rehearse
,” she hissed. “You
must
learn to follow the script.”
“Why?” asked Rebecca. Her studious face was intent. She added something else, but she was too far away for the rest of her words to be heard.
Ed smiled ruefully. “Poor Janet. I think she’s in for a rough few months.”
“That’s my girl,” murmured Mike happily.
When Rebecca came back on, she followed the script for not more than three minutes. Then, frowning, she laid the sheets of paper to one side and clasped her hands in front of her. Staring intently into the camera, she said:
“I will return to all this news on the production projects later. The essence is that things are going well except for the new ice-cream factory, but I think we can all agree that that is really a little frivolous.”
A hiss went up from the audience, a groan from Janet.
“Well, maybe not so frivolous,” admitted Rebecca. “But it is still not so important as the news on the military front.”
The audience fell silent. Rebecca paused for a moment to scan her notes. Then:
“You all know that Tilly’s troops have been leaving Thuringia for the past several weeks. Mackay’s scouts report that the last units of the Weimar garrison have also departed, as of two days ago. Now Mackay has received more news, from a courier sent by King Gustav.”
She stared into the camera. “A great battle is looming, somewhere near Leipzig. Tilly is marshaling all his troops to meet Gustavus Adolphus on the open field.”
She looked away, gathering her thoughts. When she turned back to the camera, her face was solemn and pensive.
“I am Jewish, as you know. Most of our citizens are Christians, and most of them are now Catholics. But I do not believe that anyone here can take sides in this coming battle based on creed. What is really at stake is not whether Protestant Sweden will defeat Catholic Austria and Bavaria, or the opposite. What is at stake is our own freedom and liberties.”
There came another long pause. “I am supposed to present the news without commentary. That seems a bit foolish to me, since I do not know anyone who does not have an opinion on almost everything, including myself. But I will of course abide by the wishes of the television people. Nevertheless—”
Another groan from Janet. The audience—throughout Grantville—was utterly silent.
“My prayers tonight will be for the king of Sweden. In this coming battle, Gustav II Adolf fights for our future. Ours, and that of our children, and of theirs, and of theirs, and of theirs, and of theirs.”
“Amen,” whispered Mike.
Part Three
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
Chapter 34
In the centuries to come, they would call Gustavus Adolphus the Father of Modern War. Then they would take to quarreling over it.
For he wasn’t, really. That title, if it can be given to anyone, more properly belongs to Maurice of Nassau. Gustavus Adolphus learned the modern system from the Dutch, he did not invent it. True, he refined Maurice’s emphasis on the line rather than the square, and extended it to his arquebusiers. True, also, he gave particular emphasis to artillery. Here, too, myths would abound. People would talk of the famous “leather guns,” never realizing they failed the test of battle and were soon discarded. The guns had a tendency to overheat and burst. Gustav brought none with him to Germany.
His greatest accomplishment, others would argue, was Gustav’s creation of the first national army in the modern world. His Swedish army was an army of citizen conscripts, rather than mercenaries. But, again, the claim was threadbare. The Swedish system was actually pioneered by his uncle, Erik XIV. And, in truth, Gustav soon came to rely on mercenary soldiers—
värvade
, the Swedes called them, “enlisted” men—almost as much as his opponents. Sweden was a sparsely populated country, whose citizenry could not possibly provide the number of soldiers Gustav required.
So it went . . .
He introduced the light musket, which eliminated the clumsy musket fork.
But many other European armies used light muskets, and as late as 1645 musket forks were still being issued to Swedish soldiers.
He abolished the bandolier and introduced cartridge pouches for his musketeers.
Another exaggeration. The Stockholm Arsenal would continue issuing bandoliers at least until 1670.
He invented uniforms.
Not true. Uniforms were already coming into existence throughout Europe. If anything, the ragged Swedish troops were more haphazardly garbed than any.
He shortened the pike to eleven feet, making it more maneuverable in battle.
False—even silly. What use is a short pike to an infantryman? That legend was begun by a parson, who mistook an officer’s partisan for a pike.
