n the Elector soon detached the
free cities from the Union; and the princes quickly followed their
example. Fortunate in preserving their own dominions, they abandoned
the Elector, their former chief, to the Emperor's mercy, renounced the
Union, and vowed never to revive it again.

But while thus ingloriously the German princes deserted the unfortunate
Frederick, and while Bohemia, Silesia, and Moravia submitted to the
Emperor, a single man, a soldier of fortune, whose only treasure was his
sword, Ernest Count Mansfeld, dared, in the Bohemian town of Pilsen, to
defy the whole power of Austria. Left without assistance after the
battle of Prague by the Elector, to whose service he had devoted
himself, and even uncertain whether Frederick would thank him for his
perseverance, he alone for some time held out against the imperialists,
till the garrison, mutinying for want of pay, sold the town to the
Emperor. Undismayed by this reverse, he immediately commenced new
levies in the Upper Palatinate, and enlisted the disbanded troops of the
Union. A new army of 20,000 men was soon assembled under his banners,
the more formidable to the provinces which might be the object of its
attack, because it must subsist by plunder. Uncertain where this swarm
might light, the neighbouring bishops trembled for their rich
possessions, which offered a tempting prey to its ravages. But, pressed
by the Duke of Bavaria, who now entered the Upper Palatinate, Mansfeld
was compelled to retire. Eluding, by a successful stratagem, the
Bavarian general, Tilly, who was in pursuit of him, he suddenly appeared
in the Lower Palatinate, and there wreaked upon the bishoprics of the
Rhine the severities he had designed for those of Franconia. While the
imperial and Bavarian allies thus overran Bohemia, the Spanish general,
Spinola, had penetrated with a numerous army from the Netherlands into
the Lower Palatinate, which, however, the pacification of Ulm permitted
the Union to defend. But their measures were so badly concerted, that
one place after another fell into the hands of the Spaniards; and at
last, when the Union broke up, the greater part of the country was in
the possession of Spain. The Spanish general, Corduba, who commanded
these troops after the recall of Spinola, hastily raised the siege of
Frankenthal, when Mansfeld entered the Lower Palatinate. But instead of
driving the Spaniards out of this province, he hastened across the Rhine
to secure fo