Pictured: Saxony, including the appended realms and the remaining possessions of the Juelich-Mark-Kleve inheritance at the end of 1620, is forest-green. The Bohemian Confederacy is light-green. Austrian Habsburg lands are yellow. Ecclestiastical lands of the Holy Roman Empire, most of which are members of the Catholic League, but some of which have Lutheran administrators, are red. Bavaria, the only territorial prince of consequence who is an ally of the Austrian Habsburgs, is light orange. The Spanish Habsburgs, including their conquests in the west during 1620, is deep orange. Light-blue denote those states of the Protestant Union which are actively allied with Saxony, including the Palatinate Wittelsbachs, Anhalt, Ansbach, Hesse-Kassell, and Hesse-Darmstadt.
The First General War and the Invention of Global Warfare
Marguerite Tromarey
Bohemia and the East, 1620
In February 1620, the V Saxon Army-Eisleben, supported and funded by the Lutheran Church of Saxony, arrived in Prague bringing the number of Saxon forces in Bohemia to 18,000 infantry. The various Saxon armies had varying cavalry components, usually less than 500 horse for each army. It is believed there would have been around 1,000 horse total for the three Saxon forces in Prague at that time. Like the infantry, the cavalry relied disproportionately on firearms. Traditional shock cavalry armed with lances was disfavored by the Saxons, with the great uncertainty being whether they would be able to fire and reload on the battlefield in a timely way. This was very much like the great question facing the Saxon infantry, but with the added complication of firing from horseback.
The Duke of Teschen, in far-eastern Silensia, had mustered 10,000 infantry and perhaps 2,000 cavalry, but was unable to march them west at the start of the year because the Cossacks the Habsburgs had obtained from Poland began brutal raids into Moravia. Unable to force the Cossacks into open battle, the duke's army was instead dispersed so as to garrison the fortified towns that would be the Cossacks' targets. While this provided welcome protection to eastern Moravia and won support for the new regime, it deprived Christian of vital assistance in the coming campaign season. It was believed one reason for the duke's decision was his reticence to send his army against the Habsburgs directly, rather than against Polish invaders who were behaving lawlessly in the Bohemian realms.
Thus, lacking the contributions promised by the Duke of Teschen, but joined by Christian of Anhalt with a contingent of forces from the Palatinate, as well as several thousand troops sent by the Silesian Margrave of Jaegendorf, the full Bohemian and Saxon army began the year with 32,000 infantry, along with 6,000 cavalry, Despite Christian's original misgivings, the discipline enforced on the army's recruitment and payroll by his vertreter had paid off, in that morale was high, desertions were few and the army was in good discipline. 7,000 additional Hungarian and Transylvanian hussars hired as mercenaries created their own problems, but Christian feared dispensing with their services would just lead them to switch allegiances take employment with Ferdinand.
Over the winter, Christian's preoccupations had been the sieges of the remaining Habsburg strongholds in the south of Bukovice and Krumlov, Pilsen having surrendered in late November 1619. With the siege lines closely supervised and a steady flow of Saxon reinforcements to the siege lines, Bukovice surrendered in January, allowing Christian to start the season with a claim of victory. In February, the new Bohemian king ordered his army to march south to engage the Imperial and Austrian forces. Addressing the army he announced he would first take Krumlov, With it, completely in his possession he would finally have all of Bohemia. From Krumlov he would march to Vienna. There, he would not flinch from its walls, rely on help from inside, or merely menace it, as army after army had the past few years. Instead, he promised he would besiege the city until it had fallen, force Ferdinand to recognize his reign in Bohemia, and confer Upper and Lower Austria on a new, Protestant prince.
The announcement of these war aims was taken by the rest of Europe when it reached the respective capitals of the great powers as delusional, and as such, completely in character. However, they represented a great problem. For with the addition of the Saxon armies to the Bohemians and his mercenaries, Christian had a clear numerical advantage. The strategy of the Imperial forces, as developed by Tilly and Bucquoy, was going to be to refuse to give battle and exhaust Christian by having him pursue them fruitlessly. Instead, with Christian declaring he would make a straight line towards Vienna, a target they dared not allow him to win, he was now determining the path of the war. This presented an end to the frenetic dashing about of the Protestant armies the previous year. Instead, Christian's march would be slow, methodical, with in his train, not just the siege artillery that would be sufficient to bring down the walls of Vienna, but pre-fabricated bridge segments that had been built over the winter that could be thrown up to enable passage over significant rivers, possibly including the Danube.
