Remembering the Pforzheimer 400 at the Battle of Wimpfen, 6th May 1622

Figure 1. Sebastiaan Vrancx - Battle of Vimpfen on 6 May 1622

 (From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository). 

(Please click on this image and any of the others for a larger image.)

Most families have a foundation myth. These can often be difficult to confirm the veracity of, however they will always contain at least some germs of the truth. 

For many years I have been slowly compiling a "family" chronicle which was originally intended for my children, but as I have now taken so long to write it, it must now be for my grandchildren. If I only tell the story of my ancestors, 50% of my children's history would be missing or 75% of my grandchildren's history. 

This has presented a major challenge as 50% of what is missing is central European in origin. No chronicle of my children's history can possibly be complete without the story of my in-laws-family.

My wife is originally from Hungary, and when I first visited her in the 1970's, I was taken to see an old pharmacy that had belonged to a forebear of her family who had arrived in Hungary as a refugee from Germany "during the Thirty Years War." It was during this trip that I first learnt the tale of Samuel Küttel.

It was while I was a young backpacker Interrailing during the 1970's, that I had first become aware of mainland European history, which is rarely taught in British schools, unless it involved our army actually fighting there. 

One of the most formative events in Germany and central Europe of the 17th Century was the Thirty Years War, which was barely mentioned in Britain when I was a schoolboy. This war was to have the most devastating impact on the populations of Europe leading to the movement of huge numbers of people across Europe, leaving enduring effects that persist to this day. 

Several years later after our marriage, my mother in law, gave me some copies of a photocopy of an article in Hungarian from the late 19th Century, and in subsequent years that set out the basic elements of the story as it was understood then. 

Since then I have slowly been able to piece together a far more detailed account of these events, overcoming the challenges of languages, and far distant archives. 

400 years ago this month (May 2022) events in the south-east of Germany in the Rhine Valley occurred that were to change my wife's Küttel family history dramatically. Up until that moment her ancestors had been living peacefully in Weiße Lederstraße in the town of Pforzheim. The town at that time had a population of less than 3,000 people, but had played an important role in developing Protestant learning in Germany, where it was situated close to major trade routes across the country. At one point the earlier Markgraf had tried to develop a university in the town that would have predated Heidelberg University.

Intended to teach the new Protestant learning, it had been crushed almost at birth in an earlier war, but many of the pioneering Protestant preachers from 1530 onwards had preached in the town, tolerated and encouraged by the local rulers. 

Had the Küttel sat through these sermons in their local church? Sadly, at present it is unlikely that I will ever know. 

Hans Küttel had become a member of the local part time cavalry unit raised in the town by their ruler Markgraf Friedrich V. von Baden. 

Family legend as told to me by my late mother in law, was that Hans Küttel had been caught up in the rout that had followed the explosion of the Protestant armies ammunition reserve during the battle. The powder had been held inside a wagon fortress that formed the core of the Markgraf's position.

The advent of the four hundred year anniversary of the Battle on the 6th May 1622, has led in recent weeks to a spate of articles and posts appearing online, in books and the media, which I have been tapping into. 

Unlike events in almost contemporary English Civil War, which have a huge literature about every single battle and campaign which is then described and analysed, there does not appear to be such a volume of research available on the events during the Thirty Years War as we are fortunate enough to have available here for the civil war. 

If you stumble on this post, and you are a German researcher into either local history in Baden or of the battles of this conflict, I would love to hear from you. My email is balmer.nicholas@gmail.com

In future posts I will explore aspects of how my own Welsh & English ancestors would themselves caught up in this terrible conflict in the middle of Europe. 

Sebastiaan Vrancx in his painting (Figure 1)  Battle of Vimpfen on 6th May 1622, which shows Tilly's Imperialist Army in the foreground, the huge explosion that took place inside the Protestant wagon laager can be seen. Ever since the days of the Hussite warriors, who were proto-Protestants from Bohemia had developed and deployed wagon forts to counter the massed cavalry of the Habsburg & German feudal armies, and wagon forts seem to have remained a feature of Protestant war planning into the Thirty Years War.  

The wagons of the Protestant army can be seen, in Vrancx's painting with their draw poles interlocked to form a formidable obstacle. The Pforzheim cavalry formed the Markgraf's bodyguard and reserve. Perhaps this unit can be seen at the extreme right of this painting drawn up just outside the wagon laager. 

Are those famous Spanish tercios arriving on the battlefield on the left?

The battle took place on a very hot day in early May, and during the morning on part of Tilly's Imperialist army had arrived on the battlefield. Tilly's crack Spanish tercios were still distance away, and would not arrive for some hours. 

