imperial deputies; "the stars have already indicated to me that the
spirit of the Elector of Bavaria holds sway in the imperial councils.
But his majesty, in dismissing his troops, is rejecting the most
precious jewel of his crown."
The event which we have described took place in September, 1630.
Wallenstein, having paid off and dispersed his great army to the four
winds, retired to his duchy of Friedland, and took up his residence at
Gitschen, which had been much enlarged and beautified by his orders.
Here he quietly waited and observed the progress of events.
He had much of interest to observe. The effort of Ferdinand and his
advisers to drive Protestantism out of Germany had produced an effect
which none of them anticipated. The war, which had seemed at an end, was
quickly afoot again, with a new leader of the Protestant cause, new
armies, and new fortunes. Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, had come to
the rescue of his threatened fellow-believers, and before the army of
Wallenstein had been dissolved the work of the peace-makers was set
aside, and the horrors of war returned.
The dismissed general had now left Gitschen for Bohemia, where he dwelt
upon his estates in a style of regal luxury, and in apparent disregard
of the doings of emperors and kings. His palace in Prague was royal in
its adornments, and while his enemies were congratulating themselves on
having forced him into retirement, he had Italian artists at work
painting on the walls of this palace his figure in the character of a
conqueror, his triumphal car drawn by four milk-white steeds, while a
star shone above his laurel-crowned head. Sixty pages, of noble birth,
richly attired in blue and gold velvet, waited upon him, while some of
his officers and chamberlains had served the emperor in the same rank.
In his magnificent stables were three hundred horses of choice breeds,
while the daily gathering of distinguished men in his halls was not
surpassed by the assemblies of the emperor himself.
Yet in his demeanor there was nothing to show that he entertained a
shadow of his former ambition. He affected the utmost ease and
tranquillity of manner, and seemed as if fully content with his present
state, and as if he cared no longer who fought the wars of the world.
But inwardly his ambition had in no sense declined. He beheld the
progress of the Swedish conqueror with secret joy, and when he saw Tilly
overthrown at Leipsic, and the fruits of twelve years of war wrested
from the emperor at a single blow, his heart throbbed high with hope.
His hour of revenge upon the emperor had come. Ferdinand must humiliate
himself and come for aid to his dismissed general, for there was not
another man in the kingdom capable of saving it from the triumphant foe.
He was right. The emperor's deputies came. He was requested, begged, to
head again the imperial armies. He received the envoys coldly. Urgent
persuasions were needed to induce him to raise an army of thirty
thousand men. Even then he would not agree to take command of it. He
would raise it and put it at the emperor's disposal.
He planted his standard; the men came; many of them his old followers.
Plenty and plunder were promised, and thousands flocked to his tents. By
March of 1632 the thirty thousand men were collected. Who should command
them? There was but one, and this the emperor and Wallenstein alike
knew. They would follow only the man to whose banner they had flocked.
The emperor begged him to take command. He consented, but only on
conditions to which an emperor has rarely agreed. Wallenstein was to
have exclusive control of the army, without interference of any kind,
was to be given irresponsible control over all the provinces he might
conquer, was to hold as security a portion of the Austrian patrimonial
estates, and after the war might choose any of the hereditary estates of
the empire for his seat of retirement. The emperor acceded, and
Wallenstein, clothed with almost imperial power, marched to war. His
subsequent fortunes the next narrative must declare.
_THE END OF TWO GREAT SOLDIERS._
Two armies faced each other in central Bavaria, two armies on which the
fate of Germany depended, those of Gustavus Adolphus, the right hand of
Protestantism, and of Wallenstein, the hope of Catholic imperialism.
Gustavus was strongly intrenched in the vicinity of Nuremberg, with an
army of but sixteen thousand men. Wallenstein faced him with an army of
sixty thousand, yet dared not attack him in his strong position. He
occupied himself in efforts to make his camp as impregnable as that of
his foeman, and the two great opponents lay waiting face to face, while
famine slowly decimated their ranks.
