Siege of Korneuburg (1646)
| date | May 22nd to August 4th 1646 |
|---|---|
| place | Korneuburg , Lower Austria |
| output | imperial victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
|
Johann Copy |
|
| Troop strength | |
| 3,000 to 5,000 men | 900 men |
| losses | |
|
unknown |
unknown |
.svg){kind=small}
Wallerfangen - Dömitz - Haselünne - Wittstock - Rheinfelden siege - Rheinfelden battle - Breisach Siege - Witten Weiher - Vlotho - Ochsenfeld - Chemnitz - Bautzen siege - Freiberg sieges - Riebel Dorfer Mountain - Dorsten - Preßnitz - La Marfée - Wolfenbüttel siege - Kempen Heath - Swidnica - Breitenfeld - Klingenthal - Tuttlingen - Freiburg - Jüterbog - Jankau - Herbsthausen - Alerheim - Korneuburg - Totenhöhe - Hohentübingen - Triebl - Zusmarshausen - Wevelinghoven - Dachau - Prague siege
The siege of Korneuburg took place during the Thirty Years War and lasted from May 22nd to August 4th 1646 . Field Marshal Lieutenant Hans Christoph III. Imperial troops commanded by Puchheim (1605–1657) succeeded in retaking the city held by a strong Swedish garrison under the command of Colonel Johann Copy. With the victory of the siege for the imperial side, the danger that Swedish troops could use Korneuburg as a starting point for crossing the Danube and advancing to the imperial residence city of Vienna was finally averted.
Starting position
With the annihilation of the main imperial army in the battle of Jankau on March 6, 1645, the way to the Habsburg hereditary lands was wide open to the Swedes under Lennart Torstensson (1603–1651) . Without having to fear resistance, the victorious Swedish army marched through Jihlava and Znaim , which opened the gates to the Swedes on March 22nd, and finally entered Lower Austria . Marching via Retz , Eggenburg and Ravelsbach , Torstensson's army finally reached the towns of Stein and Krems on the Danube , which were occupied on March 26th and 31st after a brief resistance. By then the Swedes had brought almost all of the important cities, towns and castles in the Waldviertel under their control. However, they did not succeed in forming a bridgehead at Krems. The remaining imperial armed forces thwarted all attempts by the Swedes to cross the Danube and, prior to their retreat across the river, had also removed all available timber and ships and made the Danube bridge at Mautern unusable through partial destruction.
Following the Danube, the Swedes initially marched towards the main imperial fortress of Korneuburg, whose commanding officer, Colonel Lukas Spicker, was requested on April 4, 1645 to hand over the city together with Kreuzenstein Castle , which was also under his control. Given the small number of troops available to him - he had only the vigilantes of the city, plus another 200 men of the Vienna city Guardia, the forerunner of the later Federal safety guard corps - Spicker came this requirement immediately and handed castle and fortress already on April 5th without a fight the Swedish troops. Then Torstensson turned to the so-called Wolfsschanze , a star-shaped fortification that covered the road from Vienna to the north, which ran over three islands in the Danube. On the orders of the emperor, the ski jump was finally abandoned on the night of April 9th to 10th and the Danube bridge closest to it was destroyed. When the Swedes occupied the hill on the following day, there was also no risk that the imperial troops could unexpectedly cross the Danube.
Had it been up to Torstensson, the opportunity should now have been used to dare to storm Vienna together with the armed forces of the Transylvanian Prince Georg I. Rákóczi (1593–1648), an ally of Sweden , from which he took a decisive turn of the war expected. He wanted to use the time up to the union with the Transylvanian troops to take the Brno fortress , which threatened his supply routes. On May 4th the Swedes arrived in the Brno area, the conquest of which Torstensson considered an easy thing to do. However, the city had a large number of defenders and with Colonel Jean-Louis Raduit de Souches (1608–1682) an excellent commander. After months of unsuccessful siege, Torstensson finally gave up and withdrew with his significantly weakened army on August 19 towards Lower Austria. Although he now knew that Rákóczi could no longer expect any help, because he had come to an understanding with the emperor in the meantime and the hostilities had almost ceased, the favorable situation on the German theater of war gave rise to hope that reinforcements would soon arrive with which the storm on Vienna still seemed possible.
