Chapter 45: Habsburg European Offensives in 1632
While the Dutch, allied with the Japanese, went on the offensive in Asia, they were much more on the defensive on the home front in 1632, although the Prince of Orange Frederick Henry initially planned a full-scale offensive campaign. The prince’s plans would be disrupted by the renewed capacity of the Spanish Crown to invade the Netherlands thanks to expanded manpower resources under the Union of Arms. Leading the Army of Flanders, Spain’s premier standing army in the Spanish Road, was the king’s younger brother, Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand. Initially it took some time for reinforcements to arrive at Ferdinand, as part of the Spanish Road was either partially occupied or constantly strained by Swedish-Protestant forces fighting the Catholic League in the Holy Roman Empire. On April 17th, 1632, however, the Duke of Feria Gomez Suarez de Figueroa, the Governor of the Duchy of Milan, liberated Rheinfelden from Swedish forces and opened the corridor between Spanish Lombardy and the Spanish Low Countries for Portuguese, Aragonese, and Valencian soldiers, numbering 15,000 in total, to join Ferdinand. The time it took for this to happen allowed Frederick Henry to capture the forts of Venlo and Roermond and begin a siege on Maastricht in June. Approaching the prince’s position was Ferdinand, now leading an army of 33,000.
The Capture of Rheinfelden, painted by Vincenzo Carducci
On July 16th, the Cardinal-Infante arrived in the vicinity of Maastricht, which was defended by a Spanish garrison of just 3,000 against the Dutch army of 21,000. Ferdinand devised a two-pronged attack upon Frederick Henry’s forces, with Don Gonzalo de Cordoba taking charge of the secondary force that attacked one side with the Cardinal-Infante assaulting the other. Although they outnumbered the Dutch, the Spanish failed to break their enemy’s morale or their contravallations during this assault and were forced to withdraw. They would take another crack at Frederick Henry and his army, however, when German marshal Gottfried Graf zu Pappenheim arrived with an additional 16,000 men in early August. This time, the coalesced Catholic forces broke through the contravallations and despite a spirited defense, the Prince of Orange was forced to end his siege and retreat northwards. Taking advantage of this victory, the combined army quickly retook Venlo and Roermond by the end of September, completely reversing Dutch gains from the spring. From there, the army of 49,000 proceeded to march on the city of Arnhem, the capital of the province of Gelderland, with the Cardinal-Infante intending to effectively split the Netherlands in two and conquer the divided halves of the United Provinces separately. In response, Frederick Henry, knowing he couldn’t win a pitched battle against the Catholic army, reorganized his forces into smaller divisions that would engage in a war of attrition. These smaller divisions harassed the enemy’s supply lines and baggage trains, employed scorched earth tactics in the countryside to deprive the Cardinal-Infante of needed provisions, and initiated hit-and-run attack after attack. Although Arnhem still fell to the Spanish on November 22nd, Ferdinand and zu Pappenheim’s forces had been depleted and lacked the necessary supplies to stay in one piece in the region. A garrison of 5,000 would be left, with the bulk of the rest of the army settling down in the Meise valley for the winter. Despite the Spanish near-pyrrhic victory though, Dutch fortunes on the home front were at its lowest in more than 40 years, not helped by political disunity in the States’ General between pro-peace and pro-war parties.
Portrait of Frederick Henry, the Prince of Orange, by Michiel Janszoon van Mierevel
Spain also assisted its Austrian kin militarily, with a Spanish army of 10,000 led by the Marquess of Leganes Diego Felipez de Guzman converging with Albrecht von Wallenstein’s Catholic League army of 43,500 at the Battle of the Alte Veste against King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, the standard bearer of the Protestant cause in central Europe. This engagement ended in a Catholic victory, with Swedish cavalry commander Johan Baner killed during the battle and fellow artillery commander Lennart Torstenson captured in the aftermath. Afterwards, the combined army marched north towards Saxony in order to knock prince-elector John George I out of the war, Gustavus Adolphus unable to pursue due to being outnumbered and still reeling from losses at Alte Veste [1] .
The fall of 1632 proved to be relatively successful months for Habsburg forces across Europe, and it seemed like Protestants would be defeated for good in the near future against seemingly unbreakable Catholic momentum. However, these same successes would convince a new player to join the conflict. Alarmed by the resurgence of his old Habsburg rivals, King Louis XIII of France and his chief minister Cardinal Richelieu decided on direct intervention, signing an alliance with the Dutch and a mutual defense pact with Sweden that also renewed ongoing military subsidies to Gustavus Adolphus. In March 1633, an army of 27,000 led by Urbain de Maille-Breze would depart Paris towards the Spanish Netherlands, where he marched relatively unopposed through towns and cities lacking sufficient garrisons due to men drawn away for the Spanish offensive northwards the previous year. At the end of the month, Maille-Breze reached Leuven, a small town that controlled the critical River Dyle, and began to besiege it. By now, news of the French intervention had reached the Cardinal-Infante, who began to march south leading an army of 20,000 and left de Cordoba as the commander of Spanish forces alongside zu Pappenheim’s imperial contingent to continue the reconquest of Gelderland from the Dutch. He also recalled the Marquess of Leganes from Leipzig, which had been captured by Catholic forces on November 1632 from Saxony, and began to gather troops from nearby areas in the Spanish Netherlands and Alsace to reinforce both him and de Cordoba in their respective positions.
Campaigns in the Low Countries 1632-1633 (Dutch=black, Spanish=yellow, zu Pappenheim=purple, French=blue)
By forcing Ferdinand’s attention to be distracted from the Netherlands, France gave Protestant forces across Europe a lifeline and proved that the wars in Europe were far from settled.
[1]: Spanish troops with von Wallenstein discourage Gustavus Adolphus from marching north and engaging the Catholic League at Lutzen.
