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CHAPTER I THE OUTBREAK OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
It was not till five months after the death of the
unhappy Emperor Rudolf II that, on June 13, 1612, his brother Matthias reached
the height of his ambition by being elected to the Imperial throne. His
candidature had been approved by all the other Archdukes; but the Spiritual
Electors had caused delay by reverting to the idea of securing the succession
to the more capable Archduke Albert, notwithstanding his renunciation of his
rights and the Spanish Government’s dislike of the project. The Temporal Electors,
after discarding in turn the equally short-sighted notions of putting forward
Maximilian of Bavaria and his namesake, the Austrian Archduke, settled down to
a choice which, from the point of view of militant Protestantism, might suit a
brief period of transition. Their action had been quickened by Klesl’s
management, and by the diplomatic exertions of Christian of Anhalt, seconded by
those of the Margraves Joachim Ernest of Ansbach and George Frederick of
Baden-Durlach.
But, although Matthias had come to be regarded as a
necessity in various quarters, he counted few friends in any. The Spaniards
hated him for his intervention in the affairs of the Netherlands, futile as it
had proved. The Estates in Hungary and in the other lands subject to his House
cherished no gratitude for his various concessions; his frequent hagglings in
the course of his bargains with them were known to have been inspired by his
adviser Klesl, at heart a foe to that principle of home rule which Matthias had
accepted in order to oust Rudolf from power. Moreover, Matthias, now a worn-out
man of fifty-five, was really little better fitted than his predecessor for
taking any part in the business of State—except that he was always ready to
sign his name. He would have been only too glad to be left in peace and allowed
to enjoy all that he had gained, and to saunter among the treasures which his
elder brother had accumulated. Klesl was at heart reactionary; and the lack of
principle inherent in Matthias’ own character, the sense of power inspired in
him by his election as Emperor, and the influence of his newly-married consort
Anne, a daughter of the late Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol, alike inclined him to
resistance against the Protestant movement in the Habsburg dominions, albeit
the main cause of his rise to supreme power. Thus his rule, at once weak and
irritating, contributed to the failure of those hopes for the maintenance of
peace in the Empire and in Europe which had accompanied his accession to the Imperial
throne.
In 1612, while the Letters
of Majesty accorded to Bohemia and Silesia might there seem to have
established the rights of the Protestant Estates on an immovable basis, in
Hungary the coronation of Matthias had been immediately followed by the
emancipation of the Protestant congregations from episcopal control. The
demands of the Moravian Protestants had been satisfied; and to his Austrian
subjects Matthias had reluctantly made concessions which, though in part verbal
only, seemed sufficient guarantees for the free exercise of their religion.
Outside the Habsburg dominions the Union and the League, in which the forces of
Protestant advance and Catholic reaction had been gradually finding their
respective centres, at the time of the accession of Matthias seemed likely to
sink back into inertia. In October, 1610, both bodies had agreed to dismiss
their troops without loss of time; at Rothenburg in September, 1611, the Union
had found its balance-sheet very unsatisfactory; and the burdens already borne
by its members, the Palatinate in particular, caused a very general feeling on
their part that the present was not a time for fresh efforts. Furthermore, the
death of the Elector Palatine Frederick IV in September, 1610, had deprived the
Union of its real head; and, in the following year, the Elector Christian II of
Saxony had been succeeded by John George I, to whom the neutral attitude of his
elder brother had been chiefly due and who was resolutely opposed to an
aggressive Protestant policy, partly by reason of his antipathy against his
Ernestine kinsmen, and against the Palatine and Brandenburg Houses (heightened
in the latter case by his own Jülich-Cleves claims). Thus he had remained deaf
even to the overtures of Landgrave Maurice of Hesse-Cassel, who was always
prepared with a scheme of his own, and who had suggested the election of a
Protestant Emperor in the person of the Saxon Elector himself.
Nor, since the assassination of Henry IV of France,
were any hopes of substantial foreign support left to the Union, should it
enter on a policy of action. Since the conclusion of their twelve years’ truce
with Spain in 1609, the States General were necessarily indisposed to any aggression
on their own account, besides being distracted by internal differences and
troubles. The policy of France was no longer directly antagonistic to that of
Spain. The treaty of alliance which the Union after protracted negotiations
concluded with England in April, 1612, was defensive only; it could not have
been anything more, for James’ marriage-negotiations with Philip III of Spain
had already begun. Thus there seemed some chance that the policy which Klesl
was urging on Matthias might prove successful; and that, while his immediate
subjects were appeased by conciliatory assurances, the Union might dissolve,
and the League, from which Bavarian jealousy had excluded the head of the House
of Austria, might follow suit. No consummation could better assure the
preservation of the peace of the Empire, while at the same time strengthening
the authority of its chief.
1612-4] Fallacy of pacific expectations.
Yet all these calculations were delusive. In no part
of the Habsburg dominions or of the Empire at large was there even an approach
to mutual confidence between the parties. Matthias’ understanding with the
Austrian towns was verbal only. The inviolable compact between Crown and
Estates in Bohemia—the Letter of Majesty itself—was already known to have a fatal flaw. As for the Union and the League,
the advantages in an emergency of a ready-formed alliance had already been made
so manifest that there could not be the faintest intention of putting an end to
either association; and Maximilian of Bavaria was far too jealous of John
George of Saxony for a combination between the League and the Lutherans to be
even conceivable. The Elector Palatine was hard pressed in his finances; but in
the long run he must follow his destiny as the leading Calvinist Prince and the
directions of the keeper of his political conscience, Anhalt, the activity of
whose “chancery” had never been more intense or more concentrated on definite
issues. Moreover, in 1614 the party of action made a distinct advance when the
new Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg actually adopted Calvinism and his
policy became identified with that of the Elector Palatine. As to foreign
connections, the pacific intentions of James I might reduce the significance of
his treaty with the Union; but in the same year the negotiations were completed
which in the following February (1613) led to the celebration, amidst the
rejoicings of Protestant England, of the marriage of his only daughter
Elizabeth to the young “Palsgrave”; and on his way home Frederick V induced the
States General to conclude another defensive treaty with the, Union, which was
ratified in the following year. Clearly, the truce between Spain and the United
Provinces was little likely to become a peace; the all-important
border-question was still unsettled, and was before long to bring Spinola and
Maurice of Nassau once more face to face. Though France and Spain seemed
settling down into amity and were soon to be bound together by two royal
marriages, yet there could never be any real unity of purpose or policy between
them; and their intimacy only served to revive in Philip III aspirations which,
vain as they were, constituted a real menace to the peace of Europe.
So far as the internal condition of the Empire was
concerned, it was rapidly becoming incompatible with the continuance of
tranquility; and the deep-seated disturbances in its religious, political, and
social life were alike making for war.
Agitated religious and economic condition of the Empire. 1600-18
The religious question, which more than half a century
ago the two-faced agreement of the Peace of Augsburg had sought to regulate,
was still unsettled; and the aspirations of the Catholic Reaction, together
with the ambitions of the militant section of the Protestants, alike ignored in
that compact, remained still unsatisfied. Never before had religious
differences asserted themselves with so embittered a vehemence, as if pen and
speech in their innumerable smitings of the adversary were striving to
anticipate the decision of the sword. The age was still enamored of religious
controversy; and, while theological learning still dominated the higher
education imparted in the Universities to increasing numbers of the upper as
well as of the middle classes, its teaching mainly busied itself with the proof
(among the Protestants necessarily the Scriptural proof) of dogma. To these
tendencies the educational system of the secondary schools, which had been
developed with notable vigor, especially in Lutheran Saxony and Württemberg,
readily adapted itself. Never, too, had the Church of Rome been so eagerly and
persistently intent upon strengthening her influence by means of her
educational work; and in this direction the Jesuits labored with a success far
greater than that which attended some of their amateur efforts in diplomacy. In
the south-German, Austrian, and Rhenish Provinces of their Order were to be
found many of its Colleges, of which since 1573 the Collegium Germanicum at Rome was both the ensample and the feeder;
in several of the southern Universities most of the theological and the philosophical
chairs were filled by Jesuit occupants, and the secondary education of Catholic
Germany was largely falling under their control. The lower classes of the
population they were content, in the south-west in particular, to leave to the
Capuchins, a popular Order by both tradition and habit, with a predilection for
camps and soldiery, and an acknowledged claim, which stood them in good stead
as diplomatic agents, to be everybody’s friend.
Thus, without its being necessary to attribute the agitation of the public mind to the operations of the Rosicrucians or other occult societies, the literature of Catholic and Protestant polemics, and the discussion of the various religious issues in academic disputations, swelled to unexampled dimensions in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the Great War. Among the pamphlets of the period, the Catholic Turbatus imperii Romani status (1613) excited extraordinary attention, by tracing the unhappy divisions in the Empire to the irruption of heresy into its system, and latterly to the insatiable determination of the Calvinists to share in the benefits of the Religious Peace; and the Union at its Nurnberg meeting in the following year resolved to issue a quasi-official rejoinder. But the more fundamental differences between Catholics and Protestants were not neglected; and the ceaseless efforts of the Jesuit controversialists in their Bavarian and neighboring centres, which culminated in Jacob Gretser of Ingolstadt’s Defensiones of the Popes, of his own Order, and of its great luminary Bellarmin, met with the fullest response from the Lutheran theologians of Wurttemberg and Saxony.
The conversion to Rome in 1614 of Wolfgang William of Neuburg gave rise to a
prolonged outburst of barren invective; and in 1615, having succeeded to the
government of the duchy, he caused a religious disputation to be held in the
presence of himself as a kind of corpus
delicti. As is usual in seasons of embittered theological strife, the
transition was easy to coarse historic recrimination and malodorous personal
scurrility—intellectual degradations which helped to prepare the national mind
for the brutalizing effects of war.
