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CHAPTER III.
THE PROTESTANT COLLAPSE1620-1630.A.
THE BOHEMIAN AND THE PALATINATE WAR. (1620-3)
THE
Bohemian War, as the military conflict of the year 1620 is usually called, was
as brief in its course as its results were decisive; for, strictly speaking, it
extended over but four months. Its story is on the Protestant side from first
to last one of helplessness, incompetence, and ill-faith. While Frederick's
enemies were preparing to crush him, he was impotently allowing the confusion
in his government to become chaos. The Bohemian army had returned from its
futile march on Vienna, demoralized by failure and with ranks thinned by
disease; its pay was in arrear, and the soldiery ready to break out into open
mutiny; yet the Bohemian nobles were jealous of Anhalt holding the chief
command over it. The condition of things had, however, improved by May, when
Anhalt had effected a junction with Mansfeld, and had been further reinforced
by a Silesian contingent. Bethlen Gabor too had now
openly promised aid; and, a few weeks after Maximilian had crossed the
frontier, a joint Bohemian and Hungarian embassy had started for
Constantinople, and an informal Diet had elected Bethlen King at Pressburg.
After
entering Upper Austria on July 24, 1620, with the army of the League (about
two-thirds of the entire force), Maximilian reached Linz on August 4 without
any serious impediment, and at once, in accordance with his commission from the
Emperor, exacted provisional homage from the Estates. Their 2000-3000
mercenaries were quickly drafted into the army of the League; and a large body
of armed peasantry that sought to obstruct its passage was cut to pieces.
Maximilian then put forth his second Imperial commission, empowering him to
bring back Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia to their allegiance, and crossed the
Bohemian frontier, turning aside again, however, into Lower Austria to effect
his junction with Bucquoy. With the Lower Austrian
Estates Ferdinand himself dealt, proclaiming as rebels the Protestant seceders who had formally placed themselves under the
protection of Frederick. In the meantime Anhalt with the main Bohemian army
fell back into Moravia; while Mansfeld, after operating against a force of
Spanish auxiliaries under Don Balthasar Maradas, threw himself into Pilsen.
As early as April, having already tired of a service which brought him little
plunder or pay, and not even the desired title of Field-Marshal, he had asked
for his dismissal; and in August, although he had for a year and a half been
under the ban of the Empire, he made overtures to the Emperor through
Maximilian.
1620] Tilly marches on Prague.The battle of the White Hill
The
way to Prague thus lay open; and, towards the end of October, Maximilian
induced Bucquoy to adopt a less cautious strategy. The
combined main army of the League and the Imperialists, probably amounting to
rather less than 22,000 men, now set forth in its march upon the Bohemian
capital. Anhalt, whose forces, including 3000 Hungarians, seem to have
outnumbered the enemy by about 2000 men, moved from Moravia and, with King
Frederick, who had joined him, took up a position in a fortified camp at Rakonitz, athwart the hostile line of advance. In these
preliminary operations Anhalt gained a momentary advantage over Tilly, who had taken Bucquoy’s place during his disablement by a slight wound. Count John Tzerklaes von Tilly was a Walloon, who under Parma and in the
Hungarian wars had learnt to combine prudence with decisiveness of action at
the right moment. In the Thirty Years’ War the continuity of Tilly’s military successes was unbroken till Gustavus Adolphus appeared on the
scene. He was neither unwilling to resort to diplomatic contrivance, nor blind
to his own interests; but his devotion to the cause which he served, inspired
by an unswerving religious zeal and political loyalty, secured him the
confidence of his master, while his rigorous abstention from self-indulgence
won him the goodwill of his soldiery, to whose habits and desires he was
accustomed to allow the licence approved by the
military usage of the times. Unable to dislodge Anhalt at Rakonitz, Tilly endeavored to reach Prague by a more circuitous
northern route before the arrival of the Bohemian army; but Anhalt and
Hohenlohe contrived to be first on the spot, and encamped to the west of the
city on the White Hill, where they hastily threw up entrenchments.
Before
these had been completed, Tilly brought up his host
in face of them, and, amidst the morning fogs of November 8, in opposition to
the advice of the still disabled Bucquoy, marshaled
his troops in order of battle. The Catholic forces (which included combatants
from every nation of western and central Europe) advanced to the cry of Sancta
Maria, given out from his tent by Duke Maximilian. A spirited charge of the
Imperialist horse was promptly met by Thurn’s regiment; and for a brief space of time it seemed as if the defense, in which
Anhalt and his eldest son distinguished themselves, would prevail. But before
long it gave way; young Christian of Anhalt was taken prisoner by a gallant
Imperialist adversary, Count Verdugo; and a general
assault of the Leaguers, whom Tilly had quickly
rallied after the first shock of the cannonade directed against them, gradually
broke the Bohemian line. Only a small section of the troops, more especially
the Moravian foot, refused to yield. In the flight which followed, a much
larger number of men and horses went down than in the battle itself. The entire
affair occupied not much more than an hour; and the fighting was half over
before information that it had begun reached Frederick, who, unluckily for his
fame, was sitting at table with the English ambassadors. A council of war was
speedily held, at which the Austrian Tschernembl and
one or two others were for continuing the defense, since the fortifications
were strong, and 8000 men sent by Bethlen Gabor might
speedily arrive-in point of fact, they were already within twenty miles of
Prague. But Anhalt and Thurn had lost confidence in
their troops, and were probably afraid of being unable to control so large a
host (for hardly more than a thousand had fallen in the battle) within the
panic-struck capital; moreover, they were naturally anxious to secure the
safety of Frederick and his family. He seems to have made one attempt to parley
with Maximilian, and, when his overture remained unanswered, to have resolved
on flight. On the evening of the fateful day a long stream of vehicles,
containing the King and Queen and their family, his chief ministers and
generals, Anhalt, Ruppa, Thurn,
and the rest, passed out of Prague on its way towards the Silesian frontier.
Only Thurn’s son returned to Prague, whither he was
afterwards followed by the English ambassadors. On the following day the
victorious armies began their entry into Prague; and on November 13 Maximilian
received on behalf of the Emperor the provisional homage of such of the Estates
as were assembled there.
Meanwhile,
the Palatinate War had broken out, some months before the Bohemian had reached
its crisis. In the course of August, 1620, Spinola,
in his march from the Netherlands, advanced as far as Mainz and took Kreuznach, while the forces of the Union slowly drew back
on the other side of the Rhine. Offering to spare the Hesse-Cassel
and Baden-Durlach dominions if their Princes would
promise neutrality, he invaded the Upper Palatinate in September, and, though
stoutly opposed by a remnant of the Elector's soldiery, seized place upon
place, and gradually began to take the government of the country into his
hands. In October, Frederick Henry of Orange, with 2000 men, joined the forces
of the Union at Worms; but neither he nor Maurice of Hesse was able to infuse resolution into the Court and Council at Heidelberg, whence
the Electress Dowager and the heads of the Government
incontinently took flight. Early in December the Dutch auxiliaries withdrew.
Without attempting to lay siege to the chief towns of the Rhenish Palatinate, Spinola was content for the present to remain in the
comfortable winter-quarters which he had secured, and to await the progress of
events.
1620-2] Frederick left without support by
the Union.
After
the catastrophe of the White Hill it had seemed quite safe on the Imperial side
to neglect the overtures of Mansfeld; and he consequently offered his services
to Frederick, who named him commander-in-chief in Bohemia and the incorporated
lands (February, 1621). Mansfeld hereupon made a series of raids from Pilsen; but, having repaired to Heilbronn, in order to try
his diplomatic powers on the members of the Union there, he found himself
debarred from returning to Pilsen, which had in the
meantime been occupied by the troops of the League. The fortress of Glatz on the Silesian frontier, the last place in Bohemia
which held out against Ferdinand's authority, was not surrendered by the
younger Thurn till October, 1622.
The
manifesto issued from Breslau in November, 1620, by the unfortunate Frederick,
calling on the Union to take up his cause as its own and predicting the lengths
to which the Catholic Reaction, if unchecked, would proceed, fell on deaf ears.
After holding repeated meetings in the last months of the year, the Union in
December at Worms still proclaimed its determination not to abandon the defense
of the Palatinate. But the representatives attending these meetings had
dwindled in numbers, and at Worms no longer included a single deputy from any
of the towns. Several of the Princes, too, were evidently bent upon making
their peace with the Emperor-among them Duke John Frederick of Württemberg (who
had special reasons for dreading the application to his own case of the reservatum ecclesiasticum),
together with the Anhalt Princes, Christian’s nephew and brothers, and his late
diplomatic helpmate, Joachim Ernest of Ansbach. All
the members of the Union had lost heart, with the exception of George Frederick
of Baden-Durlach and the high-minded but somewhat
stubborn Maurice of Hesse-Cassel. Nor was there any
reliance to be placed on foreign support; the States General were disinclined
to repeat a demonstration which the incompetence of the Union had rendered
futile; while James I, though the invasion of the Palatinate had furnished him
with the requisite opportunity for allowing funds to be collected and
volunteers shipped, and part of a loan obtained by him from Denmark had been
transferred by him to his daughter Elizabeth, would go no further till his
Parliament should meet in January. Inasmuch as his marriage negotiations with
Spain were still in progress there was no saying what course he might then
pursue.
On
February 7, 1621, the Union was to meet at Heilbronn, to determine whether it
should prolong its existence beyond May 14 following (up to which date its act
of association had been renewed in 1617) and at the same time to settle what
common action should be taken for the protection of the Palatinate. England,
Denmark, and the United Provinces had been invited to send their ambassadors to
the meeting; but before it took place the former chief of the moribund Union
had been placed under the ban of the Empire.
After
quitting Prague, Frederick had with his wife and children made his way into
Silesia, whence he speedily sent them on into the dominions of his
brother-in-law, the young Elector of Brandenburg. George William had in the
previous year succeeded both in Brandenburg and in Prussia, which in 1618 had
at last been united with the electorate. Just as during his administration of
Cleves and Mark George William had sought to assure these western possessions
to his House by keeping in touch with the States General, so he might now be
expected, in opposition to Austria and Poland, to enter into close relations
with Sweden. Such had indeed been the calculation of King Gustavus Adolphus, who in May, 1620, paid an incognito visit
to Berlin, and there, with the aid of the Lutheran Electress Dowager Anna, obtained the promise of the hand of the absent Elector's sister
Maria Eleonora. In September the Chancellor Axel
Oxenstierna negotiated the formal engagement, and in November the marriage was
celebrated at Stockholm. But, though Gustavus Adolphus kept alive the relations thus begun, he was from
the summer of 1621 onwards again much occupied by the renewal of the Polish
War; while George William, though he had reluctantly consented to the match,
was unwilling to provoke either Poland or the Emperor, and delayed choosing his
side. In January, 1621, Frederick, whose hope that the Silesian Diet might
rally to his support and thus enable him to hold on till the arrival in full
force of Bethlen Gabor had been frustrated, joined
his wife at Küstrin. Behind his back Silesia
submitted without delay to the Saxon occupation, purchasing by a large
money-payment easy terms, including the liberty of exercising the Augsburg
Confession. Under the pressure of Bucquoy’s troops
the Moravian Estates had already on December 18,1620, declared their secession
from the Bohemian confederation. The Lusatians obtained conditions similar to the Silesian; but here, in accordance with his
compact with the Emperor, the Elector of Saxony was to remain in possession
till he had been repaid his costs.
On
January 29, 1621, the final blow fell, and the ban of the Empire was solemnly
pronounced upon Anhalt, Hohenlohe, and John George of Jägerndorf. This
sentence, although delayed at the last in deference to the wish of the Elector
of Saxony, must be concluded to have been an afterthought, and due to
considerations of policy. For why should it not have been issued when Frederick
dared to defy the Emperor by accepting the Bohemian crown and then by resisting
him in arms? This view of the situation put forward, with his usual caution, by
Baron (afterwards Prince) Ulrich von Eggenberg, since
1615 Ferdinand's most trusted counselor, was quite understood by Maximilian of
Bavaria, who two months later was charged with the execution of the decree.
That careful accountant reckoned the total of the Emperor's indebtedness to him
at more than three millions of florins; and the amount was of course continuously
increasing. The Emperor would have offended against a traditional principle of
his House by entertaining the thought of a permanent cession of Upper Austria
to Maximilian, who now held it in pledge; hence it was proposed to compensate
him by transferring to him the Upper Palatinate (which his troops were with
this intent to occupy) together with the electoral dignity. At the same time
Ferdinand had another bargain in view, proposed by the Spanish ambassador Oñate. In return for her assistance Spain was to be placed
in possession of the other half of the Palatinate (the Rhenish or Lower)
together with Elsass, so as to form a ‘secundogeniture’
for Philip III's second son, Don Carlos. This latter scheme was afterwards
repudiated at Madrid; but the arrangement with Bavaria seemed practicable, and
an indispensable preliminary to it was the solemn act of outlawry which
dispossessed the present Elector Palatine.
1621] Dissolution of the Union.
However
late the blow, it fell in time to extinguish the last pretence of resistance at
Heilbronn, where the meeting of the Union opened on February 7, nine days after
the issue of the ban of the Empire. No foreign Power was represented there,
though even now the English Parliament was ready to grant subsidies for the
rescue of the Palatinate. When the representatives of the Union at Heilbronn
showed some disposition towards collecting their resources for the same
purpose, Landgrave Lewis of Hesse-Darmstadt
acquainted them with the Emperor's view as to any action of the kind. Not only,
he pointed out, would those who supported the outlawed Elector be in their turn
subjected to the ban, but the disclosures of The Anhalt Chancery (a pamphlet
recently put forth by Maximilian of Bavaria, purporting to contain the substance
of Christian of Anhalt’s diplomatic negotiations) had
so clearly proved the Union itself to be an association for unlawful purposes
that its members had no choice but to abandon it. Immediately a sauve qui peut set
in; and a series of treaties were negotiated by the busy Landgrave Lewis, even
Maurice of Hesse-Cassel, hitherto the very soul of
the Union, seeking protection for his landgravate in
a special compact. On April 12 the Duke of Württemberg and the Margrave of Ansbach agreed in the name of the Union to abandon
Frederick and the defense of the Palatinate, and to dissolve the association;
and on May 14 a few of its members met at Heilbronn to formulate its
dissolution. They stated that its purpose still remained unfulfilled; nor could
they have better described the result of the thirteen years for which it had
lasted. The dissolution of the Union, besides depriving Frederick and the
Palatinate of the last chance of aid from that body, seriously damped the ardor
of their supporters both in England and in the Scandinavian North.
When
the breakdown of the Union had followed on the rout of the White Hill, the
first act of the changeful drama of the Great War was really played out. The lackland “King and Queen of Bohemia”, as they continued to
call themselves, had passed on from Küstrin to
Berlin, and thence, by way of Wolfenbüttel and Segeberg (in the royal portion of Holstein), into the Free
Netherlands. To Segeberg Christian IV of Denmark in
March summoned a few Princes of the Lower Saxon Circle, who passed some strong
resolutions as to the defense of Frederick's inheritance. In Holland he and his
consort were received by the population as the martyrs of its own cherished
Calvinism; and a cordial welcome was extended to them at the Hague by
Frederick's kinsman, Maurice of Orange (April, 1621). The Dutch truce with
Spain was at this very time running out, and the arrogant Spanish demands
rendered the renewal of war inevitable; so that already in December, 1620, the
States General had pressed the defense of the Palatinate both upon the Union
and upon Denmark.
