Lines of Stollhofen
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The Lines of Stollhofen (
The lines were constructed by order of Margrave
Location
The roughly 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) long and only partly fortified line started in the east near Obertal (today part of
At the same time, by including the villages of Bühl and Stollhofen, it enabled control of the old trade routes from Basle to Frankfurt (today the Bundesstraße B3) at Bühl, and from Strasbourg to Frankfurt (old Roman road, today the B 36). Until 1707, the line bounded the operational area of the French troops and barred the easiest route to Bavaria via Pforzheim.[citation needed]
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1720 plan of the whole line
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Northern section
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Central section
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Southern section
History
Following his Rhine crossing in mid-February 1703, Marshal
In summer 1703, however, Margrave Louis William could not stop Villars marching up the Kinzig valley and on into Bavaria. There, Villars was victorious in the First Battle of Höchstädt. Likewise in 1704, Tallar passed through the Black Forest unhindered along the Dreisam Valley.[citation needed]
After the death of Margrave Louis William (9 January 1707), Villars captured the Bühl-Stollhofen Line in May without a fight and had it destroyed.[citation needed]
Several months after the loss of the Bühl-Stollhofen Line, work began on the Ettlingen Line under the Rhine Army commander, George Louis of Brunswick-Lüneburg. The line was reinforced during the War of the Polish Succession (1733–1738), was destroyed by the French in 1734 broke and was rebuilt in 1735.[citation needed]
Today
As a result of the canalization of the Rhine by Tulla in the 19th century and the construction of roads and settlements in the last century the remains of the line are now visible in places only in the wooded areas east of Bühl.[3] In the Bühl Municipal Museum[4] is the 1703 map of the Bühl-Stollhofen Line drawn by Major Elster.
See also
- Baroque fortifications in the Black Forest
- Eppingen lines
- Johan Wijnand van Goor defended the lines in 1703
- Battle of Blenheim (August 1704) the lines played an important blocking role in the weeks before the battle
- Prince Eugene of Savoy commanded the forces on the line immediately before the Battle of Blenheim
- Marshall Villars (May 1707) attacked the lines with a holding operation and then outflanked them defeating Christian Ernst, Margrave of Brandenburg.
Notes
- ^ Nolan 2008, p. 253.
- ^ Making a combined force of 50,000 men in 72 battalions and 109 squadrons with 70 guns
- ^ see description with the images
- ^ Stadtmuseum Bühl Archived February 4, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
References
- Nolan, Cathal J. (2008), Wars of the Age of Louis XIV, 1650-1715, Greenwood encyclopedias of modern world wars, ABC-CLIO, p. 253, ISBN 9780313359200
- Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, Bestand L 6, Bü 1696, 1707
Further reading
- Eugen von Müller: Die Bühl-Stollhofener Linie im Jahr 1706, in Hrsg.: Badische Historische Kommission: Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins, Band 21 1906, Carl Winter's Universitätsbuchhandlung, Heidelberg, 1906
- Hans Zelter: Die Stollhofener Linie, in Fortifikation No. 9, 1995, pp. 20–24
External links
- Lines from Stollhofen in: Arthur Kleinschmidt (1882), "Karl III. Wilhelm", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 15, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, p. 238
- Bühl und Stollhofen (PDF-Datei; 148 kB)