The Battle of Lemgo, 17 October 1638 : An Empirical Re-evaluation

• The Battle of Lemgo (1638) is traditionally viewed as a complete route of the Swedish forces under Lt General James King (an Orcadian) and an allied army led by Prince Karl Ludwig of the Palatinate. In this presentation, Dr Kathrin Zickermann and Prof Steve Murdoch have reassessed the battlefield reports following the battle and the subsequent actions of the Swedish-Palatine Army. In so doing a number of flaws in the conventional orthodoxy have been exposed. Missing from all previous mentions of this event has been any attention to the Swedish accounts of the battle, or even objective scrutiny of the available German and English ones. This paper returns to the basic principles of the study of history by reviewing the battle objectively and from all sides equally. In so doing we overturn the orthodoxy surrounding the battle and its aftermath. We can conclusively show that far from being a route which saw King and Karl Ludwig return to base with only five survivors (the myth), the battle witnessed an orderly retreat and was followed up by subsequent actions previously overlooked in any Swedish, German or English language accounts. This placed the Swedish army in a stronger position than prior to the battle, albeit the Palatine force was denuded of some of its most senior commanders. We address the mythologizing of these (such as Prince Rupert of the Rhine) and contemplate why the obsession with romantic figures has helped obscure the historical reality of the day.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Historia och arkeologi -- Historia (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- History and Archaeology -- History (hsv//eng)

Keyword

military history

history

Thirty Years War (1618-1648)

Empirical History

Military History

Historia med inriktning mot militärhistoria

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)