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1G4J.]
Invasions of Bolieniia
and Biivaiia. CHRISTINA. THE REGENCY. Baner’s retreat from
Katisbon, and death. 307
men at Stettin, pushed forwards in his track ". We
find him in the spring of Ifi.SO again in Saxony ; he
destroys again an ImpcriaHst and Saxon army, by
the victory of tlie 4tli April, at Cliemnitz, advances
into Bohemia, takes prisoners Hofkirelien and
Montecuculi at Brandeis, on tlie 19th May, and is
before the gates of Prague on the following day. His
army was full of Bohemian fugitives. How changed
did they not find their native land ! For twenty
years not a Protestant minister or church had been
seen ; a people once froward, but now spiritless,
even to having lost hope. The Imperialists and
Swedes vied with each otlier in plundering. But
the enemy soon gathered strength in his own
country’. Reinforcements came in from all sides;
one under Piccolomini, from the Netherlands. In
Bauer’s rear. Saxony and Brandenburg were again
unquiet. In Lower Saxony, Luneburg, newly hos-
tile, requested a suspicious neutrality’. The heaviest
blow was the death of Bernard of Weimar, wliich
occurred on the 8th July, I63f). Bauer, who had
calculated upon meeting this great general on the
Danube, was now himself obliged to determine for
retreat. But this was not accomplished without
great loss.
In the month of May, 1640, wo see for the first
time a French and Swedish army united at Erfurt.
The former consisted in the greatest part of the old
army of Weimar, which France had succeeded in
gaining *, under the command of the duke of Lon-
gueville and Guebriant. The troops of Hesse and
Luneburg also adhered to Baner^. But the incon-
veniences of a divided command soon showed them-
selves. Piccolomini would not allow himself to be
enticed out of his fortified camp at Saalfeld. The
allies parted, and the year passed away, until amidst
the snows and cold of December, while the enemy
was lying secure in his winter-quarters, we see
Baner breaking up in conjunction with Gue’briant.
He proceeded through Thuringia, Franconia, and
the Upper Palatinate, and in January, 1()4I, ap-
peared suddenly befoi’e Ratisbon, where the new
emperor Ferdinand III. (his father had died the
15th February, 1C37) was holding a diet with the
electors and deputies. Already had Bauer sent
6 " Gallas drew after him some miserable relics of his
army. The Brandenburgers and Saxons bad been much
thinned, while the Swedish soldiers, though with a small
stock of clothes, had noble courage, and were all young,
picked men." PufTendorf, xi. 486. Gallas relinquished
the command, which Maracini and the Saxon Hofkirehen
received.
^ No sovereign house during the Thirty Years’ War la-
boured so perseveringly for such an end as that of Luneburg.
That the parts should think of themselves, when the whole
is dissolved, may be natural. But there is truth in the ob-
servation of Baner to chancellor Urebber, wlio visited him
as the envoy of Luneburg after the victory at Chemnitz.
"
By the like miserable considerations was Germany brought
into its present necessity; the annals of neutrality booted
not." Von der Decken, 1. c. iii. 184. "The counsels of
duke George of Luneburg," writes Oxenstierna to Baner,
Jan. 9, 1639, "are sufficiently known to me, and are for
nought but to gain time, and so to hold witli the strongest."
Reg.
* Oxenstierna writes to Baner, that he should seek to en-
force the right of Sweden to the army of Weimar, which had
been first levied on Swedish account.
9 Oxenstierna to Salvius, on the rupture of the land-
gravine, George duke of Luneburg, and the prince of Tran-
sylvania Ragozi, with the emperor, March 1, 1639. In
his cavalry over the frozen Danube, and begun to
cannonade the town, when the ice broke up from a
sudden thaw. The enemy was reinforced, the at-
tempt miscarried, and the general soon found him-
self in a more difficult situation than ever. The
Swedish troops only were at this time accustomed
to winter campaigns. Those of Weimar turned
round, Gue’briant deserted Baner, who at Cham
was well-nigh surrounded by the enemy. The
Bavarian general Mercy, who had been sent in
advance with a numei’ous cavalry, fell in with the
Swedish colonel Eric Slange. The latter threw
himself, with three regiments, into the small town
of Newburgh, and defended himself so heroically
until the fourth day, when he was compelled to lay
down his arms, that Baner had time to escape with
the rest of his force. Yet in the defile of Pressnitz
in the Bohemian forest he was only saved by half
an hour’s start from being cut off by Piccolomini.
The Imperialists pursued him eleven days without
quitting the saddle. He came to Zwickau, where
Gue’briant again joined him; thence, amidst con-
tinual fighting, to Halle, Merseburg, and Halber-
stadt. This retreat Baner made in a dying con-
dition, being at last carried on a litter. He expired
at Halberstadt, May 10, 1G41, in his forty-fifth
year. In the victory which followed at Wolfenbuttel
the army bore the body of their general with them
into action *. Baner made himself illustrious by
his campaigns. Wine and love were the hero’s
foibles 2.
One remark we cannot withhold. If we consider
the issue of these operations undertaken from North
Germany against Austria, which after Bauer’s days
were more than once repeated, we will pause ere
with the crowd we blame Gustavus Adolphus, be-
cause after the victory of Leipsic he was unwilling
to attack the hereditary dominions of the emperor,
until he had strengthened his unprotected flank;
and we perceive likewise that the sole condition of
the success of such an attack was, a powerful co-
operation on the side of France. This co-operation
was never given in a decisive mode. The interests
of Sweden and France had indeed a point of con-
respect to the junction with the allies, Oxenstierna writes to
Baner, July 8, 1640,
" Trouble yourself not with the humour’s
and differences of the generals ;
make use of the ditTerence
which is betwixt the duke of Longueville and Hesse together
with Luneburg, to hinder the French general’s designs for a
separation ; promise Klitzing (now general of the Limeburg
troops) a pension of 2000 to 4000 rix-dollars; were duke
George (of Luneburg) also gratified with a yearly pension,
we would not look to the cost. While he was yet no sove-
reign person, he had abstracted from his late majesty 5000
rix-dollars; if he might now be won with 10,000!" Reg.
•
Histoire du Marechal de Guebriant, p. 348. Compare
Beauregard’s character of Baner in this work. He was
French agent (spy, Bougeant says) in Baner’s army.
2 Poison was at first suspected to be tlie cause of his death-
Salvius writes to John Oxenstierna, Hambuig, Dec. V, 1641.
Nescio an sit venenum. Nam statim post pocula primes
eosque atrocissimos sensit dolores. Accedunt jam interdum
deliria,
—et in spectrorum erroribus ac somniis ipse quidem
se fatigat. Vereor ne, punitis aliis, Deus tandem nos ipse
punire decreverit, ob enormia scelera et probra plus quam
barbara, quse hoc hello impune committantur, John Oxen-
stierna replies, Stralsund, Dec. 31, 1641 : From poison I
judge, nothing is to be looked for; but excess in eating and
drinking, as Herr Grubbe states, are poison enough for such
as are subject to maladies of that kind. Fant, Handlingar,
iv. 94.
X 2
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