Probably no one was more astonished by the behaviour of the Union than its youthful President. There is evidence that the Elector Frederick was, of all the princes assembled at Rothenburg, the most in ignorance as to his own policy. Christian of Anhalt had been working only to one end: he wanted to create a party in Bohemia which would elect Frederick for King. He had hoped to arrange this before the election of Ferdinand and, having signally failed,[32] had leapt upon the renewed opportunity which the rebellion offered him. It did not need very much political acumen on the part of the princes of the Union to penetrate Anhalt’s schemes. Resenting the policy in itself, they resented still more his assumption that he could throw dust in their eyes with fine words about the defence of Protestantism.
Among those assembled at Rothenburg, Frederick was one of the few who believed in Anhalt’s professions. From the outset he wanted peace in Bohemia. The letters on this subject which he had written to the Emperor, to the King of Great Britain and to the Duke of Bavaria,[33] disingenuous as they may seem, were in fact the outcome of a real innocence. Frederick was twenty-one, technically of age, but he had not the character or the desire to replace Anhalt, whom he trusted in all things. Nevertheless, he took his duties seriously and when the revolt in Bohemia had been made clear to him in all its aspects he had timorously evolved a policy. His suggestion was that the Union should raise an army and persuade the Elector of Saxony to join them in a protest to the Emperor Matthias. He hoped in this way to show that the Protestants of Germany were united, and were, in the last resort, prepared to use force. Once this was evident to the Emperor, Frederick assumed that there would be no actual necessity to appeal to arms. Protestantism in Bohemia would be guaranteed and a significant warning would have been issued against any future attempt at coercion in Germany itself.
Frederick’s plan was the fruit of youth and optimism, and Anhalt could probably have persuaded him that, in view of Saxony’s rabid hostility towards the Calvinists, it was quite impracticable. But it was one thing to persuade Frederick that his peace plan would not work and quite another to suggest that an intrigue to gain the Bohemian Crown for himself was the only alternative. Anhalt found it simpler to use Frederick’s trivial project as the cover for his private intrigues. Exploiting his master’s confidence, he could give instructions to ambassadors that certainly never reached Frederick’s ears and keep the well-intentioned but incurious prince totally ignorant of the things which were being done in his name.[34]
After the meeting of the Union at Rothenburg concealment was no longer so easy. Even Frederick must have felt that there was some substance behind the suspicions of his fellow princes, and about November 1618, Anhalt judged it wise to reveal his schemes to one who was to be the principal actor in them.[35] A strong man might still have been able to redeem the situation, however gravely endangered, but Frederick was not strong, and his trust in Anhalt, although shaken, was not destroyed. The Bohemians had meanwhile responded to the persistent hinting of the Palatine ambassadors, and Thurn privately asked them whether they would guarantee their master’s acceptance of the Crown should it be offered to him.[36] At the same time Anhalt approached the Prince of Orange to support the plan and bought the favour of the Duke of Savoy by promising to further his candidature for the imperial throne.[37] All this while Frederick, the impotent figure-head of the whole scheme, drifted in a state of bewildered melancholy towards the abyss whither his chancellor was blithely steering.
Busily pushing the pieces on the chessboard into alignment for European war, Anhalt was assisted by an ally whose motives were more questionable than his own. Ernst von Mansfeld, general of the army which had been sent to the help of Bohemia, was the bastard son of a nobleman, Peter von Mansfeld, one time governor of Luxembourg. While his father had brought him up at his Court, he had early and brutally checked the boy’s pretensions to consider himself a true scion of his family, leaving him with a personal sensitiveness on this point which he never outgrew.[38] Birth and education made him an adventurer. The whole world was his oyster and the sword the best tool to open it.