Frederick’s
and Elizabeth’s life of exile, which in the case of the heroic Queen lasted
full forty years, cannot be described here. Notwithstanding his placidity of
temper, Frederick was tenacious of his rights throughout; while in the earlier
years of her exile Elizabeth Stewart's royal personality inspired a passionate
loyalty in both the military champions and the diplomatic agents and helpers of
the Palatine cause. With the aid of indefatigable servants such as Ludwig Camerarius and Johann von Rusdorf the Palatine family constituted the chief, and at one time almost the sole,
nucleus of resistance to the victorious Catholic Reaction.
Frederick,
whom the “pasquils” of the day treated with scant
generosity, believed himself to be following his destiny, while in truth he was
yielding to stronger wills than his own. There was some grandeur of purpose in
their designs, and some genius in the devices which were to give effect to
them. All the more humiliating was their utter collapse so soon as they were
put to the touch. Their pivot was the establishment of a national Protestant
monarchy in Bohemia. But not only had Thurn and
Anhalt (the national leader and the political counselor) failed to secure a
definite assurance of support from external allies. There was also wanting a
sufficient and trustworthy military force, organized by the Bohemian
insurrectionary government and assured of the support of the large majority of
the nation. Thus the government of Frederick had really no chance of
maintaining the offensive against Ferdinand, or afterwards of withstanding the
combined attack of Emperor, League, and Spain. The rout of the White Hill and
the abandonment of the Palatinate at once exposed the hollowness of the vast
designs, and the futility of the elaborate apparatus, of the Palatine
statesmanship, and put an end to the prominence which it had for a time
occupied in the affairs of Europe.
Christian
of Anhalt’s own political importance ended with this
collapse. The publication of his papers seized at Prague had acted like the
explosion of the master alchemist’s alembic; while the great artificer himself
made a noiseless escape into the protection of the King of Sweden. Within three
years an elaborate negotiation secured him an Imperial pardon; and before his
death in April, 1630, he not only placed himself under obligations to
Wallenstein in order to serve the interests of his hardly-used principality, but
actually received favors from the Emperor. Of his companions under the ban,
Hohenlohe likewise made his peace with Vienna; while John George of Jägerndorf
ultimately made his way to Transylvania, and till his death (March, 1624) did
his best to stimulate Bethlen Gabor to enter into the
war.
1620-1] The proscription in Bohemia.
The
effects of the catastrophe upon Bohemia and the adjoining lands, and upon the
unoffending population of the Palatinate, were appalling. In Bohemia, though
the authority of Ferdinand could not be at once restored throughout the kingdom
and the “incorporated” States, more especially as a rough winter and a severe
pestilence delayed the completion of the campaign, the Catholics were resolved
to gather in at once the fruits of their victory. The Bohemian leaders were not
prepared to rouse the kingdom to a popular resistance which even now might have
proved irrepressible. As yet the excesses committed by the troops holding
Prague had been relatively slight, and had mainly consisted (to the great loss
of future students of Bohemian history) of the burning of books actually or
presumably heretical found in the houses of the citizens. The Bohemian Diet had
of course ceased to meet; and the politic Prince Charles of Liechtenstein (the
founder of the fortunes of his House) was named regent, and afterwards
governor, of the kingdom. The Archbishop of Prague (Lohelius)
had returned early, together with other prelates and a large number of Jesuits,
upon whose immediate recall Ferdinand had insisted. Though the Polish Cossacks
had been sent home, carrying rapine and terror through the land on their way,
and though Bucquoy had departed to Hungary with the
body of Imperial troops, Tilly remained behind for a
time to hold watch over Prague. Thus the punitive process could safely begin.
During the night of February 10, 1621, the leaders of the recent insurrection
were arrested and cast into various prisons; and on the following day an
extraordinary tribunal was established for dealing with the delinquencies
connected with the rising. Out of a list of sixty-one proscribed, forty-seven
had been actually arrested, including eighteen former Directors; old Count Schlick was soon afterwards seized in the castle of Friedland. Thurn, Ruppa, and twenty-nine other defaulters were summoned to
appear within six months. On March 29 a “rapid procedure” was instituted
against the prisoners, and twenty-seven of them were condemned to death, while
they were all declared to have forfeited their estates. The sentences were quickly
confirmed at Vienna, the penalty of death being, however, remitted in five
instances, and some barbarous stipulations as to the mode of execution struck
out. On April 5 sentence of death in absentia was pronounced on twenty-nine
further delinquents, while the property of ten who had died in the interval was
declared forfeited. On June 21 twenty-seven of the prisoners suffered death,
and certain minor punishments were inflicted or sentences pronounced on the
following day. Order was kept in the city by seven squadrons of Saxon horse,
brought in for the purpose. No further executions took place; and from the
spring of 1622 onwards the punitive measures of the Government were practically
confined to confiscation.
But
this proceeded on an enormous scale. To the proclamation bidding all landowners
who had taken any part in the insurrection avow their guilt and throw
themselves on the Emperor’s mercy, more than 700 nobles and knights had
responded. Their lives and honor were left untouched; but, in direct violation
of a privilege of Rudolf II providing that forfeited estates should pass to
innocent persons in the line of inheritance, one-third, one-half, or the whole
of their respective lands were, in accordance with a scale elaborated by Slawata, declared to have escheated to the Crown. The
confiscations continued till 1628, when a popular outbreak led to the closing
of the proscription list; though payments continued to be enforced for many
years, chiefly on petty offenders. It may be safely stated that by the end of
1623 nearly half of the landed property in Bohemia had passed into the hands of
the Emperor, and that the confiscations arising out of the insurrection
amounted in value to something between four and five millions of our money.
How
was the Emperor to deal with so vast an amount of landed property? So early as
September, 1622, he announced his intention to sell large quantities of it for
cash (of which he certainly stood in need) and to entrust both the conduct of
the sale and the application of the proceeds to the Bohemian Government under
Liechtenstein. Unfortunately they executed their task with reckless speed,
disposing of the main mass of the estates within something like a twelvemonth.
As a matter of course, enormous fortunes were made by the wary, and especially
by persons claiming to be entitled to easy terms or even to free
gifts-officials such as Slawata and Martinitz or military commanders such as Bucquoy, Maradas, and Aldringer. The most extensive operations, however, were
carried on by Liechtenstein, Eggenberg, and above all
by Albrecht von Wallenstein.
A
member of a noble but not wealthy Bohemian family, Wallenstein had exchanged
the creed of the Bohemian Brethren for that of Home, and by his first marriage
had attained to large possessions and a prominent position in Moravia. He had
made himself useful to the Emperor Ferdinand by levying troops for his service,
first, on a small scale, for his campaign against Venice (1617), then, in
larger numbers, during the Bohemian War. In 1622 he was appointed to the
command of the troops at Prague, and continued to oblige the Emperor with a
series of loans which in the following year already exceeded a million of
florins. A large share of the confiscated Bohemian lands was now directly or
indirectly acquired by him, among them the domains of Friedland and Reichenberg on the Silesian frontier, and, a
little more to the south, the town of Gitschin. By
1624 his acquisitions were valued at not far short of five millions of florins;
and it was manifest that he designed sooner or later to make the lands in his
possession the basis of an independent principality. The eminence which he had
already reached was due to his services, to his wealth, and to his connection
with the great financiers of the day-above all, with de Vite,
to whom about this time a patent had been granted for the purchase and recoining of all the silver in Bohemia. Wallenstein’s
interests had always been bound up with the affairs of his native land. But,
with the twofold object of obtaining a certain amount of money and rewarding
many military commanders and others who had served him in the recent crisis,
Ferdinand now introduced into the Bohemian landed nobility a number of
new-comers of Germany Italian, French, and Spanish origin, with the result of
both denationalizing the once powerful order into which they were admitted and
rendering it subservient to the Crown.
1617-24] Rise of Wallenstein. Religious
reaction.
But
Ferdinand took but a slight personal interest in the land-settlement of his reconquered Bohemian kingdom; what he had at heart was the
fulfillment of his vow to extirpate the heresy which had estranged the country
from Rome. Notwithstanding the warnings of Bishop Carlo Caraffa (who had looked into the condition of things at Prague before proceeding to
Vienna as Nuncio), the cautious counsels of Liechtenstein, of the Elector of
Mainz, and of even Maximilian of Bavaria, and the danger of giving offence to
John George of Saxony and his influential Court-preacher, Ferdinand, as early
as March, 1621, ordered all clergy, University teachers and schoolmasters
professing the doctrines of Calvin, the Picards, or
the Bohemian Brethren, to quit the realm within three days. Next, a general
attack was opened upon the adherents of the Confession of 1576. Before the
spring was over no Protestant worship was any longer permitted in Prague,
except in the German churches, or on any of the royal domains. Other measures
ensued, and early in 1622 a series of tests was proposed to the Protestant
clergy remaining in Prague which by October led to their expatriation, followed
by that of their colleagues in other towns of the kingdom. In the same year the Carolinum at Prague was similarly purged; and its
revenues and rights were made over to the Jesuit Clementinum,
with which it was combined into a new University. After Ernest Albert von Harrach (a son of the Emperor’s favorite councilor Baron
Charles von Harrach, and a brother of Wallenstein’s
second wife) had succeeded as Archbishop of Prague, the religious reaction
passed all previous bounds. In 1623 the whole body of the Protestant clergy of
all shades of creed were expelled from Bohemia; and in 1624 an Imperial edict,
obtained through the influence of the Jesuit Lamormain,
now the Emperor's confessor, prohibited any religious service except the
Catholic, and excluded Protestants from all rights and privileges, whether
civil or religious. The conversion of Protestants was systematically enforced
by billeting soldiery upon the recalcitrant; and emigration was only permitted
on condition of forfeiture of a considerable portion of the emigrant’s
property. Liechtenstein's proclamation of 1626, summing up the disabilities
imposed on Protestants in Bohemia, is a document which it would not be easy to
match in the entire history of religious intolerance.
The
grotesque inquisitorial process for carrying out this cruel policy at Prague
and then throughout the kingdom met with much violent opposition; but the
instances of a persistent refusal to conform or emigrate were quite isolated.
In 1627 Ferdinand II, when at Prague to secure the coronation of his heir,
instituted a tribunal of “reformation”, which fixed six months as the final
term within which Protestant recusants must quit the realm after the sale of
their property. It is reckoned that on this last occasion more than 30,000
domiciled families of all classes abandoned Bohemia. The country lost
incalculably by this drain of warlike nobles, skilled professional men,
accomplished scholars and artists, and for a long time to come fell back
hopelessly in learning and culture; some of its neighbors, Saxony in
particular, profiting in proportion by the immigration of Bohemian exiles. The
royal towns were deprived both of their corporate property, which had formerly
amounted to something like one-third of the lands of the kingdom, and of their
self-government; and their utter decline entirely changed the face of the
country and dried up the sources of the activity of the people. Such of the
Bohemian-born nobles as remained in the land sooner or later became converts;
while the peasantry, unable as a class to emigrate, sank into stagnation. The
hand of Ferdinand, which cut into shreds the Letter of Majesty, seemed at the
same time to have severed the sinews of the nation’s vitality. The new
Constitution, carefully drafted by two reactionary Commissions, and signed by
Ferdinand on May 23,1627, besides establishing the hereditary right of the
ruling dynasty, while it reserved to the King the right of summoning the Diet
and the legislative initiative, also included provisions for putting an end to
the ascendancy of the Bohemian tongue and thus preparing the extinction of the
Bohemian nationality.
1621-5] The Lusatias and Silesia. Bethlen Gabor.
In
Moravia the adoption by the Estates of Zierotin’s advice to renounce further resistance on being assured of the preservation of
their religious liberties had proved of little avail, for in an interview with
the Moravian leader Ferdinand fell back on the authority of the Pope in matters
of conscience. Heavy contributions were imposed upon the towns, and large
numbers of industrious sectaries had to take refuge in Hungary. Ultimately, the
Moravian Constitution was revised on the same lines as the Bohemian. After some
show of resistance, John George of Jägerndorf, who commanded a force levied in
Lusatia, Silesia, and northern Bohemia, declined to risk a battle; and in the
end both Upper and Lower Lusatia were granted fair terms, including the
confirmation of their religious liberties, by the Saxon Elector. His account
against the Emperor had already mounted to a height which put out of question
the redemption of the Lusatias, and they were
regularly pledged to him in 1623. Silesia, which had at first shown a bold
front, but now consented to dismiss its levies, obtained a confirmation of its Letter of Majesty with an amnesty, from which, however, John George of
Jägerndorf was excepted.
The
rout of the White Hill had also determined Bethlen Gabor to stay his advance, and after a time to enter into negotiations with the
Emperor (January, 1621). But Ferdinand now felt strong enough to reject the
Transylvanian's offers of compromise; and hostile operations were resumed. Bucquoy’s delays, and then his death (July), enabled Bethlen, who had been reinforced by some troops under the
outlawed Jägerndorf, to overrun the greater part of Hungary, to penetrate into
eastern Moravia, and even to harry Lower Austria. But without aid from either
Venice or the Turk he felt unable to keep up the struggle; and on the last day
of the year a peace was patched up at Nikolsburg in
Moravia. Bethlen was secured the possession (with
certain reservations) of seven Hungarian counties, with the reversion to his
son of the Silesian duchies of Oppeln and Ratibor; in return, he renounced so much of Hungary as he
had hitherto occupied, and all claims to the title of King. But all the rights
and privileges of the Hungarian Estates were confirmed; and the progress
subsequently made in Hungary by the Catholic Reaction, which ultimately secured
a working majority among the magnates, though throughout favored by the Crown,
was due to ecclesiastical initiative, in particular to that of Archbishop
(afterwards Cardinal) Pázmány. For the present the
pacification with Bethlen Gabor and his Hungarian
adherents enabled Ferdinand to carry on unhindered the work of reaction in
Bohemia and Moravia, and to attempt a similar settlement in the Austrian
duchies.
Peasant insurrection in Upper Austria.
[1626-8
Although,
in pledging Upper Austria to Maximilian, Ferdinand had expressly reserved his
own rights of territorial sovereignty, several arrests had to take place before
the Estates would either sue for his pardon for their participation in the
Bohemian rising, or make any contribution towards the redemption of his pledge.
In February, 1625, their pardon was at last purchased by the payment of a
million of florins, while the religious settlement was left in the Emperor’s
hands. The Commission of Reformation appointed by him in the previous October
having proved a failure. Easter, 1626, was now fixed as a final term for the
adoption of Catholicism by the population, with the alternative of emigration
on condition of certain payments to the Government and, in the case of
peasantry, to their landlords in addition. The ruthless execution of this edict
aroused the fiercest indignation among the peasants, a large proportion of whom
were possessed of arms and accustomed to their use. Baron Adam von Herbersdorf, the governor appointed jointly by Ferdinand
and Maximilian, had shown himself fair and conciliatory; but the pressure of
the Bavarian occupation had now been intolerably aggravated by the religious
persecution set on foot by the Emperor. In January, 1626, the insurrection in
Upper Austria began. Brutally repressed at first, it broke out afresh on May
17, the plot having rapidly spread among the peasantry of the north-western
angles of the duchy, between the Inn and the Danube, and to the north of the
latter river. The cry was for the restoration of the Habsburg rule, of the
Constitution, and of religious liberty. North of the Danube the peasants were
led by Stephen Fadinger, a tradesman who had turned
peasant proprietor; south of it by Christopher Zeller, a taverner.
