Swords for Hire by James Miller

Author:James Miller [Miller, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857905482
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 2017-07-04T16:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

‘betwixt the Devill and the deepe Sea’

Brandenburg, Saxony, Bavaria, the Rhineland, 1631

AFTER WINNING control of the Oder valley, Gustavus Adolphus led the main body of his troops back to Berlin, then a relatively small town and the capital of Brandenburg. In 1620 he had married Maria Eleonora, the sister of George William, the Elector of Brandenburg, in a political rather than a love-inspired match. Brandenburg and Saxony were the two most important Lutheran states in the German-speaking world but, despite this religious affiliation and the status of George William as his brother-in-law, Gustavus Adolphus was still unsure of the intentions of these putative allies. At the end of April, George William entertained the victorious Swedish king at his hunting lodge at Pankow, north-east of Berlin, while Swedish troops moved into the castle of Spandau and set up open camps there and at Potsdam on the western fringes of the city. John George, the Elector of Saxony, the other potential ally, was holding back from an alliance, and Gustavus Adolphus also became suspicious of George William’s loyalty. Both men were, naturally, disinclined to have a war fought across their lands. To help George William make up his mind, the Swedish troops camped in order of battle, ostensibly as a defence measure but more as a thinly disguised threat. Monro describes Gustavus as ‘so incensed’ by the elector’s prevarication that he swore to take Berlin and make the elector his prisoner. At last George William recognised he had no room for manoeuvre and agreed to a treaty. His wife and her mother, with a company of ladies, came out to entertain the Swedish king and assured him that the elector would do everything required of him. ‘To which’, says Monro, ‘his Majesty answered merrily that if the Duke [Elector] would not end with him friendly before night he would send the Dutchesse and all the Ladies prisoners to Sweden, and the Duke should follow.’ George William had to agree to provide money and means to support the war effort, by quartering the Swedish army and paying a monthly contribution from his estates. ‘There is no Oratory of such force to gaine both men and women, as a strong well-conducted Army’, observed Monro wryly.

The consequences of an army’s presence were visited more cruelly on the city of Magdeburg, which had allied itself with Gustavus Adolphus in the previous autumn. Occupying Mecklenburg, Tilly’s Imperial army ran short of food, horses and supplies during the winter of 1630/31 and, as his men began to desert in search of pay and sustenance, the Imperial commander accepted the suggestion of his impetuous colleague, the Bavarian cavalryman Field Marshal Count Pappenheim, to lay siege to Magdeburg, whose capture promised plenty to replenish their stores. Magdeburg fell to the Imperial army early in May, before the Swedish king could whip his Protestant German allies into line and come to its aid. In an orgy of drunken plundering Tilly’s troops sacked the city. A fire broke out, probably accidentally, and

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