164 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
For what it is worth, the Bohemians probably had the best of the
fighting during 1618 and 1619, while Ferdinand himself ran a serious
risk of capture during the sieges of Vienna, having courageously or fool-
ishly stayed in the city throughout the first and returned to it during
the second. Nevertheless the hardships of the campaign, and epidemics
in particular, had taken a heavy toll on their forces, added to which
the Bohemian directorate sadly neglected their army, failing to provide
adequate pay, equipment or winter quarters, so that the soldiers and
their families suffered terribly from lack of money, provisions and proper
accommodation in the bad weather. It is reported that one regiment lost
85 per cent of its strength from hunger and cold, some 3500 men, as well
as a similar number of their dependents.^21 The result was an army which
had to be rebuilt almost from scratch in the spring of 1620, just as the
Habsburg side was beginning to assemble formidable allies, and the col-
lapse into defeat at the battle of the White Mountain in November of
that year stems at least in part from that fact.
The principal problem was that the estates were willing enough to
embark collectively on a dangerous revolt, but not sufficiently willing
to pay for it individually, while most of the participants clearly did not
fully appreciate the personal risk to property and life that they were
running if the revolt failed. Hence after the first wave of support taxa-
tion was thereafter imposed reluctantly and paid even more reluctantly,
particularly by the ruling classes themselves. Smiˇrický was one of the
few prepared to go further, personally financing a regiment and going
into the field with it until his death on campaign in November 1618.
For most of the rest, taxation was something to be shifted as far as pos-
sible on to the lower orders, an approach which added to the latter’s
direct burdens of war. These included conscription into the militia, ris-
ing prices and food shortages due to diversion of manpower from the
fields, together with the additional consumption of large numbers of
soldiers and their dependents, as well as foraging, looting and worse by
the passing armies, all of which fell most heavily on the common peo-
ple. The revolt had not originated at that level but had been imposed
from the top, initiated by an Estates assembly dominated by the nobil-
ity and led by the higher aristocracy, and in which the citizens of the
towns had only very limited influence, while the country people were
not represented at all. Protestant religious aspirations may well have
been shared by the majority, but the cost soon became too high, and by
the time the revolt moved into its most critical period popular support
had long since faded.
The Bohemians’ search for allies in the Habsburg lands can also be
summarised briefly, as although much time and effort was expended