"Best 30YW General? Gustavus Adolphus!" Topic

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Best 30 Years War General?

65% said "Gustavus Adolphus"
8% said "Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly"
6% said "Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein"

Yup, he was the best right up until he got himself killed in battle.

I think he won on name recognition alone.
His career was way to short to really judge.

It would be like saying Napoleon was the best general of the napoleonic wars if he died at Marengo(and even then he'd have more to show than Gustav Adolph

Ah but he burst onto the scene with his Swedes and put a right smashing onto the other side who had basically won every battle before Gus showed up.

His Swedes even won the battle in which he was killed in.

If he did not get himself killed he would have crushed the other side.

Or would he?
As I said, we don't know, what we do know is he was the greatest king to get himself killed in the 30 years war.

Gunfreak,
Too short career? Gustav Adolf was active as acommander for almost 21 years with roughly 4 years spent directing operations in Germany either through subordinates or in person. His time in active opertions in Germany was 28 months. Considering the impact on the war of those 28 months a better Napoleonic comparison would be Napoleon being killed at Eylau 1807.

Didn't Gustavus Adolphus defeat Tilly? Didn't his army defeat Wallenstein?

I think Lutzen was a draw. The Swedes held the battlefield but their King was dead and their army shattered.

The idea that the Swedish army was "shattered" is not supported by the sources and post-battle events though I know it is a view popular with some historians. Despite it's heavy losses the Swedish army was still a functional if depleted force after the battle and able to contine operations, pretty much the opposite of a "shattered" army.

Holding the battlefield including all of the enemy field artillery is pretty much the very definition of a victory in the 17th Century. Wallenstein was also forced to abandon all of his plans and retreat back to Imperial territory. However there was no pursuit to turn the Imperial retreat into a rout and a decisive success. So you have a tactical victory followed by operational sucess but a continued strategic stalemate. All bought at a very significant cost, if the success achived was worth the cost is very open to debate. That the battle of Lützen was a Swedish victory isn't. You can well consider it a Pyrrhic victory, I've certainly refered to Lützen as such myself but the outcome of Lützen as battle fit no definition of "draw" that I know of.

28 months, exactly then he died, we never found out of his enemy would adapt to him and beat him in his own game, and if he then adapted to them etc.

Other generals had a decade or more in that war.

For Napoleon his enemies adapted but most of them were still not as good as him, and so all things being equal he would usually win. For Napoleon we have so much information on his military campaigns, we can pick apart all his good and all his bad. There is a reason you have rabid bonaparteist, and the anti bonaparteist. And even today 200 years later they will fight as hard as any religious fanatical person (in words)
You don't see that with the Swedish king, he came, he saw he conquered, then had the good fortune of dying at the peak of his power. He didn't end up in st Helena or get banished from Carthage after his army got crushed by the Romans.

He might be the greatest general of the war, he certainly won the contest of biggest impact in shortest time.
But we still have to few datapoints to say he was definitely the best.

And even if you as an expert say you have enough datapoints, it still means 99.5% of those that voted in that poll votes on name recognition alone.

The Swedish army that assembled after Lutzen was only 2/3 of its original strength. Many of the core senior infantry brigades were essentially wiped out and some never restored (the Yellow and Blue brigade for instance.) Desertion was high after Lutzen. The Swedish army had lost 30+ standards.

Holding the field allows a certain claim to victory but in the case of Lutzen it is very weak claim. In fact, many of Wallenstein's officers wished to continue the battle the next day. Wallenstein's decision to withdraw from Lutzen was a pragmatic strategic realization that he was better off retreating and consolidating his position. There was little to be gained in his remaining on the field. It was not a reaction to a tactical defeat on the battlefield.

Turenne. It's not even close.

Turenne is a good one. He gets too little attention except maybe in France.

No way on Gus. He is well overrated as an innovator and general as recent researchers have shown. Wallenstein might have withdrawn but I am not so sure he should have and apparently his generals didn't think so.

