Qualla: Battle of Villinghausen https://qualla.com/battle-of-villinghausen en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:34 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/j/t/battle-of-villinghausen-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Battle of Villinghausen https://qualla.com/battle-of-villinghausen Battle of Villinghausen: Introduction https://qualla.com/battle-of-villinghausen/ Photo credit Public domain. Two French marshals brought ninety thousand men to a stretch of low Westphalian hills in July 1761. They outnumbered Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick's Anglo-German army by a comfortable margin. They also outranked each other identically, and that turned out to matter more than anything else. Neither the Duc de Broglie nor the Prince de Soubise was willing to take orders from the other, so when Broglie attacked Ferdinand's left flank on the morning of 16 July expecting his colleague to hit the weakened right at the same time, Soubise sent only token forces forward. The Allied right held. The Allied left was reinforced. Broglie's assault broke. By noon the French were in retreat and a battle that should mathematically have gone the other way had become, for the rest of Europe, the news of the summer.

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]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/j/t/battle-of-villinghausen-wp/u1jt-battle-of-villinghausen-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Battle of Villinghausen: The Long Westphalian War https://qualla.com/battle-of-villinghausen/ Photo credit Matthias Böhm, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Seven Years' War in western Germany had by 1761 settled into a kind of geographical grind. France was the senior partner in the great anti-Prussian coalition, and a French army was permanently in Westphalia, trying to push Frederick the Great's flank in by way of Hanover. Sta...

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Image: Matthias Böhm | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/j/t/battle-of-villinghausen-wp/u1jt-battle-of-villinghausen-the-long-westphalian-war.mp3 0:06 2 full Battle of Villinghausen: The Lippe and the Ahse https://qualla.com/battle-of-villinghausen/ Photo credit Matthias Böhm, CC BY-SA 4.0. Ferdinand lined up along a series of low hills, anchored on his left by the Lippe River in the north and on his center by the Ahse. It was a position chosen with care. On 15 July, the first day of the battle, Broglie attacked the Allied left in the north. His troops made progress...

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Image: Matthias Böhm | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/j/t/battle-of-villinghausen-wp/u1jt-battle-of-villinghausen-the-lippe-and-the-ahse.mp3 0:06 3 full Battle of Villinghausen: The Marshals Who Would Not Speak https://qualla.com/battle-of-villinghausen/ Photo credit Matthias Böhm, CC BY-SA 4.0. On the morning of the sixteenth, Broglie resumed his attack on Ferdinand's left, expecting Soubise to launch a coordinated assault on the now-weakened Allied right. Soubise instead ordered only a few small actions. The structural reason was straightforward and faintly absurd: the...

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Image: Matthias Böhm | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/j/t/battle-of-villinghausen-wp/u1jt-battle-of-villinghausen-the-marshals-who-would-not-speak.mp3 0:06 4 full Battle of Villinghausen: The Cost https://qualla.com/battle-of-villinghausen/ Photo credit Matthias Böhm, CC BY-SA 4.0. Battles of this scale in the eighteenth century killed and wounded in the thousands. Among the named French dead at Villinghausen was Pierre-François, Marquess of Rougé, a lieutenant general, killed in action alongside his cousin Louis-Ferdinand-Joseph de Croÿ, the 6th Duke of Cr...

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]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/j/t/battle-of-villinghausen-wp/u1jt-battle-of-villinghausen-the-cost.mp3 0:06 5 full Battle of Villinghausen: The News, and the Treaty https://qualla.com/battle-of-villinghausen/ Photo credit Matthias Böhm, CC BY-SA 4.0. Villinghausen was not a strategic catastrophe for France - the French armies still outnumbered Ferdinand and were able to continue offensive operations afterwards, though the two armies split and operated independently again. But it was a decisive piece of news. London heard the ...

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]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/j/t/battle-of-villinghausen-wp/u1jt-battle-of-villinghausen-the-news-and-the-treaty.mp3 0:06 6 full