The military practice of his time was an invitation to him. With the development of artillery and more especially of the musket, the feudal levy, consisting of unskilled peasants, had become almost useless. Professional soldiers alone could acquire the necessary precision in tactics. Infantry was now composed of pikemen and musketeers, the musketeers chiefly for attack, the pikemen to cover them in defensive action; with the continuous improvement in the efficiency of the musket the importance of pikemen was dwindling in proportion, but in the first quarter of the century the numbers of each in the average infantry regiment were roughly equal. For the effective handling of both weapons, long practice was essential. The cavalry who formed about a third part of the average army and were still by far the most important section, at least in attack, were also armed some with lances, some with pistols; here fire-arms were replacing the lance faster than among the infantry. In pitched battles, ill-trained cavalry were worse than useless, well-trained cavalry all-important, since on the execution of certain complicated movements might depend the success or failure of the whole army.[39] So far no state had evolved a system of conscription capable of keeping a national army fully trained. When it came to war a wise government at once hired a professional general.
These professionals usually kept about them a small staff of officers expert in rapid recruiting and training. The armies thus raised without regard to race or religion were the outcasts of society or the surplus population of overcrowded districts. Switzerland and north Italy, for instance, where the land could never support the healthy and prolific race that it bred, produced better recruits than the German States, where the population question was less acute. The soldiers once enlisted were faithful only to their banners. The oath which they took was not to any personal leader or State but to the flag, and if the flag were captured in battle the soldiers were at liberty to follow it.[40] Even loyalty to the flag was not always apparent, and it was usual for prisoners of war to enlist in the army of the victors whether their banner had been taken or not. Besides this, a soldier served only under contract; should he choose at the expiration of his time to try another army he was free to do so. Officers and men shifted from service to service without the least compunction and discussed the merits of each round the camp fires in the evening. The Emperor paid well, but it was considered ‘a hard service, to lie out wet and dry’; the King of Poland paid even better but would not undertake to feed the army in winter; the Governess of the Netherlands made the wages sound tempting to those who did not know that she calculated a month at six to eight weeks; ‘the best service is accounted the States[41] because constant, and if they lose any joint or be made unserviceable they are during their life to have the same pay that they had when they were disabled’.[42]
Generals were accustomed to see their armies dwindle to half their size by desertion during the winter months or when the quarters were more than usually uncomfortable. Theoretically death was the penalty for desertion, but since a number of the men came back in the spring encouraged by the prospect of fresh plunder, wise officers did not discourage them by a rigid inquiry into their absence.
Mansfeld’s professional reputation rested on his organizing ability. He was not a very gifted tactician, but he had a genius for putting the money of his employers to the best advantage in recruiting and quartering the troops. He could raise an army in record time and maintain it at very reasonable cost—to the employers at least. To the peasantry on whom he quartered his men the cost may well have seemed less reasonable.
Since it was more expensive to raise a new army than to keep on an old one, the mercenary general began to search out new employment for his men as soon as a war came to an end. The Bohemian revolt had been manna in the wilderness to Mansfeld, who had found himself in 1618 faced with the prospect of disbanding his men. Fundamentally he was a less dangerous adventurer than others who were to follow him in the dis
astrous years to come, because he was not a very ambitious man. All that he wanted was to secure for himself a recognized position in society and a little free principality to which he could retire in old age. He would not be over-scrupulous in the means he used to gain this end, for although he had virtues they were those of the soldier only. The courage, endurance and self-discipline for which he was famous were balanced by no social virtues and he was as devoid of common honesty as he was of cowardice. The Elector Palatine’s money, the Duke of Savoy’s ambition, the Bohemian revolt, the very war which was to engulf all Germany, were but so many incidents in the path of his desire. He saw nothing among the mountainous ranges of European politics but the footholds by which he would climb to his personal goal.