The religious as well as the political differences
that were distracting the Empire had by no means only brought Catholics and
Protestants into mutual opposition. The Catholics themselves were not united
either in action or in aim; and the trimming policy which Klesl was commending
to his master, and which found a willing agent in the Protestant
Controller-General Zacharias Geitzkofler, was strongly resented by the Jesuits,
whose influence was paramount with both Maximilian of Bavaria and Ferdinand of
Styria. But more fundamental was the fissure continuously widening between the
two divisions of the Protestant body, the Lutherans and the Calvinists. The
enduring antagonism between them was not wholly or even mainly due to political
motives or dynastic interests—to the rivalry for the Protestant hegemony
between Saxony and the Palatinate, the competition of interests involved in the
Jülich-Cleves difficulty, the conflicting views and sentiments as to the
Imperial authority and the preservation of the integrity of the Empire and of
its foreign policy. As has been already noted, Lutheran and Calvinist religious
opinion had alike become more rigid, and consequently more combative; with the
Lutherans it had been stiffened by the endeavor to enforce binding instruments
of uniformity, while among the Calvinists the violent internal struggle had
already set in which was to end in a drastic “expurgation” of most of the “Reformed”
Churches of Europe. But as between the two religious communities, the
opposition was radical; Luther had never made a secret of it, or of the fact
that its roots lay in the doctrine of the Eucharist; and since his death it had
steadily progressed to its logical results. Over the heads of the few who
perceived the consequences to which open discord in the face of the common foe
must inevitably lead, the polemical current poured its eddying waves, the Saxon
theologians contending against the north-German Calvinists now settling at
Berlin, and Heidelberg (quite literally) taking up the cudgels against
Tübingen. Among the Lutheran leaders must be mentioned Hoe von Hohenegg, who as
chief Court-preacher to the Elector John George held a position which, in
accordance with the ideas of the age as to the relations between Church and
State, made him the arbiter of the ecclesiastical, and frequently of the
political, affairs of the Saxon electorate; and, among the Calvinist leaders,
Abraham Scultetus, a Heidelberg divine who had accompanied the Palsgrave on his
wedding journey to England and was to remain his chief ecclesiastical adviser
at Prague. How these two “confessors” loved each other may be gathered from Hoe
von Hohenegg’s counter-blast to the sermon delivered by Scultetus at Heidelberg
on the occasion of the centenary jubilee of the Reformation, which by the irony
of fate occurred in the year before the outbreak of the last and longest of the
Religious Wars.
Neither in the Lutheran nor in the Calvinistic parts
of the Empire had that Reformation led, as it should have led, to a widespread
growth of the inner religious life. The inquisitorial powers of the Church of
Rome, which in the lands where the Counter-reformation had restored or
heightened her authority she wielded with increased zeal and force, had in the
Protestant lands been transferred to the territorial governments. Throughout
the Empire the exercise of these powers, while materially interfering with the
ordinary administration of justice, weighed heavily upon almost every relation
of private life, thus calling forth a sense of anxiety and unrest which
contrasted painfully with the “merrier” and more tranquil conditions of the
past. Most conspicuously was this the case with regard to the wide range of
beliefs and practices covered by the terms magic and witchcraft. In the earlier
half of the sixteenth century the temporal Courts had taken over the task of
maintaining and applying the definition of the crimen magiae promulgated by papal authority; and literature and
art had brought as many faggots to the fire of persecution as they were capable
of furnishing. There was no difference in sentiment or in practice on this head
between the Protestant and the Catholic parts of the Empire. Yet it was not
till the period with whose closing years we are now concerned—a period
extending from about 1580 to about 1620—that the growth of superstition and of
delusions, often shared by the accused with the accusers, became epidemic in
Germany. The fury of persecution which accompanied this revival raged both in
the ecclesiastical lands of the Middle Rhine and Franconia and in the temporal
territories from Brunswick to the Breisgau, while asserting itself, though with
less savage violence, alike in Lutheran Saxony and in Catholic Bavaria. The
perturbation created by these proceedings, and the spirit of unreasoning terror
and reckless self-defense which they aroused, beyond a doubt sensibly
contributed to the wide-spread feeling of unrest, and to the general desire for
remedies as violent as the evil itself. Among the Princes of the age we find
every kind of fixed delusion—from the visions of Christian of Denmark to the
ravings of John Frederick of Weimar. Nor should the inveterate endurance and
rank growth of countless petty superstitions be overlooked, which seemed to
place life and death under the control of dealers in astrological certificates
and magical charms, and, during the long war now at hand, was to count for much
in the recklessness of the soldiery and of the populations at their mercy.
To the pervading spirit of religious discord and moral
disquietude there was in this age of decline added the general consciousness of
a continuous decrease of material prosperity throughout the Empire. During a
long period, in which neither war nor epidemics had prevailed on a large scale
(although from 1570 onwards several parts of Germany had, in consequence of a succession
of years of dearth, been subject to visitations of the plague), the population
seems on the whole to have gradually increased, notwithstanding the fall in
longevity to which already Luther bore regretful testimony. The great and often
sudden rise of prices was due not only to a lessening of the productive powers
of the country and its inhabitants, but also to violent derangements in the
monetary system of the Empire, largely brought about by the constant
deterioration of the silver currency, due in part to the decrease in the native
production of the metal, but mainly to the steady debasement of the smaller
silver coins issued by every potentate, large or small. Hence a most active
speculation in coins both by the great bank at Nurnberg (the clearing-house of
Germany) and by less honest enterprise. In 1603 the Diet allowed the Turkish
aid to be paid in foreign coin, and ten years later it sanctioned the
acceptance of money at its current value. Clipping of the coin became a common
abuse; and the Kippers and Wippers,
as they were called, grew into one of the pests of the national life. So
terrible was the distress caused by the systematic deterioration of the
monetary medium, that in the decade preceding the Thirty Years’ War a very
different war seemed on the eve of breaking out—an insurrection of the lower
classes at large in both town and country, not only impoverished but frenzied
by their utter uncertainty as to the value of the money with which they had to
purchase their hard-earned bread.
Inasmuch as among the middle and higher classes
intemperance in both eating and drinking—the national vice so largely
accountable for the short-livedness deplored by Luther—as well as extravagance
in dress, were on the increase, indebtedness had spread in every social sphere;
and it had become common to depend on loans which usury, and Jewish usury in
particular, was ready to supply, though at the usual risk of infuriating the
population against its supposed despoilers. Any sudden pressure such as that of
a great war was certain to entail a financial crisis; yet, as capital grew in
the hands of neither rulers nor ruled, while foreign trade continued to
diminish, no restraining influence of commercial or industrial prosperity made
for the maintenance of peace. The home trade was sinking at the same time,
probably less on account of the detested foreign pedlars than of the rings
which bought up wares and artificially raised prices. The native industries,
too, were rapidly falling, more especially the great mining industry, for
various reasons, including peculation on a large scale, and with results which
partly accounted for the lamentable decrease in the production of silver.
Trade with foreign countries shared in this decadence.
The great days of the Hanseatic League were at an end. Democratized Lubeck had
failed in her final struggle to recover the control of the trade with the
Scandinavian Powers; afterwards she had lost her hold over Livonian and Russian
commerce. Meanwhile the old competitors, England and the United Provinces, made
a series of fresh advances. In 1567 the English Merchant Adventurers set up
their staple at Hamburg, and after forced migrations to Elbing and Emden, and a
prolonged settlement at Stade, were in 1611 once more allowed by the Hamburgers,
who were themselves now doing good business as middlemen, to settle in their
city and to trade from it under favorable conditions, while enjoying free
exercise of their national religion. In the meantime the Dutch Baltic trade,
especially in corn and timber, assumed very large proportions, though these
have perhaps been over-stated. Even the Spanish trade the Hanse towns had to
share with the Dutch after the conclusion of the truce of 1609. Lübeck allied
herself with the Dutch against the overbearing maritime policy of Christian IV
of Denmark in 1613; and three years later, together with other sympathizing
Hanseatic cities, ratified a twelve years' alliance with the United Provinces,
whose intervention had helped to relieve the sister Hanse town of Brunswick in
her struggle against her territorial lord, Duke Frederick Ulric. But neither
Lübeck nor the Hanseatic League derived any lasting benefit from these
transactions; to Lübeck (though from this period date some of her choicest
monumental glories) the dominium maris
Baltici was lost forever, and the League at large was rapidly falling
asunder. Its foreign factories were one after the other closed, or deprived of
their chief privileges; the fines which furnished a large proportion of the
League's income were left unpaid; in 1604, when the last official registers
were drawn up, 53 nominal but only 14 actual members remained. The inner
association of six cities, formed mainly for the relief of Brunswick, had
broken up. The League itself was not formally dissolved, and its final meeting
was not held till about half a century later (1669) when practically all that
remained was an association for particular purposes between Hamburg, Lübeck,
and Bremen.
Weakness of the Imperial authority.—Indulte. 1612-3
While the early years of the new century thus
witnessed a continual weakening of common interests bound up with the peace and
prosperity of the Empire, no resistless motive or common peril survived to
impress upon its members the necessity of cohesion. The gradual decline of the
Ottoman Power had been manifested by its acceptance of the Peace of
Zsitva-Torok (1606), which, although failing to secure to Hungary, and through
it to the Empire, a well-protected frontier, signified the first signal success
achieved by western Christendom against its arch-foe since Lepanto. Sully’s
plan of a European républigue très
chrétienne, however remote from the domain of practical politics, at least
showed the expulsion of the Turks from Europe to be in the eyes of contemporary
European statesmanship a possible hypothesis; and when in 1613 many of the
Estates of the Empire treated Matthias’ application for aid against the Turks
as a mere blind to cover purposes of his own, there was at all events no longer
any serious apprehension of immediate danger from the Porte.
Least of all were those who were prepared for their
own ends to plunge the Empire into war likely to be restrained by any pious or
respectful feeling towards the authority of the Emperor himself. Not that the
feeling of loyalty had wholly died out among either Princes or cities; but it
only counted in the game when, as in the case of John George of Saxony, it
cooperated with other motives, religious, dynastic, and personal. The awe
inspired by the political greatness of Charles V, the respect secured by
Ferdinand I’s subordination of his own wishes to the interests of the Empire,
the goodwill which could hardly be refused to Maximilian II's kindly
latitudinarianism—had come to be forgotten in the hopelessness of a rule so
impotent and so perverse as that of Rudolf II. How could the elements of
conservative fidelity thus dissipated be reunited and vitalized anew by such a
prince as Matthias, himself unstable at heart and controlled by no influence
save that of an ecclesiastic whom Catholics and Protestants, Archdukes and
Estates, could alike find plausible reasons for distrusting?
Yet, as has already been seen, no serious impediment
was in May, 1612, placed in the way of the election of Matthias; and, even in
the matter of the Wahlcapitulation imposed upon him by the Electors, the opportunity was lost of obtaining
important concessions from so pliant a candidate at the moment of least
resistance. It was intended to secure a reconstitution of the Emperor's supreme
ministerial council, the Reichshofrath,
whose encroachments in the previous reign had been so notorious; and, above
all, the Protestants desired the extension of the system of Imperial
indulgences (Indulte) to the
administrators of bishoprics and abbacies, who would have thus gained seats in
the Diet and assured a working majority to its Protestant members. But Saxony
at the last rallied to the Catholic side; and these concessions were not
exacted. The reorganization of the Reichshofrath with the approval of the Electoral body was however accepted in principle; and
the assent of the reigning Emperor was declared to be no longer indispensable
to the election of his successor. This innovation might prove of moment.
