(1848) Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly (Belgium) A.C. Jouvenel 46mm/Bronze ~ Uncirculated

Subject: Famous Belgians - Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly (1559-1632)

Medalist: Adolphe Christian Jouvenel (1798-1867)

This is a lovely ultra high relief obverse 46mm bronze medal which was part of Jouvenel's Famous Belgians series struck and distributed in the late 1840s and early 1850s.

Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly was a field marshal who commanded the Catholic League's forces in the Thirty Years' War. From 1620–1631 he had an unmatched string of important victories against the Protestants, including White Mountain, Wimpfen, Höchst, Stadtlohn and the Conquest of the Palatinate. He destroyed a Danish army at Lutter and sacked the city of Magdeburg but was then crushed at Breitenfeld in 1631 by the Swedish army of King Gustavus Adolphus. A Swedish cannonball took his life at Rain. Along with Duke Albrecht von Wallenstein of Friedland and Mecklenburg, he was one of two chief commanders of the Holy Roman Empire’s forces in the first half of the war.