The Revolt Defeated 217Even after this initial success Bucquoy did not want to risk an imme-
diate attack, leading to yet another fierce dispute with Maximilian and
Tilly. Eventually he was persuaded to agree, not to a battle but to a major
skirmish, a probing manoeuvre so conducted that it could be broken
off if necessary, rather than a fully committed action which would lead
either to victory or defeat. This compromise also had a serious military
purpose, that of establishing the strength and depth of the Bohemian
positions as the basis for deciding whether, where and when to attack in
earnest.
This initial advance began around noon, led by an Imperialist force
on the right wing of the combined army, while Tilly’s men progressed
more slowly on the left, where the slope up to the ridge was steeper.
Major-general Maximilian Liechtenstein, the officer commanding the
Imperialist attack, reported that at first the Bohemians fought back so
bravely that his cavalry was repulsed with heavy casualties, among them
a number of aristocratic senior officers, but instead of breaking off the
action he decided to commit his reserves and renew the assault. Thurn,
in command of the Bohemian forces on this wing, duly deployed his
own cavalry reserve and an infantry regiment to meet the thrust, but
most of the men fired off their weapons uselessly at long range, and as
Thurn himself recorded, ‘then, without any good reason, turned...and
resorted to flight’.^33
The battle was by no means over, but this set-back, following the fail-
ure to prevent Tilly from crossing the stream earlier, meant that the
Bohemians had largely lost the advantages of their defensive position,
and most of their cannon had also been captured. The fleeing men
spread panic, and although some units, notably one led by Anhalt’s son,
fought bravely, others were only too willing to quit the field at the first
opportunity. As with most battles of this period, and indeed much later,
as the duke of Wellington noted after Waterloo, the precise course of
events is difficult to reconstruct with any certainty, but the whole action
lasted little more than an hour and a half, by which time the remnants
of the Bohemian army were hastening back to the sheltering walls of
Prague as fast as they could go.
Afterwards Anhalt blamed almost everything except himself. ‘Not the
king of Bohemia nor the army commanders’ were responsible for the
Bohemian collapse, he insisted, ‘and still less was it due to the special
courage or skill at arms of the opponents. The main cause was the more
than shameful cowardice and unnecessary flight of the soldiery, both
cavalry and infantry.’ However he was probably right in identifying the
poor morale of his troops as the principal difference between the two