The Winter King and Queen of Snow

by

Gerald Watts

Contents

Map of the 1618

Part One The Marriage of Thames and Rhine, December 1612 - January 1614

Part Two A Habsburg Plans his Succession, March 1616 - September 1617

Part Three A Rebellion in , March - June 1618

Part Four Failure of Negotiations, Preparations for War, June - October 1618

Part Five The Conflict Spreads, April - October 1619

Part Six The Bohemian Campaign, November 1619 - August 1620

Part Seven A Decisive Battle, September - November 1620

Part Eight The Aftermath and the Beginning of a New Phase, April - July 1621

Biographical Details of Major Figures

Part One

December 1612 - January 1614

The Marriage of Thames and Rhine

Frederick, Elector of the Palatinate, marries Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of the King of England, and they move to .

The Betrothal

27 December, 1612. Banqueting House, Whitehall, London. Frederick of the Palatinate is betrothed to Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of King James and Queen Anne.

At the betrothal, giggling. The solemn vows translated so poorly into French and spoken by Sir Thomas Lake as if he were chewing a mouthful of beef. The young couple have to break their gaze and clench their teeth.

Sixteen years old, they make their Christian vows standing on an infidel carpet. He in purple velvet laced with gold. She in black satin sewn with silver. And in her light brown hair a little plume of feathers, dove-white, debonair.

What does it signify, this plume? Virginity? Or is it a gesture of defiance to her absent mother who thinks him handsome and polite but lacking in stature? 'He handles a fork,' she says, 'as deftly as any Frenchman. But a crown would make him taller.'

Or is the plume about their passion for the hunt, a tracking sign between the two? Her feathers flicker through the crowd like the flash of a departing doe. In London, within a week, the price doubles. So many plumes. As if all the birds of peace had been plucked to satisfy the fashion.

Frederick and Elizabeth Betrothed

The Eve of the Wedding

13 February, 1613. The River Thames near Whitehall, London.

Before the wedding, fireworks and a mock naval battle. The forces of St George against the Turks, enemies of Christ and Christendom. The Royal party watches from Whitehall. Large crowds cheer from banks and bridges as galleys are boarded, Turkish colours struck. The Thames glows with gunpowder and torches.

The clever talk is of love. One courtier, bolder than he ought, says the betrothed are like fireworks and that tomorrow night they will surely light each other, being so well-matched. He speaks the truth. Masques, plays and games are their delight but their bodies are hard packed with youth and they can smell each other's sulphur.

Meanwhile, on cold, uneven water, a war of slapping canvas, leaping ropes. Two boats come together sharply; a sailor loses both his hands. Sparks from too much saltpetre blinds another. Pretence and reality collide. There are casualties. The lovers applaud, hearing the cannon but not the cries.

The Wedding

14 February 1613. Whitehall Palace Chapel, London.

The marriage of Thames and Rhine. Her dress is a shoreline of silver, sleeves pebbled with diamonds and pearls. Her fair hair flows over her shoulders and the jewels fixed in her hair shine like sunlight playing on water . She is the day to his dark night of curls on this feast day of St. Valentine.

Or so the poets write. The occasion inspires them. Their quills are dipped in honey. To them the bride and groom are birds, stars, creatures of myth, Fortune's favoured pair. They burnish their words, shine them like trumpets, ring them like bells. They offer and answer their own question: Does this mark a new age of chivalry?

A different question from the rhymsters of the gutter. How could such a fleshy-nosed, droopy-eyed, lolly-tongued, shit-a-bed King have sired such a beautiful daughter? The Spanish ambassador moves forward like a dark-sailed skiff, his sword a rudder. He is thinking of his next despatch., For bloodlines are like rivers and marriages change maps.

The Wedding Procession

The Day After

15 February 2013. Whitehall Palace, London.

Ladies in waiting breathless and flustered. The bed still warm. Stains still damp upon the mattress. The King arrives and everybody bows, as royalty requires smallness in others. He eyes the bed. His big tongue protruding from his mouth like a fat eel from a thin crevice.

He takes his son-in-law aside, asks questions about locks and keys and whether doors were fully opened. Frederick blushes, mumbles a reply. No court guide indexed this indignity. Hands hard with rings pat his back, pat his backside. Fingers pinch his thighs. His flesh is dough; the King a common cook.

That afternoon from a Banqueting House window, Elizabeth watches her husband exercise a fine, high-stepping horse. He rides well, holding an easy bridle even as he makes the filly sweat. He's showing off his rhythm in the saddle. The ladies garland her with compliments. Even her mother is impressed.

She is a wife, complete as God intended. Two become one remain two. She's read the similes: mortar and pestle, bow and arrow, pair of compasses. She knows her womb will now grow hot, loosen, begin to wander unless his cold seed dowses its fire, moors it up for childbirth. Her sex aches. She blows him a kiss.

King James I of England and VI of Scotland

James I of England and his wife Queen Anne of Denmark

Departure and Transit

28 April - 7 June 1613. Frederick and Elizabeth travel from London to Heidelberg, Lower Palatinate.

A barge from Greenwich; from Margate a warship, The Prince Royal, a fleet of smaller ships sailing in its wake. Forty-nine servants, a chaplain, a monkey for court jester, dogs and parrots for play, her collections of gold-fringed neck crepes, of combs and dolls, a crossbow inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

They land at Flushing, oars beating to the sound of trumpets, and, her choice, go on foot to greet the crowds. Gracious, glowing, she is an Anglican Princess with a German, French-speaking husband among Calvinist, republican Dutch. Maurice Count of Nassau presses her hand, How many English soldiers might she be worth?

Three weeks later they are on the Rhine. A special ship. Fortune figures the stern, the bows crowned by a thick-maned lion. The river becomes his. Over thirty barges and four thousand men tell him so. But the plague has spilled out like floodwater fish. They are waved on, the smell of vinegar rising from jetties.

They are infected by love. Each succumbs to the other. Whence can come the harm? The fever is not just in their coupling but in sleeping and waking up so warm. She calls him Jason, Apollo. She is Helen, Diana. They play act Ovid's odes. Their lutist sings of the sun and the moon, and how they command harvests and tides.

In Heidelberg from 7th June 2013. Heidelberg, on the River Neckar, Lower Palatinate.

Over the seven-arched, roof-covered bridge, under three ornamental arches, through speeches, cheers and gun salutes, up to the great red castle in a red-lined coach. The music of harness and hoof. The juice of presented fruit drips down her chin. He smiles, tells her there is meat and wine to come.

A fourth arch in the castle courtyard appears as massive, wall-high masonry but is canvas stretched hard over wood and painted cleverly. It is gone in a week. Heidelberg settles back to the pace of the River Neckar, the Palatinate to the rhythms of work on grain and grape, sheep and timber.

Frederick sits in the Council Chamber surrounded by men with paunches and grey beards. The same who served his father loyally (though they did not staunch the flow of wine into his throat). They discuss the security of the Rhine, and the seven bastion citadel being constructed at Mannheim.

His tutor, Tilenus, had told him 'Charlemagne casts both shade and shadow.' It's true. Electorates, Landgraviates, Archbishoprics, Margaviates, Duchies, Free Cities and hundreds more estates sit within the bounds of that inheritance, enjoying rights and liberties but oath-bound to Imperial command.

The Holy Roman Emperor prays in Latin. Some Empire Protestants have formed a Union, the Palatinate its cornerstone. The council's oak-frame table is covered with vellum and paper, penmanship as fine as any brushwork, the signatures of rulers and advisors written in full title, sealed with wax.

Heidelberg in the Early 17th Century

Pregnancy and Childbirth

June 1613 - January 1614. Heidelberg, Lower Palatinate.

She dances and hunts; kills a stag from the saddle; laughs when her monkey snatches someone's hat; lets her servants slack but keeps her dressmakers busy. Her retinue swells itself with drink. Von Schonberg, her factotum, balls his fists and tells his wife the Electress does not think beyond tomorrow. Her parrots make more sense.

He plans a cull; draws up a list: the pie-handed, backstairs fumblers, the braggarts, the moist-mouthed, red-lipped tale-tellers. She demurs. 'Not her. She is so pretty. And he is such a wit. Will you leave me no English friends, Colonel?' Her smiles are like confetti. He puffs his cheeks, refuses to rescind.

He writes her a set of instructions, costumes them up as advice. 'Your purse, Electress, is too easily opened by tears.' ' Dresses you wear but claim not to like must yet be paid for.' And so on. She laughs and tells him she is pregnant. He watches her gallop, a hare leaping madly in front of her horse. What sort of woman?

An easy labour, red candles at her feet to ensure a happy birth. Her dogs are jealous. They whimper. The monkey bares his teeth. Elizabeth call for peppermint and violets. She does not like the smell. They name him Frederick Henry. In London and Edinburgh there are bonfires and bells. Praise is her due but motherhood is dull.

Historical Notes

Part One

The Betrothal

Frederick was Frederick V of the Palatinate (also known as the Palatine). He was a member of the Wittlesbach family, one of the oldest and most prestigious noble families in Europe. His territories consisted of two separate areas. The first was the Lower or Rhenish Palatinate, a fertile, prosperous region situated on the confluence of the Rivers Rhine and Neckar in what is now western . Its population was some 600,000 at this time. Its capital was Heidelberg.

The second area was the Upper Palatinate. This was a much poorer, hilly area with a severe climate (nicknamed the German Siberia today) in what is now east Bavaria. Its capital was Amberg.

Elizabeth Stuart was the second child of James VI of Scotland (born 1566) who also became James I of England on the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603.

Introduction: This Banqueting House at Whitehall was destroyed by fire in 1619. James commissioned a replacement from the architect Inigo Jones which still stands.

Verse 1, lines 3-4. Frederick and Elizabeth were both fluent French speakers and this was the language in which they talked to each other. Sir Thomas Lake (born 1567) was a favourite of James I who acted as his travelling secretary and had been appointed both Secretary of the Latin Tongue and Keeper of the Records. The ridicule that followed his poor pronunciation of French did not prevent him becoming Secretary of State in January 1616..

Verse 2, line 3. Infidel carpet - a Turkish carpet

Verse 3, line 3. Elizabeth's mother, Queen Anne (born 1574), was the daughter of Frederick II, King of Denmark and Norway. She did not approve the match and did not attend the betrothal. The excuse given was an attack of gout.

line 6. Though used by the wealthy in Italy as early as the 1300s, forks were not widely used even there until the 16th Century. Their use spread slowly from Italy to Spain and France and then further north. Most of Europe did not adopt the fork until the 18th Century. Frederick had been educated in France.

The Eve of the Wedding

Between their betrothal and marriage Frederick and Elizabeth rode, hunted, went on boating trips, sat for their portraits and watched numerous plays including several by the King's Men, William Shakespeare's company.

Verse 1. King James was not known for lavish expenditure but is estimated to have spent £5,000 or more on the fireworks and pageant on the river. This was a huge sum of money. Contemporaries judged the entertainments to be magnificent.

The Wedding

The marriage was extremely popular. Frederick was affectionately known in Britain as The Palsgrave (though Queen Anne called her daughter 'Goody Palsgrave' as a calculated insult regarding the status of her husband).

The ceremony itself was splendid and well-orchestrated. Elizabeth's route to the Chapel was made deliberately long so that as many people could see her as possible.

Verse 1, line 4. Long hair hanging loose was a sign of virginity at this time. After marriage a woman would usually cover her hair in public. Elizabeth also wore a golden coronet set with diamonds and pearls.

Verse 2. Hundreds of verses celebrating the marriage of 'Beauty's mirror, fair Elizabeth' were written. The most famous of these epithalamiums (odes written to celebrate a marriage) is that written by John Donne (born 1572). In the poem he describes the bride and groom as phoenixes:

'Two phoenixes, whose joined breasts Are unto one another mutual nests, Whose motion kindles such fires, as shall give Young phoenixes, and yet the old shall live. Whose love and courage never shall decline, But make the whole year through, they day, O Valentine.'

and, later:

'And by the act of these two phoenixes Nature again restored is For since these two are two no more There's but one phoenix still, as was before.'

King James commissioned a masque (a play) for the wedding from Thomas Campion which was performed at Banqueting House. This masque, the Lord's Masque, illustrates the official line on the marriage: 'How the beautiful bride answers her handsome husband! How full of divine grace she is! She has her father's features. She, the future parent of male offspring, the parent of Kings, generals. British strength is added to German strength. Could anything be the equal of this?' The Day After

Verse 1, lines 6-8. King James is reputed to have a tongue too large for his mouth, which protruded when he spoke and caused him to slobber

Verse 2. King James did ask prurient questions of his new son-in-law but whether he indulged in the physical touching that was sometimes part of his behaviour with other handsome young men is more doubtful.

Verse 4. This verse expresses beliefs commonly held at the time. Women were thought to have powerful sexual urges which, once awakened, had to be controlled by regular intercourse within marriage. The uterus was believed to move about ('an animal within an animal') and this movement was thought to be the cause of health problems in women. This is the theory behind the idea of hysteria: that a variety of symptoms of illness occurring in women were the result of the womb pressing on nerves, arteries and other organs.

One of the metaphors, that of a pair of compasses, was made famous by John Donne in his poem A Valediction Forbidding Mourning:

'If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do.'

If Izaak Walton's Life of Donne is accurate in this matter, this poem was written in 1611 or 1612 before work took Donne to mainland Europe and away from his wife, Anne. However it was not published in a collection until 1633. At that time many poems were passed privately among the nobility so there is a chance Elizabeth may have seen or heard it.

That evening the lawyers of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn presented a masque written by George Chapman, with sets and costumes designed by Inigo Jones. It was a great success. As the performers and other gentlemen processed up Fleet Street they were followed by boys dressed as baboons, decorated chariots carrying musicians and a group of Native American Indians.

There were more masques on later days, one by Sir Francis Bacon called The Marriage of Thames and Rhine.

The Journey

Verse 1. A book called The Winter Queen by Josephine Ross was used extensively for all the poems in Part One. She mentions all the items on this list except the crossbow. However, Elizabeth was a keen huntress and skilled in the use of this weapon. While staying at , during this journey to Heidelberg, she personally shot three stags during one hunt.

Verse 2, lines 4-6. Frederick was Calvinist. Most Protestant rulers of sizeable states or kingdoms in Europe at this time were Lutheran; the Kings of Denmark and and the Elector of for example.

Verse 2, line 7. The House of Nassau/Orange was the most powerful family in the United Provinces (or Republic of the Seven United Netherlands). The United Provinces was a group of seven Protestant states in the north of the Netherlands which had declared independence from Spain in 1581. The largest and wealthiest province was Holland. The major political centre was The Hague and the centre of commerce and culture was .

Since 1568 the United Provinces had been fighting to preserve their political independence and religious freedom from Spain, a Catholic country. With both sides exhausted by 1609, a Twelve Years Truce had been declared. The events that follow in this series of poems were all played out with the end of this period of truce, 1621, looming large in people's minds.

Verse 3, lines 2-3. A specially designed and lavishly decorated ship had been prepared for this part of the journey. It featured a crowned lion was on the bows and the figure of Fortune on the stern. The idea of Fortune was very important to the culture of this period. Fortuna was the Roman goddess of luck, both good and bad. She was often depicted veiled or blind. The Wheel of Fortune, an idea also originating in Roman times, was a very popular metaphor in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. It is an image which appears extensively in Chaucer, for example in The Monk's Tale:

'And thus does Fortune's wheel turn treacherously And out of happiness bring men to sorrow.'

Shakespeare uses it too. For example in King Lear the Earl of Kent says:

'Fortune, good night, smile once more; turn thy wheel!'

Verse 4. Frederick liked dressing up. When ruling in Heidelberg he attended tournaments dressed as historical or mythical figures such as the Roman general Scipio Africanus, the conqueror of Carthage, or Jason of the Argonauts who stole the Golden Fleece, or Arminius, the German chieftain who defeated the Roman legions. As Peter Wilson explains in Europe's Tragedy, his one volume history of The Thirty Years War published by Penguin, these figures were often chosen with anti- Habsburg symbolism in mind. For example, the Habsburg's highest chivalric order had the Golden Fleece as its symbol. Wilson describes the Heidelberg Court as a 'fantasy bubble'.

Heidelberg

Court ceremonies and spectacles were major instruments of social and political control. Such events were devised to deliver a propaganda message for the dynasty, individuals or city involved. Some were massive projects involving careful planning, artistic creativity, complex logistics, intricate schedules and thorough rehearsals. These festivals and processions were usually prepared by experienced, professional Masters of Ceremonies and were recorded in detail, with accounts distributed internally and to other courts, and kept for posterity. These Festival Books were sometimes printed beforehand as a sort of 'press pack' and were especially common in the Holy Roman Empire.

Verses 1 and 2. Temporary triumphal arches had become a standard of court festivals throughout Europe by the 16th Century. They were especially used in entry processions. Large wooden frames were covered with silk cloth and painted to look like decorated stone arches. The artistry was so skilful that the friezes, balustrades, coats of arms, alcoves with statues, and figures in allegorical scenes looked three dimensional. Some of these arches were very large and the best looked made of marble.

A book of essays edited by J.R. Mulryne called Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Art, Politics and Performance (Ashgate, 2002) gives more on this subject with illustrations.

Verse 3, lines 4-5. Frederick's father, Frederick IV, died in 1610, aged 36, an alcoholic.

line 8. This was the fortress of Fredericksburg in Mannheim. Frederick's father had begun its construction in 1606. He had also turned Frankenthal into a fortress. Rulers throughout Europe were strengthening fortifications in this period. This is partly a reflection of virtually continuous political and religious tensions and partly because the high walls of medieval castles were now too vulnerable to artillery. Engineers were designing thick, low, angled walls which would withstand or even deflect cannon fire. This was known as trace italienne. It was very expensive to build forts in this style and even more so to use it to protect whole cities.

Verse 4. Charlemagne was King of the Franks who was crowned Emperor by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day 800, notionally reviving the Western Roman Empire.

This title evolved into that of Holy Roman Emperor. Institutions and principles grew up around the Emperor and became known as the Holy Roman Empire, a term first used in the 13th Century. Some procedures were established by the Golden Bull of 1356 but the constitution of the Empire was complex and defied codification, even after the introduction of an Imperial Diet, Imperial Chamber Court and the Imperial Circles, (ten administrative districts), in the late 15th and early 16th Centuries. (The name was officially changed to The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in 1512.)

The Holy Roman Empire never developed into a single political state. It remained an elective monarchy composed of hundreds of principalities, duchies, free imperial cities and other territories with differing relationships to the Emperor. There were even free villages and free knights. There were also church lands, abbeys and prince- bishoprics.

Some domains were compact, others widely scattered. Some princes, the Elector of Brandenburg for example, ruled lands that were situated both inside and outside the Empire. As Electors, the rulers of Brandenburg swore allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor, as Dukes of Prussia they swore homage to the Kings of Poland.

Verse 5. The of the 16th Century split the religious unity of Christendom and gave rise to Protestant religions. This threatened what political cohesion the Holy Roman Empire still possessed. At the Peace of Augsburg, 1555, it was decided to follow a principle of 'cuius regio, eius religio' or 'whose realm, his religion'. This meant a prince could enforce his faith upon his lands. As C.V. Wedgwood says in her 1938 history of The Thirty Years War, 'This extraordinary compromise saved the theory of religious unity for each state while destroying it for the Empire.'

Verse 5, lines 3-4. The was a coalition of Protestant states in the Holy Roman Empire. It was set up by Frederick's father in 1608 in response to the Emperor Rudolph II and Maximilian, the Duke of Bavaria, restoring Catholicism to Donauworth, a city in Swabia, and to the Imperial Diet deciding that church land appropriated by Protestants between 1552 and the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 should be handed back.

The Union was never as strong a coalition as Frederick and his advisors hoped or supposed it to be. Some important Protestant rulers, such as the Lutheran Elector of Saxony, never joined. In addition there was widespread mistrust between the Lutheran and Calvinist religions, which sometimes turned into outright hostility.

The description of lines 4-8 tries to suggest this weakness by echoing the description of the fourth ceremonial arch.

Pregnancy

Verse 1, line 6. Colonel Meinhard von Schonberg, generally known as Monsieur Schomberg, was Frederick's steward. Ross quotes him as writing: 'Madame allows herself to be led by anyone. This makes some of her attendants take upon themselves more authority than they should.'. The English courtiers and attendants associated with Elizabeth became unpopular in Heidelberg because of their number (over 100) and their behaviour (poor). Their numbers were cut.

Verse 4, line 1. Placing red candles at the feet of women in labour was widespread practice in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Doing so was thought to ease the birth. Whether someone would have done this for an Anglican Princess living in the Rhineland is less certain. (The role of midwife in this period is interesting. It is touched on by Marry Wiesner in her book Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe and by Mary Lindemann in Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe. Both these books are part of the New Approaches to European History series by Cambridge University Press.)

Verse 4. The date of Frederick Henry's birth was Sunday 2nd January 1614. One of his godparents was Maurice of Nassau who gave the baby boy a crystal ship as a Christening gift.

Part Two

March 1616 - September 1617

A Habsburg Plans his Succession

Archduke Ferdinand of the Austrian branch of the plans his succession to become King of Bohemia, King of Hungary and Holy Roman Emperor.

Mourning

March 1616. Archducal Palace, Graz, Styria, . Archduke Ferdinand prays for the soul of his recently deceased wife.

Prayer follows prayer like one candle lit from the wick of another. Soft tongued flames and voices. The chapel walls are draped in black. The sweet pepper- breath of incense smarts eyes and nose. The Archduke pinches away tears. The Jesuit, Martin Becanus, quotes the words of St. John Chrysostom: 'Not by weeping but by prayer and almsgiving are the dead relieved.'

But the Archduke's eyes are thirsty. Every day they draw water from the well of his grief. Is his wife in purgatory or have the masses sung for her soul already opened the Gates of Paradise? She died in peace. No groan, no cry of fear. Her pale lips parted in a sigh. Now his knees ache terribly, swollen bladder tender as a bruise. Still he does not rise, offering his pain to God for her redemption.

His first hunt since her death. The ritual of coat, gloves, boots and spurs. He looks better on a horse: his farmer's cheeks in sunlight, tall as other men, belly held by leather. Outside the Schlossberg's gates a crowd of poor, many known to him by sight, some by name. He tightens rein, reaches for his purse but the beggar-chief holds out a moneyed palm, offers six small clipped coins of copper. 'To purchase prayers for your dear Duchess.'

At night he addresses his empty bed. 'Your faults were few, beloved. Your sins were surely small. God blessed us with healthy children. You were my consort and companion.' His words ease the pressure in his chest. He breathes deep, notices the brazier smells of apple wood, sees patterns in the linen. One day he might better bear his sorrow, carry her lightly, like a second shadow

The Archduke Ferdinand

Decision Making

July 1616. Archduke Ferdinand, Graz, Styria, Inner Austria.

No decision without prayer. But two masses a day and still orders are rare. The Chief Minister, Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg, is unwell. The Archduke visits frequently, taking only a few guards, a page, a secretary, a cake from the pantry, or bunch of lavender, vervain in a pouch. 'They will think I'm your Doctor,' he says. 'and that I bleed you too much.'

Blue-eyed, a sweep of russet hair above, the Archduke dresses in the Spanish style: dark doublet, unslashed sleeves, wide white ruff. A costume of restraint, of duty, regal piety, early nights, abstention from wine. Better suited to a thinner, sterner-looking man with darker beard. Yet the well-travelled, like von Eggenberg, recognise the long nose and hanging jaw that mark the dynasty of Habsburg.

The minister rises from his bed coughing. The page is sent for orange water. The secretary, nervous of the sick man's sweat. reaches long, fingertips the papers. Good news from Gradisca where the beleaguered garrison holds on, their Venetian besiegers dying of disease. Letters from Lutheran noblemen aggrieved their sons are being denied access to court, promotion to state offices.

'God does not favour heretics and neither do I,' says the Archduke. 'Loyalty to God and Prince is not a text that can be read in different ways.' Von Eggenberg, born Lutheran, a convert for career's sake, says he agrees. The Archduke smiles, calls him old friend, assures him humours will balance, fever will out. He seems such an amiable hound but no one takes a bone from his mouth.

Count Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg

A Play

Late May 1617. Archduke Ferdinand, the Jesuit college, Graz, Styria, Inner Austria.

The students bow low and long as if to hide their real faces, by last lines and applause returned to them. The Archduke smiles. He liked their clever play. In a city ruled by men of second rank, a woman of inspiring beauty is forced to dress in black and wear an ugly hat whose brim falls far beneath her pretty nose. The other citizens, being plain themselves, are pleased. End of first act.

Second: next they cover flowers, statues, paintings until everything is drab and grey. But God sends down a glorious rainbow and, having grown unused to beauty, all are struck blind. Except the woman who re-appears in all her glory and takes her place upon a splendid throne. The sense is clear. It mocks the wickedness of those who whitewash churches, destroy shrines, disfigure saints: the Dutch, the Scots, the Swiss.

