Battle of Mühlberg. Duke of Alba, commanding Spanish-Imperial forces of Charles I of Spain, defeats the troops of Schmalkaldic League.

The Battle of Mühlberg took place near Mühlberg in the Electorate of Saxony in 1547, during the Schmalkaldic War. The Catholic princes of the Holy Roman Empire led by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V decisively defeated the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League of Protestant princes under the command of Elector John Frederick I of Saxony and Landgrave Philip I of Hesse.

Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, 3rd Duke of Alba, known as the Grand Duke of Alba in Spain and Portugal and as the Iron Duke or shortly 'Alva' in the Netherlands, was a Spanish nobleman, general and statesman.

Charles V was Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria from 1519 to 1556, King of Spain from 1516 to 1556, King of Sicily and Naples from 1516 to 1554, and also Lord of the Netherlands and titular Duke of Burgundy from 1506 to 1555. He was heir to and then head of the rising House of Habsburg. His dominions in Europe included the Holy Roman Empire, extending from Germany to northern Italy with rule over the Austrian hereditary lands and Burgundian Low Countries, and Spain with its possessions of the southern Italian kingdoms of Sicily, Naples, and Sardinia. In the Americas, he oversaw the continuation of Spanish colonization and a short-lived German colonization. The personal union of the European and American territories he ruled was the first collection of realms labelled "the empire on which the sun never sets".

The Schmalkaldic League was a military alliance of Lutheran principalities and cities within the Holy Roman Empire during the mid-16th century. It received its name from the town of Schmalkalden, where the group was founded in 1531.