Fights for Jelgava in the years 1621–1622

Militärhistorisk Tidskrift, 2023

The Battle of Lemgo (1638) is traditionally viewed as a complete route of the Swedish forces under Lt General James King (an Orcadian) and an allied army led by Prince Karl Ludwig of the Palatinate. In this presentation, Dr Kathrin Zickermann and Prof Steve Murdoch have reassessed the battlefield reports following the battle and the subsequent actions of the Swedish-Palatine Army. In so doing a number of flaws in the conventional orthodoxy have been exposed. Missing from all previous mentions of this event has been any attention to the Swedish accounts of the battle, or even objective scrutiny of the available German and English ones. This paper returns to the basic principles of the study of history by reviewing the battle objectively and from all sides equally. In so doing we overturn the orthodoxy surrounding the battle and its aftermath. We can conclusively show that far from being a route which saw King and Karl Ludwig return to base with only five survivors (the myth), the battle witnessed an orderly retreat and was followed up by subsequent actions previously overlooked in any Swedish, German or English language accounts. This placed the Swedish army in a stronger position than prior to the battle, albeit the Palatine force was denuded of some of its most senior commanders. We address the mythologizing of these (such as Prince Rupert of the Rhine) and contemplate why the obsession with romantic figures has helped obscure the historical reality of the day.

Vojnoistorijski glasnik : organ Vojnoistorijskog instituta, 2022

The 17th century was one of the most turbulent centuries in the history of Europe. Both its beginning and its end were marked by wars with the Ottoman Empire, the first half by a 30-year religious war, and the second half by a mini-ice age, in addition to the final turnaround in the Austrian-Turkish wars. Given all of this, the Austrian-Turkish war between 1663 and 1664 seems to be only a minor episode. Nevertheless, this war was considered an important turning point in European history. It coincided with the time when the surface area of the Ottoman Empire in Europe was at its largest and signaled the end of the Ottoman power and domination in South-Eastern Europe. The battle of Saint Gotthard did not change the course of European history; however, it did expose some of the weaknesses of the Austrian Imperial Army on the one hand and the failings of the Turkish Army on the other. It can be argued that the experience of this battle convinced the Austrian emperor that victory in the ...

Scandinavian Philology, 2021

In this article we present an unknown map of Krakow and its surroundings with an attached description in Swedish, which is stored in the Riksarkivet, the National Archives of Sweden (Stockholm). We are scrutinizing the circumstances in which this work came into being, which indicates that the source was created between 1 and 7 October 1655, making it the oldest known map with an attached legend presenting not only Krakow, but also the adjacent towns of Kleparz and Kazimierz and the suburb of Stradom. This document was attached to an unpreserved letter that was probably sent to the Scandinavian Peninsula. We present this relic as an attempt to depict war events in an epistolographic message through a two-dimensional representation of space with a legend. We place this against the broader background of changes in worldviews at that time, shaped by increasingly popular atlases and printed maps. This work had no tactical significance, nor was it used in propaganda of the Swedish Empire. Its main purpose was to document epoch-making events. The map and legend were to complement the epistolographic message, common in correspondence of the diplomatic and military elites of the 17th century. The author must have been an educated person with considerable spatial imagination. This person’s intellectual horizons are evidenced by, among others, knowledge of the chorography of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Szymon Starowolski (Kolonia 1632 and Gdańsk 1652). The map was presumably made by Matthias Palbitzki, a diplomat and art connoisseur.

2017

In this article an overview is given of the composition of the Swedish army in the build up to Gustav II Adolf's landing in German in 1630. The paper gives a glimpse of the size and scale of the Swedish army with consieration given to the foreign component within it. The article was one of several concerning Sweden published in Desperta Ferro. Revista de Historia Militar Y Politica, vol.27 (2017). Intended for a general readership, it nevertheless draws on the latest research findings to indicate the scale of the military endeavour. Scholars citing the article should follow the link to the published article if they have access to the Spanish language.

Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana, 2021

This article aims to present a critical book by Vladimir Sergeyevich Velikanov, and SergeyLeonidovich Mekhnev caught our attention to the Courland campaign of 1705–1706 and the battle of Gemauerthof (lat. Mūrmuiža). The authors of the reviewed work described a fragment of the Great Northern War, which was unknown until now

Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana, 2021

This article aims to present a critical book by Vladimir Sergeyevich Velikanov, and Sergey Leonidovich Mekhnev caught our attention to the Courland campaign of 1705–1706 and the battle of Gemauerthof (lat. Mūrmuiža). The authors of the reviewed work described a fragment of the Great Northern War, which was unknown until now.

Scandinavian Journal of History, 2004