He congratulates the Jesuit teachers, recalls his happy years at Ingolstadt, in a college similar to this, assures them of further endowment. This part over, he takes Becanus to one side. They stroll colonnades, through pools of light and dark. 'I am concluding a treaty,' he confides, 'with the King of Spain. Would it be in any sense a sin to keep its terms secret?' The reply: 'God knows some plays are for private audience.'

The Treaty

Early June 1617. Schlossberg, the Archducal palace, Graz, Inner Austria.

Baked perch and carp, boiled Danube sturgeon, grilled eels on paper, veal sausages seasoned with fennel seeds, dumplings, venison in juniper marinade, wild boar with cumin, cloves and nutmeg, peacock, roast pheasant, black pepper for added heat, vinegar for cold, rice from Lombardy, chicory, asparagus, purslane, cress, lettuce dressed with walnut oil, purple carrot pudding, finest Queen Bread rolls, oranges, cherries, plums, raisins, sugar loaves, part-rotted medlars, baked quince served with cheese, candied coriander, ginger, lemon peel.

Guest of honour is Count Onate, the King of Spain's ambassador. Five months of correspondence to get his feet from and his lips around a malmsey glass in Graz. The abstemious Archduke sprinkles cinnamon on his chocolate and listens to von Eggenberg's subtle rhetoric. 'Any policy of compromise weakens our position, strengthens the heretic.'

Matthias, the Holy Roman Emperor, is sixty, gout-ridden and depressed. His hair comes out in the comb. His young wife, Anna, first cousin, cannot bring a child to term. Their wedding present crib, so beautifully carved, lies empty as her womb. She eats her sorrow, creates a foetus of fat, a gut-packed curve that serves as decoy, buys time to narrow divisions between men of different faiths before naming Ferdinand successor.

The House of Habsburg has two branches as its eagle has two heads. It faces west against rebel Dutch, the House of Orange, English privateers, ambitious kings of France. East against the Turk. The treaty gives Spain land in Northern Italy and in Alsace. In return King Philip will not make claim to the Bohemian or Hungarian thrones or Imperial title. This leaves the way for Archduke Ferdinand to make them all his own. Matthias signs the treaty, knowing only half. Inigo Velez de Guevara, Count of Onate

A Concert

September 1617. Schlossberg, Graz, Styria, Inner Austria. Archduke Ferdinand has been elected King of Bohemia by its largely Protestant Estates.

Had Noah been a musician? And Lot. And others whom God had chosen to save? Prayers need intercession but if ever, thinks the Archduke, God listened directly to the sounds of men it would be at moments like these: violins and cornetts carrying the melody, harpsichord and bass viol improvising a basso continuo, boys singing Monteverdi madrigals.

A man in need of harmonies, he marvels at the lucidity of soaring notes, compliments the players during intervals in their native Italian. His sons tell a joke being chanted in the fencing hall at school. 'Swiss for soldiers, Dutchmen for sailors, English for drunkards, Flemish for tailors, Spanish for horsemen, Venetians for musicians, French for dancing masters, Jews for crucifixion, Slavs to guard the border, Turks for slaughter.'

He hears his dead wife's voice in the dulcian. He still feels her in his chest, an extra rib. He is now a king. How fine to call her queen. But an elected king, required to sign the Letter of Majesty guaranteeing the rights of Utraquists, Lutherans, Calvinists. He ordered the pen to be burned. The Letter is not a law. It requires him to apply the law. And he would. A true Prince was one who made the law his instrument.

Historical Notes

Part Two

Mourning

Archduke Ferdinand was married to Maria Anna of Bavaria who died on 8th March 1616. They had seven children, two of whom, the first two born, died in infancy.

Verse 1, line 7. Martin Becanus (born 1563, died 1624) was a Flemish Jesuit priest who became Archduke Ferdinand's confessor. A prolific writer, he taught theology at Wurzburg, Mainz and Vienna.

line 8. St. John Chrysostom (c. 349 - 407) was an ascetic and hermit forced by ill-health to return to society. He became a famous preacher at the Golden Church in Antioch, whose ruins lie near the modern city of Antakya in Turkey. Later he became Archbishop of Constantinople in which capacity he tried to reform the clergy. One of the Fathers of the Early Church, he was canonised not long after his death.

Verse 2, lines 6-7. The manner of someone's death was thought to give an indication of how their soul would progress thereafter. Dying angry, delirious or in torment might indicate that the person was aware of demons coming for their soul. Someone dying peacefully was thought to be in the presence of angels and therefore destined for heaven or at least a short time in Purgatory.

Verse 3, line 1. According to C.V. Wedgwood, Archduke Ferdinand hunted three or four times a week.

line 6. Archduke Ferdinand had an amiable, charitable disposition. He did know some of the city's beggars by sight and even by name. (C.V. Wedgwood again.)

Decision Making

Verse 1, line 3. Born in Graz in 1568, von Eggenberg was educated at the famous Protestant University at Tubingen, near Stuttgart in southern Germany. There he was a contemporary of the astronomer . He travelled widely before returning to Graz to administer the family estates and to enter the service of Archduke Ferdinand.

line 8. Vervain is another term for verbena, a plant then believed to have healing properties. Vervain in a pouch was said to cure headaches.

Verse 2, line 9. The Habsburgs suffered from a genetic disorder, prognathism, in which the lower jaw outgrows the upper. This gives the chin an elongated appearance. It has come to be known as 'the Habsburg jaw' or 'Habsburg chin' and has come to symbolise the inbreeding among members of that family line.

Verse 3, lines 5-7. The , of which the seige of Gradisca was the main event, took place on the northern coastline of the between 1615 and 1617. Archduke Ferdinand was encouraging Uskok pirates, operating from their fortress port of Senj, to interfere with Venetian shipping. The Venetians fought back and besieged Gadisca. They were helped by Dutch forces and English volunteers. By late 1616, concerned about events in Germany and wishing to negotiate with Spain to secure his succession as Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand abandoned the and negotiated a peace settlement.

Verse 4, line 5-6. Raised a Lutheran, von Eggenberg was obliged to convert to Catholicism to serve in Ferdinand's court. He is an example of the increasingly limited career prospects open to Protestant families in Inner Austria under Ferdinand's rule. In fact, von Eggenberg went on to support the Counter- Reformation policies of the Archduke, serving him faithfully until his death in 1634. Ferdinand had great faith in von Eggenberg's judgement and, it is said, hardly made a decision without consulting him. Von Eggenberg was rewarded for his service with the highest honours.

line 8. There was a widespread theory that the human body was filled with four basic substances which needed to be in balance for a person to remain healthy. This theory of the Four Humours may pre-date the Ancient Greeks but was popularised by Hippocrates and Galen and lasted for some 2,000 years. The four humors were black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. The theory did lead to some strange ideas, for example that brain matter, bone marrow and semen were basically the same substance.

A Play

The plot of this play was invented for this poem. Jesuit theatrical productions were major cultural events in many places.

Verse 2, lines 9-10. Members of several protestant faiths, notably the followers of Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin, believed statues and other religious images were idolatrous. In many parts of Europe such artefacts were removed from churches and public places by Protestant religious or civil authorities or were destroyed in iconoclastic riots. (Iconoclasm - the practice of destroying religious images.) These riots occurred in cities such as Zurich, Geneva, Munster, Copenhagen and La Rochelle. Iconoclasm was also widespread in the 1550s and 1560s throughout Scotland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Northern France.

Verse 3, line 2. Ferdinand was educated by Jesuits. The University of Ingolstadt was an institution that vigorously defended the Catholic church during and after the Reformation.

The Treaty

The House of Habsburg had two branches, Spanish and Austrian. The senior branch was the Spanish one. The Oñate treaty of 29 July 1617 was a secret treaty between these two branches.

Archduke Ferdinand traded land in exchange for an assurance from Philip III, the King of Spain, that he, Ferdinand, would be allowed to contend for the thrones of Bohemia and Hungary uncontested by any other Habsburg. Once Ferdinand had possession of those titles he would be the only strong candidate to succeed his childless cousin, Emperor Matthias, as Holy Roman Emperor.

The lands granted to the King of Spain were strategically important as they consolidated the 'Spanish Road', a string of territories that ran from Upper Italy, through Alsace and the Free County of Burgundy to the Spanish Netherlands. This was the major Spanish supply route in their war against the Dutch, a war due to be resumed in 1621.

Verse 1. Early Modern Europeans ate a very wide range of animals and plants, ranging from hedgehog, heron and beaver tail, porpoises and sea urchins, to sorrel, hop shoots and marigolds. They believed what someone ate affected their abilities and character, for example eating rabbit made one timid, eating testicles developed virility. 'Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are,' was one saying. 'Der Mensch ist was er isst,' was another. (This idea lives on today, of course,: 'You are what you eat.'.)

The temperature of a foodstuff was thought significant. Lettuce, for example, was thought useful to cool an overheated sex drive. Adding 'hot' chicory to a salad could offset the cool of the lettuce. A food's dryness or moistness was also important in helping to balance the four humours of the body.

There was heavy use of spices in dishes as well as sweet and sour sauces, vinegar, and brightly coloured ingredients. Cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger and pepper were used extensively by the those who could afford them. ('As dear as pepper,' was a common saying at the time.) Increasingly, perfumes, rosewater and orange water were also used in cooking. Early modern Europeans believed that aromas and essences passed rapidly through the skin.

The subject is well covered by Ken Albala in his book Food in Early Modern Europe by Greenwood Press.

Verse 2, line 6. Ferdinand seldom drank alcohol.

lines 9-10 The Emperor's Chief Minister, Cardinal Klesl, was pursuing a policy of 'composition'. He was trying to strengthen the power of the Holy Roman Emperor through reviving Imperial justice and by finding a framework to prevent confessional divisions from undermining imperial authority.

Klesl wanted the question of the imperial succession put on hold until some form of binding arrangement with Protestant princes and Estates had been put in place. This was seen as working against the interests of Archduke Ferdinand who was impatient to be named successor and loath to see any compromise with Protestants.

Klesl himself had been a leading exponent of the Counter-Reformation, so his policies were viewed with suspicion on both sides of the confessional divide.

Verse 3, line 3. Archduchess Anna of Tyrol, daughter of Matthias' uncle, married Matthias in December 1611. She was 26 years old; he was 54.

line 5. The crib was a present from the seven Imperial Electors, an unsubtle hint that producing a son and heir would calm worries and reduce speculation about the imperial succession.

line 8. There were persistent rumours that Anna was pregnant. These rumours may have been initiated by Anna's rapid gain in weight. It's also quite possible the Cardinal Klesl, the Emperor's Chief Minister, encouraged, or even started, these rumours in order to buy time while he and the Emperor furthered their policy of composition.

Verse 4, line 11. Public documents, shown to Emperor Matthias and agreed by him, stated Philip III's renunciation of claims to the thrones of Bohemia and Hungary. They did not include the undertaking by Ferdinand to give Spain the Austrian parts of Alsace and an enclave on the River Rhine. These lands were not Ferdinand's to give. He had not yet inherited them from his cousin Archduke Maximilian.

A Concert

Verse 1, line 3. Strictly speaking intercession is saying prayers on behalf of others. Used here, the word means the intercession of saints. This means that, instead of praying directly to God, a person prays to the Virgin Mary or to a saint asking them to intercede with God on their behalf. It was a major part of the doctrine of the Christian church before the Reformation and continued in the Catholic church. Protestants varied in their attitudes. Some such as William Tyndale condemned the invocation of saints. Others, such as Martin Luther, were more ambivalent.

line 7. A cornett was an early wind instruments, typically a conical wooden pipe covered in leather with finger holes and a mouthpiece of ivory or horn. They were usually about 60 centimetres long and some were curved at the bottom.

line 8. Viols were a family of string instruments. They first appeared in Spain in the 15th Century. Bass viols resemble cellos but have a flat back and sloped shoulders, different shaped holes and six or seven strings. The bass viol is played with the bow held underhand, that is to say palm up.

line 9. A basso continuo is an improvised accompaniment in the Baroque period of music, 1600 -1750, providing its harmonic structure.

line 10. Claudio Monteverdi (1567 - 1643) was a brilliant Italian musician, singer and composer. He composed nine books of madrigals - secular songs written for several voice parts. By the early 17th Century madrigals were usually accompanied, whereas before they had usually been a cappella vocal compositions.

Verse 2, line 4. As with many well educated people at this time, both men and women, Ferdinand spoke several languages: German, Italian, French and Spanish. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 1519 -1556, famously said: 'I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse.', though this quote has almost certainly been tidied up from something less pithy but along the same lines.

Verse 2, lines 6 -10. This nasty rhyme was written for this poem. It attempts to express some of the national steroptypes and racism common at the time.

Verse 3, line 1 The dulcian was a Renaissance woodwind intrument, the forerunner of the bassoon. Usually made of maple, it had a double reed at the end of a thing metal tube inserted into the top of the bore.

line 3. By now Ferdinand had been elected King of Bohemia by the Bohemian Estates. His predecessor on the throne, Emperor Matthias, allowed him to succeed even though he was still alive.

line 5. The Letter of Majesty was a document signed by the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II in 1609. It was a concession forced on him by the Bohemian Estates. The Letter of Majesty guaranteed religious toleration to both Protestants and Catholics throughout Bohemia. The Estates demanded that Ferdinand formally agreed to abide by the Letter of Majesty when he became king-elect. Ferdinand did so but seems to have had no intention of keeping his promise.

line 6. Utraquists were a sub-group of Prostestant Hussites, the followers of Jan Hus, the leading figure of the Bohemian Reformation of the early 15th Century. Utraquists believed in receiving the Eucharist in both kinds, i.e. both the bread and the wine.

Part Three

March - June 1618

A Rebellion in Bohemia

Protestant noblemen defy their new king and instigate a rebellion.

Assembly and Petition

March, 1618. , . The Assembly of Estates meets to discuss the actions of the Regents of their new King, Archduke Ferdinand.

Winter, then Lent. People are hungry. Farmers, villagers, villeins stare at the soil, at the sky. The sun is weak. The moon is grey and small. Saturn is fiery while Mars is pale. Near Jankau a travelling journeyman sees a woman milking an adder. The same day, hailstones from a cloudless sky. Further East, two foresters tapping silver birch find the sap runs red as blood. Not far from Gitschin a sparrow breaks the wing of a chasing hawk which, as it falls, screams the name 'Beelzebub'.

In Prague, within the city walls but outside the red-roofed citadel, Protestant noblemen assemble. The Estates: part-meeting, part-demonstration. Shouting, singing, prayers, speeches, calls to order. A half-built church at Klostergrab has been marked for demolition. At Braunau burghers have been arrested. To build a place of worship on crown land is their right but many sites and forests have been given over to the Roman church. An Imperial sleight of hand.

Calm and clever, Count Schlick advises caution. 'We must challenge only in a court of law. Not risk reprisals, the status of our sons.' The greater part are won over by Count Thurn. 'Cases move through courts like wagons through mud. There is no virtue in delay.' They all suspect the Emperor is dying, that the edicts imposing censorship and bolstering the power of Regents are the work of their newly-elected King. Archduke Ferdinand, friend of Pope and Bishop who burnt ten thousand books before the gates of Graz

Unembarrassed by his halting Czech, Count Thurn speaks on. Eyes proud, voice strong, beard splendid. A former Colonel, he makes battlefield gestures, talks of no surrender. It's easy to forget his Bohemian rank was bought with spousal gold. The Defensors, guardians of The Letter of Majesty, must assert themselves, protect ancient laws, repulse attempts to bring back Popery. They send threats disguised as a Petition, swear to reconvene in May and head homeward, bearing salty city gossip, cudgels of ham.

Prague in the 17th Century

A Secret Meeting and a Decision

Evening of 22nd May 1618. Albrecht Jan Smiricky's mansion, Prague, Bohemia.

Words spin round the turret chamber walls. A turbulence of voices. Men caught in the current of their own anger. Spittle- flecked mouths. Ears that hear only the torrent of their own tongue's utterings. The oaths and threats of proud men under pressure. The Regents forbid assembly. The Emperor rejects the petition, is vague about discussion. What now? A hand slams stone. Thick-fingered fists curl around the hilts of swords. Their coats of arms dispense the law, pay taxes, raise men, fight Turks. Why should Papist Habsburg Regents dictate terms?

The turret men are few. Hand-picked by Thurn. Many burghers are keeping low. Count Schlick, the constitutionalist, has warned ' Regents hold office by royal edict. 'Defensors are self-appointed.' But Thurn prefers dice to chess. He claims Martinitz and Slavata, the leading Regents, plan to make arrests. 'Compromise,' he says, 'will leave us weak. We must take action. Tomorrow, let us go to Castle Hradschin, where The Letter of Majesty was won, and throw them out the window, as is the custom.'

Defenestration

Morning of 23rd May 1618. Castle Hradschin, Prague.

Eight o'clock. The hour is rung. Dull echoes in the cool, damp air. The bell sounds tired, as if Time is a burden, even for iron. The great cathedral, with its ranks of spear-point buttresses, its serrated towers and massive, sloping roof, looms over Prague's long bridges and narrow streets. A fortress of faith. The architecture of men's minds. With greetings, handshakes, glances, Count Thurn and his co-conspirators prime their plans. The Captain of the Castle has been suborned, confused in his loyalties to God, Pope, King and clan. Entry and exit are assured. Some city councillors, half-in-the-know, join the small crowd. A hymn is sung. 'We ask for God's blessing. What we do, we do in His name.' Another man says: 'And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way.' A third: ' I hear behind me a great voice as of a trumpet.' Someone imitates the blowing of a horn. There is laughter. The hunt is on. They set off along the street.

Four Regents and a secretary stand in the Hall of Chancellory. The room is cold. They rub their hands, keep on their cloaks. As they are not quorate, the meeting can be held informally. 'Is it too much to hope that the first item of business is allocating funds to heat this Castle?' asks Count Slavata. 'Easy to discuss. Hard to achieve,' replies Count Martinitz. Philipp Fabricius, the secretary, waits patiently, arms full of documents, a pouch of quills and ink. To serve great men is an honour and a privilege. The Regents are determined that the ban on the assembly of Estates will be enforced. They aim to blunt the edge of protest by burying it in legal sand. The new King has told them:' I am the law and the law is your friend.' But today, festival matters. Tomorrow they celebrate the Feast of the Ascension when Christ rose from Earth to Heaven. Let Protestants mark the day with dreary sermons. Their procession will show Christ sitting on a cloud, Glory in the sky.

Passing outer walls into the Castle square, the sky-framed tower acts as compass point. Count Schlick and like-minded colleagues are here, on time, just before the hour. Thurn's intent unknown to them, they are surprised to see matchlocks. Thurn does not stop for pleasantries. Schlick must fall in behind. The doors are reached. Guards told to step aside. And they are in, taking the narrow staircase almost at a run. Hard-heeled boots smack down like hooves on stone. A sword tip scrapes cement. No one speaks. Their minds are rapt with forward movement. A few more strides, a pair of doors, the handles wrenched and through, spilling out into the high-windowed room like hounds from kennels, full of bark and drool. They form a ring, surround the startled men. Two timid Regents cower. Fabricius clutches paper. Martinitz and Slavata, wide-eyed with fear and anger, protest at the armed intrusion. Thurn orders silence. The timing now is delicate. For reputation, for all that follows next, the stage management must be correct.

To rebel is to disrupt the natural order, to disobey the laws of God and Man. But if cloaked well enough in terms of ritual, the act may be obscured. A declaration is read aloud, condemning the Regents for plotting against the Estates, for wilfully giving the Emperor bad advice. 'It is you who dictate the letters against us. Admit your part! Acknowledge your complicity!' Two Regents deny any hand in framing documents. They are ushered away. But Martinitz and Slavata remain defiant. 'You have no authority to lay this charge or make arrest.' 'Arrest you?' replies Thurn. 'No, not us.' He gives the signal to his friends. The men are seized, a window opened wide. Cold air touching skin induces terror. They know now how this scene will end. Woodcut images from the history books at school. Defenestration. The throw. The fall. Martinitz begs to speak to a confessor, to die otherwise is to risk the fires of Hell.

His captors are incensed. 'No prying priests,' they shout. 'No gaudy, bauble rosaries.' 'Die and take your guilty Papist conscience with you to your grave.' They lift him off his feet and hurl him out. He screams 'Blessed Mary, save me, save me!' as he falls. Slavata is next. Terrified, he pleads for mercy, arches his back, struggles against gripping hands, tries to wedge himself against the window frame. Schlick, appalled, shouts for the men to stop. 'No good will come of this!' he cries. He is ignored. Thurn wants to force a point of no return. The weakness of men like Schlick, hidden behind masks of erudition and mannered dignity, cost him a castle. He wants it back. Slavata is now outside, clinging to the ledge. Two blows from a sword hilt and he is gone. They start dragging Fabricius across the floor. 'A secretary. I'm just a secretary. No one of importance. Spare me! For the love of God, spare me!' 'Unimportant? Then you will not be missed.' Paper flutters as he is thrown out head first.

Back-slapping laughter, like students whose difficult practical joke has been well-executed. Several look down. What unnatural shapes will bodies take after such a fall, from three high stories into a deep ditch? Would limbs separate? They lean out of the window. They want to see for themselves, details to remember. And are amazed. Martinitz is moving, sliding down the ditch towards Slavata. 'By God,' says one, 'his Mary has helped him.' Groans and feeble hand movements indicate Slavata, too, is alive. Most remarkably, Fabricius is actually on his feet. 'Shoot them,' orders Thurn. The men with matchlocks, cord already lit, rush to the window, take aim. In the stinking ditch, full of rotting waste and muck from the stables, Martinitz shouts up at Fabricius, 'Go. Run. You must escape. Bear witness to the Emperor.' He puts his arms around Slavata and pulls. Musket balls butt into the earth. They crawl away. Slavata's broken pelvis grinds. He hobbles on his fractured legs, thanking God for miracles.

.

The Defenestration of Prague

Polyxena Lobkowitz

9.25 a.m. 23rd May 1618. Palace of Count Lobkowitz, Prague.

Fists thumping at the door. Her heart as fierce and loud within her chest. 'Open up! You are harbouring traitors. Open up!' She stares at the bolts, shut fast by her own hand. Her body trembles as they jump and rattle in their slots. The door shudders. Groans of pain come from the room she had been sitting in a short while before. Count Slavata, carried in on a ladder, his legs incorrectly angled, smelling like a farmyard dog. Count Martinitz, dishevelled, bleeding from his hip, dripping water from his boots. She looks at the floor, thinks how clean it was, how pristine her morning. 'You must allow us entry, by order of the Estates.' All her life the rumbling thunder of men's voices breaking up her day. She had always known herself modest, no need for stories of Jezebel, Lot or Delilah, references to the disobedience of Eve. 'Open up or we will fire the lock.' Her husband, the Chancellor, is away. The staff behind her are silent. 'We will ignore them,' she says. 'One set of dirty boots is enough.'

Polyxena von Lobkowitz

Attributed to Roland de Mois

A Dream

Evening,. 23rd May 161. Count Slavata, Palace of Count Lobkowitz, Prague.

Even gripping the bed frame cannot stop him falling. He is an avalanche of limbs, a waxless Icarus, a dropping nut, a stone down a well, a dying bird. His cloak sprouts wings. He flaps them hard but plummets all the same. The air is cold. The fall goes on forever. The anticipation of impact voids his stomach but leaves him feeling sick. Someone gently tilts his head back, wipes his mouth, pours in more burning wine. A woman's voice is whispering. Perhaps the Blessed Virgin; perhaps his wife.

Wilhelm Slavata

Jaraslov Martinitz

A Supplication

Evening,. 23rd May 1618, Countess Slavata, Residence of Count Thurn, Prague

As the door closes she feels her sense of shame gone, like a draught excluded. Face to face only her desperation remains. 'Forgive me for calling on you so late.' She had braced herself for scornful scrutiny: the wealthy heiress come without earrings or pearls to beg a Lutheran lady for her husband's life, a diamond bribe hidden in her purse. But no. The Countess Thurn seems only sad. There is no triumph in her eyes. Broken by this unexpected sympathy, she lets the tears flow, falls forward to her knees.

A hand on her shoulder. A long lace cuff brushes her linen cap, her standing collar. 'I will do what I can. It may not be much. A wife, as you know, has no power and little influence. All I ask is a promise that you will do the same for me when the time comes.' The women clasp hands and part. The Countess Thurn stays by the window, watches the sky turn dark. Had not Johannes Kepler, the imperial astrologer, predicted trouble in May? Were they all no more than Fortune's fools?

Expulsion and Recruitment

Saturday 9th June 1618. Prague

Cassocked, cinctured Jesuits are escorted out the city gates. They seem like humble men but Thurn is not fooled. They are wolves in wool. Black chambers lie hidden in the cellars of their seminaries. Satan is the master of imposture, Rome the well-spring of hypocrisy. 'They call themselves soldiers of God,' he says. 'But they are merely a rat's nest of spies.' He rides back to the Castle. His entourage: a bugler, a drummer, four musketeers, two dragoons ahead to clear a path.

