yless time.

CHAPTER I.

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.--THE ARMY.

The opposition between the interests of the house of Hapsburg and of
the German nation, and between the old and new faith, led to a bloody
catastrophe. If any one should inquire how such a war could rage
through a whole generation, and so fearfully exhaust a powerful people,
he will receive this striking answer, that the war was so long and
terrible, because none of the contending parties were able to carry it
out on a great and decisive scale.

The largest armies in the Thirty years' war did not exceed in strength
one corps of a modern army. Tilly considered forty thousand men the
greatest number of troops that a general could wish to have. It was
only occasionally that an army reached that strength; almost all the
great battles were fought by smaller bodies of men. Numerous were the
detachments, and very great were the losses by skirmishes, illnesses,
and desertion. As there was no regular system for maintaining the
strength of the army, its effective amount fluctuated in a remarkable
way. Once, indeed, Wallenstein united a larger force under his
command--according to some accounts a hundred thousand men--but they
did not form one army, nay, they were hardly in any military
connection, for the undisciplined bands with which, in 1629, he subdued
the German territories of the Emperor, were dispersed over half
Germany. Such large masses of soldiers appeared to all parties as a
terrible venture; they could not, in fact, be kept under control, and
after that, no general commanded more than half that number.[1]

An army in order of battle was considered as a movable fortress, the
central point of which was the General himself, who ruled all the
details; he had to survey the ground and every position, and every
attack was directed by him. Adjutantcies and staff service were hardly
established. It was part of the strategy to keep the army together in
masses, to defend the ranks by earth works, and not to allow horse or
man to be out of observation and control. In marching also, the army
was kept close together in narrow quarters, generally within the space
of a camp; from this arose commissariat difficulties, the high-roads
were bad, often almost impassable, the conveyance of provisions
compulsory, and always ill-regulated: and worst of all, the army was
attended by an intense baggage-train, which, with the