It was an extraordinary position. Both sides depended for food on
foraging, and between them they had swept the country clean. The
peasantry fled in every direction from Wallenstein's pillaging troops,
who destroyed all that they could not carry away. It had become a
question with the two armies which could starve the longest, and for
three months they lay encamped, each waiting until famine should drive
the other out. Surely such a situation had never before been known.
What had preceded this event? A few words will tell. Ferdinand the
emperor had, with the aid of Tilly and Wallenstein, laid all Germany
prostrate at his feet. Ferdinand the zealot had, by this effort to
impose Catholicism on the Protestant states, speedily undone the work of
his generals, and set the war on foot again. Gustavus Adolphus, the hero
of Sweden, had come to the aid of the oppressed Protestants of Germany,
borne down all before him, and quickly won back northern Germany from
the oppressor's hands.
And now the cruelty of that savage war reached its culminating point.
When Germany submitted to the emperor, one city did not submit.
Magdeburg still held out. All efforts to subdue it proved fruitless, and
it continued free and defiant when all the remainder of Germany lay
under the emperor's control.
It was to pay dearly for the courage of its citizens. When the war broke
out again, Magdeburg was besieged by Tilly with his whole force. After a
most valiant defence it was taken by storm, and a scene of massacre and
ruin followed without a parallel in modern wars. When it ended,
Magdeburg was no more. Of its buildings all were gone, except the
cathedral and one hundred and thirty-seven houses. Of its inhabitants
all had perished, except some four thousand who had taken refuge in the
cathedral. Man, woman, and child, the sword had slain them all, Tilly
being in considerable measure responsible for the massacre, for he was
dilatory in ordering its cessation. When at length he did act there was
little to save. All Europe thrilled with horror at the dreadful news,
and from that day forward fortune fled from the banners of Count Tilly.
On September 7, 1631, the armies of Gustavus and Tilly met at Leipsic,
and a terrible battle ensued, in which the imperialists were completely
defeated and all the fruits of their former victories torn from their
hands. In the following year Tilly had his thigh shattered by a
cannon-ball at the battle of the Lech, and died in excruciating agonies.
Such were the preludes to the scene we have described. The Lutheran
princes everywhere joined the victorious Gustavus; Austria itself was
threatened by his irresistible arms; and the emperor, in despair, called
Wallenstein again to the command, yielding to the most extreme demands
of this imperious chief.
The next scene was that we have described, in which the armies of
Gustavus and Wallenstein lay face to face at Nuremberg, each waiting
until starvation should force the other to fight or to retreat.
Gustavus had sent for reinforcements, and his army steadily grew. That
of Wallenstein dwindled away under the assaults of famine and
pestilence. A large convoy of provisions intended for Wallenstein was
seized by the Swedes. Soon afterwards Gustavus was so strongly
reinforced that his army grew to seventy thousand men. At his back lay
Nuremberg, his faithful ally, ready to aid him with thirty thousand
fighting men besides. As his force grew that of Wallenstein shrank,
until by the end of the siege pestilence and want had reduced his army
to twenty-four thousand men.
The Swedes were the first to yield in this game of starvation. As their
numbers grew their wants increased, and at length, furious with famine,
they made a desperate assault upon the imperial camp. They were driven
back, with heavy loss. Two weeks more Gustavus waited, and then,
despairing of drawing his opponent from his works, he broke camp and
marched with sounding trumpets past his adversary's camp, who quietly
let him go. The Swedes had lost twenty thousand men, and Nuremberg ten
thousand of her inhabitants, during this period of hunger and slaughter.
This was in September, 1632. In November of the same year the two armies
met again, on the plain of Lützen, in Saxony, not far from the scene of
Tilly's defeat, a year before. Wallenstein, on the retreat of Gustavus,
had set fire to his own encampment and marched away, burning the
villages around Nuremberg and wasting the country as he advanced, with
Saxony as his goal. Gustavus, who had at first marched southward into
the Catholic states, hastened to the relief of his allies. On the 15th
of November the two great opponents came once more face to face,
prepared to stake the cause of religious freedom in Germany on the issue
of battle.
Early in the morning of the 16th Gustavus marshalled his forces,
determined that that day should settle the question of victory or
defeat. Wallenstein had weakened his ranks by sending Count Pappenheim
south on siege duty, and the Swedish king, without waiting for
reinforcements, decided on an instant attack.
