Battle of Ölper (1809)

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Battle at Ölper
Plan of the battle
Plan of the battle
date August 1, 1809
place Ölper near Braunschweig
output Tactical tie
Parties to the conflict

Black crowd

Kingdom of WestphaliaKingdom of Westphalia Westphalen

Commander

Friedrich Wilhelm

Jean-Jacques Reubell

Troop strength
approx. 2,000 approx. 5,000
losses

40-90

200-500

The battle at Ölper took place on August 1, 1809 between troops from the Napoleonic Kingdom of Westphalia and the Black Crowd under Duke Friedrich Wilhelm von Braunschweig-Oels near the village of Ölper near Braunschweig .

The history

Duke Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand of Braunschweig was fatally wounded in the battle of Jena and Auerstedt . On his deathbed he declared his son Friedrich Wilhelm to be his successor. Although the Duchy of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel had remained neutral in the conflict against Napoleon (the Duke took part in the battle as commander-in-chief of the Prussian troops), the French Emperor declared in 1807 that the House of Braunschweig had ceased to rule and dissolved the Duchy made it part (the " Département Oker ") of the Kingdom of Westphalia .

The Friedrich-Wilhelm-Eiche on the Petritorwall in Braunschweig (corner of "Am Neuen Petritore"), under which the Black Duke is said to have camped the night before the battle.

Friedrich Wilhelm, who did not want to accept this without resistance, offered his services to Emperor Franz I of Austria and secured him a contingent of 2,000 men in the Vienna Convention on February 25, 1809, which he equipped at his own expense. Because of their black uniform, this troop was also called the black crowd . After Austria had made peace with Napoleon after the Battle of Wagram , Friedrich Wilhelm decided to travel with his troops through northern Germany on their own, to embark on the North Sea for England and to continue fighting alongside England against Napoleon. After Halberstadt was captured on July 29th, the black crowd and their leader reached Braunschweig on July 31st . He was greeted happily by the population, but received the message the next morning that a 5,000-strong Westphalian division under General Reubell was approaching from the north of the city.

procedure

Contemporary copper engraving: Bivouac outside Braunschweig on the day before the battle. Current condition, s. Photo above: "Friedrich-Wilhelm-Eiche".

The outnumbered black crowd was additionally threatened by a Dutch division advancing from Halberstadt. In order not to get between the two divisions, Friedrich Wilhelm decided to face the Westphalen north of Braunschweig, near the village of Ölper, so that he could break through to the north.

Around 2 p.m., the black crowd, reinforced by around 200 Brunswick citizens who had been provided with material captured from Halberstadt, moved to Ölper and took up positions there. Major Korfes destroyed the crossings over the Oker to prevent flank attacks by the enemy.

Contemporary copper engraving: The Black Duke in action at Ölper.

An hour later Reubell's troops appeared at Ölper, the first Westphalian cuirassiers at the head were immediately taken under fire and withdrew. Friedrich Wilhelm left the village of Ölper to the advancing First Westphalian Infantry Regiment by withdrawing his troops to the south and collecting them from the artillery stationed on a hill . From there they could throw back the advancing Westphalian infantry .

Now the Braunschweiger, led by Friedrich Wilhelm, went over to the counterattack, in the course of which Friedrich Wilhelm's horse was killed, but he himself remained unharmed. However, when Captain von Rabiell, the commander of one of the advancing companies, fell, Friedrich Wilhelm ended the attempt to recapture Ölper.

An immediately following attack by the Westphalen also failed. The bold counterattack of the hussars under Major Schrader did them some damage and caused great disorder in the ranks of the Westphalen.

An artillery battle finally destroyed a Brunswick cannon, but there were no further attacks. Friedrich Wilhelm was planning a night attack, but Reubell had already evacuated the village of Ölper.

losses

Grave of Captain Carl von Rabiel in the cemetery of the Kreuzkloster .

The losses of the numerically superior Westphalian troops are given as 200 to 500 men. The loss figures for the Black Crowd vary between 40 (22 dead and 18 missing) and 86 (24 dead and 62 wounded), but they were probably higher.

Results and consequences

Obelisk in memory of the battle near Ölper

Although Friedrich Wilhelm is said to have made some tactical mistakes (evacuation of Ölper and then an attempt to recapture, lack of overview of the overall situation and command of only a small part of his troops), it must be noted that the Braunschweig troops were able to hold their own against a numerically superior enemy . This was due on the one hand to the blacks' greater combat experience and their high morale (they had previously defeated a Westphalian regiment near Halberstadt), and on the other to Reubell's hesitation. Even if the Westphalians claimed the battlefield at the end of the day, they had neither defeated Friedrich Wilhelm nor stopped his further march to the North Sea. After nightfall they withdrew from Ölper. In the following days, Friedrich Wilhelm marched westwards, pursued by Reubells. He reached Elsfleth on August 7th via Celle , Hanover , Nienburg and Delmenhorst . From there the Black Flock was shipped via Heligoland , Isle of Wight and Guernsey and to Ireland.

Under an agreement with the British government, Frederick William had to stay in London while his corps fought in Portugal and Spain from 1810 to 1814 as part of the Anglo-Portuguese army under Wellington's command . Regarding General Reubell's role, it remains unclear whether he only hesitated or overestimated the enemy troop strength. According to his own later testimony, however, he had let Friedrich Wilhelm escape willingly. The reason for this is believed to be a secret order from Queen Katharinas von Westphalen , a niece of Friedrich Wilhelm. In any case, by fleeing to England and Baltimore, Reubell was able to avoid arrest on the orders of Napoleon, possibly warned by his longtime friend King Jérôme .

