Battle near Lübow

Battle near Lübow

Part of: Great Northern War

date	December 5, 1711
place	Lübow , Duchy of Mecklenburg
output	Victory of the Danes

Parties to the conflict
Sweden	Denmark
Commander
Martin von Schoultz	Jørgen Rantzau
Troop strength
2,500 Swedes	3,000 Danes
losses
478 dead 1,904 prisoners, including 500 wounded	279 dead and wounded

The battle near Lübow was a sortie at the gates of Wismar , near Lübow as part of the Pomeranian campaign from 1711 to 1712 during the Great Northern War and took place on December 4, 1711 between Danish and Swedish armed forces. The battle ended in a Danish victory, but remained largely without consequences.

prehistory

After the Swedish King Charles XII. as a result of the battle of Poltava had to flee to the Ottoman Empire and remained there, the Danes who had re-entered the war against Sweden used his absence to attack the Swedish heartland in 1709. But on March 10, 1710, the Swedes under Magnus Stenbock succeeded in driving the Danes away from Skåne at the Battle of Helsingborg . Another Danish attack on Sweden the next year could only have come from Zealand . But the plague raged there , which made warfare impossible. Instead, the Danish King Frederick IV decided to shift his further war efforts to the Swedish possessions in northern Germany. The closest target for this was Wismar and Swedish Pomerania .

A Danish army of 19,000 men then gathered in Holstein and started the campaign in July. Since August 17, 1711, the fortress of Wismar was blocked by a Danish containment corps under Lieutenant General Hans Christof von Schönfeld .

In the meantime, Frederick IV's allies, especially August the Strong , managed to convince the king to concentrate all efforts on conquering the more important Stralsund fortress . As a result, the Danish army resumed its march through Mecklenburg towards Swedish-Pomerania, leaving only a weak observation and blockade corps in front of Wismar. This consisted of two infantry battalions , 28 cavalry squadrons , and since 1 October under the command of Lieutenant General Jørgen Rantzau , already the Danish invasion army had led in the Battle of Helsingborg (1652-1713), and revenge for the suffered defeat burned .

Illustration of the Wismar fortress around 1716

The Swedish garrison consisted of 5,000 men who were divided into a dragoon regiment and 4 infantry regiments and were led by the Swedish general Martin von Schoultz . The Danish detachment was in poor condition and had fallen to only 4,000 men due to desertion and disease. Lieutenant General Rantzau weakened his forces by sending another 1,000 men to Rostock and Lübeck for forage operations . An effective and tight blockage was not possible.

The Swedish commander Schoultz, who was aware of the Danish conditions through reconnaissance, decided to attack the Danish camp, which was located near Lübow , outside the city of Wismar, in this favorable location . For this purpose, he put together an armed force of 2500 men in total, made up of six battalions, six squadrons and 12 cannons. The attack was due to take place on the night of December 4th. However, the preparations were not lost to the Danes, so it was possible the Danish Lieutenant General Rantzau still in the middle of the night his forces in battle array set up.

Course of battle

At 5 a.m. the Swedes attacked the Danes' right flank. Given a Swedish numerical superiority at this point, the Danes began to waver. However, the Danes managed to stabilize the situation by adding reinforcements to this threatened area, so that the intensity of the fighting subsided for a few hours. At the same time, Swedish dragoons , followed shortly afterwards by Swedish infantry, entered the Danish camp and began to loot and destroy it. The Swedish artillery also began to fire into the camp, which led to losses in their own ranks. The original attack on the Danish lines had now stalled. Confusion and disorder also spread in the course of the disintegrating battalions, so that the Swedish commander Schoultz decided to withdraw.

Campaigns during the Great Northern War after 1709

The Danish Lieutenant General Rantzau had in the meantime gained an overview of the situation and was now leading a cavalry attack with himself in the lead, in the rear of the Swedes, who were retreating back to Wismar. Further Danish attacks took place simultaneously on the Swedish flanks and the front, so that the retreat of the fortress garrison degenerated into an irregular escape.

The Swedish cavalry was the first to flee, abandoning its own infantry and artillery. While two of the Swedish infantry regiments quickly fled, some of the remaining fine Swedish infantry battalions were formed squares to resist the Danish rider attacks on their retreat. When the Danes asked to surrender, these units responded with volleys . Despite the observed discipline, this could no longer change their fate, so that the formations were literally blown up by the Danish cavalry and a terrible bloodbath was wrought among the Swedes, who still refused to surrender.

Of the entire Swedish infantry, only 29 men, according to other sources 87 men, made it back to the fortress, the way back was cut off for the rest. The Swedish commander Schoultz was also only able to reach the fortress with great difficulty.

In this catastrophic encounter, the Swedes lost 478 dead and 1904 prisoners, 500 of whom were injured. The Danes sent the seriously wounded back to Wismar because they could not care for them themselves. The Swedish artillery, consisting of 12 cannons, also passed into Danish hands. The Swedes only had 450 serviceable teams left in Wismar, which were insufficient to fill the most important plants. In contrast, the Danes had suffered 279 dead and wounded.

consequences

Despite this victory, the Danes were unable to capture Wismar due to the lack of artillery. A bombardment of Wismar, which lasted from December 29th to January 2nd, was also unsuccessful for the Danes. The Danes also lacked infantry to storm the breaches . In addition, the fortress received reinforcements in those days by a Swedish regiment brought in from the sea. When the Danish army marched back south of Wismar to Holstein on January 19, 1712 after the siege of Stralsund had been abandoned, the Danish siege corps under Rantzau joined them.

The city itself was only conquered by a Danish-Prussian corps on April 24, 1716 during the Pomeranian campaign from 1715 to 1716 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Georg Tessin : Wismar's Swedish Regiments in the Northern War (article 4, vol. 101), Schwerin 1937, p. 106
2. ↑ Ludwig Albrecht Gebhardi : History of the Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway , Volume 2, p. 1299.

literature

• Theatrum Europaeum, Vol. 19 (1723), p. 765 ff. (PDF file)
• A siege last century. Wismar 1711-12 and 1715 , in: Efter der Wismarschen Chronik, Daheim 1888, pp. 532-535
• HW Harbou: Kampen foran Wismar 5/12 and Fursmans jydske Kyradserer
• Georg Tessin : Wismar's Swedish regiments in the Northern War (article 4, vol. 101), Schwerin 1937