The Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648

§ 6. The Saxon troops.

The Saxon soldiers were a splendid sight. New clothed and new armed, they had with them all the pomp and circumstance of glorious war. But they had had no experience of fighting. They were as raw as Wallenstein's troops had been when he first entered the diocese of Halberstadt in 1625.

§ 7. The Swedish troops.

The Swedes were a rabble rout to look upon, at least in the eyes of the inexperienced Saxons. Their new allies laughed heartily at their uniforms, ragged with long service and soiled with the dust of the camp and the bivouac. But the war-worn men had confidence in their general, and their general had confidence in them.

§ 8. Gustavus as a commander.

Such confidence was based on even better grounds than the confidence of the veterans of the League in Tilly. Tilly was simply an excellent commander of the old Spanish school. He had won his battles by his power of waiting till he was superior in numbers. When the battles came they were what are generally called soldiers' battles. The close-packed columns won their way to victory by sheer push of pike. But Gustavus, like all great commanders, was an innovator in the art of war. To the heavy masses of the enemy he opposed lightness and flexibility. His cannon were more easily moved, his muskets more easily handled. In rapidity of fire he was as superior to the enemy as Frederick the Great with his iron ramrods at Mollwitz, or Moltke with his needle-guns at Sadowa. He had, too, a new method of drill. His troops were drawn up three deep, and were capable of manœuvering with a precision which might be looked for in vain from the solid columns of the imperialists.

Section II. —The Battle of Breitenfeld

§ 1. Battle of Breitenfeld.

On the morning of September 17 Swede and Saxon were drawn up opposite Tilly's army, close to the village of Breitenfeld, some five miles distant from Leipzig. Gustavus had need of all his skill. Before long the mocking Saxons were flying in headlong rout. The victors, unlike Rupert at Marston Moor, checked themselves to take the Swedes in the flanks. Then Gustavus coolly drew back two brigades and presented a second front to the enemy. Outnumbered though he was, the result was never for a moment doubtful. Cannon shot and musket ball tore asunder the dense ranks of the imperialist army. Tilly's own guns were wrenched from him and turned upon his infantry. The unwieldy host staggered before the deft blows of a more active antagonist. Leaving six thousand of their number dying or dead upon the field, Tilly's veterans, gathering round their aged leader, retreated slowly from their first defeat, extorting the admiration of their opponents by their steadiness and intrepidity.

§ 2. Political importance of the victory.

The victory of Breitenfeld, or Leipzig – the battle bears both names – was no common victory. It was the grave of the Edict of Restitution, and of an effort to establish a sectarian domination in the guise of national unity. The bow, stretched beyond endurance, had broken at last. Since the battle on the White Hill, the Emperor, the Imperial Council, the Imperial Diet, had declared themselves the only accredited organs of the national life. Then had come a coolness between the Emperor and the leaders of the Diet. A good understanding had been re-established by the dismissal of Wallenstein. But neither Emperor nor Diet had seen fit to take account of the feelings or wants of more than half the nation. They, and they alone, represented legal authority. The falsehood had now been dashed to the ground by Gustavus. Breitenfeld was the Naseby of Germany.

§ 3. Victory of intelligence over routine.

Like Naseby, too, Breitenfeld had in it something of more universal import. Naseby was the victory of disciplined intelligence over disorderly bravery. Breitenfeld was the victory of disciplined intelligence over the stiff routine of the Spanish tactics. Those tactics were, after all, but the military expression of the religious and political system in defence of which they were used. Those solid columns just defeated were the types of what human nature was to become under the Jesuit organization. The individual was swallowed up in the mass. As Tilly had borne down by the sheer weight of his veterans adventurers like Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick, so the renewed Catholic discipline had borne down the wrangling theologians who had stepped into the places of Luther and Melanchthon. But now an army had arisen to prove that order and obedience were weak unless they were supported by individual intelligence. The success of the principle upon which its operations were based could not be confined to mere fighting. It would make its way in morals and politics, in literature and science.

§ 4. Wallenstein's intrigues with Gustavus.

