Thurn and Mansfeld, the earlier commanders of the Bohemian forces, took place.
The king's notorious incapacity in military affairs, in which he had as a youth received no instruction,[1] rendered his position even more hopeless. The military ignorance of the king was probably one of the reasons why about this time the supreme direction of the defence of the country was entrusted to a council of war. Besides the principal Bohemian statesmen and generals, Baron Tschernembl, leader of the Protestants of Upper Austria, and General Hofkirchen, commander of the levies of the Protestant Estates of Lower Austria, who had sought refuge in Bohemia, formed part of this council. Tschernembl, aware of the desperate position of the country, advised desperate remedies. He demanded that the order calling the whole male population to arms should be more strictly carried out, and demanded a great increase of the taxation and the abolition of serfdom. The latter step, he justly urged, was absolutely necessary to interest the masses in the defence of their country. These proposals, obviously opposed to the landed interest, and therefore to the wishes of the great Bohemian nobles who were the originators of the movement against the house of Habsburg, were rejected by the council of war; in fact, the deliberations of that body, which, as Gindely says had been summoned at a moment when the possibility of its proving useful had already almost ceased, led to hardly any practical result.
It is, however, probable that it was on the suggestion of the council of war that the king at last decided to leave Prague (September 28) and to join his army. The fact that his cousin, Maximilian of Bavaria, himself led the Catholic forces rendered the king's presence with his troops even more necessary than it would otherwise have been. Before the king had joined his army, the enemy had already achieved important successes. Duke Maximilian and Bouquoi had taken the towns of Vodňan, Prachatic, and Pisek by storm. Instead of marching directly on Prague, they then led their forces in the direction of Pilsen, the most important town of Western Bohemia, which was now held by a strong force under Mansfeld.
- ↑ This circumstance, very exceptional in the case of a German prince of that period, is noted in the Mémoires sur la vie et la mort de la Princesse Loyse Juliane Electrice. A Leyden, 1644.
