220

Gustavus marches for Saxony

[1632

operations in the north-west against the Swedish commanders Tott and Baudissin, and against the wary Duke George of Lüneburg. With some reluctance Pappenheim relinquished a kind of warfare in which he excelled, and took up his position, near that of Wallenstein, at Halle. The whole district between the Elbe and Saale was now under the control of the Imperialists, whose headquarters were at Weissenfels. Their entire force (including the Pappenheimers) may be reckoned at over 25,000 foot and 15,000 horse, with, it is stated, 70 guns. But, as in the case of the Swedish army, there is much uncertainty in this estimate.

Sure at last of Wallenstein's purpose, Gustavus determined upon keeping his promise to the Saxon Elector. The intentions of John George may even now have seemed doubtful to the King; but whether Wallenstein were to crush Saxony, or whether it were to lapse into neutrality, Gustavus, as he seems now to have fully recognised, would be placed in an impossible position. His way home would be blocked, his tenure of Pomerania imperilled, by the "Duke of Mecklenburg," and the freedom of the Baltic might once more be threatened by the Imperial Commander-in-Chief. If so, where was he to look for allies? Denmark's jealousy was stronger than ever. The desire of the United Provinces for peace grew with the revived ambition of Spain to take part in the war. He could place no trust in English diplomacy, which in the person of Sir Henry Vane continued to occupy itself with the subsidiary question of the restoration of Charles I's brother-in-law. Even France, while leaving the subsidies promised at Bärwalde unpaid, was alike intent upon her own operations on the Rhine, and undesirous of making Gustavus the arbiter of the German War. His progress had reached a stage of great difficulty, and we know for certain that in these closing weeks of his career of conquest his mind was much occupied with what had been his primary concern when he had opened his German campaigns the problems of safeguarding the destinies of his own Swedish kingdom.

On October 17 the Swedish army reached Nördlingen; and on the 24th Gustavus rode into the faithful city of Nürnberg, there to confer with Oxenstierna on the situation. The Chancellor was to remain as the King's plenipotentiary in southern Germany, with instructions to summon to Ulm a meeting of the Swabian, Franconian, and two Rhenish Circles, which should there renounce their allegiance to the Emperor, accept the King's "direction and protection," and order a general excise towards the prosecution of the war. The Chancellor received the King's instructions as to the government of his daughter and heiress, Christina, should his death take place during her minority. At Erfurt Gustavus bade farewell to his Queen, and on November 11 he reached Naumburg, about nine miles from Weissenfels. After the Hessians and the Weimarers had joined him, his force is reckoned to have amounted to 19,000 foot, with 6500 horse and 60 guns.

1632]

Battle of Lützen. Death of Gustavus.

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The troops of John George of Saxony and Duke George of Lüneburg were not on the spot. Arnim, who commanded the Saxon forces that were still in Silesia, was busily negotiating according to his wont. But with all his coming and going, Gustavus' urgent entreaties could not induce the Elector to do more than order two regiments of horse to march south with the Lüneburg troops. None of these, or of the Saxons, appeared on the field of battle.

To keep in touch with Pappenheim, Wallenstein moved back his main army on Merseburg and Lützen, and by this movement induced Gustavus to advance. On the evening of November 15 the Swedes stood on the border of the great plain which opens east of the Saale upon Lützen, Markranstädt, and Leipzig-in this war, as in the Napoleonic, the chosen battle-field of the nations. On the morning of the 16th, in a November fog, the battle of Lützen began. The high road to Leipzig had been entrenched by Wallenstein and was defended by artillery. Behind it stood his army, in three lines of battle, with cavalry on either wing; upon it the Swedes advanced in their lighter formation of two lines, the King and his blue and yellow guards on the right; Bernard of Weimar (but as to this the accounts differ) in command on the left. About ten o'clock the fog for a time dispersed, and the attack, led by the King in person, began. Notwithstanding a charge of Ottavio Piccolomini's cavalry, the Swedes had taken the battery on the road, but they were driven out again; and, as the fog thickened, Gustavus, hastening to the assistance of one of his regiments, was momentarily isolated and carried among the enemy's cavalry. His horse received a wound, and then he was wounded himself, whereupon he begged the Duke Francis Albert of Lauenburg to help him from the field; but the Duke fled. A royal page (Leubelfing) remained by the side of his master, when some troopers rode up and put an end to his life. His body was found naked, and covered with wounds. The supposed foul play on the part of the Duke of Lauenburg is an exploded fiction.

