Kepler's Witch (37 page)

The sentence had been carried out, but Katharina had not confessed. According to the verdict, nothing more could be done to her, so Aulber, the Güglingen magistrate, led her back to prison. On October 3, Duke Friedrich of Württemberg commanded that Frau Kepler be released from prison, since she had cleansed herself through her ordeal. The sentence had been carried out, and she was free to go. Einhorn and Aulber refused to let her go and, instead, delayed the final proceedings while holding Katharina in prison, even after the order of her release. It worked once, but this time the duke had less patience. The ducal chancery in Stuttgart finally informed Aulber that if he wanted to hold Katharina after October 7, then any expenses incurred for her care would come from his own pocket. Aulber released Katharina almost at once. From the day that Katharina Kepler was arrested in Heumaden to the day of her release, October 7, 1621, 425 days had passed.

Even with the trial over and the sentence passed, the Reinbold family continued their campaign against Katharina, calling her “evil trash.” On November 15, Luther Einhorn, supported by the judges of Leonberg whom he dominated, wrote to the duke, requesting that he forbid the Kepler woman from living in Leonberg. They wanted her to live somewhere else. Einhorn proclaimed his deep concern for the welfare of the town, saying that the presence of the Kepler woman would be a source of terrible contention and continued struggle. He did not, of course, mention that he and his friends would be one of the causes of that contention. Einhorn was terrified that the slander case might finally come to light, bringing his own actions to light with it. Katharina certainly never returned to Leonberg, for aside from Einhorn's petition to the duke, she
received word that if she ever showed her face in her hometown again, the people there would beat her to death.

Johannes Kepler, in response to Einhorn's petition, asked the duke to transfer the complaint to Tübingen or Cannstadt. The day before Katharina, destroyed by the long ordeal and weakened by age and abuse, finally died in Heumaden, at the home of her daughter Margaretha, the duke ordered Einhorn to deliver the files to Tübingen. The files, rather mysteriously, disappeared.

F
ROM
K
EPLER'S
H
ARMONICE
M
UNDI
, B
OOK
V 1619

Where Kepler writes his
Harmony of the World
as the Thirty Years' War heats up, and where he is finally chased out of Linz, his home for fourteen years.

N
OVEMBER
8, 1620. Deep autumn, nearly winter. The air was cold with more than just the time of year. Thousands of men would die that afternoon in a little less than two hours. The noise would be unthinkable—booming cannons, war cries, the screams of dying horses. When it was over, blood soaked into the ground all across the hillside. The Battle of White Mountain lasted from noon until just before two o'clock in the afternoon. The French philosopher René Descartes, in his soldierly days, fought on the Catholic side and witnessed the entire battle. For such a short, decisive conflict, the two sides were fairly well matched. The Protestants occupied the top of White Mountain, a low hill just outside of Prague. They had the better tactical position, commanding what passed for the heights, with about twenty-one thousand men at arms, seven thousand fewer than the Catholics. But their men were tired after days of forced marches, while the Catholic troops were fresh. Moreover, the
Protestants had not adequately prepared for the battle. Their commander, Christian Anhalt, had ordered his men to dig in along the forward curve of the hill, but the men refused, saying they were too tired and that they were soldiers, not peasants. Digging was for farmers and, besides, their shovels were all broken. Instead, Anhalt ordered them to build up five breastworks, three to protect the artillery and two for the infantry.

The Protestants also chose to arrange their troops according to the Dutch fashion in three columns of three lines, interspersing companies of cavalry and companies of infantry. Current military theory claimed that this arrangement was more flexible, which was probably true, but it was also less stable, and in the end that proved fatal.

The Protestant armies were led by Field Marshall Prince Christian Anhalt-Bernstein, the personal adviser to Friedrich V and the man behind the formation of the Protestant Union. He was an ambitious man, fiercely anti-Catholic and anti-Habsburg, who worked tirelessly to advance the Protestant cause, a man of radical temperament who did much to inflame the hatred between Protestants and Catholics. Under him was Field Marshall Count Matthias Thurn, one of the leaders of the Second Defenestration of Prague, the man who had counseled action that day in the Bohemian chancellery building, and then later led an army of mercenaries against Vienna and the emperor. He was the torch that had lit the fuse of the Thirty Years' War, a fearless commander, some said rash, who had been the supreme military leader of the Protestant forces until Friedrich replaced him with Prince Christian Anhalt, a change he fiercely resented. From that point on, Count Thurn complained openly whenever he thought that Anhalt was showing hesitation of any kind.

