Complete Works of Stephen Crane

by Stephen Crane

  The king threw himself on his knees among the dead and wounded to offer up thanksgivings. He had the alarm-bells set ringing in all the villages round about to apprise the country of his victory. He encamped with his army in the deserted camp of the enemy. Almost all the baggage of the Imperialists fell into the hands of the conquerors. Hardly a soldier among the killed and wounded had less than ten ducats in his pocket or concealed within his girdle or saddle. Now that the battle was over the Elector of Saxony joined Gustavus in his camp at night. The king, who could be astutely diplomatic, gave him all the credit for having advised the battle and kept silent as to the Saxon troops. The elector, transported with joy at the issue of the day, promised to Gustavus the Roman crown. Gustavus lost no time in dallying with the Roman crown, but made new plans for action. He left Leipzig to the elector and set forward for Merseburg, which, with Halle, at once surrendered.

  Here he gave his army a rest of ten days, and many Protestant princes joined him in council.

  II

  LUTZEN

  From the day of Leipzig, Tilly’s fortunes left him; his past victories were forgotten and execrations were heaped upon him. Though he was wounded, he went to work with all his old energy to form a new army, but the emperor expressly commanded that he should never again risk any decisive battle.

  The glorious victory at Leipzig is said to have changed not only the world’s opinion of Gustavus, but his own opinion of himself. He was now more confident; he took a bolder tone with his allies, a more imperious one with his enemies, and even more decision and greater speed marked his military movements, though nothing tyrannical or illiberal was seen in him.

  The emperor and the Catholic League were dumfounded at the annihilation of Tilly. Richelieu was beginning to think his auxiliary too powerful; Louis XIII. even was heard to mutter, “It is time to put a limit to the progress of this Goth.”

  “Alone, without a rival,” Schiller says, “he found himself now in the midst of Germany; nothing could arrest his course. His adversaries, the princes of the Catholic League, divided among themselves, led by different and contrary interests, acted without concert, and consequently without energy. Both statesman and general were united in the person of Gustavus. He was the only source from which all authority flowed: he alone was the soul of his party, the creator and executor of his military plans. Aided by all these advantages, at the head of such an army, endowed with a genius to profit by all these resources, conducted besides by principles of the wisest policy, it is not surprising that Gustavus Adolphus was irresistible. In not much more time than it would have taken another to make a tour of pleasure, with the sword in one hand and pardon in the other he was seen traversing Germany from one end to the other as a conqueror, lawgiver, and judge. As if he had been the legitimate sovereign, they brought him from all parts the keys of the towns and fortresses. No castle resisted him, no river stopped his victorious progress, and he often triumphed by the mere dread of his name.”

  Many of his advisers pressed Gustavus to attack Vienna, but after careful consideration he thought he would serve his cause best by marching straight into the heart of Germany on the Main and the Rhine.

  Ten days after Leipzig the king reached Erfurt and ordered Duke William of Saxe-Weimar to take possession of the city. Proceeding through the Thuringian Forest, he reached Konigshofen Schweinfurt, which yielded to him, as did Wurzburg. Marienberg he was obliged to take by storm; a great store of treasure was here, as well as the money which the Elector of Bavaria had sent to Tilly for the purpose of replacing his shattered army.

  Great quantities of provisions, corn, and wine fell into Swedish hands. A coffin filled with ducats was found, and as it was lifted the bottom gave way, and the soldiers began to help themselves to the coin in the presence of the king. “Oh, I see how it is,” said he; “it is plain they must have it; let the rogues convert it to their own uses.”

  In truth, the character of the Swedish army was no longer beyond suspicion; the soldiers had become to some extent demoralised with their conquests; the cruelties and barbarities that they had suffered had forced upon them terrible reprisals, and the usage of looting was so universal that they could not be held back from it.

  Tilly had by this time collected a new army out of the Palatinate and come back to Fulda, and here he tried to get the consent of Maximilian of Bavaria to engage Gustavus in battle again, but the duke was fearful of having another army wiped out, now the only one the Catholic League possessed, and refused him.

