Battle of the Konzer Bridge
Engraving showing the course of the battle, artist and date unknown
| date | August 11, 1675 |
|---|---|
| place | Conc |
| output | Victory of the anti-French coalition |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
|
|
|
| Commander | |
|
GW von Lüneburg |
|
| Troop strength | |
| 16,000 men: 11 bags of infantry (10,000 men) 42 Esk. Cavalry (6600 riders) 14 guns Rear guard: |
15,000 men: 12 bags of infantry (11,000 men) 36 escort cavalry (5,400 riders) 11 guns Trier garrison: approx. 7 bags (6,000 men) |
| losses | |
|
1000 dead |
2000–6000 dead, |
.svg){kind=small}
Dutch War (1672–1678 / 79)
Solebay - First Schooneveld - Second Schooneveld - Texel - Bonn - Maastricht - Sinsheim - Seneffe - Enzheim - Türkheim - Sasbach - Konzer Bridge - Stromboli - Augusta - Palermo - Kokersberg - Philippsburg - Maastricht - Valenciennes - Tobago - Cassel - Freiburg - Ypres - Rheinfelden - Saint-Denis
The battle of the Konzer Bridge was an episode of the Dutch War . On August 11, 1675, troops allied with Emperor Leopold I achieved a victory over an army of the French Sun King Louis XIV. The triumph thwarted the attempt of a French relief army to break the siege of the city of Trier , which had been under French occupation by the imperial army since 1673 . As a result, the besieged surrendered on September 6, 1675.
Marshal François de Créquy (also: de Créqui) was in command of the French relief army . The imperial coalition army commanded Duke Georg Wilhelm von Braunschweig-Lüneburg . His brother, the Osnabrück Prince-Bishop Ernst August , and Duke Karl IV of Lorraine (Georg Wilhelms and Ernst August's brother Johann Friedrich , as Duke of Braunschweig-Calenberg (Hanover), was a French party member) had advisory functions . The imperial sergeant-general Otto de Grana played a decisive role in the battle .
The battle site is not far from Trier , between Wasserliesch and Konz below the Granahöhe , near the confluence of the Saar and the Moselle .
prehistory
During the War of Devolution , Louis XIV made a first successful attempt to expand French territory to the northeast. At that time Spain was still the main enemy and the Spanish Netherlands was the target of aggression, but the Sun King soon turned against the Holy Roman Empire . The inadequately protected western border of the empire, weakened by small states, was easy prey for its expansion policy. Louis XIV had already occupied the Duchy of Lorraine in 1670 and expelled its ruler, Charles IV. Only four years after the end of the War of Devolution, France was preparing to attack the United Netherlands . Louis XIV wanted to take revenge on his former ally in the war of devolution for the separate peace that he concluded in Breda in 1667 , which forced him to the Aachen Peace of 1668 , which was disadvantageous for him . Also of interest was the weakening of the Dutch naval and trading power.
France secured its project diplomatically in advance. It concluded alliances with England, Bavaria and Sweden, and contractually allied with almost all princes in the strategically important Lower Rhine area. About subsidy treaties were Cologne and Munster committed to providing his own troops. Osnabrück and Calenberg (Hanover) were also in league with France . The German Kaiser declared his neutrality in 1671. By means of neutrality treaties, France won the support of Pfalz-Neuburg with the duchies of Berg and Jülich , as well as Kurtrier , which controlled an important supply route with the Moselle. Brandenburg's Great Elector , courted by France as the sovereign of the strategically important Duchy of Cleves , initially sided with Holland; therefore, when the war broke out, Kleve was quickly occupied by the French.
The fatal border position between the territories of the traditionally hostile Bourbons and Habsburgs forced the Trier sovereign Karl Kaspar von der Leyen to adopt an opportunistic policy of neutrality, which was aimed at the currently more powerful. From May 1672 there were regular transports of troops and provisions on the Moselle; In the period from April to August alone, eyewitnesses counted almost 200 supply ships. The elector stayed away from the action: the capital was Trier, but the sovereigns had resided at Philippsburg Palace in Ehrenbreitstein - today a district of Koblenz - since 1629 .
