Battle of the Alte Veste

Background

In the spring of 1632 Gustavus Adolphus beat the Imperial-League army at Rain am Lech, where Tilly fell, then took Augsburg and entered Munich on 17 May. Emperor Ferdinand II recalled Albrecht von Wallenstein, who raised a new army within weeks. Wallenstein drove the Saxon army out of Bohemia and advanced towards Saxony; he then, instead of seeking a battle, threatened the Swedish base at Nuremberg by building a fortified camp near Zirndorf.

Gustavus turned north with his army. He and Wallenstein's army met round Nuremberg and Fürth, a market town with a ford over the Regnitz that had been largely abandoned after being burnt in June. Gustavus occupied Nuremberg and camped outside it, and Wallenstein entrenched. German Wikipedia says the camp held about 60,000 people and called it the largest field camp in history, citing web sources.

Oxenstierna's relief army reached Gustavus on 27 August, and on 31 August the king offered battle in the open near Nuremberg, which Wallenstein declined. Both armies were short of food. The Swedes made a first attack at Gebersdorf on 1 September, starting at about 17:00, and broke it off about five hours later (s2), two days before the larger assault on the Alte Veste.

The armies

The Swedish army at Nuremberg combined Gustavus's own force, about 18,000 men, with Oxenstierna's relief army of about 24,000 (German Wikipedia). Its senior officers included Bernhard and Wilhelm of Saxe-Weimar, Lennart Torstensson, who commanded the artillery and was captured in the fighting, and Johan Banér, who commanded infantry and was wounded. Scottish and Finnish troops are named among the attackers: a Scottish regiment at the Alte Veste, and Finnish cuirassiers on the left.

Wallenstein's army was dug in behind trenches, redoubts and an abatis on wooded high ground; the Alte Veste itself was a derelict castle on a hill whose possession would have let Swedish guns dominate the camp. German Wikipedia's figure for the camp is about 31,000 foot and 12,000 horse; English Wikipedia's infobox gives 43,500 and 45,430 without making clear which side each is.

The armies' strengths cannot be pinned down: the sources give ranges of 27,000 to 46,000 men for the Swedes and 27,000 to 60,000 for the Imperials. The point that matters for gaming is the terrain. The Imperial camp was a fortress; the Swedes had a good deal of cavalry that could not be used against it and heavy guns that could not be moved up the slope.

The battle

CDB90 records one engagement, number 8 (ALTE VESTE), from 10:00 on 3 September to 11:00 on 4 September. German Wikipedia gives a detailed account of the 3 September attack; English Wikipedia gives only an outline. The account below follows German Wikipedia, with no times other than those it gives.

The feint and the approach, 2–3 September. Wallenstein wrongly believed that the Swedes would try to turn his position from the west and placed his main force on the west side of the camp. On the morning of the 3rd the Swedes deployed in three wings between Unterfürberg and Dambach by 07:00 and attacked at about 09:00, along a front of about 2.7 kilometres, with Gustavus leading the left wing in person. Believing that Wallenstein was withdrawing, the Swedes came on carelessly, and the king sent much of his cavalry towards Schwabach and Neumarkt.

The right wing, the Rosenberg. The Swedes took an artillery redoubt near the Zirndorf water tower, but could not get their heavy guns over the Rosenberg. Wallenstein reinforced the camp's edge there with 3,000 musketeers.

The centre, the Alte Veste. The assault on the fortified ruin failed. Imperial trenches and an abatis stopped the Swedish brigades, and as they faltered, Bavarian cavalry and Croatian horse counterattacked on the flanks. English Wikipedia says that much of the Swedish cavalry dismounted and went in on foot and was cut down by Wallenstein's cavalry, and that the final commitment of the Swedish cavalry reserve prevented a complete disaster.

The left wing, Dambach and the Fugger road. Finnish cuirassiers took the outer Fugger line and a star redoubt, and Colonel Jakob Fugger was mortally wounded. The main assault came late in the afternoon. The Finns reached the edge of the camp at Sonnenstrasse and took several redoubts, but nightfall prevented a break-in. The Swedes spent the night in the rain on the ground they had won.

4 September. In the morning Gustavus broke off. German Wikipedia names heavy rain, the failure to move guns over the Rosenberg and damp match for the muskets. He withdrew to the Hardhöhe near Fürth unpursued. The Swedes lost, among others, Torstensson as a prisoner; he was held for nearly a year at Ingolstadt.

Reading the times. CDB90's single engagement begins at 10:00 on the 3rd and ends at 11:00 on the 4th, which covers the whole assault and the night on the field. The 1 September attack at Gebersdorf, which German Wikipedia dates from about 17:00 to 22:00, is a separate and earlier action. Neither account gives clock times for the individual wing attacks other than 'late in the afternoon' for the main assault on the left, so a map reader should treat the three wing actions as running side by side through the day, with the left the last to peak.

Aftermath

Neither army was destroyed. Wallenstein had held his camp and, in his letter of 5 September (cited by German Wikipedia from Förster, 1829), described the king as having lost his reputation for invincibility; German Wikipedia argues he emerged as an equal opponent. Gustavus could not make Wallenstein fight in the open. The Swedes left Fürth on 18 September after a parade in front of Wallenstein's camp. Wallenstein broke camp on 23 September, burning villages, the bridges and parts of Fürth. Nuremberg was never taken, but nor was it relieved by an Imperial victory; the Swedish king marched back to the Danube unpursued, and the way was open for the Habsburgs to advance into Saxony.

Both armies lost more men to dysentery, desertion and hunger than to the fighting, and thousands of horses died. The two commanders met again at Lützen on 16 November 1632, where Gustavus was killed. Wallenstein was murdered at Eger on 25 February 1634.

The battle is recorded under several names in the literature: the Alte Veste, Fürth, Zirndorf or Nuremberg. English Wikipedia calls the result a nominal Catholic victory; the Swedes had not been routed, but the king's aura of invincibility was damaged and Swedish supplies, which English Wikipedia says were worsening, were still short.

Wargaming it

The Alte Veste is a rare case of a battle in which the attacker was meant to lose, and it suits a scenario about an assault on prepared defences. A game at about 1:100 figures needs the Swedish brigades, the cavalry reserve and the Imperial earthworks, with the contested hill in the centre. Because both sides' strengths are uncertain, set the Swedish force by what the scenario needs, not by one source.

The key terrain is the wooded Alte Veste hill and the Rosenberg, over which the Swedes could not move heavy guns, and the two flanking attacks at Dambach and the Zirndorf water tower. Rain and wet match are good reasons to slow fire for the Swedes late in the game. Wallenstein's mistaken belief that the Swedes would come from the west and his main force being on the camp's wrong side give the Imperial player a hidden deployment decision, and the 3,000 musketeers who arrive at the Rosenberg make a good reserve rule.

The interesting decisions are Swedish: whether to concentrate on the Alte Veste, whether to commit the cavalry dismounted, and whether to stop at nightfall. Victory conditions can be set by who holds the outer lines at the end of the day, or by casualties. The what-ifs are the Finns breaking in on the left, and Gustavus not attacking at all, in which case Lützen may not have happened as it did.

Maps and pictures