Below you will find another fantastic article from Clio’s Board Games, this time discussing the decline of Albrecht von Wallenstein’s life through the lens of boardgames. You can also find this article on Clio’s blog. The previous articles in this series can be found here and here. Enjoy! -Rachel
Back to Wallenstein, the mystery of the Thirty Years’ War! …or, if you have been reading the last two instalments in this miniseries, just a regular man, shaped by his time, shaping his time. We’ve seen his unassuming beginnings and his meteoric rise early in the war, and then his five years as supreme imperial commander until he was recalled by an ingrate emperor on behalf of his malignant princes. Today, we’ll look at Wallenstein’s second command, the duel of the two greatest commanders of the war, and Wallenstein’s search for peace. Of course, there will be board games on the way.
Part 3: Decline
In Command Again
Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, had taken Germany by storm in 1631. He was allied with the heretofore neutral Protestant electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, had shattered the imperial army under Count Tilly at Breitenfeld, and was taking his winter quarters in Mainz, deep in the southwest of Germany. For 1632, he looked ready to advance along the Danube, first into Bavaria, the home of elector Maximilian, the most powerful Catholic prince in the empire (and Wallenstein’s chief rival), and then into the Habsburg core lands.
Wallenstein had been the emperor’s man to solve his military problems for five years. It was thus an obvious choice to recall him as commander. Even Maximilian was in favor (hoping for Wallenstein to defend his electorate, which had heretofore been blissfully ignorant of war as a first-hand experience). Emperor Ferdinand II was practically begging. Wallenstein agreed – but only to reorganize the army, only for three months. The emperor went along, having no other choice. And, of course, when the three months were over, Wallenstein stayed on, having his supreme authority confirmed and expanded.
We have discussed the Wallenstein rule in Thirty Years War: Europe in Agony, 1618—1648 (David A. Fox/Michael Welker, GMT Games) as far as his dismissal was concerned – when Wallenstein’s influence becomes too high, the Catholic player can avoid losing by dismissing Wallenstein which will halve his influence. Having dismissed Wallenstein, the Catholic player can recall him again for a second bout in command – this time probably shorter, as Wallenstein will have some leftover influence and will thus be closer to the influence threshold that would mean Protestant victory!
Gustavus Adolphus had not been idle while Wallenstein re-organized the army. He had split his army in several parts, taking a good deal of Catholic Germany (and distributing ecclesiastical lands to his supporters), while his main force advanced towards Bavaria. The army of the Catholic League under Maximilian and Tilly attempted to make up for their numerical inferiority with a strong defensive position behind the river Lech. Gustavus Adolphus forced the Lech in April 1632 with the double measure of a crossing south of the Catholic army and the massed use of artillery. The League army was routed. Tilly died of the wounds he had suffered in the battle. One month later, Gustavus Adolphus lodged in the Bavarian capital Munich.
The Duel with Gustavus
Maximilian beseeched Wallenstein to march for Bavaria and meet the Swedes in open battle. Yet Wallenstein’s mission concerned the entire empire, not just a single electorate. And his caution – half natural, half learned in the campaign of 1626 – led him to pursue a different course. He marched for Franconia. From there, he threatened Gustavus’s supply lines which stretched all the way to the Baltic coast, and he could quickly march to Bavaria, strike at the Swedish king’s new Saxon allies, or retreat to Bohemia, as the situation required it. When he took camp near the city of Nuremberg, one of the greatest cities of the empire, he also evoked the Protestants’ fear of another Magdeburg – more atrocities visited on a large Protestant city. Gustavus Adolphus had to turn and face Wallenstein.
The Swedish king had a battle-hardened army with him, but the difficult supply situation and the vast area which he had conquered had forced him to detach large parts of his army. Even though reinforcements arrived for him in Nuremberg, his combined force was not bigger than Wallenstein’s (strengthened by some of the Bavarian troops) who had built a fortified camp at the Alte Veste outside of Nuremberg. Gustavus, eager to fight a decisive battle and resume his attack on the Habsburg core lands, attempted to breach the defenses for several days, but was bloodily repelled by Wallenstein’s forces. The king had to withdraw. He left a garrison behind to hold Nuremberg against Wallenstein’s siege. The Swedes were not defeated, but the myth of Gustavus’s invincibility was broken.
As the Protestant army had withdrawn southwest, Maximilian feared a new invasion of Bavaria. Once more, he demanded that Wallenstein follow Gustavus to protect Bavaria. And once more, Wallenstein refused. Protect Bavaria he would, though… not by marching south, but north.
