Henrik Magnus von Buddenbrock, born on July 22, 1685, in Swedish Livonia, was the son of the landed gentleman and Swedish Empire army officer Henrik Gotthard von Buddenbrock (1648-1727) and Charlotta Cronman.
He had enlisted as an officer of the Swedish army, becoming a captain of the Livgardet in 1711, Major of grenadiers in 1715, and Major General in 1721.
He had been elevated to friherre (matricle number 206) in 1731 and promoted to Lieutenant General of the infantry in 1739.
As such, he is in 1741 commander of the troops in Finland, under General Charles Emil Lewenhaupt, at the onset of the Russo-Swedish War.
Major General Carl Henrik Wrangel, who leads one of the two divisions of the Swedish Army in Finland, with a strength of four thousand men, is ordered by Buddenbrock to lead his force into battle against General Peter Lacy's numerically superior Russian force in order to defend Villmanstrand, at the long disputed frontier between Sweden and Russia.