Great was the joy in Protestant Germany when the news was told. The cities of the south prepared once more to resist their oppressors. All that was noblest in France hailed the tidings with acclamation. English Eliot, writing from his prison in the Tower, could speak of Gustavus as that person whom fortune and virtue had reserved for the wonder of the world! Even Wallenstein, from his Bohemian retreat, uttered a cry of satisfaction. For Wallenstein was already in communication with Gustavus, who, Protestant as he was, was avenging him upon the League which had assailed him and the Emperor who had abandoned him. He had offered to do great things, if he could be trusted with a Swedish force of 12,000 men. He was well pleased to hear of Tilly's defeat. "If such a thing had happened to me," he said to an emissary of Gustavus, "I would kill myself. But it is a good thing for us." If only the King of Sweden would trust him with men, he would soon bring together the officers of his old army. He would divide the goods of the Jesuits and their followers amongst the soldiers. The greatest folly the Bohemians had committed, he said, had been to throw Martinitz and Slawata out of window instead of thrusting a sword through their bodies. If his plan were accepted he would chase the Emperor and the House of Austria over the Alps. But he hoped Gustavus would not allow himself to be entangled too far in the French alliances.

§ 5. His designs.

Wallenstein's whole character was expressed in these proposals, whether they were meant seriously or not. Cut off from German ideas by his Bohemian birth, he had no roots in Germany. The reverence which others felt for religious or political institutions had no echo in his mind. As he had been ready to overthrow princes and electors in the Emperor's name, so he was now ready to overthrow the Emperor in the name of the King of Sweden. Yet there was withal a greatness about him which raised him above such mere adventurers as Mansfeld. At the head of soldiers as uprooted as himself from all ties of home or nationality, he alone, amongst the leaders of the war, had embraced the two ideas which, if they had been welcomed by the statesmen of the Empire, would have saved Germany from intolerable evil. He wished for union and strength against foreign invasion, and he wished to found that union upon religious liberty. He would have kept out Gustavus if he could. But if that could not be done, he would join Gustavus in keeping out the French.

§ 6. Impossibility of an understanding between Wallenstein and Gustavus.

Yet between Wallenstein and Gustavus it was impossible that there should be anything really in common. Wallenstein was large-minded because he was far removed from the ordinary prejudices of men. He was no more affected by their habits and thoughts than the course of a balloon is affected by the precipices and rivers below. Gustavus trod firmly upon his mother earth. His Swedish country, his Lutheran religion, his opposition to the House of Austria, were all very real to him. His greatness was the greatness which rules the world, the greatness of a man who, sharing the thoughts and feelings of men, rises above them just far enough to direct them, not too far to carry their sympathies with him.

§ 7. Political plans of Gustavus.

Such a man was not likely to be content with mere military success. The vision of a soldier sovereignty to be shared with Wallenstein had no charms for him. If the Empire had fallen, it must be replaced not by an army but by fresh institutions; and those institutions, if they were to endure at all, must be based as far as possible on institutions already existing. Protestant Germany must be freed from oppression. It must be organized apart sufficiently for its own defence. Such an organization, the Corpus Evangelicorum, as he called it, like the North German Confederation of 1866, might or might not spread into a greater Germany of the future. It would need the support of Sweden and of France. It would not, indeed, satisfy Wallenstein's military ambition, or the more legitimate national longings of German patriots. But it had the advantage of being attainable if anything was attainable. It would form a certain bulwark against the aggression of the Catholic states without necessitating any violent change in the existing territorial institutions.

§ 8. His military schemes.

If these were the views of Gustavus – and though he never formally announced them to the world his whole subsequent conduct gives reason to believe that he had already entertained them – it becomes not so very hard to understand why he decided upon marching upon the Rhine, and despatching the Elector of Saxony to rouse Bohemia. It is true that Oxenstjerna, the prudent Chancellor of Sweden, wise after the event, used to declare that his master had made a mistake, and later military historians, fancying that Vienna was in the days of Gustavus what it was in the days of Napoleon, have held that a march upon Ferdinand's capital would have been as decisive as a march upon the same capital in 1805 or 1809. But the opinion of Gustavus is at least as good as that of Oxenstjerna, and it is certain that in 1631 Vienna was not, in the modern sense of the word, a capital city. If we are to seek for a parallel at all, it was rather like Madrid in the Peninsular War. The King had resided at Madrid. The Emperor had resided at Vienna. But neither Madrid in 1808 nor Vienna in 1631 formed the centre of force. No administrative threads controlling the military system stretched out from either. In the nineteenth century Napoleon or Wellington might be in possession of Madrid and have no real hold of Spain. In the seventeenth century, Ferdinand and Gustavus might be in possession of Vienna and have no real hold on Austria or Bohemia. Where an army was, there was power; and there would be an army wherever Wallenstein, or some imitator of Wallenstein, might choose to beat his drums. If Gustavus had penetrated to Vienna, there was nothing to prevent a fresh army springing up in his rear.

