The Empire of Austria - John S. C. Abbott (best books to read now TXT) 📗

mankind, I cheerfully surrender myself to the sacrifice. It is my duty as a sovereign to obey the King of kings without murmuring, and to resign the power I have received from His hands whenever it shall suit His all-wise purposes. I shall yield up my last breath with the firm persuasion that Providence will support my subjects because they are faithful and virtuous, and that my ministers, generals and senators will punctually discharge their duty to my child because they love justice, respect me, and feel for their country."

The king himself was affected as he uttered these words, and tears moistened the eyes of many of the stern warriors who surrounded him. With general acclaim they approved of his plan, voted him all the succors he required, and enthusiastically offered their own fortunes and lives to his service. Gustavus assembled a fleet at Elfsnaben, crossed the Baltic sea, and in June, 1630, landed thirty thousand troops in Pomerania, which Wallenstein had overrun. The imperial army, unprepared for such an assault, fled before the Swedish king. Marching rapidly, Gustavus took Stettin, the capital of the duchy, situated at the mouth of the Oder, and commanding that stream. Driving the imperial troops everywhere before him from Pomerania, and pursuing them into the adjoining Mark of Brandenburg, he took possession of a large part of that territory. He issued a proclamation to the inhabitants of Germany, recapitulating the arbitrary and despotic acts of the emperor, and calling upon all Protestants to aid in an enterprise, in the success of which the very existence of Protestantism in Germany seemed to be involved. But so utterly had the emperor crushed the spirits of the Protestants by his fiend-like severity, that but few ventured to respond to his appeal. The rulers, however, of many of the Protestant States met at Leipsic, and without venturing to espouse the cause of Gustavus, and without even alluding to his invasion, they addressed a letter to the emperor demanding a redress of grievances, and informing him that they had decided to establish a permanent council for the direction of their own affairs, and to raise an army of forty thousand men for their own protection.

Most of these events had occurred while the emperor, with Wallenstein, was at Ratisbon, intriguing to secure the succession of the imperial crown for his son. They both looked upon the march of the King of Sweden into the heart of Germany as the fool-hardy act of a mad adventurer. The courtiers ridiculed his transient conquests, saying, "Gustavus Adolphus is a king of snow. Like a snowball he will melt in a southern clime." Wallenstein was particularly contemptuous. "I will whip him back to his country," said he, "like a truant school-boy, with rods." Ferdinand was for a time deceived by these representations, and was by no means aware of the real peril which threatened him. The diet which the emperor had assembled made a proclamation of war against Gustavus, but adopted no measures of energy adequate to the occasion. The emperor sent a silly message to Gustavus that if he did not retire immediately from Germany he would attack him with his whole force. To this folly Gustavus returned a contemptuous reply.

A few of the minor Protestant princes now ventured to take arms and join the standard of Gustavus. The important city of Magdeburg, in Saxony, on the Elbe, espoused his cause. This city, with its bastions and outworks completely commanding the Elbe, formed one of the strongest fortresses of Europe. It contained, exclusive of its strong garrison, thirty thousand inhabitants. It was now evident to Ferdinand that vigorous action was called for. He could not, consistently with his dignity, recall Wallenstein in the same breath with which he had dismissed him. He accordingly concentrated his troops and placed them under the command of Count Tilly. The imperial troops were dispatched to Magdeburg. They surrounded the doomed city, assailed it furiously, and proclaimed their intention of making it a signal mark of imperial vengeance. Notwithstanding the utmost efforts of Gustavus to hasten to their relief, he was foiled in his endeavors, and the town was carried by assault on the 10th of May. Never, perhaps, did earth witness a more cruel exhibition of the horrors of war. The soul sickens in the contemplation of outrages so fiend-like. We prefer to give the narrative of these deeds, which it is the duty of history to record, in the language of another.

"All the horrors ever exercised against a captured place were repeated and almost surpassed, on this dreadful event, which, notwithstanding all the subsequent disorders and the lapse of time, is still fresh in the recollection of its inhabitants and of Germany. Neither age, beauty nor innocence, neither infancy nor decrepitude, found refuge or compassion from the fury of the licentious soldiery. No retreat was sufficiently secure to escape their rapacity and vengeance; no sanctuary sufficiently sacred to repress their lust and cruelty. Infants were murdered before the eyes of their parents, daughters and wives violated in the arms of their fathers and husbands. Some of the imperial officers, recoiling from this terrible scene, flew to Count Tilly and supplicated him to put a stop to the carnage. 'Stay yet an hour,' was his barbarous reply; 'let the soldier have some compensation for his dangers and fatigues.'

