Hessian War

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Hessian War
date 1567/1645 to 1648
place Upper Hesse (focus)
Casus Belli Distribution of the estate after the death of Philip I in 1567
output Victory Hessen-Kassel
Peace treaty April 1648
Parties to the conflict

Hessen-Kassel

Hessen-Darmstadt

Commander

Landgraves:

  1. Wilhelm IV. († 1592)
  2. Moritz (1572–1632)
  3. Wilhelm V († 1637)
  4. Countess Amalie (as guardian of Wilhelm VI. )

Landgraves:

  1. George I († 1596)
  2. Ludwig V († 1626)
  3. George II

The Hessian War (in the broader sense, sometimes also in the plural: Hessian Wars ) was a long-term, partly diplomatic, partly military dispute between the branches of the Hessian Princely House , in particular the Landgraviate of Hessen-Kassel on the one hand and the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt on the other Page. It was triggered by a division of the estate after the death of the last Landgrave of Hessen, Philip I, in 1567.

Summary

The conflict, which dragged on for almost 80 years and three generations, intensified in the 1620s after the Hesse-Marburg line died out and culminated in the Hessian War in the narrower sense from 1645 . This open exchange of blows began with the siege of Marburg in 1645 and ended in April 1648 (before the Peace of Westphalia concluded that same year , with which the Thirty Years War was settled) with a victory for Hessen-Kassel. As a result, Upper Hesse was divided and partially fell to the generally strengthened Hessen-Kassel.

At the European level, the Hessian War is more closely related to the Thirty Years' War, in which the reformed Hesse-Kassel took the Protestant- Swedish, Hessen-Darmstadt, despite the Lutheran denomination, the Catholic - Imperial party. In the course of the war, Hessian mercenary troops fought in Westphalia ( Hochstift Münster and Paderborn ), in Obergeldern , on the Lower Rhine ( Kurköln ), in the Duchy of Braunschweig and in other places.

Overview of those involved in the conflict

Landgraviate of Hesse
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Philip I
"The Magnanimous"
(1504–1567)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Hessen-Kassel
Lower Duchy of Hesse
( Lower Hesse , today Northern Hesse )
= approx. 50%
 
 Hessen-Marburg
Oberfürstentum Hessen
( Upper Hesse , today Central Hesse )
= approx. 25%
 
 Hessen-Rheinfels
Niedergrafschaft Katzenelnbogen
(today part of Rhineland-Palatinate )
= approx. 15%
 
 Hessen-Darmstadt
Upper County Katzenelnbogen
(today South Hesse )
= approx. 10%
Wilhelm IV.
(1532–1592)
 
 Ludwig IV.
(1537–1604)
†† line expired
 
 Philip II
(1541–1583)
†† line expired
 
 George I
(1547–1596)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Moritz
(1572–1632)
abdicated in 1627
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ludwig V
(1577–1626)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Wilhelm V
(1602–1637)
∞ Amalie Elisabeth
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 George II
(1605–1661)

course

Trigger and initial phase

Philip I , last Landgrave of Hessen († 1567)

The conflict was triggered by the division of the inheritance after the death of Philip the Magnanimous in 1567. In accordance with an old house law in the House of Hesse, the latter had decreed in his will a division of the Landgraviate among his four sons, whereby the share of the Hessian territory decreased according to the succession :

  1. The eldest son, Wilhelm , received the Lower Principality in northern Hesse (hereinafter referred to as Hessen-Kassel ) with the city of Kassel , a total of about half of Hesse.
  2. The second eldest son, Ludwig , received Upper Hesse in the middle of Hesse (hereinafter called Hessen-Marburg ) with the city of Marburg and the fortress of Gießen , about a quarter of Hesse.
  3. The third oldest son, Philipp (the younger) , received the Niedergrafschaft Katzenelnbogen in western Hesse (hereinafter referred to as Hessen-Rheinfels ) with Rheinfels and Katzenelnbogen , a little more than an eighth of Hesse.
  4. The youngest son, Georg , received the Upper County of Katzenelnbogen in the south of Hesse (hereinafter referred to as Hessen-Darmstadt ) with the city of Darmstadt , a little less than an eighth of Hesse.

After the Rheinfels line died out in 1583, Hesse-Rheinfels was divided proportionally among the three brothers of the late Philip II.

