Johan Banér

Johan Banér

Johan Banér (* 23 June ^July / 3 July  1596 ^greg. In Djursholm , near Stockholm ; † 10 May ^July / 20 May  1641 ^greg. In Halberstadt ), also Jan Banér , Johan Banner , Johan Banier , Johan Bannier was a Swedish field marshal in the Thirty Years War . After the death of King Gustav II Adolf and after the heavy defeat of the Swedes in the Battle of Nördlingen , Banér became commander in chief of the Swedish troops in the Holy Roman Empire . In this role, Banér developed into one of the most ruthless and sophisticated representatives of the generals of the Thirty Years' War .

Life

Banér was the son of Gustav Axelsson Banér and his wife Christina Sture . Banér came from an old noble family and was born on the Djursholm manor on July 3, 1596 (June 23 according to the Julian calendar valid in Sweden). His father and uncle were born in 1600 on the orders of King Charles IX. Executed for high treason because she killed the Catholic, Polish King Sigismund III. Wasa and supported his claim to the throne. Although his father was killed by Charles IX, the father of King Gustav II Adolf , who had been in office since 1611, a close friendship developed between Banér and King Gustav II Adolf at an early age, probably also because Banér's family after the coronation by Gustaf II Adolf had been reinstated in their old positions.

In November 1623, Banér married Catharina Elisabeth von Pfuel . On February 20, 1636, his wife died, who had accompanied him on most of the campaigns and whose death touched him very much. As a kind, gentle but determined woman, she was very popular with the mercenaries, especially since she was the only one who knew how to treat her ambitious, always bad-tempered and impatient husband. It was all the more astonishing when Banér married Elisabeth Juliana von Erbach, daughter of the Margrave of Baden Georg III, on July 25, 1636 . As the margrave's son-in-law, Banér hoped that the connection would help him acquire land in the German Empire. To the annoyance of his officers, after this marriage, the length of the night drinking bouts increased and three quarters of the days were spent in bed. On May 29, 1640 Banér's second wife Elisabeth Juliane also died, which made his drunkenness even worse. Again after a short time, on September 16, 1640, Banér married Johanna Margaretha von Baden, a daughter of Margrave Friedrich V von Baden-Durlach . Once again he hoped that the relationship with the bride's father would benefit him to improve his position with the imperial princes.

Johan Banér died at the age of 44 on May 20, 1641 (May 10 according to the Julian calendar) in Halberstadt.

His son Gustav, known as the "great Banér", died in 1677 as governor general of Ingermanland with no heirs.

Military career

At the age of 19, Banér joined his brother Svante Banér's equestrian regiment . His career began with participating in the siege of Pskov in 1617 during the Polish-Swedish War . As early as 1620 Banér was a lieutenant captain in the court regiment and in the following year he was appointed colonel in front of Riga because of his bravery . In 1623 Banér received the rank of major general.

In 1625 he was appointed commander of Riga and held this post until 1626. He was then transferred to Danzig as commandant . As such, he was also authorized commissioner in the Swedish-Polish armistice negotiations, which lasted from 1627 to 1629. That year, Banér was promoted to general infantry and appointed governor of Memel .

Thirty Years' War

Together with the army of King Gustav II Adolf , Banér landed on the Baltic coast in Germany in 1630 and then played an increasingly important role in the Thirty Years' War . Together with Gustaf Horn , Banér negotiated the Barwalde Treaty between Sweden and France, which was passed in January 1631 and secured the future financing of the Swedish army by France.

Victories at Breitenfeld, Magdeburg Munich (1632)

In the battle of Breitenfeld between the army of the Catholic League under Tilly on September 17, 1631, Banér commanded the cavalry of the right wing of the Swedes. A flank attack by the cavalry Pappenheim was repulsed by the Swedish cavalry, so that Banér had a major share in the victory of the Swedes, which was the beginning of the Swedish triumphal march to southern Germany. From that day on, Banér was called "the Swedish lion" . At the end of November 1631, Banér received the order from Gustav II Adolf to take the city of Magdeburg, which had been conquered by troops of the Catholic League in May 1631 and which has been held since then . On January 7, 1632, he took his headquarters in Salbke south of Magdeburg, blocked the city, had to retreat first because of the impending approach of Pappenheim, who wanted to terrify Magdeburg from Wolfenbüttel , and then finally moved to Magdeburg on January 21, 1632 a.

