218 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
sides. ‘The courage and valour of our men did not simply fail all at once
in the battle, but day by day long before, and the longer it went on the
worse it became.’ The reason, he said, was that ‘because of lack of pay
discipline broke down, and the soldiers mostly became refractory and
eventually lapsed into desperation....Scarcely a week went by without
some form of mutiny, and the insolence became such that it was virtu-
ally impossible to maintain the command.’^34 Hence a large part of the
responsibility for the defeat must lie with the Bohemian leadership and
Friedrich’s government, who left their army cold, hungry and unpaid
the previous winter, while lack of pay with which to buy food exacer-
bated the further hardships to which they had been exposed over the
summer. The men and their families had no reason to hope for better
in the winter to come, so that it is hardly surprising that many were
more inclined to look to their own safety than to stand and fight on the
Bohemian behalf.
Maximilian’s army was better provided for, but it fared equally badly
against the greatest hazard faced by soldiers of the day, namely epi-
demics, which were unusually prevalent and severe in 1620. One study
looked at the numbers of troops joining and being detached from the
League army, including casualties, between Ulm and the White Moun-
tain, and this estimated a discrepancy of between 12,000 and 15,000
men, which the author attributed to deaths from disease. Even allowing
for the unreliability of the numbers, and noting that adjustments are
necessary for desertions and for men who were not dead but ill, injured
or otherwise unfit for combat, these figures still indicate a massive death
toll from epidemics. The families and other people in the accompany-
ing baggage train, almost a second army, as Maximilian’s court preacher
described it in his campaign diary, will have suffered no less.^35
As the battle raged King Friedrich was at lunch with English ambas-
sadors in Prague castle, ‘where, for ought wee could discover, there was
confidence enough, and opinion that both the armyes were apter to
decline than give a battell’, as they observed.^36 Bythetimeheleft
with his large escort to take the field himself the first fleeing sur-
vivors were already reaching the city. Many more followed, but they
were demoralised and disorganised refugees rather than a fighting force,
while their leaders were little better and too dispirited to mobilise
them to man the defences. There were exceptions, Thurn’s son and the
Austrian Tschernembl reportedly among them, who pointed out that
the besiegers would soon be suffering from the cold and bad weather and
even suggested sallying out to attack them in their camps.^37 They found
little support at the council of war in the city that night, as most others,