The History of the Thirty Years' War Part 20

The artillery on both sides, as the horses could not be found, remained all night upon the field, at once the reward and the evidence of victory to him who should hold it. Wallenstein, in his haste to leave Leipzig and Saxony, forgot to remove his part.

Not long after the battle was ended, Pappenheim's infantry, who had been unable to follow the rapid movements of their general, and who amounted to six regiments, marched on the field, but the work was done. A few hours earlier, so considerable a reinforcement would perhaps have decided the day in favour of the Imperialists; and, even now, by remaining on the field, they might have saved the duke's artillery, and made a prize of that of the Swedes.

But they had received no orders to act; and, uncertain as to the issue of the battle, they retired to Leipzig, where they hoped to join the main body.

The Duke of Friedland had retreated thither, and was followed on the morrow by the scattered remains of his army, without artillery, without colours, and almost without arms. The Duke of Weimar, it appears, after the toils of this b.l.o.o.d.y day, allowed the Swedish army some repose, between Lutzen and Weissenfels, near enough to the field of battle to oppose any attempt the enemy might make to recover it.

Of the two armies, more than 9,000 men lay dead; a still greater number were wounded, and among the Imperialists, scarcely a man escaped from the field uninjured. The entire plain from Lutzen to the Ca.n.a.l was strewed with the wounded, the dying, and the dead.

Many of the princ.i.p.al n.o.bility had fallen on both sides.

Even the Abbot of Fulda, who had mingled in the combat as a spectator, paid for his curiosity and his ill-timed zeal with his life.

History says nothing of prisoners; a further proof of the animosity of the combatants, who neither gave nor took quarter.

Pappenheim died the next day of his wounds at Leipzig; an irreparable loss to the imperial army, which this brave warrior had so often led on to victory.

The battle of Prague, where, together with Wallenstein, he was present as colonel, was the beginning of his heroic career. Dangerously wounded, with a few troops, he made an impetuous attack on a regiment of the enemy, and lay for several hours mixed with the dead upon the field, beneath the weight of his horse, till he was discovered by some of his own men in plundering. With a small force he defeated, in three different engagements, the rebels in Upper Austria, though 40,000 strong. At the battle of Leipzig, he for a long time delayed the defeat of Tilly by his bravery, and led the arms of the Emperor on the Elbe and the Weser to victory. The wild impetuous fire of his temperament, which no danger, however apparent, could cool, or impossibilities check, made him the most powerful arm of the imperial force, but unfitted him for acting at its head.

The battle of Leipzig, if Tilly may be believed, was lost through his rash ardour. At the destruction of Magdeburg, his hands were deeply steeped in blood; war rendered savage and ferocious his disposition, which had been cultivated by youthful studies and various travels. On his forehead, two red streaks, like swords, were perceptible, with which nature had marked him at his very birth.

Even in his later years, these became visible, as often as his blood was stirred by pa.s.sion; and superst.i.tion easily persuaded itself, that the future destiny of the man was thus impressed upon the forehead of the child. As a faithful servant of the House of Austria, he had the strongest claims on the grat.i.tude of both its lines, but he did not survive to enjoy the most brilliant proof of their regard.

A messenger was already on his way from Madrid, bearing to him the order of the Golden Fleece, when death overtook him at Leipzig.

Though Te Deum, in all Spanish and Austrian lands, was sung in honour of a victory, Wallenstein himself, by the haste with which he quitted Leipzig, and soon after all Saxony, and by renouncing his original design of fixing there his winter quarters, openly confessed his defeat.

It is true he made one more feeble attempt to dispute, even in his flight, the honour of victory, by sending out his Croats next morning to the field; but the sight of the Swedish army drawn up in order of battle, immediately dispersed these flying bands, and Duke Bernard, by keeping possession of the field, and soon after by the capture of Leipzig, maintained indisputably his claim to the t.i.tle of victor.

