In February Frederick of Bohemia made his appearance at Frankfort and was received by the King with exaggerated respect. To the indignation of the constitutional party, Gustavus gave him the precedence not of an Elector but of a reigning monarch, and insisted on the perpetual use of all his titles without omission.[125] This was fair treatment indeed, but even the dispossessed prince shortly began to suspect his ally’s intentions. He confessed to the Brandenburg ambassador that he saw no further cause for war except that ‘the King of Sweden was hard to content’,[126] and when later he found that Gustavus intended to restore him to the Palatinate as a vassal of the Swedish Crown, he gathered the rags of his self-respect about him and emphatically refused.[127] A welcome ally, the King was an unwelcome master. From Frederick of Bohemia to Gustavus of Sweden, this attitude was doubtless in practice absurd; in theory it was the only possible course for a loyal German prince.
The son-in-law of John George, the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, suffered most. He had acted during the summer as a go-between for the Emperor and his father-in-law, and when in the autumn he had been forced to ally himself with Gustavus, he continued to use all his petty influence to guide the conqueror towards peace.[128] The King suspected him of being in imperial pay, and when the prince complained of the bad discipline of the soldiers quartered at Rüsselsheim, asked him scornfully if he was thinking of selling it to the Emperor. Indeed he referred to him mockingly in public as ‘peacemaker in ordinary to the Holy Roman Empire’.[129]
The atmosphere at Frankfort was not improved by an after-dinner conversation on February 25th 1632. Gustavus had undertaken to fight for the Germans out of pure generosity, he pointed out. ‘Let (the Emperor) not inquire after me’, he said, ‘and I shall not inquire after him’, and then to the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, ‘Your Highness can tell him so, for I know you are a good imperialist’. The Landgrave opened his mouth to protest but the King cut him short: ‘He who gets thirty thousand taler reward must be a good imperialist’, he stated scornfully. White with anger, the prince relapsed into silence,[130] while Gustavus continued to enlarge on the necessity of further war to a bewildered and irritated audience.
7.
On March 2nd 1632, the King again took the field; leaving Bernard of Saxe-Weimar to guard the Rhine, he marched to join Marshal Horn at Schweinfurt, and thence to Nuremberg for a general rendezvous of his forces. Here he was received with jubilation by the citizens and overwhelmed with gifts from the municipality;[131] after assembling forty thousand men he made ready to march south. His objective was Augsburg and, inevitably, Bavaria.
Torn between his trust in Richelieu and his fear of Gustavus, Maximilian had played into the King’s hands. The French agent had persuaded him to assert his neutrality, but Maximilian’s terrors were so great that he had never made any attempt to dissociate himself from Tilly’s army, and in March he had written to Ferdinand imploring him to recall Wallenstein.[132] Terror lest he should lose his lands drove him both to forgo all he had once gained by the dismissal of the general and to renounce his neutrality. On April 1st he joined Tilly and his army at Ingolstadt, giving Gustavus all the justification he wanted for his march into Bavaria.
