"Order of Battle for Tuttlingen, 1643?" Topic

I've recently learned about this battle almost incidentally, and it seems to have been overshadowed by Rocroi. I've been working on a later TYW Spanish army, so this one has piqued my interest.

I've been looking online for any information- In English, German, French and Spanish- and it's been scarce. What little I've been finding has been pretty bare-boned.

I found a reference to a recent, Osprey-like Spanish book on the subject, and will probably get hold of that- I could probably work through the text with help of a dictionary and grammar guide, although I have no idea of how good the book is or not.

But in the meantime, does anyone know if there exists any order of battle for either side, or could point me in the direction of where I could find one? (Without having to fly from Tokyo to Madrid or Vienna, that is.)

Even just a few names for the regiments involved would be useful.

With Spanish, Imperialists, Bavarians and Lorrainers on one side and French and Weimar troops on the other, it could be quite a colourful spectacle for the gaming table.

I've never seen an order of battle for Tuttlingen, probably because while a grand victory it was not much of a battle to begin with. Rantzau got caught by surprise with his army spread out in quarters with no effective system of sentries or guard forces to protect against attack. Not the right thing to do when you had one of the best command teams in the TYW lurking nearby (Mercy & Werth complete with exellent subordinates like Sporck, Wolff and Gold)

Bulk of the Catholic forces would have been the Bavarians who also did much (most?) of the actual fighting supported by the Lorrainer army which included a detachment of Imperial troops as well. (5 or 6 cavalry regiments IIRC), I've never seen spanish troops being mentioned as present in the accounts I've read of the battle but those have all been writting by historians whose main focuse were the Bavarians or officers in Bavarian service.

I have the official Bavarian account of the battle at home and will look through it for details on the troops involved. IIRC it does mention an number of Franco-Weimarian regiments or at least their colonels as the later ended up prisoners in large numbers.

Stephane Thion in his 'French Armies of TYW' gives Weimarian ODB as:
7 cavalry regiments (4 Weimarian: Wittgenstein, Betz, Flechstein and Russworms; 3 French: du Tot, Roncherolles, Batilly), Rosen dragoon regiment and 3 infantry regiment.

Franz Von Kausler in his "Atlas des plus memorables Batailles" gives the Weimar and French forces as

Weimar (totalling 10,000 men)
25 companies of German horse
2 Regiments of Dragoons
12 Regiments of Foot

French (totalling 8,000 men)
8 Regiments of horse
6 Regiments of Foot

German historian Helmut Lahrkamp puts the balance of forces at 16000 French & Weimarians vs 14-15000 Bavarian, Imperial and Lorrainers. No mention of the Spanish but they could simply be lumped in as part of the above lables.

Bavarian troops mentioned include the vanguard which spearheaded the attack with 1000 specialy selected "commanded" horsemen, Wolff's regiment of dragoons and 600 commanded musketeers led by Col. Gold. Later on the official report mentions the cuirassier regiments of Kolb (aka Alt-Kolb) and Lapierre (Aka La Pierre) as well as mentioning Sporck which probably indicates the presence not only of Sporck but also of his regiment of Arkebusiers.

The only Imperial regimental officer mentioned so far is one Colonel Epp who is a bit of an an enigma as I can not find his regiment in Wrede's huge history of the Austrian army but I do know that the man existed. Will continue searching.

There seems to have been two groups of Imperial troops present if I read the sources correctly. Hatzfeld who met with Mercy shortly before the attack, after the meeting Mercy wrote to Elector Maximilian that Hatzfeld would be able to join him with 1000 foot and 1200 horse. There was also a small corps of 6 Imperial cavalry regiment led by Generalwachtmeister Freiherr Wenzel von Saradetzky

Was this not helpful? TMP link

The book you refer to is presumably this one? La Batalla de Tuttlingen, 1643 : Guerra de los Treinta Años (Spanish) Perfect Paperback – Sep 2014
by Alberto Raúl Esteban Rivas (Author), Dariusz Bufnal (Illustrator)

The Spanish troops were part of the Lorrainer army :
"Note on the Spanish army in Tuttlingen

Spanish regiments that participated in the battle under the command of Juan de Vivero were sent to Duke Charles of Lorraine by Francisco de Melo, governor of the Netherlands. They were seven cavalry regiments (Jacinto de Vera, Conde de Linares, Donecquel ?, Brouck ?, Baron Eniet Sanary ?,? And Carlos Padilla) and 2 Infantry (Rouveroy and Frangipane Geraldine), along with several loose companies Palatinate. In total, 2,000 infants and 2,000 horses."
Google translated text from link found in the TMP post provided by SleepyDragon.

