Balthasard, Alexandre Hippolyte, Duke of Bournonville, 1616-1690

The correspondence was written to Alexandre Hippolyte Balthasard, Duke of Bournonville (1616-1690), Field Marshal General and Commander of the Imperial Forces on the Rhine in 1674.

The wars in the Palatinate have been regarded as the most brilliant phase of French military superiority under the leadership of the great Turenne, who was the victorious commander in 1674 and whose death in a skirmish of the following year marks the end of the first campaign. They belong to the long series of attempts made by France to gain absolute control of the Rhine, the only means to secure her eastern border. The Germans remembered this wars as one of the darkest periods of disgrace when national disunity made it possible for the "hereditary enemy" to play out one of their princes against the other and to hit deep into German territory. Their most shocking episode, the ruthless destruction of Heidelberg and its beautiful castle during the second campaign in 1689, has become a propaganda topic for nationalistic indoctrination. The debacle of this second campaign, when Maras with his marauders pillaged the unfortunate Palatinate, are fairly well known. However, relatively few details of that campaign of 1674 are found in historical works besides the dates of the few real battles that were fought at great intervals.

A prominent role among the conflicting powers of the first war fell to the Elector Palatine of the Rhine, whose small but prosperous country (between Rhine, Neckar, and Saar) had to suffer most from it. Charles Louis (1617-1680) was the son of Frederick V, Elector Palatine, who had lost his hereditary electorate and the newly won Bohemian kingdom in 1620, and through his mother, Elizabeth, Princess Royal of England, a grandson of James I. After an excellent education in Holland, where his exiled family lived for many years, he had been reinstated to the greater part of his territory and had even received a new electorate by the Peace of Munster in 1648. He was the typical territorial ruler of his time who chose his friends and allies according to the momentary interest of his state, and his patriotic sentiments were subordinated to political convenience. In 1657 he had been inclined to elect Louis XIV to the German crown instead of Leopold I of Habsburg-Austria. In 1671 he had married his eldest daughter to the Duke of Orleans, the brother of his powerful royal neighbor in the West, in order to consolidate his friendship with France. When the long concealed tension between Leopold I and Louis XIV lead to open war in 1673, he took the part of the emperor although he tried to keep out of actual fighting. The Palatinate had soon to feel the consequences. Turenne occupied a part of it in February 1674 and threatened to overrun the entire country. Charles Louis was at last forced to defend himself as best he could with a badly improvised army of his own an somewhat unreliable allies.

It was in this very critical phase, which covers the year 1674, that he wrote the series of letters to the imperial commander Bournonville, a rather inefficient military leader. The letters offer an interesting insights into his efforts to rouse Bournonville from his inactivity and to alleviate the sufferings of his subjects. These efforts were doomed from the start, and he was finally forced to make peace in 1675 when the elector of Brandenburg, who had come to his aid, had to hurry back to his country to fight off a Swedish invasion. Dying five years later, Charles Louis was spared witnessing the devastation of the Palatinate in 1689.

Another series of letters is addressed to Bournonville by the ecclesiastical prince of the Empire whose territorial possessions were likewise occupied almost entirely during the campaign of 1674: Charles Caspar von der Leyen (1618-1676) Archbishop Elector of Trier . He was of a Rhenish family of ancient nobility and had been elected to the position of coadjutor to the Archbishop Philipp von Soeteren to counterbalance the Francophile tendencies of this stubborn prince and succeed him in 1652. His little state had no means to resist when the French invaded it in 1674, and he had to flee to his impregnable fortress of Ehrenbreitstein on the Rhine opposite Coblence while the rest of the country, including his residence city of Trier, was exposed to the severest hardships of an occupation until the following year.

The letters to Bournonville prove how earnestly he endeavored to live up to his duties of a conscientious ruler in a helpless situation. He refrains from showing any emotion when he has to state the most frightful incidents of devastation and tries to make them speak for themselves.

A few documents are connected with the political activity of Frederick William the "Great Elector" of Brandenburg in the conflict before he participated in the war itself. This prince, the founder of the Brandenburg-Prussian power who paved the way for the dominating position of Prusssia achieved by his great-grandson Frederick the Great a century later, played the most important part in the war of 1674. He might have turned the tide when he led his excellently trained army to the threatened zones in August 1674, were it not for the Swedes who eliminated him for the benefit of the French by invading his own dominions and forcing him to return home as quickly as possible a few months later.

These documents belong to the diplomatic correspondence between the courts of Berlin (they are dated from the castle of Cologne on the Spree which is in the heart of modern Berlin) and Heidelberg and were forwarded in copies to Bournonville by the Elector Palatine, to keep the imperial commander informed. They deal with Swedish proposals of mediation between Louis XIV and Charles Louis and make it clear that the latter might have to follow another line of politics if he could not get efficient help.

From the guide to the War in the Palatinate: letters and documents, 1656, 1674, (University of Minnesota Libraries. Literary Manuscripts Collections, Manuscripts Division [mss])