Breitenfeld

Breitenfeld , village, Saxony, S central E Germany. It gave its name to two battles of the Thirty Years War . Gustavus Adolphus ( Gustavus II ) of Sweden there defeated the imperial forces under Count Johannes Tilly and Marshal Gottfried Pappenheim in 1631, and the Swedes under General Lennart Torstensson there routed the imperial troops under Archduke Leopold William in 1642.

Breitenfeld, Battles of Two battles during the THIRTY YEARS WAR, which take their name from a village near Leipzig. The first was fought on 17 September 1631, between Count Johannes Tilly's Catholic forces and the Protestant army of GUSTAVUS II (Adolphus) of Sweden. Despite an early advantage, Tilly's traditional infantry squares were overwhelmed by the Swedes' flexible linear tactics. Gustavus's victory was the first major Protestant success of the war, and it announced the arrival of Sweden as a power on the European stage. The second battle, on 2 November 1642, ended in another Swedish victory.