But it was a dear conquest, a dearer triumph! It was not till the fury of the contest was over, that the full weight of the loss sustained was felt, and the shout of triumph died away into a silent gloom of despair.

He, who had led them to the charge, returned not with them; there he lay upon the field which he had won, mingled with the dead bodies of the common crowd. After a long and almost fruitless search, the corpse of the king was discovered, not far from the great stone, which, for a hundred years before, had stood between Lutzen and the Ca.n.a.l, and which, from the memorable disaster of that day, still bears the name of the Stone of the Swede. Covered with blood and wounds, so as scarcely to be recognised, trampled beneath the horses' hoofs, stripped by the rude hands of plunderers of its ornaments and clothes, his body was drawn from beneath a heap of dead, conveyed to Weissenfels, and there delivered up to the lamentations of his soldiers, and the last embraces of his queen. The first tribute had been paid to revenge, and blood had atoned for the blood of the monarch; but now affection a.s.sumes its rights, and tears of grief must flow for the man. The universal sorrow absorbs all individual woes.

The generals, still stupefied by the unexpected blow, stood speechless and motionless around his bier, and no one trusted himself enough to contemplate the full extent of their loss.

The Emperor, we are told by Khevenhuller, showed symptoms of deep, and apparently sincere feeling, at the sight of the king's doublet stained with blood, which had been stripped from him during the battle, and carried to Vienna. "Willingly," said he, "would I have granted to the unfortunate prince a longer life, and a safe return to his kingdom, had Germany been at peace." But when a trait, which is nothing more than a proof of a yet lingering humanity, and which a mere regard to appearances and even self-love, would have extorted from the most insensible, and the absence of which could exist only in the most inhuman heart, has, by a Roman Catholic writer of modern times and acknowledged merit, been made the subject of the highest eulogium, and compared with the magnanimous tears of Alexander, for the fall of Darius, our distrust is excited of the other virtues of the writer's hero, and what is still worse, of his own ideas of moral dignity.

But even such praise, whatever its amount, is much for one, whose memory his biographer has to clear from the suspicion of being privy to the a.s.sa.s.sination of a king.

It was scarcely to be expected, that the strong leaning of mankind to the marvellous, would leave to the common course of nature the glory of ending the career of Gustavus Adolphus.

The death of so formidable a rival was too important an event for the Emperor, not to excite in his bitter opponent a ready suspicion, that what was so much to his interests, was also the result of his instigation.

For the execution, however, of this dark deed, the Emperor would require the aid of a foreign arm, and this it was generally believed he had found in Francis Albert, Duke of Saxe Lauenburg. The rank of the latter permitted him a free access to the king's person, while it at the same time seemed to place him above the suspicion of so foul a deed. This prince, however, was in fact not incapable of this atrocity, and he had moreover sufficient motives for its commission.

Francis Albert, the youngest of four sons of Francis II, Duke of Lauenburg, and related by the mother's side to the race of Vasa, had, in his early years, found a most friendly reception at the Swedish court. Some offence which he had committed against Gustavus Adolphus, in the queen's chamber, was, it is said, repaid by this fiery youth with a box on the ear; which, though immediately repented of, and amply apologized for, laid the foundation of an irreconcileable hate in the vindictive heart of the duke. Francis Albert subsequently entered the imperial service, where he rose to the command of a regiment, and formed a close intimacy with Wallenstein, and condescended to be the instrument of a secret negociation with the Saxon court, which did little honour to his rank. Without any sufficient cause being a.s.signed, he suddenly quitted the Austrian service, and appeared in the king's camp at Nuremberg, to offer his services as a volunteer. By his show of zeal for the Protestant cause, and prepossessing and flattering deportment, he gained the heart of the king, who, warned in vain by Oxenstiern, continued to lavish his favour and friends.h.i.+p on this suspicious new comer.

The battle of Lutzen soon followed, in which Francis Albert, like an evil genius, kept close to the king's side and did not leave him till he fell. He owed, it was thought, his own safety amidst the fire of the enemy, to a green sash which he wore, the colour of the Imperialists.