The imperial armed forces had meanwhile used Torstensson's time- and energy-consuming siege of Brno to build up a defense on the southern bank of the Danube, for which troops had been withdrawn from other theaters of war. Archduke Leopold Wilhelm (1614–1662), who had been in command of the imperial armed forces since May 1645, did not dare to attack Torstensson. This in turn saw his troops as too weak to cross the Danube and attack Vienna. Since no reinforcements arrived either, Torstensson finally withdrew again from Lower Austria and led his troops to Northern Bohemia , where they moved into winter quarters. Persistent gout attacks finally forced him on December 15, 1645 to hand over the command to Lieutenant General Arvid Wittenberg (1606–1657).
According to Torstensson's war plan for the coming year, the main interests of the Swedes now turned to the Bavarian theater of war and a union with the allied French armed forces operating there. In this context, Wittenberg was given the task of binding the imperial armed forces in Silesia and, at the same time, maintaining ties to the Swedish garrisons in Lower Austria. In contrast, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, who had come on the defensive due to the opposing successes, had to limit himself to thwarting these intentions as far as possible. Due to the new developments in the military situation , the immediate danger for Vienna and Lower Austria was averted for the time being.
Course of the siege
Before he withdrew from Lower Austria, Torstensson had the cities of Krems on the Danube and Korneuburg expanded into main fortresses and provided with strong garrisons . The Korneuburg Fortress was equipped with six new ravelins with the help of forced recruited townspeople and farmers from the area and a garrison of 900 men under Colonel Johann Copy, the Krems garrison numbered a little more than 500 men. Both fortresses had sufficient provisions and ammunition.
As a result of the successful operation of the imperial armed forces in Bohemia and Silesia, Lieutenant General Wittenberg was refused further advances to Lower Austria in the first months of 1646 and the Swedish garrisons on the Danube and in the rest of the country were left on their own. Finally, in March 1646, the offensive of an imperial force commanded by Field Marshal Lieutenant Puchheim began to take away the two fortified towns and the other fortified places that the Swedes still had in the country. For this purpose, Puchheim, who had taken over his command in December 1645, had between 3,000 and 5,000 men available who had been equipped with siege artillery from the armories of Vienna and Linz . Puchheim first turned to the Krems Fortress, which had been besieged since the beginning of April 1646. The mine warfare waged for this purpose, led by the successful defender of Brno, Colonel de Souches, finally forced the Swedish defenders of Krems to surrender on May 5, 1646 .
The subsequent siege of the heavily fortified town of Korneuburg dragged on for a long time, the bombardment of which by the imperial troops began on May 22, 1646. Here Colonel Copy proved to be a bold and tenacious defender who, hoping for relief, was determined to hold the fortress. Only after a Swedish attempt at relief by a dragoon detachment that had broken out from Silesia had proven impracticable and all the towers and bastions essential for the defense had been smashed, did Copy give up. On August 4th he handed Korneuburg over to the imperial troops. After Rabensburg and Falkenstein were surrendered by the Swedish crews there on August 27 and 30 and those from Staatz had fled, there were no longer any Swedish armed forces in Lower Austria.
Consequences of the siege
The city of Korneuburg, which had already been burdened by demands for contributions and billeting in the first years of the Thirty Years War , was ruined after the Swedish occupation and the reconquest by the imperial family. The Swedish garrison had not only demanded high food and drink taxes, but had also impaired day-to-day business and production processes through the fortification and other work in the expansion of the fortifications, which the townspeople and the farmers of the surrounding villages had been forced to do. The heavy bombardment during the siege finally caused great damage not only to the city fortifications, but also to the rest of the buildings in Korneuburg.
The treasure books from the 17th century clearly reflect the catastrophic situation in Korneuburg after the siege. In a first house appraisal, which was carried out in 1646, 121 houses in the city are shown as deserted, abandoned or dilapidated. There are only 62 houses whose owners paid taxes. Time and again, this estimate contains additional information that says that the homeowner is impoverished or that his business is not doing well. The state of affairs was not much better according to the estimate of 1665, in which on the one hand the houses, on the other hand also the land and the income from handicrafts and businesses were estimated. In this estimate, 99 out of 173 houses (57.2%) are still described as deserted or uninhabited. Frequent marginal notes paint a haunting picture of the destruction of the city and the impoverishment of its population. In the case of the owners of 73 houses (or 42.2%), there was no disclosure of their property. If we add those who were considered impoverished based on the given estimate of less than 20 lb (54 or 31.2%), we arrive at a number of 127 homeowners (73.4% of all homeowners) who have followed in the decades lived in poverty during the Thirty Years War.
literature
- Peter Broucek : The Swedish campaign to Lower Austria 1645/46. (= Military History Series, Issue 7) Österreichischer Bundesverlag Ges.mbH, 3rd edition, Vienna 1989, ISBN 3-215-01654-0 .