7.7. 1650 Swedish army left Moravian towns

During the Thirty Years' War, Swedish Protestant troops invaded Moravia in 1643. They left the town seven years later. That July, the Te Deum was sung around the churches to mark the end of the terrible war. "

It was a sad celebration. The Bohemian countries, which were most affected by the war and emigration, were economically devastated. In Bohemia, for example, the population dropped from the two million it had been before the war to about half, and almost a third of the urban and rural land"The historian Josef Pekař described the situation in his book The History of Our Empire.

For example, Olomouc was destroyed and burnt down during the stay of the Swedish army. The population was either decimated or expelled. The Swedes conquered the town in 1642 and left it eight years later. "For if around 1640 Olomouc had 30,000 inhabitants, in 1650 there were less than two thousand left. In addition, during the Thirty Years' War, in 1641, the county records and the county offices were transferred to Brno and Olomouc lost the status of the capital of Moravia," writes Jiří Glet in his book Interesting and Mysterious Places in Moravia and Silesia.

It was not until the beginning of the 18th century that a number of Baroque buildings were built here, many burgher houses were rebuilt and in 1777 the Olomouc bishopric was elevated to an archbishopric.

The Swedes also besieged Brno in 1645, where the local garrison eventually defended the city against 28,000 soldiers of Lennart Torstenson. Two years earlier they had also besieged Sovinec Castle, located in the village of the same name in the Low Jeseník countryside about fourteen kilometres south of Rýmařov in the direction of Uničov. The Swedes decided to starve the castle garrison.

First they closed the access roads and then they just waited for the defenders of Sovinec to surrender. Eventually, the Swedes themselves had to slaughter their horses because their supplies were running low. "The beleaguered defenders of the castle sent them bellows of wine with a hidden mockery, which made the Swedish soldiers very angry. For at that moment they realized that the castle had sufficient food supplies and the garrison could withstand the onslaughtfor weeks," writes Vladimír Liška in The Greatest Mysteries of Ancient Bohemia.

The Swedes retreated, but soon returned. After tenacious resistance, Sovinec fell into Swedish hands in October 1643. It cost 800 dead, but heavy wounds were also on the side of the besieged. In 1648, Swedish troops also tried to take Prague.

Sources:
Josef Pekař, The History of Our Empire
Jiří Glet, Interesting and Mysterious Places in Moravia and Silesia
www.vhu.cz