Charles Francis Atkinson

“ Negotiations for peace were constantly in progress, but no result seemed to come out of them. The Diet was assembled at Regensburg, the imperial army scattered over north-western Germany. Banér suddenly moved south heading for Ratisbon, for the defence of which the archduke’s and all available troops—even Piccolomini’s from the upper Rhine—were hurried up by the emperor. The Weimar Army under Guébriant joined the Swedes en route, and the combined army reached the objective. ”

“ Towards the end of the year his army was taken into the French service, he himself remaining in command and receiving vague promises of a future duchy of Alsace. Gallas's army from Frankfurt-on-Main pushed far into Lorraine, but it was late in the season and want of food compelled it to retreat. In eastern Germany the consequences of the peace of Prague were that Saxony, Brandenburg and other states, signatories to the treaty, were ipso facto the enemies of those who continued the war. Thus John George turned his arms against the Swedes in his neighbourhood. ”

“ The victors advanced as far as the Inn, but Piccolomini, reorganizing the debris of the Austro-Bavarian army, checked their further progress and even drove them back to the line of the Isar. Meantime, however, the Swedish general Königsmarck, gathering all the scattered forces of his side in Saxony and Silesia, had entered Bohemia and was besieging Prague. This caused the recall of Piccolomini’s army, and Turenne and Wrangel invested Munich. But Mazarin ordered the French to retire into Suabia so as not to compromise the peace negotiations at the critical moment, and Wrangel followed suit. ”

“ A thoroughly trained army, recruited from good yeomen and good soldiers of fortune, paid good wages, and led by a great captain, was a novelty in war that more than compensated for Tilly's numerical superiority. ”

“ Another force, co-operating with the duke of Savoy, was to attack the Milanese. Bernhard was to operate in the Rhine and Main country, French garrisons holding the places of Alsace. Having thus arranged to isolate the Spanish Netherlands, Richelieu sent his main army, about 30,000 strong, thither to join Frederick Henry of Orange and so to crush the Cardinal Infante. This was strategy on a scale hitherto unknown in the war. Tilly, Wallenstein and Gustavus had made war in the midst of political and religious troubles that hung over a confused country. ”

“ Nördlingen was to the Swedes what Malplaquet was seventy-five years later to the Dutch. The model army of Gustavus perished there, and for the rest of the war a Swedish army, except for some advantages of organization and technical form, was intrinsically no better than another. Gallas reconquered the towns in southern Franconia. John George, having obtained from Ferdinand a compromise on the question of the Edict — its complete revocation Wallenstein's death and Bernhard's defeat had made impossible — agreed to the Peace of Prague. ”

“ The Low Countries Spaniards, concluding a truce with the Dutch, threw their whole force upon France, but this attack dissipated itself in sieges. In Italy Plessis-Praslin won an unprofitable victory over the viceroy of the Milanese on the Oglio (July 4th) . In Spain Condé, resuming the siege of Lerida, was repulsed with even more loss than Harcourt had been the year before, and had to retire upon the mere appearance of a relieving army. ”

“ Enghien indeed followed up the débris of Melo’s army beyond the Sambre, but on the Rhine Guébriant had marched away from the region of Cologne into Württemberg, and there was nothing to prevent the imperialists in the north-west from joining Melo. The thorough establishment of the French on the Rhine and the need of co-operating with the Swedes was considered by the young general to be more important than fighting Melo in front of Brussels, and in spite of Surrender of Thionville. ”

“ The main imperialist army, still under Gallas, had departed from Alsace to the east in order to repair the disaster of Wittstock, and Charles of Lorraine, with his own small force and a detachment under Count Mercy left by Gallas, was defeated by Bernhard on the Saône in June, after which Bernhard advanced vigorously against Piccolomini, the imperialist commander in Alsace, and crossed the Rhine at Rheinau. ”

“ Battle of Wittstock. The elector had 30,000 men against 22,000 and sought to attack both in front and rear. But while his entrenchments defied the frontal attack Banér threw most of his army upon the enveloping force and crushed it. The Swedes lost 5000 killed and wounded, the combined army 11,000 killed and wounded and 8000 prisoners. The prestige of so brilliant a victory repaired even Nördlingen, and many North German princes who were about to make peace took fresh heart. ”