In March 1672 England opened the naval war with an attack on the Dutch Smyrna - trade convoy . France declared war in April. The deployment base and supply route for the attack from the east formed the territories on the Lower Rhine and Moselle, over which 100,000 men advanced against Holland. The main thrust, however, led through the duchy of Liège, allied with France, against Holland's strongest fortress, the exterritorial Maastricht . The attacking power increased Cologne with 18,000 men and Munster with around 25,000 men. After initial successes, Münster failed at the end of August 1672 and again in April 1673 at the Dutch fortress of Groningen . The operations of the French, however, assumed threatening proportions. They conquered several Spanish-Luxembourgish and Dutch fortresses within a short time and were also able to take Maastricht at the beginning of July 1673. Having reached the lowest point of the so-called Rampjaar , the desperate Dutch broke through the sea dykes in June / July and put their land under water. The French advance was stopped abruptly.
Occupation of Trier by the French 1673–75
Some of the troops that were now released were used by Louis XIV against Kurtrier, whose fickle policy of neutrality endangered France's supply via the Moselle and Lower Rhine. He also learned that the Elector of Trier had admitted some imperial companies to “protect” the city of Trier. Kurtrier's change of sides had become evident. A French corps of around 10,000 men followed Our and Sauer to Oberbillig and occupied Igel at the beginning of August . The Sun King had instructed the general, Marshal Turenne , to collect 133,000 livres from the population as a contribution to the maintenance of his troops. The residents were unable to do this. A report by the St. Maximin Office in Trier, which is kept in the city archive in Trier, describes the desolate situation: “All the villages are overcrowded with the [French] soldiers, musquetiers and the king's bodyguard. There is not a single cavalier among them who does not have a servant or two. There are houses in which 6 or 8 at the same time and so many servants and horses are lodged (quartered) . They perish and perish all the harvest (harvest) . It can be seen misery and misery and hear the poor earlier corrupt subjects shouting and Lamentationes (complaints) . "Ready cash acquired the French by the authorities and monasteries in the region. Due to the growing need, the Trier Elector turned to the Reichstag several times with a request for help. Initially without success.
On August 24, 1673, Turenne had completely enclosed the city of Trier with its estimated 6,000 inhabitants. After the refusal to accept a 5,000-strong French garrison, Trier came under artillery fire from August 31 to September 9, 1673. 500 soldiers from the Electorate of Trier, a company of imperial soldiers and an armed contingent of citizens, craftsmen and students offered resistance, but had to surrender. Up to 500 French had fallen, as did a smaller number of defenders. Louis XIV wrote in a letter to his Minister of War Louvois :
"Je veux faire tout ce que sera necessaire pour prendre Trèves."
"I will do whatever it takes to take Trier."
6000 French, Swiss and English occupied the city. The administration was taken over by a French governor . The electorate and imperial troops , who had defended them, set off by ship on the Moselle in the direction of Koblenz.
In the period that followed, the French expanded the city into a fortress by the end of 1674. In order to have a clear field of fire to repel a possible attack by the imperial troops, they had almost all the buildings outside the city walls torn down. This project was completed at the end of 1674, after which the city was indeed a fortress, but its surroundings were devastated. Other French bases are Wittlich , Neumagen , Bernkastel , Mayen , Saarburg , Karthaus and the Konzer Bridge .
The Battle of the Konzer Bridge
In the meantime, however, the tide turned against the Sun King. In May 1672, under the Great Elector , Brandenburg-Prussia took the side of the Netherlands (which he dropped again in 1673 with the Treaty of Vossem ), followed by the Emperor in June 1672. The year 1674 brought the decisive change: Austria-Habsburg forged an anti-French coalition with Spain, Denmark, Brandenburg, the Electorate of Saxony , Wolfenbüttel and Lüneburg (Celle) , Kassel and Kurtrier. The Münster prince-bishop Galen changed sides and concluded a separate peace with the Netherlands on April 22, 1674. On May 11, the Cologne Elector Maximilian Heinrich , who had been allied with Ludwig, followed suit . In November 1673, after nine days of siege, he had already lost his most important fortress, Bonn , and was now forced to change alliances. This paralyzed the French supply route across the Moselle and the Lower Rhine. With the Peace of Westminster (1674) England fell away from France and switched to Habsburg. When the Reichstag declared the Imperial War against France on May 24, 1674 , Brandenburg and Osnabrück, which had previously been allied with the Sun King, also joined the anti-French camp. Bavaria and Calenberg were among the few parts of the empire that remained loyal to France.