This is recruitment. A living broadsheet promising poor and hungry men a sash over a fed stomach, boots, a ribboned hat, paid work with pike or gun. The Emperor's Chancellor, Klesl, has opened the way to discussion. He seems to have accepted the Apologia issued by the Estates. Ferdinand is silent. Is he, too, tempted to concede that zealous Regents made mistakes? All sides to keep their honour by sharing half-a-lie? Martinitz and Slavata to remain in exile in Vienna?

Schlick has warned, 'Honour is like a net. If any man or group of men pulls too hard the knots tighten for all the rest.' As if they were a parcel of fishermen! Every noble coat of arms was first carved by sword point and by sword point is preserved. Honour requires armour. When he was Castellan of Karlstadt, the royal regalia had shone in his strong room: plum-stone rubies in golden fleur-de-lys. The new king deprived him of the post. An army, a victory, and he would get it back again.

Count Matthias Thurn

Historical Notes

Part Three

Assembly and Petition

Verse 1, line 4. Astrology was a well-established part of the culture of the time. There was a certain logic behind the idea. If the sun decided the seasons and the moon determined the tides, why should other celestial bodies such as the stars and planets not affect conditions on earth? Most doctors would not consider themselves well qualified, or be considered so by their patients, if they were not knowledgeable astrologists. There was no clear dividing line between astrology and science. The two great astronomers of this period, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, both served as court astrologer to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II. Although Kepler called astrology 'astronomy's silly little daughter', he also wrote:

'The soul of the newly born baby is marked for life by the pattern of the stars at the moment it comes into the world, unconsciously remembers it, and remains sensitive to the return of configurations of a similar kind.' Kepler, Harmonics Mundi, chapter 7

Kepler was famous for the accuracy of his work as a 'calendar maker', predicting events, and for his horoscopes such as that for General Wallenstein. The birth horoscopes of notable figures were printed and analysed at length, Martin Luther's for example.

line 5. A Wikipedia entry describes journeymen well and is adapted here. A journeyman was an individual who had completed an apprenticeship was fully educated in a trade or craft, but was not yet a master. To become a master, a journeyman had to submit a master work piece (hence 'masterpiece') to a guild for evaluation. If successful, he was then admitted to the guild a master. Sometimes, a journeyman was required to accomplish a three-year trip. Carrying his qualification papers and tools, he would broaden his experience - and look for an opening - working for various masters. These were his journeyman years.

line 6. The belief in witchcraft, both maleficia and white magic, was very common and ran from the very top of society. King James I of England might have written a far-sighted pamphlet on the ill effects of smoking tobacco but he was also convinced of the existence of witches. So, too, was the Lutheran king of Denmark, Christian IV, and the Catholic Duke of Bavaria, Maximilian. The 16th and 17th Centuries in Europe were remarkable for the number, spread and viciousness of witch trials. Some 90,000 people, mostly women, were prosecuted. (Witch craze and witch hunt are modern phrases.) A good book on this subject is The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe by Brian P. Levack published by Pearson Education.

Carrying the head of a viper which had been strangled with a crimson lace was thought to cure angina.

line 12. Satan, which means 'the adversary', was the name most commonly used name for the Devil as this time. Lucifer, though the Roman name for the morning star and not found in the Bible, was sometimes used, especially for referring to the Devil before the Fall. Beelzebub, originally the name of a Philistine god, was strictly speaking one of the Devil's chief demons but the name was also sometimes used to refer to the Devil.

Verse 2, line 4. Bohemia had a Diet or Assembly in which the nobility and leading citizens had representation. This Assembly had a long tradition and, unusually, the monarch was elected by the Estates of this Assembly. This election tended to be a foregone conclusion as a member of Austrian Habsburg dynasty had ruled Bohemia since 1526.

lines 6 - 8. Klostergrab and Braunau were test cases for Bohemian Protestants. On instructions from Ferdinand, the Catholic Regents were exercising their powers to reduce the power, influence and wealth of the Protestant faiths, a policy known as Counter-Reformation.

Verse 3, line 1. Count Joachim Andreas von Schlick (born 1569), a Lutheran nobleman of ancient family, had been Rector of the University of Jena and an educator of Lutheran Princes in Saxony. He had been a leading figure in the confrontation between the Bohemian nobility and Emperor Rudolph II in 1609 which led to The Letter of Majesty. Wedgwood describes him as intelligent, honourable, peace-loving and brave, with a good sense of humour but no great desire to lead.

line 4. Count Matthias Thurn (born 1567) had been educated in Italy before serving the Holy Roman Emperor as diplomat and soldier. The Emperor rewarded him for his service with the office of Castellan of Karlstein Castle in central Bohemia. His marriage to an extremely wealthy woman brought him large estates in Croatia and other places. In 1605 he bought a lordship which enabled him to join the Estates as a Bohemian nobleman.

Verse 4, line 1. Thurn spoke Czech poorly. However, the common language of the was German and the business of the Assembly may well have been conducted in German.

A Secret Meeting and a Decision

Verse 2, line 8. It is not clear whether arrests were being planned or not but the Emperor's letter forbidding the Estates from re-convening suggested a collision course.

line 10. Castle Hradschin () is the largest medieval castle complex in the world and dates back from the 9th Century. It had been rebuilt in the Gothic style in the 14th Century and reconstructed again in the late 15th Century. After a fire in 1541 new buildings were added in a Renaissance style. Emperor Rudolph II built the northern wing to the palace which included the fine 'Spanish Hall'. The Castle is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

lines 10 -12. These are supposed to be Count Thurn's actual words. The plan was highly symbolic. Firstly, in 1609 the Bohemian protestant noblemen had forced their way into Castle Hradschin to persuade Emperor Rudolph to grant the Letter of Majesty. And, secondly, the Hussite rebellion had started in 1419 with a judge, a burgomeister and 13 councillors being thrown out a window of Prague Town Hall.

Defenestration

This poem reconstructs the event from detailed accounts, both contemporary and historical, which are based on the recollections of those involved.

Verse 1, line 12. The Captain of the Castle was Divis Cernin of Chudenice, a Catholic. His actions illustrate the fact that the conflict was not just about religious freedoms. The rebels, their supporters and allies believed that they were defending ancient Czech and German liberties against a potentially tyrannical House of Habsburg.

lines 19- 20. The Book of Exodus, chapter 13, verse 21.

lines 21 - 22 The Revelations of St. John, chapter 1, verse 10.

Verse 2, line 3. It was a cold room and they were wearing cloaks, a fact that some have suggested affected the results of the defenestration, slowing their rate of fall.

line 8. Count Vilem Slavata, (born 1572) was a Czech nobleman from an ancient family. He converted to Catholicism in 1597 and, like many converts, became a passionate exponent of his new faith. He had been Castellan of Karlstein Castle before Count Thurn. He had supported the coronation of Ferdinand and had urged him not to sign the Letter of Majesty. He was one of ten Regents, Ferdinand's main representatives in Prague.

line 8. Count Jaroslav Martinitz (born 1582) was a Catholic nobleman and Regent. He was the person Ferdinand had appointed as Castellan of Karlstein Castle to replace Count Thurn. (Being Castellan of Karlstein Castle was a great honour because its strong room contained the royal regalia, the crown jewels and ceremonial clothing of the King of Bohemia.)

Verse 5, lines 1-6 and 20 -24. These passages of dialogue are based on the words spoken.

lines 10-11. Count Schlick was in the room but, according to Wilson, seems to been ignorant of the plan to defenestrate the Regents and to have objected to it as it was happening.

Verse 6, line 11. This line is also words reputedly spoken at the time.

lines 19 - 20 Philip Fabricius (born 1570) was First Secretary of the Bohemian Court Chancery. He suffered only light injuries from the 21 metre fall. He managed to escape from Prague and travelled to Vienna disguised as a merchant. There Ferdinand, impressed by his courage and resourcefulnees, knighted him, giving him the title Baron von Hohenfall (Knight of Highfall).

Polyxena Lobkowitz

Polyxena's family house was a palace built in the second half of the 16th century by the Czech nobleman Jaroslav of Pernštejn. It was situated very close to Castle Hradschin. After Polyxena's marriage to Zdeněk Vojtěch, 1st Prince Lobkowicz (1568-1628), the house became known as the Lobkowicz Palace. It remains the only privately owned building in the Prague Castle complex.

Prince Lobkowitz, a Catholic, as was Polyxena, was Chancellor of Bohemia at this time.

Line 9. Slavata was seriously injured but survived. He was captured by the rebels but escaped to Saxony a year later.

Line 11. Martinitz had only slight injuries. He injured himself with the hilt of his sword as he slid down the ditch to help Slavata. He fled that night in disguise, making his way to Bavaria and then Vienna.

Lines 19 - 20. The status of women and their role in society at this time is a fascinating subject. Marry Wiesner gives a good overview in her book Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Men, typically, were very confused. One the one hand Jacques Cujos could write in 1606, 'A woman, properly speaking, is not a human being.' Yet a Lutheran Pastor said: 'A man without a wife is but half a person.'. The creation of Eve was recognised as God's last act, the one which finished his masterwork. The cult of the Virgin Mary, too, was widespread and very powerful. Yet Marian worship did little for women other than set up a ideal figure which was impossible for them to live up to.

Modesty (in all its forms) and obedience were prized in women above all other qualities.

Here are four facts to illustrate beliefs about and attitudes to women. Midwives in Germany were often rewarded with higher payment if the baby was a boy. There was no nomenclature for female sex organs. Sexual assault was categorised as a crime against the property of the father or the husband, that is to say the theft of an asset. There were seven recognised stages to a man's life and these were often referred to: infancy, boyhood, adolescence, young manhood, older manhood and old age. Women were never mentioned in the same way. Their lives tended to be described in three stages, all related to their marital or familial situation: virgin, wife and widow, or daughter, wife and mother. Whether in practice women allowed their actions and decisions to be so heavily restricted by their legal and social status is less certain. The story in this poem suggests otherwise. Furthermore, there were examples of women achieving remarkable things and their reputations must have been common knowledge throughout Europe, the great queen Elizabeth I of England for example.

Lines 20 -24. The rebels did not carry out their threat to enter the property by force. One source says Count Thurn himself was one of the men outside the door and that he soon went 'meekly' away.

A Dream

Line 10. Burnt wine was the common term for brandy. Brandy was believed to have medicinal properties. 'A glass of burnt wine every morning and you will never be ill.'

A Supplication

Verse 2, lines 1 - 2. The internet is a quick and useful resource for researching fashions through the ages. The general picture in Eastern Europe at this time is that fashionable bodices had high necklines with short wings at the shoulders. In addition to the standing collar, separate closed cartwheel ruffs were worn, supported by a small wire frame. Sleeves were long with deep cuffs to match the ruff.

lines 4 - 6. This is what the Countess Thurn is reported to have said. (C.V. Wedgwood, among others.)

Verse 2, line 10. In his annual calendar for 1618, Kepler had predicted that the month of May would 'bring great upheavals to the world'.

Expulsion and Recruitment

Verse 1. The Society of Jesus was founded in 1534 by Ignatius of Loyola, a nobleman with a military background. The Jesuits are sometimes referred to as 'the soldiers of God', perhaps because this phrase is used in their founding document. With less emphasis on prayer and a cloistered life than other monastic orders, the Jesuits were very active in education and as confessors and advisors to rulers. Disciplined and devout, the order served the Papacy very effectively and developed a special relationship with successive Pontiffs. They are credited with bringing large areas of Europe back to Catholicism after the Reformation, notably Poland and Lithuania.

Because of their international network of schools and their prominence in the courts of Catholic monarchs and princes, the Jesuits were reputed by Protestants to be master manipulators and schemers. The Jesuits did not have 'black chambers' in the cellars of their schools and colleges but this is the sort of story that was widely believed. Perhaps the simple, black priests' vestments which the Jesuits wore added to their reputation among Protestants for being sinister and ruthless.

Verse 2, line 1. The Directory, the self-appointed Protestant body now administering Bohemia, called up the militia in June. This was meant to be every tenth peasant and every eighth burgher but the call-up failed. The Directory did not trust Thurn's temperament enough to appoint him commander-in-chief of the army but did give him the task of recruiting a mercenary army. He raised only 4,000 by June and 12,000 by September - far too few to defend such a large country. (Source: Wilson)

line 7. The Bohemian rebels quickly set up an alternative government and began to recuit soldiers. But they also sent a document to the Emperor Matthias justifying their actions. By sending this letter to the Emperor they were deliberately by-passing their new King, Ferdinand.

In rehetoric an apologia is a vindication of a course of action. It is not an apology.

line 11. Count Slavata was probably still a captive in Prague at this time but the sense is that he would be sent into exile by the rebels as part of the price for compromise.

Verse 2, line 10 and Verse 3. All echelons of society, except the very lowest, were obsessed with honour and degree. A person's status and quality were endlessly discussed. It was vitally important for a nobleman to preserve and seek to increase his personal and familial honour. As Thomas Mowbray says in Shakespeare's Richard II, Act 1,Scene 1:

"Mine honor is my life; both grow in one. Take honor from me, and my life is done.”

More radical ideas concerning an individual's worth were slowly emerging, in part as a result of the Reformation. These ideas were developed further before and during the English Civil Wars of 1642-51. But most Europeans firmly believed in hierarchy and order based on birth. This attitude is well captured in the famous speech on degree by Ulysses in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.

Part Four

June - October 1618

Failure of Negotiation, Preparations for War

A negotiated settlement between Ferdinand, the King of Bohemia, and the Protestant rebels does not materialise. Both sides prepare for war.

The Feast of Corpus Christi

Thursday 7th June 1618. Graz, Styria, Inner Austria, Archduke Ferdinand attends the holy festival.

The Feast of Corpus Christi and the weather is fine. God's blessing on the celebrations. The city streets are full of worshippers. The procession moves from gates to square, from square to church. Tableaux vivants on wheeled platforms: Abraham and Isaac with altar and lamb; Moses with the tablets, the Golden Calf cast down; Mary praising God before an empty tomb; Christ in Judgement on the throne of Heaven.

Among the host of brown-robed monks and cassocked priests, the mitred Bishop walks in golden robes. A deacon dressed in red carries wine that's blood. Another, in resplendent white, bears a monstrance of silver, gold and glass which holds the Holy Eucharist. Archduke Ferdinand, his sons, daughters, councillors and officials follow on, unarmed, on foot, bareheaded and gloveless.

Outside the church, the Eucharist is blessed again and lifted high. Everyone kneels in wonder at the Host, Christ's flesh, His small, bright disc of sacrifice. The Archduke feels the Holy Spirit flood his veins. Sunlight for the soul. Which turns to heat. Christ shed His blood, gave His body to save the world. But apostates spurn the agony of the cross, deny His sacramental love.

Heretics. And, now, in Bohemia, rebels too. Foiled by the Blessed Virgin who sent angels to catch men in mid-air. True believers not allowed to fall. The sin of treason refused its triumph. God shows Mercy to the Righteous. Let the rebels send lies to the Emperor. These same men bowed the knee before him, swore the oath, kissed his hand. He is their king and will soon also be crowned in Hungary. Then he will respond.

The New Garden

Mid-July 1618. Hortus Palatinus, , Palatinate.

Orange blossom on the banks of the Rhine. One of many wonders, this explosion of white. Her guests are beguiled. Scent-struck, they are led along perfect gravel pathways, past low, geometric hedges, floral profusions. Their cheeks are kissed by spray from a grotto waterfall.

'If only,' remarks the young Electress, in bud again herself, 'there was a nearby nightingale to serenade us.' She smiles, slips a special key in the side of a small carving. The toy bird sings and flaps its wings. It is all delightful, though the monkey house and menagerie give off sharper cries and stronger smells.

As the party strolls its way back, Elisabeth pretends a conversation with a stern-faced statue of Frederick. ' You are working too hard, husband,' she tells him. She laughs but it's true. Busy, less time for play and passion, even his love-making has changed. He moves more intent on his own destination.

The gardens are large and level, a great red-stone terrace carved from the verdant hill that flanks the castle. In front, nothing but sky. The horizon a waist-high parapet. It is like being on the deck of a ship. Neptune looks on, nymph-laden, benign. Father Rhine reclines, naked, in a pool of his own.

Salamon de Caus, her former tutor, has brought Italy to the Palatine. A vision of harmony and order worthy of Augustan Rome. But hidden within he has placed secrets: strange patterns, occult symbols, clues in botanical code. Efforts to undo exile from Eden, discover in Nature the language of God.

The Hortus Palatinus

A Kidnap and De Facto Coup

20th July 1618. Cardinal Klesl, Chief-Minister to Matthias the Holy Roman Emperor and principle architect of the policy of compromise with Protestants within the Empire, is on the road from Vienna to Innsbruck.

Such a jolting! Every part of him limb-leaping as the coach wheels hit rut after rut. The mad jaw-judder rhythm of cobblestones. The door is locked, the windows closed. His jostling mind has nothing it can cling to. He is a puppet jerking in a box, all position lost. Not even his clothes are his own. Stripped of his purple robes, forced into a plain priest's gown that smells of another man's sweat.

Yesterday, calm eyes and kindly words. Archduke Ferdinand had held his gaze, called him 'wise', 'a good friend to all Habsburgs', agreed that force of arms would inflame the dispute in Bohemia, said 'Cardinal, let us continue our deliberations tomorrow, at the Hofburg.' How still the day had been, windows open to the sun. The smell of lavender and lilac. A plum from the garden. Everything purple.

But today, a series of hands and fists. The Papal nuncio palming him into his private coach. Soft-gloved servants opening doors half-seen. The rigid wrists and shining knuckles of guards smacking pikes upright as he passed. An outstretched arm as the Archduke's assistant steered him to a side-room where Colonel Dampierre stood waiting with his men. Sudden, grasping gauntlets, pressing thumbs. Rough capture.

No soft seats in this old coach. No salute from armed guards front and back. They were bouncing his bones into exile. A scapegoat. A dupe. Dampierrre's parting words come back to him. 'A message from the Archduke. It is no dispute in Bohemia. It is a rebellion.' He knows that. But the childless Emperor is sick. Now is the time to damp things down, not spread the sparks by stamping on the fire. Ferdinand puts at risk his own accession. Cardinal Melchior Klesl

Intervention by Proxy

Late-July 1618. Heidelberg Castle, Lower Palatinate.

Frederick's hand is on the map. His fingertips slide easily from bridge to bridge. His palms lie flat across the Bohmervald. Geography in two dimensions. By his elbow a glass of wine and a letter from Prague. These days he would rather news than food. A strange hunger, this appetite for intrigue.

Across the table an older man, small, sharp-eyed, with flame-red hair and beard of ginger-grey: Christian of Anhalt, the minister Frederick calls 'Mon Pere', fond admiration trumping protocol. Soldier-statesman and young protégée. Ambition mirrored. They see double glory when looking in each other's eye.

The map is edged with blazon shields, a brightly coloured bestiary of lions rampant, eagles wings unfurled, stags about to rut; a gaudy panoply of stripes and crosses, thick diagonals. Every corner loudly fortified. Castled dynasties. Anhalt knows them all, knows the chains of blood and debt that bind.

Knows, too, the lines of envy, the sites where hatred sits behind a moat. Savoy. Its Duke, Carlos Emmanuel, despises the House of Habsburg and has in his employ a mercenary army in need of work. Thurn lacks troops. His militia will not stand when face to face with Flemish pike. Anhalt's idea? Pay half for part command.

Christian of Anhalt-Bernburg

Preliminary Manoeuvres

Mid-August 1618. The Protestant Estates' military camp at Steinkirchen, South of Budweis, Bohemia.

Drum rolls from a water meadow dry enough for drill. Boots in the mud. The spit and ring of bugles. Notes of urgency on a summer's afternoon, enough to break the reapers' rhythm, to lift the wings of water birds, raise the heads of sleeping dogs. In the cart-track tavern commandeered for quarters, Count Thurn issues movement orders while, with drill-book, pegs and coloured flags, his Captains move shuffling, bristling blocks of pike into braced-leg battle formations.

The pike-tips waver and shiver like reeds. Militia men: thin-armed, nervous, with shiny helmets and tunics still undyed. His regulars block the roads to Budweis, Krumau and Pilsen from the south and west. Thurn can make the cities suffer but lacks the cannon to lay proper . To command is always to want more. He talks about tactics but thinks about money. Colonel Dampierre has insufficient force to break the cordon, Thurn not enough to drive him off. Both wait for mercenaries.

As his servant readies him for horseback - tightening doublet, buckling sword, arranging sash, fluffing up the feathers in his wide-brimmed hat - Thurn addresses aides and ensigns. 'War,' he says, 'is difficult. Most worthy enterprises are. But it promotes loyalty and steadfastness, provides opportunities to show courage, purges the weak, quietens those of restless spirit. It is the strongest test of faith.' Now they move on. Provisions here are running low, soldiers are falling sick. Theft, rumours of rape, and, when the wind is westerly, the whole town smells of human waste and badly-butchered meat.

A Pikeman In Drill Positions

Illustrations from Jacob de Gheyn's The Exercise of Arms

An Imperial Army in Bohemia

Late August 1618. Archduke Ferdinand, Vienna, Austria.

Like some monstrous sea-cow thrown ashore by a freakish wave, so the Empress Anna, enormously fat, swollen and blubbered with rage, had come at him. 'I see my husband is living too long for you,' she exclaimed. 'This is the thanks he gets for the two crowns he has given you. Where is Klesl? Where is the Chief Minister?' He waited long enough for her quivering chins to settle then bowed low, brushing the floor with his hat.

Where is Klesl? Staring at walls in Innsbruck. Meanwhile here, beside the Emperor's bed, doctors swirl and sniff and colour-check a flask of Imperial urine. Rancid, green-tinged. Cabalistic almanacs and astral charts are consulted; prayers said. Ferdinand remains in the capital, no guilt or shame at the de facto coup. Tacit agreement from Rome, approval from Spain, Count Onate at his elbow.

Today, a hawk on his hand. A well-trained peregrine which flies high and waits long. Its sudden stoop as ruthless as a blade, quicker than a gun. Decision and action as one. He delights in the bird, praises the falcon and the falconer. 'This creature. does not compromise its grip,' he says. Klesl had been trying to outmanoeuvre, to agree concessions while Matthias still drew breath. No sin in tricking such a fox.

Well-hung partridges for supper. The green sauce made from sorrel, garlic, parsley, vinegar and bread. Ferdinand is an attentive host. He jokes about his army in Bohemia. 'If Colonel Bucquoy fights on the battlefield as hard as he did before the council bargaining for his fee, victory will not be long in coming.' His guests laugh. But Bucquoy had impressed. Shag-haired, forceful, sly. Sometimes you need a falcon, sometimes a wolf.

Charles Bonaventure de Longueval, Count of Bucquoy

A Plea for Peace

October 1618. Baron Karel von Zierotin, a leading Moravian nobleman, before the Bohemian Estates General, Prague.

His voice cracks. At first a soft click in the rhythm of his Czech like an egg dropped on a table and fractured. Poetry begins to seep from prose. His audience stares, disconcerted. Righteous anger delivered in a tone of confident outrage was what they expected from a Moravian protestant dressed in sombre velvet. Especially from Zierotin, the most pious scholar, eminent statesman, proven patriot.

Small, white-haired, softly-spoken, his dignity and reputation had stood up with him. A leader of the Brethren. A man whose letters went to Basle and Geneva. Surely he would bring Moravia into active alliance; provide soldiers for the defence of Bohemia? But as he speaks, frailty, pessimism melancholy appear like holes in his immaculate cloth, like moths from his eloquent mouth.

'Burnt roofs, empty fields - the livestock driven off or slaughtered by the road. Weeping families too scared to go back home. Looted granaries left to rats and crows. Two dead preachers hanging from a tree. Corpses of the innocent piled up beside a wall. A few of the pitiful sights we saw on our journey here. Bucquoy and his Walloon mercenaries lay waste. They move like locusts. They show no purpose but to kill and steal. Accept mediation, I beseech you. Make peace your object. Think of your people. Armistice!'

And now his voice sounds like an old tree tearing at the roots. He tells them waging war is like pouring poison in a stream. 'It spreads! It spreads!' He implores them all to display wisdom and humility. He begins to weep. The assembled noblemen are shocked. Their forces have the upper hand so why make peace? Perhaps he is unwell. For who sheds tears for villagers? Or has he been bought off by Ferdinand? A pity he has lost the courage of his youth. Too many books, too many letters.

Karel von Zierotin

Historical Notes

Part Four

The Feast of Corpus Christi

The Feast of Corpus Christi was a Christian rite that took place each year on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, in the eighth week after Easter. The rite celebrated the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the consecrated bread and wine which represents the body and blood of Christ, (taken in remembrance as instructed by Jesus to his Disciples at The Last Supper).

The issue of whether the host and holy wine actually became the flesh and blood of Christ or whether they were merely symbols was one of key doctrinal differences between the Catholic and Protestant faiths. Catholics believed that the miracle of transubstantiation took place when a person received the Eucharist. The host and wine physically became the body and blood of Christ. For them this act was one of the seven sacraments (rites of particular importance).