Thus March passed with Imperial armies attempting to lure Christian away from his objective, with at one point the camp fires of Tilly's forces clearly visible from Castle Hill in Prague. But Christian, never a man easily dissuaded, plodded south. The great towns of Bohemia had been fortified, provisioned, and garrisoned, and he was making the wager that any of them, including Prague, could hold out against even a determined siege in the time it took him to take Vienna. If worst came to worst, his uncle Friedrich could lead a relief army behind him. In the end, it was the Imperial armies rather than Christian that flinched. In Christian's columns headed south were only around 19,000 infantry. The rest of the Bohemian forces, under Thurn, waited for him at Bukovice. Tilly and Bucquoy could not allow Christian to reach Krumlov and join with Thurn, either to pierce the walls of Krumlov or to proceed south against Vienna and Ferdinand.
Bucquoy managed to run ahead of the Saxon column, slowed by the enormous train behind it, to Sobeslav, where he seized the road headed south and turned to confront the Saxon force. Tilly, marching from near Pilsen, was still perhaps a few days behind them both. Christian sent scouts east, around Bucquoy's army, to get word to Thurn that he would have to offer battle, and for Thurn to send immediate assistance. Unbeknownst to him, the message was intercepted and would never reach the Bohemian army. Nonetheless, Christian waited, and initially refused to offer battle in the hopes of giving Thurn the opportunity to reach him.
At this point Christian put the Saxon army to work digging trenches to create barriers to protect his infantry from the opposing cavalry. In a story which would immediately become famous, he ordered the Hungarian hussars, who were sitting in their saddles watching the work, to help, and reminded them he was paying them. When told that only peasants dig, Christian furiously dismounted, grabbed a shovel, and began throwing earth over his shoulder along with the rest of the ordinary infantry. Whether this shamed the Hungarians or won from them some sharp words depends on which version of the story one hears. But without a doubt, it lent credence to the notion that, whatever his ambitions, whatever his passions, Christian was willing to share the burdens of his men.
Eventually, unwilling to give Christian the chance to further improve his position where he was, or give Thurn's forces the opportunity to reach him, Bucquoy gave battle, with 23,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. In fact, the early battle showed that the Saxon rate of fire was not sufficient to hold back the offensive push of enemy infantry bearing pikes, Literally, the trenches in the front of the Saxon forces was all that prevented a massacre, as they channeled Bucquoy's attacks into the flanks, where they faced their own charges from the Hungarian and Transylvanian light cavalry. Casualties were heavy on both sides.
In the end, it was a simple matter of who had assistance closer at hand. Around the same time the fighting began at Sobeslav, Thurn's scouts reported back to him the situation there, and he began marching as quickly as possible to rescue his young and troublesome new king. Tilly, advancing from the northwest, was perhaps a further day behind. It was as the still-indecisive battle was reaching the end of the day that Bucquoy's rear glimpsed Thurn's soldiers approaching up the road from the direction of Bukovice. Suddenly, Bucquoy's army's resolve broke, and it became a rout. Bucquoy himself, fearing being caught within the jaws of the two armies, commanded a retreat east towards Preborov. Suddenly, with the pressure of the attack broken, Christian's infantry had the luxury of firing into the backs of the retreating army.
Half Bucquoy's army was killed, with perhaps only 10,000 of the initial number able to bear arms. Tilly, realizing he was a day away from the now conjoined armies of Christian and Thurn, rounded and fled west as fast possible. Of Christian's army, perhaps 15,000 infantry was still ready to fight, with 4,000 horse and 3,000 Hungarian hussars. To this could be added Thurn's 12,000 men, who had seen virtually no significant fighting. Of course the shock of Sobeslav (in German, the Battle of Sobieslau) was greater even than that: Christian's shabby reputation from the War of the Juelich Succession had led many great powers, including Denmark and England, to discount the possibility of victory in Bohemia. Instead, with so much of the Imperial army dead, it now remained more to see how he could be stopped short of making good on his promise of taking Vienna.
Tilly for his part sent word to Maximilian that the army of the Catholic League now represented the last hope against the Saxons and Bohemians, but that to be effective in the field against the combined force of Christian and Thurn, Maximilian would have to send the 9,000 infantry left behind to defend Bavaria. Thurn for his part argued they should pursue Tilly and press the moment to destroy the power of the Catholic League while they had superiority of numbers. But Christian once again counseled that Tilly would have to come to them in order to prevent the siege artillery in the train from being brought to bear against the walls of Vienna. Once again, the Saxon and Bohemian armies resumed its march south.
