184

CHARACTER OF WALLENSTEIN.

[CHAP. XXXII. covered; his horse was killed on the spot, he himself lay three days insensible, and it was several weeks before he entirely recovered. The campaign went in favour of Tilly, who took Hameln and Minden, and defeated a large body of Danes near Hanover. He had appealed to the Emperor for assistance against the King of Denmark; and this was the occasion of bringing the renowned Wallenstein into the field.

Wallenstein, for the loyalty and valour he had displayed during the Bohemian revolt, had been rewarded by Ferdinand II. with the lordship of Friedland and other confiscated domains of the insurgent Protestant nobles, and had been raised successively to the dignities of Count of the Empire, Prince, and, a little after, Duke of Friedland. The appearance and habits of this celebrated leader were calculated to render still more remarkable his military talents and his enormous power. In person he was tall and lank; the oval of his face was strongly delineated by his black hair, brushed up from his forehead and hanging down on each side in curly locks, and by his black beard and moustache; his complexion was sallow, his nose short, but hawked, his forehead high and commanding. His eyes were small and black, but penetrating and full of fire, and the awe they inspired was enhanced by dark eyebrows, on which hung a frown of threatening severity. The whole expression of his countenance was cold and repulsive; his demeanour haughty but dignified. With these traits his habits corresponded. Of few words and still fewer smiles, indefatigably employed in a retreat whose tranquillity was secured by sentinels planted to enjoin silence on all who approached-for even the clink of spurs was offensive to him-Wallenstein's whole appearance was calculated to throw around him a mysterious interest, increased by his known addiction to astrology.1

At the time of Tilly's application for aid, Wallenstein, who had always been a warm supporter of the Emperor and of despotism, was a member of the Imperial Council of War; and he offered to raise at his own expense an army of 20,000 men for the Emperor, the troops to be supported by requisitions wherever they were cantoned. His offer having been accepted, a hundred patents of colonelcies were sold by Wallenstein to the greater nobles, on condition of their providing officers and men. These colonels in turn sold patents to their captains, the captains to their subalterns,

1 For his character, see Hurter, Zur Gesch. Wallensteins, Kap. 20.

2 The old story, now discredited, was that Wallenstein offered to raise 50,000

men, assigning the apparently paradoxies!

reason that he could maintain an army of that force, but not one of 20,000 men. Khevenhiller, t. x. p. 803.

CHAP. XXXII.]

HE RAISES AN ARMY.

185

without any reference to the Imperial Government; and thus was created an army, which, like those of the Italian condottieri, looked up to Wallenstein as their lord and proprietor. The troops were at first directed to be cantoned in Franconia and Suabia, in order that they might live at free quarters upon the inhabitants; and on marching through Nuremberg, Wallenstein compelled. that town to contribute 100,000 gulden, although it had done nothing whatever to incur the displeasure of the Emperor.

Wallenstein, with an army that went on daily increasing, marched, in the autumn, into the Bishoprics of Halberstadt and Magdeburg; while Tilly, as already related, was taking place after place in Westphalia and Lower Saxony. It was fortunate for the Protestant cause that a mutual jealousy subsisted between Tilly and Wallenstein; hence, as neither would recognize the other as his superior, both armies acted without any concerted plan. At the instance of the Protestants a peace congress was held at Brunswick in the winter; but though Maximilian of Bavaria and his general were not indisposed to an accommodation, Wallenstein, who had formed the project of obtaining a principality for himself, rejected it with brutality. When the campaign opened in the spring of 1626, Wallenstein, instead of joining Tilly, marched eastward. The Protestants, however, committed errors on their side. Count Mansfeld, instead of forming a junction with Christian IV., who had now again taken the field, and thus opposing their united forces to Tilly, resolved to march into Bohemia, excite the inhabitants to rise, and call Bethlem Gabor again into the field; but after two abortive attempts on the bridge of Dessau, Mansfeld was forced to retreat before Wallenstein (April 25th), and his army was dispersed with the exception of about 5,000 men, with whom he entered the March of Brandenburg. By the aid of French subsidies, however, with which he levied men in Mecklenburg, and being joined by 1,000 Scots, 2,000 Danes, and 5,000 men under John Ernest of Saxe-Weimar, he increased his army to about 20,000 men, with whom he marched through Frankfort-on-Oder, Crossen, Glogau, Breslau, Oppeln, Ratibor, to Jablunka, where Bethlem Gabor had promised to meet him. But the fickle Transylvanian Prince again proved faithless, and made peace with the Emperor; Mansfeld on the approach of Wallenstein, who had followed him through Lusatia into Silesia, was compelled to disband his army; part of his troops he assigned to John Ernest of Saxe-Weimar, and he himself proceeded into Dalmatia, intending by a secure, though

