No Way Back 159the Bohemians sought to characterise their revolt as essentially reli-
gious, whereas the Imperial side emphasised the secular, political and
national aspirations which they saw as underlying this rebellion against
law and established authority. There was some truth in both views, but
the exchanges were mainly for propaganda purposes and a play for time
while the respective sides gathered men and money.^11
Thurn once more demonstrated his ability to raise and organise troops
quickly, while the directorate called up the militia, theoretically each
tenth man from the countryside and every eighth man from the cities,
together with cavalrymen to be provided by landowners. Within a
month he had an army of some 4000 men, enough to march off in
mid-June to coerce the mainly Catholic cities of Budweis and Pilsen to
join the revolt. Here he met unexpected resistance from the garrisons,
starting the pattern of indecisive military actions which was to dom-
inate the next two years. However Thurn’s move south could be seen
in Vienna as a threat to the Austrian heartland, thus strengthening the
position of those calling for military action against the revolt.
The Imperial response had initially been muted, not least because nei-
ther men nor money were available. The government was as always
heavily indebted, while its only significant forces were those guarding
the Turkish frontier, which were not only distant but also indispensable
where they were. Some units did become available with the fortuitous
ending of Ferdinand’s Uzkok war against the Venetians, although this
advantage was balanced out when the duke of Savoy, an inveterate anti-
Habsburg, ended his own war in northern Italy, but instead of paying
off his small army led by Count Ernst Mansfeld he sent it to assist the
Bohemians.
Mansfeld has become notorious as the archetypal Thirty Years War
mercenary general with an army for hire to the highest bidder, but
while he switched employers several times he nevertheless fought con-
sistently on the anti-Habsburg side, despite being born and brought
up as a Catholic. His father was governor of the Habsburg province of
Luxembourg for almost fifty years, and in his sixties and long a widower
he formed a relationship with a woman of lower rank, but although
they did not marry their three children were later legitimised on royal
authority. Ernst, the eldest, became the heir after the death of his much
older half-brother, but his father’s estate was heavily indebted and when
he died in 1604 it fell to the Spanish crown, which because of one
of its periodic bankruptcies also failed to make the expected provision
for Ernst and his siblings. By then Mansfeld had already served eight
years in the Imperial army in Hungary during the Long Turkish War,