Qualla: Battle of Mühlberg https://qualla.com/battle-of-muhlberg en-us © 2026 Bendyline Tue, 11 Aug 2026 13:49:16 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/3/1/k/battle-of-muhlberg-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Battle of Mühlberg https://qualla.com/battle-of-muhlberg Battle of Mühlberg: Introduction https://qualla.com/battle-of-muhlberg/ Photo credit Leone Leoni, CC BY-SA 3.0. Titian painted him in three-quarter armour on a dark warhorse, lance couched, riding out of a wood at dusk — the Equestrian Portrait of Charles V, finished in 1548 and still one of Europe's most reproduced images of power. Charles was not on a horse. He was forty-seven and so crippled by gout that his men carried him to the field in a litter and set him down at the rear to watch. What he watched lasted a single evening beside the Elbe on 24 April 1547. Two to three thousand men died on the Saxon side and around fifty on the imperial, and it was enough to end the military life of the Schmalkaldic League — the first alliance of Protestant princes in the Holy Roman Empire.

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Image: Leone Leoni | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/3/1/k/battle-of-muhlberg-wp/u31k-battle-of-m-hlberg-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Battle of Mühlberg: Why the Emperor Waited https://qualla.com/battle-of-muhlberg/ Photo credit Public domain. The League took its name from Schmalkalden, the Thuringian town where the pact was drawn up: defensive in form, pointedly anti-Habsburg in temper. Free cities joined for reasons of their own — Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck, Ulm and Strasbourg all wanted less of the central power, whate...

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]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/3/1/k/battle-of-muhlberg-wp/u31k-battle-of-m-hlberg-why-the-emperor-waited.mp3 0:06 2 full Battle of Mühlberg: Cousins https://qualla.com/battle-of-muhlberg/ Photo credit Public domain. The opening came from inside the House of Wettin. John Frederick I held the Saxon electorate; his cousin Maurice held the ducal Saxon lands, was equally Lutheran, and had declined to join the League in 1542. In 1546, helped by Ferdinand I, the emperor's younger brother, Maurice i...

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]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/3/1/k/battle-of-muhlberg-wp/u31k-battle-of-m-hlberg-cousins.mp3 0:06 3 full Battle of Mühlberg: Fog on the Elbe https://qualla.com/battle-of-muhlberg/ Photo credit Brück & Sohn Kunstverlag Meißen, CC BY-SA 3.0. John Frederick made three decisions that April, each defensible on its own. Hoping to spark an anti-imperial rising in Bohemia, he sent a large part of his army there. He detached small garrisons to hold the Saxon towns most exposed from the south. Then he abandoned Meissen and m...

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Image: Brück & Sohn Kunstverlag Meißen | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/3/1/k/battle-of-muhlberg-wp/u31k-battle-of-m-hlberg-fog-on-the-elbe.mp3 0:06 4 full Battle of Mühlberg: An Evening on the Heath https://qualla.com/battle-of-muhlberg/ Photo credit Eduard Sommer, Public domain. Told the imperial army was across, the elector's first instinct was to run for Wittenberg. He then realised his men could not be ready to march in time, and convinced himself that only a vanguard had crossed. So he formed up along the edge of a forest, hoping the trees would stop...

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]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/3/1/k/battle-of-muhlberg-wp/u31k-battle-of-m-hlberg-an-evening-on-the-heath.mp3 0:06 5 full Battle of Mühlberg: The Price of Winning https://qualla.com/battle-of-muhlberg/ Photo credit Bärbel Miemietz, CC BY-SA 4.0. Charles is said to have summed the day up by rewriting Caesar: Vine, vi y venció Dios — I came, I saw, and God won. John Frederick was condemned as a heretic and sentenced to death, and Charles then traded that sentence for something he wanted more: the elector's life for the sur...

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Image: Bärbel Miemietz | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/3/1/k/battle-of-muhlberg-wp/u31k-battle-of-m-hlberg-the-price-of-winning.mp3 0:06 6 full