The men who followed them were Czechs, Austrians, Germans, Moravians, and Hungarians, many of whom were veterans of campaigns against the emperor. Few of them had the fighting experience of the Catholics, however, especially the imperial troops, for they had been fighting the Turks for years. The Catholics also had much better equipment. However, because the Protestants held the high ground, Anhalt believed that the Catholics would avoid a direct attack and would likely wait until the next day anyway. He informed Friedrich of his opinion, and so the new king of
Bohemia, who was not much of a warrior anyway, left the field for the city on the morning of the battle and ordered up his breakfast.
¹

Their enemy, the Catholic League, was founded by Maximilian Wittelsbach, the Duke of Bavaria, a man who was said to be a financial genius, but who could sometimes be stingy and even petty, a man who supported the Catholic cause with all his heart, but at the same time worked constantly to undermine the Habsburgs in favor of his own family. In command of the Catholic army was Lieutenant General Count Jean T'Serclaus, Baron of Tilly, a Walloon from Flanders who had waged war in the pay of the Spanish for years. He was aggressive up to a point and believed that a general could shift the tides of history if he made the right decisions and won the right battles. When he felt that he had corralled enough of an advantage over the enemy, he would grab the opportunity and attack, and attack again. He was willing to break with military fashion when he saw the need and was rarely taken in by the latest theories. A rather conservative, pragmatic commander at heart, he preferred large, deep formations and overpowering force.

His immediate subordinate, Lieutenant General Charles Bonaventura de Longueval, Count of Bucquoy, was a different sort entirely. He supported Tilly, but was not the strategist his commander was; he relied more on personal courage and bravado, much like Jeb Stuart in relation to Robert E. Lee. He believed in the quick thrust, the lightning charge, in wearing down an enemy by feint and maneuver. Their soldiers were generally old campaigners—Bavarians, Germans, Frenchmen, Spanish, and Walloons, men who had fought the Dutch, the Hungarians, and the Turks. They were hard men, men used to death, and their password in the field was something no Protestant would ever say: “
Sancta Maria,”
“Holy Mary.”
²

The day before the battle, the two armies faced one another and waited. The Catholic position was the poorer one, for they had to fight uphill all the way. Tilly had organized his army into two wings, with the imperial troops on the right and the army of the Catholic League on the left. They were arrayed in the less flexible but more traditional and more stable configuration of four large square phalanxes of infantry at the center, with columns of more mobile infantry and cavalry protecting their
flanks. Anhalt had apparently misread Tilly right from the start. Tilly had been aggressive right off, setting the front of his formation a mere six hundred yards from the Protestant ranks. The Catholic commander had somehow judged that, despite the ground, his army was the stronger one, and he would press that advantage without mercy.

The armies were finally set in order and battle lines drawn, when night fell and the two sides encamped. By next morning, as Friedrich rode off for his breakfast, an autumn mist covered the battlefield. Men moved about in the fog, troops assembled. Suddenly, in the early morning light, Tilly sent soldiers to attack the Protestant outposts along the stream, pushing them back and quickly taking the bridge and a small village nearby named Rep. The Moravian colonel Stubenvoll rode as fast as he could to the Protestant commanders and begged them to counterattack as quickly as possible, to throw the Catholics back across the stream, so that the Protestants could hold on to every advantage they had. The enemy could not be allowed to hold the bridge. Count Thurn agreed, but Anhalt resisted, and finally did nothing. Colonel Stubenvoll, furious, stormed out of the tent. “We are all lost!” he shouted.

Meanwhile, the Catholics had their own problems. Bucquoy disagreed with Tilly's plan and wanted to outflank the Protestants instead. Both Tilly and the Duke of Bavaria, figuring that their strength was sufficient, resolved to attack Anhalt head on, but other commanders agreed with Bucquoy and preferred to nibble around the edges first. A report from one of their scouts, however, from a Colonel Lamotte, said that the Protestants were tired and disheartened and would fall if pressed, but Bucquoy would not change his mind. The disagreement intensified until the war council nearly split. Then a friar in attendance to the duke stood up and preached holy religion to the officers, stirring up their Catholic fire. They belonged to the true faith, while the Protestants were the vilest of heretics. Their side was righteous, and God was with them—that sort of thing. Swept away by their religious zeal, the officers ended the breach and devoted themselves to Count Tilly's bolder plan. They would attack.

The Catholics opened the battle at noon by firing an artillery barrage to soften up the Protestant positions. They had named their cannons the
“Twelve Apostles.” But after only fifteen minutes, the apostles stopped spreading the word—the barrage suddenly ended. For a short time, the field was silent, and then Tilly gave the signal by firing all twelve apostles at once. The Catholic forces advanced. A troop of Walloons charged the Protestant lines and drove them into the lines behind them. Imperial Cossacks circled Anhalt's forces on the right, suddenly coming upon them from the rear. At this point, the coordination of the Protestant troops broke down. Count Thurn ordered a counterattack, and his men advanced toward the Catholic League forces, fired a volley, and then broke and ran. Prince Anhalt's son then led a charge against the left flank of the imperial troops and drove them back. Tilly, however, saw this coming and sent cavalry to flank the young prince and capture him.