186

CAMPAIGN OF 1626.

[CHAP. XXXII. circuitous way, to reach again the scene of action; but he fell sick and died in that country at the age of forty-five.

Mansfeld's movement had, however, diverted Wallenstein and his troops from taking part against Christian IV., when the Danish King was on the point of fighting a decisive action with Tilly. Early in 1626, Christian had fixed his head-quarters a: Wolfenbüttel, whence his forces were extended on one side into Brandenburg, while another portion was posted in the Bishoprics of Osnabrück and Münster. He unfortunately lost the services of Prince Christian of Brunswick, who died in May, just at the moment when his reckless valour might have been useful. Among the Danish army, however, appeared Duke Bernhard of SaxeWeimar, who was afterwards to play so distinguished a part in the Thirty Years' War. Tilly was detained some months in besieging Münden, which he at last took after a murderous assault, and the loss of many men (June 9th), when the greater part of the garrison were massacred. Tilly next laid siege to Göttingen, which detained him till the 11th of August. He was soon after driven from that place as well as from Nordheim; but by forming a junction with the troops left by Wallenstein on the Elbe, he prevented the King of Denmark from penetrating into Thuringia, and joining the Saxon Dukes and the Landgrave Maurice of Hesse. Tilly had compelled Maurice, according to a decree of the Imperial Council, to cede the whole district of Marburg to Hesse-Darmstadt; to renounce all alliances with the Emperor's enemies; and to permit on all occasions the passage of the Imperial troops through his dominions. Christian had marched southward as far as the Eichsfeld, whence he now found himself compelled to retreat towards Wolfenbüttel; but on the march be fell in with Tilly and his army, and an action ensued near the little town of Lutter, August 27th. After a bloody battle, in which Christian, by Tilly's own account, displayed great activity and valour, the general of the League achieved a decisive victory. The Danish King nevertheless, though he had lost several thousand men, succeeded in holding Wolfenbüttel and Nordheim t the following spring, when the operations of Wallenstein gave a new turn to affairs. That commander, after the retreat of Mansfeld, had maintained and increased his army in reconquered Silesia at the expense of the unfortunate inhabitants. He himsel spent the winter at Vienna; but in the spring of 1627 he returned into Silesia, and marched with his army towards the Baltic.

CHAP. XXXII.]

CHRISTIAN IV. DEFEATED.

187

Directing his Colonel Arnim to occupy the two Mecklenburg duchies, and to summon the towns of Rostock and Wismar to admit Imperial garrisons, he himself entered Dömitz with another division of his forces. The approach of his army was announced by strange harbingers, which showed its irregular and lawless composition. Bands of gipsies of from ten to fifteen men, each provided with two long muskets, and bringing with them women on horseback with pistols at their saddle-bows, appeared simultaneously in many places; they boasted that they were in Wallenstein's pay, marched by byeways and tracks, concealed themselves in the bushes and underwood, and plundered wherever they found an opportunity.' It appears from Wallenstein's letters at this period, that he had formed the design of seizing the Mecklenburgs for himself; and the Emperor, regarding the two Dukes of Mecklenburg as rebellious vassals, abandoned their territories to that commander.

