Luther had raised his people out of the epic life of the middle ages. The Thirty years' war had destroyed the popular strength, and forced the Germans into individual life, the mental constitution of which one may truly call lyrical. That which will here be depicted from the accounts of cotemporaries, is a sad joyless time.
CHAPTER I.
THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.--THE ARMY.
The opposition between the interests of the house of Hapsburg and of the German nation, and between the old and new faith, led to a bloody catastrophe. If any one should inquire how such a war could rage through a whole generation, and so fearfully exhaust a powerful people, he will receive this striking answer, that the war was so long and terrible, because none of the contending parties were able to carry it out on a great and decisive scale.
The largest armies in the Thirty years' war did not exceed in strength one corps of a modern army. Tilly considered forty thousand men the greatest number of troops that a general could wish to have. It was only occasionally that an army reached that strength; almost all the great battles were fought by smaller bodies of men. Numerous were the detachments, and very great were the losses by skirmishes, illnesses, and desertion. As there was no regular system for maintaining the strength of the army, its effective amount fluctuated in a remarkable way. Once, indeed, Wallenstein united a larger force under his command--according to some accounts a hundred thousand men--but they did not form one army, nay, they were hardly in any military connection, for the undisciplined bands with which, in 1629, he subdued the German territories of the Emperor, were dispersed over half Germany. Such large masses of soldiers appeared to all parties as a terrible venture; they could not, in fact, be kept under control, and after that, no general commanded more than half that number.[[1]]
An army in order of battle was considered as a movable fortress, the central point of which was the General himself, who ruled all the details; he had to survey the ground and every position, and every attack was directed by him. Adjutantcies and staff service were hardly established. It was part of the strategy to keep the army together in masses, to defend the ranks by earth works, and not to allow horse or man to be out of observation and control. In marching also, the army was kept close together in narrow quarters, generally within the space of a camp; from this arose commissariat difficulties, the high-roads were bad, often almost impassable, the conveyance of provisions compulsory, and always ill-regulated: and worst of all, the army was attended by an intense baggage-train, which, with the wild-robber system, quickly wasted the most fertile countries.
Great care was therefore taken that no such embarrassment should arise. Neither the Emperor nor the Princes of the Empire were in a condition to maintain forty thousand men out of their income even for three months. The regular revenue of the sovereign was much less than now, and the maintenance of an army far more costly. The greater part of the revenue was derived from tithes in kind, which in time of war was insecure and difficult to realize. The finances of the parties engaged in this war were even at the commencement of it in a most lamentable state.
In the winter of 1619 and 1620, half the Bohemian army died of hunger and cold, from the want of pay and a commissariat; in September 1620, more than four and a half million of gulden of pay was owing to the troops, and there were endless mutinies, and the King Palatine Frederick could not aid his Protestant allies with subsidies. The Emperor was then not in much better condition, but he soon afterwards obtained Spanish subsidies. When the Elector of Saxony, whose finances were better regulated, first hired fifteen hundred men in December, 1619, he could not pay them regularly. What was granted by the estates in war taxes, and the so-called voluntary contributions of the opulent, did not go far; loans even in the first year of the war were very difficult to realize; they were attempted with the banking-houses of southern Germany, and also in Hamburg, but seldom with success. City communities were considered safer debtors than the great princes. There were dealings about the smallest sums even with private individuals. Saxony in 1621, hoped to get from fifty to sixty thousand guldens from the Fuggers, and endeavoured in vain to borrow thirty and seventy thousand gulden from capitalists. Maximilian of Bavaria, and the League, made a great loan for the war of one million two hundred thousand gulden at twelve per cent, from the merchants in Genoa, for this the Fuggers became responsible, and the salt trade of Augsburg was given to them for their security. Just one hundred years before, this said banking-house had taken an important share in the election of the Emperor Charles V., and now it helped to secure the victory of the Roman Catholic party; for the Bohemian war was decided even more by the want of money than by the battle of the Weissen-Berge. Thus the war began with the governments being in a general state of insolvency; and therefore the maintenance of great armies became impossible.
It is evident that there was a fatal disproportion between the military strength of the parties and the ultimate object of every war. None of them could entirely subdue their opponents. The armies were too small, and had too little durability, to be able to control by regular strategic operations, the numerous and warlike people of wide-spread districts. Whilst a victorious army was ruling near the Rhine or the Oder, a new enemy was collecting in the north on the shores of the Baltic. The German theatre of war, also, was not so constituted as to be easily productive of lasting results. Almost every city, and many country seats were fortified. The siege guns were still unwieldy and uncertain in their aim, and the defence of fortified places was proportionably stronger than the attack. Thus war became principally a combat of sieges; every captured town weakened the victorious army, from the necessity of leaving garrisons. When a province had been conquered, the conqueror was often not in a position to withstand the conquered in open battle. By new exertion the conqueror was driven from the field; then followed fresh sieges and captures, and again fatal disruption of strength.
It was a war full of bloody battles and glorious victories, and also of excessive alternations of fortune. Numerous were the dark hero forms that loomed out of the chaos of blood and fire; the iron Ernst von Mansfeld, the fantastic Brunswicker, Bernhard of Weimar; and on the other side, Maximilian of Bavaria, and the generals of the League, Tilly, Pappenheim, and the able Mercy; the leaders of the Imperial army, the daring Wallenstein and Altringer; the great French heroes, Condé and Turenne, and amongst the Swedes, Horn, Bauer, Torstenson, Wrangel, and above all the mighty prince of war, Gustavus Adolphus. How much manly energy excited to the highest pitch, and yet how slow and poor were the political results obtained! how quickly was again lost, what appeared to have been obtained by the greatest amount of power! How often did the parties themselves change the objects after which they were striving, nay even the banner for which they desired victory!