827. Go, Captain, Greet the Danish King
(Hamlet)
The Dessau bridge
Wallenstein’s appointment as Imperial general had come too late for
matters to be concluded in 1625, when a conjunction of his and Tilly’s
forces might have driven the isolated Christian back to Denmark and out
of the war. Instead they united in time only for the armies to spend the
winter skirmishing, looting the countryside, and eating the peasantry out
of house and home, rather than achieving anything of military signi-
ficance. Meanwhile Christian was involved in two contradictory nego-
tiations, one taking place in Brunswick, where peace with the emperor
was discussed, and the other in The Hague, where attempts were made
to widen the anti-Habsburg coalition in order to continue the war.
The peace conference was the first of many occasions upon which
Wallenstein favoured a realistic approach in order to achieve a peace
settlement, but the hard-line Imperialist position was determined in
Vienna and Munich, and no progress was made. Matters stood little bet-
ter for Christian in The Hague as most of his prospective allies did not
participate, even though they realised that Wallenstein’s new army com-
pletely altered the balance, and that if as a result Christian were defeated
or withdrew from the war their interests would be seriously threatened.
However England and the Dutch Republic agreed to provide him with
money, Mansfeld’s army was despatched to Lower Saxony, and contacts
were re-established with Bethlen Gabor. The other Christian, the ‘mad
Halberstädter’, also reappeared on the scene, albeit with a makeshift
army of limited military value, while another German prince, Duke
Johann Ernst of Weimar, contributed troops to the revived coalition.
There were predictable tensions between the leaders of these diverse
forces, at least partly as a result of which their grand plan was based on