The Complete Works of Stephen Crane (232 page)

Tilly saw his foes entrenched on his own side of the river and, under the tremendous firing of the guns from the higher bank, was utterly powerless to keep them from coming. For thirty-six hours the cannonade went on, the king standing most of the time at the foot of the bridge and sometimes acting as gunner himself to encourage his men. The Imperialists made a desperate effort to seize the bridge, but a large number were cut down in the attempt.

Finally, Tilly, whose courage was heroic throughout the day, fell with a shattered thigh, and had to be borne away. Maximilian, the Bavarian duke, now precipitately abandoned his impregnable position and moved the army quietly away to Ingolstadt.

When Gustavus next day found the camp vacant his astonishment was great.

“Had I been the sovereign of Bavaria,” he cried, “never, though a cannon-ball had taken away my beard and chin — never would I have quitted a post like this and laid my states open to the enemy.”

Bavaria, indeed, lay open to the conqueror; before occupying it, however, he rescued the Protestant town of Augsburg from the Bavarian yoke, Augsburg being in his eyes a special object of veneration on account of the famous “Confession” — the place “from whence the law first proceeded from Sion.” Augsburg, indeed, at first resisted him, but when he saw the dread devastation that his guns began to make on its beautiful buildings he stopped them and insisted on an interview with the governor, who, seeing the hopelessness of resistance, yielded.

Tilly died in Ingolstadt, the Elector of Bavaria sitting by his bedside. He adjured Maximilian to keep Ingolstadt with all his powers against Gustavus and to seize Ratisbon at once, begged him never to break his alliance with the emperor, and besought him to appoint General Gratz in his place. “He will conduct your troops with reputation, and, as he knows Wallenstein, will traverse the designs of that insolent man. Oh,” he sighed, “would that I had expired at Leipzig and not survived my fame!”

So died Tilly — bigoted, merciless, cruel, but nevertheless faithful and zealous to his last breath in defence of his religion and the League.

Ingolstadt was a fortress considered impregnable; it had never been conquered. Gustavus had determined to take it, and made a partial investment only, for on one side of it was the whole Bavarian army under Maximilian.

While riding about the walls one day and going very near to take observations, on account of his short sight, a twenty-four pounder killed his horse — the favourite “flea-bitten” steed — under him; he rose tranquilly and, mounting another horse, continued his reconnoitring. In camp in the evening his generals in a body protested against his risking so valuable a life in this way; but he replied that he had a foolish sort of a fancy which always tempted him to imagine that he could see better for himself than others could, and that his sense of God’s providence gave him the firm assurance that he had other assistance in store for so just a cause than the precarious existence of one Gustavus Adolphus.

Within a few days news came that the Bavarian troops had taken the Imperial town of Ratisbon, and this caused a change in the king’s plans; he had spent eight days on Ingolstadt, but he now suddenly abandoned it, because it would have been of no special advantage to him without Ratisbon in his scheme of cutting off Maximilian from Bohemia.

Munich was his next objective point, and he now proceeded into the interior of Bavaria, where Mosburg, Landshut, all the Bishopric of Freysingen, surrendered to him. But the Bavarians looked upon Protestants as children of hell. Soldiers who did not believe in the Pope were to them accursed monsters. When they succeeded in capturing a Swedish straggler they put him to death with tortures the most refined and prolonged. When the Swedish army came upon mutilated bodies of their comrades they took vengeance into their own hands, but never by consent of Gustavus.

His approach to Munich threw the capital into an agony of terror. It had no defenders, and they feared that the treatment his soldiers had met at the hands of the country-people might lead him to use his power cruelly. Some Germans in his army begged to be allowed to repeat here the sacking of Magdeburg, but such a low revenge was impossible to the king. When the magistracy sent to implore his clemency, he answered that if they submitted readily and with good grace, care should be taken that no man should suffer with respect to life, liberty, or religion. Only one act of questionable taste accompanied his public entry, and that was the presence of a monkey in the procession — a monkey with a shaven crown and in a Capuchin’s dress, with a rosary in his paw. One hopes that the king was not responsible for this.

He found an abandoned palace: the elector’s treasures had been removed. There were left, though, many fine canvases by Flemish and Italian masters. His officers urged the king to plunder or destroy these, but he said: “Let us not imitate our ancestors, the Goths and Vandals, who destroyed everything belonging to the fine arts, which has left our nation a proverb and a byword of contempt with posterity for acts of this wanton barbarity.” He had evidently forgotten the earnest request of Charles I. for “pictures and statues.”

The construction of the palace — a magnificent building — caused the king to express great admiration: he asked the steward the name of the architect. “He is no other than the elector himself” was the reply. “I should like to have thisarchitect,” replied the king, “to send him to Stockholm.”

“That,” said the steward, “he will take care to avoid.”

The guns in the arsenal had been buried so carefully that they would not have been discovered if it had not been for a treacherous insider, who told the secret. “Arise from the dead,” cried the king, “and come to judgment!” and one hundred and forty pieces of artillery were dug up, a large sum of gold being found in one of them.

Appointing the Scotchman Hepburn to the post of Governor of Munich, Gustavus soon started forth with his army.