Wallenstein’s march for Saxony followed his tried-and-tested strategy of combining pressure on the supply lines with political pressure: When Wallenstein’s army showed up in Saxony, the Saxons would understand how foolish they had been to declare against the emperor. Maybe their elector John George, an imperial loyalist by inclination, could be brought back into the imperial fold. Until then, Wallenstein’s army would winter in Saxony, consuming the food and fodder which Saxon peasants had grown and harvested.
As Wallenstein had foreseen, Gustavus Adolphus followed him to protect his supply lines and his Saxon allies, arriving in November 1632 in Saxony. In Wallenstein’s mind, the campaigning season was over, and he split his army into several winter quarters – a common necessity in Cuius Regio (Francisco Gradaille, GMT Games, forthcoming) as well, as smaller towns are often unable to supply large armies in winter. Yet Gustavus was not done campaigning, kept his force concentrated, and marched on the force under Wallenstein’s command stationed around the village of Lützen.
Wallenstein, caught unprepared, scrambled to get reinforcements for the battle that was now upon him. He hoped that at least the cavalry of his lieutenant Gottfried Heinrich, Count of Pappenheim would arrive in time, maybe even the infantry. Until then, he took defensive positions at Lützen, obscured by the morning mist and the smoke from having set the village on fire.
The ensuing Battle of Lützen, fought on November 16, 1632, was Wallenstein’s fiercest tactical challenge. The Protestant army had a slight numerical superiority, its core formed by veterans of many battles (usually on the winning side), and it was commanded by the greatest tactical commander of the time. The initial Swedish assault shattered Wallenstein’s left. The Swedes also gained Wallenstein’s artillery battery on the left wing. Yet when the battle seemed already lost, Pappenheim arrived with his cavalry regiments and turned the tide. Pappenheim, however, was severely wounded, and most of his cavalrymen fled. Colonel Ottavio Piccolomini took some regiments from the center, and, helped by the onset of more fog, could stabilize the front.
In the meantime, Wallenstein’s right had repelled the Protestant assault on their side and were now battering the Swedish-German troops under Prince Bernard of Saxony-Weimar. Bernard called for support, and the king himself answered with a group of select cavalrymen. Gustavus Adolphus was wounded, lost touch with his forces in the fog, and thus fell into the hands of imperial soldiers who killed him and plundered his corpse. News of the death of the king spread among the Protestant ranks. They responded quite differently to Pappenheim’s forces when faced with the loss of their commander: Gustavus Adolphus had been beloved, a hero, the savior of Protestantism. The Swedish-German troops battered Wallenstein’s right wing and took his second battery. Their strength, however, was insufficient to expel the imperial forces from their defensive positions. The fighting ended when night fell. Wallenstein withdrew his army in good order.
Lützen had been no victory for Wallenstein. He had given up the battlefield and his losses were heavier than those of the Protestants. Yet Wallenstein could retake the positions lost, and he could recruit new soldiers to take the places of the fallen. Gustavus Adolphus, on the other hand, could barely be replaced. The imperial side could be content with the campaigns of 1632.
The Search for Peace
After Wallenstein’s last great operational success, the campaign against Denmark in 1627 and 1628, he had made peace with his enemy from a position of strength. His inclination now was to do the same – only peace would confirm his large acquisitions in Bohemia, Silesia, and Mecklenburg, and as he grew older and sicker, frequently bed-ridden, he meant to enjoy them. As the Swedes were nowhere near as thoroughly beaten as Denmark had been, Wallenstein started smaller with attempts to prise their Saxon allies away from them with a mix of persuasion and force: While he treated with his former marshal Hans Georg von Arnim, who, as a devout Protestant, had left imperial service for reasons of conscience after the Edict of Restitution, and now served the Elector of Saxony, Wallenstein’s new lieutenant Heinrich von Holk (another Protestant, and the former commander of the forces resisting Wallenstein at the siege of Stralsund) marauded in Saxony.