Protestant faiths varied in their belief on the matter. Luther put forward the idea of 'sacramental union' in which the bread and wine become united with the body and blood of Christ. Zwingli taught that the wafer and wine were merely symbolic. John Calvin, too, believed that the body and blood of Christ were present in the Eucharist in a spiritual form only:

'The sum is, that the flesh and blood of Christ feed our souls just as bread and wine maintain and support our corporeal life.'

Verse 1, line 6. 'Tableaux vivants' is a French phrase meaning living pictures. It refers to groups of models or actors in costume arranged to portray a scene, usually a famous scene that the audience would recognise. Traditionally the actors neither spoke not moved..

Verse 2, line 6. A monstrance is a vessel used to display a religious object of great importance such as the Eucharist.

Verse 3. The Feast of Corpus Christi was a very important occasion in a busy European calendar of rituals dominated by religious festivals. Its climax was the elevation of the host. In some cities, such as Florence, crowds rushed from church to church in order to see the elevation of the host several times.

Ritual in Early Modern Europe by Edwin Muir is an interesting and readable book on a fascinating subject. It is part of the New Approaches to European History series by Cambridge University Press.

Verse 4, lines 3 - 4. The Defenestration in Prague in May was a sensational story which captivated Europeans. Wilson calls it a 'media event' such was the output of pamphlets and broadsheets about it. The first regular newspapers had been established in the preceding decade, their production made easier by advancements in copperplate printing. These publications often included dramatic illustrations. Regular postal services were also in operation by this time, so the distribution of printed news was considerably quicker and more reliable than before.

This, naturally, led to an increase in propaganda in print. For example, in accounts of the Defenestration, Catholic sources were quick to attribute the apparently miraculous escape of the three victims to the intervention of the Virgin Mary. Contemporary engravings and woodcuts showed angels coming to their rescue, slowing their fall. Protestant sources claimed they fell in a heap of dung, the inference being that is where they belonged.

The war that followed the Defenestration led to an explosion in both printed news and propaganda.

lines 9 -10. The was similar to that of Bohemia in that it lay outside the Holy Roman Empire and was nominally elective but effectively one of the lands ruled by the Habsburg dynasty. Habsburgs had been kings of both Bohemia and Hungary since the Battle of Mohacs in 1526.

The New Garden

The Hortus Palatinus was a in the Italian Renaissance style. Frederick commissioned it for Elizabeth in 1614. It was a magnificent piece of landscaping and horticultural design. It became famous throughout Europe and was called 'The Eighth Wonder of the World'. There is a good, illustrated Wikipedia page on the garden from which much of the information in this poem was drawn.

Verse 1, line 1. Thirty sixty-year-old orange trees had been specially transferred using new methods. This was a notable horticultural accomplishment for the period.

Verse 4, lines 2-3. The garden formed a large L-shape projecting from the side of the castle.

Verse 5, line 1. Frederick had met Salamon de Caus when he visited England to propose to Elizabeth during the winter of 1612-13. De Caus had been working on a garden for Prince Henry, Prince of Wales, at Richmond Palace.

Prince Henry was lively, able and popular but contracted typhoid fever and died in October 1612. His younger brother, Charles, small and frail, became heir. Charles' poor health meant the offspring of Frederick and Elizabeth were very important to the House of Stuart, being potential heirs to the throne of England.

line 2. North Italy, to be more precise, and Tuscany in particular.

lines 4-8. Rosicrucianism was a secret society dating from the late Middle Ages. It takes its name from its supposed founder, a German called Christian Rosenkreuz. Rosicrucians seem to have believed that philosophical truths known in the ancient past were now hidden to ordinary men. However, these truths could be learnt by initiates, or discerned by unravelling clues hidden by God in the natural world. These clues would lead them to a more perfect understanding of the physical and spiritual world God had created for mankind, in effect unlocking the divine secrets of the universe.

There had been recently been a revival of Rosicrucianism due to the publication of an anonymous pamphlet in Germany in 1606.

De Caus was probably a Rosicrucian. It is thought that he may have designed the Hortus Palatinus to be represent Rosicrucian thought. In this interpretation the gardens were a 'botanical cosmos' containing a coded secret deep in their design. The gardens are intended to capture 'a universal vision, based on a union of the arts, science and religion', combined with 'an ancient tradition of secret wisdom handed down over the ages'. These ideas are developed by Luke Morgan in Nature as Model: Salomon de Caus and early seventeenth-century landscape design. University of Pennsylvania Press (2007), and by Reinhard Zimmerman in Iconography in German and Austrian Renaissance Gardens in Hunt (1992) from whom the latter quote is taken.

A Kidnap and De Facto Coup

Verse 3, line 2. A nuncio is a diplomatice representative of the Papacy. The Pope, Paul V, and Count Onate, the Spanish Ambassador, were not only privy to but also complicit in the kidnap, helping with the arrangements.

line 8. Colonel Henri (Heinrich) Dampierre had raised the first cavalry regiment of the Imperial army in 1616. It became the 8th Bohemian Dragoons and existed as a distinct military unit until 1915, a regimental life of 299 years.

Verse 4, lines 7-10. Cardinal Melchior Klesl (born 1552), Emperor Matthias' Chief Minister, was the architect of composition, a policy of seeking common political ground with Protestant rulers within the Empire (see Part Two, The Treaty).

Where the Kingdom of Bohemia was concerned, initially Klesl taken a hard line against the Bohemian Estates. He had been the minister who forbade the Bohemian Assembly to reconvene in the spring of 1618. After the Defenestration, however, with Matthias sick and unlikely to live long, he thought it was in the best interests of the Habsburgs and the Empire to adopt a more conciliatory approach. This angered Ferdinand who had already been suspicious of composition, thinking it an excuse for blocking his succession to the imperial title. Intervention by Proxy

Verse 1, line 4. The Bohmerwald is a large area of forest near the border between the Upper Palatinate, Bavaria and Bohemia.

Verse 2, line 3. Christian of Anhalt (born 1568) was a prince in his own right, Christian I of Anhalt-Bernburg. A diplomat by training and a devout Calvinist, he had served Frederick's father, Frederick IV. He also had military experience, leading a Palatinate army in support of the French king, Henri IV, in 1591. He had administrative experience, too, having been appointed Governor of Upper Palatinate in 1595. He had played a leading role in setting up the Protestant Union in 1608.

line 4. Some contemporaries thought that Frederick deferred to Christian too much. They thought Mon Pere was too familiar a nickname for a ruler to give to an advisor, and that by using it Frederick undermined his own authority.

Verse 4, line 3. Carlos (Charles) Emmanuel (born 1562) had inherited the Dukedom of Savoy in 1580. Aggressively expansionist, in 1610 he had allied with Henri IV of France against Spain, though Henri's assassination that year meant this alliance came to nothing. In 1617 he had freed the city of Alba from Spanish rule with French help. It seems logical to suppose it was the army used in this campaign which now needed work.

The mercenary commander of this army was Count Ernst von Mansfeld. He is one of the many intriguing characters involved in the events covered by these poems who could have been featured but are not. Illegitimate and Catholic, von Mansfeld was, even by the standards of the day, unscrupulously pragmatic in his allegiances and conduct. If payment was in arrears, he would remain inactive or open negotiations with the enemy. If defeated, or even threatened with defeat, he would offer to change sides. His armies devastated the land they fought on and showed no mercy to the people who lived on it, whether they were friend or foe.

Preliminary Manoeuvres

Verse 1, line 9. The question whether there was a revolution in the recruitment, organization, strategic deployment and battlefield tactics of European armies during this period has been the subject of a long-running historical controversy. The debate on this 'Military Revolution', and on its relationship to the development of nation states under strong monarchical governments, is a very interesting one. A good place to start would be Dr Jeremy Black's 2008 article for History Today "Was There a Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe?"

One development in the early years of the 17th Century was a more systematic use of military drill to train soldiers. Prince Maurice of Nassau (see Part One, The Journey) was a leading exponent, having been influenced by the work of his tutor, Justus Lipsius, on the legions of Ancient Rome. Prince Maurice wished to re-introduce the discipline that had made the Roman Army so effective. He also wanted his troops to be able to manoeuvre effectively on the battlefield when faced with superiors numbers of Spanish soldiers. Definitive words of command were being used by the turn of the 17th Century.

Maurice commissioned the brilliant engraver, Jacob de Gheyn, to produce an illustrated manual in the use of arms. This was first published in 1607 and was soon translated into other languages. Johann von Wallhausen planned a six part compendium on the art of war but only finished the first three parts. These books, too, became widely read in Europe either in their original form or as adaptations.

Officers did use flags in training but the use of pegs is supposition.

Verse 2, line 1. A typical pike was 5m long and weighed about 4 kg, (though length could vary between 2.5m and 7m, and weight between 2.5kg and 6kg). It was called the 'Queen of the Battlefield'. One of the signs of an experienced and well trained unit of pikemen was simply how steady they could hold their pikes.

line 3. An undyed coat, white in colour, meant the soldier or quarter-master had not been able to afford to dye it. A red or blue dye were the most common colours. Soldiers also wore short leather trousers fastened at the knee.

Verse 3. These attitudes to warfare were typical of the period.

An Imperial Army in Bohemia

Verse 1, line 6. Two crowns: Empress Anna is referring to the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary which Matthias had given up, knowing that Ferdinand would be chosen as his successor.

line 10. It was considered good manners to sweep your hat in a fluent, precise motion when making a bow, so that it just touched the floor. Ferdinand is being sarcastic here.

Verse 2, line 1. Klesl was transferred to the monastery of Sy. Georgenberg in Pertisau, Austria, in 1619 and to Rome in 1622.

line 4. Studying the colour and smell of a patient's urine and consulting almancs and charts were standard medical practices at the time.

Verse 3, lines 1-3. The nobility of early modern Europe were obsessed with hunting in all its forms. One example, albeit an extreme one, is Johann Georg, Elector of Saxony. He amassed a total of 113,629 kills between 1611 and 1653, an average of 2,702 a year (a fact quoted by Wilson). It is hard to underestimate the role of hunting in the social culture. Johann Georg and Ferdinand loathed each other's religion but happily went hunting together.

The Successful Siege of Pilsen, Bohemia

This illustration shows Ernst von Mansfeld, with 2,000 Swiss mercenaries and 3,000 Silesians taking Pilsen in November 1619. Pilsen became Mansfeld's base thereafter.

Ernst von Mansfeld

Peregrine falcons were particularly popular as hunting birds because they are trainable and because they fly high which allows them to see the game being flushed. They are also spectacular to watch, reaching speeds of 320kph during a dive, the fastest speed of any animal.

Verse 4, lines 1-2. This was a common sauce served with meat.

line 5. Charles Bonaventure de Longueval, Count of Bucquoy (born 1571), started his military career when still a teenager, fighting for the Spanish Habsburgs in their war against the United Provinces in the Netherlands. He distinguished himself at the Battle of Nieuport (1600) and the Siege of Ostend (1601- 4). A Colonel at 26 years old, he had been invited by Emperor Matthias to take charge of the Imperial army in 1614.

line 7. According to Golo Mann in his biography of Wallenstein, Bucquoy negotiated a fee of 3,000 gulden per month plus an enormous sum for equipment.

A Plea for Peace

Count Karel von Zierotin (born 1564) was a member of a Czech noble family which owned large estates in Moravia and Bohemia. He been educated abroad in Calvinist schools and royal courts, including the court of Elizabeth I of England. A scholar and a man of great personal integrity, he had corresponded extensively with leading Reformation theologians in Geneva and Basel. He had sat in the Moravian Assembly for many years and had served as Governor of Moravia 1608-1615.

This poem was inspired by the description of this speech given by Golo Mann in his biography of Wallenstein.

Verse 1, line 8. One of the many political complications only alluded to in these poems is that the Kingdom of Bohemia was divided into four provinces, each with its own assembly. Bohemia was the largest province by some margin. The others were Moravia, and Lusatia.

Verse 2, line 4. The Bohemian Brethren, also known as the Moravian Church, was founded in Kunvald, Bohemia in 1457. The Brethren were a branch of the followers of the Reformer, Jan Huss, and therefore among the earliest of all Protestants groups.

Part Five

April - October 1619

The Conflict Spreads

The Bohemian rebel army besieges Vienna. Ferdinand is elected Holy Roman Emperor but is formally deposed in Bohemia. Frederick of the Palatinate is offered the Bohemian crown by the rebels.

Into Moravia

Mid-April 1619. Bohemian forces near the border between Bohemia and Moravia.

His back to the fire, smoking out fleas, Thurn draws long on a walnut pipe. Crackle of tobacco, purple breath released to drift. Few pleasures in this castle, damp and small. More like a prison than a palace. Servants suffering from wry neck and weepy-eye, and his sallow-skinned host keeping one hand on the cellar key. Thurn plans to prise it from him, to let his soldiers fill carts and satchels when they leave. Soon. No morning frost now and winter's mud drying on the roads leading south and east.

Captains present their latest muster rolls, hold out their hands for wages and supplies straight-faced. A ritual of deceit. They know one man in ten is absent or has already died. Another two are sick or campsite lackeys whose only skill is cleaning boots and clothes. Strange names drawn up in line and column: German, Welsh and Scots, Gascon and Greek, Cornish, Manx, Irish, Portuguese and . Highlanders and islanders, marginal men. Mercenaries bred from poor soils and strong tides. Husks and driftwood, bleached dry as bone.

Thurn's Treasurer pleads lack of funds, pays only part, hints that the soldiers should default on money owed to local citizens - the costs of billeting, food and firewood. Thurn himself has said: 'No Godly man can stand aside from this just cause of ours. All must contribute or risk forfeit.' He means Moravia must be invaded and forced at point of pike into the fight. A lesson his host, the castellan, is learning. Neutrality is just a dream when the sharp-spurred cock crows morning.

Crossing the Danube and Besieging Vienna

3 June 1619. Count Thurn at Fischermend, on the River Danube, East of Vienna.

Seven weeks without rain. The sun laying siege to the land, even the great river brought low, burnt brown and listless. Horses and oxen stand steaming on the barges. Soldiers sweat over stores, scratch at their lice, claim they can see the spires of Vienna through the haze. They are tired of pease pottage and bean bread, of searching wide and hard for hidden rye-flour and cabbage pickle. Time for the soft loaves and thick, pork-belly lard that grace a Papist burgher's table.

Thurn stands in oak shade with the Lutheran Austrian noble who arranged the boats. They pour scorn on Archduke Ferdinand. 'The Jesuitic fool,' says Thurn, 'two months ago, when the Emperor died and he offered amnesty, I told anyone who'd listen: "When your enemy extends the cup of peace, either it is poisoned or his arm is too weak to hold the sword." And I was right.' He sweeps out an open palm. 'Where are his forces now? When Vienna falls and he is captured, he will beg me for terms.'

Two days later explosions and cheers. His gunners taking pot-shots at the palace. Petard men and musketeers being prepared for an assault. It's largely bluff. Thurn lacks the cannon to breach low, sloping walls built to resist a hundred thousand Turks. The whole city is fronted like a castle. Precisely angled bastions guard all entrances. In front, a glacis - a houseless, treeless killing zone. But all the geometry of defence is useless if the main threat lies within.

Vienna in the 17th Century

view of the city by Jacob Hoefnagel 1609 showing the trace italienne with bastions and glacis

A Prayer is Answered

5 June 1619. Hofburg Palace, Vienna, Lower Austria. Archduke Ferdinand besieged.

Was ever a man, thinks Becanus, blessed with such stubborn cheerfulness. No complaints from him about the heat. 'Were God's chosen people not a desert race?' he says. 'And did Christ not test himself with forty days in arid wilderness.' Now two windows of his study shot out, scores of heretics trampling the throne room, making demands with treasonous shouts, raised hands ready to knuckle into fists.

He takes refuge in the chapel among low flamed candles and quiet saints and kneels, a crucifix clasped tightly in both hands. 'Almighty God, I place my trust in you. My body and my soul are yours. I harbour no doubt. My faith in you is absolute.' And as he prays he hears an unearthly sound like the rim of a great bell ringing in his heart. It is the voice of God. Christ speaks to him.

Becanus, come to offer comfort, sees him rise. 'I will make no concessions. Let them do what they will. Christ the Lord will not desert me.' As they return there is uproar in the throne room, tumult from the courtyard below. Insurrection? The Bohemian army broken through? No. Colonel Dampierre with five squadrons of a new arquebus regiment. Men, horses, weapons. Favours from Heaven.

Henri Duval, Count of Dampierre

The Imperial Election

28th August 1619. -am-Main. With the siege of Vienna lifted, Archduke Ferdinand is elected Holy Roman Emperor.

The stag, the boar, the heron. How many has he killed these last thirty days. His skin smells of saddle grease and powder. He sees bones and feathers in his dreams. And a crown. The crown imperial. Why the delay? He is a Habsburg, already eagled and the only candidate. The debates are posturing, the layers of protocol arcane. The business of Empire moving at scribe's pace in the capital of print.

But this will be his day. In the Great Hall of the Rathaus he takes his seat. Loud cries of protest from the Bohemians fail to stop proceedings. With him on the dais sit six other Electors, in person or by representative. One absentee is Frederick of the Palatine, the puppy-faced upstart who is scheming with the rebels, attempting to foil his election, to go against God's will.

Holy Roman Emperor. It's what he is and what he means to be: saintly, civilized, powerful. Tired of ritual, he flicks through the ancient book of subjects' rights, rises to his feet, swears the oath and signs. No tension in his trigger finger now. He nods his acceptance of allegiance and congratulations from cheering crowds while news smokes up from passageways below. In Prague he has been formally deposed.

Frankfurt in the early 17th Century

A Fateful Decision

14th September 1619. Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Ansbach, Franconia. Frederick V of the Palatinate, having been offered the crown of Bohemia, meets with rulers and representatives of the Protestant Union.

He lies awake. Without her he cannot step down into sleep but walks for hours along some kind of precipice between thought and oblivion. He misses her laughter and her hot, soft skin; how she allows him to succumb to pleasure and to rest. Wine is a poor substitute. Would he were home, warm in her arms, having made his decision.

To be a king. To make his princess bride a Queen, Princes of his sons. His lands would stretch from the Oder to the Rhine, two Electoral votes at his command. To hold a sceptre and to wear a crown. No lesser rank than England, France and Spain. To be a David or a Solomon. Dynastic glory, honour to his name.

His council see it otherwise. 'As soon as this crown is placed upon your head, Ferdinand will try to knock it off.' The rulers of Brandenburg and Saxony raise questions of loyalty. 'How can you reconcile your oath of allegiance to the Emperor with acceptance of this crown?' They advise rejection on grounds of order and honour.

He claws at his bedsheets, appeals to God for sleep or answers. Letters from Maurice Prince of Orange urge him to accept. Anhalt, his trusted mentor, speaks of great service in protecting German liberties against Imperial infringement. Scultetus, his chaplain, quotes the Book of Revelations, describes the Habsburgs as a force of darkness.

Some talk of Judgement Day and the three bright burning stars seen late last year. The offer is a divine calling which he must obey. The young lion of prophecy must roar. He lights a candle, drinks more wine, pisses in his chamber pot. Kneels to pray again for guidance. But the truth is his scalp itches for the touch of gold. He wants to be a king. Historical Notes

Part Five Into Moravia

Verse 1, line 6. Wry neck is a common name for torticollis, a condition affecting the muscles of the neck. The muscles contract causing the neck to tilt at a strange angle sideways, forwards or backwards.

line 7. Weepy-eye is a term for ocular discharge, the secretion of mucus or pus from the eye. This discharge can be caused by a number of bacteriological infections, notably gonorrhoea.

Verse 2, line 1. In organisational terms, military units at the time were often virtually independent, self-administering businesses run by their officers or by professional military contractors, known as condottieri. The more unscrupulous officers would happily defraud their superiors and their soldiers. Frank Tallett's book entitled War and Society in Early Modern Europe is interesting on many aspects of armies during this period. Several of the poems in this series use information taken from it, including this one.

Tallett states that some 1,500 military contractors operated during the Thirty Years War. The size of their units ranged from 100 men to Mansfeld's 32,000. At the height of his power, the early , the greatest military contractor of the age, , had some 151,000 men on his muster rolls.

lines 8-9. For over a hundred years armies had been made up of people from many countries and provinces. The Welshman Elis Gruffudd listed Welsh, English, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Scots, Spaniards, Gascons, Portuguese, Italians, Arbonnoises, Greeks, Turks, Tartars, Germans, Burgundians and Flemish as being present at the Siege of Boulogne (1544-46). The muster roll of a Bavarian contract regiment from 1644 also lists numerous nationalities including Poles and Hungarians. Frank Tallett's book gives more information on this topic.

Verse 3, line 4. There were no military barracks at the time, though there were manned fortifications. The idea of creating permanent bases for troops gained ground during the century as standing armies replaced militias and bought-in mercenary units.

When stationed in towns most soldiers were usually billeted with civilians, in pairs or larger numbers depending on the size of the property. Sometimes, particularly on 'home soil', the civilians were paid. The soldiers were expected to buy their own food but were expected to be supplied with some necessities such as a pan for cooking, a candle, water and some firewood.

Crossing the Danube and Besieging Vienna

Verse 1, lines 8-9. Pease pottage, or pease pudding, is the English name for a dish of boiled vegetables, usually based around peas, water, salt and spices. In German it is called are erbspüree, erbsbrei or erbsmus.

line 9. Bread was the most important foodstuff. Songs were written to it. There was a many-layered hierarchy of quality from salted, white loaves made from sifted flour through to bread made from acorns or chestnuts. (The wealthy has their bread served with the crust cut off. Hence the phrase 'the upper- crust'.)

Verse 2, lines 4-6. Emperor Matthias had died on March 20th. Ferdinand's immediate concern now was to secure the title of Holy Roman Emperor. So, on March 27th, he offered the rebels indemnity and the confirmation of privileges if they would end their rebellion and 'submit themselves to his mercy', as Wedgwood phrases it.

The Bohemian Estates did not trust Ferdinand enough to do so. Besides, they believed the political and military momentum was with them. The other provinces of Bohemia were now their allies or at least quiescent, and the rebellion seemed to be spreading. Protestants of Upper and Lower Austria, and even Styria itself, were seizing the opportunity to demand concessions from Ferdinand.

Verse 3, line 3. A petard was a small, bell-shaped bomb used to blow up gates during a siege. The word comes from the French verb péter, to break wind. The bomb had a wooden back which was attached to the gate with hooks or rings before the fuse was lit. An unreliable device, the soldier lighting it was in danger of being killed if it blew up prematurely. Shakespeare used this as a metaphor for someone being harmed by their own plan in Hamlet's famous phrase 'Hoist with his own petar' '.

line 3. The first firearms used in Europe were hand- cannon and appeared in the 14th Century. The arquebus, a smoothbore weapon using a matchlock or, later, wheellock firing action, was developed over the next two hundred years. More powerful than a crossbow or a longbow, and requiring less training, skill and strength to use, the arquebus was effective against infantry and even armoured cavalry. It was 1.25 metres long and weighted 5.5 kgs.

As armour thickened to meet the threat, so a longer, heavier firearm was developed: the musket. From the 1560s, muskets were about 2 metres long, weighed 9 kgs and fired a 56 gram ball. Muskets could kill a man in shot-proof armour at 100 paces and bring down a horse but they needed a metal support and were most effective when used in defensive postions or from behind a wall.

By the 1600s many muskets were matchlocks. This means they used pre-lit matchcord to light the gunpowder in the firing pan.They could take up to a minute or longer to load and two hands were required to adjust the length of the matchcord. Misfires were common, as high as one in five, higher in damp conditions, (hence the expression 'flash in the pan'). (The rate of misfires using arquebuses could be as high as 50%.) Two further important developments in the design of firearms were the use of flints in the firing mechansim (flintlocks) and rifling the inside of the barrel to stabilise the flight of the ball, particularly as it travelled the length of the barrel. Both these improvements had been made by 1600 but were not commonly in use because of the skill and expense required to make firearms equipped with these features.

The word musketeer is sometimes used in this series of poems for both arquebusiers and musketeers. By 1600 the stocks of the weapons were being curved to fit the shoulder. line 8. A bastion was part of the trace italienne style of fortification (see Part One, Heidelberg). It was an angled fortification which projected outwards from the main defensive walls. It allowed the defenders to fire cannon or muskets across the face of these walls. It was often accompanied by a ditch in front.

line 9. As stated in the poem, a glacis was a natural or artificial slope which allowed defenders to see and to fire upon attackers. Furthermore, the gradient of well-made glacis would protect the lower part of walls from cannon fire.

line 12. Protestant conspirators inside the city with whom Count Thurn was in communication.

A Prayer is Answered

The story told in this poem follows Wedgwood's account. Wilson suggests that the events were less dramatic; that Ferdinand was not personally manhandled and still had a measure of control.