The number of peasants under arms (where they found arms to seize) rose to
40,000; and within the month the entire duchy was in revolt, with the exception
of a few towns. At Linz, the capital of the duchy, the brave Herbersdorf, whom Zeller had previously defeated, held out,
first against Fadinger, and on his death against his
successor in the command, Achatius Willinger, a knight by birth. At last, however, troops
poured in from Lower Austria and Bohemia; and, though their excesses provoked a
desperate resistance, on September 23, 1626, representatives of the peasantry
in all the four “quarters” of the duchy submitted on their knees. They were
promised the redress of all their grievances except those relating to religion.
A few days earlier, however, 8000 Bavarian troops had entered the duchy, and
these were followed in November by 5000 more. Though at first successfully
resisted, they soon defeated the peasants in a series of engagements in which Herbersdorf’s step-son, the Bavarian general Count zu Pappenheim, bore a prominent
part. By 1627 the rebellion was extinguished. It only remained for the hangman
to wreak vengeance on quick and dead, and for the Government to carry through
the religious reaction. Yet even now, though all nobles and burghers refusing
an immediate profession of Catholicism were obliged to emigrate, it was deemed
expedient not to enforce upon the peasants more than actual attendance upon
Catholic worship. When in 1628 Maximilian renounced his hold upon Upper
Austria, the Estates of the duchy recovered their constitutional rights.
In
Lower Austria, the centre of Ferdinand’s territorial power, he contented
himself in the case of the towns with prohibiting Protestant worship and the
further placing of Protestants on the roll of citizens; besides ordering some
expulsions, notably in the capital. The University of Vienna, and more
especially its theological and philosophical faculties, were made over to the
Jesuits, who for more than a century to come retained a practical control of
Austrian education in all its grades. To the nobility of the home duchy, in so
far as they had done homage to him in 1620, Ferdinand had promised the free
exercise of their religion; and in 1627, after much searching of heart, he
concluded to leave their personal liberty of worship untouched, though
rendering it futile by the expulsion of all Protestant clergy and teachers from
the duchy. His pious hope seems on the whole to have been justified, that among
the Lower Austrian nobility Protestantism would die a natural death but it died
hard.
1621-7] The question of the Palatinate.
Thanks
to the natural fertility of the Palatinate and to the buoyancy of spirit which
still characterized its inhabitants, thanks also to the fact that here the war
had not, as in Bohemia, been essentially a religious struggle, its
consequences, though heartbreaking, were far less enduringly stamped upon land
and people. After the dissolution of the Union, the defense of the still
unconquered portions of the Palatinate seemed likely to be left to the few
electoral troops still garrisoning Heidelberg and one or two other towns with
Sir Horace Vere and his English volunteers, together
with a few companies of Dutchmen. Mansfeld, whose occupation in Bohemia was
gone, and whose army had all but dissolved, was in the spring and summer of
1621 enabled by Dutch subsidies and Palatine contributions to collect a force
of not less than 10,000 men, which would certainly have to be reckoned with.
Hence the Palatinate question, as involving the ultimate disposition of
Frederick’s inheritance, could not at present be regarded as settled. At a
meeting of the League held at Augsburg in February, 1621, Maximilian was
accordingly well-advised in resisting the wish of the Spiritual Electors to put
an end to the association, as having done its work; and he succeeded in
prevailing upon its members to keep it alive, and to retain under arms a force
of 15,000, instead of, as hitherto, 21,000 men. What was at issue was the
question of the renewal of the religious conflict in parts of the Empire very
directly affected by the contested provisions of the Religious Peace, and it is
significant that the attention of the Augsburg Assembly was directed to these
by both Maximilian and the Emperor. As for his own policy, Ferdinand, who had
been obliged to send the main portion of his army under Bucquoy to Hungary (April), sought to gain time, while putting himself in the right
with the Powers interested in the claims of the unfortunate Frederick. Digby’s counsels of moderation at Vienna chimed in with
those of Spain, on whose goodwill James I was still calculating. Archduke
Albert too, the most politic of the earlier generation of Archdukes, likewise
tried to mediate; and after his death (July 13, 1621) Digby was actually referred by Maximilian to the widowed Isabella Clara Eugenia at
Brussels, though without any result. The Spanish Government dearly recognized
that its energies needed to be concentrated against the States General, instead
of being taken up by the increasing complications of the conflict in Germany.
Hence in the spring Spinola was recalled to the Low
Countries; the command in the Palatinate, though still under his supreme
control, being assumed by Gonzalez de Cordoba. That, however, the Spanish
Government would actually intervene on behalf of Frederick’s claims, was a
calculation on which only James and Digby could rely;
and its primary condition was taken away when the English Parliament, after, in
November, 1621, petitioning for war against the Spanish invader of the
Palatinate, and voting a subsidy for that purpose, engaged in a quarrel with
the Crown, and was before long dissolved (January, 1622).
The Palatine War. [1621-2
Meanwhile
the Palatinate War had resumed its course. In June, 1621, Mansfeld established
himself in a fortified camp at Waidhaus in the Upper
Palatinate, close to the Bohemian frontier; and here he was, in July, attacked
by Tilly, at the head of a superior force. The
Leaguers were unable to dislodge Mansfeld from his position; and, the ban of
the Empire having been renewed against him, in September Maximilian himself
appeared on the scene, announcing his commission to carry out the Imperial
sentence and secretly authorized to occupy the Upper Palatinate and hold it in
pledge for his outlay. A provisional settlement was concluded between him and
Mansfeld, who in return for a large money-payment was to evacuate the Upper
Palatinate and either dissolve his army or transfer it to the Emperor. Pending
the conclusion of the agreement, however, Mansfeld, quitting his position at Waidhaus, passed on to the Rhenish Palatinate, making war
pay for war as he proceeded, and treating the country that he had come to
defend hardly better than it had been treated by its invaders.
The
news of his approach at the head of some 20,000 troops after effecting a
junction with Vere near Mannheim, caused Gonzalez de
Cordoba to raise the siege of Frankenthal on the left
bank of the Rhine (Queen Elizabeth’s dowry town) with serious loss, and the
Spanish arms thus suffered a first check (October). Maximilian, now master of
the Upper Palatinate, detached Tilly with 11,000 men
to keep watch over Mansfeld on the Neckar and the Rhine. But so little was that
incalculable condottiere mindful of his agreement, that he had already marched
into Austrian Elsass and taken Hagenau,
apparently intending to make it the seat of a permanent principality of his own
(December).
Thus
the campaign of 1621 had narrowed the limits of the conflict to the Rhenish
Palatinate, whose fate was still undecided, and to its near vicinity. Already
the scourge of war had inflicted terrible suffering upon the populations of
some of the fairest portions of the Empire; and the cause of Frederick and his
inheritance still appealed to some of the Protestant Princes of the Empire. In
these ardent spirits a genuine religious enthusiasm, combined in varying
proportions with the old sense of princely “liberty” and with the
dominant military aspirations of the age, as well as at times with a shrewd
insight into the business advantages of the new system of levying troops on the
responsibility of the commander, without the tedious process of extracting
grants from a territorial Diet. Thus Margrave George Frederick of Baden-Durlach, a prince of cultivated mind and high resolve, had
not given way even at the time of the collapse of the Union, and was now
fighting for his own margravate, of which it was
sought to deprive him in favor of the sons of the Catholic Margrave Edward Fortunatus of Baden-Baden. By the spring of 1622 George
Frederick had collected an armed force reckoned at not less than 15,000 men, of
which he took the command after prudently transferring the government of his margravate to his son Frederick. Probably his paymasters
were the Dutch, who about the same time equipped an even more notable supporter
of the Palatine cause.
This
was Duke Christ1621-2] Protestant champions. Christian of Halberstadt.
While
the levies of Christian of Halberstadt were
discountenanced both by his brother at Wolfenbüttel and by Christian, the head of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg at Celle, the
House of Saxe-Weimar from the beginning of the Bohemian War onwards identified
itself with the Protestant cause. Of the seven surviving sons of Duke John of
Saxe-Weimar, six bore arms against the Emperor; of these the senior three had
fought on Frederick's side in Bohemia; and the eldest of them, John Ernest, a
prince who inherited with the military spirit something of the intellectual
tastes characteristic of his line, had followed him to the Netherlands. Two
others, Frederick and William (the founder of a military confraternity called
the Order of Constancy) found their way to Mansfeld; and, finally, the
youngest, Bernard, the day of whose greatness was still distant, after fighting
under Mansfeld at Wiesloch, took service in the
Margrave of Baden's army. The government at Weimar was in the meantime carried
on, and the patrimony of the family preserved by the next youngest brother,
Duke Ernest the Pious.
Duke
John Frederick of Württemberg and Margrave Joachim Ernest of Ansbach were likewise in touch with Frederick and his
supporters; but though Duke Magnus of Württemberg took service with the
Margrave of Baden, the large amount of formerly ecclesiastical property held by
his reigning brother made caution indispensable.
Battle of Wimpfen. [1622
In
the spring of 1622 the ex-Elector Palatine Frederick, encouraged by these
adhesions to his cause, concluded that the time had come for him to join the
army of 20,000 men assembled under Mansfeld at Germersheim (on the left bank of the Rhine above Speier). He may
have been moved by fresh reports of tergiversations intended by Mansfeld to
approve the great captain’s suggestion that parts of the see of Speier should form part of his proposed
principality. With a view to a combined movement of his own and the Margrave of
Baden’s forces, which might have put an end to Tilly's investment of Heidelberg, Mansfeld now crossed the Rhine by a bridge from Germersheim; but at Wiesloch on
the opposite side Tilly threw himself between them
(April 27). A battle ensued, at the close of which Tilly was forced to fall back towards the Neckar, and a day or two later the junction
which brought up the Protestant forces to some 70,000 men was accomplished.
They, however, separated again almost immediately, George Frederick being left
alone to confront Tilly. On May 6 the general of the
League inflicted upon him a sanguinary defeat at Wimpfen on the Neckar, close to the Württemberg frontier. After this battle, which,
though decisive, had not annihilated the Margrave’s army, Mansfeld, who had in
the meantime relieved Hagenau, on which he always
kept a vigilant eye and to which Archduke Leopold had been laying siege, recrossed the Rhine, and, with the intention of joining
hands with Christian of Halberstadt, executed a raid
upon Darmstadt, where he took prisoners the loyal Landgrave Lewis and his son.
1622] Battle of Hochst. Tilly, however, who had united his own forces
with the Spanish under Cordoba, prevented the junction contemplated by
Mansfeld, and followed up the victory of Wimpfen by a
second, and more overwhelming success. Before Christian had begun any movement
for meeting Mansfeld, the Elector of Mainz, terrified, had hastened the advance
of Tilly and Cordoba. They found Christian awaiting
their attack at Höchst, on the left bank of the Main,
a few miles south of Frankfort. A hard-fought battle (June 20) ended in the
complete rout of Christian's troops, large numbers of whom were drowned in the
river. As, however, Christian contrived after all to join Mansfeld with not
less than 13,000 men, the struggle for the Palatinate need not as yet have been
considered at an end. James I, however, urged his son-in-law to yield to the
Imperial demand that he should renounce any further assertion in arms of his
claim, if the negotiations on the Palatinate question which were being opened
at Brussels were to proceed. With a heavy heart, and foreseeing that his
father-in-law's diplomacy would lose him the Lower Palatinate as it had lost
him the Upper, Frederick dismissed his army and betook himself to Sedan (July).
But
though Frederick might dismiss his troops, he could not pay them; and Mansfeld
once more began to consider in what quarter he could turn his soldiery to the
best account. To understand either this passage of the Thirty Years’ War, or
that which preceded the catastrophe of Wallenstein, it must be borne in mind
that the mercenary armies were reckoned as main, and at times as paramount,
factors in the general political situation - not as mere adventitious elements
in it. At this particular season the Infanta’s Government at Brussels was, with the approval of Maximilian, seriously meditating
the purchase of Mansfeld, of course at a very high price; while he balanced his
former plan of taking service with the Emperor against that of engaging himself
to the French Government against the Huguenots. In the end both he and
Christian of Halberstadt struck a bargain with the
States General, who since the determination of their truce with Spain in 1621
were in immediate need of troops, and whose great general, Maurice of Orange,
was for want of them unable to force Spinola to raise
the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom.
This
end was achieved in October, after Mansfeld and Christian, boldly marching
without leave asked or granted through the Spanish Netherlands, had defeated a
much inferior force hastily brought up from the Palatinate by Cordoba, first at Ligny, and then, more decisively, at Fleurus (August 29). The victory of Fleurus was largely due to the velour of Christian, who in this battle lost an arm. But
his fighting days were not yet quite over; and during the remainder of the year
1622 he and Mansfeld, together with Duke William of Weimar, began afresh to
enlist troops in the Lower Saxon Circle.
Siege and capture of Heidelberg. [1622
Meanwhile
in the Palatinate itself the struggle had been brought to an end by the capture
of Heidelberg and the other fortified towns of the Lower Palatinate. Tilly and his master were above all anxious to teach Europe
the lesson that war and peace depended upon the cooperation of Bavaria and the
League with the Emperor, rather than upon the action of the new King of Spain,
Philip IV, and his cautious minister Olivares. The Spanish Government would
probably have been glad to oblige James I by a considerate treatment of the
claims of his son-in-law, while evading his marriage proposal for his heir. At
Brussels, in July, the King was amused with divers suggestions for dealing with
the Lower Palatinate, and for settling the whole question by the novel
expedient of a meeting of loyal Electors and Princes to be shortly held at Ratisbon. In August Digby obtained further promises at Madrid. In the same month, notwithstanding the
indignant protests of James against an attack upon a place held by a partly
English garrison, Maximilian ordered Tilly to press
on the siege of Heidelberg, which he had actually opened on July 1.
The citadel
of German Calvinism was defended by a force of a few thousand Germans,
Dutchmen, and Englishmen, commanded by Henry van der Merven. By September town and castle were at the mercy of
the artillery that poured down destruction upon them from the neighboring
hills; and after the town had been easily carried by assault (July 17), the
remnants of the garrison, which had in vain hoped to be relieved by Vere from Mannheim, were two days later allowed to depart
with the honors of war, Tilly in person enforcing
respect for the terms of the capitulation. But, in accordance with custom, no
mercy was shown to the town during a period of three days allowed to the
soldiery for plunder; excesses of all kinds were committed, and a hospital and
some dwelling-houses were burnt to the ground. Then Tilly marched upon Mannheim, and, after taking the town (October 19), forced the
garrison to surrender the citadel of the Friedrichsburg, Vere finding his way to Maurice of Hesse. With the exception of Frankenthal,
the entire Palatinate was now in the hands of the Emperor and his allies.
At
once the reaction closed in upon its prey, as it had in the Upper Palatinate,
where the Bavarian administration and the Jesuit propaganda were gradually
extinguishing Lutheranism. In the Lower Palatinate the Calvinist ministers were
straightway expelled from the churches of the capital (beginning with the Heiligengeistkirche, of which the Jesuits took possession)
and then from those of the country at large; the Lutheran minority looked on complacently
till its turn came, and within seven years both the divisions of the Palatinate
had outwardly been all but entirely re-catholicized. The University of
Heidelberg, long the intellectual seminary of Calvinism under the protection of
the Palatine dynasty, was treated with special rigor. The deportation of the
famous Palatine library is an outrage unforgotten in the history of
civilization.
1623] Meeting of Princes at Ratisbon.
