[Sidenote: § 2. Christian IV. at a disadvantage.]
In other respects than numbers, however, the conditions were most unequal. Tilly and Wallenstein both quartered their troops on the enemy's country. In raising supplies they had no susceptibilities to consult, no friendly princes or cities to spare. Christian, on the other hand, was still amongst his allies, and was forced, on pain of driving them over to the Emperor, to show them every consideration. And in the midst of these difficulties one source of supply on which he had been justified in counting entirely failed him.
Charles I. of England had engaged in the spring of 1625 to pay over to the King of Denmark 30,000_l._ a month, reckoning that Parliament would enable him to fulfil his promise. Parliament met in May, but it had no confidence either in Charles or in his favourite and adviser, the Duke of Buckingham. A war carried on in Germany with English money was most distasteful to the English feeling. The session came to an end after a vote of a bare 140,000_l._, to meet a war expenditure scarcely, if at all, short of 1,000,000_l._ a year. Still Charles persisted. In the winter Buckingham went over to Holland and negotiated the Treaty of the Hague, by which the Dutch were to pay 5,000_l._ a month, and the English renewed their obligation to pay the 30,000_l._ already promised to Christian IV. This time, it was thought, a fresh Parliament would be ready to take up the king's engagement. But the fresh Parliament proved more recalcitrant than its predecessor. The sum of 46,000_l._ which had been sent across the seas in May 1625 was the only representative of Charles' promised support.
Christian of Denmark and his allies, therefore, were to some extent in the position in which Mansfeld had been in 1621 and 1622. If not utterly without resource, they were sadly straitened, and were obliged to govern their movements by the necessity of finding supplies rather than by military calculations.
Mansfeld was the first to meet the enemy. For some time he had been quartered beyond the Elbe, making himself troublesome to the Lübeckers and the Elector of Brandenburg. But this could not go on for ever. Wallenstein was in front of him, and he must fight him, or leave him to join Tilly against the king.