Certainly Thurn's advance had emboldened the Protestant Austrian nobles. They demanded a Protestant church in Vienna, the expulsion of the Jesuits and a cessation of hostilities with the Bohemians. Whether Ferdinand had invited them into the Hofburg himself or not, the situation was rowdy and very tense. The incident has become known as The Stormy Petition (Sturmpetition). It was Dampierre's timely arrival that intimidated the Protestants into withdrawing and changed the dynamics of the siege. Thurn retreated northwards on the 12th June.

Verse 3, line 8-9. One account says three squadrons of arquebusiers and one of dragoons. They had come from Krems, where they were stationed, crossed the Danube in small boats and entered the palace complex through the Fisherman's Gate.

Dragoons were mounted infantrymen, (though in the 18th Century the term came to mean light cavalry). The Wikipedia article states that such units may either have been developed by a French commander, the Duc de Brissac, in 1600 or by Count Ernst von Mansfeld (see Part Four, Intervention by Proxy) in the . The name suggests a French origin because the word dragon and dragoon are the same in that language; the dragon being the nickname of a short-barrelled wheellock carbine (short musket) which often had a decoration on the muzzle in the shape of a dragon's head. Such a dragon could have been used from horseback. The Imperial Election

Verse 1. Ferdinand's advisors and other imperial officials thought it would be a good idea to keep him away from long process of election. So he was invited to stay nearby and hunt.

line 10. Frankfurt was a leading city of the Holy Roman Empire. Its market dates back to 1074 and the sale of handwritten books had been conducted at the celebrated Frankfurt Fair since its outset. There is no certain date for the first Frankfurt Book Fair but the printers' and publishers' fair was well established by 1462. Johannes Gutenberg, the man who developed moveable printing type, worked in Leipzig and may have attended the Frankfurt Fair in 1454.

The Fair did not just sell books. It catered for every part of the printing process. It is still the most important annual book fair in the world. Its story is told in the book A History of the Frankfurt Book Fair by Peter Weidhass and Wendy A Wright, published by Dundurn.

Verse 2, line 5. Even though every Emperor chosen since the 15th Century had been the member of the Habsburg dynasty next in line to succeed, the monarchy was still technically elective. There were seven Electors: three spiritual (the Archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and ) and four lay (the Count of the Palatine, the Duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenberg and the King of Bohemia). (Because Bohemia lay outside the boundaries of the Empire, its King could not sit at any Imperial Council meeting other than that involved with the election of the Emperor). The title of Elector was so prestigious that the rulers of the Palatine, Saxony and Brandenburg were all addressed by this title in preference to any other.

Since the Reformation, confessional politics had added a complication. The three spiritual Electors was all Catholic, and three of the lay Electors were Protestant. The only Catholic lay elector was the Habsburg King of Bohemia. This is one reason why the throne of Bohemia was so important to imperial politics and to Ferdinand personally. If a Protestant was elected King of Bohemia, then the electoral maths changed to four Protestant Electors and three Catholic. This could, in theory at least, lead to the end of the Habsburg dynasty's monopoly of the Imperial Crown.

line 10. Frederick had been determined to at least try to thwart Ferdinand's succession. But the Protestant Union was not strong enough or united enough to mount a strong political campaign. Moreover, Ferdinand was the only candidate. The Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg would not be drawn into breaking with tradition by nominating another or by standing themselves.

In the end Frederick did not attend himself. His representative nominated Maximilian, the Duke of Bavaria but the Duke had already stated that any votes cast for him should be passed to Ferdinand. When this was pointed out, Frederick's representative cast his vote for Ferdinand. He did this in order not to worsen his master's isolation but in effect it meant that Frederick had formally agreed to serve Ferdinand.

Verse 3, line 10. On July 31st, the four provinces of Bohemia had signed a joint confederation and on 19th August they declared the election of Ferdinand as king to be invalid.

A Fateful Decision

A Fateful Decision is the title Wilson gives to this section of his book. Wedgwood wrote: 'Were it ever possible in history to single out one action as decisive for the development which followed it, the acceptance of the Crown of Bohemia by the Elector Frederick was such an act.'

Verse 3. The members of the Protestant Union advised Frederick not to accept the crown or become too involved in the situation in Bohemia. His mother and his Council in the Palatinate did likewise.

The Elector of Brandenburg was Johann Sigismund (born 1572) of the Hohenzollern dyynasty. A convert from Lutheranism to Calvinism, he met resistance when he made plans for mass conversions of his subjects and subsequently allowed both religions to be practised. Brandenburg was a member of the Protestant Union but the Elector tried to remain neutral during the Bohemian crisis. This weakened the Union considerably. John Sigismund died in December 1619 and was succeeded by George William.

The Elector of Saxony was Johann Georg I (born 1585) of the House of Wettin. 'Beer George', was, as his nickname suggests, a lazy man with a great fondness for vast quantities of beer and food. With his rumbustuous court, love of display and mania for hunting, his style was more like a Renaissance prince of previous centuries than his 17th Century contemporaries. Although a devout Lutheran who scorned other doctrines, he followed a pragmatic foreign policy based on preserving the traditional structures and relationships of the Empire. He shunned the Protestant Union.

Many, including several Electors, condemned the decision. They predicted great bloodshed and ruin. The Pope, Paul V, said Frederick was entering 'a filthy labyrinth.' Frederick's father-in-law, James I, a proponent of the Divine Right of Kings, was furious. In his eyes, Frederick was siding with rebels against legitimate royal authority.

Verse 4. In addition to those listed in this verse, his uncle, the Duc de Bouillon, who had brought him up, advised him to accept. Frederick wrote back to him: 'It is a divine calling which I must not disobey.', though in a different letter he wrote 'Believe that I am very troubled about what to decide.'

Frederick is also reputed to have said:

“If I accept, I shall be accused of ambition; if I decline, of cowardice. Decide as I may, peace is over for me and my country.”

He may have said or written something along these lines but he does not seem to have fully realised what the consequences might be for himself or the future security of the Palatinate. He was an optimist by nature.

Catholic propaganda from the time maintained that Frederick was strongly influenced in his decision to accept the crown by his wife Elizabeth. Two quotes are widely attributed to her:

"I would rather eat sauerkraut with a king than a roast dinner with an elector."

(or: "I would rather eat a dry crust at a king’s table than feast on luxuries at that of an elector.") and, to Frederick:

"If you were bold enough to marry a king's daughter, you should have the courage to take a crown."

(or: “You would not have married a king’s daughter if you had not the courage to become yourself a king.”)

But these are almost certainly false. It is doubtful that Frederick would have consulted Elizabeth on such a matter. For her part, Elizabeth's letters indicate that she was happy to leave politics to her husband, and to accept and support whatever actions and decisions he took. That said, once the decision had been made, she seems to have been pleased and to have been enthusiastic about going to Bohemia.

lines 5-6. In his book on Frederick, The Winter King published by Ashgate, Dr Brennan C. Pursell, argues that Frederick viewed the Bohemian crisis not just from a confessional point of view but as part of a wider constitutional conflict. Frederick's policies and decisions, writes Pursell, were not simply a reflection of his Calvinist faith. They were also based on a conviction that Ferdinand threatened the ancient constitutional rights of independent or semi- independent states within the Empire. However, Frederick seems to have emphasised these arguments later, when he was in difficulties.

line 6. Abraham Scultetus (born 1566) was German, a professor of theology and court preacher to Frederick.

lines 7-8. This idea was put forward by in the writings of two influential Calvinist ministers and academics. Both Johann Heinrich Alsted (born 1588) and Johann Amos Comenius (born 1592) had attended the Herborn Academy in the State of Hesse. They identified the Habsburg Empire as the nameless Fourth Beast in St John's Book of Revelation.

Alsted foresaw the imminent coming-to-pass of the prophecy in the Book of Daniel in which the king of the south forces people to renounce their faith and the king of the north then intervenes to save the people. It was believed that this prophecy referred to Ferdinand and Frederick respectively, especially as Alsted gave 1625 as the date when the king of the north would arrive. Verse 5, lines 1-2. These were years of widespread and fervent apocalypticism, exacerbated by the visible effects of a period of climate change which has come to be known at The Little Ice Age.

In 1618 three comets had appeared in Europe within a five month period, including the Great Comet. This comet was seen as early as August 25th through a hand-held telescope and become visible to the naked eye in Hungary in early September. It remained visible for seven weeks. It was bright enough to be seen by day and had an extremely long red tail. It became known as the Angry Star.

This comet caused great excitement among astronomers, astrologers and soothsayers. It was believed to portend troubled times. King James I wrote a poem about it which begins: 'Yee men of Brittayne wherefore gaze yee so, Vpon an angry starre?'

(Wilson says this was an appearance of Halley's Comet but astronomical sources do not agree. They state that Halley's Comet, which appears every 74-79 years, appeared in 1607.)

line 4. The symbol of the king of the north in the prophecy from the Book of Daniel (see above) was the lion. The lion featured in the heraldic devices of several Protestant kings and princes including that of the Palatinate.

The Departure

Verse 1, line 1. Anise seeds coated in sugar were eaten after dinner as a breath freshener and aid to digestion, (They were also thought to help lactating women.) Despite massive expansion in the number of sugar mills in the New World during the 16th Century, particularly in Brazil, sugar was still a luxury and remained so until the 18th Century.

line 2. The two children being left behind are Charles Louis, aged 22 months, and Elizabeth, aged 10 months.

Verse 2, lines 3-4. The yellow rope is imagined. There were 153 baggage wagons.

Part Six

November 1619 - August 1620

The Bohemian Campaign

Vienna is besieged a second time. Frederick, the new King of Bohemia, prepares to defend his crown. He raises money for the army.

The New Queen

17th November 1619. The Feast of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Elizabeth, now Queen of Bohemia in the Hradschin Palace, Prague.

Knowing no German and no Czech, so much is dumbshow to her. And no less amusing for that. Hussite peasants rattling flails outside the city walls. The whirr and whine of country music. Meals served slow in brazier-heated halls. Thick lace collars tight around the neck.

And now a delegation of wives dressed in Sunday clothes. Solemn, humble-proud, carrying before them in large linen aprons loaves shaped like flowers. Her namesake's miracle. So much bread! Her bodyweight in bran. Flour into flowers. She makes the joke in English. Only her friends understand.

But Rumour rides a fast horse and soon everybody knows she mocked the bread and fed some to her monkey. Her fashions are too French: long, tight curls, intricate braid. She touches her husband in public, displays the skin above her breasts, makes light of the fecundity God blessed her with. And no modest woman has a mouth that wide.

Frederick and Elizabeth when King and Queen of Bohemia

Print made c. 1630 by Michel von Iochem

Entering a Wasteland

22nd November 1619. Ferdinand II travels into Vienna as the second siege of the city begins. This time the Bohemian army is supported by Hungarian and Transylvanian troops.

Not yet light and travelling. Torchless, silent. His view is framed by the ears of his plodding horse. He watches snowflakes disappear into mud. The summer's drought completely doused by autumn rain. Fire displaced by Water. Earth liquified by Air. The Elements in conflict. The Heavens misaligned. And John Charles, his eldest child, not yet fourteen, dying from some strange malignancy in Graz, feverish but cold.

There are others. Horseless, wheel-less people. Shadows that smell. Fugitive villagers who cringe at the sound of horsemen, fall to their knees at the word Emperor. Among them monks and nuns, beaten and driven from looted monasteries. 'How far,' thinks Ferdinand, 'the Fall from Eden. How wicked the words and deeds of Luther and Calvin, dividing the one true Church. How great the task to make it whole again.'

A slow, grey dawn. Mist stronger than daylight. The snow turns to rain. There is no sound beyond hoof-beats, breath and bridles. No bleat of sheep, no moan of cattle. And no proud cockerel trying to trumpet up the sun. Empty, silent hamlets. Bucquoy's men have done their work. Peasants and livestock gone. Every grain of wheat taken from the barns. Barely a turnip left in any field. Vienna's cellars full. A wasteland surrounds.

Two equerries return, dripping with dew and sweat. A message from Dampierre. The enemy has crossed the Danube. No heavy cannon seen but great numbers of foot and horse. Ferdinand is not dismayed. Bucquoy says 'The more there are; the more will starve.' And not even Hungarian horses can scale defensive walls. He stops to say a prayer for the wounded, dead and dying he has passed. Swears vengeance. His sword doubles as a cross. A Short-lived Siege

2nd December 1619. Outside Vienna. The Bohemian army under Count Thurn and the Transylvanian and Hungarian forces under Gabriel Bethlen, Prince of Transylvania.

Thurn tries to ignore the smell. Orders state no one shall defecate within camp boundaries. But discipline dissolves in mud and rain. Men not paid for months cannot pay off fines. The sick will die if flogged. The wrong season for laying siege. The earth is miasmatic. Nearly half his troops have fallen ill. Doubtless the Viennese are dying too. His troops strip refugees of all possessions and herd them towards the city gates. They are agents of attrition. They will eat up food reserves and, God willing, spread disease.

Now he and his entourage ride slowly into the Hungarian lines. Wet horses watch them pass, long-legged, narrow-bodied mounts. There are no sentries and few . They are out foraging and murdering civilians. They return at dusk, their metal masks and shoulder furs spattered with blood. In the great tent their leader, Gabriel Bethlen, Prince of Transylvania, Calvinist vassal to the Ottoman Turk, holds court. 'Not royal born. Title gifted by the Sultan. And yet, always,' thinks Thurn, 'I have to come to him.'

A smell of sour cream and camphor. Silk drapes, carpets, cushions but also a large Bible open on a stand. Bethlen is dark-skinned, as swarthy as the Turks Thurn used to kill, and dark-eyed, with a face that slopes out into his beard. They discuss the situation. Thurn wants more help with earthworks. Bethlen hints, yet again, that he expects more cannon, reveals that Ferdinand has persuaded the King of Poland to raid his northern lands. Thurn insists that Vienna is the prize. Bethlen agrees. But two days later, he is gone.

Gabriel Bethlen

Acts of Iconoclasm

24th December 1619. Abraham Scultetus, Frederick's Chaplain crossing the and then in St Vitus's Cathedral, Prague.

The sight of them disgusts him, the statues on the bridge. Clasp-handed saint. Madonna with woman's lips in girlish face. Christ hollow cheeked and grimacing. Like bad actors at a carnival who try for sorrow but achieve self-pity. A Devil's trick to draw men's eyes from scripture. He grips his Bible and hurries on to the cathedral.

Ten days ago his hammer-men were met by angry crowds. Women clung to the stones. Count Schlick appealed to Frederick, said the bridge spoke more to history than religion. A fallacy! An argument that would leave untouched the whole edifice of Rome. But shouts taste sour to a young king weaned on cheers, a man weakened by the need to charm.

In sober dress they wait for him, hands on handles. Chisels, axes, stonemason's tools. A cart for the pieces. The basilica's magnificence - the slender-ribbed vaults of its towering ceiling, the huge pillars that throw a man's gaze up and to the light - does not awe them. Jesus was a carpenter, a friend to fishermen, the widow with her mite.

By the altar, Virgin and saints with halos of gold. Above, the great old crucifix. Everywhere ivory, silver utensils. 'God's House like a harlot's trinket box,' says Scultetus. He reads from Numbers: 'Destroy all their carved images.' Purity through destruction, whitewash and the Word. Joy at the sound of breaking masonry.

Abraham Scultetus

In Defence of a Princess

9th January 1620. Sir Andrew Grey, Scots Commander of an Anglo-Scots Regiment of Volunteers, Rotterdam, Holland, United Provinces.

A strange land this, where the waves are higher than the hills. And a hard one too. In port more masts than he has pikes and the harbour a scene of countless skirmishes as hulls, oars and rudders fight for any open water. The smell of whale-oil and herring. The clack of wooden shoes. And outside each town a tree-less, rock-less, dung-coloured bog, thin-crusted with ice. A half-drowned land, kept afloat by wind-powered pumps which creak incessantly along the coast. Here a man, or an army of men, might find their strength sucked out through the soles of their feet, their spirit pressed down by the hard horizon.

He breaks his gaze from the horizontal. There will be less mud in Bohemia than here among the moated Dutch. A role of honour awaits. To serve his Sovereign's daughter, Elizabeth, the most gracious, beautiful and beloved Queen in Christendom. The lady courtiers and commoners call the fairest of her sex, a paragon of womanhood. Hundreds of his men have sworn to die for her. Donations freely given pay for every musket ball and helmet of this noble expedition.

But one without royal warrant. The fat-tongued king splutters disapproval, denies his son-in-law a grant, call the Bohemians 'rebels', and 'traitors', declaims at length how God created kings as higher beings to rule over matters temporal. Thin-blooded as a woman, he restrains the martial valour of his subjects, places peace and profit before honour, seeks a match for his spindle- limbed son with a Spanish Habsburg Papist, lets peacocks strut at court but gaols the cockerel.

A Portrait in the Making

14th April 1620. Hradschin Palace, Prague. Frederick of the Palatinate, now King of Bohemia, sits for a portrait.

Dry brushes. The artist used to lateness. But he apologises anyway and sits himself upon the stool, raises his chin. Adjustments are few. His body is accustomed to poses. Nor does he speak, silence welcome after so many words at council. But he pours wine from the flask at his elbow, drinks with an urgent thirst.

The Emperor has amassed new armies, forged alliances with Bavaria and Spain, ensured Lutheran Saxony stays neutral, issued him an order to relinquish his crown or risk all lands and titles. Anhalt mocks the mandate. 'Bohemia lies outside Imperial command. Perhaps the Emperor needs a better map.'

No maps here. No black-ink documents to send marching into staterooms. A palette of colours. The artist mixing his paints freely, the canvas not yet decided. But it will be him. Him as King or Greek hero, Roman deity. The warming wine, the artist's gaze: reassurance of great destiny. He holds his face to the light.

Historical Notes

Part Six

The New Queen

Verse 1, line 4. Hussite peasants dressed similarly to most European peasants but are often depicted with red hooded capes on top of their smocks. Peasant dress consisted of long, loose-cut shirts that often hung down free to below the waist. Over the shirt was a long-sleeved woollen tunic that came almost to the knee. This tunic was either a pull-over design or tied with laces, toggles or loops. The legs were covered with stocking hose tied up at the waist with ankle-length boots or shoes on the feet. In Eastern Europe men wore inverted cone (flower-pot) hats of wool or felt. Women wore linen a cap or coif.

Verse 2, lines 4-5. These lines refer to what is known as the miracle of the roses. St. Elizabeth of Bohemia (1207 - 1231), daughter to King Andrew II of Hungary, was married at age 14 to Louis IV, Landgrave of Thuringia. According to legend, Louis grew annoyed at the amount of food from his kitchen that his bride gave to the poor. He forbade her from giving any more. However, she disobeyed him. One day he returned from a hunting trip earlier than expected, just as Elizabeth and some of her serving women were on their way to the poor with loaves taken from the family dining table. He demanded to know what she was carrying in the folds of her apron. She told him it was flowers. He insisted on seeing for himself. As she dropped the corners of her apron, God turned the loaves to flowers, white and red roses in full bloom although it was mid-winter.

There are slightly different versions of the story. It is not the only Christian miracle story to feature roses, though it is the earliest.

Verse 3. Initially very popular with the citizens of Prague, the behaviour of Frederick and Elizabeth turned some people against them. Frederick received delegates bare-headed, invariably turned to ask Anhalt for advice and kissed hands too readily. He took to wearing a bright red cloak with a yellow feather in his hat as he was driven about the town. He scandalised the city by bathing naked in the River Moldau in the summer of 1620, watched by his wife and her ladies-in-waiting.

Elizabeth also failed to create a good impression. Although she welcomed visitors into the Palace, even allowing them access to the state rooms. She preferred using her own serving staff to using Bohemian servants. She wore fashions that were deemed risque. And her pet monkeys behaved badly and scared visitors.

line 8. Early Modern Europeans believed that there was a strong link between a person's facial type and their character. A narrow mouth was thought to be a sign of chastity and timidity in a woman (timidity being a good thing).

Entering a Wasteland

It was brave of Ferdinand to travel towards and to enter the besieged city, especially with units of irregular cavalry from the Hungarian/Transylvanian army marauding the countryside.

Verse 3. According to Wilson, Ferdinand's cousin Leopold has stockpiled enough food for the 20,000 soldiers and 75,000 civilians inside the city while Bucquoy had implemented a scorched earth policy for the surrounding countryside.

Verse 4, lines 4-5. The combined Bohemian and Hungarian/Transylvanian armies totalled about 42,000 men. An army of this size, using estimates from Frank Tallett, would require 30 tons of bread, 26,000 gallons of beer and the meat from 2,000 cattle each day in order to sustain itself. It would also need 60 tons of fodder. Each horse required 6 gallons of water a day. In his book on the conduct of military affairs written at the time, Wallhausen suggested one horse- drawn cart was needed for every ten men.

A Short-lived Siege

Verse 1. Some Generals distributed Articles of War at the start of a campaign. Maurice of Nassau codified military law for his troops in 1590 and this became a model for other generals to adopt.

The death penalty (hanging for soldiers, execution by shooting or beheading for officers) could be imposed for mutiny, desertion, disobedience, sleeping on watch, unlicensed plunder, rape and disobedience. In practice a few soldiers were executed as an example to others but most were pardoned or their sentences reduced to corporal punishment.

Gambling, drinking excessively, pawning equipment and failure to observe sanitary arrangements could incur fines or corporal punishment. Punishments included being whipped, being hoisted by a rope tied to the wrists and dropped (the strappado), being forced to run between two lines of men armed with sticks (running the gauntlet), or being weighed down while straddling a sharply angled trestle (riding the horse).

lines 9-12. Sources do not reveal whether Thurn's troops were using this tactic but it was commonly used.

Verse 2, lines 4-7. Hussars were irregular light cavalrymen. They originated in Hungary as early as the 14th Century, the Kings of Hungary adopting a type of military unit being used against them by the Ottoman Turks . Such troops became widespread throughout Eastern Europe, for example the Cossacks of Poland, Ukraine and Russia. (Some Polish-Lithuanian Hussars famously wore wings on a wooden frame attached to their shoulders. This device made an unnerving whistling sound as they charged.)

By the 18th and 19th Centuries, many Hungarian and Polish units were dashing and disciplined cavalry regiments carrying out difficult and dangerous tasks. During The Thirty Years War, however, the Hungarian cavalry became notorious for unbridled savagery against civilians while seldom engaging in combat with any sizeable units of trained enemy soldiers. What was said of the Polish Cossacks was true of the Hungarian Hussars, that they were the sort of cavalry 'that God did not want and the Devil was afraid of.' (Quoted in Wilson.)

lines 9-10 Gabriel Bethlen (born 1580), also known as Bethlen Gabor, was a Calvinist Magyar nobleman who took advantage of a period of unrest in Transylvania to become Prince there in 1613. He achieved this partly through his own manoeuvring and partly as the appointee of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. A fascinating figure, he promoted industry, arts and education within his realm while seeking to take advantage of the Bohemian crisis by invading Hungary and forcing them to elect him king.

(Transylvania is not marked on the map because it was at that time still a region of eastern Hungary. The Ottomans considered it part of their Empire. However, the Austrian Habsburgs and local lords such as Bethlen challenged their authority.)

With a mercenary army under his personal command, Bethlen seemed the perfect ally for the Bohemian rebels. By this time, December 1619, he had invaded Hungary, won over certain key areas, threatened others, and forced the Assembly or Diet to begin the process of deposing Ferdinand. He had joined Thurn in order to besiege Vienna but his priority was securing Hungary for himself rather than supporting the Bohemian cause.

Verse 3, line 2. According to Wilson, Bethlen claimed to have read the Bible 26 times. Wedgwood says something similar.

line 10. For some time Ferdinand had been trying hard to entice the Catholic King of Poland, Sigismund III, into the conflict. Although married to Ferdinand's sister and ruler of a major regional power, Sigismund had not taken the bait offered, the Bishopric of Breslau. However by November 1619, with unpaid Cossacks needing to be kept busy and with a Hungarian enemy of Bethlen's as an ally, an attack was made on Transylvania. This drew Bethlen away from Vienna.

A note on negotiations with The Ottoman Empire:

The Sultan considered Bethlen a useful weapon against the Habsburgs and had promised him a force of Turkish auxiliaries in the fight against Ferdinand. They failed to appear.

That the Protestant Bohemian rebels were prepared to welcome support from Muslim troops sent from the Ottoman Empire, their traditional enemy, shows how desperate for men and allies they were.

In 1620 Frederick actually opened negotiations with the Sultan and, later, sent him a large sum of money - money he could not afford - as a sweetener. The Sultan sent a representative, Mehmed Aga to Prague but he proved more interested in satisfying his curiosity about the site of the Defenestration than making serious commitments. His promise of 60,000 soldiers came to nothing. When these negotiations with the Turks came to light, Frederick's reputation in Europe suffered.

Acts of Iconoclasm

Abraham Scultetus was Frederick's court preacher (See Part Five: A Fateful Decision).