  The Swedish king now advanced rapidly towards the Rhine by way of the Main, reducing Aschaffenburg, Seligenstadt, and the whole territory on both sides of the river. The Count of Hanau made but slight resistance when his citadel was cap tured, and gladly agreed to pay two thousand five hundred pounds a month for the support of the army and to recall his retainers from the Imperial service.

  Nothing now kept Gustavus from marching on Frankfort-on-the-Main. The magistrates of the city begged the ambassador that he sent to entreat him to consider their legitimate oaths to the emperor, and to leave them neutral, on account of their annual fairs, which were their chief commercial enterprise. The king was not moved by these touching business considerations; he was surprised, he replied, that while the liberties of Germany were at stake and the Protestant religion in jeopardy, they should convey to his ear such an odious sentiment as neutrality, and that the citizens of Frankfort should talk of annual fairs, as if they regarded all things merely as tradesmen and merchants, rather than as men of the world with a Christian conscience. More sternly he went on to say that he had found the keys to many a town and fortress from the Isle of Rugen on the Baltic to the banks of the Main, and knew well where to find a key for Frankfort.

  The magistrates were filled with alarm at this, and asked for time to consult the Elector of Mayence, their ecclesiastic sovereign, but the king replied that he was master of Aschaffenburg; he was Elector of Mayence; he would give them plenary absolution.

  “The inhabitants,” he said, “might desire to stretch out only their little finger to him, but he would be content with nothing but the whole hand, that he might have sufficient to grasp.”

  He then moved his army on Saxenhausen, a beautiful suburb of the city, and here the magistrates met him, and after taking the oath of fidelity opened the gates of the city to him. The king made a solemn public entrance into the city, leading his troops with uncovered head, as a mark of respect, and bringing in fifty-six pieces of artillery. He was welcomed by the magistracy to a great banquet in the coronation hall of the imperial palace of Braunfels. Maria Eleonora, his queen, now joined him in Frankfort, and when she met him was so overcome with joy that, throwing her arms around him, she cried, “Now is Gustavus the Great become my prisoner!”

  The next event of importance in this victorious progress was the carrying of Mayence, which after a short siege capitulated on December 13. On the 14th the king celebrated his thirty-seventh birthday by entering Mayence with great pomp, and took up his residence in the palace of the elector, ordering a service of thanksgiving for his success to be held in the Roman Catholic Cathedral. Provisions, artillery, and money fell into the hands of the army. The king seized as his personal share the library of the elector, and gave it to Oxenstiern for one of the Swedish universities, but, alas! it was lost in the Baltic.

  The exhausted Swedish soldiers were now allowed a space of rest to recuperate their energies. On January 10 the queen arrived in Mayence and shared with Gustavus for a short time the ceremonial splendours of a regal court, where five German princes and many foreign ambassadors had come to confer with the king and transact important negotiations with him. Among these was the Marquis de Breze, an ambassador from the French court. By his conversation Gustavus detected something of the truth, that Richelieu now feared him and was trying to undermine his power.

  Accordingly, he sent word to Louis XIII. that he wished to speak with him personally. The French ambassador tried to persuade Gustavus that an
interview with Richelieu would do as well, but he replied haughtily:

  “All kings are equal. My predecessors have never given place to the kings of France. If your master thinks fit to despatch the cardinal half way, I will send some of my people to treat with him, but I will admit of no superiority.”

  When the king and queen left Mayence in mid-February, Gustavus had had a new citadel built at the confluence of the Rhine and Main, which was called at first “Gustavusburg,” but in after days lapsed into “Pfaffenraube” (Priest-plunder). A lion of marble on a high marble pillar is near Mayence, holding a naked sword in his paw and wearing a helmet on his head, to mark the spot where the “Lion of the North” crossed the great river of Germany.

  During February Kreutznach in the Palatinate, one of the strongest castles in Germany, and the town of Ulm surrendered to the king.

