220 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
Catholics and non-Catholics....The Catholics, who were and are loyal
to Your Majesty, are protected no more than the rebels, and they like
others are abducted, robbed and held to ransom, which does little to
develop support and affection for Your Majesty.’^40 What he did not point
out to Ferdinand was that his Imperial army had been as little paid and
provided for as the Bohemian forces, as the English ambassadors noted,
and were likewise facing the winter with no prospects other than hunger
and cold for themselves and their families.^41 Nor did he mention that
while his own troops may have been better paid and fed, and thus better
behaved, their superiors had not failed to line their own pockets. One
of the Bavarian officials who arrived in Prague in his entourage boasted
that he had acquired 60,000 gulden in Bohemia in plunder and extorted
payments, adding that in his view it would be an incompetent colonel or
captain who had not taken at least 30,000 gulden as booty in this war.^42
There were certainly rich pickings to be had, as in their haste Friedrich
and his Palatine officials had left behind much that they had intended
to take with them. When Prague castle was captured ‘eight loaded wag-
ons were standing there, and on them were the fleeing king’s best
things, but they were all looted’, according to a contemporary report,
while another added that the crown of Bohemia and the king’s regalia
were also found in Prague.^43 Equally valuable politically were Friedrich’s
official correspondence and Anhalt’s chancellery wagon, which yielded
enough material to keep the Bavarian publishers busy with propaganda
for a long time. Mockery also served political ends. Friedrich was King
James I of England’s son-in-law, and among the things found in Prague
was his Order of the Garter, so that cartoonists thereafter depicted him
with his stockings hanging down. A Frenchman took the jesting further,
as a Saxon agent reported on 18 November, riding naked through the
streets, facing backwards and holding his horse’s tail, while his obscene
attacks on the departed Friedrich were accompanied by the screeching
and scraping of three fiddlers.^44 Flysheets lampooning the ‘Winter King’
and his brief reign soon appeared, and the epithet has stuck to Friedrich
ever since.
There were more serious matters to be attended to. When the
Bohemian Estates faced Maximilian three days after the battle their
spokesman was Wilhelm Lobkowitz, who, ‘in a whining voice and with
tears in his eyes’, said that they realised how much they had offended
against his Imperial Majesty, for which they were bitterly sorry, and they
humbly beseeched his forgiveness, as never again would they recognise
any other lord than Ferdinand II.^45 This was formally confirmed at an
Estates meeting attended by many of the leaders of the revolt who had