Chapter 7

In those armies the heavy cavalry was the principal arm. The musket was an unwieldy matchlock fired from a rest, and without a bayonet, so that in the infantry regiments it was necessary to combine pikemen with the musketeers. Cannon there were of all calibres and with a whole vocabulary of fantastic names, but none capable of advancing and manoeuvring with troops in battle. The Imperial troops were formed in heavy masses. Gustavus, taking his lesson from the Roman legion, had introduced a more open order--he had lightened the musket, dispensed with the rest, given the musketeer a cartridge box instead of the flapping bandoleer. He had trained his cavalry, instead of firing their carbines and wheeling, to charge home with the sword. He had created a real field artillery of imperfect structure, but which told on the Imperial masses.

The harvest had been reaped, and a strong wind blew clouds of dust over the bare autumn fields, when Count Tilly formed the victorious veterans of the Empire, in what was called Spanish order--infantry in the centre, cavalry on the flanks--upon a rising ground overlooking the broad plain of Breitenfeldt. On him marched the allies in two columns--Gustavus with the Swedes upon the right, the Elector with his Saxons on the left. As they passed a brook in front of the Imperial position, Pappenheim dashed upon them with his cavalry, but was driven back, and the two columns deployed upon the plain. The night before the battle Gustavus had dreamt that he was wrestling with Tilly, and that Tilly bit him in the left arm, but that he overpowered Tilly with his right arm. That dream came through the Gate of Horn, for the Saxons who formed the left wing were raw troops, but victory was sure to the Swede. Soldiers of the old school proudly compare the shock of charging armies at Leipsic with modern battles, which they call battles of skirmishers with armies in reserve. However this may be, all that day the plain of Breitenfeldt was filled with the fierce eddies of a hand-to-hand struggle between mail- clad masses, their cuirasses and helmets gleaming fitfully amidst the clouds of smoke and dust, the mortal shock of the charge and the deadly ring of steel striking the ear with a distinctness impossible in modern battle. Tilly with his right soon shattered the Saxons, but his centre and left were shattered by the unconquerable Swede. The day was won by the genius of the Swedish king, by the steadiness with which his troops manoeuvred, and the promptness with which they formed a new front when the defeat of the Saxons exposed their left, by the rapidity of their fire and by the vigour with which their cavalry charged. The victory was complete. At sunset four veteran Walloon regiments made a last stand for the honour of the Empire, and with difficulty bore off their redoubtable commander from his first lost field. Through all Protestant Europe flew the tidings of a great deliverance and the name of a great deliverer.

On to Vienna cried hope and daring then. On to Vienna; history still regretfully repeats the cry. Gustavus judged otherwise--and whatever his reason was we may be sure it was not weak. Not to the Danube therefore but to the Main and Rhine the tide of conquest rolled. The Thuringian forest gleams with fires that guide the night march of the Swede. Frankfort the city of empire opens her gates to him who will soon come as the hearts of all men divine not as a conqueror in the iron garb of war but as the elect of Germany to put on the imperial crown. In the cellars of the Prince Bishop of Bamberg and Wurtzburg the rich wine is broached for heretic lips. Protestantism everywhere uplifts its head, the Archbishop of Mainz, chief of the Catholic persecutors becomes a fugitive in his turn. Jesuit and Capuchin must cower or fly. All fortresses are opened by the arms of Gustavus, all hearts are opened by his gracious manner, his winning words, his sunny smile. To the people accustomed to a war of massacre and persecution he came as from a better world a spirit of humanity and toleration. His toleration was politic no doubt but it was also sincere. So novel was it that a monk finding himself not butchered or tortured thought the king's faith must be weak and attempted his conversion. His zeal was repaid with a gracious smile. Once more on the Lech Tilly crossed the path of the thunderbolt. Dishonoured at Magdeburg, defeated at Leipsic, the old man seems to have been weary of life, his leg shattered by a cannon hall he was borne dying from the field and left the Imperial cause headless as well as beaten. Gustavus is in Augsburgh, the queen of German commerce, the city of the Fuggers with their splendid and romantic money kingdom, the city of the Confession. He is in Munich, the capital of Maximilian and the Catholic League. His allies the Saxons are in Prague. A few marches more and he will dictate peace at Vienna with all Germany at his back. A few marches more the Germans will be a Protestant nation under a Protestant chief and many a dark page will be torn from the book of fate.

