Pictures of German Life in the XVth XVIth and XVIIth Centuries, Vol. II.

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.--THE ARMY.

The opposition between the interests of the house of Hapsburg and of the German nation, and between the old and new faith, led to a bloody catastrophe. If any one should inquire how such a war could rage through a whole generation, and so fearfully exhaust a powerful people, he will receive this striking answer, that the war was so long and terrible, because none of the contending parties were able to carry it out on a great and decisive scale. The largest armies in the Thirty years' war did not exceed in strength one corps of a modern army. Tilly considered forty thousand men the greatest number of troops that a general could wish to have. It was only occasionally that an army reached that strength; almost all the great battles were fought by smaller bodies of men. Numerous were the detachments, and very great were the losses by skirmishes, illnesses, and desertion. As there was no regular system for maintaining the strength of the army, its effective amount fluctuated in a remarkable way. Once, indeed, Wallenstein united a larger force under his command--according to some accounts a hundred thousand men--but they did not form one army, nay, they were hardly in any military connection, for the undisciplined bands with which, in 1629, he subdued the German territories of the Emperor, were dispersed over half Germany. Such large masses of soldiers appeared to all parties as a terrible venture; they could not, in fact, be kept under control, and after that, no general commanded more than half that number. An army in order of battle was considered as a movable fortress, the central point of which was the General himself, who ruled all the details; he had to survey the ground and every position, and every attack was directed by him. Adjutantcies and staff service were hardly established. It was part of the strategy to keep the army together in masses, to defend the ranks by earth works, and not to allow horse or man to be out of observation and control. In marching also, the army was kept close together in narrow quarters, generally within the space of a camp; from this arose commissariat difficulties, the high-roads were bad, often almost impassable, the conveyance of provisions compulsory, and always ill-regulated: and worst of all, the army was attended by an intense baggage-train, which, with the wild-robber system, quickly wasted the most fertile countries. Great care was therefore taken that no such embarrassment should arise. Neither the Emperor nor the Princes of the Empire were in a condition to maintain forty thousand men out of their income even for three months. The regular revenue of the sovereign was much less than now, and the maintenance of an army far more costly. The greater part of the revenue was derived from tithes in kind, which in time of war was insecure and difficult to realize. The finances of the parties engaged in this war were even at the commencement of it in a most lamentable state....