The dispute over the Marburg legacy and the Thirty Years' War

Marburg inheritance dispute (from 1604)

Ludwig IV , the only Landgrave of Hesse-Marburg († 1604)

In 1604, Landgrave Ludwig IV of Hessen-Marburg died childless at his castle in Marburg . His will provided that Hessen-Marburg would be divided equally between the sons of his previously deceased brothers Wilhelm in Kassel and Georg in Darmstadt, on the condition that the Lutheran faith would be uniformly preserved throughout Hessen-Marburg.

There was initially a dispute about whether the division should take place halfway between the lines or proportionately according to the number of nephews. Darmstadt would have benefited from the latter interpretation, since Georg von Hessen-Darmstadt had left more sons with Ludwig , Philipp (III.) And Friedrich than Wilhelm von Hessen-Kassel with his sole ancestral owner Moritz . The dispute was decided by the Reichshofrat in favor of Hessen-Kassel after a legal challenge by Hessen-Darmstadt , and Hessen-Marburg was divided in half.

The dispute over the Marburg inheritance flared up again after Landgrave Moritz von Hessen-Kassel, who had come closer and closer to the Calvinist faith of his wife Juliane von Nassau-Dillenburg since taking over the government in 1592, put some Calvinist regulations into force in his area of ​​government in 1605 and converted to Calvinism in the same year. As a result, many Lutheran pastors moved to Hessen-Darmstadt and the Lutheran theologians from the University of Marburg to the illustrious grammar school in Giessen, which from 1607 also had the status of a university. Since Moritz ended the Lutheran unity of Hesse-Marburg by converting to Calvinism, he violated his uncle's will, which, according to Hesse-Darmstadt, lost his claim to his share in Hesse-Marburg. At that time, however, Darmstadt was not politically or militarily strong enough to be able to enforce its claim to the whole of Hessen-Marburg.

Advance of Hessen-Darmstadt to the main accord (1618–1627)

Ludwig V of Hessen-Darmstadt († 1626)
Moritz von Hessen-Kassel (abdicated 1627)
Battle of Höchst (1622)

In the Thirty Years' War, more precisely in the war for the Electoral Palatinate , Ludwig V of Hesse-Darmstadt initially behaved neutrally, but despite the Lutheran state religion, he tended to side with the Catholic Emperor, while the Calvinist Hesse-Kassel fought on the side of the Protestant Union . After the Protestant Duke Christian von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel marched into Upper Hesse in 1621, Ludwig V openly allied himself with the Emperor in the hope of military support.

This calculation initially worked out in the medium term: In 1621, the imperial field marshal Ambrosio Spinola occupied the Wetterau . In return, the Protestant military leader Ernst von Mansfeld attacked the Darmstadt Upper County on behalf of Elector Friedrich von der Pfalz . He succeeded in capturing Ludwig V of Hessen-Darmstadt and his son Johann . In exchange for the release of the hostages , he asked for the Rüsselsheim fortress to be handed over .

When he withdrew from Rüsselsheim, Mansfeld was defeated by the imperial general Tilly on June 10, 1622 in a battle on the Lorsch Heath . A few weeks earlier, on April 27, 1622 in the Battle of Mingolsheim , Mansfeld had still triumphed against Tilly, but had not taken much advantage of it. Shortly afterwards, Tilly regained strength through his victory in the Battle of Wimpfen on May 6, 1622. After Mansfeld, Tilly also defeated Duke Christian von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel on June 20, 1622 on Hessian territory near Höchst am Main in the battle of Höchst , which decisively weakened the Protestant side. Tilly advanced against Hessen-Kassel and occupied all of Niederhessen except for the city of Kassel, which forced the execution of an Imperial Court Council judgment of April 11, 1623, the entire legacy of Hessen-Marburg (including all tax revenues from it, retrospectively) and the county Katzenelnbogen with the Rheinfels fortress and the Rhens pledge of the Darmstadt line. In addition, Tilly occupied some Lower Hessian offices as pledge. Landgrave Moritz von Hessen-Kassel , however, did not recognize the judgment.

Ferdinand of Bavaria , Elector and Archbishop of Cologne , who was supposed to carry out the sentence, had the Rheinfels fortress besieged in 1626. Landgrave Ludwig V died during this siege. His son Georg II took over the affairs of government in Darmstadt and continued the fight against Kassel. After heavy fighting, Rheinfels was handed over to Hessen-Darmstadt on September 2, 1626 .