Ferdinand and Maximilian had sought counsel of the dying Tilly. Tilly had given them counsel bitter but inevitable. Dissembling their hate and fear they called like trembling necromancers when they invoke the fiend upon the name of power. The name of Wallenstein gave new life to the Imperial cause under the very ribs of death. At once he stood between the Empire and destruction with an army of 50,000 men, conjured, as it were, out of the earth by the spell of his influence alone. All whose trade was war came at the call of the grand master of their trade. The secret of Wallenstein's ambition is buried in his grave, but the man himself was the prince of adventurers, the ideal chief of mercenary bands, the arch contractor for the hireling's blood. His character was formed in a vast political gambling house, a world given up to pillage and the strong hand, an Eldorado of confiscations. Of the lofty dreamer portrayed in the noble dramatic poem of Schiller, there is little trace in the intensely practical character of the man. A scion of a good Bohemian house, poor himself, but married to a rich wife, whose wealth was the first step in the ladder of his marvellous fortunes, Wallenstein had amassed immense domains by the purchase of confiscated estates, a traffic redeemed from meanness only by the vastness of the scale on which he practised it, and the loftiness of the aim which he had in view. Then he took to raising and commanding mercenary troops, improving on his predecessors in that trade by doubling the size of his army, on the theory, coolly avowed by him, that a large army would subsist by its command of the country, where a small army would starve. But all was subservient to his towering ambition, and to a pride which has been called theatrical, and which often wore an eccentric garb, but which his death scene proves to have been the native grand infirmity of the man. He walked in dark ways and was unscrupulous and ruthless when on the path of his ambition; but none can doubt the self sustaining force of his lonely intellect, his power of command, the spell which his character cast over the fierce and restless spirits of his age. Prince- Duke of Friedland, Mecklenburgh, and Sagan, Generalissimo of the armies of the House of Austria,--to this height had the landless and obscure adventurer risen, in envy's despite, as his motto proudly said, not by the arts of a courtier or a demagogue, but by strength of brain and heart, in a contest with rivals whose brains and hearts were strong. Highest he stood among the uncrowned heads of Europe, and dreaded by the crowned. We wonder how the boisterous soldiers can have loved a chief who was so far from being a comrade, a being so disdainful and reserved, who at the sumptuous table kept by his officers never appeared, never joined in the revelry, even in the camp lived alone, punished intrusion on his haughty privacy as a crime. But his name was victory and plunder; he was lavishly munificent, as one who knew that those who play a deep game must lay down heavy stakes, his eye was quick to discern, his hand prompt to reward the merit of the buccaneer; and those who followed his soaring fortunes knew that they would share them. If he was prompt to reward, he was also stern in punishment, and a certain arbitrariness both in reward and punishment made the soldier feel that the commander's will was law. If Wallenstein was not the boon companion of the mercenaries, he was their divinity, and he was himself essentially one of them--even his superstition was theirs, and filled the same void of faith in his as in their hearts; though, while the common soldier raised the fiend to charm bullets, or bought spells and amulets of a quack at Nuremburg or Augsburg, Seni, the first astrologer of the age, explored the sympathizing stars for the august destiny of the Duke of Friedland. Like Uriel and Satan in Paradise Lost, Gustavus and Wallenstein stood opposed to each other. On one side was the enthusiast, on the other the mighty gamester, playing the great game of his life without emotion, by intensity of thought alone. On one side was the crusader, on the other the indifferentist, without faith except in his star. On the one side was as much good, perhaps, as has ever appeared in the form of a conqueror, on the other side the majesty of evil. Gustavus was young, his frame was vigorous and active, though inclined to corpulence, his complexion fair, his hair golden, his eye blue and merry, his countenance frank as day, and the image of a heart which had felt the kindest influences of love and friendship. Wallenstein was past his prime, his frame was tall, spare, somewhat bowed by pain, his complexion dark, his eye black and piercing, his look that of a man who trod slippery paths with deadly rivals at his side, and of whose many letters not one is to a friend. But, opposites in all else, the two champions were well matched in power. Perhaps there is hardly such another duel in history. Such another there would have been if Strafford had lived to encounter Cromwell.

