17
STALEMATE
Emperor Ferdinand III
Aged just 29, the new emperor had grown up amid dynastic crisis and war. His mother was Ferdinand II’s first wife, Maria Anna of Bavaria, making him nephew to Elector Maximilian. Considered a sickly child, his two elder brothers predeceased him. A regular fitness routine improved his own health, but the strain of his early involvement in politics – he was crowned king of Hungary at the age of seventeen – took its toll, leading to an early death in 1657. Two of his three wives and six of their eleven children died before him, contributing to his naturally melancholic disposition. Alongside a sincere sense of duty, he took a lively interest in contemporary culture and was one of the most artistically talented of the Habsburgs. In addition to laying out new palace gardens and augmenting the family’s already substantial art collection, he was a skilled musician, composing several respectable works in the then fashionable Italian early baroque style.
Though educated by the Jesuits, he remained more moderate than his father, distinguishing more clearly between private morality and public pragmatism. He shared his father’s conviction that the family fortunes depended on keeping their hereditary lands free from heresy. Catholicism remained the test for political loyalty. This goal had been achieved after White Mountain and secured at Prague in 1635, but protecting the dynasty’s gains in its homeland remained at the heart of Ferdinand III’s programme. He was more flexible towards the Empire where the priority was to uphold constitutional prerogatives, rather than imposing confessional goals.
The new emperor faced considerable difficulties, not least over the amnesty question. However, his presence at Nördlingen had associated him with success and he was supported by able advisers. Chief among these was Maximilian von Trauttmannsdorff, who had headed his household since 1633 and was the only man Ferdinand fully trusted. Honest, loyal and clear-sighted, he was already Austria’s top diplomat, having negotiated peace with Bethlen in 1622, the Bavarian withdrawal from Upper Austria, and the Prague Peace. He emerged as the head of court and government after 1637. His position was strengthened by the appointment of his friend Kurz von Senffenau as imperial vice-chancellor to succeed Stralendorf who died in October 1637. Both favoured peace, provided Sweden offered acceptable terms.
The change in government weakened Spanish influence, but this was already on the decline after 1634. Olivares made a concerted effort to engender support for a major offensive against France, arguing that Sweden would pull out if France were defeated. The Year of Corbie augured well for a renewed combined assault and Spain requested Piccolomini’s men be reinforced to 30,000 on the Meuse, as well as another imperial army to attack across the Rhine and permission to recruit 16,000 more Germans. There were some in Vienna who still favoured cooperation with Spain. Even a year later, during the planning for the 1638 campaign, Schlick proposed a drive on Paris he claimed would spark ‘factions and mutinies’ in France.1 The imperial army, however, was in no condition to fulfil Spain’s expectations. The main force under Gallas numbered only 16,110 men on Ferdinand III’s accession.2 As emperor, Ferdinand could no longer accompany the army because of the political damage that would follow association with a defeat. He nonetheless agreed to send 26,000 Imperialists and Bavarians under Gallas, Piccolomini and Werth from Luxembourg up the Meuse into Champagne, while Duke Charles attacked from the Franche-Comté with 12,000, half of whom were to be Spanish. This pincer movement was intended to liberate Lorraine, not invade France, and even this was aborted due to other events.
Ferdinand III did not feel obliged to do more, because Olivares was still not paying the promised subsidy in full. Bank charges eroded the value of what was sent, adding to Austrian mistrust. Philip IV was obliged to recall Oñate as a scapegoat for the deteriorating relations later in 1637.3Piccolomini’s corps remained to support the Spanish in Luxembourg until the end of 1639 when its commander and most of its 12,000 men were withdrawn. A smaller force remained under Baron Lamboy, a Liègois who was already an imperial colonel by 1621, but who made a poor general. The imperial corps did not help Spain against the Dutch, but instead covered the Lower Rhine against French incursions and provided limited assistance to Duke Charles.
The Rhine Campaign
Werth’s Bavarians were withdrawn from Picardy in January 1637 and joined the Imperialists who had been blockading the French in the Ehrenbreitstein since August 1635. France paid for 117 wagon-loads of Dutch supplies to be escorted to the area by Melander’s Hessians from Dorsten. This international relief effort failed when Werth captured the convoy. The defenders’ situation was desperate. The vicomte de Bussy-Lameth, in command of the garrison, claimed to have survived by eating eighty rats, and he reduced pressure on supplies by allowing half his garrison to scramble down the walls and escape. Ramsay sent barges with more food from Hanau along the Main, but they were intercepted at Mainz. Under bombardment since 8 May 1637, the 195 survivors of the original 2,000 soldiers surrendered on 28 June in return for repatriation to France.4 The Imperialists had tightened their grip on the electorate of Trier, containing the Hessians east of the Rhine far from French help.
The defeat, combined with Bernhard of Weimar’s lacklustre performance in Alsace, prompted Richelieu to increase French involvement along the Rhine. He had withheld 1.6 million livres of Bernhard’s subsidy, because the general mustered only 9,000 men. Instead of money, which might make Bernhard too independent, Richelieu sent 5,800 French troops under du Hallier instead. Having wintered on the upper Marne, Bernhard drove south-east into the Franche-Comté in May, largely because it appeared a softer target than Alsace.5 He joined the duc de Longueville who had replaced Condé in command of the 10,000-strong Army of Burgundy and had advanced through Lorraine in March. Together they defeated Duke Charles’s 6,000 soldiers on the Saône in June, and commenced a systematic conquest of the Spanish province, avoiding strong-points like Besançon in favour of reducing outlying castles.
Leaving de Longueville to complete the task, Bernhard broke into Upper Alsace at the beginning of August, drawing supplies from the garrison in Benfeld that remained loyal to Sweden. Short of money, he resolved to conquer the area beyond the Rhine to winter at the enemy’s expense. The moment seemed opportune, because the main imperial army under Gallas had marched east in June to assist the Saxons, leaving only weak detachments under the incompetent Savelli and the turncoat Sperreuter. Richelieu approved the plan, hoping to relieve the burden on France while increasing pressure on the emperor. The objective would dominate French strategy in the region for the next three years.
The imperial city of Strasbourg stuck to its neutrality, denying either side use of its bridge. Bernhard tried to cross using the islands at Rheinau (Rhinau), north-east of Sélestat on 6 August. The attempt was overly optimistic, because his army was too weak. After much prompting, Maximilian agreed to release Werth with 7,000 Bavarians, available since the capture of Ehrenbreitstein. They reinforced the imperial units at Ettenheim, forcing Bernhard back over the river on 2 September. The Bernhardines were now down to 6,900 including du Hallier’s men. They retreated south into the bishopric of Basel, ignoring Swiss protests. The local population fled, exacerbating an already critical supply situation, and Bernhard only survived the winter thanks to provisions forwarded by the French garrison in Mömpelgard.
Hessen-Kassel
Failure in Westphalia confirmed the experience of the Rhine campaign – that France could not pursue its objectives in the Empire solely through German surrogates. Richelieu had intended Hessen-Kassel to fulfil a similar role in north-west Germany as Bernhard was supposed to play in Alsace. With little prospect of Swedish assistance, Landgrave Wilhelm V had made an alliance with Louis XIII in the Treaty of Wesel on 21 October 1636. He agreed to Richelieu’s standard terms of not to make peace without France and to respect Catholicism in conquered areas. In return, he would receive 200,000 talers a year to help maintain 10,000 troops, and the promise of diplomatic support for his objectives.6
Richelieu planned to recruit another 12,000 men on the Lower Rhine with French money to reinforce the Hessians who could then act as a barrier between the war in the west and Sweden’s conflict with the emperor. The man entrusted with the task was Count Rantzau, a Protestant Holsteiner who had served the Dutch, the Swedes and the emperor before joining France in 1635. He was a favourite of the French queen and was later rumoured to have fathered Louis XIV. He claimed to have been wounded sixty times, and certainly lost an eye, a foot, a hand and an ear over his career. Arriving in March 1637, he managed to find only 1,000 recruits by September.7 Together with the failure to relieve the Ehrenbreitstein this raised more suspicions about France’s reliability as an ally.
