§ 6. Wallenstein's army.
After all it was not upon written documents that Wallenstein's power was founded. The army which he gathered round him was no Austrian army in any real sense of the word. It was the army of Wallenstein—of the Duke of Friedland, as the soldiers loved to call him, thinking perhaps that his duchy of Mecklenburg would prove but a transitory possession. Its first expenses were met with the help of Spanish subsidies. But after that it had to depend on itself. Nor was it more than an accident that it was levied and equipped in Bohemia. If Gustavus had been at Vienna instead of at Munich, the thousands of stalwart men who trooped in at Wallenstein's bare word would have gathered to any place where he had set up his standards. Gustavus had to face the old evil of the war, which had grown worse and worse from the days of Mansfeld to those of Wallenstein, the evil of a military force existing by itself and for itself. From far distant shores men practised in arms came eagerly to the summons; from sunny Italy, from hardy Scotland, from every German land between the Baltic and the Alps. Protestant and Catholic were alike welcome there. The great German poet has breathed the spirit of this heterogeneous force into one of its officers, himself a wanderer from distant Ireland, ever prodigal of her blood in the quarrels of others. "This vast and mighty host," he says (Schiller, The Piccolomini, act i. sc. 2),
is all obedient
To Friedland's captains; and its brave commanders.
Bred in one school, and nurtured with one milk,
Are all excited by one heart and soul.
They are strangers on the soil they tread.
The service is their only house and home.
No zeal inspires them for their country's cause,
For thousands like myself, were born abroad;
Nor care they for the Emperor, for one half,
Deserting other service, fled to ours,
Indifferent what their banner, whether 'twere
The Double Eagle, Lily, or the Lion;[A]
Yet one sole man can rein this fiery host,
By equal rule, by equal love and fear,
Blending the many-nationed whole in one.
Was it, forsooth, the Emperor's majesty
That gave the army ready to his hand,
And only sought a leader for it? No!
The army then had no existence. He,
Friedland, it was who called it into being,
And gave it to his sovereign—but receiving
No army at his hand;—nor did the Emperor
Give Wallenstein to us as General. No,
It was from Wallenstein we first received
The Emperor as our master and our sovereign;
And he, he only, binds us to our banner.
[A] That is to say, the standard of the Emperor, of France, or of Sweden.
1632
§ 7. He receives full powers.
Wallenstein at first accepted the command for three months only. In April it was permanently conferred on him. The Emperor was practically set aside in favour of a dictator.
§ 8. The Saxons driven out of Bohemia.
Wallenstein turned first upon the Saxons. In one hand he held the olive branch, in the other the sword. On May 21st his emissary was offering peace on the terms of the retractation of the Edict of Restitution. On the 22d Wallenstein himself fell upon the Saxon garrison of Prague, and forced it to surrender. It was a plain hint to John George to make his mind up quickly. Before long the Saxons had been driven out of the whole of Bohemia.
§ 9. But John George will not treat alone.