Battle of Stresow

Battle of Stresow

Part of: Great Northern War
Pomeranian Campaign 1715/1716

Landing of the troops at Groß Stresow

date	Landing: November 15, 1715 Combat: November 16, 1715 between 3 and 4 a.m.
place	Groß Stresow , today a part of Putbus on the island of Rügen
output	Victory of the Prussians, Danes and Saxons

Parties to the conflict
Sweden	Prussia Denmark Saxony
Commander
Charles XII.	Leopold I.
Troop strength
750 ( infantry ) 2.200 ( cavalry ) 8 artillery guns	19,500 (infantry) 3,500 (cavalry) 26 artillery pieces of which landed: 15,000
losses
400 dead 100 wounded	180 dead and wounded

The battle of Stresow in the course of the Pomeranian campaign of 1715/1716 in the Great Northern War took place in the morning hours of November 16, 1715 near Groß Stresow near Putbus on the island of Rügen . In history, this battle is described as both a battle near Stresow and a battle near Groß Stresow .

prehistory

Battle of Stresow

Location of the battlefield

As early as 1711 and 1712, the Danish and Saxon troops tried to take the fortress of Stralsund . This siege failed because the fortress could be supplied with supplies and troops from the island of Rügen from the Swedish motherland. In addition, the Swedish Navy still had sovereignty over the bay in front of Stralsund and the waters around Rügen.

In the early summer of 1715, Prussian, Danish, Saxon and Electoral Hanover troops began to besiege Stralsund again. The Swedish king personally took over the defense of the city and fortress. During this siege, too, the troops were shot at from Rügen. So it was decided to take the island of Rügen first and then to advance on Stralsund from two sides. A necessary prerequisite for a landing operation was mastery of the waters around Rügen. After the naval battle at Jasmund , the storming of the Peenemünder Schanze and the sea ​​battles in the Greifswalder Bodden , the Allies had put the Swedes on the defensive. You could now safely land the transport fleet near Rügen. On November 15, 1715, under the command of Leopold I von Anhalt-Dessau, an army of around 19,500 men made up of Prussian , Danish and Saxon troops landed on a beach near Groß Stresow. The Swedes had a garrison of 4,500 men stationed on the island, led by King Charles XII. It consisted of twelve cavalry squadrons and five infantry battalions. In addition, the Swedes had twelve cannons.

The Allies secured the landing zone on all sides with raised entrenchments and Spanish horsemen . Furthermore, night vigils were set up and the troops put in combat readiness.

The attack of the Swedes

Charles XII. had learned of the landing of the troops at Gross Stresow and immediately set off to catch the attackers on the beach. In the dark of night he embarked with some of his closest officers in a fishing boat and left Stralsund in the direction of Rügen. He did not get enough information about the strength of the Allied troops and only marched towards Stresow with a small, quickly deployed force.

In the early morning hours of November 16, the Swedish army reached the beach at Groß Stresow, near Alte Fähr . The troops that had landed were already in battle formation behind their barricades and awaited the attack by the Swedes. The Swedish king attacked the enemy immediately after arriving with his cavalry. This attack was quickly canceled because the entrenchments over which Charles XII. was very astonished, prevented the cavalry from entering.

The second attack was led by the infantry . But this also had problems hitting Prince Leopold I's troops behind their entrenchments. The horse on Karl XII. rode into battle was shot dead in the fighting. After Karl and his troops had fought their way into the defense line of the Danes with heavy losses, he was wounded by a grazing shot in the shoulder. The attack hit the Danish Jyske regiment with such violence that it staggered for a moment. But it recovered quickly and opened a violent counterfire. Very soon the Danes received additional troop support. So the Swedes could be thrown back.

Fifteen minutes after the battle began, Prince Leopold von Anhalt-Dessau ordered General Dewitz to attack the Swedish flank with the five Prussian and Saxon cavalry squadrons. The attack was repulsed by the Swedish cavalry . The bloody battle continued, but over time it developed into a battle of retreat for the entire Swedish armed forces due to the intense counter pressure. The king himself lay wounded under his horse, hit by a musket ball in his chest. Only with difficulty could it be recovered at the last moment.

