What if the Emperor had won the Battle of Breitenfeld?
Gustavus Adolphus's victory at Breitenfeld in 1631 saved the Protestant cause in Germany. What if Tilly and Wallenstein had beaten him?
What actually happened
By 1629 the Thirty Years' War seemed won for the Catholic emperor Ferdinand II. His generals Tilly and Wallenstein had beaten the Bohemian rebels, the Palatinate and Denmark, and in March 1629 the Edict of Restitution ordered the return of church lands secularised by Protestants since 1552.
Two blows reversed this. In July 1630 Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden landed in Pomerania. At almost the same moment the Electoral Diet of Regensburg, alarmed at Wallenstein's power, forced Ferdinand to dismiss him. In May 1631 Tilly's army stormed and sacked Magdeburg; the horror pushed Saxony into alliance with Sweden.
On 17 September 1631, at Breitenfeld near Leipzig, Tilly's veterans broke the Saxon army, but the Swedes reformed their line, and their flexible brigades and light regimental guns shattered Tilly's massive formations. Within months Gustavus was in southern Germany. He died at Lützen in 1632, and the war dragged on, drawing in France in 1635, until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which confirmed the religious divisions of the Empire.
The turning point
Breitenfeld was the moment the imperial ascendancy broke. Had it gone the other way, Saxony would have been knocked out, Sweden left with a bridgehead on the Baltic and the Edict of Restitution enforced across north Germany.
The game frames the alternative through Regensburg: if Ferdinand had kept Wallenstein, the two great imperial armies could have faced Gustavus together. Historians such as Peter Wilson stress that the emperor's power was always constrained by the princes, Catholic as well as Protestant, who feared Habsburg dominance, and by France, which was subsidising Sweden. An imperial victory at Breitenfeld would not necessarily have meant an imperial peace on the emperor's terms.
The world that might have been
In Crown & Plough the alternative reads: at Regensburg the emperor did not dismiss Wallenstein; at Breitenfeld the armies of Tilly and Wallenstein drove the King of Sweden back to the Pomeranian coast; the Edict of Restitution stood and the church lands went back to the bishops, and the princes of the Empire could no longer wage war without the emperor's army.
Beyond the game, a Habsburg victory in 1631 might have led to a more centralised Holy Roman Empire, closer to a monarchy than the loose federation confirmed at Westphalia. Lutheranism would have survived in Saxony and elsewhere, but the Calvinist and secularised lands of the north would have been under heavy pressure.
It might also have provoked a bigger war sooner. France under Richelieu was determined not to see the Habsburgs dominate Germany, and Sweden and the Dutch had strong reasons to keep fighting. The war's devastation, which killed a large share of Germany's population, might not have been shortened at all.
Ripples through time
Breitenfeld is shaped by Worms: if Luther was burned in 1521 and the princes stayed Catholic, the emperor's victory here becomes much more likely.
Carried into the Age of the Sun King (1680), Sweden has no foothold on the German coast: Pomerania belongs to Brandenburg, and the Austrian army starts a quarter stronger.
- Shaped by What if Luther had been burned at Worms?
- Carries into the next era Age of the Sun King and the Baroque
Play this turning point
Start in the Renaissance era, or take the scenario The Prague window, which begins with the Defenestration of 1618. In the Currents of History story Thirty Years' War you can join the Protestant side, the imperial side or simply sell your sword as a mercenary; the imperial side pushes for the alternative.
The war runs long before 1631, so there is time to build up a contribution, and a lord or ruler in the imperial camp counts heavily.
Play this turning point → Start the scenario “The Prague window” →
Questions and answers
Why was the Battle of Breitenfeld important?
It was the first great Protestant victory of the Thirty Years' War, destroyed Tilly's veteran army, made Sweden a major power in Germany and ended any chance of enforcing the Edict of Restitution.
Why was Wallenstein dismissed in 1630?
The electors, including Catholic ones, feared his enormous army and independent power and made his dismissal a condition at the Diet of Regensburg. He was recalled after Breitenfeld.
What was the Edict of Restitution?
An imperial decree of 1629 ordering Protestant rulers to return Catholic church lands taken since the Peace of Passau in 1552.
Sources and further reading
Contemporary Swedish and imperial reports. Modern accounts: Peter H. Wilson, Europe's Tragedy: A History of the Thirty Years War; Geoffrey Parker (ed.), The Thirty Years' War; C. V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War; Michael Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus.
← What if the Spanish Armada had landed in England?What if the Ottomans had taken Vienna in 1683? →