The Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648. Gardiner Samuel Rawson
the most disciplined army was often guilty of excesses from which in our days the most depraved outcasts would shrink. The soldiers, engaged merely for as long a time as they happened to be wanted, passed from side to side as the prospect of pay or booty allured them. No tie of nationality bound the mercenary to the standard under which accident had placed him. He had sold himself to his hirer for the time being, and he sought his recompense in the gratification of every evil passion of which human nature in its deepest degradation is capable.
§ 7. Soldiers of the Thirty Years' War.
Yet, even in this terrible war, there was a difference between one army and another. In an enemy's country all plundered alike. Tilly's Bavarians had been guilty of horrible excesses in Bohemia. But a commander like Tilly, who could pay his soldiers, and could inspire them with confidence in his generalship, had it in his power to preserve some sort of discipline; and if, as Tilly once told a complaining official, his men were not nuns, they were at all events able to refrain on occasion from outrageous villany. A commander, like Mansfeld, who could not pay his soldiers, must, of necessity, plunder wherever he was. His movements would not be governed by military or political reasons. As soon as his men had eaten up one part of the country they must go to another, if they were not to die of starvation. They obeyed, like the elements, a law of their own, quite independent of the wishes or needs of the sovereign whose interests they were supposed to serve.
§ 8. Mansfeld takes the offensive.
Before the end of May the breaking up of the army of the Union sent fresh swarms of recruits to Mansfeld's camp. He was soon at the head of a force of 16,000 men in the Upper Palatinate. The inhabitants suffered terribly, but he was strong enough to maintain his position for a time. Nor was he content with standing on the defensive. He seized a post within the frontiers of Bohemia, and threatened to harry the lands of the Bishop of Bamberg and Würzburg if he did not withdraw his troops from the army of the League. He then fell upon Leuchtenberg, and carried off the Landgrave a prisoner to his camp.
§ 9. A truce impossible for him.
The first attack of the Bavarians failed entirely. Bethlen Gabor, too, was again moving in Hungary, had slain Bucquoi, and was driving the Emperor's army before him. Under these circumstances, even Ferdinand seems to have hesitated, and to have doubted whether he had not better accept the English offer of mediation. Yet such was the character of Mansfeld's army that it made mediation impossible. It must attack somebody in order to exist.
§ 10. Vere in the Lower Palatinate.
Yet it was in the Lower, not in the Upper, Palatinate that the first blow was struck. Sir Horace Vere, who had gone out the year before, with a regiment of English volunteers, was now in command for Frederick. But Frederick had neither money nor provisions to give him, and the supplies of the Palatinate were almost exhausted. The existing truce had been prolonged by the Spaniards. But the lands of the Bishop of Spires lay temptingly near. Salving his conscience by issuing the strictest orders against pillage, he quartered some of his men upon them.
§ 11. War recommenced in the Lower Palatinate.
The whole Catholic party was roused to indignation. Cordova, left in command of the Spanish troops after Spinola's return to Brussels, declared the truce to have been broken, and commenced operations against Vere.
§ 12. Mansfeld driven from the Upper Palatinate.
By this time Mansfeld's power of defending the Upper Palatinate was at an end. The magistrates of the towns were sick of his presence, and preferred coming to terms with Maximilian to submitting any longer to the extortions of their master's army. Mansfeld, seeing how matters stood, offered to sell himself and his troops to the Emperor. But he had no real intention of carrying out the bargain. On October 10 he signed an engagement to disband his forces. Before the next sun arose he had slipped away, and was in full march for Heidelberg.
Tilly followed hard upon his heels. But Mansfeld did not stop to fight him. Throwing himself upon Alsace, he seized upon Hagenau, and converted it into a place of strength.
Section III. —Frederick's Allies
§ 1. Proposal to take Mansfeld into English pay.
The winter was coming on, and there would be time for negotiations before another blow was struck. But to give negotiations a chance it was necessary that Mansfeld's army should be fed, in order that he might be able to keep quiet while the diplomatists were disputing. James, therefore, wisely proposed to provide a sum of money for this purpose. But a quarrel with the House of Commons hurried on a dissolution, and he was unable to raise money sufficient for the purpose without a grant from Parliament.
§ 2. England and Spain.
James, poor and helpless, was thus compelled to fall back upon the friendship of Spain, a friendship which he hoped to knit more closely by a marriage between his son, the Prince of Wales, and a Spanish Infanta. The Spanish Government was anxious, if possible, to avoid an extension of the war in Germany. Though all the riches of the Indies were at its disposal, that government was miserably poor. In a land where industry, the source of wealth, was held in dishonour, all the gold in the world was thrown away. Scarcely able to pay the armies she maintained in time of peace, Spain had now again to find money for the war in the Netherlands. In 1621 the twelve years' truce with the Dutch had come to an end, and Spinola's armies in Brabant and Flanders could not live, like Mansfeld's at the expense of the country, for fear of throwing the whole of the obedient provinces, as they were called, into the enemies' hands. If possible, therefore, that yawning gulf of the German war, which threatened to swallow up so many millions of ducats, must be closed. And yet how was it to be done? The great difficulty in the way of peace did not lie in Frederick's pretensions. They could easily be swept aside. The great difficulty lay in this – that the Catholics, having already the institutions of the Empire in their hands, were now also in possession of a successful army. How, under such circumstances, was Protestantism, with which so many temporal interests were bound up, to feel itself secure? And without giving security to Protestantism, how could a permanent peace be obtained?
§ 3. Spanish plans.
To this problem the Spanish ministers did not care to address themselves. They thought that it would be enough to satisfy personal interests. They offered James a larger portion with the Infanta than any other sovereign in Europe would have given. They opposed tooth and nail the project for transferring the Electorate to Maximilian, as likely to lead to endless war. But into the heart of the great question they dared not go, tied and bound as they were by their devotion to the Church. Could not Frederick and James, they asked, be bought off by the assurance of the Palatinate to Frederick's heirs, on the simple condition of his delivering up his eldest son to be educated at Vienna? Though they said nothing whatever about any change in the boy's religion, they undoubtedly hoped that he would there learn to become a good Catholic.
§ 4. Frederick not likely to accede to them.
Such a policy was hopeless from the beginning. Frederick had many faults. He was shallow and obstinate. But he really did believe in his religion as firmly as any Spaniard in Madrid believed in his; and it was certain that he would never expose his children to the allurements of the Jesuits of Vienna.
§ 5. A conference to be held at Brussels.
It was settled that a conference should be held at Brussels, the capital of the Spanish Netherlands, first to arrange terms for a suspension of arms, and then to prepare the way for a general peace. The Spanish plan of pacification was not yet announced. But Frederick can hardly be blamed for suspecting that no good would come from diplomacy, or for discerning that a few regiments on his side would weigh more heavily in his favour than a million of words.
§ 6. Where was Frederick to expect help?
The only question for him to decide was the quarter in which he should seek for strength. His weakness had hitherto arisen from his confidence in physical strength alone. To get together as many thousand men as possible and to launch them at the enemy had been his only policy, and he had done nothing to conciliate the order-loving portion of the population. The cities stood aloof from his