Gus was rash and reckless. When you win like that you gain a lot of praise. When you lose you lose big. In some ways his aggressiveness makes me think of him as a proto-Prussian. Politically too.

Tilly was old at the time of Breitenfled and that was Pappenheim's fault. Wallenstein's forces beat the Swedes in Poland, Alte Veste and arguably Lutzen.

But for reputation it is Gustav Adolph all the way.

Turenne is an odd choice given that he did not win a single major battle during the TYW but rather had his army surprised and wrecked by Mercy and Werth at Mergentheim in 1645.

Turenne became one of the great captains of the period_after_the TYW but the TYW was very much a learning period for him. His performance during the TYW was mixed but steadily improving. Note for example his improvement as a wing commander when you compare the battles of Freiburg and Allerheim. Turenne clearly had an exceptional ability to learn from experience (including his mistakes) and he never again repeated the errors which led to his defeat at Mergentheim.

<qTilly was old at the time of Breitenfled and that was Pappenheim's fault. Wallenstein's forces beat the Swedes in Poland, Alte Veste and arguably Lutzen.
Tilly may have been old but there is no evidence at all that age had diminished his ability, he came very close to winning at Breitenfeld and would go on to defeat Horn at Bamberg in 1632.

Pappenheim being responsible for the defeat at Breitenfeld is a tall tale. It has no support in the primary sources for Breitenfeld as was shown by the Swedish General Staff historians as far back as the 1930's.

If by "in Poland" you are refering to the battle of Honigfelde/Trzciana it is interesting that you leave out the presence of Hetman Stanislaw Koniecpolski and his thousands of Polish hussars and cossack-style cavalry. Without Koniecpolski and the Poles there would not even had been a battle as Arnim and the Imperial troops were too slow to catch up with the Swedes. And Honigfelde was not you typical battle, it was a rearguard action by the Swedish army whose objective was not to defeat the Polish-Imperial force but rather to withdraw successfully to the Swedish camp at Marienburg (Malbork). This the Swedes achived but with the loss of about 7% of their cavalry as well as some leather cannon and standards. A solid tactical victory for the Catholic allies but a strategic and operational success for the Swedes as all later attempts to dislodge them from their fortified positions in Prussia failed.

The Swedish attack on Alte Veste was indeed defeated with the loss of some 1000 killed and about 1500 wounded, mainly from the 6000 musketeers who made up the initial assault force. But Gustavus had some 28000 men present at Alte Veste and more than 40000 in the army as a whole. Wallenstein made no attempt to pursue the Swedes who withdrew in good order. (It is also worth noting that Wallenstein had been surprised by Gustavus attack on Alte Veste just as he would be surprised by the Swedish advance towards Lützen.)

And if we are going to look at the performance of "forces" rather than commanders (Wallenstein was nowhere near Polish Prussia, the army was led by Hans Georg von Arnim) then there is a ton of examples of Gustavus defeating "Wallenstein's Forces", the Nürnberg campaign of 1632 included the double victory of Freystadt & Burgthann (Aka Freystadt-Fröschau) were Gustavus and Taupadel were not only able to leave Nürnberg despite Wallensteins massive army but Taupadel destroyed Wallensteins main supply depot at Freystadt while Gustavus attacked Sparr (who had been sent to intercept Taupadel) at Burgthann. Sparr was captured and his detachment badly defeated. Gustavus and Taupadel then returned to Nürnberg.

And the list can be made even longer with names like Gartz, Greifhagen, Frankfurth an Oder and so on.

Yes I agree he was the best. Too bad he got killed at Lutzen.

Bernard of Saxe Weimar

Conde should be mentioned just because of Rocroi. Not sure he was all that brilliant but he was certainly aggressive.

I noticed that Wallenstein got low numbers. While perhaps not a great tactician he was a great organizer and he did put up a good defense at Lutzen.