Jobst von Scholten

Arrival in Denmark

Jobst von Scholten's family hailed from the County of Tecklenburg in Westphalia, but Scholten's father, Heinrich Scholten, had emigrated to Holland. Heinrich Scholten became a public official in Amsterdam and joined the ranks of the city's patricians. Scholten's exact birth year has been disputed, but historians often cite the year 1647. A lot of evidence points to Heinrich Scholten being an acquaintance of Henrik Rüse, perhaps being tied to him through family. Rüse would be called to Denmark at the behest of Frederick III in 1661 in order to improve and expand the kingdom's fortifications after the destructive Second Northern War. It is likely that Scholten was in Rüse's cortege of officers and followed him to Denmark. He is said to have served in the Danish Army since the age of 14, which, if he was born in 1647, would correspond with him going into the King of Denmark's service in the same year as Rüse.

Scholten was enlisted as fähnrich in Rüses Regiment prior to 1670. In 1672, he was promoted to lieutenant in that same regiment, and in 1673 he made captain.

Early Career as a Fortifications Engineer

Despite these infantry commissions, Scholten's profession and speciality was and remained as a military engineer. He was trained by Ruse, and he had sought further education in his native Netherlands as well as in Brandenburg. After his homecoming to Denmark he first received a post as konduktør. This was the equivalent of the rank of lieutenant amongst the small throng of engineers then employed in Danish service. There was no unified corps of engineers at this time in Denmark, nor any corps that consolidated the engineers in the King's service. A young engineer like Scholten instead conducted himself in a system where engineers fell directly under the general staff's control. The engineers usually sorted under the command of either the Quartermaster General of Denmark or the Quartermaster General of Holstein, who also held jurisdiction over the Duchy of Schleswig and the Duchy of Holstein, and also over the County of Oldenburg and the County of Delmenhorst. Yet Rüse had been appointed to the position of quartermaster general of all the realm's fortifications, and over-inspector of the same. Scholten would therefore serve directly under his mentor at the construction, repairment, remodelling and improvement of fortifications in Schleswig, Holstein and Denmark proper. In 1673 he became the leading engineer at Rüse's remodelling of the most important fortification in the duchies: the fortress city of Rendsburg in Schleswig.

In the Scanian War, he also served both as an engineer and as an infantry officer. Scholten's career can only be followed with complete certainty after his transfer to the Royal Life Guard in 1676, but it is likely that the officer at Wismar by the name of Captain Schultz is indeed identical with Scholten.

The campaign of the Danish Army in that war opened with an attack on the Swedish enclave of Wismar in 1675. Christian V's front prepared for this main event by sapping its way towards the fortress walls under the guidance of the engineers, Scholten included - if we assume Captain Schultz to be Scholten. Wismar was assaulted on 13 December, and the Swedish garrison was forced to capitulate, but Scholten was injured because of a fall.

He spent that year 1676 back in the country of his birth, where he had been sent in order to hire more engineers for the army. He is listed as having the rank of major in the Royal Life Guard on 14 February 1677. He was wounded again during the Siege of Malmö in 1677. He was very soon after promoted to lieutenant colonel. In October of 1677, he led the fortifying efforts at Landskrona, a Danish strongpoint in Scania as well as the base of operation for the Danish guerillas known as snaphaner by the Swedes. In December he travelled to Holland again with orders to recruit more engineers. In 1678 Scholten received command of the Life Guard. As the leader of this elite regiment he was included in the Danish expeditionary force consisting of 6,000 men, which was sent to Norway in order to support the Norwegian regiments in the up-coming invasion of Bohuslen. Scholten was under the immediate command of a lieutenant general by the name of Giese, while the commander-in-chief of the whole invasion force was Ulrik Frederik Gyldenløve. Later that year he partook in the relief of Helsingborg from a Swedish siege.

Fortress Inspector in Schleswig and Holstein

In 1682, the same year as Christiansburg was completed, Scholten became chief of Dronningens Livregiment in Glückstadt. On 6 November Christian V organised the engineers of the Danish Army into the Danish Fortifications Service and the Holsteiner Fortifications Service. The first quartermaster general in charge of the Holsteiner Fortifications Service, Wolfgang William Romer, fell out of favour with the King for having hired unsuitable foreign officers for the new service, and Scholten took over as inspector-in-chief of the engineers and fortresses in Schleswig, Holstein, Oldenburg and Delmenhorst in the fall of 1685.