Initially planned was an action against the Swedes on the side of France in Bremen-Verden . A word of power from the emperor then steered the company into the Moselle area towards Trier, from there to advance towards Lorraine or Alsace, where strong French forces had advanced as far as the Tauber and Main . Three armies were concentrated in the spring of 1675 for use against France, one of them near Cologne for use on the Moselle. The largest contingents were Lüneburg (5,000 infantrymen, 3,000 horsemen, and the entire artillery with 14 guns) and Osnabrück (3,000 foot troops, 800 horsemen). Münster and Trier were each involved with 3,000 foot troops, in addition there were Imperial Austrian troops (2,000 infantrymen, 1,500 horsemen) and those from the Spanish Netherlands (2,000 infantrymen). Duke Charles IV of Lorraine commanded the bulk of the cavalry with 2,500 riders . In total the Reichsarmee numbered about 25,800 men, of which 18,000 were infantry and 7,800 cavalry. In addition, 2000 foot troops from Mainz were approaching, but they did not arrive until after the battle.
The armed forces left Oberhausen and Bergheim on July 14th and reached Schweich at the beginning of August . After building a wooden makeshift bridge over the Moselle near Pfalzel , the Allies stood in front of the walls of the city of Trier on August 4 and began to enclose them. Louis XIV then had a relief army with about 10,800 infantry, 5,400 cavalry and 11 cannons marched. Marshal Créquy was in command. Originally scheduled to support Condé in Alsace, he now turned around at Zabern and arrived at Tawern via the Saargau , not far from the later battlefield. Then the French advanced further and now held the plain below the (later so-called) Granahöhe , this itself and the adjacent low terraces on the edge of the Liescher mountain .
The Reichsarmee then felt compelled to loosen the siege of Trier and attack the French who were still encamped beyond the Sauer. On the night of August 10th to 11th, they advanced with the bulk of their armed forces to the Konzer Bridge, about an hour and a half away, and took the weakly guarded river crossing in a flash. A French counterattack undertaken shortly thereafter was broken off in the face of the numerically superior Allies. They immediately began to create an additional possibility to cross the river with the help of a pontoon bridge .
4,500 infantrymen and 600 horsemen were placed between Karthaus and Trier to prevent the French lying in Trier from falling out; in fact one was soon presented and rejected by about 700 men. To the north-west of Trier, near Pfalzel, 3,600 men and 700 horsemen had been left behind to protect the siege guns. The remaining 16,000 men stood on August 11, 1675 for the battle of the Konzer Bridge. They faced a good 15,000 French who were completely taken by surprise by the presence of the enemy. At around 10 a.m. (some sources also indicate 8 a.m.) the Allies crossed the Saar in three places: The infantry and artillery passed over the stone Konzer Bridge and the new Pioneer Bridge, the cavalry used two fords on the left and right of the bridges. Sergeant General Otto de Grana commanded the right wing and, shortly after crossing the Saar, captured two French supply ships near Reinig (now part of Wasserliesch ) on the Moselle. Then he conquered the strategically important northern terrace of the Liescher mountain (the Granahöhe later named after him ); this offered an excellent view of the future battlefield and an ideal field of fire.
At 11 o'clock the Allies were all standing on the southern bank of the Saar; half an hour later, the French, taken by surprise, were attacked in general. The fight was initially a draw. Créquy organized vigorous counter-attacks that temporarily brought the Allies to the brink of defeat. General Grana's intervention turned the fortunes of war. With the help of the entire Lorraine cavalry (around 2,200 horsemen), 600 dragoons (half of which consisted of Lorraine and imperial soldiers) as well as around 4,500 infantry and 3 guns, he conquered the Liescher Berg and the Kehlberg against only half as strong French forces. After about an hour, Grana had occupied the heights of Tawern at around 2 p.m., thus seizing the main French army in side and back. It was this action that “decided the defeat of the enemy after three hours of fighting”, according to the inscription on the granade monument. The situation was now hopeless for Crequy's troops, and they turned to flee. In the end, they had suffered heavy losses: around 2,000 dead and 1,600 prisoners. In addition to 80 flags and standards, the imperial troops captured all 11 cannons and 200 wagons with supplies. Of the anti-French allies, more than 1,000 soldiers lost their lives.
A contemporary report describes an impression of the fierceness of the struggle: “In this state the Keyser troops attacked the peoples [of the French] so violently that they completely beat these regiments and hacked them into the pan, which was such a horror to the whole French camp chased in that everyone thought more about escape than about fencing ”. The imperial chased the French about 50 kilometers to the fortress Sierck on the border with French-occupied Lorraine. Another advance seemed too risky for the pursuers, so they turned around and turned against the French troops in the city of Trier.
