Battle of Rheinfelden, 1638: beaten on Sunday, victorious on Wednesday

Rheinfelden is really two battles a few days apart, as a print published in 1638 already made clear in its title: a hard clash between the Imperial, Bavarian and Weimar troops on Sunday the 28th, and again on Wednesday 3 March. The first went against Bernhard; the second, as Friedrich Hermann Schubert writes in the Neue Deutsche Biographie, was the first defeat Bernhard inflicted on a Catholic army in his Rhine campaign, and it opened the way to his greatest prize, Breisach.²

A prince in French pay

Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar was one of the Protestant generals who had fought with Sweden. After the Swedish defeat at Nördlingen in 1634 he turned to France. By the treaty of Saint-Germain of October 1635 Richelieu's government gave him the money to keep 18,000 men under the authority of the French crown and promised him the landgraviate of Alsace. The Royal Collection Trust's catalogue simply calls his force a French mercenary army.³

In the winter of 1637 to 1638 his quarters in the Jura could not feed his army. Once the French had promised to cover his back against Lorraine, Karl Menzel writes in the older Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, Bernhard struck: in January 1638 he crossed the Rhine at Säckingen, took Laufenburg and Waldshut and laid siege to Rheinfelden.⁴

Sunday, 28 February

The speed of his advance alarmed the Imperial side. Johann von Werth, the famous Bavarian cavalry leader, was in Munich and Augsburg recovering from a pistol ball in the neck when he heard the news; he and the Imperial general Federico Savelli hurried out of their scattered winter quarters to relieve the town. On 28 February the armies met, and the first battle of Rheinfelden went against the Weimar army. Bernhard gave up the siege and fell back toward Laufenburg.⁵

Wednesday, 3 March

Werth and Savelli did not follow up their success. According to Bernhard von Poten's article on Werth in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, the victors gave themselves over to rest; Menzel calls their commander careless and boastful after his win. Only two days later Bernhard turned back, and on 3 March he fell on them by surprise.⁶

This time the Imperial and Bavarian army was decisively beaten and scattered in every direction. Almost all its senior commanders who were not killed were taken prisoner: Savelli, two other generals and many high officers, and Werth himself, who surrendered to an officer of the Count of Nassau. Bernhard sent the captured colors to the king of France as trophies. The dates are not quite uniform even in the same reference work: Michael Kaiser's newer Neue Deutsche Biographie article dates Werth's capture to 2 March, while the older entries and Schubert give 3 March.⁷

Jean de Werth in Paris

Werth expected Bernhard to exchange him quickly for the Swedish field marshal Gustav Horn, a prisoner since Nördlingen. Instead, Poten writes, Richelieu insisted on having the feared Jean de Werth in French hands. An attempt by the Imperial general Götz to free him on the way to Benfeld failed, and he was taken to the castle of Vincennes, a journey that turned into a kind of triumph as crowds came out to see him. He spent the next years as a celebrated prisoner at the court of Louis XIII, and was exchanged for Horn only on 24 March 1642. Savelli escaped from captivity on his own.⁸

From Rheinfelden to Breisach

With the relief army gone, Rheinfelden surrendered in March, and Bernhard's troops spread into Württemberg; Freiburg fell on 1 April. Later in 1638 he forced the great Rhine fortress of Breisach to surrender, the most famous feat of his career.⁹

He did not enjoy it for long. Bernhard died in 1639 after a short illness, probably smallpox, and Alsace, which he had hoped to rule as his own principality, passed to France. Werth returned to the field in 1642 and fought on for Bavaria and the Emperor, at Tuttlingen, Freiburg, Jankau and Alerheim; Kaiser counts his capture at Rheinfelden as the break in his career that kept him from the supreme Bavarian command.¹⁰