Because of the military defeats and the desolate governance of Landgrave Moritz von Hessen-Kassel, the Lower Hessian estates began to rebel openly against Moritz, and in 1627 they forced his abdication. In addition, the House of Kassel lost the Rotenburger Quart through Moritz's inheritance . In this way, Moritz's son and successor, Wilhelm V, was forced to accept the ruling of the Reichshofrat of 1623 and to renounce the disputed areas. On September 24, 1627, a settlement agreement , the so-called main accord , was concluded. All of Upper Hesse, the Niedergrafschaft Katzenelnbogen and the rule Schmalkalden , a Hessian exclave in Thuringia, went to Hessen-Darmstadt. In addition, Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Darmstadt were set to be of equal rank in the order of the German Empire. In return, Hessen-Kassel received the pledged-occupied areas in Niederhessen back.

With the edict of restitution of 1629, Hessen-Kassel also took the Hersfeld monastery , which had been under the administration of Lower Hesse since 1604. Since Kurköln had supported Hessen-Darmstadt in the Hessian inheritance matter, Landgrave Georg II now also initiated the redemption of the Electoral Cologne pledge of Rhens , which had come to the House of Hesse with the County of Katzenelnbogen , where, with the support of the Koblenz Jesuits, extensive recatholicization began in the same year.

Advance of Hessen-Kassel in the Swedish War (1630–1634)

George II of Hessen-Darmstadt
Wilhelm V of Hessen-Kassel († 1637)

After the complete defeat of the House of Hessen-Kassel was averted by the main chord, Wilhelm V began secretly from 1627, covered by the apparent renunciation, to build up a new mercenary army. The turning point for Hessen-Kassel in the Thirty Years War came in October 1630, when Wilhelm V became the first German Protestant prince to ally with King Gustav Adolf II of Sweden (also a great-grandson of Philip I and thus a great cousin of Wilhelm V) . After the alliance was formally sealed in the Treaty of Werben on August 22, 1631 (following the Battle of Werben ), Hessen-Kassel put its army in the service of the Swedish king. In return, Gustav Adolf offered the people of Kassel the prospect of expanding their territory by acquiring territories.

With the political and military support of the Protestant alliance under the leadership of the Swedish king and the skilful leadership of Wilhelm V, who also went to war as a general, the Lower Hessian troops succeeded in achieving considerable military success in the period that followed. The first to succeed was to drive the imperial occupiers out of Hessen-Kassel. On 24 August 1631 was Hersfeld that to the September 9, 1631 Kurmainz associated Fritzlar conquered. The imperial family was further weakened and put under pressure by the defeat in the Battle of Breitenfeld . With relief attacks on Mainz positions in the Taunus , Hessen-Kassel supported the Swedish advance via Erfurt , Würzburg and Hanau towards Frankfurt and Mainz .

The Lower Hesse hope to win back the lost territories in Upper Hesse in return for the support of the Swedes was not fulfilled. After George II had negotiated. Of Hesse-Darmstadt with the Swedish king, he reached through the closed on November 29, 1631 Treaty of maximum recognition of neutrality Hesse-Darmstadt in return for abandoning the fortress Ruesselsheim, so Darmstadt its territories in Upper Hesse could keep. Instead, on February 28, 1632, Gustav Adolf gave Hessen-Kassel some other areas outside of Hesse that Lower Hesse troops had previously conquered on behalf of Sweden (including the Fulda Abbey , the Diocese of Paderborn and the Corvey Monastery ) or were to conquer ( Diocese of Münster , later by the Swedish Chancellor Oxenstierna replaced by parts of the Duchy of Westphalia and the Vests Recklinghausen ).

Advance of the emperor against Hessen-Kassel from 1634

After the battle of Lützen in November 1632, in which the Swedish Protestant side suffered great losses and King Gustav Adolf was killed, the fortunes of war also turned for the Protestants, and with it Hessen-Kassel as well. After the defeat in the Battle of Nördlingen in September 1634, the Protestant alliance fell apart. The Calvinist Hessen-Kassel could not join the Prague Peace of 1635 due to excessive demands on the part of Darmstadt, which called for the annexation of the whole of Hessen-Kassel. Later, because of the uncompromising policy of the imperial court, he continued to fight on the Swedish and French sides against the emperor and the imperial princes. On the other hand, Hessen-Darmstadt had given up its neutrality and was again fighting openly for the Kaiser. Both sides achieved successes: Darmstadt won the county of Isenburg-Büdingen and the Electoral Palatinate Office of Kaub , Kassel ended a nine-month blockade of the Hanau fortress on June 13, 1636 by defeating the imperial military leader Lamboy . But neither side managed a decisive blow.