Ferdinand III would have preferred to negotiate with Wilhelm V, but his father had already published the imperial ban in October 1636 and named Landgrave Georg of Hessen-Darmstadt as imperial commissioner. Lack of troops provided an excuse for last minute talks, but these failed to persuade Wilhelm to abandon the war. Ferdinand III reluctantly approved an invasion in April 1637, but the bulk of the Westphalian army under Götz and Hatzfeldt had already left in March to reinforce Gallas, leaving only weak detachments under Geleen, Wahl and Velen. Darmstadt had backed the emperor energetically since Prague, raising 5,500 men, but most of these were serving with the Imperialists in Saxony, or watching Ramsay in Hanau.8 Wilhelm’s troops were able to escape northwards into Westphalia where they helped their comrades recapture Vechta and Bielefeld in June. The fall of the Ehrenbreitstein finally released enough Imperialists to invade Hessen-Kassel in October, when 17 towns and 300 villages were torched to intimidate the landgrave.
Hessian garrisons still held out in Kassel and Ziegenhain, while Wilhelm used his new French alliance to revive negotiations with the Dutch. The Republic had consistently rebuffed his overtures in favour of good relations with Cologne. However, when it renewed its own French alliance in October 1636, it saw advantages in using the Hessians as a buffer along its eastern frontier. Conscious of the earlier difficulties with Count Mansfeld (see Chapter 10), the Dutch prepared the ground thoroughly, securing agreement from Emden and the East Frisian Estates to pay 12,000 tlr a month to maintain 2,500 Hessians. Wilhelm retreated into East Frisia in September 1637. The arrangement was intended to last six months, but the Hessians stayed until August 1650. Significantly, neither Ferdinand of Cologne nor the emperor chose to challenge their presence so as not to disturb the tacit understanding with the Republic. Götz returned with 4,000 men through Thuringia, clearing the Hessians from Paderborn and Lemgo by November, but refrained from pursuing them into East Frisia.9
Wilhelm V died in Leer on 1 October leaving his young son in the charge of his widow Amalie Elisabeth. As a distant relation of the Bourbons, she expected France to support her ambitions. Richelieu made considerable efforts to retain her loyalty, sending her a diamond-studded cross and transferring her husband’s pension to her son. Fears that Colonel Ramsay might hand Hanau, her homeland, over to France prompted the Imperialists to break the uneasy truce that had prevailed there since the Hessian relief in 1636. Wilhelm von Metternich, a colonel in Mainz service, stormed the place without the loss of a man on 18 February 1638, though Ramsay was mortally wounded in the fighting. Metternich was rewarded with the Bohemian estate of Königswart that became the home of his descendant, Prince Clemens, the Austrian statesman.10
Even before this, Amalie Elisabeth was convinced France would provide little direct help, and turned instead to the Dutch, presenting herself, like Elizabeth of Bohemia, as a poor widow. The hard-nosed burghers gave her shelter until 1639, but were not prepared to sacrifice their good relations with the elector of Cologne for her. She became an embarrassment to the Dutch as had the Winter Queen. Her troops in East Frisia and Westphalia disrupted Dutch trade and oppressed towns otherwise friendly to the Republic.
The emperor thus still hoped the Hessians might defect. Spain offered money, Schlick negotiated with Melander, while the electors of Mainz and Cologne persuaded Ferdinand to remove the bellicose Darmstadt landgrave as imperial commissioner and to recognize Amalie Elisabeth as regent during her son’s minority. The emperor also renounced claims to Hersfeld and was prepared to grant de facto toleration for Calvinism, as he did for Anhalt and Brandenburg. In return, Amalie Elisabeth was merely expected to accept the loss of Marburg to Darmstadt. Duke Georg of Lüneburg and others advised her to accept this generous offer, but she used the emperor’s alleged hostility to Calvinism as an excuse to reject it. She would only finally agree a truce on 3 March 1638, retaining possession of her existing garrisons as she waited for the general situation to improve.
The Palatinate’s Final Throw
Ferdinand accepted this, because he wanted to concentrate Götz’s small force to deal with a new threat unexpectedly posed by the Palatine exiles. The failure of the earl of Arundel’s embassy in 1636 prompted a typical violent swing in Stuart policy: Charles I abandoned his nominal alliance with Spain made in 1634 and signed a new treaty with France on 27 February 1637. In return for a rather vague promise of diplomatic support over the Palatine question, Charles was prepared to declare war on the Habsburgs, provide 30 ships and let France recruit 6,000 men. Richelieu never ratified the agreement. He had no desire to compromise relations with Elector Maximilian who remained his preferred partner in the Empire. The prospect of French help was sufficient for Charles to send Sir Thomas Roe on a fool’s errand to Hamburg where French, Swedish and imperial envoys were gathering under nominal Danish mediation. The Danes still resented the English for what they regarded as inadequate support during the 1620s, while the Swedes failed to understand why Charles, as a Protestant monarch and Karl Ludwig’s uncle to boot, did not back the Palatinate to the hilt. Their impatience led them in July 1638 to sell arms to the Scottish malcontents whose defiance of the king led to the First Bishops’ War, thus opening the British Civil Wars in 1639, and effectively removing the country as an active participant in European affairs for over a decade.11
Elizabeth of Bohemia had long given up hope of full restoration ‘otherwise than by arms’.12 Her son’s expedition proved even more quixotic than the campaigns of the earlier paladins. Knyphausen’s widow let a small party into Meppen, a town seized from the bishop of Münster and given to her husband as a Swedish donation. Alongside Karl Ludwig, the party included his younger brother Rupert and a number of English gallants dedicated to the Winter Queen, like the earl of Northampton and Lord Craven. Lying on the Münster–East Frisian frontier, Meppen offered a base to collect an army to march south and recover the Lower Palatinate. Even considering that they brought 41 barrels of English gold, the plan was far-fetched. Long negotiations failed to secure Hessian support since Amalie Elisabeth did not want to risk her truce with the emperor.13 James King, a Scottish veteran who assumed command of the Swedes in Westphalia in 1637, did promise 1,000 men from his base between Minden and Nienburg, allegedly because he was thinking of retiring and wanted to please Charles I.
Karl Ludwig managed to recruit 4,000 men, including some discharged recently by the Catholics.14 Ferdinand of Cologne feared the worst as imperial units had been withdrawn again. Command was entrusted to Hatzfeldt with instructions to raise a new army of 4,500 from men detached from the Westphalian garrisons in March. By May he was sufficiently strong to surprise Meppen, capturing twenty cannon and scattering the Palatine forces. Karl Ludwig regrouped in Cleves to the south, protected by the local Dutch garrisons, but he was left with only 1,700 men, whereas Hatzfeldt mustered 6,420 by July 1638.15
Karl Ludwig joined King and the Swedes at Stadtlohn on 9 September and headed north to retake Meppen. This was held too strongly by the Imperialists, while the East Frisians flooded their frontier so that the Palatines could not enter, and nor could the Hessians leave to join them. The Palatines headed east through Osnabrück, hoping to capture Lemgo as a new base nearer the Swedish posts along the Weser. Hatzfeldt’s approach forced them to abandon their siege and retreat towards Minden. They assumed Hatzfeldt would be content at just relieving Lemgo and did not expect him to pursue them. However, he had 5,800 men, mainly cavalry, and dashed east to cut off their retreat at the Vlotho bridge on 17 October.
Prince Rupert and the Swedish cavalry tried to break through, but he was captured by Walter Devereux, Wallenstein’s assassin, along with 1,200 others. King reached Minden with just five companions. Karl Ludwig tried to escape (rather unheroically) in his coach but it sank in the Weser, drowning the horses and driver. He survived by clutching a willow branch and hauling himself ashore. He hid in Minden for two months before he eventually returned to his Dutch exile. Hatzfeldt suffered only 79 casualties and followed up his success by capturing Vechta that November.
