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From there, he'd fought for the Poles for a time. In 1624, Wallenstein—then a general for the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II—had hired him. Just a few years later, the Austrian emperor sent an army to support the Polish king Sigismund III against the Swedes. Arnim had been one of the commanders of those forces.

So, on June 17, 1629, he'd faced Gustav Adolf at the battle of Trzciana. His Polish allies had been commanded by Stanislaw Koniecpolski. That had been a ferocious battle, which ended with a slight advantage for the Poles and imperials. But the Austrian troops had mutinied when the Poles failed to pay them, and von Arnim had wound up leaving imperial service in disgust and going to work for the elector of Saxony.

Two years later, in one of the twists that were so common in the Thirty Years' War, von Arnim had wound up fighting alongside Gustav Adolf again, when he met Tilly at the battle of Breitenfeld. That had been a great victory for the Swedish king, but the Saxon troops had been ignominiously routed early in the battle.

However, von Arnim himself had not been blamed for the fiasco. It would have been hard to do so, since the elector John George had been present on that battlefield himself and had been one of the first to flee. So von Arnim had remained in Saxon service.

Today, he was regretting it. For the past four years, the elector of Saxony had generally refused to listen to von Arnim's advice. That was true with matters both large and small.

With regard to the largest, John George had ignored von Arnim's advice when the Ostend War broke out. Von Arnim had been confident that Gustav Adolf would eventually emerge triumphant, and thus it would be folly not to support him as Saxony was required to do by the provisions of the agreement that had set up the Confederated Principalities of Europe.

But the elector had chosen to do otherwise. He'd been resentful for years at Gustav Adolf's preeminence among the Protestant nations and principalities of Europe, and John George was unfortunately prone to being sullen and stubborn. His legal argument was based on a differing interpretation of the relevant provisions of the CPE agreement, but von Arnim was sure that the elector's real motive was profoundly irrational. He felt he'd been dragooned against his will into the CPE by Gustav Adolf's bullying—which was true enough, of course—and now with the Ostend War he saw a chance to get out and regain his independence.

In purely legal terms, John George's position was probably as valid as Gustav Adolf's. Those provisions were not what anyone would call a model of clarity. But regardless of the letter of the agreement, John George was certainly breaking its spirit—and the king of Sweden was just as certain to become furious over the issue. Politics and the law were related but ultimately quite different realms. If Gustav Adolf did triumph over the Ostenders, as von Arnim thought he would and John George insisted he wouldn't, the repercussions on Saxony would be severe.

So it had proved. Once again, Hans Georg von Arnim would face the forces of Gustav Adolf on a battlefield.

Not Gustav Adolf himself, though. Saxon spies had said the Swedish king was taking his own forces north to do battle with Brandenburg. More importantly, since von Arnim had no great confidence in the elector's espionage apparatus, the Poles said the same. It had become clear to von Arnim that Koniecpolski had a very capable spy network in the USE.

Unfortunately, Koniecpolski would be absent from the coming battle. The Polish Sejm was still squabbling over whether or not to come to the aid of Saxony and Brandenburg. King Władysław IV wanted to do so, but without the Sejm's agreement Koniecpolski would not move. And the king was not foolish enough to think his will could override that of the grand hetman of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

So, there was only a token Polish force here. Cold-bloodedly, von Arnim intended to order them into the thick of the battle. They'd probably suffer