As a reaction to his victory over the imperial troops at Hanau and his alliance with France, Wilhelm V of Hessen Kassel was banned from the Reich on August 19, 1636 by the Electoral Congress in Regensburg . His adversary from Darmstadt was appointed administrator for all of Hesse. Because of the military stalemate, the eight was initially ineffective.

Since even after more than two decades there was no end to the dispute in sight and the whole of Hesse had suffered heavily from the consequences of the war, more than hardly any other region in Germany, the state estates from all parts of Hesse organized a state parliament in February 1637 , around one To achieve arbitration between their sovereigns.

The arbitration state parliament was not successful, because at the same time the newly elected Emperor Ferdinand III. , who was also King of Croatia , already sent several regiments of Croatian troops to Lower Hesse to enforce the eight against Wilhelm V. The Croatians devastated large parts of Lower Hesse during their campaign and threatened to take Kassel as well. In this situation Wilhelm V fled with his family and a large part of his army to Friesland , where Ulrich II of East Friesland, after mediation by the States General , granted him refuge. There, in the camp near Leer , he died of an illness on September 21, 1637.

Hesse-Kassel regained strength in the Swedish-French War (from 1637)

Amalie Elisabeth , regent of Hessen-Kassel from 1637

Since Wilhelm's son Wilhelm VI. At the time of his father's death, only eight years old, Wilhelm V appointed his wife Amalie Elisabeth as guardian for the underage heir and thus regent of Hessen-Kassel in his will . In a single coup she let the country pay homage to the underage son, who was not subject to the eight, past the Kaiser and Darmstadt. Amalie Elisabeth proved to be a skillful tactician who managed to consolidate the situation for Hessen-Kassel despite the extremely difficult starting position. At first she concluded a pretense of an armistice with the emperor and thus saved Kassel from being conquered by the imperial-Croatian troops. Then she rebuilt a powerful army on the basis of the troops her husband had taken with him to Friesland. Furthermore, in 1639 she concluded an alliance with France at Dorsten , represented by Cardinal Richelieu , and with Sweden, and later one with Duke Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar .

With their new allies behind them, Amalie Elisabeth's troops advanced increasingly against Kurköln from 1640 onwards , in order to defend and gain further territories that had already been conquered (and in return for the renunciation of Upper Hesse by the Swedes), especially in the area of ​​the Recklinghausen Castle . In 1641, after several weeks of siege by imperial and electoral Cologne troops , Hessen-Kassel lost the vestic city of Dorsten , which was conquered in 1633 , the most important Hessian position on the right Lower Rhine. But after some of the imperial troops had withdrawn to fight in other regions (especially near Wolfenbüttel ), Hessen-Kassel undertook a campaign in the Electoral Cologne area on the left bank of the Rhine. In the battle on the Kempen Heath , Hessen-Kassel, with the support of French and Weimar troops, inflicted a heavy defeat on the imperial army. As a result, large areas of northern Kurköln with the Duchy of Berg and parts of the neutral Duchy of Jülich fell under the occupation of Hesse-Kassel.

The Hessian War in the narrower sense (1645–1648)

Inspired by the military and diplomatic successes in the Rhineland and Westphalia, Landgravine Amalia Elisabeth von Hessen-Kassel felt strong enough from 1644 to resume the fight for the Marburg inheritance. She had the main chord treaty of 1627, in which the renunciation of Upper Hesse was stipulated, subsequently declared invalid by a legal opinion and at the end of 1645 dispatched her battle-hardened troops under the leadership of Johann von Geyso towards Marburg. After a brief siege of Marburg and Butzbach and surrender, the majority of Upper Hesse fell under the rule of Kassel again in early 1646.

In 1647 an imperial army led by General Melander , who had only recently changed sides from Kassel to Darmstadt, succeeded in regaining the city of Marburg - but not the castle. However, since shortly afterwards the city of Darmstadt and the Upper County were again attacked by French troops led by Marshal Turenne , the success was short-lived. By the end of 1647, the troops from Kassel had occupied most of Upper Hesse and the Lower County of Katzenelnbogen again. At the beginning of 1648, Melander's troops withdrew from Marburg.

The Hessian War was finally settled permanently within the framework of negotiations that were conducted in parallel to the Westphalian Peace Congress under the mediation of Duke Ernst von Sachsen-Gotha and which were sealed in a Unification and Peace Treaty in April 1648, before the Westphalian Peace Treaty. Before the Peace of Westphalia was concluded, Kassel fought (and won) one last time against the imperial side in the battle of Wevelinghoven in the Rhineland together with other Protestant troops; Darmstadt was not involved in this battle.