For the present the election of Matthias as Emperor
made no change in the existing state of things. Though really in a minority in
the Imperial Diet, the Catholics both here and in the great tribunals and
councils of the Empire were still artificially enabled to exercise the sway
proper to a majority. Neither Matthias nor Klesl could rise to the conception
of an Imperial State or national monarchy covering and controlling the
aspirations of both Catholics and Protestants; nor can it be denied that such
an ideal, which the conditions of the Empire and of the Habsburg lands were
alike unfit to meet, could only have been realized by statesmanship of the
rarest power. Yet Matthias and Klesl, or at all events the latter, the
sincerity of whose Catholic sympathies it would be futile to question, saw
clearly enough into the situation to be ready to make concessions to the
Protestant majority, without neglecting the common interests of the Empire.
With intentions such as these Matthias met his first
Diet, which was opened at Ratisbon on August 13, 1613. He declared himself
prepared for certain reforms in the Reichskammergericht,
and appealed for a grant in aid against the Turks, who were again encroaching
on the Hungarian frontier and manifestly intending to supplant the Prince of
Transylvania, Gabriel Bàthory, a dependent of the Emperor, by his own former
follower, Bethlen Gabor. But, while the Catholic Princes proved recalcitrant,
being rendered suspicious (Bavaria and Mainz in particular) by Klesl’s
overtures to them to allow the Protestant Administrator of Magdeburg to take
his seat at the Diet, the conciliatory attitude of the Emperor and his adviser
encouraged the Protestants to raise their terms. They would not hear of any
Turkish grant until their demands, of which the maintenance of the Religious
Peace was merely the first, should have been satisfied. Though the Emperor
allowed a conference to take place under the presidency of Archduke Maximilian
between his own councilors and ambassadors of the Corresponding Princes, the
latter were not even satisfied by the Imperial promise of a “commission of
composition”, as it was to be called, to be assembled at Speier in the
following year, in which both sides were to be equally represented. Thus, when
at the beginning of September the news came that a Turkish army of 80,000 men
had actually begun military operations, and when a majority consisting of the
Catholics, with Electoral Saxony and Hesse-Darmstadt, voted a considerable
grant in aid, the Opposition recorded its protest; and a practical deadlock was
once more established in the business of the Empire.
It so happened that about this very time the adoption
by the two “possessing” Princes, Wolfgang William of Neuburg and John Sigismund
of Brandenburg, of the Catholic and the Calvinist faith respectively, gave rise
to great agitation in the Jülich-Cleves duchies, in the neighboring parts of
the Empire and across the border. As has already been seen, a renewal of
hostilities between Spain and the United Provinces was only with difficulty
prevented, through the good offices of France and England, by the Treaty of
Xanten (November, 1614) signed between Wolfgang William, Duke of Palatinate-Neuburg and John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, the treaty ended the War of the Jülich succession and all hostilities between Wolfgang William and John Sigismund. Based on the terms of the treaty, the territories of Jülich-Berg and Ravenstein went to Wolfgang William. Moreover, the territories of Cleves-Mark and Ravensberg went to John Sigismund. These last territories were the first Rhine provinces to be governed by the House of Hohenzollern, and were the oldest constituents of the future Prussian Rhineland); but both Spanish and Dutch influence continued to
operate, and in 1616 (the year of the treaty between the States General and the
Hanse towns) Frederick Henry of Orange occupied Herford in Ravensburg, and a
Spanish garrison Soest in Mark. Meanwhile at Aachen, where the Palatine
Government, charged with the vicariate in this part of the Empire during the
interregnum, had allowed the Protestants to recover their ascendancy, Matthias
had sought to arrest this change by reverting to the prohibitory mandates of
his predecessor; and he had adopted a similar policy of repression at Cologne,
where the Catholic town council had procured an injunction from the Reichshofrath against an obnoxious
Protestant settlement at Mülheim on the right bank of the Rhine below the city.
Thus the force of events and the inconsistency inherent in the policy of the
Emperor and his chief minister kept alive in the north-west the very religious
conflict which at Ratisbon they were seeking to allay.
The Austrian dominions. 1614-8
Nor were they more fortunate at home in Austria, where
the Protestants both entertained an inveterate suspicion of Klesl and feared
the growth of the rigidly Catholic party at Vienna which abominated his present
policy of concession. In August, 1614, representatives of all the lands under
the rule of the German Habsburgs (the Bohemian Estates refusing to send more
than a deputation, so as to safeguard their independence) assembled at Linz—the
first Reichstag, as it has been
called, of the Austrian dominions. Besides the Emperor and Archdukes Maximilian
and Ferdinand, Zuñiga and Count de Bucquoy (a pupil of Parma) appeared here as
representing Philip of Spain and Archduke Albert. But all this dynastic display
was rendered futile by the resentment with which the Austrian Protestants met
the maneuvers of their familiar adversary, Klesl, and the ill-disguised repugnance
of the Hungarians to the Habsburg rule. They declined to be moved even by the
fact of the establishment of Bethlen Gabor as Prince of Transylvania under
Turkish suzerainty; and Matthias had to enter into negotiations. These, after
being arrested for a time by the war party, ended with the conclusion of the
Peace of Tyrnau (May 6, 1615), in a secret supplement to which Bethlen Gabor
promised to yield ultimate allegiance to the Emperor. A treaty with the Turks
on the basis of that of Zsitva-Torok speedily followed (July), and was renewed
in 1616 and, after a change of Sultan, in 1618. Whether the Austrian Government
observed perfect loyalty in the matter of these transactions, or not, their
result was to keep Bethlen Gabor more or less quiet during the troubled years
which preceded the Bohemian War. The importance of this diplomatic success was
increased by the circumstance that about this time (1616-7) Archduke Ferdinand
of Styria, and through him the Austrian Government, were hampered by a conflict
with Venice, due in part to the inroads on Dalmatia of the Uskoks, a piratical
frontier population of fugitives from many Slavonic lands settled in eastern
Carniola and Croatia, which only came to an end with the Peace of Madrid
(September, 1617, ratified in February, 1618).
Meanwhile, both Union and League shrank from any
forward movement. A meeting of the Union was held at Heilbronn in September and
October, 1614, with the object of strengthening its financial basis and developing
its system of foreign alliances. But nothing came of it except the ratification
of the existing defensive treaty with the States General, and some desultory
negotiations with the enterprising Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, whom the
ingenious Maurice of Hesse had already contrived to interest in German affairs,
but whose attention was as yet mainly directed to Poland. In the following year
the towns belonging to the Union agreed upon an annual contribution towards the
requirements of the Dutch treaty; but the attempts made at meetings held at
Nurnberg and Hanover to extend the Union broke down—in the latter instance
because of the repellent attitude of Electoral Saxony. At Nurnberg the Union
displayed its willingness to fall in with Klesl’s scheme of a meeting of
Catholic and Protestant Estates, for a “composition” or free settlement of
their differences; but the Catholics would listen to no such proposal, and the via media of an ordinary Kurfürstentag suggested by Klesl
likewise fell through. The Union, in fact, instead of gaining, was losing
strength. The actual secession of Neuburg was followed by the virtual defection
of Brandenburg, whose demand that the Union should declare itself bound to
defend his “possession” of part of the Jülich-Cleves duchies was refused at
another Heilbronn meeting (April, 1617). Here, though nearly all the members
were represented, the towns (always the restraining element) outnumbered the
Princes in the proportion of seventeen to nine, and the constitution of the
Union was altered to that of a purely defensive confederation. And, even with
its numbers reduced and its purposes restricted, the Union was at Heilbronn
prolonged for three years only (to May, 1621). These facts go far to account
for the “desertion” of the Elector Palatine by the Union after the Bohemian
catastrophe; yet the Palatine clique and its guiding spirit, Christian of
Anhalt, were largely responsible for the timorous policy of Heilbronn.
Nor can the League be said to have made better
preparation for the conflict whose imminence was no longer to be ignored. In
the counsels of this body a struggle had for some time been in progress between
Maximilian of Bavaria and the party (headed by Mainz) desirous of admitting at
least a portion of the Austrian hereditary lands into the League and placing
them under a third Directory, that of Archduke Maximilian. The League, over
whose action a certain control was to be given to the Emperor and into which
even Protestants were, if they chose, to be admitted, would thus have become an
organization for the defense of the Empire and the maintenance of the Imperial
authority; and the part played in it by the Duke of Bavaria could not have been
more than subordinate. Consequently, though this reconstitution had been agreed
upon at a meeting held at Ratisbon at the close of the Diet (September, 1613),
it was repudiated by Maximilian; and at Augsburg (March, 1614) he formed with
the Franconian and Swabian prelates a fresh association on the basis of the old
Munich alliance. Thus, with the Rhenish and Austrian Directories left
ineffective, the old League was at a standstill; and there only remained its
new and narrow substitute as the nucleus of future developments. At the time of
the threatened renewal of the conflict on the Lower Rhine which was averted by
the Peace of Xanten, this new League, at a meeting held at Ingolstadt in July,
1614, had agreed to send aid to Wolfgang William, while the Union (in
accordance with the Heilbronn resolution) held altogether aloof.
Thus the final cause of the outbreak of the War was
after all to be found within the Habsburg dominions, where Klesl’s policy was
openly to suffer shipwreck. This policy had never been whole-heartedly adopted
by the Emperor Matthias; to Klesl himself, however, the logic of facts seems at
last to have brought home the equity of the Protestant demands. But it was too
late. The party which, inspired by the Jesuits, would listen to no abatement of
the pretensions of the Church of Rome, and to which in the disputes among the
Estates of the Empire “composition” was an abomination, while at home it
abhorred concessions to the Protestants, all the more as implying the grant of
autonomy in other matters, was resolved on making a clean sweep of Klesl and
his policy of conciliation. This party was headed by Archduke Maximilian and by
Archduke Ferdinand of Styria, whose succession, as the only member of the House
having issue, to the Habsburg dominions and contingently to the Imperial
throne, was regarded as a settled affair, since both Maximilian and Albert had
renounced their rights in his favor. Ferdinand, who attributed the inadequacy
of support which had prolonged his war with Venice to on the part of Klesl,
still more resented the supposed machinations for delaying the steps that must
precede his election as Roman King. While his party insisted upon the
convocation of a meeting of Electors (Kurfürstentag)
which should confine itself entirely to the question of the Imperial
succession, Archduke Maximilian in February, 1616, submitted to the Emperor a
memorandum, which set in a fuller light the aspirations of the Catholic
Hotspurs. The Emperor was in this paper advised to levy an army at the cost of
Spain, and to place it under the irresponsible command of Ferdinand for the purpose
of settling the perennial Jülich-Cleves question out of hand. Here, then, was
the specter of war summoned into the Empire, with the unconcealed object of
overawing those who had to choose the successor to the Imperial Crown. In the
meantime Archduke Maximilian pointed out the necessity of at once securing the
succession of the future Emperor in Bohemia and Hungary.
1614-6] Ferdinand of Styria and the succession.