The Margrave's army had been holding out well until the middle of the day. By lunchtime both armies had become exhausted by the heat and exertion, so that the fighting slowed down, and came to a temporary halt. The Protestants started to eat their supplies which were contained in the wagons kept in the wagon laager. 

As this was happening Tilly's Spanish elite infantry Tercios began to finally arrive on the battlefield and launched an immediate assault on the Protestant army. In their surprise at the renewed attacks being made on them, somebody in the Protestant army who was presumably trying to get more gunpowder from the powder reserve succeeded in dropping a spark into one of the barrels of power leading to a catastrophic explosion. 

Within moments the Protestant army began to collapse and flee. Presumably Hans was somewhere in the middle of this terrible event, and would shortly be rescuing Markgraf Georg Friedrich von Baden-Durlach by pulling him up onto his horse behind him.

Figure 2. This painting shows Pieter Snayers (1592-1667) interpretation of the Battle of Bad Wimpfen.

Snayers was a painter who specialised in paintings of battles and sieges, who based at Antwerp where be became one of the Imperialist Habsburg main war artists. In 1628 he moved to Brussels, where he was closely associated with many of the Imperialist Spanish army officers. It is very possible that he had discussed the battle with either Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba (1585–1635) or Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly the two principle Imperialist officers present at the battle, many years later while these officers were in Brussels.  These paintings were intended to record the most significant events during the battles on a single canvas. This means that the painting is nearly always "very busy".  It is often also broken into two or three horizontal bands.

Snayers had access to very accurate maps of many of these battlefields and sieges, which when compared to modern maps are often recognisably accurate depictions of the area.  This painting lacks the upper part of most of Snayers works which are in effect maps.

The upper half of this painting shows the events from the battlefield, but misses out the Protestant wagon laager, but emphasises the Spanish Tercios. It is hard to be that this painting actually depicts the battle of Wimpfen.

The lower half of the painting from the battery of cannon downwards shows what may well be the Imperialist cavalry falling onto the fleeing Protestants.  The Spanish and Imperialist German cavalry can be seen caracoling on the left.  It is possible that the cavalry in the centre in disarray is the gallant Pforzheimer unit  going down while defending their rulers escape.  

Perhaps Hans Küttel is in the fleeing troopers on the right with the Markgraf on his horse with him? The swirl of cavalry at the top of this painting is an accurate depiction of a very well known Spanish tactic called the caracole or caracol (from the Spanish caracol - "snail"). The troopers in these units were armed with wheel lock pistols or carbines to fire in turn at enemy massed infantry. These wheel lock pistols could be re cocked by winding up a spring inside the weapon operated by a spanner that the trooper carried around his neck on a leather thong. He was able to reload, if he could find a sheltered spot on the battlefield. Failing that he had to thrown the wheel-lock into the face of his opponent, to gain time to draw his sword to slash his way to safety. 

Each trooper in turn advanced to fire with his loaded piece, which he discharged as close as possible to the faces of the pikemen as he could get, without being spiked, before wheeling away to allow the other troopers following him to fire in turn. The men who had fired would then reload their pistols as they retired to the rear of the formation, so that an endless stream of firing troopers would in theory occur until the infantry pike block started to break up as individual pikemen became wounded or died, and the others became disordered enough, to allow the pike block to be broken, or its men chose to flee.

Figure 3.  A contemporary engraving of the battlefield.

This engraving was made for the popular German market shortly after the battle had occurred, and would have been widely available in Germany in the years following the battle.  The map shows the battle as it was occurring, and the explosion towards the left of the engraving.  The River Neckar can be seen sweeping around the battlefield.

Like Snayers and Vrancx's painting, these engravings generally depict as many of the key manoeuvres as possible on a single sheet of paper. In practise each of the tactical moves took place in a sequence over many hours. Many of these prints like this one have a key on them, with small letters from the alphabet that were used to show the order of events.

I believe that the unit labelled "B" may be the Pforzheimer unit, perhaps with other Protestant cavalry units brigaded together. 

The battle field is still largely open fields to this day. The A6 Autobahn runs around the perimeter of the battlefield today.

It lies along on our route when we drove with our children on family holidays to Hungary, so we have visited the battlefield at Wimpfen several times over the years. 

When we first went there we were reduced to asking local farmers and villagers the way. Most had no idea what we were talking about, until we happened on to a potato farmer tilling his field.

He was really helpful, and I got the impression that he was only happy to find anybody else who had the slightest interest in the battlefield site.

He pointed out an overgrown bramble and thorn bush, which had grown up on a monument erected on the battlefield during the 19th Century.

In the last year or so some information boards have been erected.

