Sea battle near Fehmarn (1644)

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Sea battle off Fehmarn
Depiction of the sea battle after Willem van de Velde
Depiction of the sea battle after Willem van de Velde
date October 13th Jul. / 23 October 1644 greg.
place between the northwest tip of Fehmarn and the southwest tip of Lolland in the Fehmarnbelt , Baltic Sea
output Swedish-Dutch victory
consequences End of Danish rule of the sea
Parties to the conflict

DenmarkDenmark Denmark

Sweden 1650Sweden Sweden Netherlands
Republic of the Seven United ProvincesRepublic of the Seven United Provinces

Commander

DenmarkDenmark Pros Mund †, Corfitz Ulfeldt †
DenmarkDenmark

Sweden 1650Sweden Carl Gustaf Wrangel , Maerten Thijssen
Republic of the Seven United ProvincesRepublic of the Seven United Provinces

Troop strength
17 (n.a.a. 18) ships of the line with 415 (n.a. 448 or 600) guns and 5,600 men 32 (n.a.a. 37, 42 or 64) ships with 875 (n.a. 914 or 1,200) guns and 10,000 men, thereof

Sweden 1650Sweden12 (n.a.A. 16) ships of the line 14 ships of the line, 7 (n.a. 10) smaller ships with 483 guns
Republic of the Seven United ProvincesRepublic of the Seven United Provinces
losses

12 ships of the line (including 10 captured and 2 burned), 2,000 (n.a. 4,000) dead and wounded, 1,000 (n.a.s. 1,200) prisoners

1 (Dutch) ship of the line, 2 (Swedish) fires,
1,500 (n.a.a. only 60) dead and wounded

In the sea ​​battle near Fehmarn ( Danish / Swedish Femern ) on October 13, 1644, the allied Swedes and Dutch destroyed a Danish fleet . With the defeat of the Danes, their previous naval rule in the Baltic Sea ended .

prehistory

In the final phase of the Thirty Years War , Sweden surprisingly attacked Denmark in 1643. The Swedish Field Marshal Lennart Torstensson and his troops had invaded Denmark via Holstein and Schleswig and had occupied Jutland . The Danish fleet was able to prevent the crossing to Zealand and thus an advance on Copenhagen . The landing fleet of the Dutch allied with the Swedes had been repulsed in May 1644 in the sea ​​battle in the Lister Tief in the North Sea, and the Swedish Baltic Sea fleet, despite its numerical superiority, remained initially blocked in the Kiel Fjord even after the sea ​​battle on the Kolberger Heide in July 1644 .

Battle in the Fehmarnbelt

When the Dutch advanced into the Baltic Sea with new reinforcements, the Swedish fleet escaped from the Kiel Fjord and united with the Dutch squadron. Torstensson's deputy Carl Gustaf Wrangel took command . The allies had twice as many ships of the line as the Danes and numerous smaller ships. Despite brave resistance, the Danes were unable to withstand twice as much firepower and the majority of boarding crews. The Danish admiral Pros Mund, who had already fought against Wrangel's Dutch deputy Maerten Thijssen in the Lister Tief, fell in the fight. Mund's deputy Corlitz Ulfeldt, who had already fought on the Kolberger Heide, was fatally wounded. Swedes and Dutch eventually captured ten Danish liners and burned two more. Three (according to other sources four) Danish warships were driven onto the beach and destroyed (or at least damaged) there. Only two (n.a. three) Danish ships of the line were able to escape to Copenhagen.

consequences

With the loss of twelve (n.a. 14, 15 and 16 respectively) liners and thousands of sailors off Fehmarn, the traditional Danish supremacy on the Baltic Sea was broken. Nevertheless, Swedish troops did not land on Zealand. Denmark had come to terms with the German Emperor Ferdinand III. allied and Torstensson therefore had to assert himself in Holstein against imperial troops under Matthias Gallas . Since the imperial aid was only half-hearted, the Swedes also remained victorious on land; However, their newly won maritime domination depended above all on the support of the Dutch. Danes and Swedes signed the peace of Brömsebro in 1645 . It was not until 1658 that the Swedes succeeded in crossing the (frozen) Belt, crossing to Zealand and advancing to Copenhagen. The Netherlands then switched sides, saved the besieged Danish capital and finally defeated the Swedish fleet in Öresund .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Carl Frederik Bricka: Mund, Pros . In: Carl Frederik Bricka (Ed.): Dansk biografisk Lexikon. Tillige omfattende Norge for Tidsrummet 1537-1814. 1st edition. tape 11 : Maar – Müllner . Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, Copenhagen 1897, p. 512-513 (Danish, runeberg.org ).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g A. Hammarskjöld: Wrangel, Karl Gustaf . In: John Rosén (Ed.): Nordisk familjebok konversationslexikon och realencyklopedi . 1st edition. tape 17 : V-Väring . Gernandts boktryckeri, Stockholm 1893, Sp. 1413-1414 (Swedish, runeberg.org ).
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Gaston Bodart: Military-Historical Kreigs-Lexikon . Page 72. Stern, Vienna and Leipzig 1908
  4. ↑ a b c Brockhaus Conversations-Lexikon, Volume 6, Page 434 (Wrangel), 1st edition, Amsterdam / Leipzig 1809
  5. ↑ a b c d e Herfried Münkler: The Thirty Years War - European catastrophe, German trauma 1618–1648 , page X. Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 2017
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Spencer C. Tucker: A Global Chronology of Conflict - From the Ancient World to the Modern Middle East , page 604. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara 2009
  7. ↑ a b c d Micheal Clodfelter: Warfare and Armed Conflicts - A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures 1492–2015 , page 39. McFarland, Jefferson 2017
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g Johann Baptist von Weiß : Textbook of World History - The Thirty Years' War , page 480.Braumüller, Vienna 1872
  9. ↑ a b Bouko de Groot: Dutch Navies of the 80 Years' War 1568–1648 , page 28. Bloomsbury Publishing 2018
  10. ^ A b c Danish Naval History: The Navy before 1801

literature

  • Peter Englund : Desolation - A History of the Thirty Years War , Chapter 2 (The great battle of Fehmarn). Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 2013
  • Niels H. Probst: Slaget i Femern Bælt October 13, 1644 . In: Marinehistorisk Tidsskrift No. 2/1986 (PDF). Marinehistorisk Selskab, Lyngby 1986