On June 25, Krumlov surrendered to Christian and acclaimed him as king rather than suffer the bombardment of that same artillery. Hungarian and Transylvanian discipline became more of an issue as the hussars were angry to be denied a sack. Like Pilsen, Bukovice and other fortified places, Christian garrisoned Krumlov strongly. At the same time, he understood a continued lack of fresh supplies from Prague meant most likely that Tilly and other forces on the side of the Habsburgs were intercepting communications and provisions. Christian badly wanted to avoid incurring the wrath of his new subjects by plundering their crops and livestock to support his forces, but by this point, especially given the size of the army he had to support, there was no choice but to resort to confiscations.
The army resumed its march south in early July, but by now Tilly had reinforcements. The 30,000 infantry of the Catholic League was now bearing down on the army of Christian and Thurn from the west, while the rump force of Bucquoy's survivors, careful to avoid coming into range of battle, had been shadowing the column from the east. Now it was Christian's turn to not want to be caught in the enemy's pincers. Thurn again wanted to divide their army, but Christian decided he would risk battle against Bucquoy first, and take the chance they could finish off his army before Tilly could close on them. The key would be to surprise Bucquoy.
On the day his army crossed into Upper Austria at Bad Leonfelden, Christian received in a ceremony before a large assembled audience the fealty of 14 Lutheran Austrian nobles, including Tschernembl, reaffirmed his intent to liberate all Austria from Habsburg oppression, and gave no doubt in a few days' time he would be at the walls of Vienna, as promised. No one anticipated that, after sundown he ordered his armies to strike their camps and march overnight back into Bohemia towards Malonty, where Bucquoy was camped. When dawn came, Christian's army was too close, and Bucquoy was forced to give battle.
This time, 4,000 of the Habsburg forces were killed by the superior combined army of Christian and Thurn. Bucquoy was captured, and gently treated. This time perhaps only a thousand of the large Saxon and Bohemian force was lost. The problem was that after two victories Christian's signature overconfidence had returned, in full force. Informed that the even larger army of the Catholic League under Tilly was only miles away, Christian decided to charge headlong into it. Thurn counseled the better choice now would be to send for further reinforcements, and perhaps even the presence of the Magdeburg army under Friedrich of Saxony, neither Christian nor Thurn knowing the parlous situation in the west by that point. Christian, for his part, believed that with no supplies or communications reaching the army, they needed to offer battle while they were in their strength.
Thus at Gruenbach, a few days after passing back into Upper Austria, Christian and Thurn met Tilly. By this point Tilly had been further reinforced, by Imperial troops and ragtag elements of Bucquoy's former army to some 40,000 infantry. The 15,000 surviving infantry Christian had after Sobeslav, combined with Thurn's 12,000, had been reinforced by 4,000 fresh recruits from the Lutheran population of rural Upper Austria. There were still some 6,000 total cavalry on the Austrian side. Christian believed if he could force this victory against Tilly, the way would be open to a decisive siege against Vienna and a quick victory. However, Tilly now understood the critical error at Sobeslav had been to give the Saxons the opportunity to entrench their position, protecting their gun-dependent infantry from cavalry and pike advance. Christian, for his part, believed that if he attacked first, Tilly would entrench his position to defend, and thus in a sense do him the favor.
Instead, Tilly sent his forces into the teeth of the oncoming Saxons, with the result that the Saxon army was quickly broken. Christian's infantry was simply mowed down by the pikes. The countervailing benefits of the cavalry, whether Saxon, Bohemian, Hungarian or Transylvanian, that Christian had previously been able to rely on, had been worn away with their dwindling numbers, and now provided precious little assistance. At Gruenbach, Christian lost 8,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry before being forced into a humiliating retreat that just barely managed to salvage his precious siege artillery and the mobile bridgeworks. Tilly, from his superior force lost just 3,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry. Urged on to pursue Christian and end the war quickly for the Habsburgs, Tilly did so.
Now, the slowness of the Saxon army truly began to work against it. In a ferocious confrontation in the village of Kvetonov, just over the border back in the kingdom of Bohemia, Thurn demanded Christian discard the bridgeworks of which he had been so proud so that the army could stay ahead of Tilly. Frustrations over the course of the whole campaign and Christian's reign beforehand, which had been ignored in the glory of the previous successes, boiled over. They rowed furiously, with serious threats made on both sides. In the end, accepting at length the most likely alternative was defeat and capture, Christian made the decision to abandon the bridgeworks, save the siege artillery, and make like hell for Krumlov, the only town of sufficient size to support the army for any length of time. At Kaplice Tilly almost caught Christian and Thurn, but Christian ordered another night march, which, while demoralizing, brought the army to the gates of Krumlov just ahead of Tilly.
