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WULF ISEBRAND & THE BATTLE OF HEMMINGSTEDT While perhaps only a footnote in late medieval Northern European history, the Battle of Hemmingstedt still informs the heritage of the people of Dithmarschen, today a province of Germany. Monuments in Dithmarschen pay tribute to the battle, and its anniversary is still celebrated in the twenty-first century. On the morning of February 17, 1500, harsh winds intermittently flung snow, rain, and hail onto Dithmarschen's flat coastal plains. The fields were becoming saturated, and only one road remained passable between Meldorf, where citizens mourned, and Heide, where citizens waited anxiously. The sorry condition of Meldorf and Heide was the result of invasion. Days before a Danish royal army crossed into Dithmarschen determined to tame its independent inhabitants. The army consisted of roughly 2,000 Schleswig, Holstein and Danish knights, 5,000-7,000 foot soldiers, and 2,000-5,000 mercenaries, or Landsknechte. They were not just any mercenaries, but among the best of the Landsknechte in Europe: the German Schwarzen Garde (Black Guard). Most records put the total force at between 12,000 and 15,000 men, with at least 400 wagons and numerous cannons. The only real resistance the invaders had met since invading Dithmarschen was the weather. The invaders captured Meldorf, Dithmarschen's oldest town, on February 14th, without a fight. The town was treated mercilessly. The invaders initiated a bloody whirlwind of raping and pillaging. Women, children, and old men were massacred. The town was put to the torch before the invaders prepared to set out for their next objective--Heide--only one day's march away. They expected little resistance, and probably did not send out a substantial number of advance guards and scouts. Thus it was they had no idea stubborn Dithmarscher farmers were assembling a make-shift defense astride the road to Heide. The day before, the Dithmarscher had captured a Danish scout who divulged under torture that on the 17th the invaders would move on Heide. Isebrand, with the help of Telse von Wöhrden and Reimer von Wiemerstedt created an ingenious plan of flooding the fields in front of an earthen barrier they would build up across the road. Isebrand and his men set to work immediately, turning the very land they tilled into a bulwark against the enemy. Working throughout the night, they constructed an earthen mound, the Schanze, at a point of a slight elevation. Then early in the morning they opened the area's sluice gates. Water flowed over the fields' irrigation Wettern (ditches) and deep into the marshlands. This flooding, it was hoped, would greatly lessen the invaders' ability to maneuver beyond the confines of the road to Heide, funneling the attackers into a single narrow approach running directly into the Schanze. Flooding the fields was a costly action, of course. But a small price to pay considering that freedom itself was at stake. Despite the grandiloquent tone of that assertion, it is accurate. Dithmarschen was an autonomously administered state, a rare thing in 1500 A.D. Though it was nominally under the authority of the archbishop of Bremen, as far back as Karl der Große, who was crowned Franconian emperor at Aachen in 800 A.D., it was known that the Dithmarscher met in Meldorf annually for a governing Jahresversammlungen. By the era of Wulf Isebrand, Dithmarschen's government had become multi-tiered, its highest-ranking body being a council comprised of Masters, each Master representing one of the forty-eight key families of Dithmarschen. Ruling nobles of the region had for centuries coveted Dithmarschen and its agricultural prosperity. Some had made a grab for the small state: In 1319, Gerhard the Great attempted to subjugate Dithmarschen, and lost at the Battle of Wöhrden. Duke Albrecht and his brother Gerhardt VI of Schleswig also made separate fatal attempts in 1403 and 1404 respectively. Dithmarschen persevered; but, when its council began organized agricultural commerce outside of the region, including to the Netherlands, it was apparently the last straw for the next fraternal duo to threaten the small republic. And this time one of the brothers wore a royal crown--the sovereign of the kingdom of Denmark, King Johann I. Johann and his brother, Duke Friedrich I of Schleswig and Holstein, sought to add Dithmarschen to their possessions and, of course, tax its people. In 1499, they demanded that the Dithmarscher surrender without a fight, acquiesce to Danish plans to construct fortifications on Dithmarschen's soil, and pay 15,000 marks in recognition of Danish sovereignty. The king and duke were refused. So towards the end of 1499, they began assembling a princely army to invade Dithmarschen. To add an extra measure of safety for the many nobles in the ranks, the Black Guard under their leader Junker Slentz (Thomas Slentz) was hired to form the