The defeat extinguished the last flicker of an independent Palatine cause, leaving it wholly dependent on unscrupulous foreign backers. The start of the British Civil Wars removed the most consistent of these, as well as prompting many Britons to return home. Spain refused to release the 6,000 who were serving in its Army of Flanders, but at least 30 experienced Scottish officers left Swedish service during 1639. No more than 10 Scots became Swedish officers each year after 1638, compared to the 1,900 who joined over the previous decade.16
The Swedish Retreat
With negotiations stalled, the Imperialists made a third attempt to drive the Swedes into the sea and, for the first time, prioritized operations against them. Gallas took the main army of 20,000 men from the Rhine to join the much reduced imperial and Saxon forces, numbering around 10,000, at Pretzsch on the Elbe between Wittenberg and Torgau in June 1637. Further Saxon units garrisoned Magdeburg and Wittenberg, isolating Banér’s 14,000 men in Torgau where he had been blockaded since March. Gallas bridged the river above and below the town, ready to cross and surround the Swedes. However, Banér again evaded destruction, this time breaking out at night on 28 June having distributed 300,000 litres of wine plundered from the elector’s cellars. Unlike Mansfeld and Duke Christian, Banér had no scruples about burning his baggage and mounting his infantry on the transport horses for a quick escape.
The direct route north to Pomerania was blocked by the Brandenburgers, who were now arming on behalf of the emperor. Banér headed north-east instead, through Jüterbog and Lübben to the Oder. As well as pursuing the Swedes directly, Gallas sent columns to race ahead and reach Küstrin first, trapping Banér between the river and the Polish frontier. Banér sent the officers’ wives, including his own, and the remaining baggage towards the frontier as if he intended to escape that way, but double-backed westwards across the river south of Frankfurt and then dashed north on the other bank to meet Wrangel and 5,000 men at Eberswalde. His 16-day trek cost 4,000 men, but the army was still intact.
However, there were only 9,000 garrison troops in Pomerania and just 1,200 in Mecklenburg. All were unpaid and demoralized. The fortresses were in a poor condition and the garrisons had long since consumed the palisades for firewood. There was little Banér he could do to stop Gallas picking them off. Landsberg, Gartz, Demmin and others all fell to the imperial army again, reducing the Swedes to Stettin, Stralsund, Wismar, Wärnemünde, Greifswald, Anklam, Kammin and Kolberg. The costly retreat dashed the hopes raised by the battle at Wittstock the previous year.17
The situation forced Oxenstierna to scale down his demands. He was prepared now to make peace in return for holding some Baltic ports for fifteen years while the Germans paid 3 million tlr, part of which would be used to disband the army. All constitutional revisions were abandoned, but he still held out for an amnesty for those excluded from the Prague Peace to retain his current allies as potential checks on Habsburg power. He was even prepared to accept the detested Franz Albrecht of Lauenburg and his brothers Franz Carl and Julius Heinrich as new intermediaries. Ferdinand III sent Vice-Chancellor Kurz for direct talks in Hamburg in January 1638. Gallas was optimistic, but the Swedes now stalled, citing the emperor’s refusal to negotiate over the Palatinate and Bohemian exiles.
This was simply a ruse, since Sweden was happy to abandon both in 1648 to obtain peace. The real reason was that Oxenstierna was now simply playing for time until he concluded parallel negotiations with France. With its own forces making no headway, France needed Sweden to maintain the pressure on the Empire and prevent the feared Habsburg combination. Richelieu accepted Oxenstierna’s terms in the Treaty of Hamburg on 15 March 1638. The annual subsidy of 400,000 riksdalers was extended for three years and Richelieu accepted that Sweden was not a party to its war against Spain. Similar arrangements were written into the Franco-Dutch alliance that was also renewed in March, though Richelieu obliged the Republic not to make a separate peace with Spain, whereas Oxenstierna merely consented to coordinate diplomacy with France.18
The military situation had returned to that of summer 1630, only this time the odds were more in Sweden’s favour. Banér was established in his bridgehead, with Stettin as his main base. The new French subsidies allowed Oxenstierna to deliver three ship-loads of new uniforms, as well as 14,000 conscripts and 180,000 talers in cash by July 1638. Gallas, by contrast, mustered just 15,000 and had been obliged to winter in an extended cordon across Mecklenburg and Pomerania to contain the enemy. The Saxons were busy blockading Erfurt, and though Gallas was reinforced by 8,500 Brandenburgers, these were poorly organized and ineptly led by men like Conrad von Burgsdorf who ‘were little better than gangsters’.19 The effort was nonetheless considerable for Brandenburg, and reflected the elector’s determination to claim Pomerania after Duke Bogislav’s death. Brandenburg’s government was already more authoritarian and militarized under Count Schwarzenberg, whose reputation was unduly blackened by generations of Prussian historians glorifying the reign of Georg Wilhelm’s son after 1640 as that of ‘the Great Elector’.20 The elector entrusted command to Schwarzenberg who reorganized the army in December 1638, but this alienated Klitzing who joined the Guelphs the following May, while another colonel defected with his regiment to the Swedes. Effective strength fell below 6,000 and Brandenburg operations were restricted to defending their own forts.
Meanwhile, Banér broke the imperial cordon by recapturing Gartz and then liberating Mecklenburg in October 1638. Gallas fell back across the Elbe, plundering Brandenburg and sending units into Bohemia and Silesia to ease the pressure on scarce supplies.21 It had proved impossible to assemble the numbers needed to crack the last Swedish defences because the area between the Elbe and Oder had been devastated by the fighting since 1635. Though it was not clear at the time, the Imperialists would not get another chance.
RESOLUTION ON THE RHINE
Imperial Military Finance
Financial difficulties contributed to the failure. The Peace of Prague essentially adopted the system of military funding devised at Regensburg in 1630 to maintain a single army through regular payments from the imperial Estates. Assessed at 80 Roman months a year, these payments would produce at best 8 million florins, but even predicted returns were considerably less than this because the Swedes still held Pomerania, Mecklenburg and other areas. Failure to win over Hessen-Kassel or the Guelphs further eroded receipts. Gallas complained that the cities of Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck were lending millions to the enemy but refused to billet his exhausted troops.22 Those that did pay were chiefly former Liga members who now considered themselves the emperor’s allies and expected to be treated accordingly, with exemption from billeting and winter quarters.
The electoral congress extended the grant by another 120 Roman months in October 1636, but the emperor had already begun assigning regions to support the separate corps of his main allies. Upper Saxon payments went directly to Johann Georg’s troops, while Cologne units maintained themselves at Westphalia’s expense. The Bavarian, Franconian and Swabian Kreise payments were allocated to Maximilian’s army in January 1636. The practice eroded the already fragile distinction between the official war taxes and the numerous other payments demanded by individual commanders. The Franconians claimed in February 1638 that these additional costs amounted to between two and five times what they owed in Roman months, and they tried to offset them by withholding the official taxes. They also requested measures to improve army discipline, reduce pay and allow Kreis officials to supervise transit through their region.23
Ferdinand III responded to these complaints by approaching all the imperial Estates through the Kreis assemblies, rather than just the electors, when the 1636 grant expired in November 1638. Saxony and Brandenburg backed the call at the Upper Saxon assembly, knowing full well that the 120 Roman months it agreed would go to their own soldiers. Westphalia did the same, but the Franconians refused on the grounds that their region was already supporting a large part of the imperial army in addition to local garrisons. As a result, the emperor assigned Swabia and Bavaria to Maximilian, reserving Franconia and the Upper Rhine for his own forces on 20 November.24
These difficulties contributed to a slow but steady decline in the size of the imperial army from its peak under Wallenstein. The Prague arrangements envisaged 80,000 men, but the army still totalled over 100,000 including the Bavarians and Saxons. The impact of the plague, lack of funds and growing logistical problems made it impossible to sustain these numbers after 1635. By the beginning of 1638, the Habsburg War Council estimated there were 73,000 men including the Saxons, Bavarians and some auxiliaries paid by Spain, but planned to add just 10,000 recruits. The decision to switch Gallas and the main army to Saxony in 1637 seriously depleted the forces left on the Upper Rhine under Savelli. The 14 imperial cavalry regiments there had just 80 to 200 men each, while the 10 foot regiments averaged only 200 apiece, except for Colonel Reinach’s unit in Breisach which was 800 strong. Numbers improved slightly in February, but the regiments all remained seriously under-strength and in a poor condition. Many of the officers were ill and the unpaid soldiers sustained themselves by plundering. Concerned for the welfare of his own units, Maximilian allowed Werth to move the Bavarians back to slightly fresher areas in Upper Swabia, Württemberg and Donauwörth. The Bavarian army remained in generally better shape and its horse and foot regiments averaged 800 to 1,000 men each between 1639 and 1645, with only a slight decline thereafter.25
Failure to maintain regimental strength caused considerable problems. Units had to be combined to achieve the strength required by tactical formations. More seriously, they were disproportionately expensive, because the higher-paid officers survived better than their men. Plans were drawn up in November 1638 to amalgamate the numerous under-strength regiments into fewer, but larger, more effective ones. At this point, it was reckoned there were only 29,500 men left in the two main armies, on the Upper Rhine and under Gallas.26 The total troop number intended for 1639 was only 59,000, excluding the Bavarians and Saxons, or barely half what the imperial army had mustered five years earlier.
