The Thirty Years' War - James Aitken Wylie

existence. Even when the army-roll exhibited
100,000 names, it was difficult to bring into action
the half of that number of fighting men, the
absentees were always so numerous, from sickness,
from desertion, from the necessity of collecting
provisions, and from the greed of plunder. The
Bohemian army of 1620 was speedily reduced in
the field to one-half of its original numbers; the
other half was famished, frozen, or forced to desert
by lack of pay, not less than four millions and a
half of guldens being owing to it at the close of the
campaign. No military chest of those days – not
even that of the emperor, and much less that of any
of the princes – was rich enough to pay an army of
40,000; and few bankers could be persuaded to
lend to monarchs whose ordinary revenues were so
disproportionate to their enormous war
expenditure. The army was left to feed itself. When
one province was eaten up, the army changed to
another, which was devoured in its turn. The
verdant earth was changed to sackcloth. Citizens
and peasants fled in terror-stricken crowds. In the
van of the army rose the wail of despair and
anguish: in its rear, famine came stalking on in a
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