Battle of Vergt
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Battlefield in the Vern valley near Pont-Romieux
| date | October 9, 1562 |
|---|---|
| place | Vergt , France |
| output | Victory of the Catholics |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
|
Catholics |
Huguenots |
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| unknown number of soldiers from Gascony, 5,000 Spaniards | 11,000 men, 1,000 of them mounted |
| losses | |
|
unknown |
at least 4,000 dead |
The Battle of Vergt took place on October 9, 1562 as part of the French Huguenot Wars (1st Huguenot War) between the armies of the Catholic and Reformed parties . The Catholic army was commanded by Blaise de Monluc and Charles de Burie . The Protestant army was under the command of Guy de Montferrand and Symphorien de Duras . The battle was fought almost 2 kilometers west-southwest of the center of Vergt near Pont-Romieu and ended with a serious defeat for the Huguenots .
Historical context
In 1562 , the Protestant generals under the command of Louis de Condé attacked simultaneously on several fronts, hoping to capture a maximum number of cities. The Guyenne , to which Vergt belonged, was a Protestant stronghold. Here the Huguenot warlord Symphorien de Duras was able to raise an army of around 12,000 men. The Gascogner were known through their experience in the Italian wars as solid infantrymen who were able to withstand the Swiss pikemen who had been in the Catholic army since 1516 and also the German mercenaries . De Condé and Coligny considered this Southern Reformed army to be indispensable, as only a large infantry army could meet the royal army. De Duras had the intention to advance with his army to the north as far as the Poitou in order to be there with the associations of François III. de La Rochefoucauld , who, in addition to his infantrymen, had gathered 1,000 aristocratic Protestants on horseback.
In the beginning, the Catholics had little to oppose to such an organized armed forces. The Louis III staying in Bergerac . de Bourbon, duc de Montpensier , who had been hastily summoned by the pressurized royal court to command the southern Catholic army, had not yet acquired any authority. The royal lieutenant de Burie and the loyal field masters de Charry, d'Arne and de Massès were in Mirande with the bulk of the army . De Burie, however, was reluctant to take action against the Protestants, especially after learning that the reinforcements from Spain had been held up by mutinies. Therefore only Blaise de Monluc remained as a serious Catholic general. He had just taken a Lectoure and had fought several times against Huguenot leaders.
Blaise de Monluc then went against the Huguenots, who were marching to Poitou, showing great atrocities against the civilian population - he saw himself as the ambassador of the young King Charles IX. and saw his task in restoring order in the abandoned parts of the country. But the Huguenots were not squeamish either.
The start of the battle
Between October 3 and 4, de Monluc learned that the Reformed army under de Duras was marching towards Poitou in order to join forces with the local units to strengthen the northern forces. He therefore decided to increase his effective forces with 5,000 mutinous Spaniards by offering them a share of the spoils of war. On October 7th he camped in Belvès . The following morning he crossed the Dordogne with several mounted men at Siorac and learned that Charles de Burie only wanted to join without royal orders if de Montpensier also joined his troops. De Monluc then let his influence play with the lieutenants de Buries, who chose their former commander.
With a few horsemen, de Monluc then advanced to Cendrieux , where de Duras stopped his cavalry in the immediate vicinity. He learned from locals that the Protestants had pointed their cannons at Vergt.
The carefree Protestants had not noticed that the Catholic army under de Monluc was approaching their troops, since they thought the latter were still in Lectoure. De Monluc then dashed with 50 riders to Sainte-Alvère , from where he could inspect the entire Huguenot army. He then learned that two Protestant officers - de Salignac and de Moncaut - and 25 mounted men had dropped behind the bulk of the Huguenot army in order to go hunting. He managed to capture the stragglers without de Duras suspecting. The latter was in the process of uniting his cavalry with the rest of his army near Vergt.
Following the advice of his lieutenants, de Burie had joined de Monluc in Saint-Alvère and it was jointly decided to attack the Huguenot army on October 9, 1562.
Course of the battle
The course of the battle is described by only a few authors, including de Monluc, who reported the course in his Commentaires , which was only published in 1592 .
On the morning of October 9, 1592, the Catholic army met the Huguenots, who positioned themselves for battle in the meadows of the Vern near Pont-Romieux .
