Bremen-Verden Campaign

Part of the Scanian War and Franco-Dutch War

Duchies of Bremen and Verden in 1655
(1655 copperplate by Frederick de Wit)

Date	15 September 1675 – 13 August 1676
Location	Duchies of Bremen and Verden
Result	Allied victory

Belligerents

Swedish Empire

Holy Roman Empire

Denmark-Norway

Commanders and leaders

Field Marshal Henrik Horn

Prince-Bishop von Galen
(to end October)
Duke George William
(from end October)

Strength

November 1675
5,600 Swedes in Stade
800 Swedes in Carlsburg

1675
4,000 Münster troops
2,800–3,100 Brandenburg troops
2,500 Danes
3,000 Lüneburg troops
1676
12,000 men

Holy Roman Empire

The Bremen-Verden Campaign (German: Bremen-Verdener Feldzug) was a conflict during the Northern Wars in Europe. From 15 September 1675 to 13 August 1676 an anti-Swedish coalition comprising Brandenburg-Prussia, the neighbouring imperial princedoms of Lüneburg and Münster, and the Kingdom of Denmark, conquered the Duchies of Bremen and Verden.

Bremen-Verden, a remote outpost of Sweden's Baltic Sea empire, was the third Swedish imperial fief in North Germany granted under the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, alongside Swedish Pomerania and the Barony of Wismar. Following its conquest it remained in allied hands until the end of the war in 1679, but was then fully returned to Sweden in the wake of the Treaties of Nijmegen. For the major warring parties of Sweden, Brandenburg and Denmark, this theatre of war in northwest Germany was only of secondary significance.

After France had invaded the General States in 1672 as retribution for the outcome of the War of Devolution, an alliance formed up against her. The conflict escalated into the Dutch War. In order to relieve her increasingly stretched forces, therefore, France urged its traditional ally, Sweden, to go to war against her enemies, who, in addition to the States General, included the House of Habsburg and the Electorate of Brandenburg. At the end of 1674, a Swedish army under the imperial commander, Carl Gustav Wrangel, invaded the Margraviate of Brandenburg which was militarily almost unprotected, while the Brandenburg army under Elector Frederick William I found itself at war with France. In a short summer campaign in 1675, Frederick William succeeded in defeating the Swedish army and pushing it back to Swedish Pomerania.

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Wikipedia