258 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
Subsequent developments were even more disappointing for
Christian. Although his own recruitment progressed rapidly most of the
other members of the Circle were slow to move and fell well short of pro-
viding their quotas of troops, and while the two dukes of Mecklenburg,
the largest territory, were keen participants their Estates were not and
refused to fund any recruitment whatsoever.^48 Nor was the expected sup-
port from England and the Dutch forthcoming, the former sending only
Mansfeld’s small army but not the promised additional 7000 men. Nev-
ertheless by the early summer Christian himself had 20,000 men in his
Lower Saxon Circle army ready for deployment.
Why Christian entered the war is a question which has not been, and
perhaps cannot be, satisfactorily answered, beyond noting that, as with
his namesake Christian of Brunswick and with Margrave Georg Friedrich
of Baden-Durlach, the main factors seem to have been either personal
or his personal interpretation of the circumstances. His own northerly
lands were the least affected by the presence of Tilly’s army, but he nev-
ertheless viewed supposed Habsburg aspirations to universal monarchy
and the counter-Reformationary ambitions of Emperor Ferdinand II as
significant and direct threats to Denmark, an opinion which his council
consistently refuted and rejected whenever he put it to them. On a more
personal note he was equally convinced that Ferdinand had ambitions
to recover for Catholicism and as appanages for his offspring the sec-
ularised north German bishoprics into which Christian had succeeded
in placing his own children. In principle he may well have been right
about this, but the prospects at the time of Ferdinand achieving it were
remote.
Christian was likewise worried by the threat from Sweden, and this
met with a little more sympathy although by no means full agree-
ment from his council. He was particularly alarmed by the prospect of
Gustavus Adolphus leading a successful intervention in Germany, and
then, with his reputation further enhanced and a very large army at his
disposal, possibly backed by the Dutch navy, turning on Denmark. For
Christian, leading the intervention himself was one way of precluding
that possibility. On the personal level this concern may have extended
to a wish to reassert both himself and his country in the face of upstart
Swedish successes and growing international recognition, particularly in
the aftermath of the humiliating climb-down over Sound tolls and other
disputed issues in mid-1624.
These concerns seem to have stemmed less from reality than from the
personality of ‘the parochial and slightly paranoid Danish monarch’,
as he is called in one modern study.^49 Nevertheless they led to his