In the winter following his reduction of Pilsen, Mansfeld left his men in their quarters and set out to see for himself how the land lay. Having visited Heidelberg he went on to Turin where he found the Duke of Savoy in a more than usually exuberant mood. In February 1619 he had secured the sister of the King of France as a wife for his son and heir. Mistaking this for an indication that the French government was at last preparing an attack on Spain, the Duke proposed to make himself Emperor and King of Bohemia; he would then present the Elector Palatine with Hungary and Alsace.[43] Mansfeld was more concerned for the immediate payment of his army than for the partition of Europe, and it needed the smooth diplomacy of Anhalt, who arrived from Heidelberg in March, to bring them to an agreement. Mansfeld was sent back to Bohemia with the guarantee of further support, and the Duke of Savoy was satisfied after eight weeks more diplomacy by a treaty of alliance conceived in Anhalt’s usual vein. Charles Emmanuel should certainly have the Empire and probably Bohemia too if he would support the Elector Palatine in the meanwhile.[44]
Some of the Duke of Savoy’s enthusiasm seems to have infected Anhalt, for he was blind to the weakness of his cause. He hardly noticed the intractability of the Union and did not pause to consider the King of Great Britain. When an ambassador was sent to obtain James’s assistance, the King had made it clear both in the King’s English, which was Scots, and in three lines of Virgil that he would have nothing to do with Bohemia.
‘O praestans animi juvenis, quantum ipse feroci
Virtute exsuperas, tanto me impensius aequum est
Prospicere, atque omnes volventem expendere casus’
recited James, ingeniously misquoting the Aeneid.[45]
While Anhalt fondly imagined that he was building up an international alliance, the Archduke Ferdinand was striving to regain the wavering support of his own dynasty. The King of Spain and the governors of the Netherlands had helped him gladly so long as they believed that Bohemia could be easily quelled. The intervention of Mansfeld had altered that. In the spring of 1618 the rebels were not only strong in Bohemia, but the loyalty of Moravia, Hungary, Lusatia and Austria was weakening.[46] Silesia had already joined in the revolt. It was rumoured in Germany that Maximilian of Bavaria had at last decided to contest the imperial election, and at Brussels Ferdinand’s disillusioned cousins debated whether it would not be wiser to sacrifice him altogether, since he could only be upheld at great and perhaps fruitless expense. Was there, from the dynastic point of view, any object in re-establishing a man whose weakness would be a menace to their prestige and whose chances of the imperial crown were dwindling?
All this time, Maximilian of Bavaria and John George of Saxony were working with immense industry and apparent good faith for a solution of the Bohemian problem before Matthias died. Should an imperial election occur while the revolt lasted, some desperate effort of the Elector Palatine’s party to gain control of the Bohemian vote was to be feared. Both John George and Maximilian implored the rebels to submit their cause to arbitration by the princes.[47] John George, by persistent entreaty, at length persuaded them to send deputies to a general Conference at Eger in April 1619. His labour was in vain, for before the conference met the last feeble bond of German union snapped.
At nine o’clock on the morning of March 20th 1619, the Emperor Matthias died.
3.
In the face of this new situation the extremist party in Bohemia at once gained the upper hand. The projected conference at Eger was tacitly abandoned and strenuous efforts were made to increase the army,[48] fill the empty treasury and drag the provinces of Moravia and Lusatia into revolt. The lands of all loyal Catholics, some of whom had already fled, were seized by the victorious party.[49] At Braunau the Abbot barely escaped with his life.[50] The process was the more thorough because Thurn was now in deadly fear of a rupture within the country itself. Along the Moravian and Austrian borders villages and farms lay waste, and the peasants were everywhere loud in their outcry against a government which had taken their savings, wasted their lands and enlisted their sons. Thurn’s native army, raised by compulsion, unprofessional and badly officered, was sick, hungry, mutinous and unpaid. The towns-folk, rich and poor, had been pressed to subscribe to loans, and the wanton debasement of the coinage had injured their trade. Prague was crowded with hungry and fever-stricken fugitives.[51]
On March 27th, Ferdinand offered oblivion, indemnity and the confirmation of their privileges if the rebels would but submit themselves to his mercy.[52] Distressed as they were, the Estates could not bring themselves to trust him. Their refusal was followed in a few weeks by the open revolt of Moravia in panic for her liberties. A landslide in the Hapsburg dominions had begun. The Protestants of Upper and Lower Austria were loudly criticizing Ferdinand; Carinthia, Carniola, even Styria, were alleged to be on the verge of insurrection.[53]
In Europe the situation was even darker for Ferdinand. The weathercock French government had withdrawn its earlier offer of support.[54] In Brussels they had abandoned Ferdinand and were talking of putting forward the Archduke Albert for the imperial throne.[55] He was old, but at least he had more control of the states he ruled than that ‘silly Jesuited soul’[56] as they now contemptuously called him, who, with all his dominions in revolt, was proposing to stand for the Empire.