Partisan Leaders
The horrendous losses of the 1638 Rhine campaign were a major factor behind this decline. Bernhard of Weimar was determined to achieve the objective set the year before and establish a firm foothold for France east of the river. This time he prepared thoroughly. Since he had wintered in Mömpelgard and the bishopric of Basel, he was already close to the stretch of the Rhine along the Swiss frontier to Lake Constance. This route offered an alternative to the previous year’s attempt to punch directly across the Black Forest. Though he had been joined in person by Rohan, who had escaped from the Valtellina (see Chapter 18), he still had few troops. Savelli’s Imperialists held Rheinfelden with 500 men, with other garrisons in Waldshut, Freiburg and Philippsburg and Reinach’s regiment in Breisach. These posts would have to be taken if the river was to be secured. He also needed a base beyond the Black Forest to tap the richer resources of Württemberg and the Danube valley.
Fortunately, Bernhard had an excellent spy network and knew how weak his opponents were. He also had the services of Colonel Erlach, a veteran of Dutch service who had been wounded at White Mountain and subsequently served Mansfeld and Sweden until 1627. Since then he had commanded the militia of his homeland, the Protestant canton of Bern. He joined Bernhard’s army in September 1637, although he did not leave Bernese service until the following May. His contacts with the canton’s patriciate ensured a good flow of supplies to Bernhard’s army.
Erlach also opened negotiations with Major Widerhold, a Hessian who was the Württemberg militia’s drill instructor and commandant of the Hohentwiel, the duchy’s only fortress still holding out against the emperor. Though he has now faded from the local popular consciousness, Widerhold occupied a prominent place in Swabian patriotic folklore into the twentieth century. He exemplifies the partisan leaders who played an increasingly important role as the rapid escalation of the conflict left numerous isolated garrisons scattered across the Empire. These sustained themselves by raiding and acted as potential bases should friendly forces return to their area. The Swedes in Benfeld, Ruischenberg’s Imperialists in Wolfenbüttel and Ramsay’s Bernhardines in Hanau are three examples encountered already. Others included the Hessians in Lippstadt under the Huguenot refugee Baron St André and his subordinate, Jacques Mercier from Mömpelgard, known as Little Jacob, who rose through the ranks of Hungarian, Bohemian, Russian and Dutch service. Both were contemporary celebrities incorporated by Grimmelshausen into his novel. A counterpart in Habsburg service was the Swiss patrician Franz Peter König, ennobled in 1624 as von Mohr, who distinguished himself in skirmishes around Lake Constance in the early 1630s. As these background sketches indicate, such men generally came from relatively humble backgrounds and made reputations and fortunes through daring exploits. They never rose to command armies and were often difficult to control. König was dismissed after becoming embroiled in a feud with the highly disagreeable Wolfgang Rudolf von Ossa, Habsburg military commissioner for south-west Germany.
Widerhold acted nominally in the name of Duke Eberhard III of Württemberg, but pursued his own agenda. Mixing terror with benevolence, he spared the immediate vicinity of the Hohentwiel and concentrated on longer-range raids against Catholic communities, forcing 56 villages, monasteries and hamlets to provision his garrison that rose to 1,058 men and 61 guns by the end of 1638.27 He was well-supplied with intelligence from friendly villagers who often participated in his plundering expeditions. He returned the favour on his death, leaving a large endowment for the local poor. His exploits became legendary. Once he caught the bishop of Konstanz out hunting and stole his horse and silver, and later he netted 20,000 talers by capturing the local imperial war chest in Bahlingen.
Blockaded since Nördlingen, Widerhold agreed to remain neutral after February 1636 because of renewed talks to include Württemberg in the Prague amnesty. Ferdinand III made surrender a condition for restoring Eberhard III in 1637, but Widerhold ignored ducal orders to comply and declared for Bernhard in February 1638. He remained a constant thorn in the Habsburg side, not least by raiding the Tirolean enclaves, and did not submit to ducal authority until 1650.
The Battles of Rheinfelden
The Rhine campaign of 1638 was an epic struggle that reveals the difficulties in assembling and sustaining armies. In the opening phase, Bernhard contested control of the Forest Towns route from the Rhine to the upper Danube, while the second stage saw a fierce struggle over the Austrian Breisgau that could serve as a French base and became one of Richelieu’s territorial demands.
Bernhard advanced with only 6,000 men and 14 guns through Swiss territory to cross at Basel on 28 January and surprise Savelli’s men at Rheinfelden. The garrison resisted, blocking his onward path and forcing Bernhard to begin a siege with his limited resources. The main works faced the town on the south bank, with two cavalry regiments posted on the other side opposite the gatehouse protecting the bridge. An infantry regiment was detached to guard the Laufenburg bridge further upstream, while four cavalry regiments secured the ferry at Beuggen, a fortified manor belonging to the Teutonic Order.28
Werth immediately saw the need to relieve Rheinfelden and prodded Savelli into helping him collect 2,600 infantry and 4,500 cavalry from the Breisgau outposts and rushing with only minimal ammunition and no artillery through the mountains. The Imperialists appeared early on Sunday 28 February 1638 outside Beuggen, but were blocked by Bernhard’s dragoons posted behind a hedge. Unable to deploy, the Imperialists took another, more difficult road parallel to the river and headed west towards Rheinfelden. Bernhard used the four hours it took them to ferry over 600 musketeers and 8 light guns, as well as concentrating the cavalry already north of the river under Taupadel on the higher ground above the town. Taupadel charged as the Bavarian cavalry tried to deploy from the road at Karsau. The Bavarians were thrown back, but the charge left Rohan and Johann Philipp von Salm-Kyrburg, another paladin veteran, both mortally wounded, while Colonel Erlach was captured. Savelli and the imperial infantry now arrived and gained the heights. Bernhard held his position until nightfall, then slipped past the enemy to retreat eastwards along the river to Säckingen, abandoning at least three of his guns and having lost 150 men.
The absence of pursuit is unsurprising given that Savelli and Werth had just force-marched their men through the mountains in winter on low rations. Bernhard regrouped at Lauffenburg, 14km upstream, where he was joined by the rest of his army from the south bank on 2 March. He now undertook one of the risky strokes that made him famous, setting off early the next day back along the north bank to Beuggen, collecting the three cannon that the Imperialists had failed to find.29
He was spotted by imperial pickets around 7 a.m. Werth and Savelli hastily deployed behind a ditch that drained at right angles into the Rhine, but ‘before we had got our people together, the first had already been shot dead’.30 The Bernhardine infantry advanced in good order, firing a salvo at half range, backed by their light cannon. The cavalry on either flank then charged. The imperial infantry replied with a salvo, but were still reloading as their opponents rushed across the ditch. They broke, discouraging their cavalry who now tried to escape, some throwing off their armour to lighten the load. Werth made a stand with the best Bavarian infantry regiment until they were forced to surrender. In all, 500 were killed and 3,000 captured, including Savelli, General Enkevort and Sperreuter. The latter was one of the first to flee, fearing for his life if captured by his former employers, but was caught on Basel territory. Bernhard hated Werth who had openly denounced him as a traitor to the Empire. He enjoyed himself immensely watching Werth and Savelli blame each other for the defeat at a banquet he gave the captured officers to celebrate his victory.