Verse 1, lines 1-2. On the Charles Bridge stood a wooden crucifix flanked by statues of the Virgin Mary and St. John the Evangelist. Elizabeth referred to the crucifix as 'the naked bather'.

Verse 2. Scultetus had Frederick's permission to remove the statues. Popular protest either prevented him from doing so or, as other sources suggest, persuaded the King to have them restored. Whether Count Schlick was a key person in the appeal to the king is not clear but seems likely.

Verse 3. A wonderful example of Gothic architecture, St Vitus Cathedral was the largest and most important church in Bohemia. It dates from the mid-14th Century.

line 3. A basilica is a rectangular Christian church built in the early Christian of Medieval period. It usually has a central nave with two or four aisles, windows on the upper parts of the walls and one or more vaulted recesses (apses).

Verse 4, line 2. A large, magnificent and colourful wooden crucifix hung above the altar, a masterpiece of Medieval religious art.

line 8. The iconoclasts destroyed works of art, poked holes through paintings and even damaged the tombs of saints. The Bohemians, who saw such objects as part of their national history rather than just religious symbols, were offended.

In Defence of a Princess

The purpose of this poem is to describe the difference between the great outpouring of popular sentiment in Britain on behalf of Frederick and Elizabeth and the lack of any support from King James. He did send several diplomatic missions to the continent to try to resolve the crisis but they were invariably overtaken by events and were ineffective. (One, under the Earl of Dancaster, cost £30,000 and involved 150 people. It was no wonder, as Wilson points out, that it was overtaken by events.)

Verse 1, line 6. The Dutch were the great maritime power of the North Atlantic at this time. Their arctic whaling fleet supplied sperm oil, a vital ingredient for soap and oil-lamps. Their herring fleet consisted of some 2,000 ships. It was a sophisticated industry with curing carried out on board. Herring was part of the staple diet of huge numbers of less affluent Europeans. Even the Catholic enemies of the Dutch supported the herring industry by not eating meat on Fridays.

Verse 2, line 9. Greys' force of volunteers was 2,500 strong. Later, a further 1,200 Scots travelled to Bohemia under Sir John Seton. Frederick's bodyguard was made up Anglo-Scots.

Verse 3, lines 10-11. This refers to Prince Charles (born 1600) who may have suffered from rickets when young. He grew up to be of slight build and no taller than about 1.63m (just over 5ft). Despite these disadvantages he developed into a good fencer and very fine horseman.

King James had brought the long Anglo-Spanish War to an end shortly after accession. Keen to avoid future hostilities with Europe's greatest power, from 1614 James began to negotiate a possible marriage between his son Charles and the Infanta Anna Maria, daughter of King Philip III of Spain. This proposed 'Spanish Match' was unpopular with the Protestant English.

line 12. The peacocks are a reference to James I's handsome favourites, men like Robert Carr (later Earl of Somerset) and George Villiers (later Duke of Buckingham).

The cockerel is a reference to Sir Walter Raleigh. Raleigh was the most significant figure to pay the price for James I's pro- Spanish policy. Raleigh had been involved in Elizabeth I's anti-Spanish privateering and colonial policy in the New World. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1603 for supposedly being involved in a plot against James. He was released in 1616 so that he could conduct a second expedition to Venezuela to search for El Dorado. This expedition attacked a Spanish outpost in violation of a treaty. On his return to England Raleigh was arrested at the insistence of the Spanish ambassador and executed in October 1618.

A Portait in the Making

Verse 2, line 2. Though he does not feature strongly in these poems, Maximilian I (born 1573), the Duke of Bavaria, was a key figure in the history of this period. A Wittelsbach, and a distant cousin of Frederick's, he was a devout Catholic and an active ruler, with a marked tendency towards absolutism. In appearance he was tall and thin. His voice was strangely high-pitched.

Wily, wealthy and experienced, Maximilian saw the situation as a great opportunity to advance his personal and dynastic ambitions while serving his religion and his Emperor.

In 1608 he had formed a to counter the Protestant Union. He now agreed to use his own forces and those of the League against Frederick and the Bohemians. In return he demanded full compensation for revenue expended and the opportunity to take over the Palatine and become an Elector in place of Frederick.

Ferdinand said: we must use 'the Bavarian devil to drive out the Bohemian Beelzebub'. line 3. Maximilian wanted to secure his north western border before marching towards Prague. Spain was persuaded to mount a military foray into the Rhineland which would achieve this aim. It would also, Maximilian hoped, begin the conquest of the Palatinate.

lines 3-4. The Elector of Saxony, Johann Georg, had offered to mediate between the Emperor and Frederick. But in negotiations with Maximilian and Ferdinand, in return for concessions regarding disputed bishoprics, he agreed that Frederick had broken to Imperial Peace. (Johann Georg's overriding aim appears to have been to confine the geographical spread of the conflict.)

With the Elector of Saxony adopting this stance, the support of the Protestant Union for Frederick, which had never been strong, fell away completely. It formally declared its neutrality in the Treaty of Ulm, May 1620.

Maximilian I , Duke of Bavaria

Part Seven

September - November 1620

A Decisive Battle

Bohemia and the Palatinate are invaded by forces loyal to the Habsburg dynasty. A decisive battle is fought near Prague.

The Expropriation of Jewish Property

7th August 1620. Elizabeth in The Hradschin Palace, Prague.

A well-chosen window to watch them arrive. Four long-bearded Jews. Ambassadors from their quarter across the river. 'The hats are strange but the fur looks very fine.' She comments on cloaks, buckles and boot-stitch, notes the badge two of them wear, proudly sewn. A yellow star on red, like the flag flown from their town hall by special privilege.

Two long, lean faces, indicating boldness and greed. One fleshy, a dull and stubborn man. The fourth clearly a depressive, cheeks wan and sallow. She wonders if those lips have tasted the blood of a Christian child. If those hands nail Holy wafers to the wall. Secretive usurers. Who can count their wealth? Their wives sit in candlelight, heavy with gold.

Three days since the Royal command that Jews contribute fully to Bohemia's defence. Money to stop mutinies. Troops sent into their streets to collect all that was due. Not enough. Too few thalers, too many words. That evening Frederick rails at table, calls them Christ-killers, a magpie people, says no honour found among men without swords.

The Palatinate Invaded

16th September 1620. Heidelberg. Countess Louise Juliana of Nassau, Elector Frederick's mother, with his second son Charles Louis.

The dark eyes, dark hair, slope of the cheek, the way his lips curl around the spoon. The boy is like his father and she is a mother again. And more of one than before. She holds him often, utters more urgently a mother's foolish, forlorn, prayer: 'Let him stay like this forever. Beautiful, innocent and mine.'

But all boys betray their mothers. Lust weans them. They wipe milk from their mouths, hoping to taste wine at a lover's breast. Dowager Electress, Regent. Then not allowed to enter a room ahead of his English bride. Served second at table. Worse, her advice ignored. 'Refuse the crown. Your duty lies here. Why bring Prague's problems to the Rhine?'

A widow counselling caution, a mother saying 'don't', her words had met expectations - that logic seldom issues from a slender throat - and died in his ears. Yet he had listened to the singing laughter of his Princess wife, the music of her sighs, the flattery of her gasps of joy, and believed himself beloved of Fortune, fit to be a king.

And now Spanish soldiers in the Palatine. The Army of Flanders, twenty thousand strong, led by Ambrogio Spinola, a man more ruthless and able than either of her sons. It falls to her to organise defence with too few troops and gold already gone to Bohemia. While Frederick sends exhortations and puts his faith in God.

A Strategic Decision

26th September. The Hofburg Palace, Vienna. A young equerry brings a strategic decision before Emperor Ferdinand.

Boots to the boot-boy, horse to the groom and led into the palace. Borrowed court shoes pinch his feet as if impatient with his tired steps. He is given radishes and a large glass of wine. His empty stomach rises to meet them. Everything is acid. His blood begins to froth. He almost feints when he kneels before the Emperor. Ferdinand calls for a chair, feigns not to notice rank odours coming from the young man's clothes.

Instructed to spare no detail, his mind rebels. To bring sickness, blood and hunger into this beautiful room. To let savagery loose where there is lace, velvet, glass and vine- carved wood. To tell the truth about soldiering. The sad, sour tale no one had thought to tell at riding school or in the fencing hall. He would sound like a coward or a child. Honour and good manners dictate the lie.

So he describes the many splendid banners to the Holy Virgin in whose name they fight, the Jesuits leading daily prayers, the twelve great cannon each named for an apostle, their swift progress from Linz towards Budweis. And not the pale faces and desperate eyes of those dying from Hungarian fever, nor the soldiers squabbling over mouldy bread, still less the horseman holding up for sale a crucifix plundered from a nunnery.

Ferdinand is pleased. He reads the dispatch. Bucquoy advises caution, says the land they're entering is eaten out. Advises north-east into Moravia or even winter quarters to sit out the pestilence. Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, disagrees. 'The Rebellion pretends to be a Cerberus but is in fact a one-headed hound. And that head is Prague. Strike for the city and deal a mortal blow.'

And what says Marshal Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, the monk in armour, soldier since a boy? Ferdinand met him in Munich. Prayed with him, God's Commander in the Field. It was a privilege. A handsome, neat-faced man: short grey hair, arched eyebrows, steady eyes. Moustache curled precise and tight above a mouth that measured syllables with discipline. ' Supply lines thin. No threat behind; winter ahead. If the Emperor allows, we push for Prague.'

Johann Tserclaes, Count Tilly

A Visit to the Army

Saturday 7th November 1620. Frederick leaves the Bohemian army at Anhost, a village west of Prague, about two leagues (two hours march) from the city.

Memories of discomfort and a creeping urge to piss. Sedan, ten years ago, the castle courtyard of his guardian, the Duc de Bouillon. His shoulders cold. The wrought iron breastplate hanging heavy on his ribs. The artificer's apprentice tightening straps, saying 'Armour needs to be worn a long time before it fits.'

Now fourth day in camp and still uneasy. Softly dressed, no pinch of metal at his hips. Though he speaks well, accepts cheers graciously, the soldiers seem to know he would flinch at a flogging. Anhalt reassures him. 'Let me command. There is work for you in Prague.' Tells him how he will hold to the ridge, behind river and soft ground. Hard to attack.

They visit Thurn. Sulky and irate, he has been ignoring Anhalt's orders, issuing his own, keeping to his tent, aggrieved he is not Field Commander. Frederick's charm is wasted on the man - it is like pouring honey on a stone. But his confidence, too, seems so well-worn, so battle-ready, Frederick leaves full of hope.

The

Early morning, Sunday 8th November, 1620. A hill and plateau west of, and close to, Prague, Bohemia.

The Bohemian Army

Thick fog. Tired men with useless eyes stare down the slope. Senses strain against the muffling white; minds grope forward, reaching for the enemy. They know the Devil uses fog to cloak his work. Prayers to St. Martin and St. Adrian, but still the day swirls before them shrouded, lacking line or shadow.

Anhalt gives thanks. The enemy is close, has crossed the river, has matched his sudden night march with their own. But no battle, surely, in this fog. Time for more cannon to catch up. Time to dig, to scrape away some chalk, set his pikes into the ground. Time for the king to hurry back with sufficient spades and money to fix his bedraggled army to their posts.

The Imperialist and Bavarian Army

Tilly sends scouts into the fog. Waiting, his army seems to tremble beneath him like the withers of his weary horse. Infantry lean on musket supports or sit on rows of pikes. Cavalry lie across their horses' necks. All are hungry, many ill. There comes a time when soldiers would rather fight than endure another march. But charge uphill? And by the time the fog lifts will Anhalt be prepared? Decisions for the brave.

Deploying Bavarians left, Bucquoy's Walloons right, he thinks of Joshua and Gideon. God is the God of Battles. War is His forge. In it He separates the blessed from the damned. Today he will do God's work and do it well. Lightly armoured lancers gallop in with news. All the main army is now in position; a rebel outpost fled without returning fire. Tilly nods. 'Tell the Master Gunners to load, signal scouts to withdraw, priests to prepare mass.'

The Bohemian Army

Now the fog begins to thin. The enemy takes shape below, dark rows on open ground. Anhalt rides the ridge, checks his battle lines. Ten cannon intervalled. Moravians before a walled and wooded game park on the right. Thurn and his Bohemians above less steep approaches on the left. In the centre, conscript units placed between companies of German mercenaries. Hungarian horsemen on both flanks at the rear.

He speaks to his son, who could be no other, same shape of eye and eyebrow, same fox-red hair, but young, unblooded in the art of war. The son dismounts, kneels before his father, vows to honour name and title. A scene copied from the tapestries. The first part, perhaps, of a future triptych that will hang glorious upon their ancestral walls. The watching troops approve. The young man's heart beats like a bird trapped beneath cloth.

The Imperialist and Bavarian Army

All eyes to the front, fixed on the hill. No piece of earth ever obsessed them more. 'How steep the slope?' 'How wet the grass?' The officers tell them repeatedly to mark their lines. 'The loaf-shaped gravel pit.' 'The right edge of the wall.' They try to count horses on the crest, ranks of men below. 'Are we more?' 'Are we better armed?' Question after question like children impatient with the story. The end is everything.

A sergeant strides in front, flanked by a bugler and two drummer boys. 'The other side of that hill lies Prague. Food like you've never eaten. Plunder like you've never seen. The enemy stands between you and riches.' Then Domenico, appears, prophet-monk who can stare away blindness, general of the barefoot Carmelites. Un-hooded, his brown robes spattered with mud, he is snarling like a dog, holds up for view a painting of the Madonna with burnt-out eyes.

'Sacrilege! Vile, sinful sacrilege! See what the evil heretics have done to the Blessed Virgin, mother of our Lord, mother to us all. They have pokered out her eyes for she could see corruption in their souls. Today, at midday, when the sun is highest, we will start pushing back the darkness. Whoever fights with us today guarantees their place in paradise. Bless us, Holy Mary, for we fight in your name.'

The Bohemian Army

Roars roll up the hill, more menacing for being indistinct. 'What do they shout?' 'Jesuits, lad, praising the Pope's arse.' Replies sporadic: Lutheran hymns, Calvinist prayers. Then silence. Shoulder to shoulder each man feels collectively alone. Then all the valley cannon blast a challenge and the roaring men begin to march. Such a sudden clutching at the heart as never came with love. Fear shutting like a trap.

Anhalt sweeps his spyglass across advancing squares of pike - ponderous and bristling tercios, each corner capped by groups of musketeers, flanked by cavalry. A reckless move by Tilly. For slopes decide the push of pike and he has the gradient. Anhalt sends dispatch to Thurn. Attack now with cavalry, foot soldiers close behind. Soon Bohemian horsemen surge downhill. A clamour of hoofbeats, a rattle of drums.

The Imperialist and Bavarian Army

'Halt and hold fast!' Armour, wood and leather shudder. Close ranks move closer still, press hard against each other, lock men together, trap them facing forward. Front rank right feet feel the pike pole planted firm. Left knees bend, backs and arms find the angle. The weight heavily familiar. Blades from behind appear above the shoulder. 'Bristle, boys, bristle like the porcupine.' 'Hold firm! Hold firm and their horses will surely shy or spike.'

The musketeers deploy, running into rows. Long coils of matchcord tight across their chests, twelve wooden flasks of powder bouncing upon bandoliers, a leather bag of shot against their hip. Supports are staked. Loading drills begin. Fast fingers forced into precision. Eyes flickering. Mouths blowing on a smoking piece of cord. Barrels up at last, stocks hard in shoulders. Rib-cages heaving at the sight ahead.

The target a moving mass of horse and men: muscle, flesh and armour, pistols and swords. Less than a hundred paces. Still no command. The ground is shaking now. Barrels tremble. Acid roils eel-like in the waiting gut. Then the command comes like a flash of flame inside the ear. And it is done. Barrels leap. Black smoke rises. No time to re-load. Muskets quickly turned and gripped as clubs as second ranks prepare to fire.

The Bohemian Army

Anhalt's orders: use your downward force to drive off their cavalry, scatter their musketeers, expose their tercios to our advancing pike and shot. But no - the Bohemian charge slows up and turns, pistols are fired hastily, swords brandished but not swung or driven home. Unnerved by shouts and smoke and glint of blades, riders rein up their horses, disengage. Behind, the infantry, seeing the faces of their own, fire one volley at long range and step back. Aghast at all advantage lost, Anhalt sends in his son.

Young Anhalt charges, leads his regiment straight against a tercio. Pride-spurred horsemen galloping through smoke. Blasting and hacking their way inside the crowded ranks of pike with pistols at close range and swinging swords. Pike poles splinter, clash against each other. Soldiers trip and fall, bring more men down. The Bohemians slash to left and right, like woodmen cutting undergrowth. The Walloons cling to their unwieldy pikes as horses, mad-eyed with pain and fear, barge aside anything that stops them breaking clear. The Imperialist and Bavarian Army

Propped up on a palette, Bucquoy, pale and feverish from recent wounds, watches groups of men bunch and spread across the hill like slow-moving flocks. Herding perhaps. The smoke could be autumnal fires, the noise the shepherds' calls. But he is not lulled. He knows in war the difference between spectacle and savagery is merely distance. The candle in the corner becomes the flame against the skin. As his wounds testify.

Observing a tercio breaking out of shape, he sends cavalry to its aid, calls for armour and a horse. The physician objects. But Bucquoy has lived with wounds before. Bravery should leave its mark. And pain acts as a test of mettle and resolve; the chance to measure oneself against Christ's sacrificial agony. The hands of servants shake while his are still. This, he thinks, is what distinguishes men of quality.

The Bohemian Army

The first and last lesson of a soldier: to turn your back is to invite slaughter. But seeing grotesquely wounded horses, bleeding men, advancing enemy, some drop their pikes and run. The signal others have been waiting for. Like birds rising from an open field, the army flees. Thurn rails against them. Whoresons. Cowards. He rails against Frederick for lack of funds, Anhalt for his strategy. He wheels his horse. Timing the tilt between honour and safety.

Christian of Anhalt, too, has lost command. He shouts orders and insults but is ignored. The Hungarians have already gone, unwilling to face Polish Cossacks on foreign soil. On the right, backed by slope and wall and woods, the Moravians still hold. But Tilly has the numbers and the will. Anhalt prays for his gallant, missing son and turns towards Prague. His duty now to prevent the capture of the king. A Tercio Flanked by Sleeves of Musketeers

A 17th Century Cannon, a 24 pounder, probably used for siege warfare.

A Musketeer Loading

an illustration from Jacob de Gheyn's The Exercise of Arms

A Cavalryman Firing his Pistol

an illustration from Jacob de Gheyn's drill book, The Exercise of Arms

The Battle of White Mountain

A Death on the Battlefield

1.54 p.m. 8th November. On the slopes of The White Mountain.

The earth so wet and tasting of rust. Not like at home. But he was not at home. No. Not since his father had pointed to show which son he meant. 'That one, if you must.'

If he could lift his head, he'd call for water. Were his mother or his sister near, they'd bring him some. The hardest thing to bear, being away from kin, living among strangers.

Far from his cousins and the village girls whose smiles brought on his special dreams. Pinching lint from their laps at sewing-bees. Bartering for kisses at harvest festivals.

Animals, too, he'd missed. Watching ducks and geese fluffing up their feathers in the evening sun as he and his brothers set nets for them, wading slow and silent through the reeds.

He keeps still. Avoids worse pain. His body reproaching his mind. Now is not the time to wonder why the preacher lied, why God had not strengthened his arm or shown mercy.

With eyes closed, he listens for voices. But hears no words. Only men like himself squealing, bellowing, braying, howling and bleating their sad, lonely ways into silence.

Flight from Prague

The morning of Sunday 8th November. Frederick and Elizabeth, King and Queen of Bohemia in the Hradschin Palace, Prague.

Bed drapes drawn. A nest of silk and scented flesh. Hands impatient after absence. Soft folds, smooth surfaces. Pleasure's overwhelming rush. In the morning he is more gentle, playful, strokes her pregnant belly, describes for her the women he saw in camp. Soldiers' wives, dressed in homsepun, ugly and short, their hair always cap-covered, rucking up their sleeves with red-knuckled fingers as they pounded the laundry or pot-boiled foul-smelling food.

Some are unmarried, he tells her, runaways, girls of ill virtue, their noisy children quick-footed in mud. One sells charms she claims can protect a man from musket and cannon. Elizabeth laughs. 'I wonder what she has for pikes and swords.' But she day-dreams of battle. Galloping up in hunting dress, on a fine horse, handing her brave husband a pistol. At lunch Frederick tells English ambassadors his army is strong and well-set for winter.

A troop of dragoons, two mules laden with spades, a small box of money. He sets off to raise morale. A king should be seen. The streets are crowded. Herds of livestock being driven in, in case of siege. Refugees too. Subjects who need a German Prince to protect their religious liberties against the House of Habsburg. His dragoons clear a way through. But the crowd thickens. The western gate is blocked by some obstruction.

A rabble of cavalry urging their horses passed sentries, tearing off sashes and tunics. Beyond, a mass of fleeing foot-soldiers. Suddenly everyone is shouting. Panic like a great gust of wind blows all other time and thought away. Only the immediate remains. Hurry east. Get across the river. 'All is lost!' 'The enemy is near.' 'Close the gate.' A man rides up, wild-eyed, hoarse, dishevelled. Frederick is amazed. Is this really Anhalt?

State rooms quickly scavenged for the valuable and portable. Servants running this way and that as if putting out a fire. The crown jewels of Bohemia thrust into a bag. The Royal chambers littered as the Queen directs the discard of all but the most precious. Taking flight in carriages with dirty wheels, and un-cushioned seats, pulled by mismatched horses. Already on the move, the door is opened, a bundle thrown inside. Rupert, her infant son.

Their mounted guards force passage through the press of angry, fearful crowds. Closed-window carriage but outside sounds reach in: shouts, cries of distress, urgent prayers to the statues on the bridge, whose sorrowful faces seem to grieve for those drowning as they try to swim across. Some say: Defend the river. Force a siege. But Frederick hesitates and the chance is lost. That night, borrowed lodgings. Hopes for the morning snubbed. 'Leave at first light. The people plan to give you up.'

Historical Notes

Part Seven

The Expropriation of Jewish Property

The Bohemian army had mutinied three times during the course of the summer because of lack of pay. In early August the government in Prague began extorting more money from the Jews in order to keep the army in the field. Increasingly desperate for funds, Frederick was selling his own jewellery.

Most of the information upon which the details of this poem are taken comes from internet articles.

There had been Jews living in Prague since the 14th Century or earlier. Despite two expulsions in the middle of the 16th Century, the sixty years that followed was a golden age for the Jewish community in the city.

There might have been as many as 6,000 Jews living in Prague at this time. This made it the largest population of Jews anywhere in the world. Perhaps one in five of the population of the city were Jewish. Among their number were mathematicians, astronomers, geographers and historians, including the notable scholar David Gans (1541-1613).

The Jewish quarter was large and had the best paved streets in the city. Four synagogues had been built during the Early Modern Period, including the High Synagogue next to the Jewish Town Hall. Two of these synagogues, and the Town Hall itself, were part-funded by the wealthy philanthropist, Mordecai Meisel.

The Jewish financiers of Prague had been very important to the Emperors Rudolph II and Matthias (as they were to be to Ferdinand over the next twenty years). Jacob Bassevi was one of their representatives at this time. The Emperor Rudolph had exempted Jews from all customs and toll duties in 1599.

Verse 1, line 4. A person's clothing was meant to be a clear indicator of their social status. There were even laws (sumptuary laws) governing who was permitted to wear what. For example Elizabeth I of England passed Statutes of Apparel in 1574. There were restrictions on who could wear certain types of jewellery, fur, collar, hat and weaponry, such as swords. Most of the laws were directed at women. To what extent these laws were obeyed is less clear.

Jews at this time had a reputation for distinctive hats. Styles included a wide flat hat, a large beret, fur hats and turbans. Not all their hats were different to Christian Europeans. For example, some Jews wore the hats then associated with particular professions.

Earlier, in the Middle Ages, Jews had been forced to wear a distinctive cone-shaped pointed hat (pilleus cornutus) in some parts of Europe. In some places these 'Jewish Caps' (Judenhut) had to be distinctive colours, red or yellow, in parts of Italy for example. This requirement had largely disappeared by the 1500s. So it is difficult to determine to what extent the hats worn by Jews at this time reflected their taste and fashions, their occupation or, as some sources suggest, were part of a dress code they were expected to follow to differentiate them from Christians.

lines 6-8. The yellow Star of David on clothing now has terrible connotations of extreme anti-Semitism. Indeed, it has a long and unpleasant history. In the Middle ages it was a requirement forced on the Jews. For example, in 1274, the Statue of Jewry introduced by Edward I of England stated:

'Each Jew, after he is seven years old, shall wear a distinguishing mark on his outer garment, that is to say, in the form of two Tables joined of yellow felt of the length of six inches and of the breadth of three inches.'

