112 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
the Austrian borders and set about demobilisation. Duke Heinrich Julius
of Brunswick was commissioned to oversee the discharge of the Passau
troops, but while Rudolf gave him the relevant authority he furnished
none of the necessary money, without which the men could not be paid
their arrears and dismissed.^30
Rudolf’s real intentions during the autumn of 1610 are hard to
fathom, if indeed he knew them himself. Reclusive and indecisive
anyway, the contradictions both within his letters and between his state-
ments and his actions, or more precisely inaction, may have reflected
no more than his state of mind. On the other hand they may have
concealed more sinister intentions, such as the wish to retain his own
troops until after Matthias had discharged his. It is also unclear how
far Leopold was acting in accordance with, or despite, Rudolf’s private
instructions, and it has been suggested that while the latter’s consuming
interest remained the recovery of his Austrian lands, Leopold himself
was aiming to invade Bohemia in order to suppress the Estates and to
establish his own position as successor king.^31 It is not even clear to what
extent Leopold was actually in control of his Passau army as the crisis
developed.
The looming problem was quickly evident to others. The army, not
only the soldiers but large numbers of wives, children and other camp
followers, had exhausted the resources of the small territory of Passau
over the summer, so that they were not only unpaid but already hungry
before the autumn. In mid-September Rudolf’s Imperial military coun-
cil advised him that they would have to be moved to winter quarters
in Bohemia until money could be found to pay them off, a prospect
which horrified his Bohemian officials. Aware of the risk that as the
condition of the army deteriorated it might decide to move on its own
initiative to find food, in October they began to prepare defences, partic-
ularly around the southern cities, and in November they called up local
militias and stationed them on the main access roads into Bohemia.
Meanwhile Heinrich Julius of Brunswick was in Passau trying to placate
the restive troops, despite previous un-kept promises about their pay,
and on 9 December he persuaded them to wait another week while he
went back to Prague to seek funds, but there he met with nothing but
evasions.
On 22 December the army, commanded by a certain Colonel Ramé,
broke camp, although on whose orders is not known. The troops first
marched into Upper Austria south of the Danube, where there were
no opposing forces, but finding the passes further south defended, or
so he later claimed, Ramé then moved northwards into prosperous