The market for the great adventurer's services having risen so high, the price which he asked was large--a principality in hand, a province to be conquered, supreme command of the army which he had raised. The court suggested that if the emperor's son, the King of Hungary, were put over Wallenstein's head, his name would be a tower of strength, but Wallenstein answered with a blasphemous frankness which must have made the ears of courtiers tingle. He would be emperor of the army; he would be emperor in the matter of confiscations. The last article shows how he won the soldier's heart. Perhaps in framing his terms, he gave something to his wounded pride. If he did, the luxury cost him dear, for here he trod upon the serpent that stung his life.

The career of Gustavus was at once arrested, and he took shelter against the storm in an entrenched camp protected by three hundred cannon under the walls of Nuremberg--Nuremberg the eldest daughter of the German Reformation, the Florence of Germany in art, wealth and freedom, then the beautiful home of early commerce, now its romantic tomb. The desolation of her grass-grown streets dates from that terrible day. The Swedish lines were scarcely completed when Wallenstein appeared with all his power, and sweeping past, entrenched himself four miles from his enemy in a position the key of which were the wooded hill and old castle of the Altenberg. Those who chance to visit that spot may fancy there Wallenstein's camp as it is in Schiller, ringing with the boisterous revelry of its wild and motley bands. And they may fancy the sudden silence, the awe of men who knew no other awe, as in his well-known dress, the laced buff coat with crimson scarf, and the grey hat with crimson plume, Wallenstein rode by. Week after week and month after month these two heavy clouds of war hung close together, and Europe looked for the bursting of the storm. But famine was to do Wallenstein's work; and by famine and the pestilence, bred by the horrible state of the camp, at last his work was done. The utmost limit of deadly inaction for the Swedes arrived. Discipline and honour gave way, and could scarcely be restored by the passionate eloquence of Gustavus. Oxenstiern brought large reinforcements; and on the 24th August Wallenstein saw-- with grim pleasure he must have seen--Gustavus advancing to attack him in his lines. By five hundred at a time--there was room for no more in the narrow path of death--the Swedes scaled the flashing and thundering Altenberg. They scaled it again and again through a long summer's day. Once it was all but won. But at evening the Nurembergers saw their hero and protector retiring, for the first time defeated, from the field. Yet Gustavus had not lost the confidence of his soldiers. He had shared their danger and had spared their blood. In ten hours' hard fighting he had lost only 2,000 men. But Wallenstein might well shower upon his wounded soldiers the only balm for the wounds of men fighting without a country or a cause. He might well write to the emperor: "The King of Sweden has blunted his horns a good deal. Henceforth the title of Invincible belongs not to him, but to your Majesty." No doubt Ferdinand thought it did.

Gustavus now broke up and marched on Bavaria, abandoning the great Protestant city, with the memory of Magdeburg in his heart. But Nuremberg was not to share the fate of Magdeburg. The Imperial army was not in a condition to form the siege. It had suffered as much as that of Gustavus. That such troops should have been held together in such extremity proves their general's power of command. Wallenstein soon gladdened the eyes of the Nurembergers by firing his camp, and declining to follow the lure into Bavaria, marched on Saxony, joined another Imperial army under Pappenheim and took Leipsic.