Meanwhile Maximilian, although besought by his Bavarians to come and deliver them from the Swedes, could not resolve to risk a battle. The wonderful victories of Gustavus had indeed a paralysing effect upon the country. As yet no one had been found capable of resisting him. Richelieu himself was horror-stricken at the power he had helped to raise. It was expected in France that an invasion of Swedes would be the natural continuation of the Rhine conquests; it  was said that Gustavus would not rest until he had made Protestantism compulsory throughout Europe. Nothing less than the command of the German Empire was supposed to be his ultimate aim.

There is no doubt that his ambitions steadily enlarged themselves, but there is nothing to prove that he contemplated supplanting Ferdinand. His enemies were disheartened. Ferdinand was now brought to the pass of abjectly begging Wallenstein to resume his command, and Wallenstein was assuming airs of indifference and allowing himself to be persuaded only with great pressure.

This extraordinary man was the son of a Moravian baron of the ancient race of Waldstein. As a youth he was notably proud and stubborn, ambitious and conceited, often saying, “If I am not a prince, I may become one.” He fell from a very high window whilst at the University of Goldben and was quite unhurt, which is said to have been the beginning of his certainty of future greatness. He was grossly superstitious always and entirely an egotist. At twenty-three he married a wealthy widow, who in a fit of jealousy gave him a “love philtre” in his wine, from which he narrowly escaped death. Dying in 1614, she left him a large property, and later he married a Countess Isabelle von Haggard, of immense fortune and of much “beauty, piety, and virtue.”

Wallenstein now began to invest his great wealth in the purchase of confiscated properties, and it was said that through his knowledge of metallurgy he adulterated the coin which he paid. At all events, his wealth assumed fabulous dimensions, and through his wife’s relations he mingled with the highest nobles of the empire. He always spoke with affection of his wife, but did not live with her nor write to her for years at a time.

In person Wallenstein was very tall and thin, with a yellow complexion, short red hair, and small, twinkling eyes. His cold, malignant gaze frightened his great troop of servants, who nevertheless stayed with him because they were unusually well paid. His military career had begun in his youth, when he served in Hungary.

Afterwards he raised a body of horse at his own expense for a war against the Venetians. On the breaking out of the war in Bohemia, in 1618, he was offered the post of general to the Bohemian forces, but adopted the side of the sovereign in whose family he had been brought up.

After putting down the Bohemian rebellion, in which Tilly had served Maximilian, the emperor decided that it was necessary for him to have a powerful army under his own orders. Wallenstein offered to raise an army, clothe, feed, and arm it at his own expense, if he should be made a field-general, an offer which the emperor accepted and which Wallenstein carried out.

His military activities from this time on are historical, as well as the details of his cold, pompous nature. He lived like a king, with great state, had no principles whatever about the way he acquired wealth, and spent it with magnificent lavishness.

At the time Ferdinand deprived him of his command, just as Gustavus was entering Germany, Wallenstein had become Duke of Friedland, Sagan, Glogau, and Mecklenburg, and was more insolent than if he had had royal blood in his veins. He spent an income of three millions of florins yearly, for his armies had plundered the land for years with great effect. He was able to control his rage at his sudden downfall because his Italian astrologer, Seni, who ruled him completely, assured him that the stars showed that a brilliant future awaited him, exalted beyond anything he had yet known. And so he was led on to close his career by plots against his emperor and to meet death by the hands of assassins.

All of Gustavus’s successes were the source of deep satisfaction to Wallenstein; they brought nearer his inevitable recall.

Now when Tilly was dead, and the emperor was beseeching him again to take command of the Imperial troops, Wallenstein sent an envoy to convey the congratulations of the Duke of Friedland to the King of Sweden, and to invite his majesty to a close alliance with him. He undertook, in concert with Gustavus, to conquer Bohemia and Moravia and drive the emperor out of Germany.

Gustavus felt that help would be very welcome, and he seriously considered the offer; but he could not bring himself to believe in a success promised by such an unscrupulous adventurer, who so willingly offered to become a traitor. He courteously refused, and Wallenstein accepted the emperor’s offer of chief command with a salary amounting to the value of one hundred and eight thousand pounds per annum. He demanded that he should have uncontrolled command of the German armies of Austria and Spain, with unlimited power to reward and punish. Neither the King of Hungary (to whom the emperor had wished to give the highest command) nor the emperor himself was ever to appear in his army or exercise the slightest authority in it. No commission or pension was to be granted without Wallenstein’s approval. An Imperial hereditary estate in Austria was to be assigned to him. As the reward of success in the field he should be made lord paramount over the conquered countries, and all conquests and confiscations should be placed entirely at his disposal. All means and moneys for carrying on the war must be solely at his command.

The ambassador to whom he made these terms suggested that the emperor must have some control over his armies, and that the young King of Hungary should at least be allowed to study the art of war with Wallenstein, but the reply was: “Never will I submit to any colleague in my office; no, not even if it were God Himself with whom I should have to share my command.” In his extremity the emperor accepted these conditions, April 15, 1632.

Although an avowed Jesuit, Wallenstein had no religious scruples whatever, and the Catholics feared and hated him as much as the Protestants. The gorgeous luxury of his surroundings was apparently only designed to impress the world; he was not a sensualist, but seems to have been actuated only by an insane love of power. Soldiers flocked to his standard and worshipped the mighty warrior who rewarded them with ceaseless plunder, but  the princes, nobles, and peasantry of the countries through which he passed were left with a blight upon them. He seemed to be unable to see in a country any reasons for industrial prosperity or for conserving wholesome conditions of any sort; he was a brave, fearless leader — after that, a robber, and nothing else.