The French were quartered as follows according a footnote in historian Johann Heilmann's collection of primary sources for the campaign & battle.
Tuttlingen:
Headquarters, the artillery, the 4 companies of "Guards" (i.e the French La Reine units) and the de Clous infantry regiment

Mühlheim:
General Reinhold Rosen with 6 regiments of cavalry and 2 regiments of dragoons. In locations nearby there were also another 2 cavalry regiments and 3 infantry regiments

Möhringen:
The Rantzau regiment and 7 infantry regiments

Geisingen and surrounding area:
5 infantry regiments

The remaining troops along the Donau up to Donaueschingen.

Thanks very much gentlemen. All very helpful, and I appreciate your efforts.

For some reason that link provided hasn't been loading for me, but that might be an over-zealous antivirus protection. I'll have to try on a different computer later.

There was a Regiment Frangipani (German) in the Spanish order of Battle at Rocroi, I imagine it is the same one.

Much of the cavalry listed also seem to have been those regiments that formed the Spanish right under Isenburg at Rocroi. The regiment Sanary may be the same as the one called Savary in my source.

The book you refer to is presumably this one? La Batalla de Tuttlingen, 1643 : Guerra de los Treinta Años (Spanish) Perfect Paperback – Sep 2014 by Alberto Raúl Esteban Rivas (Author), Dariusz Bufnal (Illustrator)

That's it. It's on order.

So Tuttlingen sounds like a battle somewhat along the same lines as a Hochkirch or Auberouche, so it seems a decent game could be made out of it with a bit of thought. Although it would be a real challenge to the French-Weimarian player.

Some brief details on French OOB and the Battle can be found here … link

@piccolomini

Nice family library in Siena Cathedral

@Stoppage

Unfortunately i'm barred from it, being from the poorer side of the family ;)

Take a look at the Pike and Shot series of GMT. If they cover the battle in one of their games, then you can have a OOB angle. All playbooks with OOBs are available for free online on the GMT website

Never covered by P&S series as it was considered a much too single sided engagement to be worth the space and resources.
A historicaly accurate set of rules for gaming Tuttlingen would be that the Bavarian player rolls a D6 dice, on 1-6 he wins. The French player gets to demand 3 re-rolls…

The French "Army of Germany" had effectivly lost the battle before it even began by not only scattering the troops in widely separated quarters but also by neglecting the security measures that were considered necessary. (I.e proper pickets, guard forces, pre-determined assembly points and so on). Last but not least most of the senior officers and the army commander is busy playing cards and getting drunk in a place which isolates them from the rest of the army in case of an attack…

And the misery does not stop there, a good chunk of the army (The Weimarians) detest the new army commander (Rantzau) and their morale has taken a hit even before you factor in the effects of the surprise attack.

Even better! A good case of mutual suspicion between allies can make for fun scenarios, given the right player attitude, "victory" conditions, and with an umpire commanding the Imperial forces.

As it happens I just stumbled upon the GMT games .pdf's earlier today. Lots of information there.

The Franco-Weimarians will not be doomed to endless refights of Tuttlingen. I tend to use orders of battles as a basis for collecting armies and choosing which regiments to paint, as I prefer to have named units rather than just generic "these are my mounted harquebusiers with grey hats", even if any specific uniform and flag information may be lacking.

Anyway Bavarian and Lorrainer flags do look good.

So a bit of a tough ask for the French, then?

For a two player game, make it fast and simple. Play twice, switching sides. See who can dust the French off fastest.

So a bit of a tough ask for the French, then?

That is a bit of an understatement…

The key problem is that the army is spread out while the Catholic allies are a concentrated force.
I marked the quarters of the Franco-Weimarian army on the modern map below which should give an idea of the scale of the challenge the French faced in the event of an attack.

Digging through my sources I found the following list of the Bavarian army before Tuttlingen. Do note that it shows the entire army including regiments not present in Mercy's command. Units are also listed at ration strenght, actual combat strenght would be lower due to men being sick, horseless or having unfit horses and so on.

link

The Bavarian army was unusual in that it chose to mantain a limited number of regiments at high strenght rather than the numerous understrenght units found in for example the Swedish and Imperial armies. This was due to the way the Bavarians controlled military enterprisers combined with a war finance system that worked better than most.
This led to regiments being kept in existence with only changes of commanders rather than being disbanded or reformed. For example the Miehr regiment foot is actually none other than Alt-Tilly which has soldiered on after the death of Jean T'serclaes. "Holz" was once the famous Comargo regiment which mauled The Swedish Yellow regiment at Lützen. Gayling's Cuirassiers started their existence as the famous Cronberg cuirassiers who were regarded as the flower of Tilly's army, together with their fellow "flowers" in the Schönberg regiment they almost single handedly much of the Saxon army at Breitenfeld.

Interesting! Thanks for that, Daniel.

Sporck's arquebusiers and Wolff's dragoons will certainly be added to my collection at some point.