He was at any rate the first to convey to his friend Wallenstein the intelligence of the king's death. After the battle, he exchanged the Swedish service for the Saxon; and, after the murder of Wallenstein, being charged with being an accomplice of that general, he only escaped the sword of justice by abjuring his faith.

His last appearance in life was as commander of an imperial army in Silesia, where he died of the wounds he had received before Schweidnitz.

It requires some effort to believe in the innocence of a man, who had run through a career like this, of the act charged against him; but, however great may be the moral and physical possibility of his committing such a crime, it must still be allowed that there are no certain grounds for imputing it to him. Gustavus Adolphus, it is well known, exposed himself to danger, like the meanest soldier in his army, and where thousands fell, he, too, might naturally meet his death.

How it reached him, remains indeed buried in mystery; but here, more than anywhere, does the maxim apply, that where the ordinary course of things is fully sufficient to account for the fact, the honour of human nature ought not to be stained by any suspicion of moral atrocity.

But by whatever hand he fell, his extraordinary destiny must appear a great interposition of Providence. History, too often confined to the ungrateful task of a.n.a.lyzing the uniform play of human pa.s.sions, is occasionally rewarded by the appearance of events, which strike like a hand from heaven, into the nicely adjusted machinery of human plans, and carry the contemplative mind to a higher order of things. Of this kind, is the sudden retirement of Gustavus Adolphus from the scene; -- stopping for a time the whole movement of the political machine, and disappointing all the calculations of human prudence. Yesterday, the very soul, the great and animating principle of his own creation; to-day, struck unpitiably to the ground in the very midst of his eagle flight; untimely torn from a whole world of great designs, and from the ripening harvest of his expectations, he left his bereaved party disconsolate; and the proud edifice of his past greatness sunk into ruins.

The Protestant party had identified its hopes with its invincible leader, and scarcely can it now separate them from him; with him, they now fear all good fortune is buried. But it was no longer the benefactor of Germany who fell at Lutzen: the beneficent part of his career, Gustavus Adolphus had already terminated; and now the greatest service which he could render to the liberties of Germany was -- to die.

The all-engrossing power of an individual was at an end, but many came forward to essay their strength; the equivocal a.s.sistance of an over-powerful protector, gave place to a more n.o.ble self-exertion on the part of the Estates; and those who were formerly the mere instruments of his aggrandizement, now began to work for themselves.

They now looked to their own exertions for the emanc.i.p.ation, which could not be received without danger from the hand of the mighty; and the Swedish power, now incapable of sinking into the oppressor, was henceforth restricted to the more modest part of an ally.

The ambition of the Swedish monarch aspired unquestionably to establish a power within Germany, and to attain a firm footing in the centre of the empire, which was inconsistent with the liberties of the Estates.

His aim was the imperial crown; and this dignity, supported by his power, and maintained by his energy and activity, would in his hands be liable to more abuse than had ever been feared from the House of Austria.

Born in a foreign country, educated in the maxims of arbitrary power, and by principles and enthusiasm a determined enemy to Popery, he was ill qualified to maintain inviolate the const.i.tution of the German States, or to respect their liberties. The coercive homage which Augsburg, with many other cities, was forced to pay to the Swedish crown, bespoke the conqueror, rather than the protector of the empire; and this town, prouder of the t.i.tle of a royal city, than of the higher dignity of the freedom of the empire, flattered itself with the antic.i.p.ation of becoming the capital of his future kingdom.

His ill-disguised attempts upon the Electorate of Mentz, which he first intended to bestow upon the Elector of Brandenburg, as the dower of his daughter Christina, and afterwards destined for his chancellor and friend Oxenstiern, evinced plainly what liberties he was disposed to take with the const.i.tution of the empire. His allies, the Protestant princes, had claims on his grat.i.tude, which could be satisfied only at the expense of their Roman Catholic neighbours, and particularly of the immediate Ecclesiastical Chapters; and it seems probable a plan was early formed for dividing the conquered provinces, (after the precedent of the barbarian hordes who overran the German empire,) as a common spoil, among the German and Swedish confederates.

