Battle of Breitenfeld, First (September 17, 1631)

The fighting went on for seven hours, with the Swedes tearing up the Imperial tercios with musket and artillery fire. Gustavus personally led his Finnish cavalry reserve (about 1,000 horse) in a fierce charge against the Spanish, already bled white by his artillery and badly exposed by the earlier flight of their cavalry. Many were crushed or trampled to death by comrades as panic set in and the tercio ranks finally broke. Tilly was wounded thrice, in the neck, chest, and arm, and taken by his bodyguards from the field.

Casualty estimates vary, but as many as 12,000 Habsburg-Catholic League troops were left dead or dying on the field, to just 2,000 lost by Gustavus (and two-thirds of those were allied troops, not Swedish). Another 6,000 Imperials were taken prisoner, along with all the heavy Imperial artillery and 120 regimental and company standards. That represented two-thirds losses for an Imperial Army previously undefeated in battle with Protestant forces. The victory, the first major success by the Protestant side in 12 years of fighting, opened the way for Gustavus to move west or south. This was critical, as he had eaten out his original base and resupply areas in Pomerania and Brandenburg. First Breitenfeld scattered the surviving Habsburg and Catholic troops. Gustavus failed to pursue them, but that was largely due to the more pressing need he had of bringing his own army into fat new lands from which it could feed. After the battle, the Catholic position in north Germany, the Rhineland, and parts of southern Germany, utterly collapsed. The next year, Gustavus invaded Bavaria, occupied Munich, and threatened Vienna. The more general consequence of Breitenfeld was discrediting of the old tactics of ”push of pike” by infantry squares in favor of more mobility and greater firepower, a lesson read and applied all over Europe.