mid-May and mid-July with the "sword dance" to commemorate the siege of the city
- In Konstanz, to commemorate the stuck advance of the Swedes, the “Swedish Cross”, mounted on a Swedish cannon barrel, can be seen next to the bridge from the mainland to Mainau in Lake Constance.
- The so-called “Schwedenkreuz”, a group of crucifixions made of cast bronze, can also be seen at the harbor on the Mainau.
See also
literature
- Carmen Galenschovski: Lake Constance. 8th edition. Baedeker / Mairs Geographischer Verlag, Ostfildern 2005, ISBN 3-8297-1055-0 ; Chapter From the Thirty Years War to the Congress of Vienna (1618-1815). P. 36 f. ( Excerpt from Google Books )
- Karl Gogg: Austria's Navy 1440–1848. Verlag Das Bergland-Buch, Salzburg et al. 1972, ISBN 3-7023-0013-9 , p. 20 ff (for the entire chapter “The sea war”).
- Heribert Küng: 350 years ago: End of the Thirty Years War in the Lake Constance-Alpine Rhine region. In: Montfort. 50th year 1998, 3rd issue, p. 185 f. (Digitized version)
- Johann Sporschil: The Thirty Years War . G. Westermann, Braunschweig 1843, p. 684 f. ( Digitized version )
- Eberhard Fritz: Konrad Widerholt, commandant of the Hohentwiel Fortress (1634-1650). A war entrepreneur in the European power structure . In: Journal for Württemberg State History 76 (2017). Pp. 217-268.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Anselm Zurfluh: Thirty Years War. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . March 5, 2015 , accessed June 8, 2019 .
- ↑ Torsten Schöll: No peace on Lake Constance. In: Südkurier , January 26, 2019.
- ^ Karl Gogg: Austria's Kriegsmarine 1440-1848. Pp. 105 f, 136 f, 143 f. (for the entire section of ship types)
- ↑ Inselwächter, Lindau, Bodensee (accessed on July 9, 2013)
- ↑ Ransperg Chronicle, final chapter ; quoted by: Heribert Küng: 350 years ago: End of the Thirty Years War in the Lake Constance-Alpine Rhine region. P. 189.
- ^ Time travel guide - Vorarlberg: The Thirty Years' War. The Swedes in Vorarlberg (accessed July 9, 2013)
- ↑ Lachmann / Maier / Sauerbruch: Legends and customs on the Überlinger See . A. H. Konrad, 1972, ISBN 3-87437-089-5 , p. 120.