From Bohemia to the Thirty Years War 231had overcome his scruples about invading the Palatinate without a
valid mandate to enforce an Imperial ban, recognising that Friedrich
could not be publicly outlawed at the time in the face of the objections
of the elector of Saxony. Consequently the occupying Spanish troops
were, to say the least, in a delicate legal position, and one which was
barely improved by the polite sophistry that they were the army of
the Burgundian Netherlands, the principal member of the Burgundian
Circle of the Empire, rather than of a foreign power. Consequently the
question of placing Friedrich under the Imperial ban was immediately
back on the agenda after his defeat and flight.
This, and indeed most of the subsequent history of this phase of the
Thirty Years War, was greatly complicated by the problem of Emperor
Ferdinand II’s commitments to Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, both the
formal one to repay his military expenses and the confidential one to
transfer to him Friedrich’s electoral title. Maximilian was well aware
from the outset that there was little chance of the perennially over-
indebted Imperial treasury being able to cover his costs in a reasonable
space of time, if ever, which was why he had begun his Bohemian cam-
paign by occupying Upper Austria for himself. This, however, was a
temporary expedient, as he also recognised that Ferdinand would make
every effort to recover this integral part of the Habsburg hereditary
lands, so that he would eventually need to be compensated in some
other way.^2 Confiscation of the property of the Bohemian rebels had
been foreseen, but the proceeds were needed to fund Ferdinand’s own
military expenses and to pay off his troops, as well as to reward loyalists.
That left Friedrich’s Palatinate.
Once the Ulm treaty had secured League territories against the dan-
ger of a Union attack as soon as Maximilian’s army moved away into
Bohemia, there was little military reason for the Spanish invasion of the
western Palatinate. Arguably this was to prevent the Union army follow-
ing Maximilian into Bohemia, where it would have been free to attack
him, and this was doubtless a factor in the cautious duke’s planning, but
a Spanish army ostentatiously mobilised on the Netherlands frontier or
moved into League territory adjacent to the Palatinate, as it actually was
before the invasion, might well have had the same effect. On the other
hand occupying Friedrich’s territory would make it a great deal easier
to dispossess him permanently afterwards, as no new military campaign
would then be required, and it would be surprising if this too was not in
Maximilian’s calculations.
Friedrich had nevertheless first to be given the opportunity to sub-
mit, if only to placate the elector of Saxony, who even after the defeat