To save Saxony Gustavus left Bavaria half conquered. As he hurried to the rescue, the people on his line of march knelt to kiss the hem of his garment, the sheath of his delivering sword, and could scarcely be prevented from adoring him as a god. His religious spirit was filled with a presentiment that the idol in which they trusted would be soon laid low. On the 14th of November he was leaving a strongly entrenched camp, at Naumberg, where the Imperialists fancied, the season being so far advanced, he intended to remain, when news reached his ear like the sight which struck Wellington's eye as it ranged over Marmont's army on the morning of Salamanca. [Footnote: We owe the parallel, we believe, to an article by Lord Ellesmere, in the _Quarterly Review_.] The impetuous Pappenheim, ever anxious for separate command, had persuaded an Imperial council of war to detach him with a large force against Halle. The rest of the Imperialists, under Wallenstein, were quartered in the villages around Lutzen, close within the king's reach, and unaware of his approach. "The Lord," cried Gustavus, "has delivered him into my hand," and at once he swooped upon his prey.

"Break up and march with every man and gun. The enemy is advancing hither. He is already at the pass by the hollow road." So wrote Wallenstein to Pappenheim. The letter is still preserved, stained with Pappenheim's life-blood. But, in that mortal race, Pappenheim stood no chance. Halle was a long day's march off, and the troopers, whom Pappenheim could lead gallantly, but could not control, after taking the town had dispersed to plunder. Yet the Swede's great opportunity was lost. Lutzen, though in sight, proved not so near as flattering guides and eager eyes had made it. The deep-banked Rippach, its bridge all too narrow for the impetuous columns, the roads heavy from rain, delayed the march. A skirmish with some Imperial cavalry under Isolani wasted minutes when minutes were years; and the short November day was at an end when the Swede reached the plain of Lutzen.

No military advantage marks the spot where the storm overtook the Duke of Friedland. He was caught like a traveller in a tempest off a shelterless plain, and had nothing for it but to bide the brunt. What could be done with ditches, two windmills, a mud wall, a small canal, he did, moving from point to point during the long night; and before morning all his troops, except Pappenheim's division, had come in and were in line.

When the morning broke a heavy fog lay on the ground. Historians have not failed to remark that there is a sympathy in things, and that the day was loath to dawn which was to be the last day of Gustavus. But if Nature sympathized with Gustavus, she chose a bad mode of showing her sympathy, for while the fog prevented the Swedes from advancing, part of Pappenheim's corps arrived. After prayers, the king and all his army sang Luther's hymn, "Our God is a strong tower"--the Marseillaise of the militant Reformation. Then Gustavus mounted his horse, and addressed the different divisions, adjuring them by their victorious name, by the memory of the Breitenfeld, by the great cause whose issue hung upon their swords, to fight well for that cause, for their country and their God. His heart was uplifted at Lutzen, with that Hebrew fervour which uplifted the heart of Cromwell at Dunbar. Old wounds made it irksome to him to wear a cuirass. "God," he said, "shall be my armour this day".

Wallenstein has been much belied if he thought of anything that morning more religious than the order of battle, which has been preserved, drawn up by his own hand, and in which his troops are seen still formed in heavy masses, in contrast to the lighter formations of Gustavus. He was carried down his lines in a litter being crippled by gout, which the surgeons of that day had tried to cure by cutting into the flesh. But when the action began, he placed his mangled foot in a stirrup lined with silk, and mounted the small charger, the skin of which is still shown in the deserted palace of his pride. We may be sure that confidence sat undisturbed upon his brow; but in his heart he must have felt that though he had brave men around him, the Swedes, fighting for their cause under their king, were more than men; and that in the balance of battle then held out, his scale had kicked the beam. There can hardly be a harder trial for human fortitude than to command in a great action on the weaker side. Villeneuve was a brave man, though an unfortunate admiral, but he owned that his heart sank within him at Trafalgar when he saw Nelson bearing down.