“ Torstensson, by his halt before Leipzig after Breitenfeld, had given the emperor a whole winter in which to assemble a new army. The hereditary provinces, as the devastations of war Torstensson against Gallas. approached their own borders, willingly supplied a force of 12,000 men, which under Piccolomini manoeuvred for a while to the west of Dresden. But Piccolomini was replaced by Gallas, who, though cherishing visionary schemes of uniting Hatzfeldt’s troops and Götz’s Cologne-Bavarian-North German army with his own for a decisive blow, had in fact to fall back through Bohemia. ”

“ One of the last acts of the king was to designate the young duc d’Enghien, son of the incapable Condé, as general of his northern army. Harcourt had strangely failed, Guébriant was far away, and the rest of the French marshals were The Duc d’Enghien. experienced but incapable of commanding an army. Yet it was no small matter to put in their place a youth of twenty-one, who might prove not merely inexperienced but also incompetent. But Enghien’s victory was destined to be the beginning for the French army of a long hegemony of military Europe. ”

“ Moreover Mansfeld, having so thoroughly eaten up the Palatinate that the magistrates of Frederick's own towns begged Tilly to expel his general, decamped into Alsace, where he seized Hagenau and wintered in safety.
The winter of 1621-22 passed in a series of negotiations which failed because too many interests, inside and outside Germany, were bound up with Protestantism to allow the Catholics to speak as conquerors, and because the cause of Protestantism was too much involved with the cause of the elector palatine to be taken in hand with energy by the Protestant princes. ”

“ Success was for the present with the emperor and Spain. Gallas, now appointed to Wallenstein's place, was Aldringer's companion from boyhood, whereas Bernhard, the Rupert of the German war, disagreed with Horn. Under the leadership nominally of the king of Hungary, Ferdinand's heir, but really of Gallas, the army recaptured Regensburg and Donauwörth, and when the Spanish Cardinal Infante joined them with 15,000 men on his way from Italy to the Netherlands, they were invincible. Bernhard attacked Battle of Nördlingen. ”

“ At the end of July Tilly, returning from the west before he had accomplished its reduction, made his appearance and was twice repulsed (13/23 and 18/28 July) , losing 6000 men out of 22,000. Moreover, Ferdinand having in his moment of triumph flatly rejected John George's appeal against the Edict, Saxony took up arms. Thereupon Tilly, turning away from Gustavus's entrenchments, invaded Saxony, being reinforced en route by 20,000 men from Italy (the war there being left to the Spaniards) . The elector at once made an alliance with the Swedes. Then Gustavus advanced in earnest. ”

“ There still remained for the armies of Tilly and Buquoi the reduction of the smaller garrisons in Bohemia, and these when finally expelled rallied under Mansfeld, who was joined by the disbanded soldiery of the Protestant Union's short-lived army Then there began the wolf-strategy that was the distinguishing mark of the Thirty Years' War. An army even of ruffians could be controlled, as Tilly controlled that of the League, if it were Predatory armies. ”

“ Ferdinand III. sent his brother, the archduke Leopold William, to take command of Gallas’s army and sent all available reinforcements to Bohemia. But Banér contented himself, after an unsuccessful attempt upon Prague, with thoroughly eating up the country and, as winter came on, he retired into the Saxon mountains. The other Swedish troops overran Brandenburg and fomented a revolt in Silesia.
In 1639, as before, Richelieu’s attacks on Spain, other than those directed upon Alsace and Baden, were unsuccessful. ”

“ Tilly had just captured Leipzig, and outside that place, carried away by Pappenheim's enthusiasm, he gave battle on the 7/17 September to the now superior allies. The first battle of Breitenfeld (q.v.) was a triumphant success for Gustavus and for the new Swedish system of war, such a battle as no living soldier had seen. The raw Saxons, who were commanded by Arnim, once Wallenstein's lieutenant, were routed by Tilly's men without the least difficulty, and the balance of numbers returned again to the imperialist side. ”