Yet the yellow star on a red background worn by the Jews of Prague may well have been worn as a badge of special privilege rather than as an enforced mark of racial identity. The Jewish community were given the honour of being allowed to fly their own flag, the same design as the badge, above their town hall as early as 1357. (This may have been the first use of the Star of David to represent the Jewish Community.) This was an honour granted to them again in 1648 after the by Ferdinand's son and successor, Ferdinand III.

Verse 2, lines 1-4. As with a narrow mouth indicating chastity (Part Six, The New Queen), facial types were thought to indicate prevailing personality traits. Someone whose mouth hung open was a noisy liar. Even the shape and size of a person's ears were thought to be a clue as to their nature. Slender-eared people were sensitive, small-eared spiteful, big-eared stupid. This poem suggests the physical caricature of the European Jew made infamous by Nazi propaganda may have its origins in these Medieval and Early Modern ideas regarding appearance and character.

(There is great emphasis placed today on making a good first impression, particuarly on important occasions such as a job interview. Such advice strongly suggests that judging by appearances is still common and known to be so. It is just done is a less brazen and formulaic fashion than in the past.)

Verse 2, line 5. There was a widespread belief in Europe at this time that Jewish religious rituals, notably the Passover, required Christian blood. In a terrible miscarriage of justice in 1475 in Trent, north Italy, nineteen Jews, (eighteen men and one woman), were tortured until they confessed to the murder of a Christian boy. Answering leading questions under great duress, the accused described in detail how the boy was murdered so that his blood could be collected for their Passover rituals. In this perverse Christian fantasy, the Jews, jealous of the body and blood of Christ which gave the Holy Communion its power, sought its substitute for their own services in the blood of an innocent Christian child.

line 6. Unleavened bread plays an important part in the rites of both Christianity and Judaism. In Germany, Jews nailed the matsa, a large disc of unleavened bread, to the wall of the synagogue where it was left for several days. Christians interpreted this (or chose to interpret it) as deliberate mockery and desecration of the host. Muir's book on rituals covers these misunderstandings in more detail.

Verse 3, line 8. This was typical of the sort of bind European Jews faced. Not allowed by law to carry weapons, they were then held in contempt as being men incapable of military powess. All the honour and status that came with being proficient in the use of arms was denied them.

The Palatinate Invaded

Louise Juliana (born 1576) was the daughter of William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, and his third wife. She married Frederick's father in 1593 and bore him eight children, three of whom died in infancy.

Verse 1, lines 1-4. The boy is Frederick's son, Charles Louis, now 2 years, 11 months old.

Verse 2, line 4. Louise Juliana had ruled as Electress from 1610 until Frederick turned 18 years old in 1614.

Verse 3, lines 3-4. Women were not thought to have minds suited to the discipline of logic.

Verse 4, line 2. The Army of Flanders was the title given to the Spanish army based in Flanders to fight against the United Provinces.

line 3. Don Ambrogio Spinola (born 1569) was a Genoese aristocrat who served the King of Spain as a general, as did several of his younger brothers. He first marched to Flanders in 1602 with an army of 9,000 Lombard (North Italian) mercenaries he had paid for with his own money. There he took over the Siege of Ostend which fell to him in 1604. He became an expert in siege warfare.

line 6. Frederick had almost emptied the Palatinate treasury to pay for the war in Bohemia. On two occasions wagons carrying 80,000 florins had set off from Heidelburg to Prague.

A Strategic Decision

Verse 1, line 4. Radishes were eaten as an appetizer. They were not recommended by physicians, however, for they were thought to cause bloating.

Verse 2, line 2. Seventeenth Century Catholic Europe saw a flowering of Marianism, religious cults based on the worship of the Virgin Mary. Duke Maximilian had declared the Madonna to be the Patron of Bavaria in 1616. The Catholic League forces fought in her name. She was their 'Generalissima', their Commander-in-Chief, and they marched under banners displaying her image. (This conveniently got around the question of who held the highest military authority, Count Tilly of the Catholic League army or General Bucquoy of the Imperial army.)

line 7. Contemporary diagnosis varied but Hungarian fever was probably a form of typhus or cholera. It killed 12,000 Catholic troops by the end of the year (Wilson).

It is estimated that only one in ten soldiers died in battle at this time, while three out of ten died of their wounds and the remaining six from sickness and disease. (Tallett).

line 10. In general the behaviour of troops of all armies towards civilians during the whole Thirty Year's War was barbarous and indiscriminate. Although fighting in the name Catholicism, the soldiers of the League plundered monasteries and convents as well as the homes of Protestants (Wilson).

Verse 3, lines 1-2. The Madonna was often depicted set in a blue field edged with gold on a white background. (Imperial Armies of the Thirty Years War by Vladimir Brnardic, Osprey Publishing.)

Verse 5, line 1. Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly (born 1559) was a Walloon by birth, that is born in the Spanish Netherlands, which is now Belgium. Educated by Jesuits in Cologne, he began his military career aged 15. He distinguished himself fighting for the Kings of Spain against the Dutch, and then in the service of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II against the Turks. He had been commander of the Catholic League's forces since 1610.

Devout, dignified, without affectation, and with an impeccable record of behaviour in his personal life, he was the model of a Christian General. However, tragic events later in the Thirty Year's War, notably the sack, destruction by fire, and slaughter of civilians young and old in in 1631, in which 25,000 out of a population of 30,000 were killed, made him a more controversial figure.

line 9. Tilly seems to have calculated that that it would be easier to keep his army fed and intact if they took Prague before winter set in. His troops were very hungry at this stage and temperatures were already below freezing at night.

A Visit to the Army

Verse 1, lines 2-4. Frederick had spend his youth at the Court of Sedan in northern France where he was brought up by his uncle, Henri de La Tour, the Duc de Bouillon. He was an accomplished rider, fencer and dancer and enjoyed hunting but proved out of place in a military environment.

This poem speculates that he was conscious of his lack of aptitude for combat and war from an early age.

The Battle of White Mountain

Despite its name, White Mountain is really just a ridge some 2km long and 60m high. It stood about 8 km from the western outskirts of Prague as the city was then.

Verse 1, line 6. There were, and still are, patron saints for every profession and most situations. St Martin and St Adrian were two of the saints whose lives had special meaning for soldiers. St Martin had been a conscript in the Roman army and is most famous for cutting his cloak in two with his sword in order to give half to a beggar.

St Adrian was also a Roman soldier. He converted after witnessing the courage of Christians he had been ordered to torture.

Although Protestants did not believe in intercession, directing prayers to saints asking for help was still common.

Verse 2, lines 1-2. Wedgwood says that Anhalt moved first, on the night of the 5th and then again on the night of the 7th. She says that their movement on the 7th was seen by the light of a burning village which some Hungarian horsemen had set alight.

Wilson says that it was Tilly who made a covert dash for Prague on the 5th and that Anhalt, on higher ground, followed and overtook him, arriving at White Mountain about midnight on the 7th.

The river is the marshy Scharka stream which Anhalt decided was too far from the ridge to defend.

line 5. The chalk gave the hill its name. The slope was pitted with small chalk and gravel pits.

Verse 4, line 1-2. Tilly placed his Bavarians on the left, facing the steeper part of the slope below a walled garden. The Imperialist troops under Bucquoy he placed on the right. There were ten large blocks of infantry, supported by cavalry squadrons. The Polish Cossacks were held in reserve. Their role was to outflank the enemy if possible.

Sources vary as to the numbers of troops involved. According to Wilson, Tilly had a slight advantage in numbers. He gives the Catholic forces at some 17,000 foot soldiers and 6,000 cavalry; the Bohemian army at 11,000 foot, 5,000 cavalry and 5,000 Hungarian and Transylvanian light cavalry.

Verse 5, line 4. The Catholics had twelve cannon which they nicknamed the twelve apostles.

The artillery of this period was cumbersome. Mobile cannon did not appear until the 18th Century. Cannon were cast iron, used corned gunpowder (gunpowder wetted, dried and ground into small pellets), and cast-iron shot, which had replaced stone balls in the previous century. Cannons could fire about eight shots an hour. Because of the slope, Anhalt's cannon were largely ineffective. Their barrels could not be depressed at a low enough angle.

line 5. The wooded game park had a pavilion called the Star Palace. Frederick and Elizabeth had paused here before their entry into Prague in October 1619. It was here that they were met and the formal welcoming procession began. The park was also one of the places they went hunting.

Verse 10, line 1. The battle cries of the Catholics were 'Salve Regina' and 'Sancta Maria'.

Verse 11, line 1. The telescope, a hand-held device, was first invented by Dutch spectacle makers in 1608. When hearing of the device, Galileo quickly made one of his own in 1609. It is speculation whether a military general such as Anhalt would have possessed one by 1620 but spyglasses certainly spread very quickly among captains of sea-going ships.

line 3. A tercio, also known as a Spanish Square, was the infantry formation used in battle from the early 1500s until the late 1600s. Early tercios could consist of up to as many as 3,000 soldiers but by the 17th Century 1,500 was the typical number.

A tercio was by this time a hollow square of pikemen with 'sleeves' of musketeers at each corner. The formation was effective against cavalry. It allowed inexperienced soldiers to be held in position by more experienced veterans around them.

As the firepower of muskets increased and as more movement was introduced into battlefield tactics, tercios became smaller in number and more linear in shape. Maurice of Nassau and Gustav Adolph of Sweden were two generals whose innovations led to changes to, and the eventual decline of, the use of the tercio.

Verse 12, line 6. Pikes in the front rank were held at 45 degrees. In some defensive formations lines of pike were held over the heads of the supporting musketeers.

Verse 13, line 12. Each of the twelve flasks contained a prepared single charge. Together they were known at the twelve apostles.

Verse 16, lines 1-3. Cavalrymen wore armour but not the full, heavy armour of the knights of the Middle Ages. The ratio of cavalry to infantry had declined towards the end of the 16th Century as armour became more vulnerable to shot from arquebus or musket.

Cavalry horses were large and powerful (some 16 hands high and weighing about 500 kg according to Wilson). To accustom them to the battlefield they were trained in fields containing burning straw and piles of carrion. However, their natural survival instincts made them ineffective against a wall of pike. Cavalry, therefore, rarely attacked tercios head on.

Sometimes they used a manoeuvre called the caracole. This involved stopping short of the enemy lines, riding up in successive ranks to within pistol range, firing one or both of the long-barrelled pistols they carried and then wheeling back to re-load. (They fired sideways from the saddle with a fully extended arm so as to avoid singeing the ears of their horse.)

More usually, they were used to drive off the enemy's screen of cavalry and then to attack the side or rear of infantry formations, with pistols, swords or lances, trying to exploit any gaps or breaches. They were also effective at scouting and hacking down fleeing enemy. (Tallett).

Verse 17, line 2. Bucquoy had been wounded in a skirmish on 3rd November.

Verse 20, line 8. Christian the younger survived but was captured. He was held by Ferdinand until 1621 when he was allowed to return to his family's Princedom. He succeeded his father in 1630 as Prince of Anhalt-Bernberg but the war did not spare his territories. His diaries have been a useful sources of information about the Thirty Years War.

The battle lasted less than two hours. If the outcome had not been so decisive and so important it might be classified as a skirmish.

A Death on the Battlefield

The Bohemians lost 1,600 men killed and 1,200 wounded, most deaths and injuries incurring during the flight from the battlefield. Estimates of the Catholic dead are in the region of 650-700. All the Bohemian cannon and over 100 banners were captured.

Armies at this time had few surgeons, perhaps three for the whole force. (Nobles may have had their own barber surgeon in attendance.) Many army surgeons were merely people with experience at using some form of 'medical' instrument, for example in gelding pigs or horses. Some were cobblers. Soldiers had to pay for their own treatment. Many preferred being treated by women who had attached themselves to the army or by quacks who exploited sick or injured soldiers. (Tallett)

Flight from Prague

Verse 1, lines 6-10. Large numbers of women followed and accompanied armies. They swelled the ranks by some 28%, according to Tallett.

Some were soldiers' wives, whether officially married or not. Others were prostitutes or hangers-on. They acted as sutlers (people who sold troops provisions), launderers, cooks, latrine cleaners and foragers. Some women fought alongside their husbands in uniform and died bravely.

(In German armies by the mid 16th Century there was actually the rank of Hurenweibel, whore sergeant, whose job it was to supervise the women, children and lackeys in camp.)

Verse 2, line 9. Frederick ate an early lunch with two diplomats from King James, Conway and Weston., who were hoping to persuade him to make peace and give up the crown.

line 10. Frederick genuinely believed this to be the case, relying on the assessment of Anhalt and Thurn. He had worried about Elizabeth remaining in Prague but had not ordered her to leave.

Verse 5, line 3-4. These crown jewels were a vital source of income for Frederick and Elizabeth in the months and years to come. Some sources say that he was in such a hurry that he forgot to take the crown with him. Others, Wilson among them, that he feared the citizens of Prague would not let him leave if he took it.

The Crown of St. Wenceslas was, and is, a particularly old, fine and famous crown. The crown was made in 1347 from 22-carat gold. The design is of a main circle of gold with large vertical fleur-de-lis on all four sides. Two other golden bands cross the top of the head and a cross stands where they meet. In this cross there lies a thorn said to be from Christ's crown of thorns. In the crown are set 19 sapphires, 30 emeralds, 44 spinels, 20 pearls, 1 ruby, 1 rubillete and 1 aquamarine. It weighs 2 kg 475 gm. It is kept in St Vitus Cathedral, Prague with replicas exhibited in the royal palace.

line 6. Wedgwood says Elizabeth left books of a 'frivolous' nature scattered on the floor of her rooms and that the discovery of these books shocked the Catholics and pious Bohemians who found them.

line 10. The man who threw the baby in the carriage was Count Christopher Dohna, He was one of a pair of brothers, originally from Prussia, who had been influential in Frederick's upbringing and who had served him as secret envoys. Count Christopher had been in Prague since 1616 operating to obstruct Ferdinand's plans and to further those of Frederick and Anhalt. His optimistic dispatches had been influential in Frederick's decision to accept the throne.

The baby, Rupert, was eleven months old. His name was deliberately chosen to hark back to a Wittelsbach who had been Holy Roman Emperor in the early 15th Century, the only member of the family to have held the title. (Frederick persuaded the Bohemian Estates to nominate his oldest son, Frederick Henry, as heir to the throne. His dynastic ambitions were clear.)

Rupert's birth had been greeted with great joy in Prague. His godfather was Gabriel Bethlen who sent him a Turkish stallion with an ornamental saddle and bridle as a christening present.

The infant Rupert survived the flight from Prague to become the soldier, admiral, colonial governor, sportsman, scientist and amateur artist known to English history as Rupert of the Rhine.

Verse 6, line 7. Among those suggesting that Frederick make a stand on the east bank was Count Thurn's son Franz, who had been at the Battle of White Mountain with his father.

line 10. The citizens of Prague planned to hand Frederick over to Tilly in the hope that he would spare them if they did so.

The victorious Catholic troops entered Prague in no mood to be merciful. Discipline soon broke down and the houses of Catholics and Protestants alike were broken into. The looting of property and the murder of remaining rebel troops lasted several days until Tilly decided enough was enough and restored order. (Duke Maximilian had given mercenaries fighting for the Bohemians an amnesty on 10th November but some lingered.)

Part Eight

April - July 1621

The Aftermath and the Beginning of a New Phase

The victorious Emperor Ferdinand extends his power over Bohemia and punishes the leaders of the rebellion. Frederick is forced into exile. Some Protestant states take up arms on Frederick's behalf.

The Winter King and Queen of Snow

30th April, 1621. Frederick and Elizabeth in The Wassenaer Hof, a grand house in The Hague, United Provinces.

More comfortable than a castle. The courtyard large, the red-brick very fine, the roof a charming ensemble of gables, chimneys, windows. All parts neatly tiled. But lacks grandeur, the skyline domination of their palaces in Heidelberg and Prague. All heads lifted in their direction. All gates emblazoned with their coat of arms.

Artisans refurbish the interior in a more regal style. New tapestries, silks and paintings on the walls, paid for in guilders from Dutch Republican taxes. Every stitch and brushstroke a deployment against Spain in a conflict already two generations old. Frederick's Rhineland territories must be denied to the enemy.

Maurice of Nassau walks a pair of compasses across a map. Marks out possible pinch points with forefinger and thumb, like a carpenter measuring the thickness of a plank. Frederick nods but feels Anhalt's absence. A tightening of his ribs, a brief flare of shame and longing the price of past dependence. 'Perhaps,' he suggests, 'details on another day.'

Exiled, stateless, with servants but no subjects, he knows he is 'The Winter King'. Pamphlets mock his one year reign. 'Fatherless Fritz'. Drawings show him fleeing Prague, garterless, breeches sagging around ankles, the Crown falling from his head. His lost honour is a piece of leather he chews upon but cannot swallow. His audience grow bored.

Elisabeth delights in telling genteel guests about the night she rode pillion. Forty miles, through a winter storm, her body pressed against the back of a gallant English captain. She plays on her reputation. Wearing a dress of white and red, she says, 'The Papists call me 'Queen of Snow', the English 'Queen of Hearts'. Which do you think the aptest soubriquet?'

God raised us up to greatness once,' he says, 'It is in His power to do the same again.' He hunts less often. Wine fattens his face. Desperate, searing love a form of flagellation. Her legend grows. Young men swear their lives to her. Blinded by their oaths, by royal birth and her own youthful charm, she fails to recognise the shift from entitlement to cap-in-hand.

Passing Judgement

22nd and 23rd May 1621. The Hofburg Palace, Vienna. Ferdinand, Holy Roman Emperor and restored King of Bohemia, decides the fate of the rebel leaders.

A simple task - to sign. The paper sits beneath his hand. Pen freshly cut. Black ink newly mixed. Wax already hot. But to put his name to this! His fingers falter, contract, want, spider-like, to hide themselves. Some form of nausea has crept outward from his heart. Sweat emerges on his forehead. He rises, silently absents himself.

No better proof of God's blessing than a battle won. Two crowns of solid silver specially cast. One he sent to Rome. The other he took to the shrine of the Blessed Virgin at Mariazell. Rode bareheaded. Gave money to the poor. Cried as he gave thanks for victory. Prayed to her for guidance on passing judgement. Returned undecided.

Already he has carried out God's work throughout Bohemia. The Estates reformed. The crown secured. The Jesuits returned to Prague. The Letter of Majesty brought to him for scissoring. Rebels seized, imprisoned, tried. Those in exile outlawed, their property distributed as reward to pious men, promoted to high offices.

But this execution order is cold prose. He wants more poetry in lines of justice, not this inventory of names, body parts, instruments: heads, hands, tongues, swords and rope. A list of lords and knights, of citizens from the higher ranks. Even those thrown from the high window three years ago have urged him to commute the sentence.

That night he consults his confessor. 'Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.' Becanus quotes the Psalms. They pray together. God judges. Kings teach their enemies to fear. Solemn, resolved, he signs the next day. A headache and his bowels are loose. His body tells him what his conscience fails to hear. In weeks to come, dreams of startling violence. Bodies dangling from a spreading oak like human fruit. A leper with a boatman's hook pulling hands out of a river. A corpse jumping from a burning tower. Visions from the Devil. Attacks upon his soul. He fights them off with prayer. Holds vigils. Ask God what further service He requires of him.

The Blood Court

Before dawn, 21st June 1621. The Square, Prague, Bohemia. The Rathaus is the City Hall.

For the condemned, silence is the greater noise. What sounds, it asks them, will they hear tomorrow, with severed heads? Last night and this the creak of cartwheels, the thumps, taps, knocks of wood on wood, the ring of hammered nails. Even the grunts of men and slurps of their drinking have floated up the Rathaus tower walls into their cell. The world as they knew it. Activity. Movement. Life. Until now. One, by the window, says 'The stage is set.' And such a big stage. Ten paces square, higher than most men, viewable from all sides, boasting a window gallows, seats, a crucifix, a wooden walkway from the Rathaus door, the whole platform covered with black cloth and spread with sand to take the blood.

Count Schlick gazes at the moon and stars. The last he'll ever see. Runs his fingertips along the window sill, feels every grain of rock, every tap mark of the mason's chisel. Cold and hard, familiar, this is every piece of masonry he's ever touched. To be lifeless seems impossible. Are his senses mocking him? Is the Devil testing him with earthly elements one last time? The looks strange, deformed. Dull scaffold drapes where there should be well-worn cobblestones in beads of moonlight. But still the place he strode across so many times. How important was he to himself when young! How full of puff! He's glad he's lived long enough to learn humility, outgrow the man he was.

A slow, collective dawn. With every breath they draw a little darkness from the room. 'How cruel,' thinks Schlick, 'to execute at daybreak. To make Light the enemy. As if all life has been a dream in darkness and sunlight brings oblivion.' He and his companions take shape for one another, exchange glances, gestures, smiles. Together they have talked out, and sung away, anger and bitterness. Only fear and faith remain, competing for the final word. ' Friends,' says Schlick, 'think, of our good fortune. Not taken at childbirth, nor by smallpox or the plague. Not killed by famine or Turkish sword. God gave us health and high office. We served our people and our king. Our last duty is to die bravely and trust in His Mercy.'

Jan Mydlar, Master Executioner, claps sand and sawdust from his gloves, settles his leather cap upon his head. Prosperous, an artisan skilled with rack and screw, with knee-splitter and Spanish Boot, with choking pear, with pincers, flaying knives, butchers' axes, and two-handed, round-ended swords. He lives among the horse-knackerers, gravediggers and refuse men. A piece of obsidian among lumps of coal. No one but his children and his wife has touched his skin in over twenty-years. He takes the sacrament alone.

Six helpers, three of them his sons. Black clothes, black masks. Death's soldiers in full uniform. Mydlar remains unmasked. Wants to offer reassurance with his face. Places in a line four great swords and three long lengths of rope, each ending in a noose eight coils thick. One for every Deadly Sin and one to spare. Below the scaffold, twenty-eight coffins. Open, empty. As if the contents of a great house are to be moved. Here Mydlar talks to servants of the men condemned. Has their hair been cut? Have collars been removed? Divis Cernin's valet reports his lord's complaint. No dignity, dying with cold air on one's neck.

Half-past four. Drumbeats, boot-steps, the jangle and clatter of soldiers on the move. Halberdiers and musketeers take up positions around a scaffold fence. The Emperor, fearing insurrection, has sent seven hundred Saxons into Prague. Roofs redden against a sky that slides from grey to pink to blue. The square holds its shadow. Mydlar is used to crowds but this one gathers slowly. Civilians pass mounted troops soft-footed and closed-mouthed. Protestants mournful and subdued. Romanists suffused with righteous awe. To see the Word of God fulfilled. Heretic traitors put to the sword.

The Tower clock strikes five. A cannon fires. The Imperial Prosecutor and his judges, black-robed, expressions set for posterity, rise from their dais seats. Charges, sentences are read aloud. Treason against a lawful king. Schlick is lead out first, smart in black velvet, prayer book in hand, flanked by Reverends. He walks upright, composed, like a man with no important thing to do. Trumpets sound and drums are beat to drown out any words. But Schlick is unconcerned with crowds. He shakes hands with the priests, kneels, ushers forward a servant to pull his shirt down at the back, says a short prayer with firm Amen to summon down the blade. His head flies, lands, rolls, is caught by Mydlar's men and quickly wrapped. His bloody corpse removed.

One by one the names are called, the men are killed. To those jostling in corners or in shoulder- shoving window frames, the beheadings begin to look the same. But, as Mydlar knows, up close all men die differently, present their necks at different angles to his sword. Lord Budovec takes off his coat himself, folds it with care; Vaslev Kaplir has trouble getting to his knees; Otto of Los, thrusts out his chest like a soldier on parade. And so it goes. One strides out and sings a hymn with booming voice; another, tearful, whispers his goodbyes. One lifts his head to lengthen out his neck; another bows so low his nose is almost in the sand. Each a novice, improvising death.

Mydlar, the veteran, is consistent in his work. A fast, full-shouldered swing. Changes swords when he feels bone and sinew push back against the blade. Uses the block to behead Sir Martin Fruwein's floppy corpse, a tower suicide. Uses a paring knife to cut out the tongue of Dr. Jesenius, the waggling red that welcomed Frederick with a speech. Decapitates the Doctor as he swallows blood. Chops off two right hands, lawyers who drafted documents. Then their heads. Escorts Jan Kutnauer up the ladder, hangs him from the beam. Follows with his step-father. The second body swings towards the first. Face to ear, the two heads almost touch. 'See,' says a smiling judge 'even in death these two conspire.'

The hangings stir the poor among the crowd. Gentry strung up like murderers or thieves. The world, it seems, is turning upside down. They stare at the rope. Death makes things magic. What powers might its fibres now possess? The last man, Vokach, a burgess, dies at nine. The final trumpet blast and drum roll fade away. The judges leave. Mydlar and his men eat bread, drink watered wine, discuss the tasks ahead. Three burgesses to be whipped out of the town. Mikulas Divis to be nailed to the gallows by his tongue. Twelve heads, two hands to be set on spikes upon the Charles Bridge tower. The scaffold to be dismantled, certain items stored or burnt. The bill to be submitted.

