Battle of Welfesholz

Battlefield south of Welfesholz

Date	11 February 1115
Location	Welfesholz, present-day Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Result	Saxon victory

Belligerents

Duchy of Saxony

Holy Roman Empire

Commanders and leaders

Lothair of Supplinburg

Hoyer of Mansfeld (†)

The Battle of Welfesholz was fought on 11 February 1115 between the Imperial army of the Emperor Henry V and a rebellious Saxon force.

Henry V, scion of the Frankish Salian dynasty and uncontested King of the Romans since 1106, had inherited both the Investiture Controversy and the Saxon conflict from his father Henry IV. In 1110 he moved to Italy and, after negotiation failed, captured Pope Paschal II and several cardinals to enforce his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor. Having returned from Rome he was immediately excommunicated by the papal legate in Germany Cuno of Praeneste and again by Archbishop Guy de Vienne, the later Pope Callixtus II, which encouraged the Imperial princes in their rising against the emperor—most of all the Saxon Duke Lothair of Supplinburg and Archbishop Adalbert of Mainz, Henry's long-time supporter who after his investiture had deserted him.

Henry entrusted the Saxon affairs to his field marshal Count Henry of Mansfeld, a Saxon noble himself. However, though he had Adalbert imprisoned at Trifels Castle and forced Lothair to submit himself after a court hearing at the Imperial Palace of Goslar, the smouldering Saxon conflict broke out again in March 1113 over the succession in the Thuringian territories left by late Count Ulric II of Weimar and Orlamünde. In order to create an own power basis, Henry had made attempts to confiscate the county as a ceased fief but met obstinate resistance by Ulric's heir, the Count Palatine of the Rhine Siegfried, son of the Ascanian count Adalbert II of Ballenstedt. The insurgents gathered under the lead of the Osterland count Wiprecht of Groitzsch and the Thuringian count Louis the Springer, but were repulsed by Henry's troops under Mansfeld in a battle at Warnstedt near Thale. Wiprecht was captured and at first sentenced to death for high treason. Later he was reprieved, imprisoned at Trifels and divested of his possessions, which passed to the House of Mansfeld.

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