Savelli’s behaviour somewhat resembles Mr Toad’s. He soon escaped thanks to the woman charged with bringing food to his cell. Unfortunately, the authorities were not as forgiving as the characters in Kenneth Grahame’s story and she was executed along with seven other alleged accomplices. Bernhard should have celebrated instead, because Savelli was more a liability than an asset to any army, owing his command to his court connections. Enkevort, a competent officer who had risen to
his command partly thanks to a timely defection from Wallenstein in 1634, was held by the French along with Werth until they were exchanged for Swedish generals in 1641 and 1642 respectively. Sperreuter was held hostage with his wife and child on the Hohentwiel until 1641 when he was swapped for Taupadel who had been captured in the meantime. His confinement was rather less easy than that of Enkevort and Werth who attended French society events, and his family died during the bombardment of the Hohentwiel in July 1639. The loss, albeit temporary, of such officers was serious at a time when military efficiency was closely linked to the skill and reputation of commanders. Rheinfelden also frustrated the emperor’s efforts to eliminate Hessen-Kassel, because Götz and the former Liga units had to be diverted from Westphalia to the Upper Rhine in April.
Rheinfelden resisted bravely for another three weeks, but was forced to surrender on 24 March. Even after pressing the imperial prisoners into service, Bernhard’s force still numbered only 12,000, half of whom were cavalry. He lacked the infantry to besiege the other towns that still resisted. Whereas du Hallier’s French detachment had been recalled at the end of 1637, Richelieu now sent a contingent of 4,500 infantry that was to remain with Bernhard’s army. French troops regarded the Rhine like the river Styx, fearing they would never return if they ventured into Germany. The new detachment lost 2,000 deserters within a month, but Richelieu was determined that Bernhard should eliminate the threat to Alsace and sent another 1,900 infantry in July. Both detachments were led by exceptional officers who were to represent French interests in Germany until the end of the war. Guébriant, the more senior, already knew Bernhard from the 1636 campaign and volunteered to lead the reinforcements. Brave and honest, he was able to assert himself over his fractious subordinates. His equally courageous wife assisted him, even leading 400 recruits from Paris to join him for his last campaign. His early death in 1643 prevented him reaching the front rank of French generals military history has chosen to commemorate, leaving him overshadowed by Turenne who commanded the second detachment. The younger brother of the duc de Bouillon, Turenne’s association with Huguenotism slowed his career and he served the Dutch instead until 1632. Despite a weak physique and a speech impediment, he distinguished himself as a courageous and skilful commander, becoming the only Frenchman Napoleon later considered a truly great general. He was soon switched after 1638 to Italy and Roussillon, but returned to assume command in Germany after Guébriant’s death and remained there until 1648.31
The Siege of Breisach
Rather than push on along the Forest Town route, Bernhard turned against the Breisgau immediately to the north. Freiburg, the administrative centre, was difficult to defend and fell on 10 April. He then concentrated his infantry and artillery outside Breisach from 15 June, leaving Taupadel and the cavalry east of the Black Forest to deter relief efforts. Perched on a rocky hill above the Rhine, Breisach commanded a permanent bridge resting on two islands and protected by entrenchments on the western bank. Colonel Reinach was an experienced Bavarian officer who had commanded Pappenheim’s infantry at Lützen and later transferred to imperial service. His garrison had been reinforced to 3,000 men with 152 cannon. The rest of the imperial campaign of 1638 became a series of increasingly desperate attempts to relieve him.
The task was entrusted to Johann Count Götz, one of the many Lutherans in the imperial army. From Lüneburg, he had served the Palatinate and then the Dutch, before joining the imperial army. He was identified with Wallenstein’s ‘German’ faction, but survived the purge in 1634 only to be court-martialled after a poor performance in Silesia the following year. His reputation for bravery and experience ensured his appointment as Bavarian commander in 1636, despite Maximilian’s normal antipathy to Protestant officers. He also enjoyed Ferdinand III’s confidence and was named imperial commander on the Rhine in September 1638. Götz collected 13,500 men at Rottweil east of the Black Forest, intending to coordinate a relief effort with Charles of Lorraine, who still held out with 5,000 men in the Franche-Comté against de Longueville’s 13,000 French.
Götz climbed the mountains to appear north of Breisach on 26 June. He slipped in supplies, but was too weak to attempt relief directly and crossed over into Alsace hoping that taking French positions there would force Bernhard to lift the siege. The French garrisons proved too strong, while Bernhard switched Taupadel’s cavalry west of the Rhine to confront him. Thwarted, Götz retreated to Württemberg, leaving Savelli opposite Strasbourg. Having recuperated, he rejoined Savelli to give a combined total of 15,000 men at Offenburg on 7 August.
The Battle of Wittenweier
Götz attempted to reprovision Breisach by using his entire army to escort supplies that were to be loaded onto barges at Rheinau. Bernhard realized he could never take Breisach while Götz remained in the field and decided to force a battle. He drew 11,400 men from his siege lines and headed north through Kensingen and Lahr. It was not until scouts reported his approach on Sunday 8 August that the imperial commanders realized he was no longer at Breisach. The imperial cavalry in the vanguard were driven back into the village of Friesenheim, about 4km north of Lahr. Götz reacted quickly, placing infantry and artillery on a vine-covered hill at Schuttern 2km to the west, while the rest of the army drew up behind a boundary ditch between there and Friesenheim. Bernhard sent his French infantry who cleared Friesenheim, which the Imperialists had set on fire. Götz regrouped his troops on the hill, while Bernhard moved artillery into the vineyards opposite. He soon realized that the terrain was unsuitable for the cavalry that comprised more than half his force and so broke off the action, falling back to more open ground at Mahlberg having lost around 50 men to the enemy’s 120. The fighting was typical of the many relatively bloodless confrontations between the armies that go largely unrecorded, but which was to be the prelude to a more significant action.32
Determined to get his supply convoy through, Götz gave Savelli two-thirds of the army and sent him early the next day towards Wittenweier to reach Rheinau. Götz hoped the large Kaiserwald wood would screen this move, but Bernhard was alerted and headed north-west after morning prayers to catch Savelli as he emerged through a gap in the trees. Savelli had failed to take precautions and had moved too far ahead of the supply train that blocked the road behind. Bernhard and Guébriant arrived at the gap first, deploying the cavalry on their left, followed by the infantry in the centre and Taupadel and the rest of the cavalry coming up on the right. Savelli’s cavalry were disordered by 400 musketeers and 2 guns Bernhard had posted in a wood by the Rhine. They gave way as Bernhard charged, some units fleeing, disordering their infantry and plundering the provision train. Savelli and the fugitives escaped through the defile as Götz arrived with the rearguard. However, Taupadel’s cavalry on the right faced better regiments, and were thrown back by Götz who attacked Bernhard’s infantry and captured their artillery. Bernhard replied using cannon abandoned by Savelli, while two veteran infantry regiments arrived from the reserve. Götz made repeated attacks with his cavalry until midnight when he retreated, having already evacuated 3,000 wounded to Offenburg. He nonetheless lost 2,000 killed, 1,700 captured, 13 cannon and over 3,000 wagons full of food and munitions. Bernhard lost 1,000 casualties, but recouped these by pressing enemy prisoners and deserters into service.
It was a serious defeat that exposed significant weaknesses in an imperial army that then disintegrated during the retreat. Regiments remained under-strength and contained too few experienced men. Only 3,000 men remained with the colours by the time Götz reached Offenburg. He was furious with Savelli whose court connections enabled him to escape a court martial, though other officers, including Werth’s brother, were arrested. Götz complained that the Strasbourg burghers treated his fugitives worse than the enemy, stealing their clothes and beating them before sending them packing.33
Desperate Measures
Though wounded himself, Götz persisted, regrouping at Rottweil to wait for General Lamboy and 3,900 men originally intended to reinforce the Spanish in Italy but who were now directed to join him, along with others scraped from garrisons in Bohemia and Franconia. The soldiers had lost confidence in their commander, believing wrongly that he ‘was not really Bavarian, but more Weimarian’ and in secret negotiation with Bernhard.34 An attempt to supply food to the Breisach garrison through the Black Forest failed, but Savelli, now posted to Philippsburg, did slip some across the river by sending Croats down the west bank to the Breisach bridgehead. Bernhard was down to 9,000 men and could no longer isolate the fortress completely. Peasants were able to enter and sell food at extortionate rates. The situation inside Breisach was nonetheless growing desperate; Reinach had already expelled the civilians and was down to 1,600 effectives. Bernhard tried to sow dissent within the garrison, sending letters he had captured in Savelli’s baggage suggesting that the Habsburgs suspected the commandant of disloyalty.
