"Lorrainers in Imperial service, TYW" Topic

I've been working on a Spanish and allied Imperial army for the so-called French phase of the Thirty Year's War, and find myself increasingly interested in fielding a Lorraine contingent from the 1640's.

It's a confusing subject; the Duke of Lorraine at this time, Charles IV, had been forced to abdicate in favour of his (reluctant) brother, and had entered Imperial /Spanish service. Most of Lorraine was under the control of the French, but one source I've read said that a goodly number of Lorrainers served with their "legitimate" duke, so it seems that troops from Lorraine could be found on both sides.

Now as wargaming forces go this is a pretty arcane topic, but before I start painting anything I thought I would ask just on the off-chance someone might have some information. Is anything known about the those units that were loyal to the Duke?

I am working on an assumption that they would pretty much look and be organized the same as any other Imperial infantry unit of the time, and that they were unlikely to have been uniformed above company level- or at least that no uniform information has been recorded.

A number of companies put out TYW Lorrainer flags. I have no idea if these are conjectural or based on recorded examples, or where their information came from. But they are pretty.

It is a fairly complex subject. Karl IV had been involved not only in alliance with the Emperor but had also supported nobles opposed to Cardinal Richelieu. This led to French troops occupying the duchy in 1632 and again 1633.

To save the duchy Karl IV came up with the plan to abdicate in favour of his brother Nikolaus Franz who at the time was a Cardinal and bishop of Toul. As part of the plan the new duke married Claudia of Lorraine by granting himself the necessary dispensations and against the express will of the King of France. This and the hostile attitude of the Lorrainers towards the French led to the new ducal family being placed in house arrest but Nikolaus and Claudia were able to escape. All of this happened very rapidly,Nikolaus had become duke on the 19th of January 1634, he was married a month later and made his escape on April 1st.

With his brother on the run (Nikolaus and Claudia only reached München in august of 1636) Karl IV formaly resumed the title of Duke of Lorraine and in 1635 began the reconquest of the duchy using his a mix of Lorrainer and Imperial troops.

It should be noted that Karl and his Lorrainers were an independent force_allied_with the Emperor, they were not in the Emperor's service. Karl did not recieve any Imperial rank as far as I can tell nor were the Lorrainer regiments included on the lists of Imperial troops. The idea that Karl was in direct Imperial service that I have seen more than once in English sources could be the result of confusion between him and Charles II of Lorraine, Duke of Elbeuf, who was appointed Imperial field marshal in 1636.

The French were very unpopular with the Lorrainers and the only Lorrainer regiments in French service by 1635 were those that had been raised before well before the war and it is questionable if they retained much of a Lorrainer identity.

I've never been able to find much information about the small army of Lorraine and they do not seem to have left much of a paper trail. (Or at least not much has been published of any surviving documents). I'll dig through a few sources to see if I can spot anything new but at the moment I don't even have regimental names which is rather unusal.

Enlightening! Thanks for this, Daniel.

Much I have read so far has the Duke entering Imperial service, with nothing being expressly stated about his troops being an independent contingent. Confusion between him and the Duke of Elbeuf would explain that.

It's certainly piqued my interest. Given what was left of the Duchy he had available to him after the French takeover, I wonder how the Duke was able to finance keeping an independent body of troops in the field for any extended length of time, and who may have supplied them (and of course what they may have looked like- but I suspect that may have to be a matter for conjecture).

I am curious what sources those are Daniel. The English sources I've read seem to indicate the opposite.

The local French commanders had to withdraw when Karl/Charles returned in 1635 and the counter-offensive headed by Louis XIII failed to make any headway when faced with the strenght of the position assumed by Charles and the pending arrival of additional Imperial troops led by Gallas. So Charles was in tenous control of the Duchy for a couple of years before Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar began his campaigns along the Rhine.

An educated guess is that Charles financed his army in the same way as many other warlords of the period, by a combination of existing income, extensive use of credit, foreign subsidies, contributions levied on the population, the dreaded "Free quartering" and simply not paying the men…

After all Mansfeld was able to mantain a much larger force under arms in the early 1620's even though he often controll no territory other than than where his troops encamped.

