The Thirty Years War

by C. V. Wedgwood

  At the same time, Spinola with nearly twenty-five thousand men[73] set out from Flanders, amidst scenes of such devout enthusiasm that many compared the campaign to a new Crusade.[74] As the head of the column advanced towards the Rhine, the Prince of Orange, afraid to break the truce and powerless to intercept the army, appealed in despair to the King of Great Britain.[75] At this eleventh hour, James permitted a regiment of two thousand volunteers under Sir Horace Vere to put out from Gravesend for the Low Countries.[76] At the same time, he wrote to the government at Brussels demanding to know the destination of their army, and on August 3rd he received the disingenuous reply that they did not know.[77] Spinola, crossing the Rhine at Coblenz, turned his face towards Bohemia, and the anxious powers of western Europe breathed again. It was a brilliant feint, designed to keep his enemies out of action, for, wheeling in his tracks in the third week of August, he headed again for the Rhine. ‘It is now too late to doubt whether Spinola’s large army is destined against the Palatinate, it is already at our door’, lamented the Electress-mother from Heidelberg.[78] On August 19th, Spinola occupied Mainz. In vain the distracted Prince of Orange besought the Electress-mother to defend the threatened country. In vain he appealed to the princes of the Union. Alone, the two thousand English volunteers forced their way up the Rhine, evading Spinola’s outposts, and establishing themselves at the key fortresses of Frankenthal and Mannheim.[79] On September 5th, Spinola crossed the Rhine, on the 10th he took Kreuznach, and four days later Oppenheim.[80] Far away in Bohemia Frederick’s heart bled for his people, but he could do nothing save appeal once more to the King of Great Britain and console himself with pious thoughts. ‘I commend all to God,’ he wrote to Elizabeth. ‘He gave it me, he has taken it away, he can give it me again, blessed be his name.’[81]

  At Linz, meanwhile, Tilly had joined with what remained of the imperialist army, and on September 26th had crossed the Bohemian border. He was first in the field by a narrow margin; on October 5th, the Elector of Saxony swept down from the north, and the town of Bautzen, the capital of Lusatia, surrendered almost without a blow.[82] At the same time, Maximilian was summoning Pilsen to surrender, and Mansfeld had opened negotiations. On a peremptory order from Frederick to hold the town, Mansfeld sulkily obeyed, but he could no longer be relied on to harass the rear of the enemy; serving an insolvent master, he was not so foolish as to make himself unpopular with Maximilian, a wealthy prince and a potential employer.[83]

  With Pilsen quiescent in his rear, Maximilian turned towards Prague, and in mid-October came up with Frederick’s miscellaneous forces at Rokitzan, two days’ march from the capital. The King himself was in the camp, trying vainly to check the furious rivalry of Thurn and Anhalt. Here, a few days later, Mansfeld appeared in person to announce that his contract had run out, and since the King had not the means to renew it he would take leave to consider himself free of his obligations.[84]

  Frederick still trusted in Bethlen Gabor, who had once more overrun Hungary. But the troops which he sent to reinforce the Bohemians were a hindrance rather than a help, for their unbridled licence robbed the King of his last vestige of popularity among the peasants, and on foraging expeditions they not only attacked their allies, but even fought with each other.[85] They slaughtered their prisoners, and so ill-used one of Maximilian’s colonels who had been returning wounded to Austria that, Frederick himself intervening too late, he died within a few days.[86]

  Meanwhile the surrounding country was desolate. Empty villages, burnt-out farms, and the carcasses of starved cattle marked the passing of the armies. The winter had come on early after the storms of autumn, and in both camps, the bitter cold and fevers engendered by the damp and the lack of food decimated the armies.

  On November 4th, the Bohemian army celebrated the anniversary of the King’s coronation with hollow rejoicings; the soldiers had threatened a general mutiny unless pay should be forthcoming at latest by the end of October, and only the presence of the enemy prevented them from carrying out their threat.[87] Anhalt and Thurn were agreed only on one point, that something must be done and quickly. The King too was anxious to make sure of Prague where he had left his wife, once again within a few weeks of her confinement.