In his treatment of the Elector Palatine, he entirely belied the magnanimity of the hero, and forgot the sacred character of a protector. The Palatinate was in his hands, and the obligations both of justice and honour demanded its full and immediate restoration to the legitimate sovereign.

But, by a subtlety unworthy of a great mind, and disgraceful to the honourable t.i.tle of protector of the oppressed, he eluded that obligation.

He treated the Palatinate as a conquest wrested from the enemy, and thought that this circ.u.mstance gave him a right to deal with it as he pleased. He surrendered it to the Elector as a favour, not as a debt; and that, too, as a Swedish fief, fettered by conditions which diminished half its value, and degraded this unfortunate prince into a humble va.s.sal of Sweden. One of these conditions obliged the Elector, after the conclusion of the war, to furnish, along with the other princes, his contribution towards the maintenance of the Swedish army, a condition which plainly indicates the fate which, in the event of the ultimate success of the king, awaited Germany.

His sudden disappearance secured the liberties of Germany, and saved his reputation, while it probably spared him the mortification of seeing his own allies in arms against him, and all the fruits of his victories torn from him by a disadvantageous peace.

Saxony was already disposed to abandon him, Denmark viewed his success with alarm and jealousy; and even France, the firmest and most potent of his allies, terrified at the rapid growth of his power and the imperious tone which he a.s.sumed, looked around at the very moment he past the Lech, for foreign alliances, in order to check the progress of the Goths, and restore to Europe the balance of power.

Book IV.

The weak bond of union, by which Gustavus Adolphus contrived to hold together the Protestant members of the empire, was dissolved by his death: the allies were now again at liberty, and their alliance, to last, must be formed anew. By the former event, if unremedied, they would lose all the advantages they had gained at the cost of so much bloodshed, and expose themselves to the inevitable danger of becoming one after the other the prey of an enemy, whom, by their union alone, they had been able to oppose and to master. Neither Sweden, nor any of the states of the empire, was singly a match with the Emperor and the League; and, by seeking a peace under the present state of things, they would necessarily be obliged to receive laws from the enemy. Union was, therefore, equally indispensable, either for concluding a peace or continuing the war. But a peace, sought under the present circ.u.mstances, could not fail to be disadvantageous to the allied powers. With the death of Gustavus Adolphus, the enemy had formed new hopes; and however gloomy might be the situation of his affairs after the battle of Lutzen, still the death of his dreaded rival was an event too disastrous to the allies, and too favourable for the Emperor, not to justify him in entertaining the most brilliant expectations, and not to encourage him to the prosecution of the war. Its inevitable consequence, for the moment at least, must be want of union among the allies, and what might not the Emperor and the League gain from such a division of their enemies? He was not likely to sacrifice such prospects, as the present turn of affairs held out to him, for any peace, not highly beneficial to himself; and such a peace the allies would not be disposed to accept. They naturally determined, therefore, to continue the war, and for this purpose, the maintenance of the existing union was acknowledged to be indispensable.

But how was this union to be renewed? and whence were to be derived the necessary means for continuing the war? It was not the power of Sweden, but the talents and personal influence of its late king, which had given him so overwhelming an influence in Germany, so great a command over the minds of men; and even he had innumerable difficulties to overcome, before he could establish among the states even a weak and wavering alliance. With his death vanished all, which his personal qualities alone had rendered practicable; and the mutual obligation of the states seemed to cease with the hopes on which it had been founded. Several impatiently threw off the yoke which had always been irksome; others hastened to seize the helm which they had unwillingly seen in the hands of Gustavus, but which, during his lifetime, they did not dare to dispute with him.

Some were tempted, by the seductive promises of the Emperor, to abandon the alliance; others, oppressed by the heavy burdens of a fourteen years' war, longed for the repose of peace, upon any conditions, however ruinous. The generals of the army, partly German princes, acknowledged no common head, and no one would stoop to receive orders from another.

