180 Wallenstein
with reasonable certainty to have said, and even more upon what he
actually did, the picture becomes sharper.^3
After Lützen Wallenstein did not remain long in Leipzig, or indeed in
Saxony. Seeking winter quarters for his battered army in hostile territory,
and with Arnim, Lüneburg and Bernhard of Weimar still at large, no
longer seemed feasible. Security was necessary to allow for rebuilding,
and this was only to be found in Bohemia, albeit this meant wintering
again in the Habsburg hereditary lands, much to the dismay of the court.
His army withdrew, and Wallenstein himself went to Prague. There he
wrote a letter of condolence to Pappenheim’s widow, and a few days later
he sent her a significant sum of money to tide her over, ‘as we are not
unaware that in current circumstances the lady is unable to get anything
from her lands’.^4 He also distributed generous rewards to officers and
men who had acquitted themselves well at Lützen, together with pay-
ments to the wounded. There were those, however, who had conducted
themselves differently. The unexpected appearance of the Swedes had
not allowed some to prepare themselves mentally for battle, the shifting
fortunes of the day had misled others into thinking at various times that
the battle was lost, and the unusually prolonged fighting had frayed the
nerves of still others. There had been deserters, some of them officers,
even a colonel. One captain fled so far that he met Pappenheim’s men
on the march towards Lützen, telling them that the battle was lost and
advising them to head back to Halle as fast as they could. Some of the
runaways had taken their entire units with them, although Wallenstein
blamed the officers, ‘for if they had stood their ground then the troopers
would also have remembered their duty’. Military justice had to follow,
‘for just as the good are rewarded, so must the bad be punished’.^5
The result was the so-called Prague blood tribunal, arising from which
twelve officers and five other ranks were executed, while some thirty
junior officers who had prudently disappeared and evaded capture were
sentenced to death in their absence. Some historians have presented
this as Wallenstein seeking scapegoats for his failure to achieve a clear
victory at Lützen, as well as claiming that this turned many of his
officers against him, but this is improbable.^6 Holk was responsible for
the process, a large and widely drawn bench of judges carried out the
court-martial, and the evidence was carefully examined over a period
of three weeks. Some of those who had been suspected initially were
cleared without being brought to trial, others were acquitted, and one
was sentenced only to a dishonourable discharge, but for the proven
deserters, and particularly those who not only fled but first robbed their
own army’s baggage train, military law prescribed death.