The Complete Works of Stephen Crane (231 page)

At four o’clock the king took charge of his right wing, wheeled it suddenly to the left, dashed up to the heights where the Imperial artillery was placed, and, capturing it, turned the fire of their own guns on the enemy. Gustavus now swooped down upon Tilly’s rear.

Caught between this cavalry attack at the rear and Horn’s infantry in front, the Imperialists made a tough struggle. When the sun went down only six hundred men were left to close around Tilly and carry him from the field. With that exception the army had been destroyed. Seven thousand lay dead in the field; five thousand prisoners remained to take service with the victors, as the custom was at that time.

The king threw himself on his knees among the dead and wounded to offer up thanksgivings. He had the alarm-bells set ringing in all the villages round about to apprise the country of his victory. He encamped with his army in the deserted camp of the enemy. Almost all the baggage of the Imperialists fell into the hands of the conquerors. Hardly a soldier among the killed and wounded had less than ten ducats in his pocket or concealed within his girdle or saddle. Now that the battle was over the Elector of Saxony joined Gustavus in his camp at night. The king, who could be astutely diplomatic, gave him all the credit for having advised the battle and kept silent as to the Saxon troops. The elector, transported with joy at the issue of the day, promised to Gustavus the Roman crown. Gustavus lost no time in dallying with the Roman crown, but made new plans for action. He left Leipzig to the elector and set forward for Merseburg, which, with Halle, at once surrendered.

Here he gave his army a rest of ten days, and many Protestant princes joined him in council.

II

LUTZEN

From the day of Leipzig, Tilly’s fortunes left him; his past victories were forgotten and execrations were heaped upon him. Though he was wounded, he went to work with all his old energy to form a new army, but the emperor expressly commanded that he should never again risk any decisive battle.

The glorious victory at Leipzig is said to have changed not only the world’s opinion of Gustavus, but his own opinion of himself. He was now more confident; he took a bolder tone with his allies, a more imperious one with his enemies, and even more decision and greater speed marked his military movements, though nothing tyrannical or illiberal was seen in him.

The emperor and the Catholic League were dumfounded at the annihilation of Tilly. Richelieu was beginning to think his auxiliary too powerful; Louis XIII. even was heard to mutter, “It is time to put a limit to the progress of this Goth.”

“Alone, without a rival,” Schiller says, “he found himself now in the midst of Germany; nothing could arrest his course. His adversaries, the princes of the Catholic League, divided among themselves, led by different and contrary interests, acted without concert, and consequently without energy. Both statesman and general were united in the person of Gustavus. He was the only source from which all authority flowed: he alone was the soul of his party, the creator and executor of his military plans. Aided by all these advantages, at the head of such an army, endowed with a genius to profit by all these resources, conducted besides by principles of the wisest policy, it is not surprising that Gustavus Adolphus was irresistible. In not much more time than it would have taken another to make a tour of pleasure, with the sword in one hand and pardon in the other he was seen traversing Germany from one end to the other as a conqueror, lawgiver, and judge. As if he had been the legitimate sovereign, they brought him from all parts the keys of the towns and fortresses. No castle resisted him, no river stopped his victorious progress, and he often triumphed by the mere dread of his name.”

Many of his advisers pressed Gustavus to attack Vienna, but after careful consideration he thought he would serve his cause best by marching straight into the heart of Germany on the Main and the Rhine.

Ten days after Leipzig the king reached Erfurt and ordered Duke William of Saxe-Weimar to take possession of the city. Proceeding through the Thuringian Forest, he reached Konigshofen Schweinfurt, which yielded to him, as did Wurzburg. Marienberg he was obliged to take by storm; a great store of treasure was here, as well as the money which the Elector of Bavaria had sent to Tilly for the purpose of replacing his shattered army.

Great quantities of provisions, corn, and wine fell into Swedish hands. A coffin filled with ducats was found, and as it was lifted the bottom gave way, and the soldiers began to help themselves to the coin in the presence of the king. “Oh, I see how it is,” said he; “it is plain they must have it; let the rogues convert it to their own uses.”

In truth, the character of the Swedish army was no longer beyond suspicion; the soldiers had become to some extent demoralised with their conquests; the cruelties and barbarities that they had suffered had forced upon them terrible reprisals, and the usage of looting was so universal that they could not be held back from it.

Tilly had by this time collected a new army out of the Palatinate and come back to Fulda, and here he tried to get the consent of Maximilian of Bavaria to engage Gustavus in battle again, but the duke was fearful of having another army wiped out, now the only one the Catholic League possessed, and refused him.

The Swedish king now advanced rapidly towards the Rhine by way of the Main, reducing Aschaffenburg, Seligenstadt, and the whole territory on both sides of the river. The Count of Hanau made but slight resistance when his citadel was cap tured, and gladly agreed to pay two thousand five hundred pounds a month for the support of the army and to recall his retainers from the Imperial service.

