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Battle of Dortmund

While Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick faced off against Duc de Brogile in Hesse, George Germain, 1st Viscount of Sackville would face off against the Marquis de Contades in the west as the old French army poured over the Rhine.

On June 8th, Sackville made a stand against the French at Dortmund. Sackville commanded 4,000 British soldiers (which included 3,000 reinforcements sent into the Germanies earlier that spring beyond Britain’s original commitment) 10,000 Hanoverian soldiers, 5,000 from Schamburg-Lippe, and 2,000 Prussian soldiers, who were the very last of Prussia’s unrecalled western garrisons for a total of 21,000. Contades led the older French western army of 43,000, which had once been led by Clermont and defeated at Dusseldorf by the Duke of Brunswick nearly a year ago.

Unfolding much like the battle of Frankfurt, both sides took positions in and around the town of Dortmund, and fell into a series of long artillery duel and skirmishes which devastated the town. The numbers were simply not on Sackville’s side though, and he would be forced to retreat, but not before Lord Granby gave the French a bloody nose turning back the French pursuit of the retreating allied army.

Allied Forces: ~2,000 casualties, 10 guns captured
French Forces: ~4,200 casualties.
Civilian casualties: just under ~1,000

French Victory.

Accusations of the free city of Dortmund supporting the surrounding Prussian province of Mark and the Allied army, combined with the damage the town suffered in the battle, were cited as the reasons Dortmund was incorporated into the occupied County of Mark at the war’s end.