Surrender of the French occupation of Trier
The French commander, Marshal Créquy, had escaped to Saarburg with some of his officers . Disguised in a Lorraine equestrian uniform, he managed to get to besieged Trier by night on the day of the battle. There he took over command of the enclosed French troops. As the siege continued, Créquy stubbornly refused to surrender and surrender the city. Créquy's intransigence drove his demoralized troops to mutiny , which opened the city gates to the Allies on September 6, 1675. The French garrison had meanwhile melted from 6,000 to 1,500 men; she was allowed to leave for Metz and Diedenhofen , leaving her horses and firearms behind. The Allies lost about 500 men in the siege. Later, "the elector Archbishop Karl Caspar von der Leyen, who was distinguished by German convictions," as the inscription on the Grenade memorial reads, was able to move back into his capital.
Créquy still did not surrender after taking the city. He occupied the Trier Cathedral and fought doggedly a fight for honor with a few of his loyal followers. There are two versions of the circumstances surrounding his capture. One says that he last fled to a bell tower in Trier Cathedral and was captured there by a Brunswick officer. According to the other version, he was found on horseback in the cathedral behind one of the altars and arrested. Créquy was brought to the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress in Koblenz. In November, the Elector of Trier released him again - presumably as a gesture of goodwill towards Louis XIV.
Historical meaning
Since the anti-French coalition decided not to take advantage of its victory, the significance of the battle at the Konzer Bridge remained historically limited. The number of dead and wounded on both sides was within the normal range of the time, but Créquy's force was for the moment crushed. The allies, however, failed to take any further action against the remaining contingents of the Sun King's troops in Lorraine and Alsace. The loss of Bonn and Cologne as well as the flooding of Holland had put an end to the French advances over the Moselle and Lower Rhine in any case. Meanwhile, Trier could have formed the basis for Louis XIV to recapture lost territory; the loss of the city was therefore significant for him. In general, France's defeat turned out to be painful enough that Trier and the Moselle valley were to remain intact for the remainder of the Dutch War.
In a continuation of the fight against France, Lüneburg and Munster in particular saw no advantages, but rather the threat to their own military potential. His engagement in the war against France's allies, Sweden, which was weakened after the defeat at Fehrbellin , promised more profit ; here, in the event of a victory, significant territorial gains beckon. Therefore, the two Reichsländer prepared together with Brandenburg and Denmark for the Bremen-Verden campaign , for which they set out in September 1675.
It was not until the Reunion War in 1684 that the French occupied Trier again, with Marshal Créquy at their head. After taking the city of Luxembourg in June 1684, he had all of the Trier towers torn down and the moat filled in.
Battlefield today
Most of the fallen soldiers on both sides are said to have been buried in mass graves above the Granahöhe, namely on a higher terrace on the mountainside in the district of “Auf der Kerrichhof” (“On the churchyard ”, in Moselle Franconian dialect “Ob 'm Körfich”). Until recently, farmers found remains of weapons and other military equipment, cannonballs and many horseshoes on the battlefield when they were ordering their land. The area was considered unsettled for a long time, and ghost stories kept making the rounds among the rural population.
In memory of the “Battle of the Conzer Brück”, as it is called in contemporary sources, the Granadenkmal was erected on Granahöhe in 1892 .
Today the memorial is part of the "Culture and Orchid Trail" set up by the Upper Moselle community of Wasserliesch with EU support in 2005/2006 .
literature
- Gottfried Kentenich : History of the city of Trier: from its foundation to the present; Memorandum for the 100th anniversary of the city's membership of the Prussian state . F. Lintz, Trier 1915, DNB 560621256 . Reprint: Verlag der Akademischen Buchhandlung Interbook, Trier, 1979, DNB 810229242
- Golo Mann: August Nitschke . Propylaea world history, Propylaea publishing house Berlin-Frankfurt a. M.
- Chronicle Wasserliesch (community Wasserliesch)
- Arthur Janke : The siege of the city of Trier in the years 1673–1675 and the battle at the Conzer Bridge on August 11, 1675 . Publishing house of Fr. Lintz'schen Buchhandlung, Trier 1890.
Web links
- Battle of the Konzer Bridge 1675 (copper engraving by Merian from 1682) from Dilibri in high resolution
- Homepage of the municipality of Wasserliesch
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jean-Charles Fulaine: Le duc Charles IV de Lorraine et son armée. 1624-1675. Éditions Serpenoise, Metz 1997, ISBN 2-87692-324-6 .
- ↑ Book Show. In: Austrian soldier friend. Journal for military interests / military newspaper , December 5, 1890, p. 6 (online at ANNO ).
Coordinates: 49 ° 41 ′ 37 ″ N , 6 ° 33 ′ 31 ″ E