Chapter XXXVI: Section II: The Battle of Breitenfeld

[Sidenote: § 1. Battle of Breitenfeld.]

On the morning of September 17 Swede and Saxon were drawn up opposite Tilly's army, close to the village of Breitenfeld, some five miles distant from Leipzig. Gustavus had need of all his skill. Before long the mocking Saxons were flying in headlong rout. The victors, unlike Rupert at Marston Moor, checked themselves to take the Swedes in the flanks. Then Gustavus coolly drew back two brigades and presented a second front to the enemy. Outnumbered though he was, the result was never for a moment doubtful. Cannon shot and musket ball tore asunder the dense ranks of the imperialist army. Tilly's own guns were wrenched from him and turned upon his infantry. The unwieldy host staggered before the deft blows of a more active antagonist. Leaving six thousand of their number dying or dead upon the field, Tilly's veterans, gathering round their aged leader, retreated slowly from their first defeat, extorting the admiration of their opponents by their steadiness and intrepidity.

[Sidenote: § 2. Political importance of the victory.]

The victory of Breitenfeld, or Leipzig--the battle bears both names--was no common victory. It was the grave of the Edict of Restitution, and of an effort to establish a sectarian domination in the guise of national unity. The bow, stretched beyond endurance, had broken at last. Since the battle on the White Hill, the Emperor, the Imperial Council, the Imperial Diet, had declared themselves the only accredited organs of the national life. Then had come a coolness between the Emperor and the leaders of the Diet. A good understanding had been re-established by the dismissal of Wallenstein. But neither Emperor nor Diet had seen fit to take account of the feelings or wants of more than half the nation. They, and they alone, represented legal authority. The falsehood had now been dashed to the ground by Gustavus. Breitenfeld was the Naseby of Germany.

[Sidenote: § 3. Victory of intelligence over routine.]

Like Naseby, too, Breitenfeld had in it something of more universal import. Naseby was the victory of disciplined intelligence over disorderly bravery. Breitenfeld was the victory of disciplined intelligence over the stiff routine of the Spanish tactics. Those tactics were, after all, but the military expression of the religious and political system in defence of which they were used. Those solid columns just defeated were the types of what human nature was to become under the Jesuit organization. The individual was swallowed up in the mass. As Tilly had borne down by the sheer weight of his veterans adventurers like Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick, so the renewed Catholic discipline had borne down the wrangling theologians who had stepped into the places of Luther and Melanchthon. But now an army had arisen to prove that order and obedience were weak unless they were supported by individual intelligence. The success of the principle upon which its operations were based could not be confined to mere fighting. It would make its way in morals and politics, in literature and science.

[Sidenote: § 4. Wallenstein's intrigues with Gustavus.]

Great was the joy in Protestant Germany when the news was told. The cities of the south prepared once more to resist their oppressors. All that was noblest in France hailed the tidings with acclamation. English Eliot, writing from his prison in the Tower, could speak of Gustavus as that person whom fortune and virtue had reserved for the wonder of the world! Even Wallenstein, from his Bohemian retreat, uttered a cry of satisfaction. For Wallenstein was already in communication with Gustavus, who, Protestant as he was, was avenging him upon the League which had assailed him and the Emperor who had abandoned him. He had offered to do great things, if he could be trusted with a Swedish force of 12,000 men. He was well pleased to hear of Tilly's defeat. "If such a thing had happened to me," he said to an emissary of Gustavus, "I would kill myself. But it is a good thing for us." If only the King of Sweden would trust him with men, he would soon bring together the officers of his old army. He would divide the goods of the Jesuits and their followers amongst the soldiers. The greatest folly the Bohemians had committed, he said, had been to throw Martinitz and Slawata out of window instead of thrusting a sword through their bodies. If his plan were accepted he would chase the Emperor and the House of Austria over the Alps. But he hoped Gustavus would not allow himself to be entangled too far in the French alliances.

[Sidenote: § 5. His designs.]

Wallenstein's whole character was expressed in these proposals, whether they were meant seriously or not. Cut off from German ideas by his Bohemian birth, he had no roots in Germany. The reverence which others felt for religious or political institutions had no echo in his mind. As he had been ready to overthrow princes and electors in the Emperor's name, so he was now ready to overthrow the Emperor in the name of the King of Sweden. Yet there was withal a greatness about him which raised him above such mere adventurers as Mansfeld. At the head of soldiers as uprooted as himself from all ties of home or nationality, he alone, amongst the leaders of the war, had embraced the two ideas which, if they had been welcomed by the statesmen of the Empire, would have saved Germany from intolerable evil. He wished for union and strength against foreign invasion, and he wished to found that union upon religious liberty. He would have kept out Gustavus if he could. But if that could not be done, he would join Gustavus in keeping out the French.

