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1645.]
Duke Bernard and Horn
defeated at Nbrdlingeii.
CHRISTINA. THE REGENCY.
Bad faith of Wallenstein.
His assassination. 301
gen. For the relief of this town, Weimar and
Horn, who had separated,- were obliged anew to
unite, while the chancellor hastened reinforcements,
partly from Frauconia, and partly from the Rhine.
The enemy was joined by the troops coming from
Italy, under the Spanish cardinal infant. Duke
Bernard wished for a battle.
" We have allowed
Ratisbou to be lost,"
—he said—" the banks of the
Danube are overrun with enemies, the Rhine and
Mayne threatened ;
if we help not Nordlingen in
its strait, all is over with our fame." The besieged
unceasingly announced their distress by messengers
and signals. Horn urged that against so superior
an enemy reinforcements should be waited for.
The troops coming from Franconia, under field-
marshal Kratz and general Kagg, at length arrived,
by which the Swedish force was increased to nearly
18,000 men, while the enemy were 30,000 strong *.
Horn therefore advised waiting likewise for the
Rhinegrave Otho Lewis, who, hitherto busied with
the siege of Brisach, was now approaching with
five thousand men, and this opinion prevailed in
the council of war; although Bernard’s officers
expressed themselves insultingly upon Horn’s scru-
ples. According to the resolution, the army was to
approach Nordlingen by the road of Ulm, and
occupy a height lying near, until the Rhinegrave,
who was expected within two days, had come up.
Bernard’s heat during the execution of this move-
ment changed a skirmish into a battle, which,
already commenced on the evening of the 26th,
and continued through part of the night, ended on
the 27th August, with the complete defeat of the
Swedish army, the captivity of Horn, and the
flight of the duke *•. Bernard of Weimar, to whom
the league of Heilbronn finally committed the com-
mand-in-chief,
—with the remark, that " He who
had overturned the car, must also help it up 1,"
—
found, however, his views no longer subserved by
it, and sought the assistance of France for his own
plans. But those times wherein the sword alone
founded new sovereignties were past. This had
already been shown by Walleustein’s fate.
This soldier-prince had, after the flight from
they dealt with such hideous cruelty to every man, of high
or low rank, that all prayed but for death, to escape greater
martyrdom." Chemnitz, ii. 521. In the Swedish army also
the disaster at Nordlingen obliterated the last traces of the
discipline of Gustavus Adolphus.
" The Swedes and their
allies," complains the ejected elector of Mentz, "rob, mur-
der, scorch, burn, gag, force, and practise other tyrannies,
like heathens and Turks, such as have never been heard."
Rose, ii. 9.
8 Le Laboureur, Hist, du Mar6chal de Guebriant, p. 67.
9 See the description of the battle of Nordlingen in Rose’s
Duke Bernard of Weimar, i. 297 ;
as also Horn’s own account,
which is written without any bitterness, and inspires respect
for his character, in Chemnitz, ii. 521. Horn’s captivity
lasted almost eight years.
1
Chemnitz, ii. 237.
2 When he declared this to duke Francis Albert of Saxe-
f.auenburg, the latter took it ill, and answered wrathfully :
"
That is not honestly done." Forster, Wallenstein, i. 214.
The elector of Saxony besides appealed in his own proposals
of peace to Walleustein’s promise to induce the emperor to
make great cessions and a peace. Chemnitz, ii. 167.
’ He sent thirteen couriers after one another to duke Ber-
nard to accelerate their junction. Richelieu, viii. 99. At
the same time he sent his chancellor to the margrave Chris-
tian of Brandenburg Culmbach, and begged a personal con-
ference for the furtherance of a peace; he would afterwards
Lutzen (for which he held a bloody reckoning with
several of his officers), again collected his force be-
hind the Bohemian mountains, in whose neighbour-
hood, like a storm-cloud, it seemed to linger. Mean-
while, words of peaceful sound only were heard out
of the threatening darkness. Wallenstein, after he
had advanced into Silesia, availed himself of the
mediation for peace now opened by Denmark, and
embraced by the emperor, in order to make highly
dissimilar proposals to the combatants, each for
itself. He offered his alliance to Saxony and
Brandenburg, to expel the Swedes from Germany 2,
but at the same time also to Sweden in conjunction
with Saxony and Brandenburg, and France in eon-
junction with Sweden, to compel the emperor to
peace. The speedy result was a general distrust to-
wards the author of these proposals ;
and this sus-
picion was not extinguished at the imperial court,
although the apparent confidence between Wallen-
stein and the enemy, after two truces, was sud-
denly broken off by a brilliant military activity.
After Arnheim with the Saxons had parted from
the Swedish army in Silesia, he found himself,
when the last truce was at an end on the 21st Sep-
tember, 1633, quite unexpectedly surrounded in
Steinau on the Oder by Wallenstein, who made
prisoners 6000 men, with Duvall and Thurn, and
then threatened Berlin and Dresden. Recalled by
duke Bernard’s progress on the Danube, he ad-
vanced into Franconia, yet too late to save Ratis-
bou, and afterwards turned back to Bohemia.
These were the last exploits of Wallenstein. De-
clared an outlaw by the emperor, he was assas-
sinated in Eger, on the I4th February (0. S.), 1634,
together with his principal confidants. That he was
then on the point of uniting with Bernard and the
Swedes, is undoubted and acknowledged on all
sides*. Great obscurity rests (m the enigmatical
character of Wallenstein ; and this is by no means
cleared up through his correspondence lately made
public, which discloses to the attentive reader un-
der circumspect phraseology, relations between the
emperor and his general strained to the uttermost *.
himself repair to Oxenstierna, and likewise consult with the
French ambassador. "For he was fully minded, when he
had been to the margrave, decidedly to take his way to the
lord high-chancellor, and converse orally with him, as also
with the French ambassador." Chemnitz, iii. 329.
4 How little in these circumstances words express the
real disposition several examples might be adduced to show.
After the demands which the emperor In December, 1C33,
made known to Wallenstein by Questenburg, had been re-
mitted, and the general in return assured the emperor that
he would do every thing for his service that utility and neces-
sity permitted,
" should he even burst for it," (according to
Questenburg’s letter to the emperor ; Pilsen, Dec. 30, 1633,
Forster, Walleustein’s Letters, iii. 137.) Wallenstein in the
beginning of 1634 makes the same demands a pretext for
setting on foot a confederacy between his ofRcers. Further,
on the 21st February (N. S.) Wallenstein sends to ’Vienna
the declaration that he was ready to subscribe all that was
asked, to lay down his command, and to render himself to
answer where the emperor pleased. The same day he sends
Francis Albert of Lauenburg to duke Bernard, to make
known to him his defection from the emperor. (Forster,
Wallenstein, 274. 276.) On the other side, although the em-
peror had let fall an observation, that it appeared to him as
though he had got a colleague king at his side,
—(and we
know what such words from a sovereign import,)—he de-
clares, nevertheless, by letter to Wallenstein of Jan. 3, 1634,
that he was willing to let it rest "on the duke’s good mean-
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