From Mecklenburg Wallenstein turned to Pomerania, where Stralsund, one of the greatest fortresses of the Empire, impeded his further progress. Wallenstein invested it with his army, and made several assaults, which were successfully repulsed. The brave inhabitants had sworn to hold out to the last and rather perish in the defence of their hearths and homes and families than surrender their city to a conqueror who showed no mercy to the vanquished. Wallenstein, on the other hand, was determined to enter the city as a conqueror. Hearing that the inhabitants would defend the city unto death, he swore that he would take it, even if it were bound with chains to Heaven, and he laid a regular siege to it. But all his efforts were in vain. The Swedes succeeded in giving succor to the beleaguered city from the seaward side, reinforcing it with troops, ammunition, and provisions. Finally, after a delay of two months and a loss of twelve thousand men, Wallenstein abandoned the project of taking the city, raised the siege, and returned to Mecklenburg. There the conquest of the strongly fortified city of Rostock consoled him to a certain extent for his failure at Stralsund.
Emboldened by the great successes of Wallenstein and the almost complete overthrow of the Protestant armies, the Emperor rather rashly undertook to reinstate the Catholic Church in all its former privileges and to compel the Protestant states to restore all the property and real estate which had been confiscated and estranged from that church during the preceding eighty years. To carry out this imperial plan the so-called Restitution Edict was promulgated,—a very unwise measure, which spread consternation and alarm throughout the Empire, and fanned the dying embers of the religious war into a new flame. Not only Protestants, but many Catholics protested against the edict, and Wallenstein himself criticised it sharply. But the Emperor would not recede from the resolution he had taken.
Wallenstein’s influence was already rapidly declining; his overthrow was near at hand. In 1630 the imperial diet of Regensburg was held. All the sovereign princes of Germany, and especially all the Electors of the Empire were present, and they made jointly a terrible onslaught on Wallenstein, whom they all hated or envied. They united their complaints against him and demanded his immediate and peremptory dismissal from the service, as a punishment for the outrages committed by his army and for the extortions and exorbitant levies which he had made from friend and foe for his own self-aggrandizement. For a long time the Emperor resisted these demands and stood up for the great general to whom he owed so much; but he was anxious to secure the votes of the Electors for his son, the King of Hungary, as heir to the imperial crown, and the dismissal of Wallenstein was to be the price for these votes. He therefore issued the decree, deposing Wallenstein from his office of generalissimo of the army. It is said that he trembled in affixing his signature to the document, and that for weeks afterwards he lived in extreme fear of the wrath of the powerful chieftain. But Wallenstein took his disgrace very coolly. The news came to him at a moment when he was with Seni, a famous astrologer, in whom he placed implicit confidence. Seni had just predicted to him, from a configuration of the stars, that he would experience a tremendous disappointment, but that this disappointment would be followed soon by his complete reinstatement in all the honors which he might be deprived of. Wallenstein took the decree of deposition as the confirmation of Seni’s prediction. Without showing much irritation, and only with an expression of regret that the Emperor had been ill-advised and had yielded to bad counsels, he left the army and withdrew to Prague, the capital of Bohemia, to live there in royal splendor and luxury.
When Wallenstein’s soldiers were informed of the dismissal of their chief, whom they idolized and regarded with an affection mingled with awe and terror, there was danger of an open revolt against the Emperor’s decree; but Wallenstein himself and some of his generals quieted their rage and suppressed all manifestations of rebellion. Thousands of soldiers and a great number of officers refused to remain in the Emperor’s service, declaring that they had enlisted only in order to serve under Wallenstein and under no other commander. More than one half of the entire army left the service, and most of the officers, at their own request, accompanied the deposed general to his new place of residence, Prague. The disgrace of the general, or rather the act of removal which, in the eyes of the German princes, was intended to disgrace him, turned out to be a triumph, greater than a victory in the field, and made his position in Germany even more conspicuous. Moreover, everybody seemed to feel that the hour of his reinstatement would soon come. And Wallenstein, on his part, neglected nothing to confirm this opinion, which flattered his vanity, and which he firmly believed would be realized, because “it was written in the stars.”