And Charles army seems to have been very small, the typical numbers mentioned are 3000-4000 men plus garrisons. An easier force to mantain with limited resources than the larger armies that other commanders kept under arms.

Bill N,
I'm not sure exactly which part of my text you are asking for sources for?

If it is the question of which of the "Charles of Lorraine" who was an Imperial "Feldmarschall" I'm using Dr. Antonio Schmidt-Brentano's "Kaiserliche und k.k. Generale 1618-1815)" published by the Austrian State Archive link

If it is the question of wether the Lorrainer troops were in "Imperial service" or were an independent allied force I've relied on Alphons, Freiherr von Wrede's "Geschicte der K. und K. Wehrmacht" volumes I-III which covers all units of the Imperial army which he could find a record of from 1618 onward. I've supplemented this with a couple of unpublished studies of the Imperial army made by the historical section of the Swedish general staff.

The question of the Lorrainer regiments in French service was based on the study of the French army during the TYW written by Neil Danskin and published by the Pike and Shot society, it has a list of over 500 French regiments raised during the period complete with identity and dates of existence.

What I was referring to was your statement that English sources indicate that Lorraine was in direct Imperial Service.

It's been like trying to look for a cheetah at a vegan food festival, but I have found a single source that actually identifies individual Lorraine regiments fighting against France: the playbook for the "Under the Lily Banners" boardgame by GMT games.

PDF link

I happened to stumble across them while reading the scenario for the Battle of Lens, which was one of the last of the war.

I've no idea of the specific sources, or the accuracy of the information. But it will have to do as it is all I've got.

But it's enough for me to field a Lorraine contingent to fight alongside my Spaniards; and at least the Lorrainers are now spared the indignity of me having to paint up the Regt. de la Quiche.

These are the regiments named in the scenario:

Horse:

Jaeger-Montauban (Cuirassier- a.k.a. Fusiliers a cheval)
Ligniville-Melin (Cuirassier)
Châtelet-Valentin (Cuirassier)
Hacquefort-Fauge (Cuirassier)
Mondragon-Montmorency (Cuirassier)

Infantry:

Touvenin (brigaded with the Spanish/Walloon(?) Tercio de Silly)
Clinchcamp (brigaded with an Irish regiment)
Remion and l'Huilier (brigaded together)
Verduisant and Gondrecourt (a.k.a Guirecourt). Also brigaded together.

Interestingly, all the Lorrainer infantry are noted as lacking pikes; the infantry of other nationalities carry them. I have no idea why the Lorrainers didn't, or when they may have gotten rid of them- assuming of course that they were ever issued any to start with.

As for the cavalry, I am assuming (probably wrongly again) that most- probably all- may have had lightened armour at this point in time.

Not one iota of information on flags or uniforms could I find. That means I'm free to indulge myself. No doubt some new information will surface the minute I've finished the painting, varnishing and basing- as is always the way.

The Lens 1648 research for "Under the Lily Banners" was done by Daniel Sodders who does excellent work and has expert knowledge of some hard to find sources. I doubt that I even today could match the work he did for ULB at the time as I lack his command of the French language sources.

I have a feeling that the companies that make Lorrainer flags are drawing on an old "Wargames Illustrated" article. But what sources _that_ used, I don't know.

I found these flags illustrated on a post over on the Rohan à Turenne blog. They were done by Austrian artist/ illustrator K. A. Wilke, and look as if they may well be the source used for recent reconstructions of Lorrainer flags.

link

Interestingly, the post mentions that these were more likely flags for regiments of cavalry (certainly the armoured arm from the cloud looks far more like a cavalry standard than an infantry colour). Still, in the absence of any firm (or indeed any) information on specific infantry colours, the designs will have to do.

Given that several suspicious details emerged when Swedish historians investigated Wilke's images of Swedish flags I would consider these conjectural at best.

Wilke was a good illustrator but when his flags are supposedly based on an original which he no longer owned and the painter of said original was a 18th Century Swedish artist that have not left a single shred of evidence of his existence in Sweden then something odd is going on. In addition Wilke showed flags for regiments that did not exist or he had changed the type of the regiment. For example the Yellow regiment which was a foot regiment has suddenly become a regiment of horse and so on.

I would consider at least the 3 in the lowest row to be more typical of the design used by infantry flags rather than cavalry standards.