From Bohemia to the Thirty Years War 241In spring 1621, back home and still aged only 21, Christian volun-
teered to raise an army for Friedrich and his Dutch paymasters, although
for reasons which seem to have been primarily personal. He was cer-
tainly firmly Protestant, although more to the point ostentatiously
anti-Catholic, but he was probably more attracted by the opportunity
to make a name for himself as a general. Several disastrous years later
he wrote apologetically to his mother: ‘As for having a passion for war,
I must confess that I do, that I was born with it, and that I shall have it
to my dying day.’^21 His behaviour confirms the truth of that statement,
and his self-image is indicated by his conduct when his arm was badly
wounded in the Netherlands in 1622. He reportedly had the amputation
accompanied by a fanfare of trumpets, and he then despatched a mes-
senger to tell the Spanish general Spinola that although he had lost one
arm he still had a second, following this up by striking himself a medal
with the mottoaltera restat, ‘the other remains’.^22
Christian himself offered two explanations for his involvement, writ-
ing to his uncle, King Christian IV of Denmark, in early 1622 that he
‘wanted to undertake knightly service on behalf of the king of Bohemia,
and to show myself as a young cavalier’, but later telling his mother, in
the letter quoted above, ‘that it was for no other reason than the great
affection which I had for the queen of Bohemia’.^23 This was Friedrich’s
wife Elizabeth, who was the daughter of James I of England and also
Christian’s cousin, as their mothers were both sisters of the king of
Denmark. The ‘great affection’ was ostensibly chivalrous rather than
amorous, and it is said that Christian wore one of Elizabeth’s gloves
in his hat as though at a medieval joust while riding out on cam-
paign under a banner inscribed ‘For God and for her’. True or not, the
glove story was reported in the near-contemporary German press and
many times subsequently, while the English press noted that ‘Count
Mansfelt...with the Duke of Brunswick...have a considerable army on
foot for the Lady Elizabeth...the Queen of Boheme, who is called for
her winning Princely comportment the Queen of Hearts’. Elizabeth her-
self wrote to a friend that ‘a worthie cosen germain of mine, the duc
Cristian of Brunswic.... hath ingaged himself onelie for my sake in our
quarell’.^24 Less chivalrous are reports of Christian’s obscene and scato-
logical outbursts about various of hisb“etes noiresamong the princes of
the day, including James I, among the mildest being his description
of the Archduchess Isabella as an old hag.^25 Contemporaries labelled
Christian ‘the mad Halberstädter’, and it is not difficult to see why.
Whether Christian had any serious religious, political or personal aims
beneath this cloak of romantic fantasy can only be guessed, as there