§ 9. Necessity of finding a basis for his operations.

The real danger to be coped with was the military system which Wallenstein had carried to perfection. And, in turning to the Rhine, Gustavus showed his resolution not to imitate Wallenstein's example. His army was to be anchored firmly to the enthusiasm of the Protestant populations. There lay the Palatinate, to be freed from the oppressor. There lay the commercial cities Augsburg, Nüremberg, Ulm, and Strassburg, ready to welcome enthusiastically the liberator who had set his foot upon the Edict of Restitution; and if in Bohemia too there were Protestants to set free, they were not Protestants on whom much dependence could be placed. If past experience was to be trusted, the chances of organizing resistance would be greater amongst Germans on the Rhine than amongst Slavonians on the Moldau.

§ 10. He resolves to march to the south-west.

For purposes of offence, too, there was much to induce Gustavus to prefer the westward march. Thither Tilly had retreated with only the semblance of an army still in the field. There, too, were the long string of ecclesiastical territories, the Priest's Lane, as men called it, Würzburg, Bamberg, Fulda, Cologne, Treves, Mentz, Worms, Spires, the richest district in Germany, which had furnished men and money to the armies of the League, and which were now to furnish at least money to Gustavus. There Spain, with its garrisons on the left bank of the Rhine, was to be driven back, and France to be conciliated, whilst the foundations were laid of a policy which would provide for order in Protestant Germany, so as to enable Gustavus to fulfil in a new and better spirit the work left undone by Christian of Anhalt. Was it strange if the Swedish king thought that such work as this would be better in his own hands than in those of John George of Saxony?

Section III. —March of Gustavus into South Germany

§ 1. March of Gustavus upon the Rhine.

The march of the victorious army was a triumphal progress. On October 2, Gustavus was at Erfurt. On the 10th he entered Würzburg: eight days later, the castle on its height beyond the Main was stormed after a fierce defence. Through all the north the priests were expelled from the districts which had been assigned them by the Edict of Restitution. Gustavus was bent upon carrying on reprisals upon them in their own homes. On December 16, Oppenheim was stormed and its Spanish garrison put to the sword. The Priest's Lane was defenceless. Gustavus kept his Christmas at Mentz. His men, fresh from the rough fare and hard quarters of the north, revelled in the luxuries of the southern land, and drank deep draughts of Rhenish wine from their helmets.

§ 2. Gustavus at Mentz.

There is always a difficulty in conjecturing the intentions of Gustavus. He did not, like Ferdinand, form plans which were never to be changed. He did not, like Wallenstein, form plans which he was ready to give up at a moment's notice for others entirely different. The essence of his policy was doubtless the formation, under his own leadership, of the Corpus Evangelicorum. What was to be done with the ecclesiastical territories which broke up the territorial continuity of South German Protestantism he had, perhaps, not definitely decided. But everything points to the conclusion that he wished to deal with them as Wallenstein would have dealt with them, to parcel them out amongst his officers and amongst the German princes who had followed his banner. In doing so, he would have given every security to the Catholic population. Gustavus, at least in Germany, meddled with no man's religion. In Sweden it was otherwise. There, according to the popular saying, there was one king, one religion, and one physician.

§ 3. The French startled at his victories.

He placed the conquered territories in sure hands. Mentz itself was committed to the Chancellor Oxenstjerna. French ambassadors remonstrated with him roundly. Richelieu had hoped that, if the House of Austria were humbled, the German ecclesiastics would have been left to enjoy their dignities. The sudden uprising of a new power in Europe had taken the French politicians as completely by surprise as the Prussian victories took their successors by surprise in 1866. "It is high time," said Lewis, "to place a limit to the progress of this Goth." Gustavus, unable to refuse the French demands directly, laid down conditions of peace with the League which made negotiation hopeless. But the doubtful attitude of France made it all the more necessary that he should place himself in even a stronger position than he was in already.