Unanimity vanished alike from the cabinet and the field, and their common weal was threatened with ruin, by the spirit of disunion.

Gustavus had left no male heir to the crown of Sweden: his daughter Christina, then six years old, was the natural heir.

The unavoidable weakness of a regency, suited ill with that energy and resolution, which Sweden would be called upon to display in this trying conjuncture. The wide reaching mind of Gustavus Adolphus had raised this unimportant, and hitherto unknown kingdom, to a rank among the powers of Europe, which it could not retain without the fortune and genius of its author, and from which it could not recede, without a humiliating confession of weakness.

Though the German war had been conducted chiefly on the resources of Germany, yet even the small contribution of men and money, which Sweden furnished, had sufficed to exhaust the finances of that poor kingdom, and the peasantry groaned beneath the imposts necessarily laid upon them.

The plunder gained in Germany enriched only a few individuals, among the n.o.bles and the soldiers, while Sweden itself remained poor as before. For a time, it is true, the national glory reconciled the subject to these burdens, and the sums exacted, seemed but as a loan placed at interest, in the fortunate hand of Gustavus Adolphus, to be richly repaid by the grateful monarch at the conclusion of a glorious peace. But with the king's death this hope vanished, and the deluded people now loudly demanded relief from their burdens.

But the spirit of Gustavus Adolphus still lived in the men to whom he had confided the administration of the kingdom. However dreadful to them, and unexpected, was the intelligence of his death, it did not deprive them of their manly courage; and the spirit of ancient Rome, under the invasion of Brennus and Hannibal, animated this n.o.ble a.s.sembly.

The greater the price, at which these hard-gained advantages had been purchased, the less readily could they reconcile themselves to renounce them: not unrevenged was a king to be sacrificed.

Called on to choose between a doubtful and exhausting war, and a profitable but disgraceful peace, the Swedish council of state boldly espoused the side of danger and honour; and with agreeable surprise, men beheld this venerable senate acting with all the energy and enthusiasm of youth. Surrounded with watchful enemies, both within and without, and threatened on every side with danger, they armed themselves against them all, with equal prudence and heroism, and laboured to extend their kingdom, even at the moment when they had to struggle for its existence.

The decease of the king, and the minority of his daughter Christina, renewed the claims of Poland to the Swedish throne; and King Ladislaus, the son of Sigismund, spared no intrigues to gain a party in Sweden.

On this ground, the regency lost no time in proclaiming the young queen, and arranging the administration of the regency. All the officers of the kingdom were summoned to do homage to their new princess; all correspondence with Poland prohibited, and the edicts of previous monarchs against the heirs of Sigismund, confirmed by a solemn act of the nation.

The alliance with the Czar of Muscovy was carefully renewed, in order, by the arms of this prince, to keep the hostile Poles in check.

The death of Gustavus Adolphus had put an end to the jealousy of Denmark, and removed the grounds of alarm which had stood in the way of a good understanding between the two states. The representations by which the enemy sought to stir up Christian IV. against Sweden were no longer listened to; and the strong wish the Danish monarch entertained for the marriage of his son Ulrick with the young princess, combined, with the dictates of a sounder policy, to incline him to a neutrality.

At the same time, England, Holland, and France came forward with the gratifying a.s.surances to the regency of continued friends.h.i.+p and support, and encouraged them, with one voice, to prosecute with activity the war, which hitherto had been conducted with so much glory.

Whatever reason France might have to congratulate itself on the death of the Swedish conqueror, it was as fully sensible of the expediency of maintaining the alliance with Sweden.

Without exposing itself to great danger, it could not allow the power of Sweden to sink in Germany. Want of resources of its own, would either drive Sweden to conclude a hasty and disadvantageous peace with Austria, and then all the past efforts to lower the ascendancy of this dangerous power would be thrown away; or necessity and despair would drive the armies to extort from the Roman Catholic states the means of support, and France would then be regarded as the betrayer of those very states, who had placed themselves under her powerful protection.