army's spearhead. On February 11, 1500, Johann and Fredrich's army set off under the Dannebrog, the Dane's prized standard. Surely Dithmarschen was thrown into a panic. Hastily a defense of Dithmarschen began assemble. The defenders must have clumped into scattered units, or were purposefully deployed in various locations, since records put the defending army at as many as 6,000 men, yet the number of fighters with Isebrand at the Battle of Hemmingstedt never approached that quantity. As the royal army and its mercenaries entered southern Dithmarschen, prominent Dithmarscher hastily met in Wöhrden. Many urged capitulation. But the pro-war faction prevailed; its leader, Wulf Isebrand, was a forceful advocate for resistance against the invaders, and was charged with managing the defense of Dithmarschen. Regarding Isebrand before the battle, history tells us little more, except that he was a Dutch immigrant residing in Wöhrden with his wife, Anna Mulen, the daughter of a prominent family. At the time of the invasion she was pregnant and nearly ready to give birth. Accounts vary as to the reinforcing of the Schanze on February 17th. Some accounts do not mention any reinforcements at all; but others suggest that a large group of farmers arrived to supplement Isebrand's force just before the battle. What is certain is that even with the reinforcements, the defenders on the Schanze remained hugely outnumbered by the soldiers of Johann and Fredrich. By lunchtime the meadows were overflowed. The weather remained inclement. Soldiers in the invading army probably eyed warily the rising waters in the Wettern beside the road. Finally, through the precipitation, the invaders in the front ranks would have made out the Schanze on the road ahead. The earthen defense work had atop it at least one cannon. Some accounts state that there were several cannons. Certainly some of the farmers were armed with firearms, as would have been the case with some of the foot soldiers in the opposing force. Given that the Danes had yet to reach the Schanze at noon, that the battle was over before dark, and that the winter days along the North Sea are short, it is reasonable to conclude that the battle began in the early afternoon. No account I encountered said exactly when. However, the engagement's first chapter--a preface--was bloodless. Whether as a pro forma event or as a genuine attempt to avoid large-scale bloodshed, Junker Slentz called to the Dithmarscher to bring out their strongest man and let the day's outcome be settled by a duel. Without further research into the battlefield ethos and cultural contexts, I am unsure how to explain the Dithmarscher's refusal, and assume that their refusal simply was conventional--something scripted and ritualistic--and the Dithmarscher were expected to say no just as the invaders were expected to ask nonetheless. The formalities dispensed with, the defenders readied for onslaught. The invaders advanced in columns from the south--ranks of spear-wielding mercenary soldiers, Holstein and Friesian footmen, and mounted knights and nobles towards the rear. The first volleys of the opposing cannons heralded the beginning of the Battle of Hemmingstedt. The invaders surged; the initial assault against the Schanze must have been ferocious. The Black Guard, spear points reaching out far in front of them, advanced crying, "Look out, peasant, here comes the Guard!" They stormed the battlements; but the defenders' gunfire and cannon fire had deadly effect, disrupting the attackers' momentum time and again. Whenever the invaders left the road to fan out against the Dithmarscher's flanks, they became slow and easy targets slogging through the mud. Their legs must have become almost instantly numb from the frigid waters. One misstep and, weighted down with so much armor, a mercenary would easily fall under the icy waters, and some apparently stepped into unseen ditches, disappearing completely under the water, never to resurface. Even if an attacker out in the flooded fields made it back to the road, he was scarcely safer. The Guard quickly began to bottleneck on the road, men jostling for position. Behind them regular foot soldiers and mounted knights pressed against their rear, further limiting maneuverability and undoubtedly increasing a sense of desperation. Pushing, shoving, stabbing, bludgeoning, and firing, the farmers successfully held their ground. As the invading army continued to bunch up on the road, Isebrand decided to leverage superior maneuverability by ordering a counterattack. The farmers attacked shouting, "Wahr di Garr de Bur de kumt!"