Mydlar's secret dream, the one he's never told, concerns a neck. Not the first he ever noosed, nor that of the pretty murderess he axed, nor any of those who cursed him as they died. One from before, when he was young and could shake others by the hand. A thick-set neck, covered in twists of dun-coloured hair, freckled skin faintly visible like soil beneath dry grass. A forester, perhaps, given the location of the inn, or someone who worked with carts. Mydlar with his friends, drunk and loud with laughter. The man had walked over, slapped him twice across the face, poured beer over his head and left without a word. That neck. The one going out the tavern door. The one that Mydlar cannot cut.

The Blood Court, Prague 1621

The War Spreads

Late July 1621. Count Thurn in the city of Pest, Hungary.

The ferrymen are too far off and too busy with pole and paddle. But Thurn shouts anyway. Instructs his staff to do the same. A man of castles and cannon, he does not understand the ways of water, its uneven flow, how it fights force with force yet can be coaxed. 'The Romans,' he says, 'would have built a bridge and I would not have to wait.' These days the edge of his temper is always sharp. But an exiled, outlawed general with no troops has little he can cut. He waits impatiently, the River Danube rushing past his feet.

That night, in Buda, he describes again Anhalt's mistakes. Talks of the Bohemians being punished for their sins, the Emperor as Pharaoh to the Israelites. The war, he explains, will continue because it must. For Habsburgs partial victory will not suffice while he and others have their honour to restore, lost liberties to regain. In Lusatia his own son, Franz, fights bravely on. Bethlen refuses to concede Saint Stephen's throne, and threatens Pressburg. The Palatine is in flames, Bucquoy subdues Moravia by force of arms.

A pause. He dips his fingers, napkins his beard. What is needed now, he tells them, is a Caesar for our age. An Alexander to cut through the Imperial knot. Frederick was no Scipio, no Anthony. Perhaps Christian of Denmark, an older, wiser, richer man? Or young Gustav Adolph of Sweden, forging his sword on the plains of Poland? And how long can the House of Bourbon keep its armour and lances on trestles when Habsburg pennants fly at both ends of the lists? In any war, the last word is the best.

Dishes are cleared. Diners wash meat grease from their hands, get up from benches, place their knives back on their belts. Low flames light wine-flushed faces. Eyes glow with private thoughts stirred by talk of dynasties. Outside, they piss into the gutter, say their goodnights and disperse to different lodgings. Candle-lantern shadows gesture on the alley wall. A puppet show. Two young friends, graduates from Prague, discuss what they have heard. 'No prospect of peace,' says one. 'I am a scholar not a soldier. Perhaps I'll sail to the Indies or Americas.' The other laughs. 'You will find no difference. In every place the greed and wickedness of men. Except Cockaigne, of course, where bread rolls fall from clouds and cuckoos sing like nightingales.'

After Foraging

Autumn 1621. A boy in a village in Moravia.

The man who makes him cry is crying. His father. Damp cloth wrapped around his blistered hands. Those heavy hands, now shaking and flapping like a bee-stung baby trying to wave away the pain.

And tears. A most marvellous sight. He is witnessing a miracle, as those who saw the roadside statue weep on St. Joseph's Day. Perhaps now the clouds will part and Jesus will appear on wings to give out bread, to open graves.

'They were Turks,' his uncle says. 'No Christian souls would do such things to us.' The strange cut of their beards, the curve of their swords, the smell of their horses' turds. And just three words of Czech: where, money, food. Repeated over screams.

Flames brighten as the daylight fades. The village burns. More women appear, young and old, walking slowly in their bloodied skirts. The moon breaks the cloud but only crows come down. To feast, to roost. Someone says he's thirsty, calls for help in hauling bodies from the well.

Scythes and pitchforks lay broken or discarded. His uncle turns his severed ear over and over in his hand. The boy stares at his weeping father, remembers the soldier laughing, and thrills to the new drumbeat of his heart.

The Hanging by Jacques Callott

Historical Notes

Part Eight

The Winter King and Queen of Snow

Verse 4, line 4. The victorious Catholic army found a number of wagons laden with items from the royal household blocked in a city gateway. In one of these wagons was the Order of the Garter which King James had presented to Frederick at the time of his betrothal to Elizabeth in 1612.

lines 6-8. This metaphor was inspired by something similar written by an English diplomat from the period.

Verse 5, line 2. Elizabeth was heavily pregnant at the time. The officer in question was Ralph Hopton. He later became an accomplished Royalist General, fighting for Elizabeth's brother, King Charles I, during the English Civil wars. line 7. Elizabeth was also called 'the Helen of Germany' by her detractors.

Verse 6, line 5. The two most notable Princes attracted to the cause of Frederick and Elizabeth were Christian of Brunswick and Georg Frederick, Margrave of Baden-Durlach.

Christian (born 1599) was a dashing, impetuous and eccentric young man. (In contrast, George Frederick was sixty years old.) Catholic propaganda called Christian the Mad Halberstadter because of his strange behaviour and reputed excesses in war. He is famous for picking up a glove Elizabeth had dropped and vowing only to return it to her in the re-taken Palatinate. He then wore it in his hat. His banners bore the line 'For God and Her.'

Both men raised soldiers at their own expense and joined Mansfeld in his campaigns against Tilly. They was joined by a few thousand Anglo-Scots volunteers under Sir Horace de Vere and others.

The years 1621-25 has become known as the 'Palatinate Phase' of the Thirty Years War. During this period Frederick's allies sought to defend his lands both along the Rhine and in the Upper Palatinate. Tilly won a notable victory at Wimpfen in 1622. This forced George Frederick out of the war. Christian fought on until his death from illness in 1626.

Passing Judgement

Verse 4. There were very few battles in the whole of the Thirty Years War which had clear, long-lasting social and political consequences. The Battle of White Mountain was one of them. In the two years after his victory, Ferdinand forced the Bohemian people to convert to Catholicism or face exile. Large numbers of Protestants emigrated. An estimated five-sixths of the Czech nobility went into exile. There were massive changes in landownership as loyal Catholics were favoured with grants of confiscated land, some were German and from outside Bohemia.

In 1622 was merged with the Jesuit Academy, and the entire education system of the Bohemian Kingdom was placed under Jesuit control. In 1624 all non-Catholic priests were expelled by royal decree. In 1627 permanent Hapsburg rule was established in law.

Wilson disputes the argument that this was the moment Bohemia was set on a path to absolute monarchy under a Catholic king. Many Czechs, however, believe the defeat started the process of turning a distinctive, autonomous Kingdom into just one province among many in the Habsburg Empire.

line 6. Count Slavata and Count Martinez were among those who did not want to see the rebel leaders executed. Several leading figures asked Ferdinand to commute the sentences to imprisonment or galley service.

Verse 5, line 6. Ferdinand did not sign the first set of death warrants. He pardoned five and reduced the level of barbarity of some sentences. For example Dr Jesenius' body was now to be quartered after death instead of before.

The Blood Court

The Blood Court, as this morning of executions came to be called, was held on the third anniversary of the Defenestration. In fact the whole event was a piece of grand political theatre, carefully stage-managed for maximum symbolic effect.

In November 1620 Tilly advised prominent figures in the rebellion to leave Prague and not return. He feared sentences and reprisals would be harsh. That so many did not heed his warning is testament not only to a form of arrogance about their indispensability, but also to how strongly they identified themselves with their land and titles upon which they depended for their income and their status in the community. (Count Schlick fled to Saxony but was handed over.)

Verse 4, line 1. Jan Mydlar (born 1572) was unusual in that he was not the son of an executioner. Executioners were outcasts from society and had to live with people of the lowest social standing. They could only marry the daughters of other executioners and the career prospects of their own children were very limited. So it was not often that someone came to the profession by choice.

In his strange and gruesome book, The Memoirs of a Prague Executioner, Josef Svatek suggests that Mydlar was a medical student who had joined the profession in an attempt to save the woman he loved from the gallows. There may be no basis of truth in this.

Mydlar was a Protestant. He lived well into his eighties, dying in 1664.

lines 5-8. These are instruments of torture. The rack stretched limbs to dislocation. The screw refers to various types of tightening devices placed over limbs or digits, the most common being the thumbscrew. The knee- splitter was a larger screw device in which two wooden blocks were placed either side of the knee and tightened. The Spanish Boot was one of various casings that were fitted around the leg. Wedges were then hammered in to increase the pressure. Some, like the shin-crusher, were metal casings with spikes facing inwards.

Svatek describes the choking pear as a wooden pear-shaped object with a hole in it and a string attached. This was dropped down a person's throat to stop them cursing or swearing during torture. Other sources show a segmented metal device that was placed in a person's throat. The segments could then be widened by turning a screw. This metal device seems to date from later than 1620.

(Round-ended swords: executioners' swords were specially made. Their tips had no points as the swords were going to be used for swinging not stabbing.)

Torture was routinely used in the judicial process to extract confessions. Why, it was thought, would anyone willingly tell the truth about their crimes when doing so would bring a verdict of guilty followed by terrible punishment? Satan made evildoers cunning and strong. Only torture could get at the truth.

Town halls in most large towns or cities had torture chambers beneath them, some purpose-built and fully equipped. Kings and Princes, among them James I and Maximilian Duke of Bavaria, attended torture sessions. There were rules, however, and it was not meant to be applied in cases where there was no other evidence. Mercifully, often just showing the accused the instruments of torture was enough to secure a confession.

(One Polish nobleman who doubted the validity of confessions secured under torture proved his point by falsely accusing one of his own servants of stealing an object and then having him tortured until he confessed.)

Judicial torture took a long time to lose its legitimacy. England led the way, banning it in 1640. Other European states followed in the 18th Century but it was not removed from the legal system of Portugal until 1828 and one canton of Switzerland until 1851.

Anyone doubting the validity of the theory put forward by Stephen Pinker (in his book The Better Angels of our Nature) and other academics that people today are less violent than people in the past should read more history books. Julius Ruff's Violence in Early Modern Europe, part of the New Approaches to European History series by Cambridge University Press, gives a good picture of the extraordinary levels of violence that were prevalent at that time.

Verse 5, line 5. Accounts of the Blood Court vary. Even the number of people executed and by what method differ from one source to another. This poem follows Wilson and a detailed list found on the internet (http://veritas.evangnet.cz/en/executions-1621) in stating that there were 27 executed, 24 beheaded and three hanged. The list on the internet does not mention the beheading of the corpse of Sir Martin Fruwein, the suicide. (The commission of prosecution had issued 51 sentences in total, including individuals already killed in the conflict. Some were commuted.)

Wilson says four axes were used. Svatek says swords. Illustrations from the time clearly show swords but they may not be accurate.

Svatek mentions blocks being used but, again, they are not shown in illustrations. The poem has a block used for the corpse on the premise that decapitation would have been difficult otherwise.

line 13. Divis Cernin (Dionys Czernin) was the Catholic Captain of the Guard who had let the Defenestrators into Castle Hradschin. He refused a confessor before execution.

Verse 6, line 3. A halberd was a spiked axe blade mounted on a long shaft. It was a flexible two-handed weapon about 1.6m in length (5ft).

Verse 7, lines 6-11. One of the first books to be printed using moveable type, and one which soon ran into hundreds of editions, was Ars Moriendi, the Art of Dying. The texts within it were, in effect, a guide to dying well. People were advised to die without despair or impatience but calmly displaying faith in God's mercy (see Part Two, Mourning).

All men, but especially noblemen, were expected to die bravely. Sir Walter Raleigh is supposed to have uttered three brave statements on the scaffold, including the witticism, on seeing the axe:

"This is a sharp Medicine, but it is a Physician for all diseases and miseries."

A brave death could even alter a reputation. One Spanish nobleman sentenced to death for repeated acts of corruption died with such casual insouciance that people changed their opinion of his character. Dignity before the executioner's sword allowed deeply flawed characters such as Anne Boleyn and King Charles I a redemptive public moment. As Malcolm says of the traitorous Thane of Cawdor in Act 1, scene 4 of Shakespeare's Macbeth: 'Nothing in his life Became him like the leaving it.' Verse 8, line 7. Lord Budovec was 84 years old. He had been President of the Directory set up after the Defenestration.

line 8. Vaslev Kaplir was the oldest of those executed, 86 years old. line 9. Otto of Los was 80 years old and had been a soldier.

Verse 9, line 5. Sir Martin Fruwein had committed suicide by throwing himself from the tower.

line 7. Dr. Jan Jesenius had been Rector of the Charles University in Prague. He had given the main welcoming speech on Frederick's arrival in the city. Svatek claims Jesenius and Mydlar had had previous dealings with each other. In his book Jesenius asks Mydlar to supply him with dead bodies of criminal for use in his anatomy lessons. This is plausible.

lines 10-11. Svatek claims Count Schlick was one of the two men to have their hands cut off. However, it seems logical that it was the two Doctors of Law, Jan Hauenschild and Leonard Ruppel, as the internet list states.

lines 12-16. Jan Kutnauer's father was Simeon Susicky of Sonnenstein. The story is from Svatek and has the ring of truth about it.

Verse 10, line 5. Pieces of the rope used in a gallows hanging were much prized. It was believed that they could keep someone safe from harm or even make a person invisible. Such items were sold by executioners. The toes of the hanged were often cut off by people in the crowd and kept as lucky charms. Hands of hanged men were also thought to have great powers. The dried hand (usually the left or the hand that had committed the murder) was known as the Hand of Glory. If a lighted candle made from the fat of the same corpse was placed in the hand, anyone given the hand would be unable to move.

line 11. Mikulas Divis was a secretary, a minor official who had been dressed as the Hussite hero Jan Zizka when Frederick made his grand entry into Prague.

line 15. According to Svatek the bill came to 660 groschen and wasn't settled until after a reminder had been sent.

The Blood Court was a shocking event even by the standards of the time. This not so much because of the nature of the punishment was because of the age, birth and high positions of those executed, as well as their number. It provoked considerable disquiet. Ferdinand seems to have recognised this. Only one Moravian was executed later that same month. Twelve others sentenced to death had their sentences commuted to imprisonment. They were released ten years later.

The Blood Court of 1621 is marked today by twenty-seven white crosses in the Old Town Square in Prague.

The War Spreads

Verse 2, lines 10-11. Saint Stephen's throne is the crown of Hungary. Pressburg is the old German name for the Slovak city now called . It was a strategically important Hungarian city on the River Danube near the border between Hungary and Lower Austria.

Verse 3, lines 3-5. This refers to the myth of Alexander the Great and the Gordian Knot. This was a knot attached to an ox-tethering post in Gordium, Phrygia (now Anatolia, Turkey). It had been tied by the son of Gordias and was said to be impossible to undo. Attempting to untie the knot when wintering there in 333 BCE, Alexander became frustrated. He then unsheathed his sword and cut it in two.

line 5. Scipio refers to Scipio 'Africanus'. He was the Roman general who defeated the Carthaginian general Hannibal at the Battle of Zama 202 BCE.

Anthony refers to Mark Anthony, the Roman military commander who defeated the forces of Julius Caesar's murderers at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BCE. He was later made governor of Rome's three eastern provinces and became the lover of Cleopatra with whom he fathered three children.

lines 5-11. These lines sum up in very broad terms what actually happened over the next 27 years. The Palatinate Wars (1621-25) were followed by the intervention of the King of Denmark (1625-29) and by the Swedish campaigns of Gustav Adolph and others (1630-35). The House of Bourbon, Kings of France, then became directly involved and, with Swedish forces still participating, the fighting continued until the in 1648.

The Eighty Years War between the Spanish and the Dutch ended the same year.

Verse 4, line 15. The Land of Cockaigne, also spelt Cockayne, was a mythical land of luxury and ease. It was celebrated in stories and poems of the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. Talking and hearing about Cockaigne must have given some comfort to the poor, at least in their imagination. It was a land of idleness, gluttony and lust.

In some versions Cockaigne was an upside down world where fruit trees were barren but willow trees were full of fruit. (And where behaviour was similarly inverted, nuns showing their bottoms, for example.) In other versions the streets were made of pastry, roast pigs walked about with knives in their backs to make carving easy, and fish jumped out of the sea already cooked.

(The folk music song Big Rock Candy Mountain, a song about a hobo's paradise first recorded by Harry McClintock in 1928, is The Land of Cockaigne brought up to date:

In the Big Rock candy Mountains All the cops have wooden legs And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs and:

There's a lake of stew And of whiskey too You can paddle all around it In a big canoe)

In his book Bread of Dreams, Piero Camporesi suggests that strange dreams and hallucinations were not uncommon among the poor at this time. Visions, fits or even temporary madness might be brought on by illness (Sydenham's chorea, known as 'St Vitus' Dance', for example), intense hunger or by bread adulterated with ergot or other substances. 'Our land is called poverty', went one saying, ' where one does the dance of hunger.'

After Foraging

The horrors of the war were well described at the time. Jacques Callot's two series of engravings on the 'The Miseries and Misfortunes of War' were published in 1633. Dr. Vincent's book The Lamentations of Germany was published in 1638. The impact of the war on civilians was described by those who lived through it, notably in the 1668 novel Simplicissimus by Johann Jacob Grimmelshausen. Grimmelshausen had been kidnapped by soldiers at the age of ten.

Tallett quotes a contemporary eyewitness describing a village after a military campaign:

'We found only the walls were left. Not a door, not a window, not a pane of glass, not a piece of metal, and, what is worse, not a single bundle of straw.'

Wilson points out the problem of accepting the relatively few surviving accounts at face value when so much other material has been lost, and when so much that was written was propaganda in the first place. He also discusses the problem of calculating casualties using unreliable population figures. This is especially true when migration and deaths not caused by the war have to be taken into account.

To complicate matters, some regions of Europe were devastated while others were relatively unafffected. A few towns, those involved in the arms industry for example, even flourished during the years of the war. In fact, the number of deaths and the amount of destruction in Europe caused by the Thirty Years War has been the subject of great historical controversy.

Nevertheless, modern estimates put the total number of deaths during the war as high as eight million. Even a figure of five million represents a percentage death toll three to four times higher that either of the two World Wars of the 20th Century. Wilson is not at all sensationalist in his assessment. Yet, when talking about the decline of Europe's population over the period of the war, he comes to the conclusion: 'Even a 15% decline would make the Thirty Year's War the most destructive conflict in European history.'

Biographical Details

Biographical Details of Major Figures

Part One

Frederick V of the Palatinate Frederick remained in exile and was never restored to his ancestral lands. He lived mainly off donations from the English and Dutch governments, which he spent all too quickly on building a new palace at Rhenen and in lavish entertainments.

After failing to win back the Palatinate by force, Frederick made several attempts to persuade Emperor Ferdinand to restore his lands and title to him. In 1630 he formally admitted that he had been wrong to accept the throne of Bohemia and asked Emperor Ferdinand for forgiveness. These diplomatic efforts came to nothing.

The military successes of , King of Sweden, against the Catholic forces of the Emperor between 1630-32 gave Frederick renewed hope. He was with Gustavus Adolphus on his successful invasion of Bavaria and triumphal entry into Munich. However, despite paying Frederick full royal honours on first meeting, in private the Swedish King treated him with barely disguised contempt. He promised to restore the Palatinate only if Frederick agreed to hold it as a fiefdom to the throne of Sweden.

In poor health partly because of his heavy drinking, Frederick succumbed to an infection in October 1632 and died of fever the following month.

Elizabeth of Bohemia Elizabeth bore Frederick 13 children, four of whom died in infancy or childhood, with another three dying before she did. She was said to be overcome with grief at the death of her husband.

Elizabeth continued to live in exile in The Hague even after her brother Charles had become King of England and after her second son, Charles Louis, had been restored to the Palatinate at the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648. She was never on good terms with Charles Louis and the tone of their correspondence was distant and fractious.

Elizabeth lived on in the Mauritshaus, a large mansion, with her reputation fading and her quality of lifestyle declining. One visitor reported seeing mice running under her skirts. However, she made good matches for her daughters, one of whom, Sophia, became Electress of Hanover and was the mother of the George who became George I, King of Great Britain and Ireland in 1714, the first of the Hanoverians.

When her nephew became Charles II King of England and Scotland at the Restoration in 1660, she decided to leave The Hague and return to England. She arrived in May 1661 but died of pneumonia in February 1662. Her death was of little public interest. By then she was chiefly known as the mother of Rupert of the Rhine, who was the only one of her sons to attend her funeral at Westminster Abbey.

Portraits of Frederick and Elizabeth in Youth and Later in Life

Part Two

Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor After the victory of the Battle of White Mountain, Ferdinand's forces enjoyed subsequent military successes against Frederick's allies in the Lower (Rhenish) and Upper Palatinates and then against the King of Denmark. Ferdinand overplayed his hand when he issued the in May 1629 which ordered that all church property taken by Protestants since 1552 be restored to the Catholic church. German Protestant princes strongly opposed this measure.

The tide of war turned against Ferdinand with the entry of Gustavus Adolphus and then back again in his favour on Gustavus Adolphus' death in 1632. In 1634 his forces, commanded by his son Ferdinand, together with a Spanish army, defeated a joint Swedish-Protestant army. This lead to the Treaty of Prague in 1635 which signalled the end of Ferdinand's more extreme Counter-Reformation and absolutist policies. It was the basis of agreement with Protestant Princes within the Empire.

Seriously asthmatic and increasingly senile, Ferdinand began to hand over the day to day running of affairs to his son who succeeded him on his death in February 1637.

Part Three

Count Matthias Thurn Count Thurn continued his efforts against the Habsburgs and returned to lead Protestant troops in Silesia in 1626. He later served under Gustavus Adolphus.

Thurn was captured by Imperial troops in 1633 but soon ransomed. He then retired to his family estates in Estonia where he died in 1640.

Count Wilem Slavata Count Slavata became Chancellor of Bohemia and died in 1652.

Count Jaroslav Martinitz Count Martinitz returned to Bohemia. He died in 1649.

Part Four

Cardinal Melchior Klesl Cardinal Klesl was moved to Rome in 1622 and released from prison the following year. He never regained any political influence but was restored as Bishop of Vienna in 1628. He died in 1630. There is a square in Vienna named after him.

Christian of Anhalt-Bernburg Christian remained in exile until 1624, at first in Sweden and then in Denmark. Concerned about his son, who had been wounded and captured at the Battle of White Mountain, he publicly distanced himself from Frederick and from his previous policies.

He appealed to Ferdinand for mercy and was allowed to return to his principality in 1624. He died in 1630.

Count of Bucquoy Bucquoy was killed during the siege of Neuhausel in what is now in July 1621. He was buried with full honours in Vienna. Ferdinand found him hard to replace.

Part Five

Colonel Dampierre Dampierre was killed in October 1620 before the Battle of White Mountain took place. He died near Pressburg in Hungary in a campaign against Gabriel Bethlen. He had burnt a vital bridge and delayed thousands of Hungarian troops, preventing them from arriving in time for the Battle of White Mountain.

Frederick Henry Frederick Henry, the first child of Frederick and Elizabeth, was drowned aged 15 in a boating accident in 1629. He had set off with his father to see the captured Spanish treasure fleet in Amsterdam. Near Haarlem, in thick fog, the overcrowded boat in which they were travelling collided with another and capsized.

Part Six

Gabriel Bethlen Bethlen continued his anti-Habsburg campaigns. He had limited success and was forced to renounce the throne of Hungary, though he remained Prince of Transylvania. After the Peace of Pressburg in 1626, he suggested to Ferdinand that they form an anti-Ottoman alliance but this idea was rejected. He married a daughter of the Elector of Brandenburg and died in 1629.

Abraham Scultetus Sultetus fled Bohemia with Frederick. He ended up in Emden where he preached until his death in 1625.

Part Seven

Ambrogio Spinola With the resumption of hostilities between Spain and the united Provinces in 1621, at the end of the Twelve Years Truce, Spinola distinguished himself as the commander of the successful siege of Breda 1624-25. This siege is commemorated in a great painting by Velasquez, now in the Prado Museum, Madrid. Spinola fell ill and died in 1630 during yet another campaign.

Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly Tilly lead successful campaigns against Protestant forces in the Lower (Rhenish) and Upper Palatinates, capturing Heidelberg in September 1622. He then fought against the King of Denmark's forces, winning a decisive victory at Lutter in 1626.

After the siege and appalling in 1631, where thousands of civilians were slaughtered, Tilly engaged the Swedish army under Gustavus Adolphus but was defeated at the Battle of Breitenfeld, near Leipzig. In April the following year he was wounded by a cannonball near Lech. Gustavus sent his own personal physician to treat him but he died of tetanus.

Part Eight

Maurice of Nassau Maurice was a successful general who lead the resistance of the United Provinces to the forces of Spain. He was appointed Captain-General in 1587 and took several key towns before the Twelve Years Truce began in 1609. He is credited with introducing many effective military reforms. He died in 1625 during the siege of Breda.

Maurice Prince of Nassau