The ascendancy of France, 1598-1715

by Henry Offley Wakeman

March of Gustavus to the Main.

The victory of Breitenfeld placed all north Germany at the feet of the Swedish king. Perceiving at a glance that even a successful attack upon Vienna would not end the war, and recognising that his first duty was to the troubled Protestants of the centre and of the south, Gustavus marched straight into the heart of Germany on the Main and the Rhine, disregarding the characteristic suggestions of Wallenstein that they should divide Germany between them at the expense of the Emperor and the Catholic party. On October 10th he occupied Würtzburg. The 18th of November saw him at Frankfort on the Main, the old capital of Germany. He spent Christmas Day at Mainz, and there in the fair and rich Rhineland he rested his tired troops, while in the north Tott was completing the reduction of the Mecklenberg coast line, and the Protestant administrators who had been ousted under the Edict of Restitution were being replaced. No one, however, knew better than Gustavus on what slender foundations his power rested. Richelieu was already beginning to think that his ally was becoming too powerful. Louis XIII., it was said, had been heard to mutter ‘It is time to put a limit to the progress of this Goth.’ Force, far more than inclination or policy, had brought him the Saxon alliance, and force might easily break the bond which it had forged. Tilly was mustering new forces beyond the Danube, and at any moment a general of reputation might stamp his feet and produce an army of soldiers of fortune on his flank or in his rear. Even the Protestants could not be trusted should misfortune come. Except at Nuremberg and a few other places, which had felt the hand of the oppressor, there was no enthusiasm in Germany for the Protestant Liberator. Two things were necessary to secure the fruits of the victory which he had won. His schemes for a general Protestant alliance under Sweden. He must crush the enemy before he had time to recover from the blow of Breitenfeld, and he must gain a basis of military operations and political influence by uniting the Protestant states in a firm league under his leadership. With Tilly destroyed, and the Corpus Evangelicorum formed, and trusty Swedish captains placed in occupation of the ecclesiastical lands of central Germany, then and not till then might Gustavus consider his work secure.

Advance upon the Danube to Munich, 1632.

The first thing was to crush military opposition. At the end of March the Swedes were again in the field. On the 31st Gustavus entered Nuremberg in triumph and received an enthusiastic welcome. On April 5th he captured Donauwörth, on the 14th he found Tilly entrenched behind the Lech, forced the passage of the river, stormed the enemies’ position, and drove back the old marshal to Ingolstadt wounded to death. Bavaria was at his feet. Side by side with the Elector Palatine he rode into Munich on the 7th of May. There was now no enemy left to be dealt with except the Emperor, and the dominions of the Hapsburgs were still in far too disorganised a state to be able to offer much opposition. Even the Saxons had marched unopposed into Bohemia, and when Gustavus was celebrating his triumph with the winter-king at Munich, John George, who had done more than any one else to oust Frederick from Bohemia, was keeping high festival himself at Prague.

Wallenstein appealed to by the Emperor.

It was not for long. There was but one man in all wide Europe who could save Ferdinand from the storm just breaking upon his head, for there was but one capable of drawing to himself and binding together into an organised army the soldiers of fortune who were scattered all over the civilised world. In December, Eggenberg, Ferdinand’s most trusted counsellor, had been sent to Wallenstein to ask him to forgive the past and strike one more blow for the defence of the House of Austria. Wallenstein eagerly seized the opportunity, for circumstances had played singularly into his hand. The victories of Gustavus had drawn the teeth of Maximilian and the League. The necessities of the Emperor must force him to agree to whatever terms were demanded. The long wished for moment had arrived when he at the head of an army, wholly his own, owing no allegiance to the Emperor, might become the dictator of Germany, and, ousting from her soil all foreigners except himself, might impose peace upon Germany on the basis of religious toleration. His terms. The terms which he exacted from the Emperor forbid any doubt as to his intentions. No army was to be allowed in the Empire except under his command, he alone was to have the right of pardoning offenders and confiscating lands. Appointed dictator. The Edict of Restitution was to be withdrawn. In other words, he was to be the military and political dictator of Germany. The terms were accepted, his standard raised. From Italy, Scotland, Ireland, as well as from every part of Germany, flocked to him men eager for distinction and more eager for plunder, without distinction of nationality and without distinction of religion. In May 1632, his organisation was completed. His plan of campaign. Falling suddenly upon the Saxons at Prague he drove them headlong out of Bohemia, then turning swiftly to the left directed his main army upon the rich and Protestant Nuremberg, while Pappenheim scoured the Rhine country at the head of his horse. Gustavus saw the crisis, threw himself into Nuremberg and fortified it, then, summoning to his assistance his outlying detachments, offered Wallenstein battle in the hope of crushing this new enemy by another Breitenfeld. But Wallenstein had made up his mind to show Gustavus quite another sort of warfare. He knew the great difficulties which the Swedes experienced in conducting their operations in a country, largely hostile, at such a distance from their base. He knew also the value of his own superiority in light cavalry in provisioning his own army, and in hampering the commissariat of the Swedes. He did not trust the discipline of his own recent levies on the battle-field, and so, forming a huge entrenched camp on an eminence overlooking the plain on which Nuremberg stands, he prepared to force Gustavus away by sheer starvation.