This happened about noon. But the battle continued to rage till nightfall. So soon as the King's death became known the command of his army was taken over by Bernard of Weimar. Pappenheim, whose cavalry now intervened in the battle, was in his turn mortally wounded; he died next day at Leipzig. After the Imperialists had recovered their batteries on the high road, they were finally driven out by the valour of the Swedish infantry; but nearly the whole of the Yellow Regiment was destroyed in the process. Late in the evening, after making a last attempt to rally his yielding troops, Wallenstein ordered retreat to be sounded, and Leipzig was reached in the course of the night. He had left 6000 dead on the field, the Swedes 4000. The stern judgment afterwards held by Wallenstein at Prague, when he magisterially distributed capital and other punishments as well as large pecuniary rewards, seems to indicate that he had no choice but to retreat.

Yet

222

Significance of the death of Gustavus

[1632

though the Swedes held their ground, they ventured on no pursuit. Both sides thought fit to claim the victory, and a Te Deum was celebrated at Vienna. The exultation, however, both here and at Madrid, where the Death of the King of Sweden was enacted on a stage accustomed to present to its spectators miracles and visitations of divine Providence, was due to a single incident in the battle, rather than to its general result.

The death of Gustavus Adolphus, at the height of his fame and almost at the height of his power- when still in the prime of life (he was not yet thirty-nine years of age) and full of aspirations which, marvellous as his career had been, were still unsatisfied — struck the world with awe, and was fitly moralised by Cardinal Richelieu, the man who best knew how to turn the event to political account. The full significance of the removal of such a personality from the very midst of the scene of military as well as that of political action it would be almost impossible to overestimate. He was great, not only because of what he achieved, but of what he set himself to accomplish. Oxenstierna may have been warranted in asserting that his master intended to be Emperor of Scandinavia, and to rule over an empire comprising all the Baltic lands. He certainly meant Sweden to be made impregnably strong, and left free to hold to the faith which she had chosen. Thus, as the simple triplet on the stone at Breitenfeld avers, he saved religious liberty for the world. He did so consciously, and not as a mere consequence of his political designs. To the fulfilment of his purpose he brought the gifts of a born ruler of men, as well as those of a great general and a great statesman. Cast in heroic mould, of commanding stature and fair-haired (re d'oro), he was a Swede every inch of him. Affable, free of speech, full of wrath if discipline were broken or disaster provoked, he was the comrade of his soldiers, by whose side he fought and prayed. He was at the same time a master of military detail; his reforms were grounded on experience, and his tactics inspired by the prescience of victory. He had been carefully trained in the art of government, and besides being able to speak eight languages, and interested in letters and learning, was versed in the administrative business of his own country and capable of understanding the political systems of other lands. He was an adept in negotiation; he was proof against the diplomatic insinuations of Wallenstein, and met as an equal the statecraft of Richelieu. His occasional political miscalculations and his strategic mistakes-not always easily distinguishable from one another - were almost invariably redeemed by his courage and resource; but the foundation of his strength lay in his unfaltering conviction that his cause was that of his country and one of which God had charged him with the defence.