  Leaving Oxenstiern, his minister and friend, to protect his conquests on the Rhine and Main, Gustavus began his advance against the enemy March 4, 1632, with an army — including his allies’ forces — of one hundred thousand infantry and forty thousand cavalry under arms. The Catholic League had been extremely active during the months since the defeat of Tilly at Breitenfeld and Leipzig, and had raised even larger forces.

  By the capture of Donauworth it was evident to Tilly that Gustavus’s next move was to be towards Bavaria, for he was now master of the right bank of the Danube. Accordingly, after destroying all the bridges in the vicinity, Tilly entrenched himself in a strong position on the other side of the river Lech. Numerous garrisons defended the river as far as Augsburg. The Bavarian elector shut himself up in Tilly’s camp, feeling that the issue of the coming battle must decide everything for him.

  The Lech, in the month of March, is swollen to a great torrent by the melting snows from the Tyrol, and dashes furiously between high, steep banks. The officers of Gustavus considered it impossible to effect a crossing and urged him not to try it. But he exclaimed to Horn —

  “What! Have we crossed the Baltic and so many great rivers of Germany, and shall we now for this Lech, this rivulet, abandon our enterprise!”

  He had made the discovery that his side of the river was higher by eleven feet than the opposite bank, which would greatly favour his cannon. He immediately took advantage of this by having three batteries erected on the spot where the left bank of the Lech forms an angle opposite its right. Here seventy-two pieces kept up a constant cannonade on the enemy.

  He had now to invent a bridge that would cross the torrent, and also think of means to distract the enemy from noticing its construction. He made a strong set of trestles of various heights and with unequal feet, so that they would stand upright on the uneven bed of the river; these were secured in their places by strong piles driven into the river-bed. Planks were then nailed to the trestles. While this went on, the cannonade drowned the noise of the hammers and hatchets; one thousand musketeers lined the Swedish bank and kept the Imperialist soldiers from coming near enough to discover the work, while a thick smoke, made by burning wood and wet straw, hid the workmen for the most part.

  Before daybreak the bridge was finished, and an army of engineers and soldiers selected by the king soon crossed it and threw up a substantial breastwork.

  Tilly saw his foes entrenched on his own side of the river and, under the tremendous firing of the guns from the higher bank, was utterly powerless to keep them from coming. For thirty-six hours the cannonade went on, the king standing most of the time at the foot of the bridge and sometimes acting as gunner himself to encourage his men. The Imperialists made a desperate effort to seize the bridge, but a large number were cut down in the attempt.

  Finally, Tilly, whose courage was heroic throughout the day, fell with a shattered thigh, and had to be borne away. Maximilian, the Bavarian duke, now precipitately abandoned his impregnable position and moved the army quietly away to Ingolstadt.

  When Gustavus next day found the camp vacant his astonishment was great.

  “Had I been the sovereign of Bavaria,” he cried, “never, though a cannon-ball had taken away my beard and chin — never would I have quitted a post like this and laid my states open to the enemy.”

  Bavaria, indeed, lay open to the conqueror; before occupying it, however, he rescued the Protestant town of Augsburg from the Bavarian yoke, Augsburg being in his eyes a special object of veneration on account of the famous “Confession” — the place “from whence the law first proceeded from Sion.” Augsburg, indeed, at first resisted him, but when he saw the dread devastation that his guns began to make on its beautiful buildings he stopped them and insisted on an interview with the governor, who, seeing the hopelessness of resistance, yielded.

  Tilly died in Ingolstadt, the Elector of Bavaria sitting by his bedside. He adjured Maximilian to keep Ingolstadt with all his powers against Gustavus and to seize Ratisbon at once, begged him never to break his alliance with the emperor, and besought him to appoint General Gratz in his place. “He will conduct your troops with reputation, and, as he knows Wallenstein, will traverse the designs of that insolent man. Oh,” he sighed, “would that I had expired at Leipzig and not survived my fame!”

  So died Tilly — bigoted, merciless, cruel, but nevertheless faithful and zealous to his last breath in defence of his religion and the League.

  Ingolstadt was a fortress considered impregnable; it had never been conquered. Gustavus had determined to take it, and made a partial investment only, for on one side of it was the whole Bavarian army under Maximilian.

