On 24 November 1643, in a heavy snowstorm, a Bavarian, imperial and Lorraine army under Field Marshal Franz von Mercy surprised the French army of Josias Rantzau in its quarters around Tuttlingen on the upper Danube. The French guns were taken in the first rush and the town was surrounded before anyone could get out. On 25 November Rantzau surrendered with, by one count, eight generals and 7,000 men. It was Mercy's first great victory.
A French army in winter quarters
In 1643, a quarter of a century into the Thirty Years' War, French armies were trying to push across the Rhine into southern Germany and Bavaria. Mercy, who had been made a field marshal in May, blocked the French invasion under Marshal Guébriant that summer. In the autumn the French advanced again, now under General Josias Rantzau, and took up quarters to rest around the small town of Tuttlingen on the Danube. The engraving above, published soon after the battle, calls Rantzau's force the French-Weimar army, after the German regiments once raised by Bernard of Saxe-Weimar that served in it.1
Through the forest in the snow
Mercy planned and led the winter campaign, under the overall command of Duke Charles of Lorraine, whose troops fought alongside the Bavarians and imperial regiments. The Royal Collection's description of a print of the battle names Johann von Werth as the second in command, with Count Melchior von Hatzfeldt also serving under Mercy. According to the historian Heinrich Reusch in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, the army came on after hard marches through almost impassable forest, and on 24 November, during a heavy snowstorm, fell on Tuttlingen. The French artillery park was taken in a quick rush, and the cavalry surrounded the town, in the words of Mercy's own report, so quickly that no one could get out.2
The army was then placed so that no help could reach the troops in the town from the French quartered at Möhringen and Mühlheim nearby. Mercy's brother Kaspar destroyed three French infantry brigades near Mühlheim, and the other French detachments were driven back.3
Surrender and after
On 25 November Rantzau surrendered. Reusch lists among those handed over to the Duke of Lorraine and Mercy eight generals, nine colonels, twelve staff officers, 240 junior officers, 7,000 men and ten guns, with a large amount of booty. The historian Helmut Neuhaus, in the Neue Deutsche Biographie, calls Tuttlingen Mercy's first really great victory. The engraving above gives the date as 14/24 November: the first figure follows the Julian calendar still used in many Protestant parts of Germany, the second the Gregorian.4
Mercy followed it up in 1644 with a costly victory over the Duke of Enghien at Freiburg, and in 1645 beat Turenne at Herbsthausen before he was killed at Alerheim.5 › Battle of Freiburg, 1644