  Doubts of the same kind, though not so acute, disturbed the councils of Maximilian and the imperialist general Bucquoy. Here, too, neither of them knew which was to have the higher authority, Maximilian claiming it by right of his agreement with Ferdinand, and Bucquoy being loath to surrender to the newcomer the control of operations which he had so long maintained unassisted. Ferdinand, to avoid the resentment of either party, had officially stated that the only commander-in-chief of his army was and should always be Our Lady Herself, to whose care he committed his fortunes.[88] This decision did not settle the immediate problems of Maximilian and Bucquoy. Their troops were exhausted, hungry and plague-stricken; it would be folly, Bucquoy argued, to advance through the autumnal fogs, over country stripped of fodder and partly occupied by the enemy.[89] Maximilian, on the other hand, put all his faith in an immediate assault on Prague: once the capital was taken, he argued, the revolt would be at end. He was no soldier but his political instinct was right.

  On the night of November 5th the Bohemians stealthily withdrew to defend the capital, and as soon as the innumerable and cumbrous baggage wagons of Maximilian could be set in order, the imperialist and Bavarian troops followed. For thirty-six hours the two armies marched almost parallel, the Bohemians on the high road, their enemies on the wooded hills, neither seeing the other clearly through the damp November mists. On the evening of the 7th, Anhalt halted within a few miles of Prague, and the King, after he had ridden along the lines exhorting his troops not to desert his own or the Bohemian cause, hastened into the city to implore the Estates for money to pay the army. He had not gone long before Anhalt struck camp and moved under cover of darkness to the top of the White Hill, a broad eminence scarred with chalk pits, divided by a small stream from the advancing enemy and overlooking the undefended city. It was one o’clock before Anhalt reached the summit. He had told the King that there was no likelihood of a battle and, since he let his men sleep where they halted without giving any orders for the morning, he apparently did not expect one.

  Meanwhile Bethlen Gabor’s undisciplined troops were plundering the countryside, so that here and there a light from a burning farmhouse lit up a segment of the hilly, wooded country. In one of these flashes the Catholic sentries saw the Bohemian army straggling forward toward the White Hill. At once the word was given and at midnight Maximilian and Bucquoy were in pursuit.

  The misty day had scarcely broken on November 8th when a band of Bethlen Gabor’s troops galloped into the Bohemian camp. Some of Tilly’s men, reconnoitering in the dawn, had dislodged them from an outpost, and before Anhalt had altogether grasped their proximity, the enemy crossed the stream and, moving warily in the shelter of the steep incline which protected them from Anhalt’s guns, took their stand about a quarter of a mile from the Bohemian lines.

  It was still misty, and Anhalt calculated that they would not attack until it grew clearer, for the rising ground was against them and they could have no certain knowledge of the numbers or positions of the Bohemian army. Between seven and eight o’clock he hastily drew up his troops across the brow of the hill, covering a front nearly a mile long. Later, when he was explaining away his defeat, he estimated his numbers at fifteen thousand, and the enemy at forty thousand. His estimate of his own forces was probably fairly exact, but he doubled the number of his enemies.

  On the extreme right of Anhalt’s line lay a pleasure garden called the ‘Star’, before the walls of which some hasty breastworks were thrown up; to the extreme left the hill sloped steeply away over the sodden ploughland. Anhalt placed the cavalry on the wings, the foot and cannon in the centre, but so great was his fear of mutiny that he divided up several regiments, and here and there set contingents of German professional cavalry among the conscripted Bohemian foo
t soldiers. The bulk of the Germans were, however, on the left, the Bohemians on the right, and the King’s own banner, yellow velvet with a green cross and the words ‘Diverti nescio’, was in the centre. Bethlen Gabor’s unruly Hungarians, who had at last come to rest below the ‘Star’, were ordered to move across the hill to a similar position on the left, whence they could attack the flank of the enemy.

  The Catholic forces were disposed across the lower slope of the hill: Maximilian’s troops under Tilly on the left facing the Bohemians, Bucquoy’s on the right over against the Germans, and the foot in two separate detachments in the centre, backed by small reserves of cavalry. Bucquoy, who had been seriously wounded a few days before and was unable to take command, was unwilling to risk an engagement, seeing that the Bohemians had the advantage of the ground. He wanted to bring them down from the heights by outflanking the hill and threatening Prague. Maximilian, on the other hand, was determined to stake everything on a battle, and urged Tilly to charge the Bohemians at the ‘Star’, in order to test their resistance. They stood their ground and Tilly fell back, but Maximillian remained unconvinced. The mist was by now clearing and a council of war was hastily called. Maximilian still pressed for action and Bucquoy’s unwilling lieutenants at length yielded. The leaders then heard the ‘Salve Regina’, gave the holy name of ‘Sancta Maria’ as the word for the day, and made ready for the attack.