In the following victory march of the Swedish army, Banér did a good job in the course of the victorious battle near Rain am Lech , (April 15, 1632), which opened the way to Bavaria. He was involved in the capture of Augsburg (April 20, 1632) and Donauwörth and participated in the only two-month occupation of Munich (May 17, 1632). The retreat from Munich to the north, where the imperial troops under Wallenstein near Nuremberg blocked the return route and the supply routes for the Swedish troops, took place in June 1632. In September 1632 there was the battle of the Alte Veste .

Withdrawal, Mutiny and New Beginning (1635)

In an unsuccessful attack by the Swedes on the Wallenstein camp near the Alte Veste (September 1632) General Banér was wounded. As a result, Banér was ordered to go west with a Swedish corps, where he was supposed to resist the Bavarian General von Aldringen . On the other hand, Gustav Adolf and the Swedish main army pursued the withdrawn Wallenstein army on the way to Saxony, where the battle of Lützen broke out in November 1632 , in which Gustav Adolf was killed.

In mid-January 1633 Banér withdrew to cure his war wound. In March of the same year he gave the gift of him Magdeburgische Office leeches back because he did not feel adequately taken into account in the reorganization of the Swedish army after the death of King Gustav II.Adolf, although he field marshal of the crown of Sweden and the Lower Saxon circle appointed had been. In 1634 Banér had again gathered a corps of 16,000 mercenaries , had encountered an Electoral Saxon army in Bohemia and advanced to Prague . However, after the heavy defeat of two Swedish armies in the Battle of Nördlingen (August 1634), all Swedish troops in the entire territory of the Reich were in dire straits. In the empire the Heilbronner Bund threatened to break up and Banér sent the message to the Swedish Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna that the two most important Protestant allies of the Swedes Kurbrandenburg and Electorate of Saxony intended to leave the alliance with Sweden. There was therefore the danger that in the winter of 1634/35 no quarters were available for the Swedish army in Brandenburg and Silesia. Banér would have to withdraw his army to the Altmark and to Magdeburg and Halberstadt in the Duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg to the still remaining ally, Duke Georg

In May 1635, Banér's prediction came true with the conclusion of the Peace of Prague . This treaty changed the military situation drastically. The Electorate of Saxony, previously allied with Sweden, was now allied with the emperor and Banér had to withdraw his endangered army to the Baltic coast in Pomerania. Even there, the well-secured Swedish supply bases were now considered endangered. Ultimate defeat was expected for the Swedes and there were rumors of an imminent peace in Sweden itself.

A mutiny began in the Swedish army of Banér, which consisted mostly of German mercenaries, because there was nowhere to be money and the wages were already in arrears. The situation was exacerbated by Saxon secret agents who appealed to the mercenaries' national consciousness and promised them good pay in the event that they would join the Saxon army and thus also serve the German cause. Banér, a rough, unrestrained brute , had no skill in dealing with the mutinous mercenaries and when a majority of the regiments refused to obey him, he was even ready to dismiss these regiments and surrender to the Saxons. That would have lost the Elbe region and the connection to Sweden. Only with the help of Chancellor Oxenstierna could the mutiny be ended at the last moment when a large number of Swedish mercenaries arrived from Poland, who were no longer needed in Poland after the conclusion of the Stuhmsdorf peace treaty between Poland and Sweden. Financial resources were also released and could be used to calm the situation. Despite continued difficult disciplinary conditions in the army and although the Swedish troops were already scattered in winter quarters, at the end of 1635 Banér still had to find an answer to the declaration of war by Saxony on Sweden on October 6, 1635. The Saxon army was already on the move and planned an attack on the fortress Dömitz on the Elbe, which was held by Swedish troops .

