page_title: Christian the Younger of Brunswick
section_title: Campaigns of 1622-23
hierarchical_section_title: Christian the Younger of Brunswick / Campaigns of 1622-23
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Christian von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel umgeben von westfälischen Städteansichten
context_page_description: Christian the Younger of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, a member of the House of Welf, titular Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and administrator of the Prince-Bishopric of Halberstadt, was a German Protestant military leader during the early years of the Thirty Years' War, fighting against the forces of the Imperial House of Habsburg, Habsburg Spain, and the Catholic League.
context_section_description: In 1621, Christian was one of the few men to continue rallying behind Frederick V, who had only the year before claimed and been deposed from the throne of Bohemia following his crushing loss at the Battle of White Mountain. Frederick was still leader of the Protestant resistance rooted from the 1618 crushed Bohemian Revolution. What attracted Christian to the cause is arguable, but something that may have had to do with it was the fact that before his campaigning, Christian declared a chivalric love for Elizabeth, Frederick's wife and daughter of James I of England, who at this point of the war had sent several thousand troops under Sir Horace Vere to the Palatinate.
  By the end of 1621 he had managed to raise 10,000 troops, with whom he wintered in Westphalia, gathering a great treasure from the dioceses of Münster and Paderborn. Christian's military actions began in 1622 when Ernst von Mansfeld began organizing his forces and expressed interest in linking up with his army, especially after his ally Georg Friedrich, Margrave of Baden-Durlach, was crushingly defeated at the Battle of Wimpfen. They were caught at the Battle of Höchst, 22 June 1622, and although Christian was arguably defeated, he was able to escape with much of his army despite crossing a river under heavy fire and losing all of his baggage. The newly united Protestant army moved into Alsace, leaving Heidelberg, the capital of the Palatinate, to fall to Count von Tilly in September 1622, effectively forcing Frederick V out of the war.
  After intense foraging and ravaging of the Alsace region, Christian and Mansfeld moved north in Lorraine, and upon the news of the Spanish siege of Bergen op Zoom, they marched to the relief of the city, fighting the Battle of Fleurus (29 August 1622) and in the midst of the battle, Christian displayed his well-known courage and stubbornness on the field by leading four unsuccessful cavalry charges against the Spanish lines under Fernández de Córdoba. It was on the fifth charge that the Protestant horsemen broke the Spanish lines and paved the way for the Protestant relief of Bergen op Zoom that October. This came at a cost of most of Christian's infantry and one of Christian's arms. Fresh from that victory, Christian spent the winter of 1622–23 in the Spanish Netherlands resting and replenishing his army to what would be in spring 1623 set at roughly 15,000.
  Spring 1623 saw a plan between Christian, Mansfeld, the Prince of Transylvania Bethlen Gabor, and his ally Count Thurn to retake Bohemia for the Protestants and to breathe new life into the ailing Protestant cause. The campaign faltered from the start as Count von Tilly received news of the troop movements and positioned himself in Lower Saxony, with reports from Mansfeld coming to Christian that he did not have the money to pay his armies or to campaign, leaving Christian to himself in the north. Outnumbered again, and leading an army that was not as disciplined as that of Tilly, Christian made a break for the relative safety of the United Provinces. He was outrun and outmaneuvered 10 miles short of the Dutch border, and in a stand typical of Christian's bravery, he was nonetheless decisively defeated at the Battle of Stadtlohn on 6 August 1623, when he lost all but 2,000 of this 15,000-man army. Broken, he fled for The Hague with the remnants of his army.
caption: Christian von Braunschweig und westfälische Städteansichten
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