Through the unification agreement between Kassel and Darmstadt, Upper Hesse was permanently divided. Darmstadt had to forego a considerable part of Upper Hesse with Marburg and other occupied territories in favor of Kassel, including the Niedergrafschaft Katzenelnbogen and the rule Schmalkalden . The Niedergrafschaft Katzenelnbogen with the fortress Rheinfels fell to the Hessen-Kasselische secondary education Hessen-Rheinfels-Rotenburg .

literature

  • Kurt Beck: The Hessian brotherly dispute: between Hessen-Kassel u. Hessen-Darmstadt in d. Negotiations for the Westphalian. Peace from 1644 to 1648 . Kramer, 1978, ISBN 978-3-7829-0201-4 .
  • Kurt Beck: The brotherly dispute in the Hesse family . In: The history of Hesse . Konrad Theiss, Stuttgart 1983.
  • Erwin Bettenhäuser: The Landgraviate of Hessen-Kassel at the Westphalian Peace Congress 1644-1648 . Wiku, Wiesbaden 1983.
  • Günther Engelbert: The Hessian War on the Lower Rhine (1st part) . In: Annals of the Historical Association for the Lower Rhine . Issue 161 (1959), 1959, pp. 65-113 .
  • Eckhart G. Franz : The House of Hesse: A European Family . W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2005.
  • Klaus Malettke : France and Hessen-Kassel at the time of the Thirty Years' War and the Peace of Westphalia . In: Klaus Malettke (Hrsg.): Publications of the historical commission for Hessen: Small writings . tape 46 , part 5. Elwert, 1999, ISBN 978-3-7708-1116-8 .
  • Friedrich Rehm : Handbook of the history of both Hessen . NG Elwert, Marburg / Leipzig 1842 ( full text in the Google book search).
  • Alexander Ritter: Confession and politics on the Hessian Middle Rhine (1527-1685). Darmstadt and Marburg 2007. (Sources and research on Hessian history; Volume 153).
  • Friedrich Uhlhorn et al .: Historical Atlas of Hesse . Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies, 1966 ( online version with map . ).
  • Friedrich Uhlhorn, Fred Schwind : The territorial development of Hesse from 1247 to 1866 . In: Geschichtlicher Atlas von Hessen (see also the LAGIS maps in the web links section) . Hessian State Office for Historical Regional Studies, 1966.
  • Hans Heinrich Weber: The Hessian War . Dissertation to obtain a doctorate… Self-published (printed by Münchowsche Universitäts-Druckerei O. Rindt GmbH), 1935.
  • Kerstin Weiand: Hessen-Kassel and the imperial constitution. Goals and priorities of landgrave politics in the Thirty Years War . (= Series of studies and materials on constitutional and regional history ; Volume 24). Marburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-921254-84-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Klaus Koniarek: Georg II, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt. Retrieved February 27, 2011 .
  2. ↑ a b Frank-Lothar Kroll: History of Hesse . Volume 2607 from CH Beck's series: Knowledge. CH Beck, 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-53606-9 , pp. 34 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ Weber (see literature)
  4. ↑ Jürgen Helbach: The Niedergrafschaft Katzenelnbogen and the Hessian War . In: Hansenblatt . Series of publications of the International Hanseatic Order eV, St. Goar am Rhein. Volume 15, Issue 30. St. Goar 1977, p. 1–4 ( full text as PDF on jhelbach.de).
  5. ^ A b c Wolfgang Eichelmann: Hessian coins and medals - thoughts and considerations on coins and medals of the House of Brabant . Verl.-Haus Monsenstein and Vannerdat, Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-86991-060-4 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  6. ↑ a b Alexander Ritter: Confession and politics on the Hessian Middle Rhine (1527-1685) . Hessian Historical Commission Darmstadt and Historical Commission for Hesse, Darmstadt and Marburg 2007.
  7. ^ A b c Kretzschmar:  Wilhelm V, Landgrave of Hesse . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 43, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1898, pp. 39-54.
  8. ↑ Jens E. Olesen: Common acquaintances: Sweden and Germany in the early modern period . ( Publications of the Chair of Nordic History , Volume 2). Ed .: Ivo Asmus, Heiko Droste. LIT-Verlag, Münster 2003, ISBN 3-8258-7150-9 , p. 155 ( limited preview in Google Book search).

Web links