Figure 4 showing the approach marches towards the battlefield recently posted @vor400

Figure 4. Map showing the moves by the opposing armies in the lead up to the battle at Wimpfen, being posted regularly by @vor400 on Twitter. This excellent map showing the approach routes taken by the forces during the days leading up to the battle. The author of this map @vor400 posts daily updates on Twitter. He started posting a few years ago, and intends posting every day until the end of the conflict. I  am unsure if I will still be around in 2048 to see his last posts.

If you would rather not reply in English to this blog, my wife is able to read German and Hungarian, and would translate for me.  I have a small basic knowledge of both languages, but am very far from being fluent.

Figure 5.  A map showing the approximate routes taken by the Küttel family from 1622 until the 1660's, intended to show the key locations in this blog. 

Most of what we know about the battle and the four hundred Pforzheimers comes from 19th Century books and plays, which are probably a bit misleading in places.

"Der tod der 400 Pforzheimer bei Wimpfen nicht eine sage sondern eine thatsache. Genaue untersuchung der streitfrag auf grund des ältesten hiesigen taufbuches mit benützung der ältesten geschichtlichen quellen"

 

Figure 6. Der tod der 400 Pforzheimer bei Wimpfen 

This title about the death of the 400 Pforzheimers by Ernst Ludwig Deimling was written published in 1873, and very probably drew on old archives that survived until then. Sadly during 1944 and 1945 a series of very heavy air raids by the USAF and RAF destroyed much of the centre of the city. Sadly, nearly all of the old town centre had to be redeveloped after the war, and it became a rather a soulless place. Ernst Ludwig Deimling includes a list of the 400 men in this unit. He marked the men who died with a cross. 

It can be seen that the publisher had overegged the title of this book. There is an interesting article here on the development of this legend of the 400. https://de.wikisource.org/.../2._Die_Sage_von_dem...

Figure 7. Hans Küttel listed amongst the 400.

Rather intriguingly there is a Michael Balmer also present on the list. This is not entirely surprising as there are far more Balmers in the old records from Switzerland and the Palatinate downstream of Switzerland than there are in Britain.

Most come from areas strongly associated with the Protestant reformation. While I can trace my Balmer ancestors back to about 1700, I cannot go any further back here unless my ancestors were a spelling mistake away from being Bulmer's.

Both the Küttel and the Balmer family feature in Swiss Chronicles fighting against the Austrian Habsburgs at the Battle of Sempach back in 1386. Both families were living near Interlaken at that time.

Many seem to have left Switzerland over time and many appear in lists of soldiers in the coming years, but who was who is almost impossible to work out currently.

Figure 8. Martin Balmer listed as a member of the 400.

Here is the Markgraf Georg Friedrich von Baden-Durlach (1573-1638). I hope that he hadn't had a full set of armour on when Hans Küttel had to pull him up onto his horse. The Markgraf had received a very nasty cut to his face and head caused by a lance during the battle, and this shows up in later pictures of him that can be seen here https://en.wikipedia.org/.../George_Frederick,_Margrave...

Figure 9. Markgraf Georg Friedrich von Baden-Durlach (1573-1638)

In the summer of 1627 the Markgraf was appointed lieutenant general of the Danish army by King Christian IV of Denmark, who was involved in the Danish-Lower Saxon War. 

Oddly enough another close member of kin to my ancestors Sir Charles Morgan, a Welshman in the service with the Dutch to English troops to fight on behalf King Christian IV of Denmark. Charles and his men had to endure a long siege at the port of Stade, living off the bodies of cats and dogs at one point.

Figure 10. "Die vierhundert Pforzheimer Bürger, oder die Schlacht bey Wimpfen ein vaterländisches Trauerspiel in 5 Aufz" By Ernst Ludwig Deimling · 1788

This earlier book was published in 1788 by Ernst Ludwig Deimling, who may have been father or grandfather to the author of the other book posted here. "Die vierhundert Pforzheimer Bürger, oder die Schlacht bey Wimpfen ein vaterländisches Trauerspiel in 5 Aufz" By Ernst Ludwig Deimling · 1788

This play presents the events surrounding the battle as a drama.

Figure 11. Sámuel Küttel in Hungarian early 20th Century documents

By the 1690's Sámuel Küttel who is seen as the founder of the Hungarian Küttel family had arrived in Köszeg, or Güns as German speakers called the town in those days. Here he married the daughter of the Protestant Apothecary called the Fekete Szerecseny Pharmacy, which the family owned until the early 1950's when it was taken over by the Communist authorities. They effectively stopped it developing, and by the 1970's it became a museum, which can be visited to this day. 

Figure 12. The Küttel family in Hungary contained historians in most generations, not least of which was my late mother in law, so that there are quite a few references to them in Hungarian.