It was perhaps as a challenge to his princely enemies at the imperial court and in defiance of the Emperor himself that he established his household on a footing more becoming a reigning monarch than a private citizen. He had a secret desire to accustom the people of Bohemia to look upon him as the man who might, within a short time, be called upon to rule over them as king. Otherwise it is hardly reasonable to suppose that he would have paraded such wealth and magnificence as could not but confirm the charges preferred against him by his influential enemies,—namely, gigantic extortions and robberies of public and private moneys, and plans to satisfy an insatiable ambition. His palace had six public entrances, and he caused a hundred houses to be torn down to enlarge the vacant place surrounding it. By day and by night it was guarded by sentinels, and during the night the public streets leading to it were barred with chains, that the rest of the Duke might not be disturbed. In the hall leading to the antechamber of his private apartments fifty halberdiers were constantly on guard, while sixty pages, all from the best families of Germany, four chamberlains, six barons, and a master of ceremonies belonging to one of the most illustrious houses of the Empire, were always ready to receive the orders of the great man. Whenever he travelled, his own carriage was drawn by eight full-blooded horses; his attendants followed in fifty carriages, each drawn by six horses, while as many baggage wagons, each drawn by four horses, transported the baggage for the ducal procession, and sixty richly mounted cavaliers formed the regular escort of “His Highness.”
As if Providence wished to advance the pretensions of Wallenstein, the Emperor’s affairs took a turn for the worse soon after his removal from the command of the army. Incensed at the intolerance of the German Emperor and his Restitution Edict, which was to be enforced in its full severity, Gustavus Adolphus, the great and high-minded King of Sweden, came to the assistance of the Protestant princes of northern Germany. He came not unsupported; behind him, and as his secret ally, stood the King of France, or rather Richelieu. This great French statesman, although a cardinal of the Catholic Church, saw the time had come to curtail the power of Austria, and therefore utilized the military genius of Gustavus Adolphus to effectually cripple the Emperor’s power, and to raise France to a predominant position in Europe. Richelieu equipped and subsidized the Swedish armies and, by doing so, enabled the Swedish King, whose country was comparatively poor and whose resources were consequently limited, to take the field in Germany with a strong force.
On the twenty-fourth of June, 1630, Gustavus Adolphus landed his army in Pomerania. That date marks the turning-point in the fortunes of the Thirty Years’ War. The Swedish King’s piety, and the strict discipline which he maintained in his army, stood in such glaring contrast to the excesses and outrages committed by the armies of Tilly and Wallenstein that the King was welcomed by the sovereigns of northern Germany as a savior and liberator. It is not our purpose to describe the glorious and victorious career of Gustavus Adolphus in the Empire. Suffice it to say that the conditions of victory and defeat, of triumph and despondency, were entirely reversed, that the imperial armies were unable to stem the tide of victory which had set in for the Protestant cause since the Swedish King’s appearance on German soil, that his progress southward was rapid and incessant, that the Catholic princes were either vanquished or fugitives from their states, and that the Emperor himself was trembling in his palace at Vienna, as report after report informed him of the uninterrupted onward march of the royal hero. Who can help? Who can oppose and prevent this steady march of conquest? To the terrified mind of the Emperor only one man presents himself. It is Wallenstein. But Wallenstein has been mortally offended by him. How can the Emperor humiliate himself before a subject and assuage his wrath? The danger is increasing.
Gustavus is still on the Rhine, but he prepares an invasion of Würtemberg, many of whose inhabitants will gladly welcome him. The advance of his army, under General Horn, is in Franconia and driving the Imperialists before him. No time is to be lost. The Emperor sends a friendly message to Wallenstein; but the message is haughtily rejected, and the messengers are treated with arrogance, not to say contempt. He sends back word to the Emperor that he does not care to repair the faults of others; that he is not on friendly terms with the allies of the Emperor; that he is tired and sick of war; that he is in need of rest, etc. The Emperor sends new messengers, holds out new rewards. He insists and appeals. At last, in December, 1631, Wallenstein promises to raise a new army, equip it and place it in the field by the first of March, 1632; but he positively refuses to command it. The magic power of his name renews the prodigy of six years before. On the first of March the hereditary states of Austria—Bohemia, Silesia, and Moravia—had furnished him a splendid army of forty thousand men. But it was a body without a soul; it lacked a leader able to command it and lead it to victory. The most urgent demands, prayers, supplications of the Emperor at last decide Wallenstein to take the command of this army, which is crazed with enthusiasm when he finally accepts. But he accepts only on conditions most humiliating to the Emperor. He will be generalissimo of the armies of Austria and Spain; he will appoint all his subordinate officers; the Emperor will not be permitted to join the army, and will in no way interfere with its direction or movements; Wallenstein will receive one of the hereditary states of Austria as a reward; he will be war-governor of all the territory occupied by his army; he will have the right to levy contributions, and all confiscated property will belong to him; he alone can grant amnesty; he will remain Duke of Mecklenburg, even if another crown be given to him; all his expenditures will be paid back to him at the conclusion of peace; and in case of defeat, he will have the right to retire upon Vienna, and remain there. These conditions, readily granted by the Emperor, made Wallenstein practically the Dictator of the Empire.