Nothing now kept Gustavus from marching on Frankfort-on-the-Main. The magistrates of the city begged the ambassador that he sent to entreat him to consider their legitimate oaths to the emperor, and to leave them neutral, on account of their annual fairs, which were their chief commercial enterprise. The king was not moved by these touching business considerations; he was surprised, he replied, that while the liberties of Germany were at stake and the Protestant religion in jeopardy, they should convey to his ear such an odious sentiment as neutrality, and that the citizens of Frankfort should talk of annual fairs, as if they regarded all things merely as tradesmen and merchants, rather than as men of the world with a Christian conscience. More sternly he went on to say that he had found the keys to many a town and fortress from the Isle of Rugen on the Baltic to the banks of the Main, and knew well where to find a key for Frankfort.

The magistrates were filled with alarm at this, and asked for time to consult the Elector of Mayence, their ecclesiastic sovereign, but the king replied that he was master of Aschaffenburg; he was Elector of Mayence; he would give them plenary absolution.

“The inhabitants,” he said, “might desire to stretch out only their little finger to him, but he would be content with nothing but the whole hand, that he might have sufficient to grasp.”

He then moved his army on Saxenhausen, a beautiful suburb of the city, and here the magistrates met him, and after taking the oath of fidelity opened the gates of the city to him. The king made a solemn public entrance into the city, leading his troops with uncovered head, as a mark of respect, and bringing in fifty-six pieces of artillery. He was welcomed by the magistracy to a great banquet in the coronation hall of the imperial palace of Braunfels. Maria Eleonora, his queen, now joined him in Frankfort, and when she met him was so overcome with joy that, throwing her arms around him, she cried, “Now is Gustavus the Great become my prisoner!”

The next event of importance in this victorious progress was the carrying of Mayence, which after a short siege capitulated on December 13. On the 14th the king celebrated his thirty-seventh birthday by entering Mayence with great pomp, and took up his residence in the palace of the elector, ordering a service of thanksgiving for his success to be held in the Roman Catholic Cathedral. Provisions, artillery, and money fell into the hands of the army. The king seized as his personal share the library of the elector, and gave it to Oxenstiern for one of the Swedish universities, but, alas! it was lost in the Baltic.

The exhausted Swedish soldiers were now allowed a space of rest to recuperate their energies. On January 10 the queen arrived in Mayence and shared with Gustavus for a short time the ceremonial splendours of a regal court, where five German princes and many foreign ambassadors had  come to confer with the king and transact important negotiations with him. Among these was the Marquis de Breze, an ambassador from the French court. By his conversation Gustavus detected something of the truth, that Richelieu now feared him and was trying to undermine his power.

Accordingly, he sent word to Louis XIII. that he wished to speak with him personally. The French ambassador tried to persuade Gustavus that an interview with Richelieu would do as well, but he replied haughtily:

“All kings are equal. My predecessors have never given place to the kings of France. If your master thinks fit to despatch the cardinal half way, I will send some of my people to treat with him, but I will admit of no superiority.”

When the king and queen left Mayence in mid-February, Gustavus had had a new citadel built at the confluence of the Rhine and Main, which was called at first “Gustavusburg,” but in after days lapsed into “Pfaffenraube” (Priest-plunder). A lion of marble on a high marble pillar is near Mayence, holding a naked sword in his paw and wearing a helmet on his head, to mark the spot where the “Lion of the North” crossed the great river of Germany.

During February Kreutznach in the Palatinate, one of the strongest castles in Germany, and the town of Ulm surrendered to the king.

Leaving Oxenstiern, his minister and friend, to protect his conquests on the Rhine and Main, Gustavus began his advance against the enemy March 4, 1632, with an army — including his allies’ forces — of one hundred thousand infantry and forty thousand cavalry under arms. The Catholic League had been extremely active during the months since the defeat of Tilly at Breitenfeld and Leipzig, and had raised even larger forces.

By the capture of Donauworth it was evident to Tilly that Gustavus’s next move was to be towards Bavaria, for he was now master of the right bank of the Danube. Accordingly, after destroying all the bridges in the vicinity, Tilly entrenched himself in a strong position on the other side of the river Lech. Numerous garrisons defended the river as far as Augsburg. The Bavarian elector shut himself up in Tilly’s camp, feeling that the issue of the coming battle must decide everything for him.

The Lech, in the month of March, is swollen to a great torrent by the melting snows from the Tyrol, and dashes furiously between high, steep banks. The officers of Gustavus considered it impossible to effect a crossing and urged him not to try it. But he exclaimed to Horn —

“What! Have we crossed the Baltic and so many great rivers of Germany, and shall we now for this Lech, this rivulet, abandon our enterprise!”

He had made the discovery that his side of the river was higher by eleven feet than the opposite bank, which would greatly favour his cannon. He immediately took advantage of this by having three batteries erected on the spot where the left bank of the Lech forms an angle opposite its right. Here seventy-two pieces kept up a constant cannonade on the enemy.

He had now to invent a bridge that would cross the torrent, and also think of means to distract the enemy from noticing its construction. He made a strong set of trestles of various heights and with unequal feet, so that they would stand upright on the uneven bed of the river; these were secured in their places by strong piles driven into the river-bed. Planks were then nailed to the trestles. While this went on, the cannonade drowned the noise of the hammers and hatchets; one thousand musketeers lined the Swedish bank and kept the Imperialist soldiers from coming near enough to discover the work, while a thick smoke, made by burning wood and wet straw, hid the workmen for the most part.

Before daybreak the bridge was finished, and an army of engineers and soldiers selected by the king soon crossed it and threw up a substantial breastwork.