[Sidenote: § 6. Impossibility of an understanding between Wallenstein and Gustavus.]

Yet between Wallenstein and Gustavus it was impossible that there should be anything really in common. Wallenstein was large-minded because he was far removed from the ordinary prejudices of men. He was no more affected by their habits and thoughts than the course of a balloon is affected by the precipices and rivers below. Gustavus trod firmly upon his mother earth. His Swedish country, his Lutheran religion, his opposition to the House of Austria, were all very real to him. His greatness was the greatness which rules the world, the greatness of a man who, sharing the thoughts and feelings of men, rises above them just far enough to direct them, not too far to carry their sympathies with him.

[Sidenote: § 7. Political plans of Gustavus.]

Such a man was not likely to be content with mere military success. The vision of a soldier sovereignty to be shared with Wallenstein had no charms for him. If the Empire had fallen, it must be replaced not by an army but by fresh institutions; and those institutions, if they were to endure at all, must be based as far as possible on institutions already existing. Protestant Germany must be freed from oppression. It must be organized apart sufficiently for its own defence. Such an organization, the _Corpus Evangelicorum_, as he called it, like the North German Confederation of 1866, might or might not spread into a greater Germany of the future. It would need the support of Sweden and of France. It would not, indeed, satisfy Wallenstein's military ambition, or the more legitimate national longings of German patriots. But it had the advantage of being attainable if anything was attainable. It would form a certain bulwark against the aggression of the Catholic states without necessitating any violent change in the existing territorial institutions.

[Sidenote: § 8. His military schemes.]

If these were the views of Gustavus--and though he never formally announced them to the world his whole subsequent conduct gives reason to believe that he had already entertained them--it becomes not so very hard to understand why he decided upon marching upon the Rhine, and despatching the Elector of Saxony to rouse Bohemia. It is true that Oxenstjerna, the prudent Chancellor of Sweden, wise after the event, used to declare that his master had made a mistake, and later military historians, fancying that Vienna was in the days of Gustavus what it was in the days of Napoleon, have held that a march upon Ferdinand's capital would have been as decisive as a march upon the same capital in 1805 or 1809. But the opinion of Gustavus is at least as good as that of Oxenstjerna, and it is certain that in 1631 Vienna was not, in the modern sense of the word, a capital city. If we are to seek for a parallel at all, it was rather like Madrid in the Peninsular War. The King had resided at Madrid. The Emperor had resided at Vienna. But neither Madrid in 1808 nor Vienna in 1631 formed the centre of force. No administrative threads controlling the military system stretched out from either. In the nineteenth century Napoleon or Wellington might be in possession of Madrid and have no real hold of Spain. In the seventeenth century, Ferdinand and Gustavus might be in possession of Vienna and have no real hold on Austria or Bohemia. Where an army was, there was power; and there would be an army wherever Wallenstein, or some imitator of Wallenstein, might choose to beat his drums. If Gustavus had penetrated to Vienna, there was nothing to prevent a fresh army springing up in his rear.

[Sidenote: § 9. Necessity of finding a basis for his operations.]

The real danger to be coped with was the military system which Wallenstein had carried to perfection. And, in turning to the Rhine, Gustavus showed his resolution not to imitate Wallenstein's example. His army was to be anchored firmly to the enthusiasm of the Protestant populations. There lay the Palatinate, to be freed from the oppressor. There lay the commercial cities Augsburg, Nüremberg, Ulm, and Strassburg, ready to welcome enthusiastically the liberator who had set his foot upon the Edict of Restitution; and if in Bohemia too there were Protestants to set free, they were not Protestants on whom much dependence could be placed. If past experience was to be trusted, the chances of organizing resistance would be greater amongst Germans on the Rhine than amongst Slavonians on the Moldau.

[Sidenote: § 10. He resolves to march to the south-west.]

For purposes of offence, too, there was much to induce Gustavus to prefer the westward march. Thither Tilly had retreated with only the semblance of an army still in the field. There, too, were the long string of ecclesiastical territories, the Priest's Lane, as men called it, Würzburg, Bamberg, Fulda, Cologne, Treves, Mentz, Worms, Spires, the richest district in Germany, which had furnished men and money to the armies of the League, and which were now to furnish at least money to Gustavus. There Spain, with its garrisons on the left bank of the Rhine, was to be driven back, and France to be conciliated, whilst the foundations were laid of a policy which would provide for order in Protestant Germany, so as to enable Gustavus to fulfil in a new and better spirit the work left undone by Christian of Anhalt. Was it strange if the Swedish king thought that such work as this would be better in his own hands than in those of John George of Saxony?