Unluckily for him the morning dawned in fog. The entire plain lay
shrouded. It was not until after eleven o'clock that the mist rose and
the sun shone on the plain. During this interval Count Pappenheim, for
whom Wallenstein had sent in haste the day before, was speeding north by
forced marches, and through the chance of the fog was enabled to reach
the field while the battle was at its height.
The troops were drawn up in battle array, the Swedes singing to the
accompaniment of drums and trumpets Luther's stirring hymn, and an ode
composed by the king himself: "Fear not, thou little flock." They were
strongly contrasted with the army of their foe, being distinguished by
the absence of armor, light colored (chiefly blue) uniforms, quickness
of motion, exactness of discipline, and the lightness of their
artillery. The imperialists, on the contrary, wore old-fashioned,
close-fitting uniforms, mostly yellow in color, cuirasses, thigh-pieces,
and helmets, and were marked by slow movements, absence of discipline,
and the heaviness and unmanageable character of their artillery. The
battle was to be, to some extent, a test of excellence between the new
and the old ideas in war.
At length the fog rose and the sun broke out, and both sides made ready
for the struggle. Wallenstein, though suffering from a severe attack of
his persistent enemy, the gout, mounted his horse and prepared his
troops for the assault. His infantry were drawn up in squares, with the
cavalry on their flanks, in front a ditch defended by artillery. His
purpose was defensive, that of Gustavus offensive. The Swedish king
mounted in his turn, placed himself at the head of his right wing, and,
brandishing his sword, exclaimed, "Now, onward! May our God direct us!
Lord! Lord! help me this day to fight for the glory of Thy name!" Then,
throwing aside his cuirass, which annoyed him on account of a slight
wound he had recently received, he cried, "God is my shield!" and led
his men in a furious charge upon the cannon-guarded ditch.
The guns belched forth their deadly thunders, many fell, but the
remainder broke irresistibly over the defences and seized the battery,
driving the imperialists back in disorder. The cavalry, which had
charged the black cuirassiers of Wallenstein, was less successful. They
were repulsed, and the cuirassiers fiercely charged the Swedish infantry
in flank, driving it back beyond the trenches.
This repulse brought on the great disaster of the day. Gustavus, seeing
his infantry driven back, hastened to their aid with a troop of horse,
and through the disorder of the field became separated from his men,
only a few of whom accompanied him, among them Francis, Duke of
Saxe-Lauenburg. His short-sightedness, or the foggy condition of the
atmosphere, unluckily brought him too near a party of the black
cuirassiers, and in an instant a shot struck him, breaking his left arm.
"I am wounded; take me off the field," he said to the Duke of Lauenburg,
and turned his horse to retire from the perilous vicinity.
As he did so a second ball struck him in the back. "My God! My God!" he
exclaimed, falling from the saddle, while his horse, which had been
wounded in the neck, dashed away, dragging the king, whose foot was
entangled in the stirrup, for some distance.
The duke fled, but Luchau, the master of the royal horse, shot the
officer who had wounded the king. The cuirassiers advanced, while
Leubelfing, the king's page, a boy of eighteen, who had alone remained
with him, was endeavoring to raise him up.
"Who is he?" they asked.
The boy refused to tell, and was shot and mortally wounded.
"I am the King of Sweden!" Gustavus is said to have exclaimed to his
foes, who had surrounded and were stripping him.
On hearing this they sought to carry him off, but a charge of the
Swedish cavalry at that moment drove them from their prey. As they
retired they discharged their weapons at the helpless king, one of the
cuirassiers shooting him through the head as he rushed past his
prostrate form.
The sight of the king's charger, covered with blood, and galloping with
empty saddle past their ranks, told the Swedes the story of the
disastrous event. The news spread rapidly from rank to rank, carrying
alarm wherever it came. Some of the generals wished to retreat, but Duke
Bernhard of Weimar put himself at the head of a regiment, ran its
colonel through for refusing to obey him, and called on them to follow
him to revenge their king.
