Battle of Rocroi [SEP] end time
Battle of Rocroi
The Battle of Rocroi of 19 May 1643 resulted in the victory of a French army under the Duc d'Enghien against the Spanish Army under General Francisco de Melo only five days after the accession of Louis XIV of France to the throne of France, late in the Thirty Years' War. The battle is considered by many to be the turning point of the perceived invincibility of the Spanish Tercio that dominated European battlefields in the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century. After Rocroi, the Spanish abandoned
to make the first moves towards a negotiations that would culminate in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. Traditionally, historians have traced the decline and collapse of Spanish military power in Europe from the battle of Rocroi; the defeat, however, can be overstated. A substantial part of the Army of Flanders, some 6,000 men under Beck, failed to turn up in time to fight at Rocroi and formed the nucleus of the new Army of Flanders afterwards. Some recent historians have increasingly seen 1643 as a somewhat arbitrary date – Spain remained