Sunday, 26 July 2015
War with National Forces
A reflection on the nature of the Thirty Years' War seen from a Finnish perspective: how few Finnish or Swedish soldiers were actually present in the battles where "Swedes" won or lost, and what this means for military history.
Written 26 July 2015.
My long-running research theme has been Finnish cavalry in the Swedish era. The goal is a book on the subject. Research into the 17th century has proved more difficult and laborious than anticipated, and the book’s completion has been pushed into 2016.
No complete account of Finnish cavalry can be written without the Thirty Years’ War. It was a long war, and there is not such good Finnish-perspective literature on it as there is on some other wars. Perhaps it is good to begin publishing not only with articles in the Sotahistoriallinen aikakauskirja (Journal of Military History) but also in blog form.
I have thus immersed myself, from the Finnish cavalry perspective, in the Thirty Years’ War — which I will simply call the German War. The war was in many respects remarkable. One remarkable aspect is the saying that the Swedes won or lost, when in fact national Swedes were present in very small numbers — even counting Finns. Remarkable too is that Finnish “battles” include engagements in which at most a handful of Finns were present. In the late 1630s a field army of over ten thousand might contain perhaps five hundred national troops — Swedish or Finnish. In reality, many battles in the German War were Germans against Germans.
Take the Battle of Nördlingen in 1634, where Sweden suffered a serious defeat. There was not a single national regiment present, not even a company or squadron. As far as is known, only three Finns were there: Gustav Horn, Arvid Wittenberg, and an unnamed Savonian. Horn was one of the two commanders-in-chief. Wittenberg commanded a hired, nationally German regiment. No information survives about which unit the Savonian man belonged to — he is noted only for his thorough treatment of the civilian population before the battle.
The literature sometimes mentions the Finnishness of Erik Slang. Slang was from Finland and distinguished himself many times in the German War until he was killed at the second Battle of Leipzig (Breitenfeld) in 1642. The cavalry troopers he commanded were German.
Everyone knows Torsten Stålhandske, who had a cavalry regiment recruited from the Uusimaa and Häme region. He was ordered in August 1639 to command a detached force in Silesia. A surprise in my research: the Finnish cavalry troopers were not with the major general — not even the men of his own regiment. There is no mention of them in the muster rolls. The detachment lasted over three years.
One more example. The book about Finnish battles covers the Battle of Jankow (Jankov) in 1645. It has its own chapter. The battle was decisive for the outcome of the war. But so far I have not found evidence that any Finns were present at Jankow. Admittedly in my detailed research I have only reached the year 1640.