In the winter of 1619 and 1620, half the Bohemian army died of hunger and cold, from the want of pay and a commissariat; in September 1620, more than four and a half million of gulden of pay was owing to the troops, and there were endless mutinies, and the King Palatine Frederick could not aid his Protestant allies with subsidies. The Emperor was then not in much better condition, but he soon afterwards obtained Spanish subsidies. When the Elector of Saxony, whose finances were better regulated, first hired fifteen hundred men in December, 1619, he could not pay them regularly. What was granted by the estates in war taxes, and the so-called voluntary contributions of the opulent, did not go far; loans even in the first year of the war were very difficult to realize; they were attempted with the banking-houses of southern Germany, and also in Hamburg, but seldom with success. City communities were considered safer debtors than the great princes. There were dealings about the smallest sums even with private individuals. Saxony in 1621, hoped to get from fifty to sixty thousand guldens from the Fuggers, and endeavoured in vain to borrow thirty and seventy thousand gulden from capitalists. Maximilian of Bavaria, and the League, made a great loan for the war of one million two hundred thousand gulden at twelve per cent, from the merchants in Genoa, for this the Fuggers became responsible, and the salt trade of Augsburg was given to them for their security. Just one hundred years before, this said banking-house had taken an important share in the election of the Emperor Charles V., and now it helped to secure the victory of the Roman Catholic party; for the Bohemian war was decided even more by the want of money than by the battle of the Weissen-Berge. Thus the war began with the governments being in a general state of insolvency; and therefore the maintenance of great armies became impossible.