Battle of Mühlberg

4 Key excerpts on "Battle of Mühlberg"

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  Renaissance and Reformation

  • William R. Estep(Author)
  • 1986(Publication Date)
  • Eerdmans

    (Publisher)

  Chapter XVI

  CONFLICT AND CHANGE

  D uring the eighteen-year span of the Council of Trent, the religious configuration of Northern Europe was undergoing a rapid change. An occasional setback notwithstanding, the march of Protestantism in the Holy Roman Empire seemed irresistible. When Albert of Mainz died in September 1545, he was succeeded by one who owed his office to the support of Protestant princes, whom he soon repaid by opening his territory to evangelical preaching. He also permitted clerical marriage and communion in both kinds. The elector of the Palatinate also received communion in both kinds in January 1546 and joined the Schmalkaldic League, a military alliance made up of Lutheran territories and cities. Consequently, by the outbreak of the Schmalkaldic War, the majority of the electors of the Holy Roman Empire were casting their lots with the Protestants.

  CHARLES V AND THE SCHMALKALDIC WAR

  After still another conference at Regensburg failed to achieve reconciliation between Protestants and Catholics, the emperor decided to resort to arms. In July he denounced as outlaws Landgrave Philip of Hesse, Elector John Frederick of Saxony, and the leaders of the Schmalkaldic League. Charles V was now surer than ever of a military victory over the German princes because of the defection of Maurice of Saxony. Maurice had a sizable army and ambition to match. He allied himself with Charles V in the hopes of defeating the Schmalkaldic League and gaining for himself John Frederick’s position as elector. In a very short time he overran the land and with the aid of the emperor and his Spanish army secured the coveted position for himself. He was made elector in October 1546. John Frederick was defeated by Charles and his army at Mühlberg and taken captive on April 24, 1547. Philip of Hesse, Maurice’s father-in-law, surrendered to the emperor at Halle on June 19 and was imprisoned. The archbishop elector of Cologne was forced to retire to his ancestral estate. Spanish troops occupied every major Protestant center in Germany. Thus the Schmalkaldic League was destroyed and with it Lutheran religious life and political influence in much of Germany.

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  The European Reformations

  • Carter Lindberg(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Charles V’s response to the expansion of Protestantism began by enlisting diplomatic activity in favor of calling a general council, but the emperor’s interest in church unity was stymied by the suspicions of both parties and by politics. The papacy opposed a council as proposed by the Protestants because the memory of the conciliarist movement, and especially the council of Constance, was too fresh to agree to a “free and Christian” council. The European kings obstructed a general council because they feared it would become a vehicle for the increase of Habsburg power. The Lutherans were dubious about sending representatives to a general council because they feared this would provide recognition of the papacy as the highest authority in the church. The failure of Charles’s endeavors to call a council led him to seek to restore the unity of the Empire through religious dialogues within the Empire. In 1540 and 1541 there were religious colloquies in Hagenau, Worms, and Regensburg that achieved some ecumenical convergence in theological issues concerned with original sin and justification. However, the compromises reached in these colloquies were rejected by both Rome and Luther.

  The failures to call a council and to achieve convergence through dialogue moved the religious conflict toward war. By 1546 Charles was in a favorable position to advance against the Lutherans. There was peace with France; the papacy promised to help finance the war against the Schmalkaldic League; and the League was weakened both by Charles’s successful effort to bribe Moritz of Saxony to his side and by Philip of Hesse’s bigamy. The latter was a personal and political disaster for Philip and the League, and an embarrassment for Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer, who had provided him with pastoral counsel. Since bigamy was punishable by death in imperial law, Philip’s position was seriously compromised and he promised support to Charles to avoid the consequences of the law (see Brecht 1993: 205–8, 210–15).

  The formal ground for war was enforcement of the edict against Saxony and Hesse. Together these two powers had driven the emperor’s supporter Heinrich of Braunschweig from his lands and introduced the Reformation there. The Schmalkaldic League possessed military and strategic advantages over Charles but squandered them. Moritz of Saxony (1521–53) pursued his interest in gaining the electoral dignity of Saxony by shifting from the League to Charles. By April 1547, the emperor had won the day and destroyed the Schmalkaldic League at the Battle of Mühlberg near Wittenberg. John Frederick was captured and Philip of Hesse soon was also Charles’s prisoner. Moritz of Saxony, now known as the “Judas of Meissen,” received the electoral dignity from Charles. Luther had died just before the war began. It is said that as Charles stood in the Castle church in Wittenberg where Luther was buried, he was urged to dig up Luther’s body and burn it as a heretic, but supposedly replied: “I do not make war against dead men” (Kittelson 1986: 299; Joestel 1992: 92–101; Ruland 2018: 37–39).

