Johann von Werth

Count Johann von Werth (1591 – 16 January 1652), also Jan von Werth or in French Jean de Werth, was a German general of cavalry in the Thirty Years' War.

Werth was born in 1591 at Büttgen in the Duchy of Jülich as the eldest son of lesser noble Johann von Wierdt († 1606) and Elisabeth Streithoven. He had eight brothers and sisters. At an early age he left home to become a soldier of fortune in the Walloon cavalry in the Spanish Netherlands. In 1622, at the taking of Jülich, he won promotion to the rank of lieutenant. He served as a colonel of cavalry in the Bavarian army in 1630. He obtained the command of a regiment, both titular and effective, in 1632, and in 1633 and 1634 laid the foundations of his reputation as a swift and terrible leader of cavalry forays. His services were even more conspicuous in the great pitched Battle of Nördlingen (1634), after which the emperor made him a Freiherr of the Empire, and the elector of Bavaria gave him the rank of lieutenant field-marshal. About this time he armed his regiment with the musket as well as the sword.

In 1635 and 1636 Werth's forays extended into Lorraine and Luxembourg, after which he projected an expedition into the heart of France. Starting in July 1636, from the country of the lower Meuse, he raided far and wide, and even urged his commander in chief, the cardinal infante, to "plant the double eagle on the Louvre". Though this was not attempted. Werth's horsemen appeared at Saint-Denis before the a French army of fifty thousand men at Compiègne forced the invaders to retreat. The memory of this raid lasted long, and the name of "Jean de Wert" figures in folk-songs and serves as a bogey to quieten unruly children.

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