Scholten took on the task of strengthening Rendsburg, the realm's second most important fortress behind Copenhagen. Rendsburg's defensive works were at this time concentrated around Slotsholmen, a redoubt in the middle of the Eider, today known as Altstadt. Rendsburg had come in to disrepair after two successful sieges by the forces of the Austrian Wallenstein in 1627 and the Swedish Torstensson in 1643, as well as two sieges where the fortress had held out; a siege by the Swedish commander Wrangel in 1645 and another Swedish siege between 1657 and 1660. It was therefore a ravaged fortress that Rüse had been tasked with rebuilding and repairing in 1669, a task in which Scholten had worked for Rüse as his protegé, as mentioned above. Rüse had lengthened the city walls back then, so that the castle and the walls became one single, integrated fortress. Scholten's rework would be much more ambitious, however.

In 1684, he would begin expanding Rendsburg's fortified works south. Here he established the new citadel Nyværk. This defensive complex was built in the typical modern style of the age of Vauban, sporting a grand central parade ground with radial streets emanating from it. Those streets lead out to the walls of the polygon-shaped citadel. This citadel had six bastions, as well as ravelins and other outer defensive barriers. Nyværk itself was larger than the entirety of Rendsburg's old fortifications, and stretching south it went beyond the borders of Schleswig and down into Holstein. Between 1690 and 1695 Scholten furthermore expanded the city's fortifications north with the new Kronværk, placing it where a small village on the northern Eider bank had lied previously. The Kronværk was smaller than the Nyværk, and it also had both ravelins and other defensive works guarding its walls. Scholten made Rendsburg into the most modern fortress in the realm, and the only other fortress classed as 'first class' other than Copenhagen.

Campaigns on the Southern Border

Scholten led the establishment of field fortifications and the siegeworks in many of the smaller feuds that were fought at Denmark's southern border in the last decades of the 17th century. He did this together with one of Rüse's other students, Andreas Fuchs.

Christian V moved with an army towards Hamburg in August of 1686 to force the affluent merchant city to swear fealty to him as their sovereign and hereditary monarch. Scholten took part in the ensuring Siege of Hamburg.

In 1693, Denmark's alliance with France compelled Denmark to attack and bombard Ratzeburg. During the Bombardment of Ratzeburg Scholten also served as a military engineer. He also took part in the conquest of the Gottorper redoubts at Stapelholm and on Ejdersted in 1697, a prelude to the Great Northern War.

Denmark opened the Great Northern War in 1700 by launching a military campaign against Holstein-Gottorp. Scholten, still commanding the Holsteiner Fortifications Service, led the engineers under Overgeneral Ferdinand Vilhelm. The Danish army split into two columns, and Scholten followed Ferdinand Vilhelm's column on its advance on Husum and then towards Friedrichstadt. The Gottorpers were determined to make a stand at the redoubt defending Husum, and Scholten started construction sapping trenches on 8 April. He also directed the arrangement of siege batteries, which ultimately forced the Gottorpers to retreat on 12 April. The column quickly took Friedrichstadt, and proceeded on to Tønning, where Ferdinand Vilhelm and Fuchs convened to surround the Gottorpers. The siege started after weeks of bombardment and preparations on the night to 15 May, and Scholten now led the sapworks in unison with two other engineers, Fuchs being one of them. Scholten followed the army when it broke up from the siege following the entry of a combined Swedish-Dutch-Lüneburger army into Holstein. Scholten's last act during this early phase of the war was to assume command of some 600 peasants that were conscripted on King Frederick IV's orders.

War of the Spanish Succession

Scholten became inspector of the infantry regiments in the duchies after the Treaty of Traventhal on 18 August 1700. In 1701 he was made lieutenant general. A few months later the War of Spanish Succession broke out, and Scholten was appointed second-in-command of the Danish Auxiliary Corps in Anglo-Dutch service.