Reinforced by five thousand new troops which Wallenstein after long refusal had grudgingly agreed to send him, Tilly fell back eastwards, meaning to hold the line of the river Lech. On April 7th Gustavus crossed the Danube at Donauwörth and marched eastwards, laying the land waste about him so that no second army could find sustenance. His troops even rooted up the young corn to feed their horses and left the spring fields desolate.[133] All this time Wallenstein lay on the Bohemian border with an army of twenty thousand men,[134] which he had raised but would not lead. For weeks the government at Vienna besought him to move, the Emperor and the Emperor’s son, the proud young Archduke Ferdinand, imploring him only to name his terms and bring his army to save them.[135] When the King of Sweden crossed the Danube, he had still taken no decision. On April 14th Gustavus reached the Lech, on the far side of which Tilly was encamped upon rising wooded ground. Reconnoitring, he saw sentries on the opposite bank who, not recognizing him, hailed him with the friendly insolence of their kind. ‘Where’s your King?’ they called. ‘Nearer than you think,’ shouted Gustavus and cantered off.[136] In the night he constructed a bridge of boats, and in the morning sent three hundred picked Finnish troops across the river under Tilly’s ceaseless fire, to throw up earthworks for his batteries. In the shelter of these the rest of the army crossed, Tilly not daring to risk his position by a charge. Once over, the King stormed the hill; his tactics were good and his luck better, for Tilly, shot in the leg at the outset, was carried to the rear and his second, Aldringer, fell only a few minutes later unconscious, with a fractured skull. Failing these, Maximilian saved what was left of the army by immediate retreat. The baggage and the artillery for the most part remained on the field, and the army itself would not have got so clean away had not the winds turned imperialist and blocked the roads with fallen trees in the stormy night that followed.[137]
Two hundred and fifty miles away at Göllersdorf in Austria, Wallenstein had at last come to terms with the Emperor. What those terms were will probably never be known. No untainted evidence exists. But this much is clear, that rumour credited Wallenstein with having stipulated not only for absolute control in the army, but for absolute control of all peace negotiations and the right to conclude treaties when and where he would, for the exclusion of the Emperor’s son from any part in the command, and of Spain from any influence upon it, while he, Wallenstein, was to receive as his reward a part of the Hapsburg lands and the title of Elector—Bohemia and the Electorate of Brandenburg or the Palatinate. This was mostly rumour with a little leakage of inside information.[138]
Baldly, whatever the terms of his recall, Wallenstein came back with a practical power which was unquestioned; he had proved beyond doubt that he alone could support and pay the army, and in the intervening time he had brought all his previous arrangements to such perfection that he could turn on or turn off the supplies at will. His estate of Friedland in particular, and the sphere of his influence in general, had become one vast magazine for supplying food, clothing, and stores. Munition factories had sprung up, mills were grinding night and day, bakers baking hundreds of thousands of loaves, brewers brewing, weavers weaving, while his officials everywhere were collecting and bringing in the taxes for him to pay away in wages for his army, Friedland was covered over by a network of clearing houses and roads down which supplies were transported to the troops, or carried to huge store-houses for any sudden emergency.[139] Wallenstein, first perhaps among European rulers, had conceived of a state organized exclusively for war.
His return still did not mean an immediate check to the King of Sweden, for Bohemia had first to be cleared of the Saxons. Wallenstein took his time; holding the absolute control of the situation on the Catholic side, he saw—as he had always seen—that he could undermine the King’s position best by suborning John George. Consequently, instead of attacking the Saxons he made it possible for them to withdraw unmolested over the border to the accompaniment of polite suggestions of alliance.[140] This did not separate John George from the King but it accomplished half Wallenstein’s intention, for Gustavus had counted on the Saxon army to hold Bohemia, and its withdrawal filled him with doubts of his ally’s loyalty, which before the end of the year lured him to his death.
For the moment the King’s triumphal progress went on. On April 24th he entered Augsburg among the plaudits of the Protestant citizens and addressed the people in the warmest terms from the balcony of the Fuggers’ house in the wine market; he demanded, however, an oath of loyalty from the leading citizens and a monthly subsidy of thirty thousand taler.[141] That evening he gave a banquet and ball at which, throwing off the dignity of the King, he engaged, according to a local legend, in a pleasantly human scramble for a kiss with a pretty and coy Augsburgerin.[142]
Five days later he arrived
outside the strongly fortified city of Ingolstadt where, among the small but loyal garrison, the wounded Tilly lay dying. On his sick-bed, hearing the news of Wallenstein’s appointment, he had the strength of body and character left to write a letter of good wishes to the man who, having ruined him, now stepped in over his dying body to rescue the imperial cause.[143] His mind rested much on God and the Holy Patroness to whom he had dedicated his arid and blameless life, but he forgot neither his men nor his duties, drew up a will leaving sixty thousand talers to the veteran regiments of the League army, and died, it was said, with the word ‘Regensburg’ on his lips.[144] The defence of that keypoint on the Danube had in his last moments driven all thoughts of Heaven or Hell from the failing mind of the old soldier.
