Christian of Halberstadt
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Christian was the third son of duke Heinrich Julius (1564-1613). As youngest son the Protestant prince became, at seventeen years of age, the administrator of the Catholic bishopric of Halberstadt, which made him financially independent. After the death of his father Heinrich Julius in 1613, Christian was raised in Copenhagen by his uncle, the Danish king Christian IV. (1577-1648). He also attended the university in Helmstedt. However, Christian did not have the artistic sense of his father Heinrich Julius, but he inherited the sober and pragmatic thinking of his grandfather, Julius (1528-1589).
In the Thirty Years' War he fought doggedly for the Protestant cause, so that later, as administrator of Halberstadt, he received the nickname, "the mad man of Halberstadt." After the defeat of the Bohemian king, Friedrich V. of the Palatinate (1596-1632), in the battle of White Mountain in 1620, Christian aided the Protestant Saxon sphere as mercenary leader in 1623 and fought against the imperial generalissimo Johann Tserclaes Tilly (1559-1632), by whom he was, however, crushingly defeated. The course of the war forced Christian to offer his services to more and more new lords, or to impose himself on them, even if they did not want his military services and were striving for a political solution. In 1625, with English and Danish support, Christian managed to raise a new army in order to drive the imperial-Catholic garrison out of north Germany. However, his severe injury from previous battles led to the amputation of his left arm, which caused his death in 1626. Christian entered the history books as a pitiless mercenary leader. The wages of his soldiers came from the brutal extortion of the conquered cities and from the ruthless melting down of precious treasures of church art.
--Adapted from the website, Die Welfen
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