Bühl-Stollhofen Line

The Bühl-Stollhofen Line (Bühl-Stollhofener Linie) was a line of defensive earthworks built for the Reichsarmee in the War of the Spanish Succession. It was constructed by order of Margrave Louis William I of Baden-Baden, also known as "Turkish Louis", from 1701 in order to protect northern Baden from the newly erected French fortress of Fort Louis on the River Rhine.

Location
The roughly 10-kilometre-long and only partly fortified line started in the east near Obertal (today part of Bühlertal), ran westwards over the heights to Bühl and then northwest in the Rhine valley via Vimbuch (today a village in the municipality of Bühl), Leiberstung (today part of Sinzheim) and Stollhofen to the River Rhine. It comprised linear schanzen in the terrain, as well as individual star schanzen, hornworks, small forts and fortified villages, and used the watercourses on the Rhine Plain in order to flood the fields of fire and approach using weirs.

At the same time, by including the villages of Bühl and Stollhofen, it enabled control of the old trade routes from Basle to Frankfurt (today the Bundesstraße B3) at Bühl, and from Strasbourg to Frankfurt (old Roman road, today the B 36). Until 1707, the line bounded the operational area of the French troops and barred the easiest route to Bavaria via Pforzheim.

History
Following his Rhine crossing in mid-February 1703, Marshal Villars found the passes through the Black Forest were still impassible due to snow. So he initially occupied Kehl Fortress on 12 March as his base east of the Rhine and, after having uniting with the army of Marshal Tallard, on 19 April 1702 he began an attack on the Bühl-Stollhofen Line. He bombarded the line south of Kappelwindeck and tried, to bypass the line to the east with 25 battalions under Blainville. Both attempts, on 19 and 24 April failed, because the French could not capture the fortifications at Obertal. On 25 April Villars pulled back.

In summer 1703, however, Margrave Louis William could not stop Villars marching up the Kinzig valley and on into Bavaria. There Villars was victorious in the First Battle of Höchstädt. Likewise in 1704, Tallar was able to pass through the Black Forest unhindered along the Dreisamtal valley.

After the death of Margrave Louis William (9 January 1707) Villars was able to capture the Bühl-Stollhofen Line in May that year without a fight and have it destroyed.

Several months after the loss of the Bühl-Stollhofen Line, work began on the Ettlingen Line under Rhine Army commander, George Louis of Brunswick-Lüneburg. This line was reinforced during the War of the Polish Succession (1733–1738), destroyed by the French in 1734 broke and then rebuilt in 1735.

Today
As a result of the canalization of the Rhine by Tulla in the 19th century and the construction of roads and settlements in the last century the remains of the line are only still visible in places in the wooded areas east of Bühl. In the Bühl Municipal Museum is the 1703 map of the Bühl-Stollhofen Line drawn by Major Elster.

Literature

 * Eugen von Müller: Die Bühl-Stollhofener Linie im Jahr 1706, in Hrsg.: Badische Historische Kommission: Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins, Band 21 1906, Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, Heidelberg, 1906
 * Hans Zelter: Die Stollhofener Linie, in Fortifikation No. 9, 1995, pp. 20–24