Outside, in the Swedish camp, Gustavus displayed himself with his usual recklessness and had his horse killed under him. He was unimpressed: earlier, when he had been entreated to take more care for his person, he had cogently asked what was the use of a King in a box?[145] His self-confidence was equally apparent in an interview with the French agent from Munich who sought, once again, to secure a guarantee of neutrality for Maximilian. The Frenchman began badly by explaining that the Elector knew nothing of the clash of arms between Tilly and the Swedish King. In that case, Gustavus replied, why had Tilly not been arrested and hanged? The Frenchman, attempting to redeem a tactical error, suggested suavely that there was much to be said for the Elector. Gustavus answered that there was much to be said for lice which were faithful, constant, clinging creatures. This was too much for the French agent, whose indignant protest was, however, cut short by a volley of threats. Maximilian should have his neutrality if he laid down arms at once without further question, stormed the King; otherwise Bavaria should be burnt from end to end, so that the Elector could distinguish his enemies from his friends. Truculent in his turn, the Frenchman reminded Gustavus of Richelieu’s promise to help Maximilian should he be attacked. Trembling with rage, the King declared that he would fight forty thousand Frenchmen should they come. God was with him. To this unanswerable asseveration the French agent had no rejoinder, and the interview came to an end.[146]
On May 3rd the King marched on: he had not the time to spare for a long siege and decided to risk leaving Ingolstadt unreduced. While Marshal Horn pursued the remnants of Tilly’s battered troops towards Regensburg, wasting as he went,[147] the King made for Bavaria, intending by this movement to draw Wallenstein out of Bohemia. Maximilian, now in personal command of his wrecked army, faced a cruel alternative. Either he could throw his army into Munich and save his capital, thereby abandoning Regensburg, which was not his own town, and allowing Horn to cut the line of communication between him and Wallenstein, or he could sacrifice his own Bavaria, stay where he was and maintain the line unbroken. There is no doubt which was wiser for the imperial cause, but the temptation must have been sharp, for Maximilian had given forty years of his life to the welfare of Bavaria. Nevertheless, with one of those flashes of self-abnegation which here and there illumine his career of dynastic egoism, he chose to let the army hold Regensburg. He himself descended on Munich, garrisoned it with two thousand picked cavalry, collected his more important papers and treasury and fled to Salzburg.[148]
He was not a moment too soon. By mid-May the King of Sweden was at the gates; the troops, realizing that resistance was useless, retreated over the Isar, blowing up the bridges, and the citizens and clergy bought immunity from the conqueror with the gigantic sum of a quarter of a million talers.[149]
After the passage of the Lech they had said it would take the King three weeks to reach Vienna.[150] But that had been in April, and at the end of May he was still in Bavaria. John George was holding him back. Frankly, the information from Bohemia was puzzling, contradictory and suspicious. Count Thurn, the veteran rebel, in command of the small Swedish contingent that had accompanied the Saxons, had been insinuating against Arnim’s loyalty all the year.[151] Arnim had made no effort to prevent Wallenstein’s recruiting, he had openly said that he would cease to fight if peace were not made by May,[152] and last of all he had retreated without a shot fired, back into Silesia. On May 25th Wallenstein reoccupied Prague, and with Wallenstein in Prague and Arnim apparently unwilling to fall on his rear, Gustavus could not march on Vienna. It would put him in just the position he had avoided in the previous year; some separate treaty between John George and Ferdinand might leave him stranded in Austria. The King hesitated; in spite of Thurn’s malice, Gustavus had a better opinion of Arnim than of John George and tried to solve the problem by suborning the general to abandon the Electoral service for his own.[153] Arnim would not be bribed; on June 7th he withdrew the last of his troops from Bohemia, and Gustavus sent an envoy post haste to Dresden to inquire what John George was about.[154]
In the circumstances the King had to make certain of his political position in Germany. On June 20th he again entered Nuremberg and began to organize himself a party. There, in a busy forty-eight hours, he revealed his plan for Germany. The terms of the only treaty he would make with the Emperor comprised the toleration of the Protestant religion everywhere, the restoration of all Protestant lands, the north coast from the Vistula to the Elbe for Sweden, a seizure of land which was to be made good to the Elector of Brandenburg by the gift of Silesia. Chiefly, the Protestant princes were to form a united Corpus Evangelicorum, with a strong standing army under an elected president, which should have full and equal recognition within the Empire and at the Diet.
