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30fi
The Saxons take part
against Sweden. HISTORY OF THE SWEDES. Operations upon
the Oder. [1 ess-
Here the chancellor soon foiind liunself a,
pri-
soner to his own army. It was here that Baner
rescued liini from the hands of the discontented
officers, who were treatini; with the Saxons, and
hindered, with as great boldness as eloquence and
subtlety, an outbreak of mutiny. The chancellor
quitted Magdeburg by night, and reached, in dis-
guise, the sea-coast. The untrustworthy I’egiments
were removed into separate quarters ;
the loyal
were congregated by the general round himself.
These were little nioi’e than six thousand men
against thirty thousand Saxons, with whom the
elector soon proceeded to open hostilities ^. But
he in vain attempted to cut off Baner from the
Elbe. That leader crossed the river victoriously.
Lieutenant-general lluthven defeated the Saxons
at Domitz ’. To Baner’s support came Torstenson,
who brought him two thousand horse and six regi-
ments of loot, from Prussiai. It was now the turn
of Saxony. Baner again passed the Elbe, in the
middle of winter. The elector, who menaced Pome-
rjinia, was recalled to his unfortunate country, now
the scene of a war of vengeance, which the irri-
tated Swedes, and the Protestant refugees in their
army, whose cause the elector had sacrificed,
waged with extreme exasperation and cruelty.
Saxony was given to the flames ’. But these con-
sumed also the resources of Baner’s own army, and
when the elector coalesced with the Imperialists,
under Hatzfeld, the Swedish general was con-
strained to draw back to Werben, whereupon
Magdebm-g was lost 2. Baner compensated this
and other miscarriages by the complete victory
over the combined Saxon and Imperial armies, at
Wittstock ^, on the 24th September, l(i3C ;
after
which Saxony again lay open to the conqueror.
The victory of Wittstock effaced the defeat of
Nordlingen.
Baner took Erfurt and Torgau, beleaguered
Leipsic, but was consti’ained to raise the siege, as
8
Richelieu, Mem. viii. 3-19. Baner’s army consisted in
all of twenty-six thousand men; "but how strong soever
they found tliemselves, yet no one had a mind to tight,"
says Chemnitz, ii. 775. The cavalry, in all twelve thousand
men, were especially untrustworthy. Of the German troops
who remained true, most appear to have consisted of fugi-
tives from the Austrian hereditary dominions, whose cause
Saxony had sacrificed in the peace of Prague. Chemnitz,
1. c. According to Le Laboureur, Histoire du Marechal de
Guebriant, p. 71, there were in Baner’s army not more than
from two to three thousand Swedes and Livonians.
’ Oct. 22, 1635. Of six to seven thousand men, of whom
this corps consisted, two thousand were killed, and three
thousand taken. Authentic Relation, printed in 1635, in the
Palmskiild Collections. Lieutenant-general Baudissin, whom
the elector by his so-called blood-orders of Oct. 6, 1635, had
charged to drive the Swedes out of Gernianj’, since they
would not submit to the peace of Prague, was himself well-
nigh taken prisoner. He had left the Swedish I’or the
Saxon service.
’
Baner’s manifesto against these cruelties is indeed ex-
tant, but was first emitted at Werben on the 24th May, 1636.
By his own confession they had risen to such a height,
" that it would be no wonder if the earth should gape, and
by the just judgment of God swallow up such dishonourable
malefactors." But the Saxons themselves had behaved no
better in the land of their ally, the elector of Brandenburg.
Copy of a letter from the Mark-Brandenburg, Nov. Ifi, 1636,
in the Palmskold Collections.
’ " We perceive from your reports, that in Germany one
fortress after another is given up most unjustifiably to the
all the imperial armies in Germany now turned
against him. Four months (from February to
June, 1637,) he maintained himself in his fortified
camp at Torgau, against an enemy far superinr in
force, spread thereupon a report that he meant to
relieve Erfurt, but passed the Elbe on the I9th
June, and three days after the Oder, intending to
cross the Wartha at Landsberg. Here, instead of
field-marshal Herman Wrangel, to whom he ex-
pected now to give the meeting, he found the
whole of the enemy’s strength before him. Gallas,
who had kept him invested on the Elbe, and twelve
liours after his decampment received intelligence
of it, passed the Oder by a shorter way at Kustrin,
and effected, before the walls of Landsberg, a junc-
tion with the imperialist general Maracini, pre-
viously detached to this quarter. In this situation,
Baner once more succeeded in escaping from the
enemy, who, overreached by his movements,
hastened to bar against him the way through Po-
land to Pomerania, while Baner suddenly repressed
the Oder, and joined Wrangel at Schwedf*. This
retreat, exclaims Richelieu, on which Baner had
but fourteen thousand men to set against sixty
thousand, whom except some stragglers and sick
he saved, with his baggage and cannon, may be
placed by the side of the most glorious retreats of
which history makes mention ^.
The Swedes were, in truth, again driven to the
Baltic, and the autumn of 1037 brought a conflict
for Pomerania, their last possession in Germany;
Baner maintained himself in Hinder Pomerania,
while all Fore Pomerania, .Stralsund, Greifswald, and
Ankiam excepted, became the prey of the enemy ;
but the following year supplied these losses. Gallas,
in 1638, led the relics of an ai’my, weakened by its
excesses, out of wasted Pomerania, first towards
the Havel and Elbe, and ultimately to Silesia and
Bohemia ;
while Baner, who had received fresh
troops from Sweden, and in June mustered 30,000
enemy ;
we therefore desire that you will bring such com-
mandants, especially those of Magdeburg, Havelberg, Bran-
denburg, W’erben, to a court-martial." The ministry to
Baner, Sept. 9, 1636. Reg.
3 " The enemy hath brought from thence of his whole in-
fantry scarce a thousand men, mostly Saxons ; but the Im-
perialists were on all hands raptived and mined. The
cavalry mostly saved themselves by flight during the night."
Relation, Stockholm, 1636. A multitude of contemporary
accounts of the military occurrences of 1635 and 1636 are in
the Palmskold Collections, T. 40. Baner and Torstenson re-
ceived considerable grants in fief, both at home and in Ger-
many. The ministry write to Baner, Dec. 3, 1636, to gratify
deserving officers with estates which might be won from the
enemy, as also to distribute among them gold chains and
portraits to the amount of 3000 rix-dollars. Reg.
• Old Herman Wrangel, who did not agree well with
Baner, was subsequently recalled. His son Chaijes Gustavo
Wrangel, afterwardsgeneral-in-chief, remained with thearniy.
^ Mem. ix. 3S6, " Cette action fut assez plaisamment re-
presentee, selon le genie de ce tenips-li, dans une gravure oft
Ton voyoit les generaux Allemands fort occupes a tier le
haut d’un sac, dans lequel I’armee Suedoise etoit enfermee,
tandis que Baner avec son ep^e lui ouvroit un passage par
un des coins." {Tjiis action was represented pleasantly
enough after the spirit of that time in an engraving, where
the German generals were seen very busy tying the top of
a sack, in which the Swedish army was enclosed, while
Baner with his sword opened a passage for it by one of the
corners.) Bougeant, Histoire des Guerres et Negociations
qui precederent le Traite de Westphalie, p. 289.
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