However, when Elector Frederick William during the Franco-Dutch War had joined an allied expedition with Emperor Leopold I to Alsace against the forces of King Louis XIV of France, the French persuaded Sweden, which had been increasingly isolated on the continent, to attack Brandenburg while her army was away.

When Frederick William, encamping at Erstein, heard of the attack and occupation of a large part of his principality in December 1674, he immediately drew his army out of the coalition but had to take winter quarters at Marktbreit in Franconia.

The elector bribed a local official loyal to him to hold a large and elaborate banquet for the Swedish officers of the fortress in order to get them drunk before the assault began in the night of June 14.

Field Marshal Derfflinger then personally led an attack on Rathenow with 7,000 cavalry and 1,000 musketeers, his approach slowed but hidden by heavy rain.

Impassable marshes on both flanks left Wrangel little choice but to give battle south of the nearby village of Hakenberg while his engineers repaired the span.

[2] Wrangel omitted to secure the surrounding heights, and Frederick William and Derfflinger, by placing their guns on a series of low hills to his left while the Swedes had only swamps to their flanks and a river behind them, gained a decisive tactical advantage.

This continued for some hours until Frederick William had his main attack press the right flank of the Swedes, eventually causing their cavalry to flee.

The Brandenburgian cavalry, led by Prince Frederick II of Hesse-Homburg,[1] then turned and routed the now unprotected Swedish infantry, a brigade of Generalmajor Henrik von Delwig.

While Frederick William's forces invaded Swedish Pomerania, the Swedes did not enter the margraviate again until the 1679 Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which—to the elector's great disappointment—largely restored the status quo ante bellum.

The victory at Fehrbellin had an enormous psychological impact: the Swedes, long considered unbeatable, had been bested and Brandenburg alone had prevailed against Swedish and French power politics.

In Sweden, the fiasco was one of the main accusation counts against the Privy Council aristocrats at the Riksdag of 1680, where the absolutism of Charles XI was declared.