The city of Nuremberg declared itself at once ready to join the Corpus, but for the moment the King had to shelve politics again, for Wallenstein had at last crossed the Bohemian frontier and was marching to join Maximilian. The King attempted to separate them, but Wallenstein evaded him and at Schwabach on July 11th came up in person with Maximilian. Dismounting from their horses, the allies courteously embraced one another, neither the resentment of the one nor the mortification of the other betraying itself. Momentarily,[155] it seemed that the past was forgotten and both would work in unison to redeem the fallen fortunes of the Church and the imperial dynasty.
The King retreated again to Fürth on the outskirts of Nuremberg. Wallenstein followed and built himself a strong encampment on a long ridge overlooking the little river Rednitz and threatening Gustavus’s position. On July 27th he had information that the King, outnumbered, and too weak to risk moving from his camp, had sent for almost the whole of his scattered armies from south and western Germany. There was, Wallenstein calculated, no fodder for horse or man, and the King would have to fight or starve. If he starved, that was an end of his army; if he fought, that too, in the relative positions of the troops, would be death.[156] Meanwhile Wallenstein was feeding his men from his own supplies; the communications were not faultless, and the troops, particularly in Maximilian’s army, were dying fast. But there was this difference between Wallenstein and Gustavus: Wallenstein could afford to lose one army and raise another, Gustavus could not. Maximilian could not afford it either; he said as much, but fruitlessly.[157] Wallenstein had never been sensitive to the wants of the League army.
On August 16th the King’s reinforcements came up, and at last, on September 3rd and 4th, he attacked the enemy position. All in vain, for on the uneven ground, thick with scrub, he could not bring his cavalry into action and he had to withdraw with a loss heavy in men, but heavier in reputation.[158] Bad discipline among his troops, particularly those recruited in Germany, was robbing him of his previous popularity, and even his personal intervention was unsuccessful. Stolen cattle had been traced to some German officers, and the King burst out in almost tearful rage. ‘God be my witness, you yourselves are the destroyers, wasters, and spoilers of your fatherland’, he stormed, ‘my heart sickens when I look upon one of you . . .’[159] It was rumoured that his allies were slipping from him. ‘His power is not in his own subjects but in strangers; not in his money but in theirs; not in their goodwill but in mere necessity as things now stand between him and
them; therefore if the necessity be not so urgent as it is . . . the money and the power and the assistance which it yieldeth unto him will fall from him’; so predicted a Scottish divine, shrewdly watching the passage of events. ‘He is not well settled yet in Germany’, he wrote, ‘he is far from home.’[160]
In September at Nuremberg the King attempted to right this last evil. He offered peace terms to Wallenstein, in which the main points of this scheme for establishing a strong Protestant party were clearly outlined; he demanded that all land ever occupied by Protestants should remain Protestant, that the Edict of Restitution should be unconditionally withdrawn and toleration be granted in every State of the Empire including the imperial lands, that the dispossessed should be reinstated, that Wallenstein should take Franconia in place of Mecklenburg, that Maximilian be given Upper Austria in exchange for the Palatinate, that he himself should have Pomerania, and the Elector of Brandenburg be given Magdeburg and Halberstadt in its place.[161] These terms showed clearly the scope of the King’s plans. The Church and the Hapsburg dynasty were to be ruthlessly sacrificed, and an Empire, in which the constitutional secular princes predominated, was to be in fact controlled by the Corpus Evangelicorum and its president, the King of Sweden. The marriage of his only daughter Christina to the heir of Brandenburg would create a dynastic territorial block in northern Europe which would outweight the cracking power of the Hapsburg and shift the balance of the whole continent.
The Thirty Years War Page 35