Efforts to invest the town for the purposes of a proper siege, this time by the Catholic League and Imperial forces, were fiercely resisted, as Christian personally led sallies to hold vital positions in the highlands around the town. Simultaneously, he ordered sorties north to clear the lines of provision and communication, though if he knew then the information those routes would bring to him of events in the west of the empire, he perhaps would not have bothered. Understanding his campaign season was done for the year in the absence of substantial fresh numbers of troops from Saxony and Prague, he resolved to winter at Krumlov. Tilly, for his part understanding that his army likely would not be able to take Krumlov in the face of Christian's determined resistance, decided instead to turn north. He would interpose himself between Krumlov and Prague, picking off efforts to replenish Christian's forces over the winter months and, if not locking the putative king of Bohemia off inside the walls of Krumlov, isolating him from assistance. If further help from Ferdinand, ever more short of money and weighed down by debt, happened along, then Tilly considered, he might try to take Prague, the capital whose fate until now about which Christian had been curiously indifferent, Otherwise, Tilly would simply wait.
The Empire and the West, 1620
In the Empire itself, the Protestant League had raised 13,000 infantry at Ulm, not for the purpose of directly assisting the Saxons in Bohemia but to defend the homelands of the Protestant territorial princes from attack. Just across the Danube, the Catholic League however had raised 30,000. The government of Louis XIII of France attempted to negotiate a truce between the Protestant Union and the Catholic League with respect to the Empire outside of Bohemia. At first Christian resisted the notion, but then realized the vulnerability of the outmatched Union forces threatened to dispossess his allies of their realms, so he reversed course and accepted the truce, which would limit the theaters to Bohemia, where he would face the League as well as the forces massed by Ferdinand, and the Rhineland, where Spain would most likely shortly use the opportunity presented by helping the Habsburg cousins to try to dispossess him once and for all of the western inheritance.
Thus Maximilian, of the 30,000 soldiers raised by the Catholic League, left behind 9,000 to guard Bavaria from his Wittelsbach cousins in the Upper Palatinate and the County Palatine of Neuberg, and proceeded into Upper Austria with 21,000, led by Tilly.. At this point, the Austrians who had revolted in the hope of receiving outside Protestant aid were despairing of receiving it in a timely way, as the bulk of the powerful combined Saxon army was just rousing itself out of Prague. The Austrian Protestant nobles led by Tschernembl fled into Moravia.
At this point, passing over the frontier into Bohemia, General Tilly and the army of the Catholic League became the problem of the Saxon army there, and ceases to be a factor in the military events in the empire proper.
In the west, the Saxon forces included the garrisons of the great Juelich fortresses, plus the 6,000 men massed at Dueren. With the limited truce negotiated by the French apparently holding as Maximilian marched the League Army east, this left Joachim Ernst, Margrave of Ansbach, to march the Protestant Union forces west from Ulm to defend Juelich.
The Saxons were joined by 2,000 English volunteers under Horace de Vere who were flouting their king's proclaimed neutrality and refusal to permit his subjects to participate. Most of these English were cavalry. In a mocking reference to Frederick I, the Saxons referred to these English volunteers as the Vetters, or Cousins, since each of them were worth more to the cause than the Elector's real cousin, the king. These were joined by a further 2,000 Dutch volunteers under Friderik, younger brother of the Stadtholder Moritz. Thus in the west the Wettins were able to muster in the late spring of 1620 a total force of some 25,000 infantry.
These faced, massed in the Spanish Netherlands, an army of 18,000 under Luis de Velasco that served primarily as a backstop to a surprise attack by the Netherlands in violation of the still in-effect Twelve Years Truce. The offensive force fielded by the Spanish was led by none other than Spinola, and left Brussels on August 18, legally empowered by the imperial ban against Christian to dispossess him of his territories. Spinola, ever careful, moved first against Juelich itself, at the western edge of the Saxon territories and at the intersection of the Wettin lands with the Dutch rebels. Winning Juelich, Spain would be able to pry apart the Dutch and Saxon lands and seize territory from which it could launch future efforts to recover the rebelling provinces.
Submitting to Spanish firepower, Juelich fell unexpectedly quickly, and the army under Joachim Ernst of Anhalt that was rushing to relieve it instead found the fortress and town under Spanish occupation when they were still on the other side of the Rhine. They now faced the same essential problem that Christian faced in the War of the Juelich Succession ten years before: with Juelich largely inscribed within Catholic territories, like Koln and Trier, they would have to seize a path to it first just to fight for Juelich. Meanwhile, Spinola moved quickly into the friendly territory of the Archbishop of Koln, younger brother to Maximilian of Bavaria. There, he augmented his force to some 23,000 infantry.