The camp at Nuremberg.

At the end of June the camp was finished, and the duel between the two greatest soldiers of the day began. But it was not only a duel between soldiers, it was also a duel between rival policies. The crisis of the fate of the Empire was being then decided. On the one side was military dictatorship and religious toleration in connection with the traditional institutions of the Empire, on the other Protestant supremacy and political federation under the leadership of the foreigner. Stubbornly the question was fought out, not by arms but by endurance, but day by day it became clearer that Wallenstein had calculated rightly, and that Gustavus must starve the first. By the beginning of September the strain was growing intolerable, discipline was becoming relaxed, and the king felt that he must stake all on one last attack. On September 3d he led his army against Wallenstein’s entrenchments, but in vain. After heroic efforts he had to retire baffled. Retreat of Gustavus. A few days afterwards he marched out of Nuremberg, leaving the best part of his army dead before the ramparts of the Alte Veste, or dying in the hospitals of the town. Invasion of Saxony by Wallenstein. Wallenstein, following out determinedly the plan he had laid down for himself, never attempted to pursue, but turning north into Saxony prepared somewhat leisurely to choose a position between the Elbe and the Saale, where he might entrench himself for the winter, and apply the gentle pressure of his marauding and requisitioning bands to the ever-vacillating will of John George, and detach him from the Swedish alliance. Gustavus had in the previous year lost Magdeburg by a want of decision. He was not going to lose Saxony in the same way. Summoning Oxenstjerna and Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar to his aid, he flew through Thuringia as quick as he could go, and seized Erfurt and Naumberg before Wallenstein quite realised what had happened. It was now the beginning of November, the weather had suddenly turned piercingly cold, and Wallenstein, making up his mind that Gustavus would not pursue his operations further that winter, prepared to entrench himself between Merseburg and Torgau, and gave permission to Pappenheim to return to the Rhineland capturing Halle as he went. It was a great blunder. Gustavus dashed forwards on Wallenstein’s main army to crush it before the mistake could be repaired. Wallenstein finding a battle inevitable sent messenger after messenger to bring Pappenheim back, and hastily throwing up some field entrenchments and deepening the ditches which intersected the plain, awaited the onslaught of the Swedish king at Lützen on the 16th of November.

Battle of Lützen, 1632.

As at Breitenfeld the Swedes were drawn up in two lines, and the imperialists only in one, but Wallenstein, unlike Tilly, seems to have interspersed bodies of musketeers among the troops of the cavalry, and posted a strong reserve behind his centre. The battle began as usual with the artillery in the early morning, then, as the autumn mist cleared away, the Swedes advanced to the attack about ten o’clock. There was no room for generalship. It was hard hand-to-hand fighting. For two hours the battle swayed backwards and forwards, the hardest of the fighting being on the Swedish right, where the king himself was engaged with Piccolomini’s black cuirassiers. Bit by bit the Swedes were gaining ground, when Wallenstein bringing up his reserves directed a terrible charge upon the Swedish centre, and forced it back with fearful loss, especially among the officers. Death of Gustavus.Gustavus, at the head of such horsemen as he could muster, flew to the rescue, and as he made his way through the mist which had gathered again for a few moments in the hollow, found himself unexpectedly in the middle of a troop of the enemy’s cavalry. A shot broke his left arm, another pierced his back, and he fell heavily to the ground, where he was soon despatched by a bullet through the head. His white horse, riderless and bloodstained, tore on through the enemy into the Swedish ranks and announced the loss of their leader. Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar took the command, and rallying the army with the cry of vengeance, renewed the charge with an enthusiasm which carried all before it. Just then Pappenheim and his cavalry appeared on the right flank of the Swedes, and the battle again settled down to hard hand-to-hand fighting for three hours more. Pappenheim himself fell dead in the first charge, but his men, like their enemies, fought on the more fiercely to avenge the fall of their captain. At last as the darkness fell the Swedes nerved themselves for a supreme effort, and drove the imperialists from their entrenchments just as the leading columns of Pappenheim’s infantry appeared upon the field.