  This long delay convinced Anhalt that the enemy, holding the worst position, would draw off without fighting. He was taken completely unawares when Tilly, supported by a steady bombardment from the artillery in the centre, suddenly charged up the hill. At first the Bohemians stood to their posts, and on the right wing, where Anhalt’s valiant son was in command, all but forced Tilly to give way. Meanwhile the imperialists on the right seconded Tilly’s charge, and the infantry in the centre, gaining the plateau at the top of the hill under cover of the guns, engaged the Bohemian centre. Ill-armed and mutinous, the centre soon gave ground, two standards were taken, the lines broke and the officers tried in vain to drive their men back to their posts at the sword’s point.

  At this moment Bucquoy struggled from his sick bed, called for his horse and, wounded as he was, led the imperialist reserves to the support of the main body. On the Bohemian right wing young Anhalt, twice wounded, went down among a circle of enemies, while his soldiers took panic, and fled breaking the ranks behind them. On the extreme left the Hungarians, thrown into disorder by Tilly’s first charge, were even now streaming across the Moldau in full flight. Unsupported, the troops on the Bohemian left broke in hopeless panic, scattering towards Prague, and Anhalt, hoarse with his efforts to rally his men—Alexander, Caesar, or Charlemagne, he explained later, could have done no more—rode after them. The King’s great banner, a hundred standards and all the cannon were taken, and on the brow of the hill only the Moravian life-guard stood to their places about the walls of the ‘Star’, not a man surrendering.

  In Prague the King and Queen sat at dinner with the two English ambassadors. Both were in good spirits and Frederick asserted confidently that there would be no fighting; the enemy were too weak and would soon draw off. He had been told so, and he was in the habit of believing what he was told. After dinner, nevertheless, he thought he would ride out to see his gallant soldiers. As he passed the city gate he met the first fugitives from the battle, and while he vainly inquired the cause of their panic Anhalt himself came up, incoherent and dishevelled. This was the first that the King knew of the battle which he had lost.[90]

  Anhalt, so fluent once in council, had but one solution to offer—the king must fly at once. Frederick made a last effort to redeem his shattered fortune; ignoring Anhalt’s council of despair, he moved his wife and children rapidly across the Moldau—so rapidly that the youngest prince was all but forgotten and the Queen’s frivolous books were left flying about in her rooms to scandalize the piety of the conquerors.[91] Fortunately someone had the wit to lay hands on some of the Crown jewels; they were to be the chief source of the King’s diminishing income for many years to come. In the new town across the river Frederick called a council to discuss the situation. Neither the King nor the Queen—‘our blessed undaunted lady’ as the English ambassador called her—showed any sign of fear, and if they decided to leave their capital, it was not they who abandoned their subjects but their subjects who abandoned them.

  Confusion reigned in Prague, and the people closed the gates inexorably against the flying troops.[92] Since they would not receive their defenders there was no hope of saving the town; indeed the burghers gave vent to their hatred of the foreign King who had despised their churches and disregarded their conventions. On the night after the battle Frederick’s nearest followers feared for his life, and all alike besought him to escape before the citizens delivered him to the victorious enemy as the price of their own immunity.[93] If anything was still to be done for the Bohemian cause, it could only be by joining Mansfeld, or by making a stand in Silesia. Early in the morning Frederick set out for Breslau, accompanied only by Elizabeth and some few councillors; it was not a moment too soon, for the mob had already decided to sacrifice him, and his departure was all but prevented.[94]

  Almost without a shot fired, the town had unconditionally surrendered, and Maximilian of Bavaria wrote that night to his wife from the palace where for the last year Frederick had kept his Court. The news reached Munich on November 13th,[95] on the 23rd cannon thundered the rejoicings of Vienna.[96] Churches echoed with psalms of thanksgiving and from the high pulpits under the image of Christ crucified the voices of the clergy cried for vengeance.