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  The European Reformations

  • Carter Lindberg(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  The failures to call a council and to achieve convergence through dialogue moved the religious conflict toward war. By 1546 Charles was in a favorable position to advance against the Lutherans. There was peace with France; the papacy promised to help finance the war against the Schmalkaldic League; and the League was weakened both by Charles’s successful effort to bribe Moritz of Saxony to his side and by Philip of Hesse’s bigamy. The latter was a personal and political disaster for Philip and the League, and an embarrassment for Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer who had provided him with pastoral counsel. Since bigamy was punishable by death in imperial law, Philip’s position was seriously compromised and he promised support to Charles to avoid the consequences of the law (see Brecht 1993: 205–8, 210–15).

  The formal ground for war was enforcement of the edict against Saxony and Hesse. Together these two powers had driven the emperor’s supporter Heinrich of Braunschweig from his lands and introduced the Reformation there. The Schmalkaldic League possessed military and strategic advantages over Charles but squandered them. Moritz of Saxony (1521–53) pursued his interest in gaining the electoral dignity of Saxony by shifting from the League to Charles. By April 1547, the emperor had won the day and destroyed the Schmalkaldic League at the Battle of Mühlberg near Wittenberg. John Frederick was captured, and Philip of Hesse soon was also Charles’s prisoner. Moritz of Saxony, now known as the “Judas of Meissen,” received the electoral dignity from Charles. Luther had died just before the war began. It is said that as Charles stood in the Castle church in Wittenberg where Luther was buried, he was urged to dig up Luther’s body and burn it as a heretic, but supposedly replied: “I do not make war against dead men” (Kittelson 1986: 299; Joestel 1992: 92–101).

  Charles now sought to re-establish a unified Empire by the imposition of a temporal settlement at the 1548 diet of Augsburg to be in effect until the council of Trent finished its work. The settlement, known as the Augsburg Interim, allowed the provisional continuation in Protestant lands of married clergy, communion in both kinds, and a form of the doctrine of justification. The Interim was vehemently denounced by most Protestants as an imposition of the old faith. Some theologians, most notoriously Melanchthon, rationalized the reintroduction of elements of the Catholic cultus and theology as “matters of indifference” (adiaphora

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  Twenty Battles That Shaped Medieval Europe

  • George Theotokis, Georgios Theotokis(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Robert Hale Non Fiction

    (Publisher)

  The flank attack by the Swiss troops overwhelmed the knights fighting on foot. Exhausted by the mid-summer heat and by hours of fighting in full armour, the latter were soon retreating in panic towards their rear, where their squires were holding their horses, while part of the Habsburg army was still advancing towards the battlefield. These advancing troops could have saved the day, and Leopold did order them to rush to the rescue of their retreating comrades, with himself leading them into the fray.

  But in the swirling mêlée, Leopold and his knights were found dead, cut down by enemy halberdiers, while the rest of the army retreated down the hill. Coalition casualties numbered around 1,800 men, including the duke himself; Swiss losses were surprisingly low, about 120 men, mostly among the vanguard.

  CONCLUSIONS

  Coupled with the Battle of Näfels (9 April 1388), the last Swiss-Austrian battle of the fourteenth century, the Swiss victory over the Habsburg alliance east of Sempach has been perceived, already since the fourteenth century, as the turning point in the territorial expansion of the Swiss Confederacy. This point marked an evolution from a loose anti-Habsburg confederation of cities and cantons in the fourteenth century, to a powerful political and military federation and a key regional player at the turn of the fifteenth century.

  Following the division of hereditary Habsburg lands after the Treaty of Neuberg, agreed between the Habsburg duke Albert III (reigned 1365–95) and his brother Leopold III (reigned 1365–86) on 25 September 1379, the outcome of the Battle of Sempach decisively tipped the balance of power west of the Rhine in favour of the Swiss Confederation. This allowed the cities, especially Lucerne and Bern, an unchecked expansion into the Habsburg lands, and eventually would lead to the establishment of the state of Switzerland.

  From a military point of view, the Battle of Sempach offers an excellent case study of a military revolution that was unfolding in Europe in the fourteenth century with regard to the tactics of foot-soldiers. By the middle of the tenth century, wars were fought almost exclusively by men on horseback, and foot-soldiers were largely considered an expendable mob of armed peasants, who would mostly be used in siege operations or in defence of the lord’s castle. Nevertheless, the tactical importance of foot-soldiers in medieval Europe varied greatly depending on the society from which they came.

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