Siege of Mainz (1689)
The siege of Mainz in 1689 was part of the fighting of the Palatine War of Succession and one of several sieges of the fortress city .
prehistory
The war began in 1688 with the incursion of French troops into the areas of the empire on the left bank of the Rhine. The French succeeded a. a. the conquest of the Philippsburg fortress and the more or less non-fighting conquest of the Electorate of Cologne and the conquest of Mannheim and other cities in southwest Germany and the destruction of Heidelberg Castle (first time in 1689).
The city and fortress of Mainz were owned by the Mainz electors . These had started to modernize the fortifications in the years after the Thirty Years' War , but after a final construction phase in 1668–1673 the work was stopped due to lack of money. When the French army with the " Régiment du Roi " approached on October 16, 1688 , there were only 700 defenders facing it, which is why the surrender of the fortress without a fight was negotiated on October 17. The French immediately began repair work so that the fortress was made ready for defense over the winter.
Deployment of the troops
The Kaiser, reinsured by the Augsburg Alliance , responded to the threat with the so-called Imperial War . In 1689 England, Savoy and the Netherlands joined the alliance against French expansion efforts (" Vienna Great Alliance "). In 1689 the Kaiser and the German princes were able to raise an army with around 100,000 soldiers on the Rhine. This army was divided into three army corps. The first corps with 30,000 men under Elector Friedrich III. von Brandenburg was to take action against the French from Cologne. The second army corps under Duke Karl von Lothringen was planned with 40,000 men for the siege of Mainz. The elector Max Emanuel of Bavaria was supposed to assemble with 30,000 men in Heilbronn to protect Swabia and the Baden areas. Count Maximilian Lorenz von Starhemberg , already appointed field marshal , and his regiment were placed under the army corps of Charles of Lorraine.
Meanwhile, the French continued with the destruction and pillage of Palatinate and Baden towns and villages. Therefore, in May 1689, Karl von Lothringen sent Count Maximilian von Starhemberg with a few regiments to Koblenz to protect the city and the surrounding area from the French. When Karl von Lothringen arrived at the troop assembly point in Frankfurt towards the end of May , he was not very pleased. The deployment was supposed to be over on May 25, but so far only the Hessian and a small part of the imperial troops had arrived in Frankfurt. Sometimes the troops were still in their home countries. It didn't look any better with the promised care. The provisions and ammunition store, which was supposed to be full, was practically empty. There were no bullets, powder, bombs or cannons, only a few provisions were found by Charles of Lorraine. The field guns were still in Bohemia .
The French were better prepared for the campaign than the imperial ones. They had brought all ships to the left bank of the Rhine and blocked the mouth of the Main near Mainz with sunk ships in order to hinder the supply of the imperial troops across the Main . The fortifications and crews of the Mainz fortress were strengthened, and the commander-in-chief of the French Upper and Middle Rhine Army, Marshal Duras , set up a camp near Mainz with 30,000 men in order to be able to quickly thwart the imperial crossing of the Rhine.
Since Karl von Lothringen did not want to delay the start of the campaign too much, he had the food supply accelerated, borrowed guns and ammunition from the surrounding principalities, ordered all available ships on the Moselle and Lahn to be brought to Koblenz and sent in a bridge builder Koblenz, so that a ship bridge could finally be built over the Rhine. He had the troops of the Elector of Hanover march directly to Koblenz to support Maximilian von Starhemberg's army corps, which was already threatened by the French. While Charles of Lorraine was waiting for the princes to arrive and because he did not want to leave his troops unemployed, he set out from Frankfurt for Mainz on May 30th to attack the redoubt on the right bank of the Rhine , which served as a bridgehead. On the evening of June 1st, he had the hill attacked by the Hessian troops. The defenders resisted only briefly and then quickly retreated over the bridge to Mainz. Charles of Lorraine had the redoubt and the bridge demolished so that the French could no longer use them, and he retired to the nearby camp . The next day the Duke sent two more regiments to Koblenz and had them cross the Rhine on the newly completed flying bridges in order to unite with the troops of Count Maximilian von Starhemberg.