The emperor had good hopes that his Saxon vassal would return into the imperial fold and commended Wallenstein for his diplomatic efforts. In the meantime, Wallenstein (and his new second-in-command Matthias Gallas, promoted after Holk had died of the plague in September 1633) also treated with the Swedes (in the person of Gustavus Adolphus’s chancellor Axel of Oxenstierna who now directed Swedish politics), yet nothing would come of that: Both sides seem to have tried to stall the other’s war efforts with diplomacy and undermine the confidence of the allies of the other. For example, the Swedes offered Wallenstein to become King of Bohemia if he allied with them and fought against the emperor – an absurd notion, as Wallenstein’s confirmation by the Protestant estates of Bohemia would have been at odds with their expropriation in 1621 from which he had acquired his Bohemian holdings.
The Swedish advances were not acknowledged by Wallenstein himself. As his health deteriorated, however, others started speaking with his voice, chiefly his brother-in-law Adam Erdmann, Count Trčka, his marshal Christian von Ilow, and the Bohemian diplomat Vilém Kinský. They hoped to bring about an alliance between Wallenstein, the Bohemian emigrants, and the foreign powers supporting them against the Habsburgs – Sweden, and possibly even France.
Both sides used their tentative diplomatic efforts and the resulting operational lull in 1633 to consolidate their forces after the exertions of the previous year. By fall, though, they were ready to strike again. Wallenstein marched to Silesia to retake the last Habsburg dominion held by the Protestants. Their commander, the Bohemian Heinrich Matthias von Thurn, surrendered in exchange for his release after the capture. Emperor Ferdinand resented that this arch-rebel who had been in the Bohemian uprising from its beginning in 1618 went unpunished.
The Swedish main army, commanded by Bernard of Weimar, struck at Regensburg and invaded Bavaria again in November. Wallenstein sent some regiments under Johann von Aldringen to support the Catholic League army, but his own army remained in Bohemia on the principle that any threat to the Habsburg core lands could be blocked as long as imperial forces held the city of Passau on the Danube. Maximilian complained bitterly to the emperor about Wallenstein’s passivity.
Emperor Ferdinand II had always been the source of Wallenstein’s power, often against the advice of his allies. Maximilian had always been suspicious of Wallenstein. The Spanish Habsburgs had had a more ambivalent stance. They had respected Wallenstein as an effective commander who spread Habsburg influence in Germany, but had resented his refusal to support their wars in the Netherlands, and, in the late 1620s, against the French in Upper Italy. In December 1633, they found themselves in a pickle: The Habsburg governess of the Netherlands, Isabella Clara Eugenia, aunt to the King of Spain, had died. With Dutch naval supremacy, they could only bring a new governor in by land, along the Spanish Road linking Upper Italy and the Netherlands – whose middle part in Germany was now in the hands of the Swedes. The Spanish representatives in Vienna lobbied for Wallenstein to give the new governor, Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, an armed escort of several regiments. Wallenstein refused. An army of a few thousand men with the Cardinal-Infante could not possibly withstand any Swedish attack on its way, he argued, while he could not spare thousands of men when the Habsburg core lands were under direct threat. Spain was snubbed. If the Spanish had ever supported Wallenstein, henceforth, they wouldn’t.
It doesn’t look so good anymore for our hero! In the next post, we will wrap up the story of Wallenstein. Watch this space!
Games Referenced
Won by the Sword (Ben Hull, GMT Games)
Thirty Years’ War: Europe in Agony, 1618—1648 (David A. Fox/Michael Welker, GMT Games)
Cuius Regio (Francisco Gradaille, GMT Games, forthcoming)
Further Reading
A recent biography which succeeds at dispelling the Wallenstein myth is Mortimer, Geoff: Wallenstein. The Enigma of the Thirty Years’ War, Palgrave Macmillan, London 2010.
For an older, more encompassing biography with literary aspirations, see Mann, Golo: Wallenstein. His Life Narrated, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York City, NY 1976.
On the reception of Wallenstein and his changing image from his contemporaries all the way through the 20th century, see Bahlcke, Joachim/Kampmann, Christoph: Wallensteinbilder im Widerstreit: Eine historische Symbolfigur in Geschichtsschreibung und Literatur vom 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert [Conflicting Conceptions of Wallenstein: A Symbolic Figure from History in Historiography and Literature from the 17th to the 20th Century], Böhlau, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 2011 [in German].
For a short introduction to the Thirty Years’ War, see Schmidt, Georg: Der Dreißigjährige Krieg [The Thirty Years’ War], C.H. Beck, Munich 2010 [in German].
A magisterial monography on the entire war is Wilson, Peter H.: Europe’s Tragedy. A New History of the Thirty Years’ War, Penguin, London 2009.
Author: Clios Board Games