Duke Charles made his own, poorly timed relief effort before Götz’s new army was ready, and marched from the Franche-Comté with 4,000 men into Upper Alsace without interference from the French under Longueville. Bernhard gambled correctly that Götz could not intervene, and crossed the Rhine, picking up detachments on the other side to give 4,800 men to block Charles outside Thann, south-west of Colmar, on 15 September. Bernhard’s cavalry displayed superior discipline, returning to the field having broken the Lorraine horse and assisting their infantry to crush Charles’s foot soldiers, who fought on for two hours before breaking.
Götz was not ready to move until a month later, when he marched with 10,000 men up the Glotter valley past Freiburg, to appear at Breisach on 22 October, only to find Bernhard safely back in his entrenchments. Having been repulsed, Götz sent 1,000 musketeers over the Rhine to clear the besiegers from the Alsatian side, but these were dispersed by Turenne. Despondent, he re-crossed the Black Forest.35 With his army in poor shape, he relied on local militia to attack the Forest Towns in a last attempt to relieve Breisach by going round the southern end of the mountains, while Charles advanced to Thann again and Savelli sortied from Philippsburg. The three detachments collectively outnumbered Bernhard’s army, but each was individually too weak to achieve anything and the operation was aborted in late November.
The local inhabitants had fled, leaving the Imperialists to subsist on thistles, snakes and a meagre bread ration. They were without shoes or stockings. Their horses were dying. The reinforcements that arrived in October lost half their strength within a month and the total number fell to 12,000, including Savelli, despite 13,000 men joining them since August.36 Götz was arrested as a scapegoat, but despite the best efforts of Savelli’s friends at court he was exonerated and resumed command in 1640.
The Fall of Breisach
The garrison had fallen to 400 men who had gone without bread for four weeks, surviving by chewing horse and cow hides. Reinach finally agreed to surrender on 19 December in return for free passage.37 Bernhard was furious to discover that thirty of his prisoners of war had starved to death during the siege. Three of the corpses had allegedly been eaten by the survivors, attracting widespread notoriety. Stories of cannibalism had been circulating since 1629 and became more common in the mid-1630s. Though they declined after 1640, they entered folk memory and re-emerged in mid-nineteenth-century writing under the influence of other cannibal tales from the age of European colonialism. They were clearly believed at the time and were still cited as hard evidence a century later.38
Seventeenth-century accounts were already influenced by Classical mythology and baroque drama that used tales of mothers eating their children as motifs for absolute horror and depravity. There were numerous direct accounts of people eating dogs, mice and other less palatable animals, but those of cannibalism were always based on hearsay.39 The tales were fabricated and certainly embroidered in propaganda, mostly written by south-west German Protestants to rally sympathy, or as a metaphor for moral breakdown caused by the war.
As a reprisal for the alleged atrocity, Bernhard deliberately humiliated Reinach’s troops as they staggered out of Breisach. He was determined to claim his triumph, riding Werth’s horse captured at Rheinfelden as he entered the fortress. He obliged Reinach to leave the government archive behind as he intended Breisach as a capital for his own principality. He also insisted on garrisoning it with his own men and not those of the French, who had spent 1.1 million talers on a campaign that claimed at least 24,000 lives. Pamphlets appeared celebrating Bernhard as a German Achilles who had captured the Porta Germaniae for Louis XIII.
In fact, Bernhard had not so much opened a door to Germany than closed one into France. Breisach was a useful bridgehead, but France needed towns on the other side of the Black Forest to open a route into Germany. Its significance was not in severing the Spanish Road, which was already cut, but in blocking imperial incursions into Alsace, giving France a real chance to hold that province permanently. France shifted from military to civil administration, no longer treating the Alsatians as foreigners.40 It also spelled the end for Duke Charles. Thann, his last Alsatian outpost, fell early in 1639. He escaped with his mistress and 1,600 troops across the western edge of his duchy to Sierck on the Luxembourg frontier in February, leaving a few isolated garrisons in Lorraine, but exposing the Franche-Comté. The war had shifted deeper into the Empire, as Bernhard could now be reinforced to operate east of the Rhine.
PEACE FOR NORTH GERMANY?
Ferdinand III Addresses the Amnesty Question
The worsening military situation encouraged Ferdinand to tackle the amnesty problem bequeathed by his father. Renewed efforts were made to win Hessen-Kassel and the Guelphs for the Prague settlement and to use what remained of the military momentum to persuade Sweden to make peace. France and Sweden responded by tightening pressure on the Germans to remain loyal to them, or at least neutral.
The emperor’s hands had been tied by his father’s policies. Hildesheim had been promised to Cologne in return for its support at the 1636 Regensburg congress, while five further Württemberg districts were transferred to the Tirolean Habsburgs and the Bavarian Chancellor Richel as rewards at the beginning of 1637. Johann Georg of Saxony was concerned the amnesty exclusions were undermining the chances for peace, while Duke August of Wolfenbüttel petitioned Ferdinand III on his accession for the return of his capital.41
Ferdinand did his best. Georg Friedrich, the only Hohenlohe count excluded from the amnesty at Prague, was pardoned in 1637.42 The emperor also accepted that Eberhard III was not responsible for Widerhold’s behaviour and agreed to allow him back into Württemberg provided he accepted the loss of the monasteries and donated districts. Zweibrücken was included in these arrangements that were all completed by October 1638. The four Nassau-Walram counts were also pardoned in 1640, but as their lands were not restored they remained French pensioners in Metz and Strasbourg.
Wolfenbüttel proved far more difficult because it became the fulcrum of initiatives to neutralize all north-west Germany. Saxon and Brandenburg troops tried to force the Guelphs to rejoin the war in 1637 by invading from the east. Duke Georg persuaded them to leave by getting the Swedes to evacuate the town of Lüneburg that they had been occupying since April 1636.
A New Third Party
Convinced he needed to bolster his neutrality, Georg opened negotiations with Amalie Elisabeth of Hessen-Kassel after she renewed her truce with the emperor in March 1638. Together they had 12,000 troops, offering a viable basis to uphold a common neutrality.43 The proposal appealed to the Hessian commander Melander, who advocated widening it to include Cologne, Pfalz-Neuburg and Hessen-Darmstadt to form a new third party that could achieve a general peace by forcing the emperor to modify the Peace of Prague.
