Johann Wilhelm Wennemar von Eppe

Johann Wilhelm Wennemar von Eppe († December 1643 ) was a mercenary leader in the Thirty Years War , most recently a colonel and regimental commander in imperial service.

origin

He came from the noble family of those von Eppe , who had their ancestral seat in the village of Eppe , today a south-western part of Korbach in the north Hessian district of Waldeck-Frankenberg and in the course of time acquired an estate in Goddelsheim , the Wasserburg Reckenberg and the Burg Fürstenberg as a fief .

Military career

Eppe first appears in a document in 1622, initially as captain in the Würzburg - Bamberg , from 1623 ligist foot regiment Wolf Dietrich Truchsess von Wetzhausen , with whom he participated in the battles against the troops of the Electorate of Palatinate under Ernst von Mansfeld , including the battle of Mingolsheim on 27. April 1622, took part.

Later he was in the Hesse-Kassel service without any details being known. However, he was enfeoffed on September 18, 1638 by Margrave Georg Wilhelm von Brandenburg , probably for recognized services, with the Brandenburg fief of the House of Horne in Haaren an der Lippe .

Soon afterwards he changed sides for the second time: from February 1639 he was a colonel in imperial service. When he was chasing Swedish troops under Königsmarck from Minden to Duderstadt in June 1639 , he was trapped there and about 500 men were taken prisoner in Sweden. After his release he was involved in September 1640 with the sergeant-general Wenzel Zahrádecký von Zahrádka in the capture of Bevern Castle , with Eppe playing an inglorious role. First he persuaded the commander of the castle crew to hand it over in an honorable manner, but then he had the departing plundered and captured under an obviously made-up pretext.

In December 1640 Eppe was in Breckerfeld and in spring 1641 in Essen . In April 1641 he appeared with three regiments on horseback and on foot, guns and siege equipment in front of Hofgeismar , and there was fear of an attack on the city or the nearby Grebenstein , but instead attacked Helmarshausen , further north , where he had almost 200 horses and other booty brought to himself. Shortly afterwards he undertook a fruitless attack on Warburg, which was occupied by Hesse-Kassel troops . In June 1641 he was in Soest , where his soldiers allegedly demolished 600 buildings - more than had been destroyed in the town fire in 1636 - in order to have firewood. In July he was attacked by troops of the States General during the siege of Dorsten . In November 1641, troops approaching Eppes from Essen participated in attacks on Hesse-Kassel troops in Uerdingen and Kleve , which had previously attacked Kaiserswerth , Goch , Kleve and the Alps . In January 1642 Eppe was with about 1000 riders under the command of General Feldzeugmeister Guillaume de Lamboy at Süchteln , then at Hüls . In the subsequent battle on the Kempen Heide , which ended with a crushing defeat on the imperial and electoral sides, he - like Lamboy himself - was taken prisoner.

In April 1642 it was exchanged for Volmar von Rosen, brother of the Weimar Commander-in-Chief Reinhold von Rosen . After his release, he initially stayed in Essen. In June his regiment was at Angermund . In October he was in Dorsten, then he moved to Wetzlar via Paderborn , Obermarsberg and Hallenberg . In the spring of 1643 he moved back west across the Rhine. In May he was in Bedburg , in August in Luxemburg , then with Gerolstein , and in September he moved to Freilingen and Lommersdorf . In October he was back on the right bank of the Rhine in Freusburg . He marched further south and took part on November 24, 1643 in the battle of Tuttlingen, which was victorious for the Bavarian-Imperial Bavarian Empire, against the French lying in winter quarters. His cavalry regiment was initially involved in the capture of the French artillery off Tuttlingen and then in the encirclement of the opposing infantry in Möhringen .

death

This was his last combat mission. Eppe was killed in a duel in December 1643 by the colonel and later imperial field marshal lieutenant Johann (Jobst) Hilmar von Knigge , who had accused him of deserting him .

Footnotes

1. ↑ Wolf Dietrich Truchsess von Wetzhausen auf Weißendorf and Weisenbach (1586 - March 31, 1639), colonel, last councilor and bailiff zu Trimberg (Bernd Warlich: Truchsess von Wetzhausen auf Weißendorf and Weisenbach, Wolf Dietrich von. In: The Thirty Years' War in personal reports , Chronicles and Reports . Online publication May 10, 2012, accessed June 27, 2019)
2. ↑ Bernd Warlich: Epp [e , [Johann] Wilhelm [Wennemar] von.] In: The Thirty Years' War in personal reports, chronicles and reports . Published online May 19, 2012, accessed June 27, 2019
3. ↑ https://www.lwl.org/westfaelische-geschichte/portal/Internet/urkunden_datenbank/suche/regest_detail.php?dwudanhaben=J®est=99177
4. ↑ https://hammwiki.info/wiki/Urkunde_1638_September_18

literature

• Bernd Warlich: Epp [e , [Johann] Wilhelm [Wennemar] von.] In: The Thirty Years' War in personal reports, chronicles and reports . Published online May 19, 2012, accessed June 27, 2019.