Early
in January, 1623, the meeting of Princes convened by the Emperor for settling
the future of the Palatinate and the electoral dignity attached to it was
opened at Ratisbon, where Ferdinand attended in
person. The Bavarian demand was for the transfer of the Electorate with the
electoral dignity; and, after much hesitation, the Emperor, who so early as
September, 1621, had secretly invested Maximilian with the territory, was
induced, partly by his own desire for the recovery of Upper Austria, to consent
to granting him the title also. He was, however, confronted by the objections
of Spain as well as of England, and by the all but universal alarm of the
Protestant Princes of the Empire. While the Ratisbon meeting was in progress James I actually arrived at an agreement with the Infanta at Brussels, by which Frankenthal,
the only place in the Palatinate still holding out for Frederick, was placed in
Spanish hands, to return under English occupation if within eighteen months he
had not made his peace with the Emperor. Frederick, however, manfully refused
to agree to a treaty of suspension of arms which his father-in-law sought to
force upon him. Among the Protestant Princes even John George of Saxony held
back, shaken by the condition of things in Bohemia, uneasy about his Saxon
sees, and recently (February, 1622) alarmed by the publication of a
compromising correspondence between the Emperor and the Nuncio. Brandenburg
followed suit. Even among the Catholics the Bavarian scheme found no
wholehearted support except from Maximilian’s brother, the Elector Ferdinand of
Cologne; while among the Protestant Princes the pronouncement of the ban of the
Empire had produced a quite unmistakable shock. In the end, with the aid of the
Elector of Mainz, a compromise was effected. The Emperor undertook that on
Maximilian's death the electoral dignity should pass from him to any of
Frederick's descendants, brothers, or agnates, whose claims had been in the
interval legally or by arrangement recognized; and the Duke of Bavaria was on
February 25 without further delay invested with the electorship sine mentione haeredum. The formal concession secured on behalf of
the Palatine line was however deprived of all practical value through another
secret promise made to Maximilian by the Emperor, that in no case would he pay
attention to any attempt to interfere with the established Bavarian claim. Thus
Maximilian prevailed against Spanish doubts, Protestant fears, and the cavils
of Palatine kinsmen. Inasmuch as his revenues from the Upper Palatinate
amounted to not more than a quarter of the interest of the capital expended by
him in the two wars, he was for the present also to retain Upper Austria, while
both he and Spain kept their hold on the portions of the Lower Palatinate
respectively occupied by them. Negotiations intended to secure some portion of
territory to Frederick’s eldest son accordingly continued in London and
elsewhere, till a stop was put upon them by the final breakdown, in the spring
of 1624, of James I’s Spanish marriage scheme.
Though
in the Electoral College a working majority was now assured to the Catholic
side, the meeting at Ratisbon had signally failed to
establish a satisfactory understanding between the Catholics and the loyal
Lutherans. The solitary Protestant Prince who had faithfully adhered to the
Imperial policy, the Lutheran Lewis of Hesse-Darmstadt,
was rewarded by the grant of the Marburg inheritance, long disputed by him with
his relation of Hesse-Cassel, and was tempted to
claim that landgravate itself in payment of the
arrears which he held to be his due. About the same time the margravate of Baden-Baden was detached from that of Baden-Durlach in favor of the Catholic claimant.
At a
meeting of the League held at Ratisbon immediately
after the close of the conference of Princes, Maximilian induced the assembly
to agree to the continuance of the existing rate of contributions. Thus, with
the aid of support from Emperor and Pope, the military force of the League was
again raised to 18,000 men. Maximilian well understood the precarious nature of
his gains both actual and prospective. A portion of the so-called Bergstrasse (on the right bank of the Rhine, opposite
Worms), had been on more or less plausible grounds adjudged to the Elector of
Mainz by the Emperor. The administration of Germersheim had been made over to Archduke Leopold, for whose avidity nothing was either
too great or too small, and to whom in 1623 his brother granted the Tyrol and
the rule of the Austrian possessions in Elsass. Most
significant of all, Bishop Philip Christopher of Speier,
president of the Reichskammergericht, had begun a
retaliatory process of “reformation” in the convents of his diocese recovered
by him from the Palatine Government. Such examples were not likely to be
overlooked; and many claims for restitution of conventual and other religious foundations reached the Reichshofrath in the course of the years 1623 and 1624. The anxiety aroused by these demands
was by no means confined to the most recent scene of the War; and nowhere had
it for some time been stronger than in the regions to which, now that the
stillness of death had fallen upon the Palatinate, the main conflict of the war
was to be shifted.
THE LOWER SAXON AND DANISH WAR.
(1623-9)
Even
before the Ratisbon gathering of Princes had
separated it was becoming evident that in the next stage of the Great War the chief
theatre of military operations would be found in the north-west of the Empire.
Mansfeld and his more impulsive associate Christian of Halberstadt had, on their dismissal by Frederick, transferred themselves to the Low
Countries, whither they had drawn after them Cordoba and, in the first instance
for the protection of the dioceses of the Middle and Lower Rhine and their
neighborhood, Tilly’s able lieutenant Anholt. Mansfeld’s commission
under the States General, to whom he had rendered
valuable service, expired in October, 1622; but the States of Holland knew it
to be worth their while to take him provisionally into their pay. Thereupon,
showing as little care for the inviolability of the frontier of the Empire as
was exhibited by the Spaniards themselves, he took up comfortable quarters in
East Frisia and the neighboring Westphalian districts.
His intentions were unknown; so late as June, 1623, he was still negotiating
with the French Government.
In
January, 162,3, Mansfeld had been joined by Christian of the iron arm, and both
captains manifestly looked forward to a renewal of the German War in the
approaching summer. Already in September, 1622, Bethlen Gabor had once more begun to prepare for a forward movement, though it was not
actually set on foot till a year later. Its end might be the restoration of
Frederick to the Bohemian throne; and the Palatine agents in Copenhagen and at
the north-German Courts, and at Paris, were straining every nerve.
Unfortunately English money was not forthcoming to sustain this great offensive
operation; for James I was making his final effort for peace, and in May even
contrived to inveigle his son-in-law into a promise of abstaining from hostile
efforts. But Christian IV of Denmark, greedy alike of fame and of territory,
took a very different view of the situation; and in Germany itself Brandenburg
and Hesse-Cassel, now the two chief remaining
representatives of Calvinism, might be expected to take part in a new effort of
resistance.
What
between Denmark and the United Provinces, and the troops of Mansfeld and his
fellow-captain, the territories most likely to be much affected by the next
campaign were those of the Lower Saxon Circle-the north-western region of the
Empire, washed by both the North Sea and Baltic, and made up of some
four-and-twenty Protestant principalities and free cities, and of a series of
more or less important Protestantized episcopal sees. In February, 1623, a meeting of the Circle
at Brunswick agreed to put in the field a force of 18,000 men, under the command of Duke George of
Brunswick-Luneburg. True, the force was to be defensive only; and by the end of
April nothing like a quarter of it had been brought together. On the other
hand, apart from the fact that Christian IV of Denmark, by virtue of his “royal”
portion of Holstein, was a member of the Circle, it had other willing
supporters at hand. Christian of Halberstadt entered
the service of his brother Frederick Ulric of
Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, nominally for the defense of
the ducal territories; and in March William of Weimar had placed himself and
his troops under Christian's command.
The Lower Saxon Circle. Battle of Stadtlohn.
[1623
While,
however, these proceedings were in preparation, Tilly,
who had advanced his quarters as far as the Wetterau,
was in February directly commissioned by the Emperor to march against Mansfeld
and his adherents (a commission supposed to carry with it the right of transit
through the territories of any Estate of the Empire). At the head of some
17,000 men he in the first instance entered the Hesse-Cassel
dominions, occupying the abbey of Hersfeld, the
important ecclesiastical principality appropriated a century before by
Landgrave Philip; and then advanced towards the boundary of the Lower Saxon
Circle, with the intention of breaking up the army of Christian of Halberstadt. Christian, who had not yet received the news
of Bethlen Gabor’s start, could not risk marching
into Silesia to meet him; and, when the Estates at Lüneburg declared themselves
ready to stand by the Emperor, who in return guaranteed them through Tilly their temporal as well as ecclesiastical possessions
(July 23), Christian, baffled but not disheartened, decided on a rapid return
into the hospitable United Provinces. It was at this time that he resigned his
tenure of the see of Halberstadt.
But Tilly, resolved to prevent his escape and still
more to render impossible his junction with Mansfeld, followed Christian with a
force superior to his both in quality and numbers, and, coming up with him at Stadtlohn in the diocese of Münster,
inflicted on him a crushing defeat (August 6, 1623). Christian escaped, but two
of the Weimar dukes (William and Frederick) were taken prisoners in the
encounter. Tilly, after giving Lower Saxony a partial
foretaste of the sufferings which it was to endure, then transferred his
quarters to the still vexed districts of Hesse-Cassel.
Before this Mansfeld had drawn back from the Münster country into East Frisia; whence, after handing over
the strong places of the country to the States General for a money
consideration, he withdrew to England, in order to study the opportunities of
the situation created by the return of the Prince of Wales from Madrid and the
revival of the national desire for the recovery of the Palatinate.
Not
long afterwards another menace subsided. Though the news of the Protestant
defeat at Stadtlohn had arrested the progress of Bethlen Gabor, who had begun his march in August, 1623,
Ferdinand was unable to muster a force equal in number to half of those of the
invader, with whom a Turkish host, set free by the conclusion of the Turco-Polish War, was
prepared to cooperate. Thus the Imperialists under the Marquis di Montenegro, with Wallenstein second in command, declined
to offer battle even after Bethlen had reached
Moravia (October), whence he made diversions into Lower Austria. Fortunately,
however, the Hungarian supplies soon fell short, and the truce urged by
Wallenstein was offered by Bethlen himself (November
18). Soon afterwards he began his retreat; but it was not till May 8, 1624,
that protracted negotiations resulted in a settlement which in all essentials
renewed the conditions of the Peace of Nikolsburg.
Hitherto
the Emperor had either stood on the defensive or carried on war in self-defense
or as it were in the wake of the League. So late as 1624 he cannot be shown to
have desired to extend the war in Germany or to take part in the renewed
struggle of Spain against the Dutch; while Spain was sufficiently occupied by
this struggle, and was soon to find herself involved in new complications. But
Ferdinand had chosen his part from religious, even more than from political,
motives; the influences around him interpreted his success as the beginning of
a religious reaction on which the blessing of Heaven would rest; and Europe was
thus once more confronted by an aggressive Habsburg policy.
No
direct interference with the advance of this policy was, so far as Germany was
concerned, to be looked for from England, even after James I had given up both
the Spanish marriage treaty and the control of his own policy. Mansfeld, it is
true, without much difficulty obtained ample promises of men and money in
England; and in July, 1624, notwithstanding the untoward news of the Amboyna “massacre”, a treaty of defensive alliance was
signed with the States General, by which the English Government undertook to
maintain 6000 volunteers in the Dutch service. But before the end of the first
year of the reign of Charles I England was engaged in war with Spain and, though Charles anxiously kept in view
the recovery of the Palatinate for his sister’s family, this war, which after
all was what the nation had mainly at heart, would have to be actually fought
out at sea; nor were supplies now obtainable from Parliament for any other
warlike purpose.
French antagonistic action interrupted. [1623-6
England
being now on good terms with France (with whom a defensive alliance was
concluded in June, 1624, followed by the marriage treaty of November, 1624),
the two Powers might be expected to go hand in hand in opposition to the
Austrian as well as the Spanish branch of the House of Habsburg. During the
early years of the Great War, owing to the still dominant influence of Mary de
Medici, and to her and Louis XIII’s strong repugnance to the privileges secured
to the Huguenots by the Edict of Nantes, the French Government had not been
unfriendly to the Emperor’s interests. But the successful issue of his Bohemian
War, and the continued Spanish occupation of part of the Palatinate, with
perhaps some suspicion of the transitory scheme of a Spanish frontier-state between France and Germany, rendered it
inevitable that French policy should once more return to the lines which it had
followed before the death of Henry IV. Already in 1623 the Government of Louis
XIII furnished a slight measure of aid to Mansfeld. After Richelieu had become
first Minister, French policy was more and more affected, though not yet
continuously determined, by the growing jealousy of the advance of the House of
Austria. In 1624 diplomatic communications took place with the Elector of Mainz
and the other Spiritual Electors, of which Maximilian of Bavaria certainly had cognizance.
Of more importance was the mission of de Marescol,
who succeeded in impressing George William of Brandenburg with the necessity of
combined action among those who still upheld the Protestant cause. Moreover,
the French Government concluded a liberal subsidy treaty with the Dutch, and
granted freedom of transit through France to the soldiery recruited in England
by Mansfeld for service in the Palatinate (1624). It is true that in the end
this permission was withdrawn; and Mansfeld had to ship his levies, said to
have amounted to 18,000 men, to the Low Countries, where, though supplemented
by 2000 horse levied by Christian of Halberstadt in
France, they soon dwindled away and proved unable to prevent the capture of
Breda by Spinola (June, 1625). The Anglo-Dutch treaty
against Spain of October, 1625, exercised little or no influence upon the
progress of the German War; and in 1626 Richelieu consented to conclude peace with
Spain at Monzon, leaving in the lurch Savoy and Venice, upon whom beyond the
Alps an anti-Habsburg combination must essentially depend. Absorbed at home
first by the struggle against himself and then by the conflict with the
Huguenots, who were supported by England, he could till 1629 take no direct
part in the affairs of the Empire. But his diplomacy continued active; and Pope
Urban VIII, with whom the French Government were now on good terms, maintained
his antagonism to the House of Habsburg.
Thus
Buckingham’s great scheme of an effective Western alliance against Spain and
Austria practically fell through; nor indeed would it from the outset have
suited Richelieu to throw the German Catholics into the arms of Spain, and to
close the prospect of Louis XIII appearing, when the time arrived, as arbiter
between the contending interests. On the other hand, France was quite ready to
cooperate towards the recovery of the Palatinate and the restoration of a
better balance between the parties in the Empire. But it was obvious that the
mere goodwill of England and the guarded diplomatic support of France could not
suffice to ensure success to a renewal of the struggle against the House of
Austria and the League; while without the guarantee of such a success Bethlen Gabor would clearly not be induced to move again.
It was therefore indispensable to secure the support of a strong arm and of
substantial resources.
1621-4] Christian IV of Denmark.
For
some time since, the attention of the German Protestants and their friends had
inevitably been directed to Christian IV, who as has been seen was himself a
member of the Lower Saxon Circle. As monarch of Denmark and Norway, he laid
claim to a preponderance of power in the Scandinavian North-a claim which the issue
of the "Kalmar War" could not be said to have upset. His multifarious
and eager activity (for he had a true despot's love of detail) in the maritime,
industrial, educational, and military affairs of his government gave proof of
an aspiring ambition; and his arrogance brooked no check upon his personal
will. Thus he was tolerably sure to be ready to listen to an invitation to
assume a leading part in the affairs of the Empire in the Protestant interest.
He was connected by the marriages of three of his sisters with princely
dynasties of the Empire-Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel,
Holstein-Gottorp, and Electoral Saxony (another
sister of his was Queen Anne of England, who had become estranged from the
Protestant faith). Of his brothers, one, Ulric, had
recently died as Bishop of Schwerin. The second of Christian's sons, Frederick,
was Bishop of Verden (June, 1623), and had with some
difficulty been forced by the King as coadjutor upon the Archbishop of Bremen,
John Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp (1621). An attempt
to secure in addition the coadjutorship of Osnabrück had been frustrated by the firmness of the
Catholic Chapter there. These proceedings, besides alienating the Gottorp line, had added to the apprehensions aroused by
Christian's imperious dealings with Hamburg, whose independence he openly
threatened, and by his hostility to the commercial privileges and policy of
Lübeck, and the Hanse Towns in general. His declared
intention of making himself master of the mouths of the Elbe and Weser could
not but alarm some of the Estates of the Lower Saxon Circle; and for a time he
seemed to take up an attitude of reserve towards the overtures made to him by
the supporters of a new Protestant coalition.
