Battle of Bamberg

The Catholic League led by Count Tilly began its counterattack in March. Tilly gathered the garrisons from the Upper Palatinate and added 8,000 men of the Bavarian militia to his army. From Nördlingen he marched with his army to Bamberg, arriving on the evening of 9 March. The vanguard raided the Swedish cavalry posts outside the city. The fleeing cavalrymen caused panic among the defenders in the eastern part of Bamberg. The League army broke through the defenses at the Monastery of the Holy Sepulchre. The eastern part of the city with unfinished trenches was quickly abandoned by the defenders, but the bridge over the Regnitz which gave access to the center was fiercely defended. When two of Horn's regiments managed to completely recapture the bridge, Tilly ordered two heavy guns to be placed in a beer garden overlooking the bridge. After a shelling, the bridge had to be abandoned. The Swedish commander, the Count of Solms-Laubach, died from the injuries sustained during the shelling. The fighting lasted until midnight, after which the Swedish army gave up the defence. Horn lost a third of his men, mainly through desertion, and withdrew to Schweinfurt.^[1]

Count Tilly was too weak to further exploit his success in Bamberg. Gustavus Adolphus needed another victory after the Swedish defeat to convince his various German allies, such as Württemberg, to continue supporting Sweden. The king marched from Mainz to Nuremberg, absorbing Horn's remnants. On March 31, Gustavus Adolphus arrived in Nuremberg, where he was welcomed as a hero. A week later he captured Donauwörth and gathered enough men to invade Bavaria.^[1]

• Generalstaben (1938). Från Breitenfeld till Lech [From Breitenfeld to Rain]. Sveriges krig 1611-1632 (in Swedish). Vol. 5. Stockholm: V. Pettersons. OCLC 928666596.
• Wilson, Peter H. (2009). Europe's Tragedy: A History of the Thirty Years War. Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0-7139-9592-3.