The death of Gustavus, far from breaking up the alliance between France and Sweden, had only rendered it more necessary for both, and more profitable for France. Now, for the first time, since he was dead who had stretched his protecting arm over Germany, and guarded its frontiers against the encroaching designs of France, could the latter safely pursue its designs upon Alsace, and thus be enabled to sell its aid to the German Protestants at a dearer rate.

Strengthened by these alliances, secured in its interior, and defended from without by strong frontier garrisons and fleets, the regency did not delay an instant to continue a war, by which Sweden had little of its own to lose, while, if success attended its arms, one or more of the German provinces might be won, either as a conquest, or indemnification of its expenses. Secure amidst its seas, Sweden, even if driven out of Germany, would scarcely be exposed to greater peril, than if it voluntarily retired from the contest, while the former measure was as honourable, as the latter was disgraceful. The more boldness the regency displayed, the more confidence would they inspire among their confederates, the more respect among their enemies, and the more favourable conditions might they antic.i.p.ate in the event of peace. If they found themselves too weak to execute the wide-ranging projects of Gustavus, they at least owed it to this lofty model to do their utmost, and to yield to no difficulty short of absolute necessity.

Alas, that motives of self-interest had too great a share in this n.o.ble determination, to demand our unqualified admiration!

For those who had nothing themselves to suffer from the calamities of war, but were rather to be enriched by it, it was an easy matter to resolve upon its continuation; for the German empire was, in the end, to defray the expenses; and the provinces on which they reckoned, would be cheaply purchased with the few troops they sacrificed to them, and with the generals who were placed at the head of armies, composed for the most part of Germans, and with the honourable superintendence of all the operations, both military and political.

But this superintendence was irreconcileable with the distance of the Swedish regency from the scene of action, and with the slowness which necessarily accompanies all the movements of a council.

To one comprehensive mind must be intrusted the management of Swedish interests in Germany, and with full powers to determine at discretion all questions of war and peace, the necessary alliances, or the acquisitions made. With dictatorial power, and with the whole influence of the crown which he was to represent, must this important magistrate be invested, in order to maintain its dignity, to enforce united and combined operations, to give effect to his orders, and to supply the place of the monarch whom he succeeded.

Such a man was found in the Chancellor Oxenstiern, the first minister, and what is more, the friend of the deceased king, who, acquainted with all the secrets of his master, versed in the politics of Germany, and in the relations of all the states of Europe, was unquestionably the fittest instrument to carry out the plans of Gustavus Adolphus in their full extent.

Oxenstiern was on his way to Upper Germany, in order to a.s.semble the four Upper Circles, when the news of the king's death reached him at Hanau. This was a heavy blow, both to the friend and the statesman.

Sweden, indeed, had lost but a king, Germany a protector; but Oxenstiern, the author of his fortunes, the friend of his soul, and the object of his admiration. Though the greatest sufferer in the general loss, he was the first who by his energy rose from the blow, and the only one qualified to repair it. His penetrating glance foresaw all the obstacles which would oppose the execution of his plans, the discouragement of the estates, the intrigues of hostile courts, the breaking up of the confederacy, the jealousy of the leaders, and the dislike of princes of the empire to submit to foreign authority.

But even this deep insight into the existing state of things, which revealed the whole extent of the evil, showed him also the means by which it might be overcome. It was essential to revive the drooping courage of the weaker states, to meet the secret machinations of the enemy, to allay the jealousy of the more powerful allies, to rouse the friendly powers, and France in particular, to active a.s.sistance; but above all, to repair the ruined edifice of the German alliance, and to reunite the scattered strength of the party by a close and permanent bond of union.

The dismay which the loss of their leader occasioned the German Protestants, might as readily dispose them to a closer alliance with Sweden, as to a hasty peace with the Emperor; and it depended entirely upon the course pursued, which of these alternatives they would adopt.