Thus the question of the succession forced itself to
the front, not-withstanding the persistent endeavors of Klesl to pursue his
efforts for a compromise or “composition”, to which the Spiritual Electors on
the one hand and Electoral Saxony on the other might perhaps be induced to
assent. An adherence to this policy was irreconcilable with the definite choice
of Ferdinand as the successor of Matthias; and a campaign was opened against
the Cardinal by Archduke Maximilian and his party, who shrank neither from
calumny, nor, on one occasion, it was said, even from the use of powder and
shot. They were not silenced by the publication, in 1616, of the nomination of
Klesl as Cardinal. In June, 1617, they contrived the conclusion of a secret
compact with Philip III of Spain, who had at first thought of making over his
supposed hereditary claims on the Bohemian and Hungarian Crowns to his second
son, Don Carlos. He was now bought off by the promised transfer in the event of
Matthias' death, in addition to the Imperial fiefs of Piombino and Finale,
already in Spanish hands, of certain Alsatian rights and territories. The
annals of the House of Habsburg contain few transactions which have more tended
to lower its credit with German patriots; for this arrangement signified that
the Austrian dynasty was for its own purposes prepared to grant to Spain a
definite foothold on German soil, and a most opportune vantage-ground for the
coming war.
The process which, rightly or wrongly, Klesl had been
charged with postponing, could now take its course. In Bohemia, as we shall
see, the Catholic party of action gained a transient success. The Hungarian
Diet, which met on March 23, 1618, proved less easy to be managed; and after
two months of debate the Government consented to accept the elective principle,
on confirming which Ferdinand was proclaimed King (May 16). He was crowned on
July 1, after making a series of concessions, including the restoration of the
office of Palatine as an effective regency. Before the next Hungarian Diet
assembled (May 31, 1619), Ferdinand had succeeded as King of Hungary in
Matthias' stead, and the Thirty Years’ War had broken out in Bohemia.
Origin of the Bohemian troubles. Braunau. 1609-19
The Bohemian troubles, which must be briefly
summarized at this point, were in their origin due to the course pursued by the
Government after the Protestant majority had secured the Letter of Majesty and the agreement supplementary to it. Although
it was impossible altogether to exclude Protestants from the high offices of
State, the Catholics continued under Matthias, as under Rudolf, to control the
administration; and their attacks upon the charter cherished with the utmost
warmth by the great body of the nation were not long in beginning. Inasmuch as
they could not touch the privileges granted to the royal towns, or prevent the
Protestants from speedily erecting a couple of churches in the capital itself,
they soon set about tampering with the rights of the ecclesiastical towns,
though Bohemian official and ordinary parlance designated both species under
the single name “royal”. After an early Protestant encroachment at Braunau (in
the north-eastern part of Bohemia) had been properly repressed on the complaint
of the Benedictine Abbot from whom the Braunauers held their lands, they began,
in reliance on the supplementary agreement, to build a new Protestant church;
whereupon the Abbot procured from King Matthias an ordinance prohibiting
further building and declaring it unwarranted by the Letter of Majesty. A meeting, consisting of the Protestant
councilors and officials, and six deputies from every Circle in the
kingdom—about a hundred in all,—was lawfully summoned to Prague by the Defensores appointed under the Letter of Majesty; and this assembly,
while bidding the Braunauers go on building their church, apprised the Regents
(who presided over the government in the absence of the King) that the Protestant
Estates intended to adhere to the plain sense of their religious charter
(November, 1611). After this the Braunauers were left unmolested.
But the partisans of the Catholic Reaction, headed by
the new Archbishop of Prague, were not to be thus easily repressed, and after
several previous encroachments provided a parallel case to that of Braunau at
Klostergrab in the north-west. The Protestant citizens of this little town,
which claimed to be free but stood under the lordship of the monastery of Ossegg,
whose revenues belonged to the Archbishop, deeply resented his high-handed
closing of a church which they had built for their worship, and their being
forced by him to attend the Catholic services (December, 1614). This time the Defensores protested in vain; and,
though the Protestant grievances were brought forward at a General Diet of the
Bohemian Estates and those of the incorporated lands held early in the
following summer, the Government of Matthias, who had himself come to Prague,
peremptorily ordered the closing of the Protestant churches at both Braunau and
Klostergrab. A joint representation to Matthias by all the higher Protestant
officials of Bohemia was equally ineffectual; and by the end of 1616 the first
and governing clause of the great Letter had been directly violated by a number
of Catholic incumbents, who flatly prohibited their parishioners from attending
Protestant worship outside their parishes.
But the movement was not at an end, and in the opinion
of the Protestant leaders the future was their own. Already in 1614 Thurn had
assured the Elector of Saxony that the old hereditary union between the two
lands was unforgotten in Bohemia, on whose throne it was desired to place him.
Other speculations and combinations as to that throne were rife during the
years next ensuing; and about February, 1617, Ludwig Camerarius, now one of the
most active Palatine councilors and afterwards the mainstay of his master's
cause in its darkest days, put in an appearance at Prague.
Ferdinand appointed successor in Bohemia. 1617
Still, no definite plan of action was laid, and no
candidate for the Bohemian throne was distinctly selected. Of a sudden, into
the midst of an atmosphere overcharged with electricity, came the news that the
Bohemian Diet was summoned for June 5, 1617, to appoint a King. The united
House of Habsburg had resolved to make sure of the future as well as of the
present, and, taking its stand upon the plain principle of hereditary right, to
force upon the Bohemian Estates, still unprepared with a plan of resistance,
and upon the people, not yet ready for a revolution, Archduke Ferdinand, the
pupil of the Jesuits, the religious expurgator of his Styrian duchy, the
destined champion of a systematic policy of Catholic reaction and centralized
monarchical rule. In Austria, early in this year, Tschernembl, the leader of
the “Horners” as the Protestant Estates were called after their secession from
Vienna to Horn in 1608, had informed an enquiring emissary of Christian of Anhalt,
that, if the House of Austria should lose its German dominions on the death of
Matthias, they would demand as ruler over these a German Prince, capable of
leading them against both Pope and Turk. Evidently, then, the settlement of the
Bohemian succession involved even more than the political and religious future
of Bohemia and the “incorporated” lands.
The Catholic party in Bohemia included, as has been
seen, the majority of the great Crown officials—among them the High Chancellor,
Zdenko von Lobkowitz, together with Jaroslav von Martinitz, still no less
resolute a Catholic partisan than he had been in the days of the Letter of Majesty, and Count William
Slawata, a convert from the community of the Bohemian Brethren to the Church of
Rome, and now one of the most zealous of her champions. They counted a
considerable number of adherents among the lords (Herren), and were unanimous for Ferdinand. On the other hand, the
large majority of the Knights and towns, while in favor of postponing the
election of a King till after the death of Matthias, had arrived at no settled
agreement as to the course to be pursued afterwards. The government party were
therefore well advised in securing the succession of Ferdinand with the least
possible loss of time, and in seizing the opportunity of establishing once for
all the hereditary character which, by virtue both of a series of treaties and
of ordinary practice, attached to the Bohemian Crown, notwithstanding the
principle of freedom of election set forth by the Golden Bull and actually or
nominally reasserted in the case of Ferdinand I and in that of Matthias
himself. At the Diet of 1617 the attempt of the Protestant Opposition under
Thurn to resist the assertion of the hereditary principle of succession broke
down, largely owing to the determination of Lobkowitz; and Ferdinand was almost
unanimously accepted by the Estates as King-designate of Bohemia. As such,
custom demanded that he should, not confirm existing rights and privileges, but
promise to confirm them when he should have actually assumed the government.
But the Protestant majority, after their pusillanimous failure in the matter of
the election itself, were determined to extract from Ferdinand an explicit
guarantee which should cover the whole scope of the Letter of Majesty. The Catholics as a body allowed the required
formula to pass, only Martinitz and Slawata protesting; and the latter adding
certain ominous words expressing his disregard for the precious religious
charter. Klesl´s caution, however, frustrated any attempt to carry this
disregard into action; and at his coronation on July 19 Ferdinand expressed his
satisfaction at having gained the Bohemian Crown without doing violence to his
conscience. The Silesian, Moravian, and Lusatian Diets speedily followed suit
in accepting his succession. In Austria, on the other hand, where nothing
beyond the act of homage could be required, he postponed asking for it, in the
belief that after the death of Matthias it would be easier to avoid the
concessions made by him to the Estates in 1609.
The Bohemian, Crown. 1613-7
The most important question of all, that of Ferdinand’s
succession to the Imperial throne, could now be taken in hand; and, immediately
after his coronation at Prague, Matthias had accompanied him to Dresden, where
they had easily assured themselves of the goodwill of the Elector, John George
(August, 1617). A Kurfürstentag for
the election of a successor to the Imperial throne, and, in pursuance of Klesl’s
cherished policy of compromise, for the simultaneous discussion of grievances,
was soon summoned for February 1, 1618.
The main opposition which the proposal of Ferdinand’s
Imperial succession had to overcome was that of the Palatine party, of which
the young Elector was the necessary figure-head, and which had never ceased to
keep in view its main purpose—the entire exclusion of the House of Habsburg
from the Imperial throne. Christian of Anhalt’s chancery was always at work;
and Matthias had no reason for supposing that either the Palatine councilors or
the Corresponding Princes, whose action they continued to direct, had been
secured by the policy of compromise. Anhalt had been in communication with
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden as early as 1614, and in 1617 Monthoux, an envoy of
Duke Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, negotiated a treaty for military aid with the
States General and the Union, while Anhalt’s eldest son entered into the Savoy
service. As for the young Elector Palatine, who in 1614 had assumed the
government of his inheritance, though he was something of a soldier and
something of a theologian, his excellent education had failed to implant in him
independence of judgment; while the rare natural vigor of his English consort
as yet chiefly found vent in the eager pursuit of pleasure and in extravagant
display. Anhalt had long indulged in the confident expectation that on the
death of Matthias the Bohemian Crown would drop into the Elector Palatine’s
lap; no secret had been made of these hopes when Frederick appeared as a suitor
in England; and a few months after the marriage (April, 1613) James I avowed
his opinion that in a few years his son-in-law would be King of Bohemia. But
Christopher von Dohna had travelled in vain from Heidelberg to Prague and
Dresden, and Ferdinand had been accepted as successor to the Bohemian throne.