"The troops, left to themselves, after sating their passions, and almost exhausting their cruelty in three hours of pillage and massacre, set fire to the town, and the flames were in an instant spread by the wind to every quarter of the place. Then opened a scene which surpassed all the former horrors. Those who had hitherto escaped, or who were forced by the flames from their hiding-places, experienced a more dreadful fate. Numbers were driven into the Elbe, others massacred with every species of savage barbarity - the wombs of pregnant women ripped up, and infants thrown into the fire or impaled on pikes and suspended over the flames. History has no terms, poetry no language, painting no colors to depict all the horrors of the scene. In less than ten hours the most rich, the most flourishing and the most populous town in Germany was reduced to ashes. The cathedral, a single convent and a few miserable huts, were all that were left of its numerous buildings, and scarcely more than a thousand souls all that remained of more than thirty thousand inhabitants.

"After an interval of two days, when the soldiers were fatigued, if not sated, with devastation and slaughter, and when the flames had begun to subside, Tilly entered the town in triumph. To make room for his passage the streets were cleared and six thousand carcasses thrown into the Elbe. He ordered the pillage to cease, pardoned the scanty remnant of the inhabitants, who had taken refuge in the cathedral, and, surrounded by flames and carnage, had remained three days without food or refreshment, under all the terrors of impending fate. After hearing a Te Deum in the midst of military pomp, he paraded the streets; and even though his unfeeling heart seemed touched with the horrors of the scene, he could not refrain from the savage exultation of boasting to the emperor, and comparing the assault of Magdeburg to the sack of Troy and of Jerusalem."

This terrible display of vengeance struck the Protestants with consternation. The extreme Catholic party were exultant, and their chiefs met in a general assembly and passed resolutions approving the course of the emperor and pledging him their support. Ferdinand was much encouraged by this change in his favor, and declared his intention of silencing all Protestant voices. He recalled an army of twenty-four thousand men from Italy. They crossed the Alps, and, as they marched through the frontier States of the empire, they spread devastation and ruin through all the Protestant territories, exacting enormous contributions, compelling the Protestant princes, on oath, to renounce the Protestant league, and to unite with the Catholic confederacy against the King of Sweden.

In the meantime, Gustavus pressed forward into the duchy of Mecklenburg, driving the imperial troops before him. Tilly retired into the territory of the Elector of Saxony, robbing, burning and destroying everywhere. Uniting his force with the army from Italy he ravaged the country, resistlessly advancing even to Leipsic, and capturing the city. The elector, quite unable to cope with so powerful a foe, retired with his troops to the Swedish camp, where he entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with Gustavus. The Swedish army, thus reinforced, hastened to the relief of Leipsic, and arrived before its walls the very day on which the city surrendered.

Tilly, with the pride of a conqueror, advanced to meet them. The two armies, about equal in numbers, and commanded by their renowned captains, met but a few miles from the city. Neither of the commanders had ever before suffered a defeat. It was a duel, in which one or the other must fall. Every soldier in the ranks felt the sublimity of the hour. For some time there was marching and countermarching - the planting of batteries, and the gathering of squadrons and solid columns, each one hesitating to strike the first blow. At last the signal was given by the discharge of three pieces of cannon from one of the batteries of Tilly. Instantly a thunder peal rolled along the extended lines from wing to wing. The awful work of death was begun. Hour after hour the fierce and bloody fight continued, as the surges of victory and defeat swept to and fro upon the plain. But the ever uncertain fortune of battle decided in favor of the Swedes. As the darkness of evening came prematurely on, deepened by the clouds of smoke which canopied the field, the imperialists were everywhere flying in dismay. Tilly, having been struck by three balls, was conveyed from the field in excruciating pain to a retreat in Halle. Seven thousand of his troops lay dead upon the field. Five thousand were taken prisoners. All the imperial artillery and baggage fell into the hands of the conqueror. The rest of the army was so dispersed that but two thousand could be rallied under the imperial banners.

Gustavus, thus triumphant, dispatched a portion of his army, under the Elector of Saxony, to rescue Bohemia from the tyrant grasp of the emperor. Gustavus himself, with another portion, marched in various directions to cut off the resources of the enemy and to combine the scattered parts of the Protestant confederacy. His progress was like the tranquil march of a sovereign in his own dominions, greeted by the enthusiasm of his subjects. He descended the Maine to the Rhine, and then ascending the Rhine, took every fortress from Maine to Strasbourg. While Gustavus was thus extending his conquests through the very heart of Germany, the Elector of Saxony reclaimed all of Bohemia from the imperial arms. Prague itself capitulated to the Saxon troops. Count Thurn led the Saxon troops in triumph over the same bridge which he, but a few months before, had traversed a fugitive. He found, impaled upon the bridge, the shriveled heads of twelve of his companions, which he enveloped in black satin and buried with funeral honors.

The Protestants of Bohemia rose enthusiastically to greet their deliverers. Their churches, schools and universities were reëstablished. Their preachers resumed their functions. Many returned from exile and rejoiced in the restoration of their confiscated property. The Elector of Saxony retaliated upon the Catholics the cruel wrongs which they had inflicted upon the Protestants. Their castles were plundered, their nobles driven into exile, and the conquerors loaded themselves with the spoils of the vanquished.

But Ferdinand, as firm and inexorable in adversity as in prosperity, bowed not before disaster. He roused the Catholics to a sense of their danger, organized new