Mountain Victory

Abstract

On the morning of October 9, 1634, Cardinal Richelieu summoned the Duke of Rohan to Chilly Castle in the vicinity of Paris and informed him that the King was placing him in command of the royal army, then in Lorraine. Richelieu instructed Rohan to keep a watchful eye upon the imperial army led by Charles of Lorraine, but to avoid a battle “insofar as that was possible.” A month later Rohan assembled his troops near Nancy and temporarily set up headquarters at Rambervilliers, a fortified town in the Vosges foothills. Following Richelieu’s instructions, he wrote at once to Bernard de Saxe-Weimar at Mainz, urging him to reject the Emperor’s overtures and to sign a treaty of alliance with Louis XIII. At the end of November, 1634, Rohan divided his army, numbering only five or six thousand men, into three corps and marched into Lorraine to counter a threatened invasion by Duke Charles.’ On December 4 he regrouped his little army near Montozier and captured the imperial depots at Altkirchen in a furious assault which cost the lives of two hundred men. Charles, meanwhile, crossed the Rhine at Breisach and entered Alsace with six thousand men about equally divided between foot and horse. He intended either to march into Lorraine and raise his partisans there or to confront Rohan as soon as Werth and Gallas had reinforced his little army. Boldly deciding to take the offensive, Rohan crossed the Isler river and hurried through the heavy snows towards Charles’ camp. During the night of February 17–18, Charles hastily recrossed the Rhine and sought refuge in Germany.