CHAPTER VII

WALLENSTEIN AND BERNARD OF WEIMAR

I. WALLENSTEIN'S END

(1632-4)

DURING the winter months which followed on the battle of Lützen neither of the hosts which contended for victory there maintained possession of Saxony or engaged in important operations beyond its borders. While Wallenstein, after evacuating the electorate, set up his winter quarters at Prague, and there collected the forces with which in May he joined Gallas in Silesia, the Swedish army broke up again into several divisions. That commanded by Bernard of Weimar, after clearing Saxony of Holk's and other Imperialist soldiery, passed into Thuringia and Franconia. In March Bernard pushed forward as far as the river Altmühl in the Ansbach territory, and, after a brush with the redoubtable Bavarian cavalry general, Johann von Werth, united his forces south of Donauwörth with those of Horn, who had in the last month of 1632 conquered nearly the whole of Elsass.

The expectant character of these movements on the one and the other side is explained by the fact that Lützen had virtually been a drawn battle. But in the summer of 1633 they came more or less to a standstill-Wallenstein's by his own calculated inaction, Bernard of Weimar's because of an agitation (it can hardly be called a mutiny) in the Swedish army, which was only with some difficulty repressed. Broadly speaking, we may regard this standstill as reflecting the doubts and difficulties which, after the death of the great King, pressed upon some of the chief combatants.

The Swedes, though resolved not to break off except on their own terms the struggle of which their King had, first and last, so clearly defined the ends, could no longer exercise over its progress the controlling influence proper to his mighty personality. Gustavus Adolphus was succeeded on the Swedish throne by his daughter Christina, a child of six years of age; and, so long as she remained in tutelage, the government, as will be shown in a later chapter, was practically carried on by a small committee directed by the strong will of the Chancellor, Axel

224

Oxenstierna's position after the King's death [1632-4

Oxenstierna. The widow of Gustavus, Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, was not included among the regents and guardians. Although the system of government during the minority of the "Elected" Queen-a designation partly intended to repress any pretensions on the part of the Polish Vasas-was not approved by the Swedish Diet till January, 1634, Oxenstierna secured a twelvemonth earlier the confirmation of his commission as "Legate" of the Crown, with full powers in the Holy Roman Empire and as regarding all Swedish armies. Thus there was preserved to these armies in Germany that unity of control which had given them so inestimable an advantage over their adversaries, and to which it had been the constant purpose of Gustavus to subject the military affairs of his German allies. To his position of trust, for which it might be difficult to find a parallel, Oxenstierna brought, besides a perfect knowledge of his late master's mind, the insight and judgment of a great statesman. He proved, indeed, unable to solve the perennial problem of a working control of the military executive by the civil authority. Beneath his methodical ways and a phlegmatic temperament that provoked the wit of the young Queen, there burnt a flame of patriotic ambition and incorruptible loyalty, to which a series of eminent commanders proved responsive; but the union of military and political leadership, and the enthusiasm which the great King's personality had communicated to the Swedish armies and nation, had perforce become things of the past.

Though the relaxation of the bond between the Swedes and the chief Protestant Princes was in agreement with the usual policy of John George of Saxony, a warlike impulse had momentarily seized upon him, due, it would seem, to a visionary scheme of securing the Bohemian Crown to his son and namesake. The unlucky Frederick, who had so long worn the empty title of King of Bohemia, had died at Mainz on November 29, 1632, still awaiting-though with drooping hopes his restoration to his Palatine inheritance, now, with the exception of Heidelberg, reconquered from the foe. But neither Oxenstierna, who had arrived in Dresden on Christmas Day, nor the military chiefs of the Swedish armies, fell in with John George's design. He was all the more unwilling to yield to the Chancellor's demand that the entire body of Protestant Estates should be placed under the direction of Sweden, and adhered to his view that Saxony was their proper head. At Berlin, whither Oxenstierna next repaired, he found George William in a more yielding mood; he was well aware at whose expense Sweden. would in any treaty of peace seek to obtain her "satisfaction," and was naturally anxious to conciliate the Chancellor. The project of a marriage between George William's heir (afterwards the Great Elector) and Queen Christina had not yet been laid aside. But soon after this George William showed signs of falling back into line with Saxony, and committed the command of his troops in Silesia, where old Count Thurn