The Swedes lost all their artillery and the infantry was practically wiped out. Four generals were dead or mortally wounded. The Swedes had a total of 500–600 dead and wounded, while the Danes, who had to bear the brunt of the fighting in the infantry battle, 93 soldiers were dead or wounded. The Saxons counted 36 dead and wounded in the cavalry battle, the Prussians 49 dead and wounded.

The consequences

The failed attack by the Swedes massively weakened the occupation of the island of Rügen. The king fled back to the landing stage of the fishing boat on the back of the Danish officer's horse. The majority of the defeated Swedish army retreated to the fortress of Stralsund. The island of Rügen was occupied with almost no resistance and the Stralsund fortress was besieged from two sides by the Prussians, Danes and Saxons from the end of November.

Charles XII. lost some of his most loyal companions in this battle, including Colonel Düring and cavalry general Christian Albrecht von Grothusen . Both were together with the Swedish king in exile in the Ottoman Empire in Bender . In honor of Düring, a cross was set up on the beach, which marked the place where he received the fatal wound.

memory

Since 1855 one of the two Prussian columns has been a reminder of the battle ( 54 ° 21 ′ 24.7 ″  N , 13 ° 34 ′ 18.7 ″  E ). The columns are two 15 m high monuments commissioned by the Prussian in 1854 and 1855, King Frederick William IV. In Neukamp and large Stresow were built. The memorial near Neukamp was inaugurated on October 15, 1854, and that near Groß Stresow exactly one year later, on the 60th birthday of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. After dismantling for safety reasons in 1991 and years of storage, the Stresower column was restored in November 2015 on the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Stresow. She received a new statue of Friedrich Wilhelm I , which was made by the Dresden stonemason and sculptor Sven Schubert (* 1965).

Military units

Kingdom of Prussia:

• Infantry Regiment No. 2
• Infantry Regiment No. 11
• Infantry Regiment No. 14
• Cuirassier Regiment No. 3
• Dragoon Regiment No. 3

Saxony-Poland:

• Weissenfels Regiment
• Regiment queen
• Prince Albrecht Regiment
• Regiment of Frisians

Kingdom of Denmark-Norway:

• Ludland Regiment
• P'Carl Regiment
• Civignon regiment

literature

• Sundine: entertainment sheet for New West Pomerania and Rügen, Volume 8 , Stralsund, edition 1834
• Leopold von Zedlitz-Neukirch : The state forces of the Prussian monarchy under Friedrich Wilhelm III , Volume 1, Berlin 1828
• Nürnberger Zeitung , volumes 7–12, issue of October 25, 1841
• Knut Lundblad: History of Karl the Twelfth, King of Sweden Volume 2, Hamburg 1840
• Günther Gieraths : The Combat Operations of the Brandenburg-Prussian Army Volume 8, Ed. Walter de Gruyter & Co. 1964
• Philipp Albert Aufschläger, Johannes Anton Larrass: The Royal Saxon 6th Infantry Regiment No. 105 and its regular troops , Verlag Höckner, 1891
• Hermann Voges: Contributions to the history of the campaign of 1715, part 1 in: Baltic Studies NF 9 (1905), pp. 185–209 [digitized version http://ub-goobi-pr2.ub.uni-egoswald.de/viewer/ image / PPN559838239_NF_9 / 193 / ]

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Olle (ed) Larsson: Stormaktens sista krig ( Swedish ). Historiska Media, 2009, ISBN 978-91-85873 , p. 270.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Curt Jany: History of the Prussian Army - From the 15th Century to 1914, Vol. 1, Biblio Verlag, P 640.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Sundine, p. 163
4. ↑ Baron von Zedlitz and Neukirch, p. 53
5. ↑ ^{a b} Nürnberger Zeitung, Volumes 7-12 from October 25, 1841
6. ↑ ^{a b} Freiherr von Zedlitz and Neukirch, p. 54
7. ↑ Dresden stone sculptors at home with the stars ( memento of the original from November 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ↑ Groß Stresow celebrates the renovated Prussian Column ( memento from November 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), NDR from November 15, 2015, accessed on November 16, 2015
9. ↑ Gieraths p. 9
10. ↑ Gieraths p. 42
11. ↑ Gieraths p. 53
12. ↑ Gieraths p. 205
13. ↑ Gieraths p. 136
14. ↑ Larraß p. 40

Coordinates: 54 ° 21 ′ 10 "  N , 13 ° 34 ′ 24.3"  E