It
was thus that he bore himself to Sir Robert Anstruther,
who in the summer of 1624 proposed an alliance to him in the name of King
James, and to Christian von Bellin, who shortly
afterwards came to Copenhagen with a mission from George William of
Brandenburg, and doubtless also from the ex-Elector Palatine. From Copenhagen Bellin went on to Stockholm, whither he had been preceded
by Sir James Spens, another diplomatic agent of James
I. Pending further information as to the intentions of the north-German Courts,
it seemed expedient to sound Gustavus Adolphus.
Of
the three wars bequeathed to him by his father Charles IX, Gustavus Adolphus had, as will be narrated elsewhere, by this
time brought the Danish and the Russian to a more or less successful
conclusion; the Polish he was about to renew (in 1625) on a wider scale and with
a view to more decisive results. After his marriage in 1620 with George William
of Brandenburg's sister Maria Eleonora, of which he had secured the promise by a private visit to
Berlin, no doubt could remain as to his intention to intervene, sooner or
later, in German affairs. Already in 1623 he had made certain proposals to the
ex-Elector Frederick and the States General; and now, in 1624, he expounded to Spens and Bellin an elaborate
project hinging on a proposed Russian marriage for his sister-in-law Catharine,
and a consequent declaration of war by Russia against Poland, which would
enable him at the head of a great Protestant league to carry the war into the
heart of the Austrian dominions. This scheme, Napoleonic both in its dimensions
and in its precision, was elaborated at the German Chancery in London (a kind
of Intelligence Department outside the control of the Secretary of State) ; and
a Protestant Grand Alliance was set forth as its basis in a memorial by the
indefatigable Rusdorf. The English Government at
first showed no unwillingness to defray, as was proposed, the cost of one-third
of the land forces of 50,000 men, and to furnish 17 ships of war; but
Richelieu, on the other hand, while promising a large subvention, suggested
that the Kings of Sweden and Denmark should act independently of each other at
different points in the Empire.
Meanwhile
a French diplomatic agent, Louis des Hayes (Baron de Courmenin)
had twice visited the Northern Courts and suggested a separate set of proposals
of a more moderate cast to Christian IV. The latter, stimulated, it can hardly
be doubted, by an irresistible feeling of jealousy, now likewise formulated his
offers. Towards the cost of an armament commanded by himself, which, with
German aid, he hoped to raise to a total of 30,000, and that of his own
contingent, amounting to 5000 men, England was to furnish a subvention reckoned
at £30,000 a month. On March 2,1625, King James, then near his end, decided on
accepting the smaller Danish instead of the wider Suedo-Brandenburg
scheme, while characteristically informing Christian IV that both schemes had
been accepted, subject to an arrangement between him and the King of Sweden as
to the supreme command. The great design of a general Protestant alliance was,
as will be seen, left an open question; but Gustavus Adolphus rightly interpreted the meaning of the English
decision. It signified, what from the English point of view was intelligible
enough, that the prestige of Christian IV still seemed to surpass that of his
Swedish rival. The news that the Danish King had definitively placed himself at
the head of the proposed undertaking finally determined the withdrawal of the
Swedish monarch (March 21), whose energies were for the next five years and a
half absorbed by his conflict with Poland, though he continued to pay a close
attention to the course of the German War.
The
final refusal of Gustavus Adolphus to take part in the proposed enterprise implied the renunciation of any
prominent share in it by George William of Brandenburg, though he concluded a
treaty with Christian IV. In March, 1626, George William further improved the prospects of a Protestant coalition, by marrying his
unlucky sister Catharine to Bethlen Gabor, who at one
time had not scrupled to aspire to the hand of one of the Emperor's daughters.
The Transylvanian, though he had agreed to the coronation of the Emperor's son
Ferdinand as King of Hungary (December, 1625), was once more meditating an
assertion of his own claim by a fresh invasion of the Austrian lands.
1623-5] The Danish intervention.
Throughout
the ensuing war Christian IV consistently contended that, though as a sovereign
Prince he had been invited by England and other Powers to intervene for the
recovery of the Palatinate, the struggle which the Lower Saxon Circle actually
carried on under his leadership was provoked by the invasion of that Circle,
and directed to the restoration of the peace of the Empire. The members of the
Circle were even at first far from unanimous in the wish to take up arms. The
Bishop of Hildesheim (the Elector of Cologne) was a pronounced Catholic; the
towns, as those of the Union had been, were anxious for non-committal; and
Lübeck and Hamburg detested the policy of the Danish King. Duke Christian of Brunswick-Luneburg,
the actual Director of the Circle, was, notwithstanding his Lutheran sympathies
and interests, unwilling to carry on war against the Emperor. But since the
summer of 1623 the majority of the Estates had begun to incline to invite the
cooperation, or in other words to follow the lead, of King Christian. In this
they were chiefly moved by their fears; more especially of an endeavor to bring
about the restitution of ecclesiastical lands, which, though repudiated by Tilly in the name of the Emperor would hardly fail to ensue
in the event of a successful invasion of the Circle. A gradual change in the
whole character of the northern episcopates might follow. When in July, before
the battle of Stadtlohn, the martial Christian had
resigned the see of Halberstadt,
he had done so on condition that the Danish King’s second son Frederick should
be his successor. It was no secret that the Emperor would have liked to see his
younger son Leopold William elected Bishop of Halberstadt.
But, though the Chapter, into which a Catholic element had been introduced,
rejected the Danish Prince, the Archduke’s time had not yet come; and
eventually the Administrator of Magdeburg, Christian William of Brandenburg,
was elected Bishop of Halberstadt, and Prince Frederick
associated with him as coadjutor and prospective successor.
At
the beginning of the year 1625 the resignation by Christian of
Brunswick-Luneburg of the Directorship of the Circle brought the question of
its relations with the King of Denmark to an issue. Following the precedent set
by the Emperor at Ratisbon, Christian IV in April
summoned to Lauenburg a meeting of the Estates of the
Circle favorable to himself; while about the same time the regular Diet of the
Circle (Kreistag),
sitting at Lüneburg, was going through the form of electing Frederick Ulric of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel to the vacant Directorship. When the news came from Lauenburg that it had been resolved to muster an army and place it under the King's command, he was duly elected in
the place of Frederick Ulric, who had himself been
present at Lüneburg. Hereupon, after further resultless negotiations on the part of Christian IV with Gustavus Adolphus and Richelieu, a second Kreistag was held at Brunswick
(May), where with some difficulty a majority was obtained for warlike action.
The die was now cast, and Christian entered upon his new office.
The
significance of the new Protestant combination was recognized by both friend
and foe. While Gustavus Adolphus shrewdly if not generously credited his rival with the design of making himself
Bishop General of northern Germany, every effort was used at Vienna to prevent
even a local concentration of Protestant sympathies. The Imperial diplomacy
succeeded not only in restraining the Dukes of Brunswick-Liineburg and Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel from joining Christian
IV's following, but also, by means of an assurance that no ecclesiastical lands
should be seized except for military purposes, in obtaining from the Hanse Towns at their meeting at Bergedorf (April), notwithstanding the efforts of Richelieu's agent, an open refusal to
adhere to the detested Danish King. John George of Saxony's hesitancy was
prolonged by the proposal of another Deputationstag; and George William of Brandenburg, to whom
the Emperor sent Hannibal von Dohna on a special
mission, and who was no doubt also influenced by his secret understanding with Gustavus Adolphus, for some
months refrained from any dealings with Christian IV. On the other hand,
Maximilian, probably influenced in his turn by Richelieu, showed no desire to
hasten the military action of the League. When, on May 23, Christian arrived in
the Lower Saxon Circle with his armament, although he had imposed heavy
sacrifices on his Danish subjects for his own share of it, the numbers fell far
short of the total contemplated by him. Not only was the Brandenburg contingent
wanting, but Mansfeld’s English levies, as has been
seen, were rapidly rotting away. Christian's army had thus not reached a total
of 20,000 when at last, on July 15, Tilly (who held a
double commission) was with the Emperor’s approval authorized by Maximilian to
advance “in the name of God and His Holy Mother”. On the 28th he crossed the
Weser near Höxter.
Opening of the War in Lower Saxony. [1625
The
Lower Saxon villages began to empty at the approach of a commander whose name
was already environed by half-legendary terrors; the peasantry taking refuge
behind the walls of the towns, while the Weser was full of boats laden with
fugitives. Devastation and plundering, accompanied by sacrilege, murder,
violation, and the firing of villages, marked the progress of detachment after
detachment; and reprisals on the part of the peasantry led to excesses which
seem to have gone beyond those previously or afterwards committed in these
regions by the soldiery of Mansfeld and Christian of Halberstadt,
and of Wallenstein. In mere self-defense Frederick Ulric had to admit some Danish garrisons into his towns; and great energy in the protection of the population was shown by his
mother, the Dowager Duchess Elizabeth, herself a Danish Princess. But neither
the Duke nor his Estates were capable of taking any resolute measures of
defense; and, although at the Kreistag held at Brunswick in August and September it was
resolved that the departure of Tilly, now master of
both Hameln and Minden, must precede the withdrawal of Christian IV from his
militant Directorship, the duchy of Brunswick seemed even in October likely to
fall into Catholic hands.
As
the summer wore on the offensive strength of both sides in the struggle had
increased; and about August Mansfeld’s force, which
now only amounted to about 4000 foot and a few hundred horse, joined the Danish
army. But the importance of this accession was not measurable by its numbers;
and a crisis was felt to be at hand. Soon Mansfeld was summoned to confer with
Richelieu at Paris; and the eastern enemy might be speedily expected to be
stirring again. For some time Maximilian of Bavaria had urged upon the Emperor the
necessity of calling a new army into the field, but without foreseeing the way
in which his demand was to be fulfilled. Wallenstein's great opportunity had
now arrived. He had been created Prince of Friedland in 1623, the importance of the position which his powers of administration,
organization, and statesmanship secured to him being hereby formally recognized.
Thus the agreement into which he now entered with the Emperor already in some
measure resembled a treaty between sovereign Powers. In April, 1625, he
received a patent from the Emperor creating him commander-in-chief (capo) over all the Imperial troops
employed in the Empire or in the Netherlands. Their total was reckoned at
24,000 men, of whom he undertook himself to raise 20,000. The method of levy,
the grant of commissions (which he freely offered to Protestants as well as
Catholics), and the choice of places of muster, were left entirely to his
decision. He fixed the contributions to be paid by towns desirous of escaping
the imposition of quarters; thus Nürnberg paid
100,000 florins. From the first, it was evident that the Imperial authority,
rather than the interests of the Catholic faith, would be advanced by the
compact between the Emperor and his new generalissimo.
With a strong army Ferdinand would no longer be dependent on the League; and
this was a calculation not likely to escape Maximilian. There is no reason for
supposing that Wallenstein at present carried his speculations further; but it
is clear that the fidelity of such an army as his to the Emperor depended on
its chief. Unfortunately, the actual instructions under which Wallenstein took
up the supreme command are unknown.
At
the end of July, Wallenstein, who had recently been raised to the dignity of
Duke of Friedland, proceeded from Prague to Eger,
whence at the beginning of September he was able to direct the march of his
army, which seems to have exceeded 20,000 men, through Franconia (where he joined it at Schweinfurt) and Thuringia. In
this campaign, his first as Imperial commander-in-chief, it was already
noticeable how he remained entirely uncontrolled by orders from the Emperor,
and how he resented and punished any reference to the Imperial authority by any
of his officers. No general who disputed his judgment was allowed to retain a
superior command; and no advice was treated with respect by the
commander-in-chief, except that of his chief supporter at Vienna, Ulric von Eggenberg. Surrounded
by a kind of Court of his own, and magnificently hospitable, he was at the same
time difficult of access, and rarely to be found in the midst of his troops,
whom, even when on the march, he preferred to precede or to follow. For the
rest, he always maintained the bearing of a good Catholic, though tolerant in
practice, and making no secret of being so in principle. Of his soldiery,
probably only a minority were Germans, while they included many Hungarians,
Czechs, and even Illyrians, and were largely officered by Spaniards, Italians,
and Frenchmen. They inflicted much of the suffering inseparable from the
accepted practices of war upon the inhabitants of the lands through which they
passed, without, however, committing such excesses as had accompanied Tilly’s entrance into Lower Saxony. Indeed, Wallenstein
himself, as well as some of his generals, paid personal attention to the
maintenance of discipline.
In
October Wallenstein entered Lower Saxony, but there is no indication that
either he or Tilly, who hitherto had held the supreme
command there, was anxious for a junction of their forces. Requisitioning ample
supplies for his troops and threatening to burn down villages where the life of
a single soldier was lost, but leaving unmolested those towns which paid in
hard cash for this immunity, Wallenstein slowly advanced through the Göttingen district, without meeting with any very serious
resistance. He then passed into the bishopric of Halberstadt and the archbishopric of Magdeburg, both of which were under the administration
of Prince Christian William of Brandenburg. At Magdeburg the Saxon prince
Augustus was about this time elected coadjutor; but Halberstadt was regarded at Vienna as a vacant see, and its occupant as a rebel, since
after much hesitation (for it might in either event fare ill with his tenure of
his pluralities) he had thrown in his lot with the Danish King. It was
therefore in accordance with a perfect understanding between the party of
restitution and reaction at the Imperial Court and Wallenstein, that both
dioceses were now flooded by his troops, who treated them as conquered
territory, and imposed intolerable contributions upon them. The army itself
suffered much from disease and desertion; and Wallenstein on his own authority
filled its ranks, and even increased its numbers, by fresh levies. The capture
of Halle (the archiepiscopal residence) sent a thrill of apprehension through
the neighboring Saxon electorate.
Christian
IV’s head-quarters in the autumn of 1625 were at Nienburg in Luneburg-Celle, where the dispossessed
Christian William of Magdeburg, as well as Mansfeld and the ex-Bishop Christian
of Halberstadt, put in an appearance, the last-named
bringing reinforcements. But the King was still unable to move; his affairs
were in disorder, and though, early in November, Tilly’s plan of piercing his lines at Pattensen near Hanover
was unsuccessful, the Danish army was weakened by sickness. The Mansfelders were pushed forward beyond the Elbe into Lauenburg, where they increased the ill-will of the Lübeckers to the Danish cause. On the other side of the Leine Tilly was master; while
Wallenstein, separated from him by the Harz mountains, occupied a wide arc to
the south touching the Elbe at Roslau, where in
December he occupied and fortified the so-called Dessau bridge across the
river.
1625] Failure of the Protestant combination.