Joachim Ernst decided to offer battle near Bernsberg, in the County of Mark. The difference in discipline and experience between his forces and that of Spinola's was catastrophic to the Protestant cause. The Union forces lost some 4,000 men in battle and scattered in poor order. The Saxon Army, trained by Alexander Leslie but insufficient to turn the tide, lost 1,000, and retreated in good order to Dortmund, which it occupied. Though an imperial city, Dortmund was almost entirely Lutheran, and offered its support to the Saxon cause. The English and Dutch volunteer forces both suffered extensive losses, as Friderik of Orange, Moritz's heir in the absence of any legitimate offspring, was dead.
The report that reached the Saxon regent Duke Friedrich, then in Gotha, was eye-watering: despite the immense outlays on the defense of the Rhinelands, Saxony had lost all of Juelich, all of Berg, and the western half of Mark to Spinola. Only Kleve, Ravensberg, and Herford were still in Saxon hands, and the remaining Saxon army there was incapable of resisting the Spanish in the field. Thus Friedrich took the final Saxon army, the backstop left behind at Magdeburg against unexpected invasions, and marched west, demanding Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Darmstadt honor their treaty commitments. To his 6,000 force they committed 8,000 and 5,000, respectively.
Spinola now moved to intercept this combined force before it had a chance to relieve the army at Dortmund. Spinola's convincing victory at Bernsberg had not been without cost: he had lost some 6,000 men, and felt he would not be able to face II Saxon-Dueren, IV Saxon-Magdeburg, and their Hessian allies successfully. So he intercepted Friedrich's army as it was crossing the Bishopric of Westphalia, at Bruchhausen. There, his reduced fighting force of some 15,000 infantry defeated Friedrich's 19,000, although Friedrich's better-drilled army was able to retreat before suffering the same rout as the Saxons had at Bernsberg. Friedrich with his combined force of now 15,000 soldiers fled east, as the tone of his letters to the Duke of Braunschweig, Duke of Prussia and the Elector of Brandenburg became dramatically more stern.
Meanwhile, Ambrogio Spinola, with every reason to be pleased, retired to Dortmund, where he began the process of properly investing the city for a long siege. He declined to pursue Friedrich, which would make the same mistake his predecessors had in the Spanish War seventy years before, overextending his supply lines and exposing his army to hostile partisan warfare only for the privilege of fighting the Saxons on their home territory. Instead he would consolidate his gains, neutralize the Saxon force at Dortmund, and prepare for 1621, when the Twelve Years Truce would be at an end and the Dutch would, no doubt, enter the war. The last shred of uncertainty over whether the Dutch would renew the truce had died with Friderik of Orange at Bernsberg.
At year's end, Frederick of England proposed a peace plan: Christian of Saxony would be recognized as the king of Bohemia in every legal respect, and Saxony would cede its Juelich lands, which Spain had mostly conquered during the campaign season anyway, to the Austrian Habsburgs as recompense. It was lost on no one that this would leave the Protestants with a majority of the electors in future imperial elections, though with the growing discord between Brandenburg and the rest no one was quite sure whether a Protestant emperor would be the result. Saxony rejected Frederick's notion out of hand, and France, appalled at the idea of an even greater concentration of Habsburg power in the Netherlands and the Rhineland, poured scorn on the idea. It was a measure of just how awful the military situation was for the Austrian Habsburgs that they were the power most congenial to the terms of Frederick's proposal, and Spain was close enough to supporting it outright it was preparing a mark-up of a response by which it would accept Juelich and Kleve into the lands of the Spanish Netherlands for its expense, and let the Austrian cousins take just Mark and Berg.
Saxony's winter diplomacy was directed for the most part at Brandenburg: Eleonora made an unscheduled trip north to her old home of Berlin, essentially pleading with her son to enter the war on the side of the Protestant Union, and fully empowered by Christian and Friedrich to offer Elector Georg anything he wanted, within reason. Meeting Schwartzenberg directly for the first time, Eleonora found her strategems, offers and maternal pleas falling on deaf ears. For the first time she understood the magnitude of what was happening in Brandenburg. She had even dangled before Georg's chief minister the possibility of Saxony ceding the rich city of Magdeburg in exchange for assistance, but to no luck. If this failed to move Brandenburg, she considered, someone had to be offering Georg something far in excess of even that. And the only ones who could conceivably be doing the offering were the Habsburgs, and the only thing imaginable they could possibly be offering that would be that significant were chunks that would be seized from the slaughtered carcass of Saxony itself.