town, and the several hundred soldiers of the German imperial command, who were defending the town, were forced to surrender. After a short period of looting, the French troops set the inner town area on fire on August 15, which made that area uninhabitable for several weeks. Then the French moved on.
During the following two years French troops stayed away from Pforzheim, but the economic situation of the town was miserable. In addition to this, the reconstruction of the town and the repairs of the fortifications under the supervision of Johann Matthaeus Faulhaber, the chief construction officer of the Margraviate Baden, required a lot of efforts. The accommodation of an imperial garrison under the command of (then) colonel Count Palfy also was a heavy burden.
In 1691 Louvois instructed his marshals to destroy those towns which were to serve as winter quarters for imperial troops, explicitly including Pforzheim, and then continue to Wuerttemberg for further destructions. After the French troops had crossed the Rhine river under the command of Marshal Guy Aldonce de Durfort de Lorges at Philippsburg on August 3, 1691, they assaulted the Margraves' residential town of Durlach and 1,200 cavalry men, 300 dragoons and 1,200 infantry men advanced toward Pforzheim where they arrived in the morning on August 9 and surrounded the town. When the approximately 200 imperial soldiers under the command of Captain Zickwolf and other men in the town refused to surrender, the siege began. After shelling the town during the day and the following night, the resistance of the town broke down and on August 10 in the morning the French forced the town gates open, occupied and looted it (although with little success, as there was not much left to be taken away). On August 12, the French moved on, this time refraining from setting houses on fire. The fortification had again been damaged, though (the White Tower, the Auer Bridge Gate, the Upper Mill and the Nonnen Mill were