Legend after legend. Gustavus Adolphus seemed to attract them like a magnet. For each legend refuted, two more would come to take its place.
He reintroduced shock tactics into cavalry warfare. He replaced the ineffective caracole, where cavalrymen would wheel around and fire pistols from a distance, with the thundering saber charge.
There is an element of truth to this claim, but only an element. Many German armies were abandoning the caracole already, and Gustav learned the value of shock tactics from the ferocious Polish lancers that his army faced in the 1620s. In truth, the Swedish cavalry took many years to become an effective force. Sweden had never been a cavalry nation. Swedish kings—Gustav no less than his predecessors—leaned heavily on their half-civilized Finnish auxiliary cavalry. Even the Swedish horses were small and stout. As late as Breitenfeld, Tilly could still sneer that Gustav’s cavalry was no better mounted than his own baggage-boys.
As late as Breitenfeld . . .
After Breitenfeld, of course, Tilly could no longer make the boast. All of central Germany was now open to Gustav, along with its magnificent horses. Soon enough, his Swedish cavalry was as well-mounted as any in the world.
Breitenfeld.
All the legends revolve around that place. They pivot on that day. Wheeling like birds above the flat plains north of Leipzig on September 17, 1631, they try to find sharp truth in murky reality. Never seeing it, but knowing it is there.
The legends would be advanced, and refuted, and advanced again, and refuted again—and it mattered not in the least. Breitenfeld remained. Always Breitenfeld.
After Breitenfeld, how could the legends
not
be true?
Breitenfeld was a rarity in those days. Pitched battles on the open field between huge armies were a thing of the past. For well over a century, warfare had been dominated by the
trace italienne,
the new system of fortifications developed in Italy and perfected by the Dutch in their struggles against Spain. War was a thing of long campaigns and sieges, not battles. The strength of nations was measured by the depth of their coffers, not the names of victories emblazoned on their standards. Attrition, not maneuver—and even there, attrition was measured in coins rather than lives. Lives were cheap, bullion was hard to find.
On the rare occasions when armies did collide in the open, the queen of battle was the tercio. Swiss pike tactics—with Swiss élan long gone—married to blocks of arquebusiers. Generals “maneuvered” armies only in the sense that the pharaohs maneuvered great stones to make pyramids.
The battle only happened because Tilly made a profound strategic error. Brought on, perhaps, by the overconfidence of seven decades of life without a defeat.
Tilly’s greatest asset, since Gustavus Adolphus landed in Germany—on July 4, as it happens, in the year 1630—had always been the vacillation of Sweden’s Protestant allies. The Saxons, in particular. Saxony was the most powerful of the German Protestant principalities, and it had always been Tilly’s anchor.
One Saxon, rather: the elector of Saxony, John George. For whatever reason—stupidity, cowardice, or simply the cumulative effect of his constant drunken carousing—John George could never make up his mind. The Prince of Yes and No. The Knight of Doubt and Hesitation. Hamlet without the tragic grandeur; certainly without the brains.
John George had been one of the princes who invited Gustav’s intervention; and then, when it came, foremost among those who quibbled and lawyered. Elector Hem and Haw. History would blame Tilly for the slaughter at Magdeburg, but the charge is more properly laid at the feet of the prince who was not there himself and would not allow another to come to Magdeburg’s aid. When Tilly’s soldiers ran amok, Tilly himself rode into the city to stop them. He failed, but at least he tried. And when nothing else could be done, the old soldier plucked a baby from the arms of its dead mother and carried it to the safety of his own tent. John George, secure in the safety of his palace in Dresden, saved not even the dregs of his tankard. As was the prince of Saxony’s custom, he poured the dregs over the head of a servant, signaling his desire for another draught.
Tilly should have left him alone. So long as Saxony barred the way, Gustavus Adolphus was safely penned in Pomerania and Mecklenburg. Let the Lion of the North roar in the Baltic, far from the fertile plains of central Germany.