§ 4. Campaign in South Germany.

On March 31 he entered Nüremberg. As he rode through the streets he was greeted with heartfelt acclamations. Tears of joy streamed down the cheeks of bearded men as they welcomed the deliverer from the north, whose ready jest and beaming smile would have gone straight to the popular heart even if his deserts had been less. The picture of Gustavus was soon in every house, and a learned citizen set to work at once to compose a pedigree by which he proved to his own satisfaction that the Swedish king was descended from the old hereditary Burggraves of the town. In all that dreary war, Gustavus was the one man who had reached the heart of the nation, who had shown a capacity for giving them that for which they looked to their Emperor and their princes, their clergy and their soldiers, in vain.

§ 5. Gustavus at Donauwörth.

Gustavus did not tarry long with his enthusiastic hosts. On April 5 he was before Donauwörth. After a stout resistance the imperialists were driven out. Once more a Protestant Easter was kept within the walls, and the ancient wrong was redressed.

§ 6. The passage of the Lech and the death of Tilly.

On the 14th the Swedes found the passage of the Lech guarded by Tilly. Every advantage appeared to be on the side of the defenders. But Gustavus knew how to sweep their positions with a terrible fire of artillery, and to cross the river in the very teeth of the enemy. In the course of the battle Tilly was struck down, wounded by a cannon shot above the knee. His friends mournfully carried him away to Ingolstadt to die. His life's work was at an end. If simplicity of character and readiness to sacrifice his own personal interests be a title to esteem, that esteem is but Tilly's due. To the higher capacity of a statesman he laid no claim. Nor has he any place amongst the masters of the art of war. He was an excellent officer, knowing no other rule than the orders of constituted authorities, no virtue higher than obedience. The order which he reverenced was an impossible one, and there was nothing left him but to die for it.

§ 7. Gustavus at Augsburg and Munich.

The conqueror pushed on. In Augsburg he found a city which had suffered much from the Commissions of Resumption which had, in the south, preceded the Edict of Restitution. The Lutheran clergy had been driven from their pulpits; the Lutheran councillors had been expelled from the town hall. In the midst of the jubilant throng Gustavus felt himself more strongly seated in the saddle. Hitherto he had asked the magistrates of the recovered cities to swear fidelity to him as long as the war lasted. At Augsburg he demanded the oath of obedience as from subjects to a sovereign. Gustavus was beginning to fancy that he could do without France.

Then came the turn of Bavaria. As Gustavus rode into Munich, Frederick, the exiled Elector Palatine, was by his side, triumphing over the flight of his old enemy. It was not the fault of Gustavus if Frederick was not again ruling at Heidelberg. Gustavus had offered him his ancestral territories on the condition that he would allow Swedish garrisons to occupy his fortresses during the war, and would give equal liberty to the Lutheran and the Calvinist forms of worship. Against this latter demand Frederick's narrow-hearted Calvinism steeled itself, and when, not many months later, he was carried off by a fever at Bacharach, he was still, through his own fault, a homeless wanderer on the face of the earth.

§ 8. Gustavus at Munich.

At Munich Gustavus demanded a high contribution. Discovering that Maximilian had buried a large number of guns in the arsenal, he had them dug up again by the Bavarian peasants, who were glad enough to earn the money with which the foreign invader paid them for their labours. When this process was over – waking up the dead, he merrily called it – he prepared to leave the city with his booty. During his stay he had kept good discipline, and took especial care to prohibit any insult to the religion of the inhabitants. If, as may well have been the case, he was looking beyond the Corpus Evangelicorum to the Empire itself, if he thought it possible that the golden crown of Ferdinand might rest next upon a Lutheran head, he was resolved that religious liberty, not narrow orthodoxy, should be the corner-stone on which that Empire should be built.

§ 9. Strong position of Gustavus.

All Germany, except the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria, was at his feet. And he knew well that, as far as those dominions were concerned, there was no strength to resist him. Ferdinand had done enough to repress the manifestation of feeling, nothing to organize it. He would have been even more helpless to resist a serious attack than he had been in 1619, and this time Bavaria was as helpless as himself. Even John George, who had fled hastily from the field of Breitenfeld, marched through Bohemia without finding the slightest resistance. His army entered Prague amidst almost universal enthusiasm.