More and more Protestant lines faltered. Catholic infantry quickly overran Anhalt's entrenchments and captured the artillery. Bit by bit, their army fell away and ran for the city. Anhalt and Thurn tried to rally their men, but it was too late. At this point, the battle was only an hour and a half old, but the Protestant forces had entirely collapsed. All that was left were a few brave pockets of resistance. Four thousand Protestant troops were either captured or killed in that short time, and the Bohemian rebellion was over. But the war had only begun.

After the battle, there was a quick, decisive slaughter, a quick jab to sweep away any resistance, and then the Catholics rested and prepared themselves for the assault on Prague.
³
But the assault never came. The troops' retreating to the city fortified the castle, and the leaders of the rebellion discussed their future into the night. Count Thurn and Johannes Kepler's old friend and patron from Linz, Georg Erasmus Tschernembl, argued that the city should be defended, that they had enough forces remaining to man Prague Castle and die to the last man if necessary. But the rest turned them down. The next morning, Friedrich and Elizabeth fled the castle in shame, nearly leaving their infant child behind. From that time on, Friedrich carried the nickname “Winter King,” given to him by Catholic propagandists who satirized him in print: woodcuts showed a post boy riding across the country looking for the king, unable to find him. Most of the Protestant leaders, including Count Thurn, followed
after. Soon the victorious imperial army entered the city, and the remaining Protestant leaders, expecting a general amnesty, surrendered the city to the Duke of Bavaria, who accepted it in the name of his emperor, Ferdinand II.
⁴

 

T
HE EXECUTIONERS OF
E
UROPE
were a people set apart, a tribe of their own, for the sons of executioners married only daughters of executioners, and vice versa. Their position in society was as hereditary as that of kings. They were, like the tribe of Levi, a special people, with rights, privileges, and duties that were passed on from father to son. There was also a certain artfulness that went along with being an executioner, an artfulness and a swaggering machismo. The best executioners could kill with a single stroke and could go on all day long, killing and killing, all blood and showmanship, taking only a few short breaks in between while carrying out the king's vengeance. It was theater.

One myth about executioners holds that somehow they are connected with those they kill and at the last instant before the slaughter, they feel a certain tenderness for those whose heads they are about the lop off. This is unlikely, at least in most cases, though it has made for good poetry. Executioners were professional men who grew up in the life, like show-biz families, and for them to suffer a sudden bout of fellow feeling for those they executed, they would have had to deny everything they knew from childhood on, including the righteousness of their profession and the special position of their tribe. The king, everyone believed, had a right to vengeance; if he were denied that right, the glue that held the social order together would dissolve. For the executioner, the king's right to vengeance was the core meaning of his life, and not only of his life, but of the lives of his family and friends, even his ancestors, going back generations.

The emperor Ferdinand had defeated the Protestant nobles at White Mountain. Although everyone expected him to grant a general amnesty, or at least hoped and prayed he would, few were surprised when he chose vengeance over mercy. He had made promises, of course, to those Protes
tants who had not fled with the Winter King, but what are promises made to one's enemies? And so Ferdinand called upon his dark angel, the executioner of Prague, Jan Mydlár, to carry out his vengeance. Mydlár was one of the best and prided himself on his work. By all accounts, he slept well at night and, in his cups, boasted how this head fell and that head rolled across the floor.

On June 18, 1621, in spite of all the promises and hints of amnesty, Mydlár received the order from Ferdinand to begin construction of a gallows stage. The order came in the afternoon, and by that evening the executioner and his assistants, his carpenters and metal workers, had begun construction on the scaffold and theater—twenty-two paces long, twenty-two paces wide, and four ells high—in order to execute twenty-seven men, enemies of the emperor and leaders of the Protestant rebellion. Some were nobles, some were knights, and some were burghers. The theater Mydlár constructed was quite an affair. The platform was surrounded by a wooden railing on all sides, for safety's sake, and joined to a balcony on one of the upper floors of the Old Town hall by a wooden bridge. The entire stage was then covered all the way to the ground with a great black cloth.

Imagine the scene. The crowd of burghers, peasants, and soldiers filling the Old Town Square. The conquering lords, generals, and dukes watching the executions from upper windows. And then, with a blast of trumpets, the men were led out one by one by the magistrates to the place of killing. At five o'clock that morning, just as dawn was pinking the eastern sky, the castle cannons fired. Three infantry companies and two companies of light cavalry held the crowd back, while twenty-seven coffins were laid out in rows on the cobblestones beneath the scaffolding. Each coffin had already been assigned—one victim for each coffin.