Victories at Dömitz and Wittstock, advance to Saxony and retreat to the Baltic Sea (1636/1637)

Although the new situation after the Peace of Prague had forced Banér to quarter his army in widely scattered winter quarters in the Duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg , in Magdeburg and in the Altmark in Mecklenburg , Banér managed to rally his army and the surprise attack of his new opponent, of the Elector of Saxony to counter. Johann Georg I had decided in October 1635 to attack the Swedes with the Saxon army in order to make it impossible for the Swedes to cross the Elbe at the fortress Dömitz and thus to make access to their bases on the Baltic coast impossible. With two clear victories over the Saxon army in the battle of Dömitz on November 11, 1635 and at Kyritz on December 17, 1635, the Saxon army was badly hit.

After the victory, Banér was able to combine his army with the smaller corps under Carl Gustav Wrangel and Lennart Torstensson . Nevertheless, the now united Swedish army remained numerically clearly inferior to the potential opponent, the imperial-Saxon imperial army under Melchior Graf von Hatzfeldt and Elector Johann Georg I. This superiority led to the attack of the Imperial Army and on October 4, 1636 the battle of Wittstock took place . The course of the battle and the unexpected victorious outcome for the Swedes, which was only noticed and announced on the imperial-Saxon side with a very long delay, subsequently gained great strategic importance.

With the surprising and clear victory over the superior Imperial Saxon army, the Swedes had demonstrated their resurgence and regained political and military influence for Sweden. The Swedes again became a threat to the emperor through the subsequent advances by Swedish troops into Saxony and Central Germany. For him, the victory was one of the reasons for breaking off the attack on Paris, which an Imperial Bavarian army had undertaken at the same time. The emperor's troops, supported by a Spanish army, had already conquered the French border fortress of Corbie in France , but then withdrew into the empire to fend off Banér's threatened attacks on the emperor's hereditary lands after the defeat at Wittstock. The conquered French border fortress Corbie was left to the protection of Spanish troops and was recaptured by French troops in the same year after the siege of Corbie .

After the victory at Wittstock, Banér occupied large parts of Saxony and Brandenburg and also conquered Erfurt . After Banér had also occupied Torgau , his army was surrounded there in the summer of 1637 by imperial troops under the commanders Melchior von Hatzfeldt and Johann von Götzen . Despite the difficult situation, Banér escaped with his army and was able to escape in an unusual chase between two armies across the Oder to Pomerania . The Swedish army was pursued in July 1637 by the superior Imperial Imperial Army under General Gallas , who at that time was not yet aware that he would lead the Imperial Army to its ruin, which earned him the nickname Heverderber.

Victory near Chemnitz, sack of Bohemia and futile marches (1639/1640)

In 1638 Banér was appointed the first governor general of occupied Pomerania by the Swedish crown.

In March 1638, France agreed to extend the annual support of 400,000 riksdalers to the Swedes for a further three years, as agreed in the 1636 Treaty of Wismar. A quote from Axel Oxenstierna makes it clear how important these subsidies were for Sweden , who openly admitted, "It was just the prospect of four tons of gold a year that would keep him clinging to the unloved alliance with France" Money like never before. Until 1643, when all major battles had been fought, the financial support provided by France and the Habsburg emperors, who took part in the war, was always of a similar magnitude. Just as the Swedes were supported by the allied France, the Habsburg Emperor was supported by the Spanish Habsburgs. That applied z. B. also for the imperial counter-offensive of 1640/41, which brought Banér and the Swedish army to the brink of disaster. In June 1638, the Swedish army was massively reinforced with 14,000 Swedish and Finnish mercenaries along with war supplies from Sweden. Banér now had a field army of 14,000 mercenaries on foot and 11,000 horsemen. In the spring of 1639 he invaded Saxony again and defeated the main army of the imperial army under Matthias Gallas on April 14, 1639 in the battle of Chemnitz .