Christian IV., threatened on one side by Wallenstein, on the other by Tilly, found himself compelled to retreat into his own dominions, whither he was pursued by the united forces of the Imperialists. Tilly, after some success in Holstein, proceeded to the Lower Weser, as it was reported that the Dutch were about to send a fleet into that river; while Wallenstein advanced through Sleswick into Jutland, and compelled the King of Denmark and his army to fly into the islands. During the winter of 16271628, Tilly maintained his troops at the expense of Bremen, Brunswick, and Lünenburg, while Wallenstein cantoned his army in Brandenburg, and treated the unfortunate Elector, George William, like a conquered enemy, although he was completely submissive to the Emperor's will. Brandenburg, as well as Mecklenburg and Pomerania, were forced to make large contributions for the support of Wallenstein's army. Gustavus Adolphus, then engaged in the war with Poland, would willingly have helped his brother-in-law; but George William dreaded the Swedes even more than the troops of Wallenstein. The character and talents of Gustavus, however, filled Wallenstein with awe; and he addressed to him, though with great misgivings, propositions to enter into an alliance with the Emperor against Denmark. A project had been formed to dethrone Christian IV., and to place the Emperor, or perhaps even Wallenstein himself, on the throne of Denmark; while Schonen and Norway were to have 1 Von der Decken, Herzog Georg von Braunschweig, ap. Geijer, B. iii. S. 141.

188

AMBITIOUS SCHEMES OF WALLENSTEIN.

[CHAP. XXXII.

But these ne

been alloted to Gustavus as the price of his aid.2 gotiations had no result. Among other schemes of Wallenstein at this time was one for obtaining the command of the Baltic. He dreamt of reviving the trade and power of the Hanse towns, which had been crushed by Denmark, and of giving them a monopoly of the Spanish trade. With these thoughts he procured the Emperor to appoint him "Admiral of the Ocean and of the Baltic Sea;" and he made some preparations for the building of a fleet, which, however, he found not so easy an enterprise as the raising of an army. The same schemes also urged him to

get possession of the Baltic ports.

The designs of Ferdinand II. seemed now to be wafted on wards on a full tide of success. Not only were his arms everywhere victorious, but his civil policy also encountered no serious resisance. The tyranny and extortions of Wallenstein, who exercised an almost uncontrolled dictatorship, had indeed excited serious discontent in many of the Catholic as well as in the Protestant States; even Maximilian of Bavaria himself, when his ends had been accomplished by the transfer to him of the Upper Palatinate and the Electoral dignity, began to look with jealousy on Wallenstein's career, and to sympathize with the misery which his brutality created. An assembly of the Catholic States had been held at Würzburg in 1627 to consider these evils, and the means for their redress; but the timidity of some, the jealousy of others, and the animosity of all against the Protestants, deprived their deliberations of any result. On the other hand, at a meeting of the Electoral College held soon after at Mühlhausen (October), the policy of the Emperor entirely prevailed. Ferdinand II. was not naturally cruel, but he was bigoted to the last degree; he considered that there was no salvation out of the pale of the Roman Catholic Church; and, being led by the Jesuits, he thought that he was only acting for the welfare of his subjects in compelling them, by whatever means, to return to that faith. He had entirely abolished in his hereditary dominions the exercise of the Protestant religion, and he was now contemplating the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the Empire, and the restoring to it of those temporal principalities and other property of which it had been deprived by Protestant Princes

These negotiations were first revealed by the publication of Wallenstein's letters. See the letters to Arnim, December 13th and 20th, 1627, January 3rd and 6th, 1628, in Förster, B. i. SS. 162, 168; B. ii.

S. 10. It appears from a letter addressed to Christian IV. by Gustavus Adolphus (October 21st, 1627) that the Crown of Denmark had been offered to him. Geijer, B. iii. S. 142.