  While riding about the walls one day and going very near to take observations, on account of his short sight, a twenty-four pounder killed his horse — the favourite “flea-bitten” steed — under him; he rose tranquilly and, mounting another horse, continued his reconnoitring. In camp in the evening his generals in a body protested against his risking so valuable a life in this way; but he replied that he had a foolish sort of a fancy which always tempted him to imagine that he could see better for himself than others could, and that his sense of God’s providence gave him the firm assurance that he had other assistance in store for so just a cause than the precarious existence of one Gustavus Adolphus.

  Within a few days news came that the Bavarian troops had taken the Imperial town of Ratisbon, and this caused a change in the king’s plans; he had spent eight days on Ingolstadt, but he now suddenly abandoned it, because it would have been of no special advantage to him without Ratisbon in his scheme of cutting off Maximilian from Bohemia.

  Munich was his next objective point, and he now proceeded into the interior of Bavaria, where Mosburg, Landshut, all the Bishopric of Freysingen, surrendered to him. But the Bavarians looked upon Protestants as children of hell. Soldiers who did not believe in the Pope were to them accursed monsters. When they succeeded in capturing a Swedish straggler they put him to death with tortures the most refined and prolonged. When the Swedish army came upon mutilated bodies of their comrades they took vengeance into their own hands, but never by consent of Gustavus.

  His approach to Munich threw the capital into an agony of terror. It had no defenders, and they feared that the treatment his soldiers had met at the hands of the country-people might lead him to use his power cruelly. Some Germans in his army begged to be allowed to repeat here the sacking of Magdeburg, but such a low revenge was impossible to the king. When the magistracy sent to implore his clemency, he answered that if they submitted readily and with good grace, care should be taken that no man should suffer with respect to life, liberty, or religion. Only one act of questionable taste accompanied his public entry, and that was the presence of a monkey in the procession — a monkey with a shaven crown and in a Capuchin’s dress, with a rosary in his paw. One hopes that the king was not responsible for this.

  He found an abandoned palace: the elector’s treasures had been removed. There were left, though, many fine canvases by Flemish and Italian masters. His officers urged the king to plunder or destroy these, but he said: “Let us not imitate ou
r ancestors, the Goths and Vandals, who destroyed everything belonging to the fine arts, which has left our nation a proverb and a byword of contempt with posterity for acts of this wanton barbarity.” He had evidently forgotten the earnest request of Charles I. for “pictures and statues.”

  The construction of the palace — a magnificent building — caused the king to express great admiration: he asked the steward the name of the architect. “He is no other than the elector himself” was the reply. “I should like to have thisarchitect,” replied the king, “to send him to Stockholm.”

  “That,” said the steward, “he will take care to avoid.”

  The guns in the arsenal had been buried so carefully that they would not have been discovered if it had not been for a treacherous insider, who told the secret. “Arise from the dead,” cried the king, “and come to judgment!” and one hundred and forty pieces of artillery were dug up, a large sum of gold being found in one of them.

  Appointing the Scotchman Hepburn to the post of Governor of Munich, Gustavus soon started forth with his army.

  Meanwhile Maximilian, although besought by his Bavarians to come and deliver them from the Swedes, could not resolve to risk a battle. The wonderful victories of Gustavus had indeed a paralysing effect upon the country. As yet no one had been found capable of resisting him. Richelieu himself was horror-stricken at the power he had helped to raise. It was expected in France that an invasion of Swedes would be the natural continuation of the Rhine conquests; it was said that Gustavus would not rest until he had made Protestantism compulsory throughout Europe. Nothing less than the command of the German Empire was supposed to be his ultimate aim.

  There is no doubt that his ambitions steadily enlarged themselves, but there is nothing to prove that he contemplated supplanting Ferdinand. His enemies were disheartened. Ferdinand was now brought to the pass of abjectly begging Wallenstein to resume his command, and Wallenstein was assuming airs of indifference and allowing himself to be persuaded only with great pressure.