The initiative coincided with further Danish efforts to protect its Lower Saxon interests following the renewal of the Franco-Swedish alliance at Hamburg in March 1638. Christian IV backed Georg’s plan, writing to Banér asking for the Swedish forces to spare the Guelph duchies.44 This obliged Ferdinand to instruct Gallas to refrain from demanding Lower Saxon billets, as well as send Vice-Chancellor Kurz to discuss the proposal. Christian also intervened on Duke August’s behalf, requesting Ruischenberg to evacuate Wolfenbüttel.45 The imperial garrison now numbered 2,500, excluding dependants, and cost the inhabitants 6,428 tlr a month, in addition to forage for its horses. The soldiers were also cutting down valuable trees in the surrounding forests for heating. The duke found their presence in his ancestral home an affront to his dignity and said they disrupted the good government of his duchy. Danish support proved decisive in Ferdinand’s decision to allow the duke back into the town that September, but the garrison remained.46
While strategic reasons played a part in Ferdinand’s decision to retain the garrison, it was also politically impossible to relinquish Wolfenbüttel, because both Cologne and Bavaria insisted it be held as security for the return of Hildesheim. Unfortunately, Hildesheim was occupied by Georg, not August, who could not persuade his younger brother to cooperate.47 Georg pressed on with his plans, using the emperor’s request for war taxes in November as an excuse to convene the Lower Saxon assembly to debate neutrality instead. Ferdinand condemned the move to create a ‘private defence’ as contrary to the Peace of Prague and ordered the Guelph troops to join the imperial army.48
The prospect of north German neutrality was initially welcomed by Richelieu and, especially, d’Avaux who represented French interests in Hamburg after 1637. Both saw a chance to achieve the long-desired neutral block around Bavaria. Maximilian invited the electors of Mainz, Cologne and Saxony to meet in Nuremberg in June and opened notionally secret talks with France at Einsiedeln monastery in Switzerland. Oxenstierna feared this would enable France to disengage, leaving Sweden to fight on alone. Banér, now confined to his coach by terminal illness, crossed the Elbe from Mecklenburg and invaded Lüneburg in January 1639. Though they provided supplies, the Guelphs refused to join Sweden, obliging Banér to move into Saxony two months later. The Lower Saxon assembly formally proclaimed their region neutral on 22 March, arguing it was in the public interest to exclude Sweden from the area.49
Banér’s Offensive
Banér’s advance into Saxony proved unexpectedly successful, encouraging him to push into the Habsburg hereditary lands. Though it ended in failure, the attack offered the first real proof that the high tide of imperial power since Nördlingen was ebbing. Ferdinand III appeared vulnerable at precisely the time when he needed to persuade the doubters to join him. Having collected troops at Erfurt in mid-March, Banér swept through the archbishopric of Magdeburg to enter Saxony with 18,000 men. Zwickau and Chemnitz soon fell, but he stalled before Freiberg where he hoped to capture Johann Georg’s silver mine. The miners reinforced a garrison that resisted stoutly. Furious at the delay, Banér ordered an assault that cost him 500 men. The bitter cold prevented their burial as the bodies froze solid.
General Marazzino had assumed command of the Saxons in October 1638, amalgamating the weaker regiments, but even with units sent by Gallas, he mustered only 5,000 men. Having relieved Freiberg, he made the mistake of pursuing Banér to Chemnitz. Banér faced about and routed his forces, taking 1,500 prisoners on 14 April 1639. The Saxons were shattered and never recovered. Ferdinand overruled Johann Georg’s indulgence and had Marazzino court-martialled. Banér pressed south-eastwards again, capturing Pirna on 3 May to give access to Bohemia. Leaving 3,000 men to hold the gorge, he surged south into a land free from war since 1634. Gallas massed 10,000 men under Hofkirchen to stop him at Melnik as he emerged from the mountains on 29 May. Against his subordinates’ advice, Hofkirchen threw away his initial advantage with a premature attack, losing 1,000 casualties and 400 prisoners.50 The Imperialist position collapsed further when the Swedish general Lilliehook advanced from Pomerania and captured more Brandenburg garrisons, while Stalhansk with another detachment pushed up the Oder, defeated Mansfeld and overran most of Silesia by the middle of the year.
The successes were largely due to the Imperialists’ weakness after their costly Rhine campaign the previous year. Banér’s army was too small to occupy Bohemia and he could not take Prague.51 His men were poorly disciplined, killing 38 Bohemian exiles and wounding another 153 during their assault on Pirna. Not surprisingly, few answered his proclamation promising Bohemian freedoms. Ferdinand summoned Hatzfeldt from Westphalia and withdrew most of Geleen’s Imperialists from south Germany. These combined with the remnants of Gallas’s army to give 30,000 men under the emperor’s younger brother, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, at Prague by July. Without Prague, Banér could not stay in Bohemia. He switched from liberator to destroyer in October, ravaging a third of the kingdom in the worst destruction to date in the vain hope of intimidating the emperor.
Competition for the German Armies
The Guelph alliance with Hessen-Kassel was formalized by a treaty brokered by the Hessian commander Melander in April 1639. Melander worked to recruit additional members, opening negotiations with Saxony through Arnim who had escaped Swedish captivity the previous autumn and was back in Dresden. Other contacts ran through Melander’s fellow members of the Fruitful Society (see above, p.263), extending his network to the Swedish, imperial and Bavarian armies.52
Richelieu grew concerned when Melander approached Bernhard, offering to make him commander of the third party’s proposed combined army. Bernhard had around 14,000 men in April when the Hessians numbered less than 11,000, half of whom were in garrisons. Despite capturing Breisach, Bernhard had been unable to sustain his army in the devastated Breisgau. He re-crossed the Rhine that January to invade the virtually undefended Franche-Comté, scattering the peasants who tried to bar the way in the Doubs valley. Having established himself at Pontarlier, he spent the next six months looting, burning and pillaging. He had grown disgruntled with France, wanting to be more than Richelieu’s German recruiting officer, and demanded to be given Alsace, the Breisgau and the bishopric of Basel as his own principality. There was no place for such ambitions in Melander’s scheme as this aimed for a compromise peace. Objecting that ‘a new alliance, a third party would be a third war’, Bernhard opened discussions to rejoin Sweden instead.53
Before these could be completed, he died on 18 July 1639, probably from the epidemic that had already ravaged the Franche-Comté that winter. Realizing he was dying, he summoned his colonels the day before and appointed Erlach, Reinhold von Rosen, Johann Bernhard Ohm and Count Wilhelm Otto von Nassau as the army’s ‘directors’.
There were now three substantial non-aligned armies holding the fate of western and northern Germany in their hands: the Hessians in Westphalia, the Bernhardines on the Rhine and the Guelph troops in Lower Saxony. Ferdinand had been negotiating both with Melander and, through Savelli, with Bernhard since 1637. He offered to make Melander an imperial count and appealed to his patriotism to persuade him to change sides. Coercion was impossible: Hatzfeldt had taken 7,600 men from Westphalia when he marched to Bohemia in April, reducing the Imperialists there to 9,000, including 5,500 Cologne troops under Velen. A concerted effort now began, assisted by Mainz, Darmstadt and Baden-Baden, to persuade the Bernhardine directors to defect.54 Two emissaries were sent to offer to have Bernhard’s corpse escorted to Weimar with full military honours. Joachim von Mitzlaff, who had been instrumental in suborning Wilhelm of Weimar’s army in 1635, was despatched to repeat the coup.
France and Sweden countered these moves. Casualties and the Scottish exodus to fight at home in 1638 had reduced the number of qualified, reliable senior officers in Swedish service. Oxenstierna took a calculated risk in naming Königsmarck, a German, to replace King in north-west Germany, despite his poor showing at Vlotho bridge. An impoverished Brandenburg noble, Königsmarck had enlisted as a cavalry trooper in the imperial army in 1620, resigning in 1630 having only risen to ensign. His promotion in Swedish service after 1631 was rapid as his talents were soon recognized. He now commanded around 5,000 men, mainly restricted to Erfurt. These were too few to coerce the Guelphs, but they represented a potential reinforcement should they declare openly for Sweden. He also demonstrated Swedish potency by raiding Bamberg, Würzburg and Kulmbach in August in the first incursion into Franconia since 1634.
Mitzlaff did not reach Weimar until late October 1639. His presence alarmed dukes Wilhelm and Ernst who feared Swedish reprisals, and in any case they had no influence over the Bernhardine directors. Mitzlaff returned empty-handed, only just evading 700 Swedish cavalry sent from the Zwickau and Chemnitz garrisons to capture him.55 France meanwhile moved to prevent anyone, including the Swedes, from securing the armies. Melander’s existing French pension was doubled to 18,000 livres and he was named second-in-command of Louis XIII’s German troops. Another 20,000 talers were added to Amalie Elisabeth’s subsidy in the Treaty of Dorsten. However, she obliged Richelieu to keep the agreement secret until Sweden ratified its treaty with France. This was to preserve her fragile truce in Westphalia that protected her garrisons.56
An attempt by Karl Ludwig to recruit the Bernhardines for the Palatine cause was easily thwarted by Richelieu’s agents who arrested the hapless prince as he travelled incognito across France. Meanwhile, Guébriant, in charge of the French contingent in Bernhard’s army, persuaded the directors to remain loyal to France in a new agreement on 9 October.57 The troops passed fully into French service as the Armee d’Allemagne dedicated ‘to restore and stabilize German freedom’. All its conquests were surrendered to Louis XIII, but Erlach remained governor of Breisach and the colonels retained control over the internal management of their units.
