When was the Battle of Wimpfen?

On 6 May 1622, near Wimpfen on the Neckar, north of Heilbronn in today's Baden-Württemberg.

Who fought at Wimpfen?

The Catholic League army of Count Tilly and Spanish troops under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba against the Protestant army of Margrave George Frederick of Baden-Durlach.

What decided the Battle of Wimpfen?

A shot blew up the Protestant powder wagons. The Catholic armies then stormed the margrave's position and his army fled.

How many died at Wimpfen?

The Heilbronn historical society puts the dead at about 5,000 on each side, among them Duke Magnus of Württemberg.

What was the white lady of Wimpfen?

A story from the Catholic side: soldiers said they saw a woman in white over the Protestant guns before the cannonade stopped, and took it as a miracle.

Battle of Wimpfen, 1622: the powder wagons that decided a Thirty Years' War battle

Sebastiaen Vrancx, Battle of Wimpfen on 6 May 1622, State Hermitage Museum, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Quick answer

What happened at the Battle of Wimpfen?

On 6 May 1622, in the early years of the Thirty Years' War, the Catholic League army of Count Tilly and Spanish troops under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba attacked the Protestant army of Margrave George Frederick of Baden-Durlach near Wimpfen on the Neckar. The margrave's army held a strong position until a shot blew up its powder wagons. The Catholic armies then stormed the hill, his army broke and fled, and George Frederick was driven out of the war.¹

By 1622 the war that had begun in Bohemia had moved to the Rhine. After the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, the armies of the Catholic League under Count Tilly had overrun much of the lands of Frederick V of the Palatinate, the deposed Winter King of Bohemia, and were fighting the princes who still took his side, as Britannica's biography of Tilly records.²

Three Protestant armies were in the field that spring. John Rickard of HistoryOfWar.org writes that they were struggling to unite, which would give them the strength to face the Catholic forces. Ernst von Mansfeld and George Frederick, margrave of Baden-Durlach, decided to cross the Neckar at different points to split the Catholic armies of Tilly and of the Spanish general Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba. The plan failed: George Frederick found himself facing Tilly, Córdoba and most of their army near Wimpfen.³

A good position

The battle was fought on the fields west of Obereisesheim and east of Biberach, north of Heilbronn, according to the local historical society of Heilbronn-Neckargartach (AKHKN). It puts the Catholic League army at 13,000 men and the margrave's at 15,000, with his headquarters at the Altböllinger farm.⁴

Rickard argues that although the margrave was outnumbered by the combined Catholic forces, he was not outclassed. His army was loyal and eager, while the Catholic side suffered from a divided command and bad supply. George Frederick placed his guns on a low hill that dominated the flat ground and opened the battle with a heavy cannonade, supported by a cavalry attack that for a moment seemed close to breaking the Spanish line.⁵

The explosion

Then the battle turned on a single blow. A shot struck the Protestant powder wagons and they blew up; the Heilbronn historians call it an accident that decided the battle. Rickard adds a story from the Catholic side: the soldiers believed they saw a woman in white appear above the Protestant guns, after which the cannonade stopped, and they took it as a miracle and renewed their attack.⁶

Tilly and Córdoba threw their troops together at the hill, and after a stiff fight the Baden army fled, abandoning its guns. Duke Magnus of Württemberg, aged 28, fell at the head of his cuirassier regiment; the local account says his body was so badly mutilated that he could be recognized only by a birthmark. The margrave escaped.⁷

Flight to Heilbronn

The beaten army streamed south toward Heilbronn. At Neckargartach the gate on the Wimpfen road had been shut by fleeing Lorraine horsemen and had to be hacked open with axes; at the bridge over the flooded Böllinger stream the fugitives jammed, and many men and horses were pushed into the water and drowned. Tilly's cavalry caught up with the rest. The Heilbronn historians put the dead at about 5,000 on each side.⁸

The day after the battle, the Bavarian and Spanish troops broke the neutrality of the imperial city of Heilbronn and fell on its village of Neckargartach. The society's account records killing, rape and burning: 181 houses, 119 barns and 219 stables went up in flames, and the losses ran to more than 100,000 guilders.⁹

For the survivors the war did not end with the battle. Their fields of growing grain were turned into horse pasture, trees were cut down and vineyards destroyed, and, the society writes, the villagers who remained spent the following winter crowded into sixteen rooms. The margrave's silver wagon, by contrast, had already been taken into Heilbronn for safety that evening.¹⁰

What Wimpfen changed

George Frederick was out of the war, Rickard writes, although two thirds of his army soon gathered again; Córdoba had lost about as many men, and Mansfeld crossed the Neckar unopposed. The victory was one of the string of successes with which, in Britannica's words, Tilly over the next three years conquered the Upper and Rhenish Palatinate and defeated the armies raised by Frederick's supporters, before turning on Denmark in 1626.¹¹

The battle quickly entered art. The Flemish painter Sebastiaen Vrancx painted it with the explosion rising over the Protestant lines; his picture is now in the Hermitage in St Petersburg.