In the matter of the Imperial succession the Palatine Government, with which
(especially since the marriage of Frederick's sister, Elizabeth Charlotte, to
the Electoral Prince, George William of Brandenburg) the Elector John Sigismund’s
went hand in hand, had for some time favored the scheme of bringing forward
Maximilian of Bavaria. But though that Prince had reason for carefully watching
the policy of the House of Austria, he had no intention of listening to the
voice of the charmer; and Anhalt now began to dangle the great prize before the
roving eyes of Charles Emmanuel of Savoy. King James had no better advice to
bestow on his son-in-law than that, if he could not gain over the majority of
the electors to his side, he should accept the inevitable, and try to get as
much as possible for his vote from Ferdinand. This was substantially the “composition”
policy of Klesl, which ran counter to the schemes of Anhalt as it did to the
resolve of Ferdinand's party. But, before the Kurfürstentag could meet to
decide these issues, the news arrived that the agitation in Bohemia, instead of
being repressed by the election of Ferdinand as successor to the throne, had
once more swelled to the proportions of a national insurrection. It was made
plain to Ferdinand, and his supporters recognized it, that, before seeking to
compass the Imperial, he must make sure of the Bohemian Crown. Never before,
nor for more than a century afterwards, did the literature of pamphlets in
Germany reach the dimensions to which it attained in 1618, when something like
eighteen hundred publications of this kind are stated to have flooded the
book-market.
The consequences of the appointment of Ferdinand as
successor to the Bohemian throne had not been long in declaring themselves.
After some changes unfavorable to the Protestants had been made in the
administration, the tone of the Catholic minority had waxed extremely
confident. The Letter of Majesty and
its authors were openly denounced; some peasants, settled on royal domains, who
had refused to profess themselves Catholics, were driven into exile; and in the
royal towns proper, a stop was put on the admission of Protestants to the civic
franchise, and of course to their obtaining responsible administrative posts on
the royal domains. In Prague itself, the almost wholly Protestant Altstadt was now ruled by a town council
more than half Catholic in its composition; and the prevailing uneasiness
became a panic, when (November, 1617) this town council declared its assent
necessary for the appointment or dismissal of any parish priest, and when the
foundation deeds of the numerous churches in Prague, for the most part
Utraquist, were subjected to supervision by the royal judges, and payment from
Catholic endowments was refused to the Protestant clergy. Similar proceedings
took place in other royal towns; and it was clear that, as in the royal
domains, their inhabitants were to lose the liberty of religious worship. Soon
the Chancellor Lobkowitz took occasion to assume the censorship over all
printed matter.
Shortly before the close of the year 1617 the Emperor
Matthias, influenced it was said by an astrological warning, quitted Prague for
Hungary, accompanied by Lobkowitz, and committed the government to the Regents,
chosen from among the chief state officials, so that Slawata and Martinitz, but
not Matthias Thurn, were included among them. On his way to Vienna the Emperor
had, in reply to a deputation from Braunau, definitively ordered the citizens
to give up their church to the Abbot; and, when they had refused, the
ringleaders had, in obedience to royal instructions, been sent to prison by the
Regents. But the Braunauers continued recalcitrant, and, when a government
commission came down to the town, managed to interpose delays, so that at the
outbreak of the insurrection at Prague they were still in possession of their
church. On the other hand, at Klostergrab the Abbot had crowned a series of
arbitrary acts by pulling down the Protestant church, and thus apprising the
whole Protestant population of Bohemia that the Letter of Majesty was a dead document.
The Protestant Assembly and the royal ordinances. 1617-8
Now that the iron was red-hot, Thurn and the majority
of the Defensores came to the
conclusion that there could no longer be any question of waiting till the
passing-away of Matthias should furnish an opportunity of a radical cure by
getting rid of the dynasty simultaneously with the system to which it seemed
wedded. They determined to strike, whatever might be the ulterior consequences
of their action. Using their legal powers once more, the Defensores summoned to Prague an Assembly of Protestant deputies
from each Circle of the realm (but including no representative of Prague),
together with the remaining chief Protestant officials of the Crown. This
assembly met in the capital on March 5, 1618; and such was the ardor of its
leading spirit, Thurn, that, after an address to the Regents demanding the
immediate release of the Braunau prisoners had remained without response, on
March 11 two letters were drawn up: one to the Emperor, asking redress for the
wrongs done at Braunau, Klostergrab, and elsewhere, and the other appealing for
support to the Estates of the lands incorporated with the Bohemian Crown.
Thereupon, after violent harangues, the assembly adjourned for ten days to
await the replies. But on the part of the Government there was no sign of
faltering. The royal answer consisted of the publication of ordinances, drawn
up by Klesl, which declared the assembly rebellious and threatened proceedings
against its originators, while upholding the obnoxious transactions at Braunau
and Klostergrab.
An outburst of indignation ensued at Prague, where it
was asserted that the ordinances had been drawn up by Martinitz and Slawata.
The majority of the Defensores, headed by Thurn, hereupon took the decisive
step of declaring it their duty to summon the Protestant Assembly anew
notwithstanding the royal prohibition. Lobkowitz (who had now returned) managed
to produce a certain amount of dissension among the towns, whose corporations
had been so drastically manipulated; a few Praguers resigned their places among
the Defensores, and there were some
other signs of desertion. But the clergy of the capital stood firm, encouraged
by the failure of the attempt to introduce a Catholic priest into the Bethlehem
Chapel, where Hus had ministered as the nominee of the University. After a
preliminary gathering of leaders had, on May 18, drawn up an appeal to be read
from every Protestant pulpit in Prague on the following Sunday, the Protestant
Assembly met on May 21. Royal officers summoned its members to the Castle to
hear a royal letter, couched in conciliatory terms, but bidding them disperse.
They met again, however, on the 22nd, when they resolved on a reply in which
they refused to separate. A deputation was to wait upon the Regents; and this
deputation the Assembly asked, and, curiously enough, received, permission to
accompany in arms.
The moment had thus arrived for Thurn’s second “demonstration”—the term was his own—which he had more or less confidentially discussed beforehand, and which had previously in Bohemia been esteemed an effective method of procedure. On or before the fateful morning of May 23 the Regents, together with a large part of the population of Prague, had certainly become aware of the design that had been formed for getting rid of the most obnoxious members of their body, if not of the way in which this design was to be carried out. About nine in the morning the Protestant deputation, accompanied by a long procession of armed members of the Assembly, and swelled by representatives of the Neustadt, more than a hundred persons in all, made their way to the Chancery or board-room of the Regents in the Hradschin, where not more than four of them, including Martinitz and Slawata, were found in attendance. After some discourse an answer to the last royal rescript, drawn up by the Defensores and approved by the members of the Assembly on their way to the Chancery, was read to the Regents; and, on their asking for time to consider their reply, Thurn demanded an immediate response to the questions whether the Regents had had any hand in the Emperor’s letter, and when this was refused, declared that the room should not be cleared before an answer was received.
Violent
invectives followed against Slawata and Martinitz; and already the cry had been
raised that they must suffer for their crimes, when one of their two colleagues
present veraciously pointed out that the Regents had had no concern in the
letter. But the doom of the real objects of the “demonstration” had been fixed.
They were dragged to the window, and thence, Thurn having hold of Slawata, and
one of his companions of Martinitz, the pair were cast forth into the castle-ditch—a
fall reckoned to have then been between 50 and 60 feet. Fabricius, the
secretary of the Regents, who remonstrated, was thrown out after the others.
Martinitz rose to his feet severely hurt, as did the secretary. But Slawata lay
grievously injured, and seemingly half-dead; and Martinitz on coming to his
rescue was grazed by one of several shots from the window. Some servants,
however, found their way to the fosse, and carried off their masters. Martinitz
escaped in disguise to Munich; Fabricius likewise made off; Slawata, after
being kept in some sort of custody, was allowed to depart to Teplitz, whence he
passed into Saxony. There seems to have been little or no wish to aggravate the
outrage in cold blood. Thurn’s purpose had been to render impossible any
further attempt on the part of Matthias and his advisers to tide over the
Bohemian difficulty till the question of the Imperial succession should have
been settled in favor of the House of Austria and the Catholic interest. He was resolved that the issue between the Reaction and Protestant liberties, which
was also that between the Viennese Government and the Estates of the several
Habsburg lands, should be determined, not at Frankfort or at Ratisbon, but in
Bohemia. Thus Klesl’s peace policy was cast forth from the Hofburg when the
myrmidons of the Reaction were hurled down from the Hradschin; and though the Apologia issued by the Bohemian Estates
two days after the outrage insisted that not the Emperor, but only his evil
counselors, were chargeable with the oppression of the Protestants, Thurn and
his associates had established a solidarity between the Habsburgs and
reactionaries such as Martinitz and Slawata which must force friend and foe
alike to make up their minds. The House of Austria, after violating chartered
Protestant and national rights in Bohemia, would have to meet the first shock
of the conflict which had long been preparing itself in the Empire, and of
which Europe at large had been more or less consciously awaiting the outbreak.
Yet for this outbreak hardly any Power or party in the Empire or in Europe, not
even the Bohemian Assembly which had so audaciously provoked it, was actually
prepared.
A provisional government established. 1618
The Bohemian Protestants, however, lost no time in
organizing what was now an open insurrection. On the day after the “defenestration”
the Prague municipalities sent their representatives into the Protestant
Assembly; and the other royal towns (except only Budweis and Pilsen) followed
suit. A provisional government of thirty Directors, ten from each Estate, was
named to defend the religious liberties of the kingdom, with Wenceslas William
von Ruppa, one of the managers of the Hradschin demonstration, at its head,
while Thurn as lieutenant-general assumed command of the mercenary army which
had been hastily raised, the idea of a national levy having been soon
abandoned. No change was introduced into the system of government beyond the
dismissal of those held to have abused the royal confidence. The Archbishop of
Prague, the Abbot of Braunau, and some other offending ecclesiastics were
driven out, and the Jesuits banished the realm in perpetuum.
But money flowed in slowly, and, after Thurn had set
out in the middle of June with a force of not more than 3000 foot and 1100
horse to expel the Imperialist garrisons from Krummau and Budweis, a Diet had
to be summoned to vote fresh supplies, and the Directors began to look
anxiously for the support of the other Habsburg lands. But in Hungary, where
Ferdinand was awaiting his coronation at Pressburg, the new Catholic Palatine
sent the Bohemian agent in custody to Vienna. In Upper Austria the Protestant
majority of the Estates, led by Tschernembl, contented itself with menaces to
the Emperor, and in Lower Austria it persisted in pressing its own grievances.
Most unexpectedly of all, in Moravia Zierotin influenced the Diet in the
direction of a moderate policy; and at another Diet Ferdinand, present in
person, obtained the right of transit through Moravia for his troops (August).
The Silesian Estates, however, refused a similar demand, and resolved upon dispatching
to Bohemia, though for defensive purposes only, the first installment of troops
due from them, under the command of Margrave John George of Jagerndorf
(October). He had succeeded to this principality by the will of his father, the
late Elector Joachim Frederick of Brandenburg; but the Emperor had refused to
acknowledge his succession, and treated his lands as escheated. In Upper
Lusatia the Diet maintained its allegiance to Ferdinand.
