Battle of Welfesholz

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Battle of Welfesholz
Battlefield south of Welfesholz
Date 11 February 1115 (11 February 1115) Location Welfesholz, present-day Saxony-Anhalt, Germany Result Saxon victory
Belligerents
Duchy of Saxony	Holy Roman Empire
Commanders and leaders
Lothair of Supplinburg	Hoyer of Mansfeld (†)

The Battle of Welfesholz was fought on 11 February 1115 between the Imperial army of the Emperor Henry V and a rebellious Saxon force.

Background

Henry V, scion of the Frankish

Henry entrusted the Saxon affairs to his field marshal Count Henry of Mansfeld, a Saxon noble himself. However, though he had Adalbert imprisoned at Trifels Castle and forced Lothair to submit himself after a court hearing at the Imperial Palace of Goslar, the smouldering Saxon conflict broke out again in March 1113 over the succession in the Thuringian territories left by late Count Ulric II of Weimar and Orlamünde. In order to create a base of power of his own, Henry had made attempts to confiscate the county as a ceased fief but met obstinate resistance by Ulric's heir, the Count Palatine of the Rhine Siegfried, son of the Ascanian count Adalbert II of Ballenstedt. The insurgents gathered under the lead of the Osterland count Wiprecht of Groitzsch and the Thuringian count Louis the Springer, but were repulsed by Henry's troops under Mansfeld in a battle at Warnstedt near Thale. Wiprecht was captured and at first sentenced to death for high treason. Later he was reprieved, imprisoned at Trifels and divested of his possessions, which passed to the House of Mansfeld.

The next year Duke Lothair had to attend Henry's wedding with

Meanwhile, several nobles like the deposed Duke Henry of Lower Lorraine and the Saxon bishop Reinhard of Halberstadt, disgusted by Henry's haughty behaviour, had joined the insurgents. According to the chronicles of Pegau Abbey, on 10 February 1115 the Imperial forces gathered at the Kaiserpfalz of Wallhausen and moved about 40 km (25 mi) towards Welfesholz (today part of Gerbstedt in Saxony-Anhalt) to meet the united Saxon troops led by Duke Lothair, with first skirmish occurring already on the same evening.

The next day Henry's commander Hoyer of Mansfeld started an offensive whereby he was killed in a sword combat by the young robber knight Wiprecht II, son of the arrested Count Wiprecht of Groitzsch. The incident decided the battle: the tackling Saxon armies of Lothair were victorious, forcing Henry's troops to take flight. In his 12th century Chronica Slavorum the Saxon chronicler Helmold described the battle as "the largest encounter in our time".

Aftermath

The emperor's power to rule Saxony was denied, the Bishop of Halberstadt even refused a

The fate of Count Hoyer of Mansfeld was perpetuated in a poem by Theodor Körner (1791–1813).

References