After a 5-month siege and conquest of Pirna and then of Bautzen and after the victory over an imperial army at Brandeis , the whole of Bohemia became a heavily destroyed theater of war in the following winter of 1639/40 due to looting and lodging. In the new year 1640, Banér moved through Thuringia via Saalfeld into the Hesse region and further on to the city of Fritzlar , which was reached on August 31, 1640. There, the fortified camp of the Imperial Bavarian Army under Octavio Piccolomini was to be attacked in order to support the Swedish allies in the west. The attack did not take place due to foreseeable failure. The armies faced each other inactive for several weeks with poor supplies and unusually cold weather. When 14 regiments arrived at the end of September 1640 to reinforce the imperial army, the Swedish army left the camp and withdrew. Banér described the campaign as the worst campaign he had ever seen.

Advance to Regensburg, escape and death (1641)

In preparation for a campaign that was supposed to endanger or even blow up the Reichstag, which had been meeting in Regensburg since September 1640, Banér and his troops set up winter quarters in 1640/1641 in Cham near the Bohemian border in Upper Palatinate . There he united his army with the Weimar regiments under the French commander Jean Baptiste Budes de Guébriant . With this army Banér wanted to undertake a surprising, quick advance to Regensburg in the middle of winter and harass the emperor who was present there. The approach was delayed by a few days because of incorrect information from the scouting troops sent ahead. The first patrols were able to cross the frozen Danube and met an imperial hunting party south of the Danube at the gates of Regensburg. The emperor himself was not present, so that one could only seize the horses and hunting falcons. With the booty, the scouting party was able to retreat north across the Danube in time. Banér and the army, however, could no longer encircle the city from the south because the Danube, which had initially frozen over, was thawed after a weather change. Banér could only cover the city with a harmless cannonade from the north bank. Emperor Ferdinand III kept in the city . the calm and did not dissolve the Reichstag. The Swedish army had to return to its winter camp

On March 7th, ^July / March 17, 1641 ^greg. the winter camp near Cham was attacked by imperial troops and the numerically significantly inferior army of Banér, which was also weakened by losses - pursued by imperial cavalry regiments - had to retreat quickly to Saxony via the shortest route via Bohemian territory. On March 17th, ^Jul. / March 27, 1641 ^greg. The army moved from Kaaden to the Ore Mountains . The battle of Pressnitz broke out on the ridge . Banér lost about 4,000 men, which was almost a third of the troop strength. During the march, Banér had a severe fever. Terminally ill and carried in a sedan chair, he came to Halberstadt on May 18, 1641 and died there two days later. His successor was Lennart Torstensson , who found an army in the process of dissolution due to mutiny, but which he was able to stabilize with the help of a lot of money and by adding 7,000 new Swedish mercenaries.

Military role and behavior of Banér in the last years of his life

In the last years of his life, Banér, like other military leaders, strove for personal power and land ownership in Germany. Ambitious, domineering and unscrupulous, he tried to achieve these goals and was able to take advantage of his very special military position vis-à-vis the Swedish Chancellor Oxenstierna. After the annihilation of two Swedish armies in the Battle of Nördlingen and the failure of the two military leaders - Gustaf Horn in French captivity until 1642 and Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar in the service of France - Banér was in a key position for the Swedes. He was the Swedish government's only viable asset. After the Peace of Prague, his army was the bulwark against the emperor, Saxony and Brandenburg. His army protected the spatial connection between the Upper Rhine and the Baltic Sea coast with the connection between home country Sweden. Banér's departure would have made Sweden worthless as an ally for France and would have forced Sweden to a shameful peace. All the more threatening was the poor condition of the Banér army, which was also regarded in the officer corps as extraordinarily lacking in discipline, unreliable and prone to mutinies. However, the reports on the conditions in the army came from Banér himself, who tended to exaggerate to prove that he was the only one who could rule this army. He used his strong position to repeatedly put the Swedish Chancellor Oxenstierna and the Swedish government under pressure by even making offers to the Habsburg emperor for peace negotiations and in return received tempting offers from the emperor as the best of all Swedish generals in his service to kick. But he declined all offers. On the other hand, he angered his ally France by attempting to use the Weimaraner army under Jean Baptiste Budes de Guébriant not only for his own purposes - as in January 1641 when the attack on Regensburg was finally broken off - but also entirely woo for themselves from France.