But even if the Bohemian Directors had thought of
drawing back, they would have found that the time for this had passed. The
commissioner sent to Prague by Matthias on Klesl’s advice had reported that
only large concessions could heal the breach; and any such Ferdinand, to whom
the Emperor appealed, refused to grant. Yet the party of reaction at Vienna, no
less than the Protestant leaders in Bohemia, knew that they were about to put
their fate to the touch. Maximilian of Bavaria, alienated by the vagaries of
his namesake the Archduke, and conscious perhaps of possibilities which the
negotiations as to the Imperial succession had brought home to him, returned a
cold answer to Ferdinand's appeal. The Spiritual Electors adopted much the same
tone. Even John George of Saxony’s loyalty seemed to be wavering; in June he
had actually applied for admission into the Union. The Spanish ambassador,
Oñate, counseled caution. But King Ferdinand and Archduke Maximilian could see
no safety except in going forward. On July 20, 1618, Cardinal Klesl was
suddenly arrested in the course of a visit paid by him to Archduke Maximilian
in the Hofburg, and straightway conveyed to the castle of Ambras in Tyrol. Here
and in other places he was detained as a prisoner for a period of five years,
till Pope Gregory XV rescued him from further danger by taking him into his own
custody at Rome. His political career was at an end, and with it, to all
intents and purposes, the rule of the Prince who had so long submitted to his
influence, and who, now that it was removed, had no motive power of his own
left. Klesl, after passing out of the service of the Church, which owed him so
much, into that of the Emperor, who owed him everything, had been wanting
neither in intelligence nor in sincerity of purpose, though his conduct was not
free from trickery. His name holds no place on the roll of successful
ecclesiastical statesmen; but much of the obloquy heaped on him by
contemporaries and posterity has been removed by dispassionate enquiry; nor can
it be gainsaid that on the eve of the most disastrous of religious wars his
efforts were thanklessly thrown into the scale of conciliation and peace.
In 1637, after a long exile, he died at home in his Vienna diocese.
Ferdinand's preparations.—Efforts of James I.
In July, 1618, King Ferdinand, already the real head
of the House of Austria, returned from Hungary to face a situation full of
menace. Except in the lands under his own or Archduke Maximilian’s rule (Styria
and Tyrol in especial), he could not trust to the fidelity of his future
subjects. In the way of extraneous aid, besides some pecuniary support from
Rome and Spain, he might count upon the Spanish troops which had served him
against Venice, and he could look for a small contingent from Archduke Albert
in the Netherlands, a few thousand Polish horse from his brother-in-law and
ally Sigismund III, and, if all was well, six thousand light Hungarian troops.
From the Estates of the Empire as such he could look for no aid, especially as
Bohemia was exempted from their watch and ward; and of the League only the
section headed by Maximilian of Bavaria remained effective, though its
intentions were as yet uncertain. The 14,000 troops which by August Ferdinand
actually had under arms were chiefly raw recruits of his own raising. The
Brabançon Count de Bucquoy was placed at the head of this army, with the
Lorrainer Count de Dampierre under him. Preceded by the latter, Bucquoy in
September with his main force entered Bohemia, where he found opposed to him
the Bohemian army, consisting of 12,000 foot and 4000 horse, which had been
placed in the field chiefly by the exertions of the Count of Hohenlohe, Thurn’s
right hand. The Bohemians had a better prospect of outside support than their
King-designate. Money had been promised by the States General, and more was
expected from the Seigniory of Venice, to whom about this time Spain and the
friends of Spain had become more odious than ever. France would at least remain
neutral in the quarrel; and the only way in which Queen Mary de Medici could
attest her Catholic sympathies was to offer the Emperor her mediation. The
hopes placed in James I were not yet at an end, though so far he had not
entered into any obligation to take action, and in truth troubled himself very
little about his alliance with the Union; but he was quite conscious that
England, who had not yet renounced her position at the head of the Protestant
interest in Europe, was expected to take up the Bohemian cause. Unfortunately
he was hampered by the negotiation for a marriage between the Prince of Wales
and the Infanta Maria of Spain, into which he had entered shortly before the
outbreak of the Bohemian troubles; for, though this project hung fire, he had
by no means relinquished it.
Thus the only service which he was at present able to
render to the Bohemians was to explain to Philip III the circumstances in which
he intended to offer his mediation between the Emperor and the insurgents. Had
he been able to carry out this mediation successfully and to prevent the
further growth of the movement by inducing the Austrian Government to deal
honestly with the Letter of Majesty and the Bohemian rights, and thus to destroy the foundations of Thurn’s policy,
Europe would beyond doubt have found in him the benefactor that he desired to
become. But James' mediation itself lacked any basis of reality; there was no
reasonable chance of his persuading Spain to urge upon the House of Austria a
rupture with the Catholic Reaction, or of his inducing the Bohemians and their
favorers on either side of the Alps to retrace their steps. In January, 1619,
Dohna, sent on a special mission, easily obtained James' assent to the
prolongation of his alliance with the Union; but, to the suggestion that his
son-in-law should follow Matthias on the Bohemian throne, the King only replied
that he would support Frederick in the case of an electio legitima; with a policy of war he would have nothing to do.
In February the new Viscount Doncaster (James Hay, afterwards Earl of
Carlisle), a favorite of the sprightly Electress Elizabeth and a diplomatist of
remarkable tact, started on his circular mission of peace, taking Brussels on
his way to Heidelberg, and passing thence into Austria. But, before his mission
had reached its critical point, its prospects had again changed for the worse.
Mansfeld takes service with the Bohemians. 1618-9
Of more importance therefore than the benevolent
neutrality of James I was the tangible sign of goodwill which, in response to
Anhalt’s well-calculated overtures, Charles Emmanuel of Savoy had given to the
Bohemian Directors by allowing a captain whom he had recently taken into his
service to transfer himself into theirs with a body of 2000 mercenaries. This was
Ernest von Mansfeld—“Count von Mansfeld” as he styled himself, the illegitimate
son of Prince Peter Ernest von Mansfeld, formerly Imperial Governor of
Luxemburg—win, after serving the Habsburgs in Hungary and in the Jülich-Cleves
war, had without changing his confession passed over to the side of their
adversaries. No more fitting personage could have been found to take part in
the opening passages of the great war than this born mercenary and leader of
mercenaries, ambitious without steadiness of aim and persistent without
principle, gifted with military abilities of a high order and (as he was to
prove at London as well as at Turin) with notable diplomatic skill. Of his dash
as a commander he now gave immediate proof by taking and occupying Pilsen (November,
1618). Beyond the frontier there hovered the restless figure of the
Transylvanian Bethlen Gabor, ready to resume his attitude of defiance towards
the Imperial authority, while further in the background lowered the dark cloud
of the Turkish peril, which he might still at any time draw down upon the
Austrian frontier.
The immediate hope of the Bohemians was fixed upon the
Elector Palatine, to whom in July the mission to Prague of Count Albert von
Solms, ostensibly charged with apprising the Directors of the intention of the
Elector and the Corresponding Princes to prohibit the transit of Imperial
troops through their dominions, had first drawn attention as a suitable
successor to Matthias on the Bohemian throne. Solms’ return had inspired Anhalt
to renewed diplomatic exertions at Turin and elsewhere; but the Union, while
avowedly sympathizing with the Bohemian insurrection, and conscious that its
success must lead to the triumph of the Protestant cause throughout the
Austrian dominions, could not make up its mind to abandon its defensive
character. Nor, in truth, consisting as it did of a majority of timorous towns,
and of a few petty Princes either intent upon their own purposes or, like
Maurice of Hesse, wedded to their own methods, was the Union really fit for any
political action on so large a scale. The Elector John Sigismund of
Brandenburg, though now outside the Union, was ready to cooperate with the
Elector Palatine, especially since the marriage of Frederick's sister Elizabeth
Charlotte to the Electoral Prince George William (1616); but he was of little
account as an active ally, being in difficulties with his actual Lutheran
subjects, which he tried to meet in a spirit of tolerance, and apprehensive as
to the succession in Lutheran Prussia, which would fall to his House on the
death of Duke Albert Frederick.
Thurn’s advance on Vienna.—Death of Matthias.
The conflict in Bohemia would open under conditions
far more favorable for the insurrection if the cooperation of the Austrian
Estates could be secured at the outset. In September the agitation among them
led to a large deputation to the Emperor, whose patience they completely
exhausted by a recital of their grievances. Hereupon Thurn, instead of throwing
himself with all his strength upon the Imperialists, when under Bucquoy they
invaded Bohemia, led his army into Lower Austria (November). He took Zwettel,
and his cavalry advanced into the neighborhood of Vienna. A demand arose for
the convocation of a general meeting of all the Diets; and this project, which,
if rapidly pushed forward, might have resulted in confederating the Estates of
the bulk of the dominions of the House of Austria against the continuance of
its rule, was probably only frustrated by the steady refusal of the Moravian
Diet to take part in the Bohemian movement. To no man were the German Habsburgs
in this crisis of their destinies more deeply indebted than to the Moravian
statesman Zierotin.
Though the first year of the war thus ended without
any serious blow having been struck on either side, a terrible foretaste of the
suffering which during its course that war was to spread far and near was
experienced by southern Bohemia, where the Imperialists burnt down hundreds of
villages. During the stoppage of warfare in the winter months of 1618-9, there
were some attempts at negotiation which might seem not altogether hopeless so
long as the Emperor Matthias survived. But, never himself since the downfall of
Klesl, he had been further shaken by the death of his Empress in December, and,
as the remnants of his authority seemed crumbling away, he sank into hopeless
prostration, till on March 20, 1619, he suddenly died in a fit. In his public
life he had on the whole proved more manageable than his more gifted elder
brother, and had thus enabled the State-machine to work on after a fashion;
but he had lived long enough to show that, left to himself, he could only drift
before the storm. A few months earlier (November 2, 1618) the death of Archduke
Maximilian had deprived Ferdinand of the unselfish, though not always discreet,
support of another elder kinsman, but had more distinctly than ever committed
to him the maintenance of the imperiled dynasty. His younger brother Leopold,
so prominent in Rudolf II’s latter days, who succeeded Maximilian as ruler of
Tyrol and the Austrian possessions in Elsass, continued to play a quite
secondary part.
The Habsburg dominions.—Ferdinand’s prospects.
Few princes have entered upon a great inheritance and
its responsibilities in conditions so nearly desperate as those in which
Ferdinand found himself on the death of Matthias. His Bohemian crown seemed to
have already fallen from his head; for to a rescript sent by him to the
Bohemian Estates, promising to maintain all their rights and privileges, and
asking for his recognition as King, no reply was vouchsafed. His Hungarian
throne seemed hardly better assured; for the rumor soon came from Transylvania
that Bethlen Gabor was hastening to the neighborhood of Vienna, there to hold
conference with Thurn, and then to invade Hungary in due course. Upper Lusatia
had now followed the example of Silesia; and, after Thurn had entered Moravia
with a force of 8000 men, a change had, in spite of Zierotin’s continued
counsels of moderation, been here also brought about. Part of the Moravian army
and the treasury of the Estates were indeed carried off in safety to Vienna by
Albrecht von Waldstein (Wallenstein); but a Directorate was established, and
the remainder of the Moravian troops united with the Bohemian. Upper Austria
was soon in open revolt, the Protestant Estates refusing to accept Archduke
Albert’s renunciation of the hereditary authority in favor of Ferdinand and
establishing themselves as a government at Linz, in communication with the
Bohemian Directors; while the Lower Austrians, though less resolutely, followed
suit. Thurn could look round upon seven kingdoms or provinces in revolt or
defection, when in the first days of June, 1619, at the head of an army
variously estimated at 10,000 to 12,000 men, he crossed the Danube in the
immediate vicinity of the capital.