Thurn meanwhile, at the head of an army encouraged by the spring weather and the hope of revolt in Austria, had cleared Moravia of all Ferdinand’s allies and marched on Vienna. There Ferdinand had assembled the Estates of Lower Austria. He was met by a demand for the expulsion of the Jesuits, for a Protestant Church in Vienna, for autonomy within Austria and the immediate cessation of war on the Bohemians.[57] The Estates were in session when Thurn himself appeared outside the walls.
Ferdinand’s lack of imagination and unquestioning faith served him well. Through the long summer when seven weeks of blistering rainless heat[58] added physical discomfort to the tension of the atmosphere, he had maintained his customary cheerfulness. Even when the random firing of the Bohemians made his own study unsafe he retained his calm, nor did the rumour that Hungary too was in revolt unduly depress him.[59] When his confessor came to speak some words of comfort to him he found him prostrate before his crucifix. Rising, he declared with confidence rather than resignation that he had been seeking counsel where alone he knew it to be found, and that he was now prepared to die, if need be, in the only righteous cause. Had the Saviour spoken to him from the cross, as the Viennese afterwards averred, Ferdinand could not have been more serenely confident.[60]
Almost immediately he met an angry deputation from the Estates with unruffled obstinacy and good-temper. Knowing that Thurn was outside the gates, that the people of Vienna might themselves rebel and let the Bohemians in, that it would need but little for the angry protests of his subjects to find vent in personal violence, Ferdinand nevertheless refused to accede to their demands.[61] Suddenly the clamour of the deputies was interrupted by the clatter of horses’ hooves in the courtyard outside. One at least of Ferdinand’s allies had remained loyal to him, his younger brother Leopold of Tyrol, who had dispatched four hundred cavalry to his immediate help. It was this troop which evaded Thurn’s casual guard and now burst into the courtyard of the palace. They had no int
ention of seizing the representatives or terrorizing the city; their numbers were too few for any such rash undertaking, but the mere sight of their colours was enough for the deputies of the Estates, who fled in confusion, leaving Ferdinand master of the situation.[62] He had not trusted in vain.
Fortune had veered. Four days later on June 10th 1619, Mansfeld, marching on Budweis with the larger part of his army, was cut off by the imperial forces near the little village of Sablat. He fought for seven hours, sending desperate scouts for the Bohemian reinforcements which he believed to be close at hand, and only at nightfall withdrew, leaving fifteen hundred dead and prisoners and most of his baggage in the hands of the enemy.[63] Used to the fortunes of war, he made ready at once for a new march on Budweis, but the citizens of Prague were in panic and the morale both of the native army and of the mercenaries was so badly shaken that the Estates had no choice but to recall Thurn from Austria. The two generals were thus together thrown back upon the defensive in a city now rotten with fear and discontent.
In this dark hour the Elector Palatine still proved the best friend of the rebels. On the very day of Sablat he had written to the Elector of Saxony urging the postponement of the imperial election at least until the Bohemian question was settled;[64] he had a scheme, not officially divulged, for filling Frankfort with Protestant troops and forcibly preventing Ferdinand’s arrival until the election was over.[65] There were only three drawbacks to this plan: the first that no candidate could be found to oppose Ferdinand, for the Duke of Savoy was ridiculous and Maximilian of Bavaria had refused; the second that John George of Saxony would not postpone the election; the third that of all men in Germany, Frederick was the least fitted to carry out a plan which needed audacity and determination.
The Thirty Years War Page 10