But Tilly grew too bold. Or, perhaps, he was offended by the constant complaints and the whispering sneers of the imperial courtiers. Tilly was past the age of seventy, now, and had never been defeated in battle. Who was this Swedish upstart—a man barely half his age—to sully that reputation?
So, when the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand insisted that the Edict of Restitution be enforced—at long last!—on Saxony, Tilly was obliging. He marshaled his forces, pulling them out of Thuringia and Hesse-Cassel, and marched on Saxony. Along the way, as always, his soldiery ravaged and plundered. By the time his army reached Halle, on September 4, two hundred villages lay burning behind them.
Tilly moved on. Near Merseburg, his army went into camp and began devastating the region. Tilly sent his demands to John George. The Saxon elector was required to quarter and feed the imperial army; disband his new levies; place his troops under Tilly’s command; formally recognize the emperor as his sovereign; and sever all ties to the Swedes.
Even now, John George vacillated. Tilly moved again, capturing the rich Saxon city of Leipzig after threatening it with the fate of Magdeburg.
The loss of Leipzig finally convinced John George he had no choice. He offered to join his army to Sweden’s, and Gustavus Adolphus immediately accepted. The Swedish army joined with the Saxon forces on September 15 near the town of Düben. The next day, the combined Swedish-Saxon army marched from Düben to the hamlet of Wolkau. There was nothing between them and Leipzig but a level plain; vast, open, and unwooded. Ideal terrain for a battle.
On the morning of September 17, Tilly led his army into position before his opponents arrived. His left flank was anchored by the town of Breitenfeld; his right, by Seehausen. The old veteran’s position was excellent. His army commanded what little high ground there was in the area, and he had the sun and the wind at his back.
His army’s numbers are uncertain—somewhere between thirty-two and forty thousand, a quarter of them cavalry. The infantry was drawn up in the center into seventeen tercios—or “battles,” as Tilly’s men called them—massed side by side. Each tercio numbered between fifteen hundred and two thousand men. The cavalry was drawn up on the flanks. Pappenheim’s famous Black Cuirassiers were on the left—the same men who had breached the defenses of Magdeburg, and initiated the city’s massacre. On the right, under the command of Fürstenburg, was the newly arrived cavalry from Italy.
Later in the morning, the Swedish and Saxon armies arrived and took their own positions. The Swedes held the right and the center; the Saxons, the left. The Saxons were on the east of the road to Düben; the Swedes, to the west.
Like Tilly, Gustav Adolf concentrated his infantry in the center. His right wing, mostly cavalry, was under the command of Field Marshal Banér. His left, also made up of cavalry, under Field Marshal Horn. The core of his artillery was massed on Gustav’s left center, young Torstensson in command. But, unlike Tilly, Gustav Adolf interspersed cavalry units among his infantry. The phrase “combined arms” had not yet entered the military lexicon, but its logic had already been grasped by the young Swedish king.
Of the Saxon formations, there is no record. They were simply “on the left”—and not for very long.
The Protestant allies enjoyed a slight advantage in numbers, it seems. And they held a definite superiority in artillery. But their Catholic opponents were not fazed. No, not in the least. And why should they be? Tilly’s men had only to look across the field to see that victory was certain.
The Saxon troops—well over a third of their opponents—were a semirabble, untested in battle and obviously disorganized. The Elector John George himself, surrounded by young Saxon noblemen wearing flamboyant scarves and cloaks, commanded the Saxon cavalry on the far left. Resplendent figures, those newly equipped cavalrymen, with their polished arms and shiny uniforms. Tilly’s veterans were not impressed. A sheep looks resplendent, too, before it is shorn.
The Swedes presented a different picture, but Tilly’s soldiers were unequally unimpressed. True, the Swedes were arrayed in excellent order, but—
What a ragged lot of vagabonds!
On this, every eyewitness account of the battle is agreed. The Swedish troops, said one Scottish officer later, “were so dusty they looked like kitchen servants, with their unclean rags.” A Swedish observer would say much the same, contrasting the appearance of Gustav’s men to Tilly’s:
