206 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
was still worried about the legality of an attack on the Palatinate, while
Maximilian was also concerned that he himself did not have adequate
legal justification for an attack on the Union army.^6 On the other hand
he could not afford to wait either. With money already desperately short
he needed urgently to move into territory which could be treated as
rebellious, and hence forced to feed and finance his army.
His response was essentially bluff. On 18 June he sent envoys into
Ulm, where the principals of the Union had assembled for a conference
some days earlier, with an ultimatum. Either the Union should make a
binding treaty guaranteeing that they would not attack any members of
the Catholic League, or he would treat it as ‘a manifest enemy’, a form
of words which carefully avoided a direct threat of the attack which it
clearly implied.^7
The Union had equal and opposite concerns to some of those which
troubled Maximilian. Even if they made a stand at Ulm, none of the pos-
sible outside rescuers might actually come to their aid, while their own
further recruiting might prove to be too little, too late. Their troops were
untried, and outnumbered armies were prone to being further weakened
by desertions, so that they might not be able to hold on as long as a
more determined force. Thus they could find themselves obliged to give
way later on worse terms than might be obtained at the outset, having
achieved nothing other than to delay Maximilian. That might help the
Bohemians and their Palatine allies, but would be of little benefit to the
other Union members.
In the event it was not principally military necessity but failing
political will which determined their response. The tone was set by a
pessimistic letter which the duke of Württemberg and the margrave
of Ansbach, the only two Union princes present in person in Ulm,
sent to Friedrich in Bohemia. The situation of the Union had dete-
riorated since the conference in Nuremberg in December 1619, they
noted, and the League had meanwhile recruited many more troops.
Furthermore, they continued, the Bohemians’ election of Friedrich as
king had antagonised many princes of the Empire, and the Imperial
ban now threatened not only Friedrich himself but anyone who hin-
dered an execution against him.^8 The resolution the Union had shown
almost exactly a year earlier in Heilbronn, when they had decided to
raise their deterrent army, had largely evaporated, as had the money
which they had originally earmarked to finance it, so they decided to
negotiate.
Rejecting Maximilian’s ultimatum, they countered with demands of
their own, first among them that any agreement should include progress