Everything about The Battle Of Hemmingstedt totally explained
The
Battle of Hemmingstedt took place on
February 17 1500 near the village of
Hemmingstedt in present-day
Schleswig-Holstein in
Germany. It was an attempt by Duke
Friedrich and Duke
Johann to subdue the
peasantry of
Dithmarschen, who had established a peasants'
republic on the coast of the
North Sea. (Duke Johann was at the time also king of the
Kalmar Union.)
The ducal army consisted of the "Great Guard", 4,000 mercenaries from the
Netherlands, commanded by a petty noble (
Junker) named Slentz, 2,000 armoured cavaliers, about 1,000 artillery-men and 5,000 commoners. The defenders were about 6000 men, all peasants. These men were a well-armed and well-organized
militia, not the desperate, badly-armed rabble one would associate with the term "peasant army". After seizing the village of Meldorf the ducal army advanced, but was stopped at a barricade, equipped with guns (
Geschütze). The defenders opened at least one
dike sluice in order to flood the land. The land quickly turned into morass and shallow lakes. Crammed together on a narrow road with no solid ground on which to deploy, the ducal army was unable to make use of its numerical superiority. The lightly-equipped peasants were familiar with the land and used poles to leap over the ditches. Most of the ducal soldiers were not killed by enemy arms, but drowned. The casualties among the Dithmarshians are not known, but the Danish and the Dutch lost together more than half of their army, making about 7,000 men killed and 1,500 men wounded.
The farmer
Wulf Isebrand was the leader and organiser of the peasants' defence. While he was a real person, the existence of other participants of the battle isn't proven. For instance, the legendary
Reimer von Wiemerstedt is said to have killed
Junker Slentz, the chief of the "Great Guard"; another doubtful participant was the "virgin" Telse.
Many details about the battle were made up later in order to heroize the defenders. In
1900 a monument to the defenders was raised. The cult reached its peak in the
Nazi era, when local party members used the names of the battle participants for their propaganda. Today there's a more neutral museum at the site commemorating the battle.
The Battle of Hemmingstedt is a prime example of the use of terrain in military tactics.
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