Johan t'Serclaes, Count of Tilly
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Johann Tserclaes von Tilly (February 1559 - April 301632) was a highly skilled mercenary General (Field Marshal) who commanded the Imperial and Holy Roman Empire's forces in the Thirty Years' War, he had a string of important victories against the Bohemians, Germans and later the Danish, but was then defeated by forces led by the redoubtable Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. Along with Duke Albrecht von Wallenstein of Friedland and Mecklenburg, he was one the two chief commanders of the Holy Roman Empire’s forces.
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Early years
Johann Tserclaes was born in February 1559 in Castle Tilly outside of Neville, now in Belgium, then the Spanish Netherlands, which is now composed of Holland and Belgium. Johann Tserclaes was born into the Catholic noble Brabant family and after receiving a Jesuit education in Cologne, he joined the Spanish army at age fifteen and fought under Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza in his campaign against the Dutch forces rebelling in the Eighty Years' War and participated in the successful Siege of Antwerp in 1585. After this he joined in the Holy Roman Empire’s campaign against the Ottoman Turks in Hungary and Transylvania as a mercenary in 1600 and through rapid promotion became a Field Marshall in only five years.
Campaign in Bohemia
Following this he was appointed commander of the Catholic League forces in by Bavaria under Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria in 1610 and fought against the Bohemian rebels in 1620, by which time he had spent training his soldiers in the Spanish Tercio system, which featured musketeers supported by deep ranks of pikemen. With 25,000 soldiers, he moved north and scored an important victory against Frederick V, Elector Palatine at the short but decisive Battle of White Mountain north of Prague on November 8 1620, in which half of the enemy forces were killed or captured, but he lost only 700 men. His men were well trained and it required only two hours of fighting for his soldiers to break the enemy line. This was vital in crushing resistance to the emperor in what is now the Czech Republic as it allowed Prague to be captured several days later and also delayed the Czechs’ independence for 300 more years.
Campaign in Germany
Next he turned west and marched through Germany, but was defeated at the Battle of Mingolsheim on April 27, 1622, after which he joined with the Spanish general Duke Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba, and was victorious at the Battle of Wimpfen against Georg Fredrick, Margrave of Baden-Durlach on May 6th, this victory occurred after the enemies’ ammunition tumbril was hit by cannon fire and exploded. He was successful again at the Battle of Höchst on June 20 and was made a Count (Graf in German) for this victory. These three battles in two months allowed him to capture the city of Heidelberg following an eleven-week siege on September 19. Christian of Brunswick, whom he had already defeated at Höchst raised another army, but again lost to him again at the Battle of Stadtlohn where 13,000 out of his army of 15,000 were lost, including fifty of his high ranking officers, and ending virtually all resistance in Germany, and there was a complete surrender of Bohemia in 1623. This event caused Denmark’s king Christian IV to enter the Thirty years war war in 1625 to protect Protestantism and also in a bid to make himself the primary leader of Northern Europe. Count Tilly, Johann Tserclaes then fought the Danish at the Battle of Lutter on August 26–August 27 1626 in which his highly disciplined infantry charged the enemy lines four times whereupon they broke through, leading him to win decisively, and destroying more than half the fleeing Danish army; as was uncharacteristic of warfare of the times. Because of this and other victories by Wallenstein, Denmark was forced to sue for peace at the Treaty of Lübeck, but this disrupted the balance of power in Europe resulting in Swedish involvement in 1630 under their redoubtable leader, the brilliant King and Field General Gustavus Adolphus who had been attempting to dominate the Baltic for the previous ten years in wars with Poland, then a continental power of note. Gustavus has been called the Father of Modern Warfare by many, but most of his innovations were derivative and incremental, save for an early innovative example of combined arms techniques mixing highly disciplined light and heavy cavalry, musketmen, pikemen and a heavy reliance on rapid aimed fire by light field artillery, and a penchant for exploiting developing situations by maneuver warfare.
Sack of Magdeburg
While Adolphus landed his army in Mecklenburg and was in Berlin, trying to make alliances with the leaders of Northern Germany, Johann Tserclaes laid siege to the city of Magdeburg in central Germany on the Elbe River, which promised to support Sweden. The siege began on March 20 1631 and he put his subordinate Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim in command. After two months of laying siege, and after the fall of Frankfurt (Oder) to the Swedish, Pappenheim finally convinced Tilly, who brought reinforcements to storm the city on May 20 with 40,000 men under the personal command of Pappenheim. The assault went well, but after the commanders lost control of their soldiers a massacre of the populace ensued in which 25,000 of the 30,000 inhabitants of the city perished, and the city was mostly burned down. This event is the most controversial in Johann Tserclaes’ then more than fifty-year career as a professional soldier. It remains unclear how much responsibility he bears for what happened. His enemies quickly blamed him, claiming that the massacre was ordered and used it as justification to enact similar killings. But many now see it as unlikely that he ordered the massacre, one important reason why is because Magdeburg is a strategically vital city in the Elbe River, and was needed as a base for supply when his army would turn northwards to fight the Swedes. Some have blamed the citizens themselves for setting the city on fire in an attempt to deprive his army of a base. Johann Tserclaes was a very experienced commander and would have recognized the importance of the city, and that would make burning it a poor military judgment, in addition to this he offered to accept their surrender after the capture of Toll redoubt days before the main assault, indicating he was not interested in a slaughter. Such acts of violence were quite common during the time, mostly because armies were comprised of a high number of mercenaries, resulting in notoriously poor discipline.
Campaign against the Swedish
He engaged Gustavus Adolphuus at the Battle of Breitenfeld on September 17, 1631, near the city of Leipzig, which Johann Tserclaes had reached by laying waste to Saxony. In the battle he was outmaneuvered by the innovative Gustavus Adolphus and lost 13,000 soldiers in a hard-fought battle. The Swedes’ maneuvering and accurate, rapid artillery fire caused his troops to flee. He withdrew, and political rivalries prevented Wallenstein from coming to his aid, so he turned to defense. While attempting to prevent the Swedish from crossing into Bavaria over the Lech River near the city of Rain am Lech, he was wounded by a cannon ball early in the Battle of Rain and died of tetanus fifteen days later in Ingolstadt at the age of 73 on April 30 1632.
Tactics
Johann Tserclaes was known for perfecting the use of the Spanish Terico system and trained his German armies extensively in it. The Tercio system was adopted at an important turning point in warfare. Firearms had evolved to the point that they were undoubtedly effective in warfare, because they had been developed to the point where they were easily used, they could pierce the strongest armor, but they were still remained very inaccurate, and furthermore they required a full minute to be reloaded, which left the user incapable of defending himself. The Terico system combined traditional, largely pike based medieval Spanish warfare with the use of guns. This system, however, was losing efficiency due to the advances made in artillery and linear tactics.
Fictional appearances
Tilly plays a minor supporting role in Eric Flint's 1632 series of science fiction/alternate history novels.de:Johann t'Serclaes von Tilly fr:Jean t'Serclaes, comte de Tilly is:Tilly ja:ティリー伯ヨハン・セルクラエス no:Johann Tserclaes Tilly pl:Johan von Tilly sv:Johann Tserclaes Tilly