Ferdinand regarded the third army of the Guelphs as already lost. He formally enfeoffed the elector of Cologne with Hildesheim on 22 August, and authorized Hatzfeldt to enforce this in October and compel the Guelph troops to join the imperial army.58Piccolomini had already moved his 15,000 men from Luxembourg in September to assist. Duke Georg responded by tightening his mutual defence pact with Hessen-Kassel on 9 November, while Melander broke the Hessian truce to capture Bielefeld. The concentration of imperial forces east of the Rhine exposed the other bank. Guébriant appreciated that the Bernhardines were too weak for a renewed offensive over the Rhine, but moved north along the west bank, shadowed by the Bavarians on the other side, to occupy the lower Moselle just vacated by Piccolomini. The move was partly driven by a lack of supplies, but also to shift France’s principal force closer to support the Hessians. Some of the Bernhardines crossed the Rhine at Bingen to invade the electorate of Mainz and occupy the Westerwald to the rear of the new imperial concentration.
The emperor did authorize operations to eject Guébriant, who re-crossed the Rhine on 27 December, retiring through Limburg and then south to winter at Hagenau and Breisach. However, he still preferred a diplomatic solution and postponed the invasion of the Guelph lands. Negotiations were opened with Banér, whom Ferdinand believed was authorized by Sweden to make peace.59 There was also still hope that some of the Bernhardine officers might defect. The emperor issued an open pardon to all those willing to join him in throwing off the ‘foreign yoke’.60 Rosen remained belligerent, but the others doubted the sincerity of French claims to be fighting for la liberté Germanique. Colonel Ohm told a Mainz agent that if France opposed a true peace, ‘the devil take anyone who picks up a sword or pistol to fight His Imperial Majesty. They [the colonels] are all tired of war.’
Cash, as usual, proved the sticking point. The officers wanted assurances from the emperor that he would meet their pay arrears. Hard-pressed, Ferdinand could not match the French who were channelling money through Frankfurt bankers to keep the colonels sweet.61 Widerhold also rejected Archduchess Claudia’s generous offer of a full pardon, 30,000 florins and a post in the Tirolean forces. Nonetheless, Guébriant was sufficiently alarmed to ask the Bernhardine colonels to reaffirm their loyalty to France on 17 August 1640 and Richelieu continued to treat them with respect.
The War Moves North
By draining other regions of their troops, Ferdinand III managed to collect 44,000 men in Bohemia by January 1640.62 Of these, only 12,400 were available as a field army under Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, reinforced by 4,100 under Hatzfeldt who had wintered in Franconia. Piccolomini was down to 13,000 in Westphalia, while the Saxons mustered 6,648, or only a quarter of their strength five years earlier. The Brandenburgers had effectively been knocked out. The Bavarians still totalled about 17,000 men, most of whom were on the Upper Rhine where there were perhaps 10,000 in total, including a few Imperialists. The rest were in winter quarters around Donauwörth and Ingolstadt. As these figures suggest, it was now very difficult to launch major operations in more than one region at a time.
His enemies were in a similar position. Banér was reduced to 10,000 effectives, while the other Swedish commanders had only enough men to hold their current positions. Banér had little choice but to evacuate Bohemia in March and fall back the way he had come the previous year to join Königsmarck at Erfurt. The units left to hold Saxony were defeated at Plauen on 20 April 1640, forcing the garrison in Chemnitz to surrender while most of the others abandoned their positions.63
The challenge over the coming two years was for France and Sweden to establish a viable framework for military and political cooperation that had to include the Hessians and Guelphs, while Ferdinand pinned his hopes on frustrating this with one last effort to rally all Germans behind the Prague settlement. The emperor’s preference for negotiation was cruelly exploited by the Guelphs and Hessians who had used the winter to gather their strength and now declared their hand in May 1640. Duke Georg did this openly by sending troops to Banér, counting on Swedish help to prevent an invasion of Hildesheim. He nominally mustered 20,000, but in fact had 6,000 at Göttingen and garrisons along the Weser, plus a field force of 4,500 under Klitzing. Amalie Elisabeth acknowledged her French alliance in March, but still promised to respect the truce in Westphalia. With French agreement, Melander moved the 4,000-strong Hessian field force east to the Eichsfeld in May to reinforce Banér. Richelieu summoned de Longueville from Italy, hoping that he possessed sufficient personal authority as a duke to master the 8,000-strong Bernhardine field army. This moved back down the Rhine to join the allied concentration.
The emperor was obliged to match these moves. He still hoped to win over the Hessians and so accepted Amalie Elisabeth’s assurances. Nonetheless, Wahl, the new Cologne commander, was authorized to recover the positions her troops had seized over the last two years in breach of the truce. Hessian garrisons also became bolder, now raiding Paderborn. Piccolomini followed Melander east and joined Leopold Wilhelm at Saalfeld, south of Erfurt, on 5 May. They entrenched to block the way into Franconia. After a two-week stand-off, Banér fell back north-west into Lower Saxony, alarming the Guelphs who feared he would abandon them. Once they had promised another 5,000 men, he marched south again to Göttingen and Kassel. Leopold Wilhelm shadowed him, moving through Hersfeld to entrench again at Fritzlar in August. It was cold all year, the summer was wet and miserable and food proved hard to find.64 Banér’s second wife died and de Longueville fell ill, relinquishing command to Guébriant again. The Bavarian field army arrived from Ingolstadt, bringing Leopold Wilhelm back up to 25,000 men. After another four-week stand-off, Banér withdrew, allowing the archduke to advance north down the Weser to join Wahl’s 4,000 field troops. Together, they took Höxter in October, but the men were exhausted and ill-disciplined. The weather grew windy and even colder. Leopold Wilhelm retreated south to winter at Ingolstadt. Banér left 7,000 to blockade Wolfenbüttel, while the rest of his army made themselves comfortable at the expense of the Guelphs’ villagers.
Seemingly uneventful, this campaign completely shifted the war’s focus to northern Germany, transplanting the ‘little war’ of outposts from Westphalia to the Upper Rhine instead. Under Erlach’s direction, the Bernhardine garrisons operated from Breisach and the Forest Towns in conjunction with Widerhold in the Hohentwiel. The Bavarians retaliated from Philippsburg, Heidelberg and Offenburg, while the Imperialists sortied from Konstanz and Villingen. Neither side managed to spare more than 3,000 men from their fortresses, severely restricting what they could achieve. Erlach helped disrupt plans to besiege the Hohentwiel in 1640 by sending cavalry to collect the Swabian harvest. Claudia scraped together another expedition against Widerhold in 1641, but heavy snow and lack of food forced this to be abandoned in January 1642. Erlach and Widerhold scored the only success, briefly combining the following January to take Überlingen by surprise.65
What south Germany gained by way of respite, the north lost. Desperate attempts by the Weimar dukes failed to persuade the belligerents to respect Thuringian neutrality. The Dutch feared that the arrival of France’s Army of Germany in their vicinity would merge the two wars. However, the withdrawal of Piccolomini’s corps from Luxembourg at the end of 1639 reduced the imperial presence west of the Rhine to a few units under Lamboy who spent most of their time extinguishing the last of Pfalz-Neuburg authority in Jülich. The Hessians did the same in Berg on the other side of the Rhine, as well as capturing Kalkar in 1641, a move that gave them a bridgehead on the left bank of the river and established communications with the French. Kalkar was turned into a major fortress, sustained by taking hostages from surrounding communities to ensure regular contributions.
Though the Hessians refrained from provoking the Spanish in Jülich itself, Melander had already resigned at the end of 1640 in protest at Amalie Elisabeth’s policies. He and his brother Jacob were rewarded the following December by Ferdinand with elevation as hereditary imperial counts ‘von Holzapfel’. Melander was also made imperial field marshal in February 1641, but was both too compromised and too useful a diplomat to be given actual command. Instead, Ferdinand sent him on an ultimately fruitless mission to broker peace between Spain and the Dutch Republic until he replaced Wahl as Westphalian commander in October 1645. The emperor still controlled most of southern and central Germany, but the loss of the north meant the overall situation now hung in the balance.