Battle of Rocroi
The Battle of Rocroi, fought on 19 May 1643, was a major engagement of the Thirty Years' War between a French army, led by the 21-year-old Duke of Enghien (later known as the Great Condé) and Spanish forces under General Francisco de Melo only five days after the accession of Louis XIV to the throne of France after his father's death. Rocroi shattered the myth of invincibility of the Spanish Tercios, the terrifying infantry units that had dominated European battlefields for the previous 120 years. The battle is therefore often considered to mark the end of Spanish military greatness and the beginning of French hegemony in Europe during the 17th century. After Rocroi, the Spanish progressively transformed the tercio system incorporating more of the line infantry doctrine used by the French over time. Context Since 1618, the Thirty Years' War had raged in Germany, with the Catholic Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs fighting the Protestant states. In 1635, fearing a peace too favorable to the House of Habsburg after a string of Protestant defeats, France decided to intervene directly and declared war on the Habsburgs and Spain, despite France being a Catholic power that had suppressed its own Protestant rebellions. An initial invasion of the Spanish Netherlands ended in failure, and the French retreated to their borders. December 1642 brought the death of Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to Louis XIII of France, followed by the King's own death on 14 May 1643, when his four-year-old son Louis XIV inherited the throne. Despite receiving overtures of peace amid the precarious domestic situation, the new French chief minister, Mazarin, did not wish to end the war and exerted French military pressure on Franche-Comté, Catalonia, and the Spanish Netherlands. The Battle of Honnecourt in May 1642 had opened the way towards Paris, and the renowned Spanish Army of Flanders advanced through the Ardennes into northern France with 27,000 men in the hope of relieving pressure on Catalonia and in Franche-Comté. Prelude En route, the Spanish troops, under Francisco de Melo, laid siege to the fortified town of Rocroi. The Duc d'Enghien, the commander of a French army in Amiens, was appointed to stop the Spanish incursion. He was 21 but had already proven himself a bold and cunning commander, and he had the support of worthy subordinates, such as Marshal Jean de Gassion. French forces in the area numbered 23,000. Enghien advanced to meet de Melo's numerically superior army along the Meuse River. On 17 May, he learned the king had died but kept the news secret from his army. Word reached Enghien that 6,000 Spanish reinforcements were on their way to Rocroi, and he hurried there on 18 May. He decided on an attack before de Melo's forces could be reinforced against the advice of his older subordinate commanders. He ordered his army forward through the only available approach, a defile between woods and marshes that the Spanish had failed to block. That afternoon, the French took up position on a ridge