--"Look out, Guard, here come the peasants!" Their knowledge of where the submerged Wettern were gave them a distinct advantage. They forayed down into the enemy's ranks, and when one of their extended positions seemed tenuous, they retreated fleetingly back over the ditches, even using long poles, as would a pole-vaulter, to bound over ditches and back to the relative safety of the Schanze. Still the Black Guard advanced. By now they had sustained unexpectedly heavy losses. Isebrand ordered a second counterattack. Still, the Black Guard repulsed the Dithmarscher and maintained a sufficient semblance of order in their ranks; but by now they were clearly on the defensive. Pressed from behind by the infantry and knightly cavalry of their own army, and from in front by the farmers whose guns still flashed hot lead into their wavering ranks, the mercenaries, despite their professional military training, were at the breaking point, and Isebrand ordered a third counterattack. The farmers surged forward again, and this time the Schwarzen Garde broke. The result was chaos. Unable to retire the field in order, the Guard's retreat deteriorated into a rout, as Isebrand's men, mindful of the crimes at Meldorf and faced with a fleeing army nonetheless threatening and superior in number, took no prisoners. The retreating Guard was forced to fight their way back through thousands of closely following soldiers, and the Dithmarscher fired and stabbed at them all of the way. The foot soldiers in turn began to flee in panic, into the waters or back towards Meldorf on the road, entangling with the knights riding forward to engage the Dithmarscher. And the horsemen were in an even more precarious state, since many accidentally were knocked off their mounts by their own panicking infantry. The fallen knights could not rise in their heavy armor, and their tumbles into the waters were fatal. As the Dithmarscher pushed deeper into the fleeing enemy, they began attacking the lightly-armored mounts of the knights. The order echoed through the Dithmarscher army, "Kill the horse and leave the man!" But it soon was evident that unseating the knights was enough. As the inevitability of the farmers' victory became apparent, the order changed to "Kill the man and leave the horse!" The farmers' victory was total. Thousands of men of Denmark, Schleswig, Holstein, and Friesland were killed. The ranks of the Black Guard were decimated: Junker Slentz and 800 of his mercenaries were slain. The Danes were humiliated. The Dannebrog itself was captured--a grand trophy--along with the army's abandoned goods, in total more than 1,000 horses, dozens of cannons, 3,000 covered wagons with the booty from plundered properties, plus weapons, dresses, gold and silver objects and coinage, and more. The savaging of the Danish knightly class had far-reaching effects. King Johan and Duke Fredrich managed to escape to Meldorf, but few others of the aristocracy did. It is guessed more than a thousand knights perished. One contemporary chronicler described the disaster as "total and hardly conceivable." King Johann's reputation was devastated, and soon afterwards he lost the Swedish crown. Wulf Isebrand, who according to several accounts was told at day's end upon the field that his wife had given birth to a son, died in 1506. The Dithmarscher enjoyed several more decades of freedom. But in 1559 another invading army, this one of 25,000 men under the command of Johann Rantzau, was opposed by a mere 6,000 Dithmarscher. Rantzau occupied Meldorf and then Brunsbüttel, effectively conquering the southern half of Dithmarschen. On June 13, 1559, near Heide, the Dithmarscher were finally defeated with heavy losses in a decisive battle. Peace between the Dithmarscher and the Schleswig-Holsteiners was concluded at Lohe on June 20, 1559. On the 400th anniversary of the Battle of Hemmingstedt--February 17, 1900--a memorial was inaugurated in Dithmarschen at the Dusenddüwelswarf. The monument is crowned by a 25-ton rough hewn stone, which carries an inscription of the farmers' cry, "Wahr di Garr de Bur de kumt!" On its back is inscribed the names of Wulf Isebrand, Telse von Wöhrden, and Reimer von Wiemerstedt. Throughout Dithmarschen roads and places have been named after Wulf Isebrand, and in 1927 an imaginative likeness of him was made out of simple clay brick, and erected at the Albersdorfer primary school. The main monument of 1900 was situated where the Schanze was believed to have been. But recent excavations suggest that the defensive structure was actually nearly four kilometers away. Archeological remains from the battle were first uncovered in 1944, when an oil pipeline was built near Heide, and human and horse bones were discovered buried around 1 to 1.5 meters below the ground water level. Not until 1996 was a formal excavation attempted, and many of the battle's details, thought to have been legend, were confirmed as historical fact. In February of 2000, a new tourist information pavilion about the battle was opened at the Dusenddüwelswarf monument. © Scott Isebrand 2003 - no use or reproduction of any of the above text is allowed without the author's written permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Dithmarschen today. Go to: |