De Burie opened the battle with four cannon volleys from his artillery . De Monluc let his Gascon troops gather around him and gave another speech in front of his Spanish forces, because he was not sure about them and feared a new mutiny. The first attack by the Catholic cavalry was then repulsed by the Protestant nobles under de Bordet.
On de Bordet's advice, de Duras decided not to engage in a long battle, as it would only lose time and soldiers. So he gave the signal to withdraw. Aware of this, the Catholics increased the speed of their advance in order to stab the Protestant army in the rear and prevent them from reaching the strategically favorable elevation for the Protestants. De Duras then deployed 1,000 veteran soldiers to protect his artillery. The distance between the two armies decreased noticeably and at a distance of only 200 paces the royal cavalry launched an attack on the Protestants. She succeeded in seizing the reformed cannons.
Afterwards general panic set in in the Protestant army and fleeing troops were massacred by the Catholics. Around 2 p.m. the Catholics had taken Vergt. Here they confiscated oxen in order to be able to move the guns that had been taken from the Protestants. In the course of the battle de Duras lost a total of 19 of its 23 infantry companies and 8 of 13 cavalry divisions . When he finally got to Montmorillon , there were only a hundred left with him.
According to De Monluc, over the next few days countless refugees from the Protestant army were hunted and killed in the surrounding forests, where they wanted to hide, by the Spanish and Gascon army, but also by the local population. The number of Protestants who fell was at least around 4,000, but no information is available about the losses suffered by Catholics.
Effects
The defeat at the Battle of Vergt marked a catastrophic setback in the effective strength of the Protestant army. In addition, numerous Gascon military leaders had joined the royal troops after the Battle of Vergt, which the Protestants had lost. De Condé and Admiral Coligny had no choice but to replace the lost Gascon infantry with German mercenaries . In the battle of Dreux on December 19, 1562, these then made up the bulk of the Protestant forces. The behavior of the mercenaries and German rider , however, was the main reason why the Duc de Guise on the Protestant army was to be victorious ultimately - instead of staying on the battlefield, the mercenaries had namely on the convoy hergemacht of Catholics.
In the Guyenne, however, even after the devastating battle defeat, there were still further Protestant raids, especially in the area around Bergerac .
Due to their success, Blaise de Monluc and de Burie could share the reign of the Guyenne.
literature
- Denis Crouzet: Les Guerriers de Dieu: la violence au temps des troubles de religion (v. 1525 – v. 1610) . Seyssel, Champ Vallon, 2005, ISBN 2-87673-430-3 .
- Blaise de Monluc: Commentaires (1521-1576) . édition de Paul Courteault, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris 1964.
- Arlette Jouanna, Jacqueline Boucher and Dominique Biloghi: Histoire et dictionnaire des guerres de religion . Robert Laffont, coll. «Bouquins», Paris 1998, ISBN 2-221-07425-4 , pp. 1526 .
- Jean-Charles Sournia: Blaise de Monluc - Soldier et écrivain (1500–1577) . Fayard, Paris 1981.
- James B. Wood: The King's Army: Warfare, Soldiers, and Society during the Wars of Religion in France, 1562-1576 . Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, coll. "Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History", 1996, ISBN 0-521-55003-3 , pp. 349 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Société historique et archéologique du Périgord: Gallica . In: Bulletin de la Société historique et archéologique du Périgord . 1876.
- ↑ Sarah Mouline: Cruautés of Guerres de Religion dans les Commentaires de Blaise de Monluc . In: Séminaire de Michel Magnien Littérature et humanisme: de la cruauté 2009–2010 . 2011.
- ^ Paul Courteault: Blaise de Monluc, historien. Étude critique sur le texte et la valeur historique des Commentaires . 1908.
- ^ Christian Marty: Les campagnes du Périgord . Presses Univ de Bordeaux, 1993, ISBN 2-86781-131-7 .
- ^ Nicolas Champ, Claire Laux and Jean-Pierre Moisset: Contributions à une histoire du catholicisme (Papauté, Aquitaine, France et Outre-mer) . Karthala Editions, 2013, ISBN 978-2-8111-0875-5 .