"God with us," was the Swedish battle cry. On the other side the words "Jesu-Maria" passed round, as twenty-five thousand of the most godless and lawless ruffians the world ever saw, stood to the arms which they had imbrued in the blood not of soldiers only, but of women and children of captured towns. Doubtless many a wild Walloon and savage Croat, many a fierce Spaniard and cruel Italian, who had butchered and tortured at Magdeburg, was here come to bite the dust. These men were children of the camp and the battlefield, long familiar with every form of death, yet, had they known what a day was now before them, they might have felt like a recruit on the morning of his first field. Some were afterwards broken or beheaded for misconduct before the enemy; others earned rich rewards. Most paid, like men of honour, the price for which they were allowed to glut every lust and revel in every kind of crime.

At nine the sky began to clear, straggling shots told that the armies were catching sight of each other, and a red glare broke the mist, where the Imperialists had set fire to Lutzen to cover their right. At ten Gustavus placed himself at the head of his cavalry. War has now changed; and the telescope is the general's sword. Yet we cannot help feeling that the gallant king, who cast in his own life with the lives of the peasants he had drawn from their Swedish homes, is a nobler figure than the great Emperor who, on the same plains, two centuries afterwards, ordered to their death the masses of youthful valour sent by a ruthless conscription to feed the vanity of a heart of clay. The Swedes, after the manner of war in that fierce and hardy age, fell at once with their main force on the whole of the Imperial line. On the left, after a murderous struggle, they gained ground and took the enemy's guns. But on the right the Imperialists held firm, and while Gustavus was carrying victory with him to that quarter, Wallenstein restored the day upon the right. Again Gustavus hurried to that part of the field. Again the Imperialists gave way, and Gustavus, uncovering his head, thanked God for his victory. At this moment it seems the mist returned. The Swedes were confused and lost their advantage. A horse, too well known, ran riderless down their line, and when their cavalry next advanced, they found the stripped and mangled body of their king. According to the most credible witness, Gustavus who had galloped forward to see how his advantage might be best followed up, got too near the enemy, was shot first in the arm, then in the back, and fell from his horse. A party of Imperial cuirassiers came up, and learning from the wounded man himself who he was, finished the work of death. They then stripped the body for proofs of their great enemy's fate and relics of the mighty slain. Dark reports of treason were spread abroad, and one of these reports followed the Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, who was with Gustavus that day, through his questionable life to his unhappy end. In those times a great man could scarcely die without suspicion of foul play, and in all times men are unwilling to believe that a life on which the destiny of a cause or a nation hangs can be swept away by the blind, indiscriminate hand of common death.

Gustavus dead, the first thought of his officers was retreat; and that thought was his best eulogy. Their second thought was revenge. Yet so great was the discouragement that one Swedish colonel refused to advance, and Bernard of Saxe-Weimar cut him down with his own hand. Again the struggle began, and with all the morning's fury. Wallenstein had used his respite well. He knew that his great antagonist was dead, and that he was now the master-spirit on the field. And with friendly night near, and victory within his grasp, he directed in person the most desperate combat, prodigal of the life on which, according to his enemies, his treasonable projects hung. Yet the day was again going against him, when the remainder of Pappenheim's corps arrived, and the road was once more opened to victory by a charge which cost Pappenheim his own life. At four o'clock the battle was at its last gasp. The carnage had been fearful on both sides, and as fearful was the exhaustion. For six hours almost every man in both armies had borne the terrible excitement of mortal combat with pike and sword; and four times that excitement had been strained by general charges to its highest pitch. The Imperialists held their ground, but confused and shattered; their constancy sustained only by that commanding presence which still moved along their lines, unhurt, grazed and even marked by the storm of death through which he rode. Just as the sun was setting, the Swedes made the supreme effort which heroism alone can make. Then Wallenstein gave the signal for retreat, welcome to the bravest, and as darkness fell upon the field, the shattered masses of the Imperialists drew off slowly and sullenly into the gloom. Slowly and sullenly they drew off, leaving nothing to the victor except some guns of position; but they had not gone far when they fell into the disorganization of defeat.