His ardent appeal stirred the troops to new enthusiasm. Regardless of a
shot that carried away his hat, Bernhard charged at their head, broke
over the trenches and into the battery, retook the guns, and drove the
imperial troops back in confusion, regaining all the successes of the
first assault.
The day seemed won. It would have been but for the fresh forces of
Pappenheim, who had some time before reached the field, only to fall
before the bullets of the foe. His men took an active part in the fray,
and swept backward the tide of war. The Swedes were again driven from
the battery and across the ditch, with heavy loss, and the imperialists
regained the pivotal point of the obstinate struggle.
But now the reserve corps of the Swedes, led by Kniphausen, came into
action, and once more the state of the battle was reversed. They charged
across the ditch with such irresistible force that the position was for
the third time taken, and the imperialists again driven back. This ended
the desperate contest. Wallenstein ordered the retreat to be sounded.
The dead Gustavus had won the victory.
A thick fog came on as night fell and prevented pursuit, even if the
weariness of the Swedes would have allowed it. They held the field,
while Wallenstein hastened away, his direction of retreat being towards
Bohemia. The Swedes had won and lost, for the death of Gustavus was
equivalent to a defeat, and the emperor, with unseemly rejoicing,
ordered a Te Deum to be sung in all his cities.
On the following day the Swedes sought for the body of their king. They
found it by a great stone, which is still known as the Swedish stone. It
had been so trampled by the hoofs of charging horses, and was so covered
with blood from its many wounds, that it was difficult to recognize. The
collar, saturated with blood, which had fallen into the hands of the
cuirassiers, was taken to Vienna and presented to the emperor, who is
said to have shed tears on seeing it. The corpse was laid in state
before the Swedish army, and was finally removed to Stockholm, where it
was interred.
Thus perished one of the great souls of Europe, a man stirred deeply by
ambition, full of hopes greater than he himself acknowledged, a military
hero of the first rank, and one disposed to prosecute war with a
humanity far in advance of his age. He severely repressed all excesses
of his soldiery, was solicitous for the security of citizens and
peasantry, and strictly forbade any revengeful reprisals on Catholic
cities for the frightful work done by his opponents upon the
Protestants. Seldom has a conqueror shown such magnanimity and nobility
of sentiment, and his untimely death had much to do with exposing
Germany to the later desolation of that most frightful of religious
wars.
His defeated foe, Wallenstein, was not long to survive him. After his
defeat he acted in a manner that gave rise to suspicions that he
intended to play false to the emperor. He executed many of his officers
and soldiers in revenge for their cowardice, as he termed it, recruited
his ranks up to their former standard, but remained inactive, while
Bernhard of Weimar was leading the Swedes to new successes.
His actions were so problematical, indeed, that suspicion of his motives
grew more decided, and at length a secret conspiracy was raised against
him with the connivance of the emperor. Wallenstein, as if fearful of an
attempt to rob him of his power, had his superior officers assembled at
a banquet given at Pilsen, in January, 1634. A fierce attack of gout
prevented him from presiding, but his firm adherents, Field-Marshals
Illo and Terzka, took his place, and all the officers signed a compact
to adhere faithfully to the duke in life and death as long as he should
remain in the emperor's service. Some signed it who afterwards proved
false to him, among them Field-Marshal Piccolomini, who afterwards
betrayed him.
Just what designs that dark and much revolving man contemplated it is
not easy to tell. It may have been treachery to the emperor, but he was
not the man to freely reveal his secrets. The one person he trusted was
Piccolomini, whose star seemed in favorable conjunction with his own.
To him he made known some of his projected movements, only to find in
the end that his trusted confidant had revealed them all to the emperor.
The plot against Wallenstein was now put into effect, the emperor
ordering his deposition from his command, and appointing General Gablas
to replace him, while a general amnesty for all his officers was
announced. Wallenstein was quickly taught how little he could trust his
troops and officers. Many of his generals fell from him at once. A few
regiments only remained faithful, and even in their ranks traitors
lurked. With but a thousand men to follow him he proceeded to Eger, and
from there asked aid of Bernhard of Weimar, as if he purposed to join
with those against whom he had so long fought. Bernhard received the
message with deep astonishment, and exclaimed, moved by his belief that
Wallenstein was in league with the devil,--
"He who does not trust in God can never be trusted by man!"