The
military operations of the new Protestant combination had thus in 1625 proved
far from prosperous; nor was the failure in the field redeemed by the
diplomatic efforts of the autumn and winter. More specious results attended the
conference that in November assembled at the Hague to settle the conditions of
the great offensive and defensive Protestant alliance which had been so long
hatching, and to the conclusion of which Christian IV had more or less trusted
when he had taken up arms. Notwithstanding the rupture between his sovereign
and the Parliament, Buckingham arrived with powers to treat with the United
Provinces, Denmark, France, Sweden, Brandenburg, and other German States; but,
as a matter of fact, the only plenipotentiaries besides himself authorized to
come to terms were the Danish and those of the United Provinces who, as has
been seen, already concluded an offensive alliance with England. Christian was
clearly unable to bring the Lower Saxon War to a satisfactory conclusion by his
own resources and with such German assistance as he could obtain. The problem
at the Hague therefore reduced itself to this: were the United Provinces, whose
whole strength was needed for the struggle against Spain, and England, bound to
assist them in this effort and hampered by her domestic troubles, capable of
engaging in a further effort; and, secondly, could the Danish King be induced
to include the recovery of the Palatinate in the scope of his design? The
latter question, which lay at the root of Buckingham’s purpose, was finally
settled by a secret article providing for the restoration of the Palatinate to
Frederick or his family; and the triple alliance actually concluded imposed
upon Christian IV the obligation of continuing the war with an army of near
30,000 foot and 8000 horse, on condition that the English Government continued
to pay its monthly contribution of 300,000 florins, to which 50,000 were to be
added by the States General. Under these conditions the contracting Powers
undertook not to withdraw from the treaty till the German War had been brought
to a successful issue. The obligations of the Anglo-Dutch offensive treaty were
at the same time recognized; while the other Protestant Powers, with France,
Savoy, and Venice, were to be invited to accede. But from this elaborate agreement - the chef d'oeuvre of Buckingham’s inflated diplomacy - Sweden, though
it had been represented at the conferences, in the end drew back; France was
occupied with the Huguenot revolt; and when in March, 1626, the Hague allies
met to exchange the ratifications of their paper treaty, there was no accession
to report, nor even the hope of any save that of Bethlen Gabor.
Simultaneous
negotiations with a more limited scope had been carried on at Brunswick, where
in October, 1625, Danish representatives met those of several other Lower Saxon
Estates, as well as of Holstein-Gottorp, Hesse-Cassel, and Brandenburg, and of John George of
Saxony, who appeared as mediator. Later, both Tilly and Wallenstein sent agents to the assembly. But John George, though he
prevailed upon both sides to agree to a short suspension of hostilities (from
November 17), had nothing to propose beyond the withdrawal of the armies on
both sides; and Tilly and Wallenstein at once
attached conditions to their consent which would have deprived the Circle of
all powers of defense. The sufferings of the population and the fear of
restitutions decided the Estates to reject such a solution; and by March, 1626,
the fate of the Circle was once more committed to the arbitrament of war.
Thus,
amidst all this haze of negotiations, the position of Christian IV early in
1626 was a very serious one; and the great energy which at this crisis he
displayed showed that he recognized it as such. On the renewal of hostilities
the war at once extended its range in various directions. Before the Brunswick
negotiations were at an end, Christian IV shifted his head-quarters to Wolfenbüttel, and early in March boldly dispatched John
Ernest of Weimar with a body of troops into the diocese of Osnabrück.
To this bishopric, long an object of the Danish King’s desire for territorial
aggrandizement, the Catholic majority of the Chapter had in September, 1625,
postulated a relative of Maximilian of Bavaria, Count Francis William von Wartenberg, who was still hesitating about acceptance; now,
on the appearance of the Danish troops, they lost no time in electing Prince
Frederick coadjutor. About the beginning of April, Christian, formerly of Halberstadt, who had been recently charged with the
government of his brother's duchy, entered the Hesse-Cassel
dominions, in order, as it would seem, to encourage the Landgrave Maurice
definitively to join the Lower Saxon combination. But whether this sagacious
Prince, who had to take account of imperialist sympathies among the knights of
his landgravate, could not or would not fall in with
the design of Christian, the latter had to retire upon Göttingen,
and, after breaking forth afresh, was by an advance of Tilly’s forces driven further back on Wolfenbüttel. Here, in
the castle of his ancestors, the restless cavalier a fortnight later (June 6)
succumbed to a low fever, at the hour of death believing himself under a magic
charm. His character and career are full of flaws; but his chivalrous personal
devotion and even his at times savage fanaticism redeem from the charge of vile selfishness this particular example of
the military adventurers of the Thirty Years’ War.
1626] Battles of the Dessau Bridge and of Lutter.
A
certain obscurity still surrounds the last effort of the Brunswick Christian;
but no doubt can exist as to the purpose of Mansfeld’s notable expedition to Silesia. While King Christian was occupied in crushing Tilly, Mansfeld was to divert Wallenstein towards the east,
whence support from Bethlen Gabor had continued to be
expected. Mansfeld had necessarily to begin by an assault on the defenses of
the bridge across the Elbe at Dessau erected by Wallenstein. Mansfeld, to whom,
unhappily for them, George William had allowed a transit through part of his
territories, attacked the bridge on April 25, 1626, but notwithstanding his
admirable strategy was repulsed, with the loss of 4000 men, by Wallenstein in
person. Of Wallenstein’s few victories in the field this is perhaps the most
conspicuous. But he failed to turn his success to full account, allowing
Mansfeld to make good some of his losses, and to push on into Silesia with a
force not far short of 10,000 men (June-July), Christian IV, desirous above all
of diverting Wallenstein from an attack upon Holstein, had dispatched John
Ernest of Saxe-Weimar to augment the forces of Mansfeld, who was encouraged by
secret information that Bethlen Gabor was preparing
to march, and by the news that Upper Austria, as has been seen, was in revolt.
In the meantime Wallenstein met Tilly, who had just
taken Münden and was preparing to lay siege to Göttingen, at Duderstadt; but,
though they discussed the remoter issues of the war, with the assistance of an
envoy from Spain, whose interest in the German War was reviving, Wallenstein
for the present had no choice but to follow Mansfeld. The daring eastward movement
of the latter had thus at all events succeeded in separating the two hostile
armies; though Wallenstein left behind 8000 of his troops to support Tilly.
The
forward movement begun by Christian IV in July had been too late to prevent the
capture of Göttingen (August 5) by Tilly, whose junction with the Wallenstein contingent
induced the King to turn back towards Wolfenbüttel (August 14). Hotly pursued by Tilly, he at last
halted at Lutter by the Barenberg,
a spur of the Harz mountains some ten miles north of Goslar. Neither of the
contending armies probably exceeded, or even reached, a total of 20,000. None
the less was this battle (August 27) an event of very great moment. For a brief
space of time the result was well contested by the Danish infantry; but the end
was a complete rout of Christian's forces and the loss of the whole of his
artillery, besides that of several of his commanders. The first cause of his
calamity, as Christian himself seems afterwards to have pleaded, was the
demoralization of his troops by the want of pay; for the promised English
subsidies had failed,
The
immediate consequence of the battle of Lutter was the
abandonment by Christian IV of the Brunswick territory, which after the unconditional submission of Duke Frederick Ulric was occupied by Tilly and
the contingent of Wallensteiners. The Danish King,
having crossed the Elbe, and then recrossed it lower
down, took up his position behind the fortifications of Stade,
facing his own portion of the duchy of Holstein on the other side of the river.
Both Duke Frederick III of Holstein-Gottorp and his
uncle John Frederick, Archbishop of Bremen and Bishop of Lübeck, would gladly
have shaken off their alliance with Christian; but he was still master of
Holstein, while to the south his soldiery spread out in the direction of
Lüneburg, Lübeck, and Mecklenburg, whose Dukes still adhered to the Protestant
cause. He even attempted to extend again on the west towards the Weser; but,
though this effort failed, Tilly who exercised no
authority over the Wallenstein contingent, refrained from any fresh attack on
the King’s forces beyond the Elbe; and both armies went into winter-quarters.
Peace of Pressburg. Death of
Mansfeld.
Meanwhile
Wallenstein’s pursuit of Mansfeld, begun in leisurely fashion, was carried on
more slowly than was approved at Vienna, whence two successive missives reached
the commander-in-chief, urging him to hasten his advance. Having stood still
for a fortnight at Neisse in Silesia, he slowly moved forward into the Austrian
hereditary dominions and into Hungary, where he declared himself hampered by a
want of supplies. Meanwhile, towards the end of August the Transylvanian had at
last thrown off the mask which concealed his preparations for a renewal of offensive
war; so that the news of the defeat of Lutter came
too late for him to postpone action. Reinforced by a Turkish contingent he had,
towards the end of September, found himself in face of the Imperial army. But
Wallenstein, who rarely refused to treat even at the last moment, contrived by
the end of October to induce Bethlen Gabor, even
after his junction with Mansfeld, to accept a truce, and to continue
negotiations in which a Danish commissary, Joachim von Mitzlaff,
took part. Thus, on December 28, the Peace of Pressburg was concluded, in which the Emperor renewed all the concessions made by him at Nikolsburg to the Transylvanian, with the exception of the
annual payment of 50,000 florins and the prospective transfer of Oppeln and Ratibor to which he had
then consented. Provision was made in the treaty for the dissolution of
Mansfield's army, or of the fraction which remained of it. Already, in
November, weakened by illness and no longer proof against the wiles of Bethlen Gabor, Mansfeld had transferred his command to John
Ernest of Weimar, taking his departure with a few companions, as it would seem
in order to seek for supplies and succor, first in Venice and then in England.
But on his way he was overtaken by death, as it is concluded from his will, on
November 29, at Ratona near Saroy on the Bosnian frontier. A few days later (December 4) John Ernest of Weimar
also died. The double-faced Bethlen Gabor permitted
the departure of the remnant of the Mansfelders to Silesia, where their numbers seem again to have
largely increased and where the command of them was taken by Mitzlaff.
By
the death of Mansfeld, Wallenstein was freed of his chief exemplar and rival in
the twofold process of enlisting large bodies of troops and inspiring them with
a sense of confidence in their commander, and of an adversary who, even in the
final struggle in which he had succumbed, had given proof of high capacity. A
great and incalculable force had at the same time been removed from the conduct
and progress of the war as a whole; and the so-called Danish War had really
come to an end on the plains of Hungary rather than in the mountains of the
Harz.
Christian’s
efforts to carry on the war after the rout of Lutter and his retreat to Stade were doomed to failure; and
gradually he recognized the wisdom of the pacific advice given by the Infanta Isabel so early as June, 1626. High-sounding
promises of men and money from England resulted only in the junction with the
Danish army, in April, 1627, of less than 3000 English troops, under the
command of Sir Charles Morgan; but these were merely the remnant of the four
regiments which had completed their time of service in the Netherlands. Though
doling out some assistance to Christian, Richelieu was beginning to calculate
on Bavaria and the League as the readiest counterpoise to the augmented power
of the House of Austria. In the course of 1627, even the States General put a
stop to their payments. Though the far-sighted Wallenstein was still
apprehensive of Swedish intervention, Gustavus Adolphus paid no serious attention to the Danish request
that he should detach part of his army from its Polish campaign. Bethlen Gabor was once more immovable. Even in the northern
regions of the Empire, to which he had retreated, the ground was giving way
round Christian and his army. Frederick III of Holstein-Gottorp,
whose interests were opposed to the King's, had already declared his adherence
to the Emperor. Both Hamburg and Lübeck with the other Hanse Towns of the Baltic, upon whom pressure was being put to join Christian's
adversaries, were only anxious to remain neutral; and though the Mecklenburg
Dukes, whose territories were flooded by Danish troops, could not renounce
their alliance with Christian, they desired nothing but peace, being no doubt
aware of Wallenstein's designs upon their duchies. Finally, the Danish Rigsraad itself urged upon the King the conclusion of
peace, provided things could be restored to the condition in which they had
stood before the war.
Thus
Christian’s prospects for the campaign of 1627 were extremely unsatisfactory,
while on the Catholic side; though hitherto Tilly’s achievements had far surpassed those of Wallenstein, the understanding between
the Emperor and his commander-in-chief remained unbroken. Not even the
complaints of officers and nobility in the Austrian lands themselves, where his
army was quartered for the winter, prevailed against his ascendancy. On
November 25, 1626, Wallenstein had an interview with Eggenberg,
in whom as has been seen he reposed a quite exceptional confidence; and from
this meeting, though unfortunately no authentic record of it exists, may be
dated the expansion of the original compact between Wallenstein and the
Emperor, and the development of the design with which it had been originally
concluded. While the numbers of Wallenstein’s army were henceforth to be
increased to a practically indefinite extent, and he was to be allowed to
quarter his army in any part of the Empire, the scheme of a Catholic reaction
based on the restitution of ecclesiastical lands was taken up with increased
self-confidence by the Imperial Government. The autocratic action of its
general was more immediately apparent than its Catholic purpose. Already at the
meeting of the League held at Würzburg late in February, 1627, Bavaria and
Mainz were commissioned to urge at Vienna by means of a special embassy the
numerous complaints preferred against the levies made by Wallenstein, the
exactions of quarters for his troops, and the contributions imposed and other
kinds of oppression practiced by them. The Emperor's answer, delayed till May,
promised the prevention of excesses, but refused to listen to any grievances or
to stop the levies, and pointed out the necessity that the Rhenish Electors
should maintain several of Wallenstein’s regiments as a safeguard against
France. Soon afterwards Wallenstein dispatched a regiment to support the Poles
against Gustavus. Evidently the range of the Imperial
designs was rapidly widening.
Brandenburg. [1627
During
the spring of 1627 Tilly continued, without
completing, the subjugation of the Brunswick lands, where, in opposition to
their Government, the population in town and country adhered to the Protestant cause.
Some three-hundred villages here lay in ashes, while a desperate resistance was
offered to the invaders by the so-called Harzschützen, a species of franc-tireurs.
After the capture of Nordheim (June 25) Tilly advanced upon the Elbe. The Mark
Brandenburg, wedged in between the two divisions of the war, had for some time
suffered from the inroads of both belligerents and a collision near Havelberg between the
Danes and a division of Tilly’s army, April, 1627,
led to his occupying in May the line of the Lower Havel. Wallenstein's troops
were likewise pressing into the land; and George William was now obliged to
declare openly for the Emperor. The neutral attitude which he had hitherto
striven to maintain had no doubt been partly caused by his Swedish connection
but it seems hard to blame him for not throwing himself at the eleventh hour
into the arms of the Danes. In any case, the counselor sent by him into
Transylvania, to attend the nuptials of his sister Catharine with Bethlen Gabor, Count Adam zu Schwarzenberg, who had long advocated cooperation with
Saxony and recognition of Maximilian as Elector, on his return into the Mark
demonstrated to both Elector and Estates that a consistent adherence to the
Emperor had become indispensable. Jülich-Cleves, as
well as the Prussian duchy, which might lie
at Poland's mercy, was at stake; nor could the Danes protect the Mark against Tilly and Wallenstein. But, though no other course can be
said to have been open to Brandenburg, George William's decision brought scant
relief to his unfortunate electorate, which for something like a quarter of a
century to come was destined, except during a brief interval, to remain at the
mercy of friend and foe, with but little to choose between them.
To
the east the Danish commander Mitzlaff had begun the
Silesian campaign by spreading his troops, the remains of Mansfeld’s army, into the south-eastern part of the country, advancing even into Moravia.
Wallenstein, deliberate in his movements as usual, did not quit Prague till the
end of May; but then by a series of well-devised operations completely cleared
Upper Silesia and Moravia of Mitzlaff’s soldiery.
While according to the usage of the times not a few of the garrisons under Danish colours took service with Wallenstein, Mitzlaff was, on his return home, sentenced to imprisonment
by a court-martial; whereupon he entered the Swedish service. Wallenstein's
complete success in this difficult campaign left his hands free; and he could
now join in carrying the war into Christian IV’s own dominions, and there
bringing it to an end.
