Battle of Lützen (1632): The Death of Gustavus Adolphus

The Battle of Lützen, fought on 16 November 1632 near Leipzig, was one of the bloodiest and most famous battles of the Thirty Years’ War. The Swedish army attacked Albrecht von Wallenstein’s imperial forces across a fog-bound plain and, after hours of brutal fighting, drove them from the field. But King Gustavus Adolphus was killed in the battle, and Sweden lost the leader whose campaigns had transformed the war.

Dates are given in the Gregorian calendar; in the Julian calendar then used in Sweden the battle took place on 6 November, the date on which Swedes still commemorate the king.

Background

After his triumph at the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631, Gustavus Adolphus swept through Germany to the Rhine and into Bavaria. Emperor Ferdinand II, his armies broken, recalled Albrecht von Wallenstein, the brilliant and ambitious general he had dismissed in 1630, and gave him wide powers to raise a new army.

In summer 1632 the two commanders faced each other near Nuremberg. Gustavus failed to break Wallenstein’s fortified camp at the Alte Veste in early September, a costly setback. Wallenstein then marched north into Saxony, aiming to force Sweden’s ally, the Elector of Saxony, out of the war.

Gustavus followed. In early November Wallenstein, believing the campaigning season over, dispersed part of his army into winter quarters and sent his cavalry general Pappenheim with several thousand men to Halle. Learning of this, Gustavus decided to attack before the imperial forces could reunite.

The king’s march was delayed by a skirmish at the crossing of the Rippach stream on 15 November, which gave Wallenstein the evening and night to recall Pappenheim and to prepare his position. Messengers rode to Halle, and Pappenheim set off at once with his cavalry, leaving his infantry to follow more slowly.

The armies and the battlefield

Each side probably fielded around 16,000–19,000 men, although numbers are disputed; Wallenstein’s total grew during the day as Pappenheim’s cavalry returned. The Swedish army included many German regiments and was commanded under the king by Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar and Dodo von Knyphausen.

Warned of the Swedish approach, Wallenstein drew up his army along the Leipzig road north of the small town of Lützen. He deepened the roadside ditches and lined them with musketeers, placed batteries on a slight rise near some windmills, and set fire to Lützen itself to protect his right flank.

What happened

Heavy mist lay over the plain on the morning of 16 November, and the Swedish attack did not begin until around 11 am. On the Swedish right, the king’s cavalry and infantry pushed across the ditches and began to drive back the imperial left, while in the centre the Swedish infantry brigades captured part of the imperial gun line before being thrown back by counter-attacks.

Around midday Pappenheim arrived from Halle with his cavalry and charged against the Swedish right. Within a short time he was hit by cannon shot and mortally wounded; he died the following day. His loss shook the imperial left, where some units fled.

At about the same time, Gustavus led a cavalry regiment to support his struggling infantry in the centre. In the fog and smoke he became separated from most of his men. He was shot in the arm, then in the back, and was finished off by a pistol shot to the head; his body was later found stripped of its valuables. His wounded horse, Streiff, galloping riderless back to the Swedish lines, spread the news.

Bernhard takes command

Rather than collapsing, the Swedish army fought on under Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. News of the king’s death seems to have made many soldiers determined to avenge him. In the late afternoon renewed attacks captured the imperial batteries by the windmills.

Wallenstein, who had himself been in the thick of the fighting despite suffering from gout, held his line until dark. When Pappenheim’s infantry finally arrived in the evening, it was too late to change the outcome. During the night Wallenstein withdrew towards Leipzig, abandoning his artillery, and then retreated into Bohemia.

Casualties

Losses were extremely heavy for an army of this size. Estimates commonly put Swedish casualties at around 5,000–6,000 dead and wounded and imperial losses at a similar or somewhat lower level, giving combined casualties of roughly 9,000–10,000. Many Swedish infantry brigades lost a large part of their strength.

In 2011 archaeologists excavated a mass grave on the battlefield containing the remains of 47 soldiers. The block of earth was lifted whole and is now displayed at the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle, offering rare physical evidence of the soldiers who fought there.

Key people

• Gustavus Adolphus (1594–1632): King of Sweden from 1611, killed in the battle at the age of 37.
• Albrecht von Wallenstein (1583–1634): Bohemian nobleman and imperial generalissimo, an outstanding organiser of armies.
• Gottfried Heinrich zu Pappenheim (1594–1632): imperial cavalry commander, mortally wounded at Lützen.
• Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar (1604–1639): German prince in Swedish service who led the army after the king’s death.

Consequences

Sweden kept the battlefield but lost its king, and with him much of the unity of the Protestant cause. Gustavus’s daughter Christina was only five, so the chancellor Axel Oxenstierna took charge of Swedish policy. In 1633 he organised the Heilbronn League of Swedish allies among the German Protestants.

Without the king’s personal authority, Swedish commanders and their German allies quarrelled more openly over pay, territory and strategy. Sweden increasingly relied on French money, and the war’s direction passed more and more to France, which entered the conflict openly in 1635.

Wallenstein’s reputation never recovered. His secret negotiations with Sweden, Saxony and France in 1633 made the emperor suspect treason, and he was murdered at Eger (Cheb) in February 1634. Later that year a Spanish-imperial army crushed the Swedes at Nördlingen, which led many German princes to make peace with the emperor in 1635. The war continued for another fourteen years until the Peace of Westphalia.

Legacy

Gustavus Adolphus became a Protestant hero across northern Europe. His bloodstained buff coat, taken by imperial soldiers, was kept in Vienna until it was returned to Sweden in 1920; it is now in the Royal Armoury (Livrustkammaren) in Stockholm, which also preserves his stuffed horse Streiff.

A boulder known as the Schwedenstein (Swedes’ Stone) was placed where the king was believed to have fallen, and a memorial canopy and a chapel were later built beside it. In Sweden, 6 November is still Gustavus Adolphus Day, marked by a special pastry, the Gustav Adolf bakelse.

Timeline

• 1632, September: Gustavus fails to storm Wallenstein’s camp at the Alte Veste near Nuremberg.
• 1632, October: Wallenstein invades Saxony; Gustavus marches north to oppose him.
• 1632, mid-November: Wallenstein sends Pappenheim to Halle and disperses part of his army.
• 1632, 16 November, about 11 am: The Swedish attack begins after the morning fog lifts.
• 1632, 16 November, around midday: Pappenheim is mortally wounded; Gustavus Adolphus is killed.
• 1632, 16–17 November, night: Wallenstein withdraws, leaving the field to the Swedes.
• 1634, 25 February: Wallenstein is assassinated at Eger.

Why it matters

Lützen was a Swedish victory that cost Sweden its greatest asset. The death of Gustavus Adolphus ended the period of rapid Protestant advances and turned the Thirty Years’ War into a longer, more exhausting struggle shaped by France and by the diplomacy of Oxenstierna.