His first reported feat during this war was the capture of Weert. Scholten was dispatched towards this town on 14 August 1702 with four battalions and 700 men of cavalry. The approximately 135-strong French garrison defended only the castle, but abandoned that too after two days, after obtaining free passage to Roermond. The castle of Weert was destroyed by artillery fire and Scholten lost only 6 men in the capture of the town. Later that same year, he commanded operations in the trenches at the capture of Liège in collaboration with the Hereditary Prince of Hesse-Kassel, later King of Sweden and George of Hanover, later King of Britain.

In the 1703 campaign, a fierce discussion took place among the allied generals in August. The Duke of Marborough, dissatisfied with the gains made that year, hoped to be allowed to plan an attack on the fortified French lines defending Brabant. However, his proposal divided the council of war. The generals of the right wing of the army, including Scholten and the most senior Danish commander, the Duke of Württemberg, supported Marlborough. However, the left wing consisting mainly of Dutch generals, such as Nassau-Ouwerkerk, Dopff and Albemarle, but also, for example, the Dane Jørgen Rantzau, was strongly opposed to they plan. The officers of the small army under General Slangenburg also opposed the plan. Strong opposition and the fact that some of Marlborough's original supporters, such as Scholten, cooled in their zeal ultimately meant that the Dutch field deputies did not feel able to give Marlborough permission to attack the French lines.

In May 1704, Scholten was sent by Nassau-Ouwerkerk with a detachment, 8 battalions and 21 squadrons strong, all Danish, to Marlborough's army in the Moselle. Initially, only part of the force was to consist of Danes, but after objections from the Danish commanders about 'separating' their troops, efforts were made to send as many Danes as possible with them. This meant he would participate in the Battle of Blenheim that took place later that year. He also participated in various operations in Germany after that battle.

Overgeneral in Great Northern War

Scholten retired to Amsterdam in 1708. Scholten had amassed a large fortune that he was able to live off of. The next year Denmark involved itself in the Great Northern War once again. The first major action of the Danes in this rematch was the crushing defeat at the Battle of Helsingborg. Overgeneral Jørgen Rantzau had been severely wounded, and a new overgeneral - that is to say head of the army - had to be found. Scholten was chosen due to a variety of factors. Firstly, his 40 years of service in Denmark, and the fact that he had only ever served Denmark, meant that he had an intricate knowledge of the affairs of the Danish Army. Secondly, the war was moving into a phase were battles would be rare and sieges would be common, so Scholten's engineering expertise would be needed. Thirdly, Scholten was known for being a good administrator and very good with money, and that was sorely needed now that the army had to be rebuilt from the ruins that the defeat at Helsingborg had left it in. Fourthly, Bendix Meyer, who had served on Scholten's staff in the War of Spanish Succession and who was engaged to his daughter, recommended him, and this recommendation carried a great deal of weight.

Scholten took over command of the army from the acting overgeneral, Franz Joachim von Dewitz, on 20 June 1710. Dewitz and Scholten would continue to work very closely together for the rest of the war, right up until Dewitz's death in 1719. They formed a capable team - almost always in agreement, and with complete mutual loyalty and support towards each other.

Scholten's first task was rebuilding the Danish Army. New equipment, muskets and horses were bought abroad to replace all the equipment lost during the 1709-1710 campaign in Scania. Peasants and townsmen were conscripted into the army in order to replace the soldiers lost at Helsingborg. The Danish reconstruction efforts were a success, and in the late summer of 1711, Scholten could take his place at the head of an army of 30,100 men in Holstein. Scholten and his staff broke up from Holstein and marched onwards into Mecklenburg with the intent of sieging down Swedish Wismar. Yet this plan was abandoned when August the Strong coerced Frederick IV into taking on Stralsund first, otherwise August would return with his troops to Saxony. Scholten firmly opposed this plan, but Frederick IV nonetheless gave in, and Scholten had to take to his bed for some days after getting kicked by August's horse. The attempt to take Stralsund in 1711 would fail due to the inability of the Danish Navy to transport the necessary siege artillery to Pomerania that autumn.

Family

Scholten was the progenitor of the von Scholten-family in Denmark. His son, Henrik von Scholten, was an officer like his father, and served in his father's campaigns in both the War of Spanish Succession and the Great Northern War, being wounded at the Battle of Malplaquet. Henrik would himself be promoted to general. Jobst von Scholten's great great grandson was Peter von Scholten.