Meantime the succours which the imperial generals, Goetz and Tiefenbach, were conducting from Silesia, had entered Bohemia, where they were joined by some of Tilly's regiments, from the Upper Palatinate. In order to disperse them before they should receive any further reinforcement, Arnheim advanced with part of his army from Prague, and made a vigorous attack on their entrenchments near Limburg, on the Elbe. After a severe action, not without great loss, he drove the enemy from their fortified camp, and forced them, by his heavy fire, to recross the Elbe, and to destroy the bridge which they had built over that river.
Nevertheless, the Imperialists obtained the advantage in several skirmishes, and the Croats pushed their incursions to the very gates of Prague.
Brilliant and promising as the opening of the Bohemian campaign had been, the issue by no means satisfied the expectations of Gustavus Adolphus.
Instead of vigorously following up their advantages, by forcing a passage to the Swedish army through the conquered country, and then, with it, attacking the imperial power in its centre, the Saxons weakened themselves in a war of skirmishes, in which they were not always successful, while they lost the time which should have been devoted to greater undertakings. But the Elector's subsequent conduct betrayed the motives which had prevented him from pushing his advantage over the Emperor, and by consistent measures promoting the plans of the King of Sweden.
The Emperor had now lost the greater part of Bohemia, and the Saxons were advancing against Austria, while the Swedish monarch was rapidly moving to the same point through Franconia, Swabia, and Bavaria. A long war had exhausted the strength of the Austrian monarchy, wasted the country, and diminished its armies. The renown of its victories was no more, as well as the confidence inspired by constant success; its troops had lost the obedience and discipline to which those of the Swedish monarch owed all their superiority in the field. The confederates of the Emperor were disarmed, or their fidelity shaken by the danger which threatened themselves. Even Maximilian of Bavaria, Austria's most powerful ally, seemed disposed to yield to the seductive proposition of neutrality; while his suspicious alliance with France had long been a subject of apprehension to the Emperor.
The bishops of Wurtzburg and Bamberg, the Elector of Mentz, and the Duke of Lorraine, were either expelled from their territories, or threatened with immediate attack; Treves had placed itself under the protection of France. The bravery of the Hollanders gave full employment to the Spanish arms in the Netherlands;while Gustavus had driven them from the Rhine. Poland was still fettered by the truce which subsisted between that country and Sweden.
The Hungarian frontier was threatened by the Transylvanian Prince, Ragotsky, a successor of Bethlen Gabor, and the inheritor of his restless mind;while the Porte was making great preparation to profit by the favourable conjuncture for aggression. Most of the Protestant states, encouraged by their protector's success, were openly and actively declaring against the Emperor. All the resources which had been obtained by the violent and oppressive extortions of Tilly and Wallenstein were exhausted; all these depots, magazines, and rallying-points, were now lost to the Emperor; and the war could no longer be carried on as before at the cost of others. To complete his embarrassment, a dangerous insurrection broke out in the territory of the Ens, where the ill-timed religious zeal of the government had provoked the Protestants to resistance; and thus fanaticism lit its torch within the empire, while a foreign enemy was already on its frontier.
After so long a continuance of good fortune, such brilliant victories and extensive conquests, such fruitless effusion of blood, the Emperor saw himself a second time on the brink of that abyss, into which he was so near falling at the commencement of his reign.
If Bavaria should embrace the neutrality; if Saxony should resist the tempting offers he had held out; and France resolve to attack the Spanish power at the same time in the Netherlands, in Italy and in Catalonia, the ruin of Austria would be complete;the allied powers would divide its spoils, and the political system of Germany would undergo a total change.
The chain of these disasters began with the battle of Breitenfeld, the unfortunate issue of which plainly revealed the long decided decline of the Austrian power, whose weakness had hitherto been concealed under the dazzling glitter of a grand name. The chief cause of the Swedes' superiority in the field, was evidently to be ascribed to the unlimited power of their leader, who concentrated in himself the whole strength of his party; and, unfettered in his enterprises by any higher authority, was complete master of every favourable opportunity, could control all his means to the accomplishment of his ends, and was responsible to none but himself. But since Wallenstein's dismissal, and Tilly's defeat, the very reverse of this course was pursued by the Emperor and the League. The generals wanted authority over their troops, and liberty of acting at their discretion;the soldiers were deficient in discipline and obedience; the scattered corps in combined operation; the states in attachment to the cause;the leaders in harmony among themselves, in quickness to resolve, and firmness to execute. What gave the Emperor's enemy so decided an advantage over him, was not so much their superior power, as their manner of using it. The League and the Emperor did not want means, but a mind capable of directing them with energy and effect.
Even had Count Tilly not lost his old renown, distrust of Bavaria would not allow the Emperor to place the fate of Austria in the hands of one who had never concealed his attachment to the Bavarian Elector.