Section IV. —Wallenstein's Restoration to Command

§ 1. Ferdinand looks about for help.

Unless Ferdinand could find help elsewhere than in his own subjects he was lost. Abroad he could look to Spain. But Spain could not do very much under the eyes of Richelieu. Some amount of money it could send, and some advice. But that was all.

1631

§ 2. The Spaniards recommend the recall of Wallenstein.

What that advice would be could hardly be doubted. The dismissal of Wallenstein had been a check for Spain. He had been willing to join Spain in a war with France. The electors had prevailed against him with French support, and the treaty of Cherasco, by which the German troops had been withdrawn from fighting in support of the Spanish domination in Italy, had been the result. Even before the battle of Breitenfeld had been fought, the Spanish government had recommended the reinstatement of Wallenstein, and the Spaniards found a support in Eggenberg, Wallenstein's old protector at court.

§ 3. Wallenstein as the rival of Gustavus.

Soon after the battle of Breitenfeld, Wallenstein broke off his intercourse with Gustavus. By that time it was evident that in any alliance which Gustavus might make he meant to occupy the first place himself. Even if this had been otherwise, the moral character and the political instincts of the two men were too diverse to make co-operation possible between them. Gustavus was a king as well as a soldier, and he hoped to base his military power upon the political reconstruction of Protestant Germany, perhaps even of the whole Empire. Wallenstein owed everything to the sword, and he wished to bring all Germany under the empire of the sword.

§ 4. His plan of a reconciliation with John George.

The arrival of the Saxons in Bohemia inspired Wallenstein with the hope of a new combination, which would place the destinies of Germany in his hands. The reluctance with which John George had abandoned the Emperor was well known. If only Ferdinand, taught by experience, could be induced to sacrifice the Edict of Restitution, might not the Saxons be won over from their new allies? Wallenstein's former plans would be realized, and united Germany, nominally under Ferdinand, in reality under his general, would rise to expel the foreigner and to bar the door against the Frenchman and the Swede.

§ 5. He is reinstated in the command.

In November, 1631, Wallenstein met his old lieutenant, Arnim, now the Saxon commander, to discuss the chances of the future. In December, just as Gustavus was approaching the Rhine, he received a visit from Eggenberg, at Znaim. Eggenberg had come expressly to persuade him to accept the command once more. Wallenstein gave his consent, on condition that the ecclesiastical lands should be left as they were before the Edict of Restitution. And besides this he was to wield an authority such as no general had ever claimed before. No army could be introduced into the Empire excepting under his command. To him alone was to belong the right of confiscation and of pardon. As Gustavus was proposing to deal with the ecclesiastical territories, so would Wallenstein deal with the princes who refused to renounce their alliance with the Swede. A new class of princes would arise, owing their existence to him alone. As for his own claims, if Mecklenburg could not be recovered, a princely territory was to be found for him elsewhere.

§ 6. Wallenstein's army.

After all it was not upon written documents that Wallenstein's power was founded. The army which he gathered round him was no Austrian army in any real sense of the word. It was the army of Wallenstein – of the Duke of Friedland, as the soldiers loved to call him, thinking perhaps that his duchy of Mecklenburg would prove but a transitory possession. Its first expenses were met with the help of Spanish subsidies. But after that it had to depend on itself. Nor was it more than an accident that it was levied and equipped in Bohemia. If Gustavus had been at Vienna instead of at Munich, the thousands of stalwart men who trooped in at Wallenstein's bare word would have gathered to any place where he had set up his standards. Gustavus had to face the old evil of the war, which had grown worse and worse from the days of Mansfeld to those of Wallenstein, the evil of a military force existing by itself and for itself. From far distant shores men practised in arms came eagerly to the summons; from sunny Italy, from hardy Scotland, from every German land between the Baltic and the Alps. Protestant and Catholic were alike welcome there. The great German poet has breathed the spirit of this heterogeneous force into one of its officers, himself a wanderer from distant Ireland, ever prodigal of her blood in the quarrels of others. "This vast and mighty host," he says (Schiller, The Piccolomini, act i. sc. 2),