At Rendsburg, where Christian was holding a Diet of his
Holstein Estates, the news was brought to him that Tilly had crossed the Elbe, and that Wallenstein was on his march northwards from
Silesia. On May 31 Tilly entered Lauenburg;
and soon afterwards Hans Georg von Arnim (a Brandenburger by birth and one of the most versatile
soldier-diplomatists of the war) approached with his detachment of Wallensteiners. The two Mecklenburg Dukes, Adolphus Frederick of Schwerin and John Albert of Güstrow, before long announced to Tilly their submission to the Emperor (August 1-3). There were occasions on which
Wallenstein showed himself aware of the importance of speed, and three weeks
later he had himself entered Mecklenburg. Hence he pushed on into Lauenburg, where he soon met Tilly;
and by the end of the month their joint invasion of Holstein had begun.
While
Christian’s troops had been fighting in Brandenburg and Silesia, the
incoherency of his dominions had prevented him from uniting their resources for
the purpose of common defense. Both Holstein, and Schleswig in its rear, were
wholly unprepared for the assault of his adversaries; and the defensive
measures adopted by the Estates were in a quite inchoate stage. The Danish Rigsraad, summoned to Kolding by the King, had indeed
passed a decree for the levy of 12,000 men from the kingdom itself; but not a
soldier was as yet forthcoming. The Duke of Gottorp,
who disapproved the continuance of the war, had indeed made a last attempt to
ascertain the conditions on which peace was obtainable; but at their Lauenburg meeting Tilly and
Wallenstein had formulated conditions which the pride of Christian had
unhesitatingly rejected. The negotiations,
according to Wallenstein’s almost invariable custom, were not broken off; but
the attack continued.
Occupation of Schleswig and Jutland. [1627
Pinneberg was taken
(September 2); and though a wound received on the occasion obliged Tilly to return to Lauenburg, the
advance proceeded under the undivided command of Wallenstein, On September 14
four regiments of foot and horse, the nucleus of Christian's forces, were
obliged to capitulate at Grossenbrode on the Femer Sound, in the extreme north-east of Holstein; but
their commanders, the Margrave of Baden, Bernard of Weimar, and the redoubtable
Robert Munro (who belonged to a family of Scots distinguished in the German
wars) made their escape to Fünen. Some resistance was
still offered by Count Thurn, who had recently
entered into the Danish service. He was now a sexagenarian; but his activity
had by no means come to an end with the failure of the Bohemian War, of which
he was a principal author, and he remained for some years to come one of the
most eager and resolute supporters of the Protestant cause. The King himself,
who had taken ship from Glückstadt, and had been
received with great coldness by the Dithmarschen peasantry, found his way, first to Flensburg, and then to Kolding. Utterly
disheartened, though Danish troops were approaching on the Fünen side of the Little Belt, he now threw up the game and crossed into safety. The
exact date of His flight is unknown; but it must have been early in October.
Behind his back Rendsburg fell; and a few days
earlier (October 3) Schlick, sent on in pursuit by
Wallenstein, captured 8000 Danish horse near Aalborg in Jutland, and the whole
of the Danish mainland was now flooded by the Imperial soldiery.
During
the winter of 1627-8 the army of Jutland and Schleswig appears to have amounted
to quite 30,000 men, and that in Holstein to a similar total. It is difficult
to see how Jutland at all events could have supported the heavy exactions
demanded; but the discipline maintained under Wallenstein contrasted favorably
with the lack of it in Christian's own forces. Of these none were now left in
the entire peninsula; while to the west the defensive position on the Weser
above Bremen was likewise evacuated on the approach of Tilly’s able lieutenant Anholt, and nearly the whole of the
Bremen diocese was occupied by the troops of the League without any show of
resistance. Before the close of the year 1627, the reduction of the Lower Saxon
Circle had been completed, almost the last place to fall being Wolfenbüttel, which held out till December 14, when it
capitulated to another of Tilly’s lieutenants who was
rising to distinction, Count zu Pappenheim.
The
Lower Saxon and Danish Wars, for it is hardly admissible to call this curiously
composite conflict by any single title, had had a most inglorious ending. As to
the Protestant sympathies of the populations there could be no question
whatever; but such support as Christian IV had secured in the German duchies,
and even in Denmark itself, had been
unwilling and belated; everywhere resentment of the oppressive conduct of the
royal soldiery had prevailed, and in Denmark there was a general unwillingness
to levy further troops, which could no longer be quartered “in Germany”.
Soldiers being difficult to obtain, the captains were anxious to sever their
connection with an undertaking at once so hopeless and unprofitable; and the
Margrave of Baden and Bernard of Weimar took their departure to the
Netherlands, where alone war still seemed to be carried on in earnest. In these
circumstances Christian, through this and the greater part of the following
year (1628), mainly confined his endeavors to a continued attempt to obtain
support from France and England, characteristically offering his mediation
between these Powers, now at war with each other.
1627-8] Suedo-Danish Treaty.
On
the other hand, the failure of Christian IV could not but suggest the transfer
of the task, in the execution of which he had broken down, to the rival
Scandinavian Power. Gustavus Adolphus had left Denmark to take care of itself, and had afterwards declined to furnish
an army for the reconquest of Jutland. But he was (though
hardly, in Ranke’s phrase, “awakened”, since his vigilance had throughout been
unremitting) at last moved to action when the Emperor’s arms approached the
Baltic, and the question of the control of its waters as it were suddenly
sprang into prominence. The interests of the two Scandinavian monarchies in the
Baltic were by no means identical, but up to a certain point they necessitated
an understanding between them. In January, 1628, a treaty was concluded between
Sweden and Denmark by which the former, in return for the opening of the Sound
to Swedish vessels, bound herself to keep eight men-of-war in the Baltic during
the summer and autumn of the year. At the same time family arrangements were
made intended to draw the dynasties more closely together.
Gustavus Adolphus had stirred neither without reason nor too soon.
Wallenstein, whose diplomatic skill had laid the eastern peril, whose military
operations had subdued Silesia, who by a mixture of force and conciliation had
brought Brandenburg over to the Emperor, and placed him in a position of
ascendancy in Germany such as his predecessors had not held since the days of
Charles V, was now nearing the height of his power. As yet the rise of that
power had at almost every step seemed to imply the extension and confirmation
of the Imperial authority; and now the opportunity seemed at hand for an
unprecedented development of both.
Wallenstein’s
exceptional services called for a signal reward. In September, 1627, he had
obtained, as a notable addition to the vast domains over which he held sway as
Duke of Friedland, the Silesian principality of Sagan
and the lordship of Priebus. But his services in the
north were to receive an acknowledgment which at the same time marked a great
advance of the Imperial power and its aims. It is certain that the idea of placing Wallenstein on the Danish throne was at least
temporarily entertained - though not by himself, for he had in hand what
sufficed for his purpose. This was the territory of the Dukes of Mecklenburg
whom the Danish occupation had obliged to hold out by the cause of Christian. The
two duchies had now in turn been occupied by the Imperial forces, and towards
the end of the year they were promised to Wallenstein by the Emperor. In
February, 1628, they were actually granted to him in pledge as a compensation
for the costs incurred by him in the war, and in the following year conferred
upon him as Imperial fiefs. The Dukes were driven into exile, and, after they
had attempted to levy troops for recovering their patrimony, were from 1629
onwards treated as de facto under the ban of the Empire. Mecklenburg had
suffered heavily from the exactions to which it had been forced to submit; but
the rule of Wallenstein, which endured till 1631, affords striking evidence of
his genius for administration.
Pomerania. [1627-31
Late in October, 1627, Arnim was instructed by Wallenstein to occupy all the Pomeranian seaports, and more especially the island of Rügen, which Duke Philip Julius of Pomerania-Wolgast had not long since proposed to sell to Denmark, and on the necessity of securing which Wallenstein specially insisted. In November the country at large was occupied by the Imperial troops. Two years before this date the entire heritage of the Pomeranian Dukes had, in consequence of several deaths (some of which were occasioned by the vice that was the bane of so many of the German dynasties, excess in drinking), come into the hands of Duke Bogislav XIV, the last of his ancient line. Without being wholly wanting in patriotic spirit, he was weak and ill-advised, unable really to unite the several divisions of his land or to adopt any policy in the war except that of a neutrality which the antiquated military organization of his duchy was incapable of guarding. On the extinction of the native line, the Pomeranian succession was by the Treaty of Grimnitz (1529) secured to Brandenburg. But, though Wallenstein did not encourage any interference with this settlement in his own favor, it was understood to depend on the loyalty of George William whether Pomerania, like Jülich-Cleves and Prussia before it, would be allowed to pass to the House of Brandenburg. A
question of great importance for the whole of northern Germany, and of northern
Europe, had now arisen. This was the design of the House of Habsburg to acquire
an ascendancy in the Northern and Baltic seas which might develop into the
control of them and their trade. Now that among the adversaries of that House
of Habsburg in the Great War the United Provinces and the Scandinavian North
alone continued to withstand its advance, the situation seemed to suggest the
resumption of common action against these enemies by the Emperor and Spain; and
Philip IV was ready for action. From the point of view of the joint
interests of the two Habsburg Powers, what could be more expedient than to
acquire the control of the German ports on the North Sea, and more especially
of those on the Baltic, and thus at the same time effectually break the
resistance of both the United Provinces and the Scandinavian kingdoms? With the
Sound closed against them, the Dutch, apart from the question of obtaining food
supplies for their own population, could certainly no longer build ships;
while, if the Baltic were in the hands of Powers adverse to Denmark and Sweden,
the chief bulwark of their strength, whether for aggression or for
self-preservation, would be taken away. But no supremacy over the Baltic, or
control over the mouths of Elbe and Weser, was conceivable without the
possession of ships and ports, of seamen, and the material for shipbuilding.
All these could be supplied by the Hanseatic towns along the northern coasts of
the Empire. The maritime ascendancy of the Hansa was,
no doubt, a thing of the past, and the towns in question had ceased to attempt
more than the preservation of their privileges by means of a cautious
neutrality. But the high-handed policy of Christian IV of Denmark had driven
ten among the most important Hanseatic towns into an alliance with the Dutch,
which was really directed against himself; the Hansa had refused him its support in the Lower Saxon War; and when at an earlier date
(1620) Gustavus Adolphus had sought to secure a closer alliance with these towns, none of them except
Stralsund, which though not a free Imperial city was practically independent of
the Pomeranian Dukes, had shown itself favorable to the project. Thus the time
seemed now to have arrived for inducing, or if necessary, forcing, the Hanse Towns to join in the struggle on the side of the
Emperor and Spain, in the first instance against the Free Netherlands. They
would find their account in the restriction of the Spanish trade to the
subjects of the Emperor and the King of Spain, together with further
privileges. As a matter of fact, the only Hanse Towns
largely interested in the Spanish trade were Hamburg, Lübeck, and Danzig.
With
this end in view, negotiations were opened with Lübeck and other towns as early
as the autumn of 1627; but they referred the question to the meeting of the Hansa summoned to Lübeck for the following February. The
definiteness of the designs of the Imperial politicians, of Eggenberg in particular, and of Wallenstein is shown by a letter (November, 1627), in
which the latter detailed to Spinola the plan of
campaign for the ensuing spring : an attack upon the Danish islands in which
the Hansa and Spain should each take part with 24
vessels. Not later than February Wallenstein had assumed the title of General
of the Oceanic and the Baltic Sea, a
premature assumption, but not intended as an empty vaunt. But when, in the same
month, the Hanseatic deputies met at Lübeck, they showed no disposition
whatever to enter into the Imperial proposals, and adjourned to July, and then again to September. Religious motives
had an unmistakable share in this unwillingness, even if they were not its
primary cause. At their meeting the Hanse Towns had
brought forward many grievances both old and new, turning in the main
respectively on violation of their mercantile and maritime privileges by the
Spanish Government, and on the exactions of the Imperial troops, especially
those enforced upon Wismar, and the large sum extorted from Rostock for the
avoidance of similar treatment. But of all the complaints the loudest were
those provoked by the attempt made in Wallenstein's and the Emperor's names to
force an Imperial garrison upon Stralsund.
This
attempt, which formed part of the general scheme for securing the cooperation
of the Baltic towns, was to result not only in completely frustrating the whole
design, but in checking at their full height the advance of the Imperial power
and of Wallenstein's personal authority. About this time no achievement seemed
impossible to him, even that which, like other conquerors before and after him,
he seems to have contemplated, the expulsion of the Turks from Europe. The
dream of an Imperial dominium maris was dissipated, and Wallenstein's planet for the
first time arrested in its course, before the walls of Stralsund.
1628] Siege of Stralsund.
After
Duke Bogislav XIV had signed (November 10, 1627) the
capitulation of Franzburg, regulating, and providing
for exceptions in, the admission of Imperialist troops into the towns and
country districts of Pomerania, Arnim had proposed to
the Stralsunders that, like the Rostockers before them, they should pay a sum freeing them from the obligation of
providing military quarters, and had named the exorbitant figure of 150,000
dollars. The Stralsunders at once demurred to the
demand, though declaring their willingness to discuss such a contribution with
Duke Bogislav, their nominal Prince. But they had
from the first made up their minds to resist “the shameful servitude of the
billeting upon them of Wallenstein’s troops”. The burgomaster of the city, Steinwich, was a man of spirit; the reformed constitution
of the town provided for an appeal to the whole civic body; and in the last
resort Stralsund might trust to its position, separated as it was on the one
side by more than two miles of water from the island of Rügen (occupied by the Imperialists), and protected on the other by a series of ponds
and morasses. The Stralsunders had about a thousand
mercenaries in their service; and their ships gave them the command of the sea.
Some negotiations ensued at Greifswald with Arnim,
who to gain time expressed his willingness to accept a payment of 30,000
dollars on account; and when on February 4, 1628, by a coup de main, he occupied the islet of Dänholm,
in immediate proximity to the south-eastern end of the city, the money was
paid. But, when it was found that the preparations against Stralsund continued,
the timidity of the Council was overruled by the spirit of the burghers, which
rose higher still after the surrender, on April 5, of the Imperialists on Dänholm.
Embassies, however, were about this time sent by the Stralsunders in various directions: to the Emperor, who gave a tardy and insincere promise
of relief; to Wallenstein, who threatened the Stralsunders with the annihilation of their town should they refuse to admit his garrison
within its walls; to the Hanseatic delegates at Lübeck, who voted a scanty
pecuniary aid (15,000 dollars), which did not arrive till all serious danger
was over; and to Christian IV and Gustavus Adolphus, both of whom sent materials of war and promise of
further help.
On
May 13, 1628, the siege proper was begun by Arnim;
and, after two attempted assaults had failed, the Scandinavian reinforcements
arrived. It is clear that without their aid Stralsund could not have held out
against her besiegers. First came an auxiliary force dispatched by Christian
IV, under the command of Colonel Henry Hoik, and
consisting of Major Munro’s regiment of 900 Scots and 400 Danes and Germans;
then followed eight Swedish ships, with 600 soldiers and a diplomatic agent,
who on June 23 concluded on behalf of his King a treaty of alliance for twenty
years, the basis, as it proved, of Gustavus Adolphus’ subsequent expedition. The city was sufficiently
garrisoned, and Arnim in vain essayed both assault
and bombardment. By June 23 Wallenstein himself assumed the conduct of the
siege, and massed round Stralsund an army amounting to 25,000 men, in addition
to the 6000 (or thereabouts) on Rügen. In a
preliminary interview with Arnim at Greifswald he had
declared his determination, negotiations or no negotiations, to make short work
of the canaglia in Stralsund; and to the time of his actual appearance before Stralsund seems
to belong his famous vaunt, to which Munro’s narrative bears testimony, that
the city “must down, were it bound with chains to the heavens”.