In mid-June the Elector of Bavaria arrived at the camp and, much to the displeasure of Charles of Lorraine, wanted the Elector Johann Georg III. persuaded by Saxony to besiege the Philippsburg fortress with him . But the Elector of Saxony refused because he did not want to submit to a younger prince. On the other hand, Karl von Lothringen tried to win the Elector of Bavaria for the campaign to Mainz , which he finally succeeded with "with his friendly nature and good arguments". The army was now divided into three corps, which were to cross the Rhine at different points and march on Mainz. The Bavarians were supposed to cross between Mannheim and Oppenheim , while the Saxons and Hessians near Bingen and the Imperialists near Koblenz were to dare to cross. This put the French Marshal Duras in a delicate position. He could not divide his army to prevent a Rhine crossing in all three places without being defeated somewhere.
After the majority of the imperial troops had finally arrived and the necessary war supplies were ready, Charles of Lorraine set off with his army corps for Koblenz on June 15. On June 23, the Duke reached Koblenz, where he was received "with honor and joy" by the Elector. The next day the Duke waited in vain for the ship's bridge to be completed, so he crossed the Rhine with the existing flying bridges and united with Maximilian's army corps.
On June 25th he reached Mayen , where he stayed for the time being. He wanted to confuse the French and disguise the real target. Marshal Duras fell for the deception and ordered troops from Mainz to the Mont Royal fortress, as he was of the opinion that this was the target of the duke's attack. On July 1st, Karl von Lothringen von Mayen set out for Mainz and crossed the Moselle with his entire army on July 3rd. When Marshal Duras noticed his mistake, he had the garrison in Mainz reinforced again. In a letter to the French king, however, he was of the opinion that Mainz could not be the target because the city had a strong garrison and it did not lack supplies, and everything around Mainz that would be of use to the enemy was devastated Could provide protection. Duras therefore withdrew with his army to Landau in order to accelerate the expansion of the fortifications there.
Meanwhile, Charles of Lorraine moved on to Mainz, where he arrived on July 16 with a few cavalry units and immediately had them occupy important points. He set up his headquarters in the Heilig-Kreuz collegiate monastery in front of the city. The infantry units followed on July 17, and the Saxons and Hessians also arrived two days later. Now the only thing missing was the Elector of Bavaria to begin the siege. But this did not come. The elector stayed on the Upper Rhine because he feared that in the event of his absence Swabia and large parts of Baden could be devastated by the French troops. Charles of Lorraine had to use all his persuasion again and finally managed to secure the assistance of the Elector of Bavaria in the siege. In order not to waste too much time waiting, the Duke began working on the three previously determined points of attack.
Course of the fighting
On July 26th, the Elector of Bavaria arrived at the camp with three regiments. Field Marshal Lieutenant Prince Eugene of Savoy came with him . The armies spent the next days digging trenches and building gun batteries. The daily losses of the besiegers averaged between 50 and 100 men, including Prince Eugene of Savoy, who was slightly wounded on August 4th by a musket ball . On August 7th, Karl von Lothringen received the news that Marshal Duras had set off on August 5th in the direction of Philippsburg. A moment later he was informed by the Elector of Bavaria that Marshal Duras was marching against Heidelberg . The Duke immediately sent Count von Dünnewald and 4,000 men south to protect Heidelberg.
The next day began to bombard the imperial targets, the bastions "Bonifaz" and " Alexander ", with 30 heavy cannons and four mortars. The bombardment was so successful that the French main batteries were destroyed in the evening. On the night of August 10, the French made the strongest sortie to date with 400 men, but the Saxons were able to repel it successfully. The very next day, under the command of the Capitaine de Bellevert , the French undertook another attack with the 800 grenadiers of the Regiment d'Orléans , but this time on the Hessian troops. The French managed to break through the defensive lines and buried trenches for 50 paces. Only the rushed reserve units could drive the French out again. The next day, Karl von Lothringen called back the corps of Count Dünnewald von Heidelberg, as Marshal Duras had withdrawn in the direction of Philippsburg, not without first plundering and destroying smaller towns.
