On 5 January 1675 a French army under Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne, attacked the allied German armies wintering in Upper Alsace and defeated them near the small town of Turckheim, west of Colmar. The battle was the climax of a winter campaign in which Turenne marched his army behind the Vosges mountains and reappeared where his enemies did not expect him. Within weeks the allies had left Alsace and recrossed the Rhine. The campaign is often counted among the finest of Turenne's career.
The war on the Rhine
The war that Louis XIV of France began against the Dutch Republic in 1672 spread over the following years to the Rhine, where the French faced the armies of the Holy Roman Empire and its German allies, among them Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg. Turenne commanded the French on this front.1
In June 1674 he won at Sinsheim, and later that year he fought the allies at Entzheim, near Strasbourg. The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica calls Entzheim a tactical victory that hardly changed the situation, and the historical atlas of Alsace published by the University of Upper Alsace makes the same point: it ended the allied offensive but did not keep the enemy on the far bank of the Rhine. The allied armies settled into winter quarters in Alsace, and Turenne withdrew to the western side of the Vosges.2
The winter march
Armies of the period normally stopped campaigning in winter, and the allies expected to keep their quarters until spring. Instead, in December 1674 Turenne moved his army south along the far side of the Vosges, reappeared at Belfort and came down into Upper Alsace at the end of the month. The Alsace atlas traces his route by way of Remiremont. Britannica describes this as a renowned march; the 1911 edition calls it swift and secret.3
On 29 December 1674 the French surprised an allied force near Mulhouse, in a fight that the Alsace atlas names after the neighboring village of Brunstatt. The allied commanders, caught off balance, pulled their forces together around Colmar.4
The battle
On 5 January 1675 Turenne found the allied army drawn up on the plain between Colmar and Turckheim. Among the allied commanders was the Elector of Brandenburg; the plan engraved by the French royal geographer Beaurain also names the Duke of Lorraine. Britannica says Turenne delivered a heavy blow to the flank of the main army.5
The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica says Turenne drove the enemy to Turckheim and inflicted a heavy defeat on them there, and the Alsace atlas calls the victory a daring maneuver in the middle of winter. The allied army gave way.6
No reliable count of the armies or of the losses was found in the sources used here.7
After Turckheim
The allied armies abandoned Alsace and retreated across the Rhine. The historical atlas of Alsace adds that the Elector of Brandenburg recrossed the river carrying the body of his heir in his baggage. Turenne had recovered the province within a few weeks, which is why Britannica describes the campaign as saving Alsace.8
Turenne did not survive the year. On 27 July 1675, while examining the enemy position at Sasbach, on the right bank of the Rhine, he was killed by a cannon shot. He is regarded as one of the greatest commanders France has produced, and the winter campaign that ended at Turckheim is one of the main reasons.9