“ But at last the archduke retired a little, leaving Turenne and Wrangel free to join their forces. Turenne had no intention of repeating the experiences of Freiburg and Nördlingen. War Turenne’s strategy. had by now settled down into the groove whence it did not issue till 1793. It was more profitable to attain the small objects that were sought by manoeuvre than by battle, and the choice of means practically lay between manoeuvring the enemy’s army into poor districts and so breaking it up by starvation, and pushing one’s own army into rich districts regardless of the enemy’s army. ”

“ The power of the central authority, save in so far as the army could without starvation make itself successively felt at one place and another, had long disappeared. Gustavus's Corpus Evangelicorum as a German institution was moribund since Nördlingen, and Richelieu and the Spaniards stepped forward as the protagonists, the League of Heilbronn and the emperor respectively being the puppets. ”

“ There, however, the young general learned at the same moment that Louis XIII. was dead and that the Spaniards had invested Rocroi. With the resolution and swiftness which was to mark his whole career, he marched at once to offer them battle. Enghien’s more experienced counsellors, the generals of the old school, were for delay. To risk the only French army at such a moment would, they said, be madness, and even the fiery Gassion asked, “What will become of us if we are beaten?” ”

“ But when Christian signed the peace of Lübeck, and the Edict of Restitution (1629) gave back one hundred and fifty northern ecclesiastical foundations to Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. the Catholics, men were convinced that one ruler meant one religion. Rather than endure this the North Germans had called in Gustavus Adolphus, and, just as Gustavus landed, the resentment of the princes of the League against Wallenstein's policy and Wallenstein's soldiers came to a head, and the emperor was forced to dismiss him. ”

“ This group was headed by the wise and able Maximilian of Bavaria and supported by his army, which he placed under a soldier of long experience and conspicuous ability, Count Tilly.
The war arose in Bohemia, where the magnates, roused by the systematic evasion of the guarantees to Protestants, refused Bohemian movement. to elect the archduke Ferdinand to the vacant throne, offering it instead to Frederick, the elector palatine. But the aggrandizement of this elector's power was entirely unacceptable to most of the Protestant princes — to John George of Saxony above all. ”

“ Three separate battles, which cost the Bavarians one-third of their force and the French no less than half of theirs, ended in Mercy’s retreat (see Freiburg) on the 10th of August. Enghien did not follow him into the mountains, but having assured himself that he need not fear interference, he proceeded to the methodical conquest of the middle Rhine fortresses (Philippsburg, Heidelberg, Mannheim, Mainz, &c.) , and returned with his own army to the Moselle, leaving Turenne and the Weimar Army at Spire. ”

“ Tilly at once advanced to meet him. But he had only the Army of the League, Ferdinand's
troops being occupied with repelling a new inroad of Gabriel Bethlen. Then, like a deus ex machina, Wallenstein, duke of Friedland, came forward and offered to raise and maintain an army in the emperor's service. It was an army like Mansfeld's in that it lived on the country, but its exactions were systematic and the Wallenstein raises an army. products economically used, so that it was possible to feed 50,000 men where Mansfeld and his like had barely subsisted 20,000. ”

“ The effect of it was that Frederick Henry withdrew to his own country, and in 1636 the French northern army had to face the whole of the Cardinal Infante's forces. In Italy the Franco-Piedmontese army achieved practically nothing, the gathering of the French contingent and its passage of the Alps consuming much time. In the Valtelline Rohan conducted a successful mountain campaign, which even to-day is quoted as a model of its kind. [2]
In Alsace and Lorraine, besides the Spaniards, the dispossessed duke of Lorraine was in the field against the French. ”

“ But the veterans of the League army were nevertheless driven off the field in disorder, leaving 6000 dead. Tilly himself was thrice wounded, and only the remnant of his own faithful Walloon regiments remained with him and bore him from the field.
All Protestant Germany hailed Gustavus as the liberator. Wallenstein, glad of the defeat of the Catholic army, proposed to co-operate with the Swedes. John George, the Swedish general Horn and the Swedish chancellor Oxenstierna united Strong position of Gustavus Adolphus. in advising Gustavus to march straight upon Vienna. ”