Member of the Fruitful Society

In the summer of 1633, Prince Ludwig I of Anhalt-Köthen accepted him into the Fruit Bringing Society . He gave it the company name of the keeper and the motto the regiment . The Indian pipe was given to him as an emblem . In the Koethener Society Register (1619) there is Banér's entry under the number 222. The rhyme law is also recorded there, with which he thanks for the admission:

From the reed from India one needs to hold the staff

The regiment in the field, and to administer it right,

As it puts forward the time, holding drumb I took ahn

The name in the job in which I'm leaving.

Good regiment in war, loved to lead me,

Whenever such a story can be sensed,

That there is no rod that rules without fruit

And a brave heart adorns with armed act.

literature

• Gustaf Björlin: Johan Baner. Stockholm: PA Norstedt & Söners, 1908-10. (Swedish biography in 3 vol.)
• Matthias Blazek: "The consequences of the Banérschen drinking feast of October 28, 1640", in: Der Heidewanderer , local supplement of the Allgemeine Zeitung, Uelzen, 87th year (1991) - No. 25, p. 99 f.
• Birger Steckzén: The Swedish lion Johan Baner. Leipzig: Paul List, 1942. Translated from the Swedish by Elisabeth Ihle. (Swedish original edition: Johan Baner. Stockholm: Gebers, 1939.)
• Ernst Wangerin: Johan Banér: Swedish field marshal in the Thirty Years War . Duisburg: Ewich, 1905

Web links

Commons : Johan Banér  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Publications by and about Johan Banér in VD 17 .
• Tripota - Trier portrait database
• Continuatio from Pomerania, from General Baniers digital campaign in the Bremen State and University Library

Remarks

1. ↑ (see Friedrich Schiller : Wallenstein's Death )
2. ^ Christian Pantle: The Thirty Years' War. When Germany was on fire. Propylaeen, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-549-07443-5 , p. 223.
3. ↑ CV Wedgewood: The 30 Years War. Paul List Verlag, Munich 1967, ISBN 3-517-09017-4 , pp. 387-389.
4. ↑ Reinhard Spindler, Magdeburg in the Thirty Years War. In: Magdeburger Stadtzeuge (n) , Heft 15, Verlag Delta D Magdeburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-935831-43-7 , p. 47
5. ↑ ^{a b} C. V. Wedgewood: The 30 Years War. Cormoran Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-517-09017-4 , pp. 333f, 348f.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Lothar Höbelt: From Nördlingen to Jankau. Imperial strategy and warfare 1634–1645. Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-902551-73-3 , p. 438.
7. ^ Lothar Höbelt: From Nördlingen to Jankau. Imperial strategy and warfare 1634–1645. Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-902551-73-3 , pp. 198-200.
8. ↑ CV Wedgewood: The 30 Years War . Cormoran Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-517-09017-4 , p. 368.
9. ^ Christian Pantle: The Thirty Years' War. When Germany was on fire. Propylaeen, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-549-07443-5 , pp. 243-249.
10. ^ CV Wedgewood: The 30 Years War , Paul List Verlag, Munich 1967; Pp. 381,390; ISBN 3-517-09017-4 ; Christian Pantle: The Thirty Years War. When Germany was on fire. Propylaea, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-549-07443-5 , p. 49 f.
11. ↑ Zdeněk Hojda: The battle for Prague 1648 and the end of the Thirty Years War. In: Klaus Bußmann , Heinz Schilling (Ed.): 1648: War and Peace in Europe. Volume 1. Münster 1998, ISBN 3-88789-127-9 , pp. 403-412 ( online ).
12. ↑ ^{a b} C. V. Wedgewood: The 30 Years War . Cormoran Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-517-09017-4 , pp. 387-390.