The great soldier of fortune was near his end. The stars were powerless
to save him. It was not enough to deprive him of his command, his
enemies did not deem it safe to let him live. One army gone, his wealth
and his fame might soon bring him another, made up of those mercenary
soldiers of all nations, and of all or no creeds, who would follow Satan
if he promised them plunder. His death had been resolved upon, and the
agent chosen for its execution was Colonel Butler, one of the officers
who had accompanied him to Eger.
It was late in February, 1634. On the night fixed for the murder,
Wallenstein's faithful friends, Illo, Terzka, Kinsky, and Captain
Neumann were at a banquet in the castle of Eger. The agents of death
were Colonel Butler, an Irish officer named Lesley, and a Scotchman
named Gordon, while the soldiers employed were a number of dragoons,
chiefly Irish.
In the midst of the dinner the doors of the banqueting hall were burst
open, and the assassins rushed upon their victims, killing them as they
sat, with the exception of Terzka, who killed two of his assailants
before he was despatched.
From this scene of murder the assassins rushed to the quarters of
Wallenstein. It was midnight and he had gone to bed. He sprang up as his
door was burst open, and Captain Devereux, one of the party, rushed with
drawn sword into the room.
"Are you the villain who would sell the army to the enemy and tear the
crown from the emperor's head?" he shouted.
Wallenstein's only answer was to open his arms and receive the blow
aimed at his breast. He died without a word. Thus, with a brief interval
between, had fallen military genius and burning ambition in two
forms,--that of the heroic Swede and that of the ruthless Bohemian.
_THE SIEGE OF VIENNA._
Once more the Grand Turk was afoot. Straight on Vienna he had marched,
with an army of more than two hundred thousand men. At length he had
reached the goal for which he had so often aimed, the Austrian capital,
while all western Europe was threatened by his arms. The grand vizier,
Kara Mustapha, headed the army, which had marched straight through
Hungary without wasting time in petty sieges, and hastened towards the
imperial city with scarce a barrier in its path.
Consternation filled the Viennese as the vast army of the Turks rolled
steadily nearer and nearer, pillaging the country as it came, and moving
onward as irresistibly and almost as destructively as a lava flow. The
emperor and his court fled in terror. Many of the wealthy inhabitants
followed, bearing with them such treasures as they could convey. The
land lay helpless under the shadow of terror which the coming host threw
far before its columns.
But pillage takes time. The Turks, through the greatness of their
numbers, moved slowly. Some time was left for action. The inhabitants of
the city, taking courage, armed for defence. The Duke of Lorraine, whose
small army had not ventured to face the foe, left twelve thousand men in
the city, and drew back with the remainder to wait for reinforcements.
Count Rüdiger of Stahrenberg was left in command, and made all haste to
put the imperilled city in a condition of defence.
[Illustration: THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE IN VIENNA.]
On came the Turks, the smoke of burning villages the signal of their
approach. On the 14th of June, 1683, their mighty army appeared before
the walls, and a city of tents was built that covered a space of six
leagues in extent.
Their camp was arranged in the form of a crescent, enclosing within its
boundaries a promiscuous mass of soldiers and camp-followers, camels,
and baggage-wagons, which seemed to extend as far as the eye could
reach. In the centre was the gorgeous tent of the vizier, made of green
silk, and splendid with its embroidery of gold, silver, and precious
stones, while inside it was kept the holy standard of the prophet.
Marvellous stories are told of the fountains, baths, gardens, and other
appliances of Oriental luxury with which the vizier surrounded himself
in this magnificent tent.
Two days after the arrival of the Turkish host the trenches were opened,
the cannon placed, and the siege of Vienna began. For more than two
centuries the conquerors of Constantinople had kept their eyes fixed on
this city as a glorious prize. Now they had reached it, and the thunder
of their cannon around its walls was full of threat for the West. Vienna
once theirs, it was not easy to say where their career of conquest would
be stayed.