Duke Carl II. And Duke Wilhelm , the sons of the Black Duke, donated a cross of honor for 1809 in 1824 , which was awarded to the participants.

2019: Find of a mass grave

A grave with eight male skeletons found in early 2019
A skullcap found not far from the grave with a clearly visible severe, most likely fatal blow from a saber

At the beginning of 2019, excavation work began for the new library building for the Georg Eckert Institute , located just under two kilometers south of the battlefield . Since it was to be assumed that at least part of the building site was left of an abandoned cemetery of the Kreuzkloster originally on the opposite side of the street , the work was supervised by archaeologists from an excavation company .

The south-eastern part of the old cemetery sloping down towards the Oker had already been abandoned in the first half of the 19th century and filled with earth in order to be able to create the garden for the Villa von Bülow built there in 1839 by Carl Theodor Ottmer . The 13th-century cross monastery was completely destroyed by the Allied bombing on October 15, 1944 .

The z. Several hundred grave sites, some of which are densely packed, date from a period from the late Middle Ages to the early 19th century. In fact, several individual graves of all ages and degrees of preservation were found and documented in January and February 2019. At the end of the excavation, the archaeologists had documented graves of 570 people buried.

In addition to these individual graves, a mass grave was also discovered that contained the fully preserved skeletons of eight men between the ages of 20 and 45 years. The dead were obviously at the same time and undressed, without any identifying mark and "messy", e.g. T. lying on top of each other, buried. The bones of all eight men each have a number of different injuries from sharp or blunt violence. Injuries to the torso and heads in particular, which can be traced back to the effects of cutting and stabbing weapons . Injuries from metal splinters and lead bullets were also found.

In the immediate vicinity of the mass grave, the well-preserved skull of a single man, estimated to be over fifty years old, was found, who was apparently also buried there. The artifact shows three serious injuries, two of which were older and healed, but the last one was an unhealed and most likely fatal blow with a ( cavalry ) saber .

Both the find situation and the type of various injuries caused by severe violence in connection with the dating of the burial between 1780 and 1840 suggest victims of a military conflict. The anthropologist Oliver Beykirch involved in the excavations and the archaeologist Robert Brosch (from the excavation company) as well as the archaeologist Michael Geschwinde from the Lower Saxony State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Braunschweig and Henning Steinführer , director of the Braunschweig city archive , assume that the eight men were killed in action at Ölper. However, since the dead have no other identifying features such as If, for example, remains of uniforms or items of equipment were found, it is not possible to assign them to a specific party in the associations that stood in opposition to each other in Ölper. The mortal remains of all grave sites were recovered and handed over to the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum , where they u. a. should be investigated further from a medical-historical point of view, since the large number of people in connection with the long burial period (over 300 years) can give a comprehensive insight into clinical pictures of a premodern society.

literature

  • Gustav von Kortzfleisch : History of the Duke Braunschweig Infantry Regiment and its regular troops 1809–1902. 3 volumes. Limbach, Braunschweig 1896–1903. Volume 1: 1809-1867. The Black Corps 1809 and the Anglo-Braunschweig Infantry Regiment until 1814. Chapter I: The Black Corps. 1809. Subtitle 6: In the home. August. Pp. 99-114 ( tu-braunschweig.de ).
  • Gustav von Kortzfleisch: The Duke of Braunschweig's train through Northern Germany in 1809. Mittler, Berlin 1894 ( tu-braunschweig.de ).
  • Willi Müller: The battle at Ölper on August 1, 1809. In: Lower Saxony yearbook for regional history . Volume 1, 1924, pp. 156–197 ( digitized version of the magazine volume , PDF).
  • Dorothea Puhle: The Duchy of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel in the Kingdom of Westphalia and its restitution 1806–1815 (= supplements to the Braunschweigischer Jahrbuch. Volume 5). Self-published, Braunschweig 1989, et al. Pp. 310, 493, 502.
  • Erich Rosendahl : The Riddle of Oelper. Did the Queen of Westphalia save the Black Duke? In: Lower Saxony Yearbook for State History. Volume 14, 1937, pp. 366–378 ( digitized version of the magazine volume , PDF).
  • Hermann Voges : On the history of the battle at Ölper on August 1, 1809. In: Lower Saxony yearbook for regional history. Volume 3, 1926, pp. 168–173 ( digitized version of the magazine volume , PDF).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ruthard von Frankenberg: In the Black Corps to Waterloo. Memoirs of Major Erdmann von Frankenberg . edition by frankenberg, Hamburg 2015. p. 36 f.
  2. ^ Ruthard von Frankenberg: In the Black Corps to Waterloo. Memoirs of Major Erdmann von Frankenberg . edition von frankenberg, Hamburg 2015. p. 37 (after Mary Barney: A Biographical Memoir of the Late Commodore Joshua Barney . Boston 1832, pp. 240–242) and pp. 53–55.
  3. ^ Reinhard Dorn : Medieval churches in Braunschweig. Niemeyer, Hameln 1978, ISBN 3-87585-043-2 , p. 250.
  4. ↑ a b c Oliver Beykirch and Robert Brosch: In the footsteps of the “black crowd”? In: Archeology in Germany , issue 5/2019, ISSN  0176-8522 , p. 56.
  5. ↑ Oliver Beykirch and Robert Brosch: In the footsteps of the “black crowd”? Pp. 56-57.
  6. ↑ Oliver Beykirch and Robert Brosch: In the footsteps of the “black crowd”? P. 57.