A force of 12,000 men was setting forth from Flanders
to Ferdinand’s aid; but he had no allies beyond the frontiers of the Empire
except Spain and Poland. The advances made to these Powers by Christian IV of
Denmark were only dictated by jealousy of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, to whom
the Bohemians had applied for help, for Christian was himself burning to come
forward as the champion of the Protestant cause.
But Ferdinand stood unshaken, prepared, as he told his
confessor, after weighing the dangers that threatened him on all sides, “to
perish in the struggle, should that be the will of God”. His confidence may
have been increased by his habit of not perplexing himself with details,
whether military or financial; and, while he remained unterrified by the ruins
around him, his expenditure was as liberal as if his affairs and his conscience
had been equally well regulated. On June 5 he received in a spirit of placid
firmness a deputation from the Estates of Lower Austria, who, trusting to the
effect of Thurn’s close approach to Vienna, had on that very day split off from
their Catholic colleagues on the refusal of the latter to agree to the scheme
of a confederation with the Bohemians. Ferdinand, it must be remembered, had
given no promise to the Austrians of respecting their religious liberties such
as he had made to the Bohemians and Hungarians. Before the turbulent interview
(certain familiar details of which appear to be apocryphal) had ended, five
hundred cuirassiers of the regiment afterwards known as Dampierre’s rode into
the courtyard of the Hofburg, commanded by a French officer, Gilbert de
Saint-Hilaire. The deputies, on whom the tables had thus been turned, were
allowed to depart unharmed. Probably there had been some understanding between
Thurn and the Austrian delegates; but if so, he had lost some precious hours.
Troops now began to pour in till some 6000 were gathered in Vienna, where much
enthusiasm was manifested, especially by the students under Jesuit influence.
Thurn saw that a siege of the capital was now out of the question; and, when
the news arrived from Bohemia that Bucquoy had routed Mansfeld at Zablat (the
honours of the day belonged to a regiment of Walloons and Spaniards commanded
by Wallenstein), Thurn took his departure from the neighborhood of Vienna (June
14), and fell back upon Bohemia. But here he proved unable to arrest the
progress of the Imperialists; he had, in fact, little or no control of his mercenary
soldiery; nor were matters mended by the temporary appointment of Anhalt as
Commander-in-Chief in Bohemia and the sister kingdoms. Thus, in the course of
the summer and autumn of 1619 the prospects of the Bohemian insurrection had
unmistakably darkened, while the wider anti-Habsburg movement which that
insurrection was to have called forth had been checked.
Ferdinand lost no time in making use of this respite
by taking his departure to Frankfort, his brother Leopold being left as his
vicegerent in Vienna. On his way, at Salzburg, Ferdinand met Doncaster, to whom
he listened politely, but with the consciousness that the ambassador’s messages
needed no immediate answer. At Frankfort, where he arrived on July 28, he found
the Kurfürstentag already in session,
but only the three Spiritual Electors in personal attendance. The issue of the
Imperial election was still not quite assured, though his chances were steadily
improving. Brandenburg had entered into an engagement to vote against him, and
to take no step without the concurrence of the Palatine Government. But that
Government itself was at a loss. Neither the name of the Duke of Lorraine, nor
that of the Duke of Savoy, notwithstanding the reopening of negotiations with
the latter in the winter months of 1618-9, could be seriously brought forward.
But the notion, to which the Palatine politicians clung with strange
persistency, of raising Maximilian of Bavaria to the Imperial throne, had not
been altogether dropped; and in the meantime they were seeking to create delays
by contending that a settlement of the Bohemian troubles should precede the
Imperial election. The Elector of Saxony decided the day by refusing to concur
in this proposal, though it perhaps offered the last chance of localizing the
war, and by announcing his intention to vote with the Spiritual Electors.
Hereupon the Elector of Brandenburg, unmindful of his promise, followed suit;
and, after Ferdinand had cautiously assented to the “interposition” of the
whole electoral body in the Bohemian troubles, his Wahlcapitulation was settled without much difficulty, and on August
28 followed his unanimous election as Emperor. The Palatine collapse was
complete; for Frederick's ambassador had in the end avowed his instructions to
vote in the first instance for Maximilian, but in the event of the remaining
electors or the majority of them voting for Ferdinand, to accede to their
choice.
Hardly had this result become known at Frankfort than
the news arrived there that nine days earlier Ferdinand had been deposed from
the Bohemian throne. On July 31 the General Diet, attended by representatives
of Bohemia, the incorporated lands, and the two Austrian duchies, had, solely
by their own authority, adopted the Act of Confederation which declared the
Bohemian Crown elective and assured the predominance of Protestantism
throughout these lands. The formal deposition of Ferdinand had followed on August
19. The resolution was approved in Silesia, Lusatia, and Moravia—though in the
Diet of the last-named margravate not without strenuous opposition. Had the
futility of the Palatine policy at Frankfort been known at Prague, the
Protestant leaders might possibly have paused. No doubt the decision of Bethlen
Gabor to overrun Hungary, though not actually sent to the Directors till the
day before the fatal vote, added to their confidence. But in any case, on the
banks of the Moldau as on those of the Main, the die was now cast, and it only
remained to decide who should be invited to the vacant throne.
1619] Frederick elected King of Bohemia.
The decision was made, not, as it would seem, in
deference to the general desire of the Bohemian Protestants, of whom, partly
for political and partly for historic reasons, the majority would probably have
preferred John George of Saxony, but in accordance with the determination of
the junta who had the reins of the
government and the command of the troops in their hands. Ruppa, Thurn, and
Hohenlohe had made up their minds for the Elector Palatine. In this they were
undoubtedly influenced by the personal communications which had taken place and
by his position in the Union, which at its meeting at Heilbronn in June, 1619,
urged by the arguments of Maurice of Hesse, as well as by the presence of Count
Achatius von Dohna, sent by Frederick V, had guaranteed a substantial loan to
the Bohemian ambassadors and set on foot a “defensive” force of some 33,000
troops. Means having been found for ascertaining that Frederick was “in
principle” prepared to accept, he was on August 26 all but unanimously elected
King by the General Diet, and on the following day proclaimed at Prague. The
momentous tidings found him at Amberg, where he was anxiously waiting in the
company of his adviser, Christian von Anhalt. No doubt the greatness at which
he trembled had been thrust upon him as the inheritor of the policy not less
than of the religious faith and princely dignity of his predecessors. But his “I
dare not” was as prolonged as his “I would” was manifest through it all. At
first he had in vain entreated the Directors to postpone the initial step of
the deposition of Ferdinand. Then he had openly wondered what course he would
take if he were chosen, and before his election had, as has been seen, sent
Christopher von Dohna to England to sound his father-in-law. He could take
scant comfort from a meeting of the Union hastily summoned to Rothenburg
(September 12), where only Baden and Ansbach were warmly for acceptance. From
his councilors at Heidelberg he obtained an opinion in which they only
contrived to adduce four reasons for acceptance as against fourteen for
refusal. Maximilian of Bavaria openly warned him of the risk which by accepting
he would run for both himself and his House. Similar advice, of which it is
unnecessary to analyze the motives too nicely, reached him from John George of
Saxony and other Electors; on the other hand he was encouraged to proceed by
John Sigismund of Brandenburg, who was before long to marry his daughter Maria
Eleonora to Gustavus Adolphus (1620), and some years later (1625) another
daughter, Catharine, to Bethlen Gabor. Maurice of Orange likewise advised
compliance. Frederick’s mother Louisa Juliana, the high-minded daughter of
William the Silent, was overwhelmed with forebodings of disaster when she heard
of his acceptance. That he was urged to accept by his wife is a baseless
legend, but one which continues to survive; her mind was not at this time
occupied with high political issues, though on the news of the election she
asked her father’s support and promised her own readiness to share whatever the
future might have in store for her consort. It was not the persuasions of
Elizabeth, born though she was to be a Queen, nor was it any religious admonition
on the part of his spiritual adviser, Scultetus, which convinced the hesitating
Frederick; it was rather, we may feel assured, the steady pressure of Anhalt’s
counsel that he had gone too far to retreat, which finally shaped itself in his
mind as the belief that his acceptance of the proffered Bohemian Crown was the
will of God. In this sense, on September 28, Frederick wrote secretly in the
affirmative to the Directors, who had already thrice asked from him an answer.
Two days earlier Dohna had taken his departure from the Court of James I, whose
final pronouncement, made four days before, had been merely a refusal to decide
on his own course of action until he should have convinced himself of the
justice of Frederick’s cause. This neutral conclusion, which determined the
inaction of the States General and Savoy, was adopted with a knowledge of
Frederick’s resolution to accept, for which James I is not to be held
responsible. Still there can be little doubt that, had James sent Dohna back
with a protest, a way might still have been found by Frederick for withholding
the final acceptance, which from October 6 onwards was formally made known to
several Courts.
The decision thus at last taken was of the utmost
importance for the future of the conflict, in which religious and political
motives and interests were from the first so inextricably intermixed. The
troubles of the Austrian Habsburgs had at once become a matter of direct
Imperial, and unavoidably also of international concern. It remains unknown to
what extent Anhalt, whose diplomacy was immediately responsible for the crisis,
had engaged the support of the Bohemians and their confederates for the defense
of the Palatinate, should this prove to be the next scene of action; nor do we
know whether even now he trusted for this to the Union, the product of his
earlier handiwork; but could the Bohemian records be revived from their ashes
it would matter little, for the issue of the struggle dealt swiftly and fatally
with the whole of his political edifice.
At first things seemed to go well. Towards the end of
October “the Palatinate”, as Louisa Juliana exclaimed, “was on its way into
Bohemia”. On the last day of the month Frederick held his entry at Prague; on
November 4 he was crowned. Queen Elizabeth’s regal presence and personal charm
suited the glamour of the young pair’s sudden elevation, and their popularity
sufficed to counterbalance the Calvinistic aggressiveness of their
Court-preacher Scultetus and the occasional offence given by their own light-heartedness.