It was at Nuremberg, one of the most ancient and prosperous cities of Bavaria, that the two great captains met face to face for the first time. Gustavus Adolphus had many friends in the city, which he wanted to protect against the Imperialists and from which he had received many reinforcements and supplies. His army had taken quarters in the immediate neighborhood. When Wallenstein approached, the King expected an immediate attack, but in this expectation he was disappointed. Whether he was afraid to endanger his party and his own reputation by the chances of a battle, or whether he thought that to check the victorious progress of the King was equivalent to a victory and would dishearten his allies, or whether the hope of starving the army of the King by cutting off his communications and supplies prompted his action, Wallenstein massed his army in front of Nuremberg, erected breastworks and strongly fortified them, and observed every movement of his great antagonist. It was evident that he wished to avoid giving battle. In this way they remained for eleven weeks opposed to one another, neither daring to become the aggressor or to leave his fortified position. It was the King who moved first. Provisions both in his camp and in the city were getting very scarce, and a contagious camp disease had broken out among his troops and spread to the city, decimating the ranks of his army. He therefore resolved to attack the position of Wallenstein and take it by storm. A terrible battle ensued. The Swedes and the Protestant army showed wonderful bravery, but the heavy artillery of Wallenstein mowed them down in long lines, and they were unable to stand the incessant volleys of shot and shell which poured into their ranks all day long. The assault was repulsed with terrible loss to the Swedish army, and Wallenstein had the glory of having inflicted the first defeat on Gustavus Adolphus. This defeat was the more painful to the King because he had lost from ten to twelve thousand of his best soldiers and some of his ablest commanders in the vain attempt to take Wallenstein’s position. But the defeat had no other bad results for Gustavus Adolphus, for Wallenstein permitted him to retreat from Nuremberg without molesting, attacking or pursuing him, although his army was greatly superior in numbers to the King’s army, and although his loss during the battle of the preceding day was much smaller; in fact Wallenstein’s loss in killed and wounded was estimated at no more than one thousand.
This neglect of Wallenstein to annihilate the King’s army, when everything seemed to favor such an attempt, is among the strongest evidences of his treacherous sentiments. It caused consternation at Vienna, and his enemies charged him openly with treason. But the Emperor had no right to interfere! Finally Wallenstein also left his fortified camp, but instead of following Gustavus Adolphus to Thuringia, he went in an easterly direction and invaded Saxony, where he captured a detachment of two thousand five hundred Swedes and with them Count Thurn, a German nobleman, who for some reason or other had left the Emperor’s service and had entered the Swedish King’s. This Count Thurn was especially odious to the Emperor, and when the news of his capture reached Vienna, there was general rejoicing. The Count would unquestionably have been executed, but to the utter dismay of the court Wallenstein set him free and permitted him to return to the King,—as his enemies asserted, with secret overtures from the Imperialist commander. It is possible, although by no means certain, that Wallenstein, remembering how ungratefully he had been treated before, and thinking that the same ingratitude might be shown to him again as soon as his services were no longer needed, may have tried to open negotiations with the Swedish King to secure from him personal recognition and advantages which he was afraid would be withheld from him after the King’s final overthrow. His fears were certainly not unreasonable, for the Emperor was surrounded by, and lent a willing ear to, the bitter enemies of Wallenstein, and to the very men who had brought about his first disgrace and dismissal. The King, on the other hand, if he received such overtures from Wallenstein, either distrusted him or did not see fit to act upon them favorably, possibly because Wallenstein’s terms were too extravagant.