  At Breslau Frederick sought to retrieve his fortune; he called the Estates of Silesia to help him[97] and appealed to the Union.[98] He had still Mansfeld’s troops at Pilsen if he could raise money to re-engage them; Bethlen Gabor and his army were expected from Hungary. But money was not to be had. Mansfeld made no movement and Bethlen Gabor collected his plunder and marched for safety and Transylvania.

  Frederick snatched despairingly at straws; he tried first to make terms with the invading Elector of Saxony, and next to organize resistance in Moravia, but on December 20th news came that Moravia too had yielded. Frederick dared not wait to fall with his wife and children into the hands of his encircling enemies; dismissing the few loyalists who remained with him, he slipped away towards Brandenburg between the nearing fronts of the Saxon and Bavarian armies, leaving the Silesians to throw themselves on the mercy of the conquerors.[99]

  Subjects and friends alike deserted the fugitive. Thurn’s eldest son had joined the victors on the morrow of the battle with three thousand men,[100] and Anhalt fled to Sweden from whence he wrote requesting the Emperor’s pardon on the grounds that he had been led astray by his master.[101] Catholic and Protestant pamphleteers did not spare the defeated. A post boy was represented seeking high and low over Germany for ‘a young man with a wife and children who was a King last winter’, and he was familiarly referred to as ‘faithless Fritz’ or the King of Hearts, the most worthless King of the pack, a title which the chivalrous later adapted for his wife and endowed with a prettier meaning.[102]

  Meanwhile in Prague, on the afternoon following the battle, the Duke of Bavaria had received in Ferdinand’s name the submission of the Bohemian Directorate. At a little distance his confessor watched with an overflowing heart the spectacle of heresy defeated; he could not hear the broken words of the Bohemians, nor the Duke’s low-spoken answer, but he saw that ‘the words of His Excellency whatever they were drew tears from the Directors’.[103]

  There was no mercy for the conquered. For a week after the battle the gates of the city were closed and the troops given licence to take what they would. Theoretically the rebels only were to suffer, but the soldiery could not conduct a political catechism on every doorstep in Prague, nor did they see why they should. Walloon, French and German, Pole, Cossack and Irish,[104] the mercenaries cared nothing for the niceties of policy, and it was not every day nor
every year that a capital city and one of the richest in Europe was laid open to them.

  Eight wagon-loads of King Frederick’s household stuffs were found blocking the Hradschin gates, on which the soldiers fell with undiscriminating greed, scattering silks and jewellery, firearms, and swords upon the ground. Among it all a Walloon picked up a finely wrought pendant of St George on a pale blue ribbon; he took it to the Duke of Bavaria and got a thousand talers for his pains. It was the insignia of the Garter belonging to the defeated King. Henceforward he appeared in the crude caricatures of his enemies with his garterless stockings hanging about his ankles.[105]

  The sack was not yet over when Maximilian, taking the finest horses in Frederick’s stable as his share of the booty, left again for Munich.[106] Early on the morning of Saint Catherine’s Day he rode into his capital where his subjects crowded the streets to welcome him. At the doors of the great church he dismounted, received the blessing of the Bishop of Freising and went in to give thanks to God while the choir joyfully sang: ‘Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.’[107] Maximilian had much to be thankful for; he was the only Prince in Germany who could afford the war which had just been waged, and for his services the Emperor already owed him three million gulden, against which he now held Upper Austria in pledge.

  In Vienna Ferdinand rode bare-headed to give thanks to the Blessed Virgin, and commanded a crown of pure silver costing ten thousand florins to be made, that he might himself offer it at her shrine at Mariazell in his own Styria. Another, even more splendid, he sent to the Church of Santa Maria della Scala at Rome.[108] With such shining gifts he might express a gratitude acceptable to Heaven; Spain and Bavaria would not be so easily satisfied.

  6.

  Bohemian resistance had collapsed at the battle of the White Hill, and no Protestant power came forward to save the defeated. The war was over: Frederick had but to ask pardon, the Spaniards to withdraw from the Palatinate, Mansfeld to dissolve his army and Ferdinand to pay his debts—four simple postulates that could not be fulfilled.