The expenditure of the Court, however, though not prodigal, added to the
general financial pressure, which at times had to be met by extortions in the
convents and elsewhere. While the new régime was weak at home and, as was but to be expected, quite powerless to control an
aristocracy which had always been high-tempered and of late self-governing,
this weakness was not in the eyes of the nation compensated by any manifest
accession of extraneous support, the hope of which had been the real motive of
the election of Frederick. He was recognized as King of Bohemia by the United
Provinces and Venice, as well as by Sweden and his fellow-members of the Union.
But Gustavus Adolphus had his hands full with Poland; and the States General,
while prepared to fulfill their promise of a monthly subsidy of 50,000 ducats
from May, 1619, shrank from an armed intervention. On the other hand, Bethlen
Gabor had now begun to move. This remarkable personage, half barbarian in his
ways of life, while in religion an eager and disputatious Calvinist, was, like
other Transylvanian potentates before him, obliged to depend alternately upon
the goodwill of the Sultan and the favor of the Emperor, unless, as now, he
took his fortunes into his own hands.
In August, 1619, his design of conducting an
expedition in aid of the Bohemians was announced to the Directors; and in the
course of September the greater part of Upper Hungary fell easily into his
hands. He obliged Forgacz, the Catholic Palatine of Hungary, to summon a Diet
for November 11; and it was obvious that Hungary would speedily be added to the
confederation whose hostility confronted the Emperor. On October 12 Bethlen
Gabor entered Pressburg, and its castle immediately surrendered to him.
Archduke Leopold had no choice but to summon Bucquoy from Bohemia to defend the
Austrian duchies; and on September 19 he began his retreat, laden with the
spoils of his master’s kingdom and followed by the Bohemian leaders, with a
force superior to his own in numbers, but unequal to preventing either his
junction with Dampierre or his safe transit over the Danube (October 25). Once
more Vienna seemed to be on the eve of a siege; the Bohemians under Thurn and
Hohenlohe cooperating with Bethlen Gabor’s victorious army and with an Austrian
insurrectionary force which guarded the river against any possible succor from
Bavaria, while maintaining communications with the Protestant malcontents in
the capital itself. But the combination was broken up by the news that Bethlen
Gabor’s old adversary, Drugeth de Homonnay, had entered Upper Hungary with the
aid of a force of Polish Cossacks; and by the end of November the Transylvanian
army had begun its homeward march. Bethlen had been unable to recover his
expenses from his Bohemian allies; and it may be doubted whether Frederick's
Palatine advisers looked on their Oriental auxiliary with perfect satisfaction.
However, without his aid Vienna could not be taken or held; and the Bohemian
army was itself, as usual, without its pay. It therefore likewise turned
homewards.
Ferdinand had thus gained a respite, and though
Bethlen, who had now been formally elected “Prince” of Hungary, on January 15,
1620, entered into a formal alliance with the Bohemian Crown which precluded
either side from accepting peace without the concurrence of the other, he found
it in his interest immediately to concede to the Emperor a nine months' truce
on the uti possidetis basis. Bethlen
immediately proclaimed throughout Hungary an ample system of religious
toleration approved by the Diet, and set about regulating his relations with
the Porte.
Agreement between Ferdinand and Maximilian. Opening of the War.
Ferdinand could thus for the moment concentrate his
efforts on the Bohemian struggle, the significance of which for the religious
future of Europe was becoming more and more widely manifest. Early in 1620,
Pope Paul V doubled his subsidy to the Emperor; the Grand Duke Cosimo of
Tuscany and the Republic of Genoa transmitted contributions; and Philip III of
Spain, besides sending more gold than his coffers could spare, levied troops on
a large scale in both Italy and the Spanish Netherlands. By November, 1619,
some 7000 of these troops had gathered at Innsbruck; and it was hoped that in
the course of 1620 not far short of 30,000 of the soldiery, whose reputation
was still unequalled, might, under their famous commander Spinola, overwhelm
the hereditary lands of the usurper at Prague. At last, too, the machinery of
the reduced Catholic League had been put into operation. On his way home from
Frankfort the Emperor Ferdinand II had paid a visit to Duke Maximilian at
Munich, where they had come to an understanding of moment not only for the
conduct of the war then imminent, but also for the religious future of the
Empire, as well as for the whole troubled history of the territorial relations
between the two dynasties (October 8, 1619). All the expenses incurred by
Maximilian, over and above the contributions due from him as a member of the
League or the costs of the defense of his own lands, were to be repaid to him
by the House of Austria, which till their repayment was to leave in pledge to
him an equivalent territory, more especially such lands as he might himself
have recovered from the enemy. At the same time the Emperor and he arrived at a
verbal understanding, in which the former promised, in the event of the Elector
Palatine being placed under the ban of the Empire, to confer the electoral
dignity upon the Duke of Bavaria, whose line had consistently regarded its
exclusion from alternate participation in that dignity as an arbitrary
provision of the Golden Bull. Nor was the contingent transfer to be confined to
the electoral hat; for Maximilian was to remain in possession of any of the
lands in the Empire which he had occupied while executing its ban. With these
securities, and the additional proviso that no intervention of any kind in the
affairs of the League should be allowed to the Emperor or any other member of
his House, Maximilian had no difficulty in inducing the League at a meeting
held at Wurzburg on December 5 to resolve on the levy of a force of 21,000 foot
and 4000 horse, and to commit to his discretion the use to which these troops
might be put as the occasion demanded.
As things then stood, it seemed of almost equal importance
that, after long and complicated negotiations, Ferdinand was successful in
securing the support of John George of Saxony. The Elector’s ultimate decision
was due in part to loyal sentiment, in part to his hereditary jealousy of his
Ernestine kinsmen of Weimar, whom Palatine diplomacy had not omitted to tempt
with the bait of his Electorate, and partly by the Imperial promise of
territorial gain in the shape of a lien upon both the Lusatias, and of security
for the sees and other ecclesiastical foundations in Protestant hands in the
two Saxon Circles. This last promise, which was to acquire a great importance
at no remote date, was confirmed at a meeting of Catholic Princes, including
Bavaria, held at Mühlhausen (March, 1620), so far as an undertaking to abstain
from all armed intervention in the matter of these possessions extended. At the
same meeting a resolution condemning the Bohemian insurrection and promising
armed aid to the Emperor for its repression was passed. The method of
repressing it was left to be settled by the joint decision of the Emperor, the
Elector of Saxony, and the Duke of Bavaria. Saxony had promised to do its best
to gain the support of other Estates of the Saxon Circles; but in this quarter
an ominous admonition from Christian IV of Denmark suggested caution (April 1).
On the other hand the Elector was assured of the concurrence of Landgrave Lewis
of Hesse-Darmstadt. It may be added that an effort had been made to secure
further Polish aid by the pledging of certain forfeited lands in Silesia, but
the Turks prevented its dispatch. Of troops actually under arms or promised,
the Emperor and his allies, Spain, the League, and the loyal Princes, are
calculated to have now been able to reckon upon a force of from 110,000 to
120,000 men, about sufficient to overthrow the revolutionary régime in Bohemia and the incorporated
lands, to secure the submission of the Austrian duchies, to occupy the
Palatinate, and perhaps to keep off the Eastern danger.
While the Catholic side was thus prepared, the body
which claimed to represent the Protestant interest in the Empire—that interest
to which the majority of its population had adhered through long years of hope
deferred or development arrested—continued to hesitate, and finally collapsed. But
the ignominy summarized in a song of the day—
“A Union they did form at first,
But when the war came they dispersed”
—is not wholly to be visited on the most unfortunate
of all the leagues of the Wars of Religion epoch. In order to satisfy the purposes
of a policy compounded of dynastic ambition and of antagonism to the House of
Habsburg, Anhalt had hurried the Elector Palatine into a path into which he had
not prepared the Union for following him, nor could expect it to follow him in
contravention of its avowed purpose, and without the allies whom his diplomacy
had so long been wooing in almost every part of Europe. The members of the
Union met at Nurnberg in November, 1619, together with the representatives of
seven other Protestant Princes, including the Elector of Brandenburg, and
discussed their general position with an amplitude rarely surpassed even in
that argumentative age. But while they peremptorily called upon the Duke of
Bavaria to satisfy them within two months as to the views of the Catholic
Estates concerning the expediency of a joint conference on all their
grievances, they resolved for the present to adhere strictly to a defensive
attitude. Maximilian of course refused, and during the ensuing transactions,
already noted, the Union was left out in the cold. Its ambassador,
Buwinkhausen, obtained from the States General the promise of a monthly subsidy
to the Union, equal in amount to that paid by them to the Bohemians; while
James I, who had finally decided to limit his assistance to Frederick to the
event of an attack upon the Palatinate, pointed out to the ambassador that this
occasion had not yet arisen (February, 1620). He permitted, however, as he had
already done in the case of Bohemia, the collection of voluntary subscriptions
and even the levy by means of the sums thus collected of 2000 volunteers, who
before the summer was out crossed the sea under Sir Horace Vere (July). This
delay was partly due to the King’s unwillingness to summon Parliament, partly
to the return to England of the Spanish ambassador, Count Gondomar, whom James
received with open arms, and who flattered the King’s scheme of an alliance
with Spain. Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, who had no intention of devoting his
resources in men and money to the maintenance of Frederick's precarious
grandeur at Prague, and who found that the Venice Seigniory had come to the
same conclusion, was beginning to veer round to the Catholic coalition, and
allowed the passage of Spanish troops through his dominions. Bethlen Gabor
judged that his moment had not yet arrived.
On April 30, 1620, the mandate—practically the
Imperial declaration of war—went forth, which ordered the Elector Palatine to
quit the Emperor’s dominions by June 1, and threatened him, in case of
non-compliance, with the ban of the Empire. About the same time the commission
was issued which empowered the Elector of Saxony to occupy the Lusatias and
Silesia; and shortly afterwards a similar commission against Upper Austria
reached Maximilian. The net was closing round the insurrection and round its
creature, the unfortunate Twelfth-night King.
As so often happens at the eleventh hour, a last
effort had been made in the spring of 1620 by the Government of Mary de' Medici
to mediate between the Emperor and his adversaries, so as still, if possible,
while serving the interests of the Catholic Church, to avoid a war which might
increase the prestige and power of Spain. These negotiations, carried on by an
embassy headed by the Duke of Angouleme, came to nothing; but the French
intervention had been at first welcomed at Ulm, where the members of the Union
were holding a meeting (June, 1620), and whither Maximilian had sent envoys.
The army of the Union, some 13,000 strong, was encamped hard by; while the
troops of the League, numbering about 24,000 men, were gathered some twenty
miles lower down the Danube. In July the two associations entered into an
undertaking of abstention from all offensive operations against each other. But
Bohemia was expressly excluded from the compact, the League in return promising
not to attack Frederick's hereditary 'dominions. In other words, while Spinola
might swoop down on the Palatinate, Maximilian might invade Bohemia, with his
rear secure. On July 24, 1620, Tilly entered Upper Austria, and the first stage
in the great conflict in arms had begun.
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