On the night of August 16 the imperial soldiers reached the foot of the moat in front of the bastions. But since the French had buried large pieces of wood in the ground, progress was very difficult. Around noon the next day, the French made the largest failure of the entire siege: with 2,000 soldiers and 400 workers they tried to storm the trenches of the imperialists. Although the imperialists were outnumbered, they were able to stop the attack almost anywhere and, with the help of the reserves, fight back once and for all. In an hour-long battle, the French lost 500 and the Imperial 180 men. The next two weeks continued with the construction of the trenches and the bombardment of the fortress and the bastions.
On August 30th, Charles of Lorraine received the news that Marshal Duras's troops had gathered near Philippsburg. He was pulling all the ships together and was planning to rush to Mainz to help. The Duke immediately took defensive measures and had a camp staked up the Rhine and the chain barrier on the Rhine reinforced. He also had batteries built that were aimed at the Rhine. Meanwhile, the work of the attack continued slowly. The almost daily and mostly successful failures, the detonation of mines and other traps such as wooden beams buried in the ground and studded with nails delayed the work.
On September 5th the work was as good as finished. On the same day the Duke received a message that a small French corps was approaching from the north to disrupt the siege army. In addition, Marshal Duras advanced from the south in the direction of Mainz. Charles of Lorraine consulted with the electors and set the date for the attack on September 6th. Preparations for the attack lasted almost the whole day until shortly after 4 p.m. the signal for the storm was given. 100 guns, 48 mortars and all the musketeers in the trenches fired almost simultaneously, after which a total of 10,000 men began to storm the defenses. On the orders of the duke, the attackers included the generals and officers who were supposed to encourage the soldiers by their presence. Maximilian and his regiment were also at the forefront. The French fire was just as grueling, mines were detonated everywhere and bombs, grenades and stones were falling.
Surrender and aftermath
After a three-hour battle, the imperial troops were able to establish themselves while digging the fortifications. The electoral troops advanced more quickly as the French commander had thrown most of his troops against the duke's units. By the end of the day, the Imperial had more than 2,000 dead and wounded. The electors lost 1,500 men, including Prince Eugene of Savoy, who was wounded again. Completely unexpectedly, the French occupation capitulated on September 8th at 9 a.m.
Before the retreat, French troops devastated the area just as they were supposed to do again in the course of the war after a renewed advance across the Rhine in 1692/93. The aim was to soften the area in order to leave no bases for a potential deployment against France. The French troops under the command of Ezéchiel de Mélac laid numerous cities, villages, castles and palaces in the Electoral Palatinate , Kurtrier and the Margraviate of Baden, in some cases several times, to rubble. Also Mannheim , Heidelberg (including the Heidelberg Castle , 1693), Spiers (including the Imperial , 1689) and the lock Staffort were (the Margraviate of Baden Durlach belong) destroyed.
literature
- Georg Ortenburg (Hrsg.): Army of the modern times. Department 2: The Age of Cabinet Wars. Volume 2: Siegfried Fiedler: Warfare and Warfare in the Age of Cabinet Wars. Bernard & Graefe, Koblenz 1986, ISBN 3-7637-5478-4 :
- Max Plassmann: War and Defension on the Upper Rhine. The front imperial circles and Margrave Ludwig Wilhelm von Baden (1693–1706) (= historical research. Vol. 66). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-428-09972-9 (also: Mainz, University, dissertation, 1998).
- Johann Heinrich Hennes: The siege of Mainz in 1689 , Mainz 1864 digitized
Web links
- Various contemporary maps of the siege of Mainz (DigAM Digital Archive Marburg, search for "Siege of Mainz 1689")
- Palatinate and France - The Palatinate War of Succession