The
negotiations into which, notwithstanding this vaunt, Wallenstein entered with
the Stralsund Council, can scarcely have been only intended as a blind to the
siege operations which he continued to carry on. The Council would even now
have accepted his terms, which he had reduced to the admission of a Pomeranian
garrison of 2000 men and the payment of an additional 50,000 dollars. But the
citizens at large would not hear of the acceptance of these conditions without
reference to the Kings of Sweden and Denmark. The negotiations broke down; the
bombardment and a succession of assaults (June 26-8) once more failed; two days
of rain followed; and on July 5, after 400 more Danes had found their way into
the city, Wallenstein offered a brief cessation of arms. It was accepted, and
proved the beginning of the end. On July 9 another body of 1100 Scots in Danish
pay (Lord Spynie’s regiment) arrived with supplies at
Stralsund. Three days later Christian IV himself appeared with a fleet off Rügen, and on the 16th 1200 Swedes arrived under Sir
Alexander Leslie. The town had now nearly 5000 defenders-amounting to a superabundance, as Council and citizens were not slow
to feel-and on July 19 they ventured on a sortie, which however proved unsuccessful.
Wallenstein’s
opportunity had passed away; his attempts to circumvent Stralsund by
negotiation and to crush her by force had simultaneously broken down. It was
impossible any longer to keep the Imperial forces massed round the place; on
July 21 the withdrawal of the army began, and by the 24th the siege had to all
intents and purposes been raised, though Arnim remained with the army no further off than Brandshagen.
Christian IV had the satisfaction of bidding the unfortunate Bogislav clear his duchy of the Imperialists, and of taking Wolgast by a coup
de main (August 3). But Wallenstein rapidly swooped down upon the King with
a force of 12,000 men, and, defeating the troops which he had landed, drove him
back to his ships (August 12). Before the end of the autumn Wallenstein himself
quitted Pomerania.
Wallenstein’s
success gained over the Danish King could not compensate him for so striking a
failure as the raising of the siege of Stralsund, an event whose significance in the eyes of
Europe was enhanced by the fall, in November, of Huguenot Rochelle. Those who
were jealous of the growth of the Emperor's power, or who resented Wallenstein’s
own pre-eminence, could now decry him as a baffled general, and charge him with
having been the chief promoter, if not the actual originator, of a great
political blunder. The Hanse Towns, at their
September meeting in Lübeck, took courage to reject altogether the Imperial
proposals intended to involve them in the new mercantile and maritime ambitions
of the House of Habsburg. But more than this. The Swedish troops remained in
Stralsund; the town concluded a treaty with their King; and Wallenstein’s
assertion was on the point of being falsified, that “the Roman Empire could
settle its war without Gustavus Adolphus”.
Peace of Lübeck.
The
failure before Stralsund inevitably hastened the negotiations for peace with
Denmark, in which Wallenstein throughout played the most prominent part. Early
in February, 1628, the Danish Rigsraad had addressed
to the Emperor a direct request for the opening of such negotiations; and, the
advice of Wallenstein having prevailed at Vienna over that of the party
desirous of making the most of the existing situation, he and Tilly were authorized to discuss preliminaries. The
Catholic Electors were anxious that the Emperor should seize the opportunity
for demanding a restitution of all ecclesiastical property Protestantized since the Peace of Passau; but he declined to admit even Maximilian of Bavaria
to more than a confidential share in the settlement of terms. For the peace
conferences opened at Lübeck late in January, 1629, Wallenstein and Tilly were named Imperial plenipotentiaries, and were
represented there by subdelegates. But the real management was in the hands of Wallenstein, who
conducted a negotiation on his own account in secreto secretissimo, and ultimately secured the
success of the moderate policy advocated by him. On the Emperor he seems to
have impressed the view that peace was a necessity for him, if he was to carry,
out his ulterior purposes, whereas Denmark had promises of aid from a whole
group of Powers. Tilly’s final assent Wallenstein
seems to have secured by working upon his private interests, this was the
occasion on which it was proposed to make over Calenberg (Hanover) as a principality to the general of the League. Having assured
himself that Christian IV was willing to give up the German sees held by his
family or claimed on its behalf, as well as the Directorship of the Lower Saxon
Circle, Wallenstein agreed to restore to him Jutland, Schleswig, and the royal
portion of Holstein, and even to refrain from insisting on an indemnity.
Wallenstein’s own thoughts were already turning in a different direction. In
March, 1629, he decided to send a large auxiliary force under Arnim to support the Poles in Prussia against Sweden, now
the chief object of his apprehension. He was therefore resolved on making peace
with Denmark, and would not even listen to Tilly’s demand that Christian IV should bind himself not to support the claims of the
ex-Elector Palatine. On the above terms, therefore, peace was concluded at
Lübeck on May 22,1629; and, though King Christian at the very last indulged
himself by a sudden irruption into Schleswig, Wallenstein's self-restraint
ignored the affront, and on June 7 the Peace, which included nearly all the
European Powers, was solemnly proclaimed.
C.
THE EDICT OF RESTITUTION AND THE DISMISSAL OF
WALLENSTEIN.
(1628-30)
Among the conditions of the Peace of Lübeck, by
determining which Wallenstein had achieved another great political success, had
been the appropriation of the northern sees in accordance with the wishes of
the League. The religious conflict had now reached a point when a settlement of
one of its fundamental problems was no longer to be avoided; and the Emperor
himself at last decided to take that settlement in hand.
Ever since the conclusion of the Religious Peace of
Augsburg the Protestant Estates in the Empire had in the main refused to
acknowledge the stipulation which under the name of the reservatum ecclesiasticum provided for the
deposition of prelates who had become Protestants. The Protestant Princes -
herein acting precisely like the Austrian and Bavarian dynasties - had provided
for their younger sons by means of the sees on which
they had laid hands for the purpose, while continuing at the same time to
appropriate convents and other ecclesiastical foundations within their
territories. The Calvinists, ignored by the Religious Peace, had been foremost
in infringing it. After the Reichskammergerickt had, aft last, begun to give judgments
in favor of Catholic complaints, the Calvinists and some other Protestant
Estates had paid no further heed to this tribunal, while at the same time
refusing to acknowledge the competency in such questions of the Reichshofrath.
The principle of self-help which this line of action suggested had been carried
further by the formation of the Union.
The outbreak of the war and the danger of the falling
asunder of the whole Empire had, however, made some sort of understanding
indispensable. At the Mühlhausen meeting in March, 1620, the Catholic Electors
had agreed that the Lutheran occupants - the Calvinists remained unmentioned -
of bishoprics and other ecclesiastical foundations should not be removed by
force, if they held Imperial letters of protection. The Elector of Saxony, upon
whom as usual the issue largely depended, was content with this meager
assurance; and the Bohemian War ran its course without the intervention of the
Union. When, after his victory at the White Hill, the Emperor, in February,
1621, sued for the aid of the League to enable him to continue the war, he
expressly indicated as its purpose the relief of those who had suffered wrong
in contravention of the Religious Peace. When the Lower Saxon Circle grew
restive, he refused to appease it by confirming the tenure of ecclesiastical
foundations by its (Protestant) members (May, 1621 ). When the victory of Lutter had encouraged the forward action of the League, and
the Imperial forces overwhelmed the retreating King of Denmark and his allies,
there seemed no necessity for further delay. While the party of advance was
stimulated by such publications as the Dillingen Book, the Imperial tribunals expeditiously granted the prayer of every Catholic
complainant. Already the old enemy of the Protestants of the south-west, the
Bishop of Augsburg (Heinrich von Knorringen), was to
the front, and recovering the convents in Swabia and Franconia appropriated by
Württemberg and Ansbach.
The Spiritual Electors, whose interests were most
largely concerned, had already, at a Kurfürstentag held at Ratisbon in
1627, in conjunction with Maximilian of Bavaria advocated an Imperial
declaration as to the true meaning of the Religious Peace. Now, they resolved
to insist upon the announcement by Imperial authority of a general Restitution,
and upon this announcement being made at once, before the Danish War was at an
end and the armies were disbanded. The Emperor’s legal right to issue such a
proclamation could only be demonstrated by a quibble; but there was no
disputing the fact that the Empire was at present overawed by the Catholic
forces. The suggestion that Richelieu lured the Emperor to his ruin by
proposing the Edict is absurd; but the French Minister was certainly cognizant
of the scheme.
Yet, even after the Danish War was practically over,
Ferdinand still hesitated. The Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg urged him to
qualify any such Edict as that proposed by a clause safeguarding the rights of
the Estates to be consulted in the matter. The Emperor could not conceal from
himself that the chief advantages of a restitution would rest with the members
of the League; and he was fain to extract from them in return a promise to
support the election of his son as Roman King, and to keep under arms the
military forces now in the Empire. Bavaria and Mainz would hear of no such
concessions. Maximilian, who, in February, 1628, had obtained from the Emperor
a formal guarantee for thirty years of the Upper and part of the Lower
Palatinate in exchange for Upper Austria, as well as a recognition of the
hereditary right of his line to the Electoral succession, had never been more
self-confident.
1628-9] The Edict of Restitution.
The Edict “concerning certain Imperial grievances
calling for settlement”, in its preamble charged the Protestants with having
unlawfully appropriated both immediate and mediate ecclesiastical domains, and
resorted to the sword rather than consent to their restitution; and it then
proceeded to declare the Catholics justified in demanding the restoration of
all mediate conventual or other ecclesiastical
property misappropriated since 1552, and the reinstatement of Catholic
archbishops, bishops, and abbots in the immediate sees. It approved the
expulsion of Protestants from the territories of Catholic rulers, and
prohibited all Protestant sects not adhering to the unchanged Augsburg
Confession. The execution of the Edict was to be entrusted to Imperial commissioners
from whose judgment there was to be no appeal, and who were in each case to
confine themselves to the one question: whether the particular see or convent
or other foundation had come into Protestant hands before or after 1552. The
commissioners chosen were exclusively Catholic, and for the most part
archbishops and bishops, some of whom had a direct interest in the
restitutions.
This Edict, which was communicated without note or
comment even to the loyal Elector of Saxony, spread the utmost alarm throughout
the Protestant portions of the Empire, and especially those occupied by the
Catholic armies. It was heightened by the circumstance that the terminus chosen
was the year 1552, when the Catholics were in possession of many foundations
just recovered by them, which by 1555 had reverted to Protestant tenure.
Further apprehensions were rife, and a vague fear prevailed of the Edict being
stretched so as to meet every demand of the supporters of the
Counter-reformation, and of their leaders the Jesuits. In the case of the small
Imperial towns, Archduke Leopold had some months since set a precedent in Alsace,
both by the restitution of ecclesiastical property, and by forcing the
profession of Catholicism upon all the inhabitants under his rule.
The process of restitution and reformation which now
ensued was continued more or less during the next three years. In many cases it
remained incomplete; in others it was successfully resisted, as in Magdeburg,
to which Wallenstein actually laid siege, though he was ultimately induced to
raise it (September, 1629). The great events of the year 1631 prevented the
final transfer of the archbishoprics of Bremen and Magdeburg into Catholic
hands. But up to that time five bishoprics (Halberstadt,
which together with the Hessian abbey of Hersfeld had
been secured by the pluralist Archduke Leopold William; Minden and Verden, which fell to the Bishop of Osnabrück,
a kinsman of Maximilian; and Ratzeburg and Schwerin)
had been recovered to the Church of Rome, and a sixth (held by the pluralist of
Cologne) had received back two-thirds of its lands, long since alienated from
it. In addition, the restitution had been carried out more or less fully in
about thirty Imperial or Hanse Towns, and in fifteen
more it had been announced, planned, or partially executed. In different parts
of Germany nearly a hundred convents had been restored, and some eighty or
ninety ordered to be brought back-out of the total more than threescore in the
duchy of Brunswick alone, many in Lüneburg, Hesse, and
Nassau, and some twenty in Württemberg. The number of parish and other churches
in which Catholic worship was once more set up can hardly be estimated. In
general, the localities where the Counter-reformation was most effectively
carried out were, besides the diocese of Osnabrück and the territories of Lippe, Waldeck,
and Saxe-Weimar, the duchy of Württemberg, and most especially the Brandenburg margravates of Ansbach and Baireuth.
Thus, to speak profanely, the spoils were great; but
the quarrels concerning them much marred the satisfaction of the Catholic
world. In the first place there was the hierarchical objection taken by Pope
Urban VIII and really due to his animosity against the House of Austria (more
fully discussed elsewhere), which led him to demand the recall of the Imperial
commissioners and the substitution of others appointed by himself. Further to
be reckoned with were the jealousy of the Religious Orders, the eagerness of
the Jesuits, and the financial claims of the Imperial Court. The commissioners
had been directed to deliver up the confiscated convents to the Orders of their
several foundations; when, however, any such Order was incapable of
administering a convent, it was to be sequestrated. On the restoration of a
convent to its Order, the latter was to make a payment to the Reichshofrath for
costs incurred, as well as a proportion of the revenues received. Wallenstein
sought to work the Edict in this business-like spirit; nor were Archduke
Leopold, and to a certain extent even Father Lamormain,
out of sympathy with it. The Jesuits (whose zeal was remembered against them in
the days of the negotiations for the Peace of Westphalia) were desirous of
securing for themselves the convents which the Premonstratensians,
Benedictines, and Cistercians were without the means of administering. A
violent contention followed, which was envenomed by the attacks upon the Order
by Scioppius (Caspar Schoppe),
perhaps the most foul-mouthed of the literary gladiators of the century.
Finally, the political jealousy between the League on the one hand, and the
Emperor and Wallenstein on the other, was intensified by the working of the
Edict. The members of the League were willing that Archduke Leopold William
should succeed in Halberstadt and also in Magdeburg,
Wallenstein keeping the military control over both; but they desired that
Hildesheim should fall to the Archbishop of Cologne, and Bremen, round which
still lay the army of the League, to another Bavarian prince. To this latter
design in particular a strong opposition was offered by the Emperor on behalf
of his son Leopold William; and Wallenstein was held responsible by the League
and its head for his master's dynastic policy. Their wrath against him had
already declared itself at the meeting held by the League at Heidelberg, which,
just when the Edict was about to be launched (February, 1629), had declared
itself resolved not to give up any lands, either temporal or spiritual, in its
occupation.
As the execution of the Edict proceeded, John George
of Saxony became more and more anxious to obtain a definite assurance that it
was not to be held applicable to his electorate. Maximilian of Bavaria,
desirous of securing the support of John George in the coming conflict against
the ascendancy of Wallenstein, was ready to assent to such a declaration; but
the Emperor, after entering into negotiations, came to the conclusion that
there was nothing to be feared from John George. The Saxon Elector in
consequence at last became more amenable to Protestant influence, and, though
still opposed to common action, sent a protest of his own against the Edict to
Vienna. The Emperor's answer was to refer him to the Kurfurstentag which was
assembling at Ratisbon at this time (July, 1630).
Discussions at Ratisbon and Frankfort. [1630-1
At Ratisbon a chance was
still offered to the Emperor and the League of reconsidering the policy which,
while striving to force religious unity upon the Empire, was cleaving it
hopelessly asunder. In August. A compromise, fair in some respects if not in
all, its most essential point being the restriction of restitution to sees and foundations that had remained Catholic up to
1555, was offered on behalf of the young Landgrave George of Hesse-Darmstadt,
son-in-law of the Elector of Saxony. But the proposal was rejected by the
Catholic Electors, who absolutely adhered to the Edict and insisted upon its
rigorous execution, more especially in Württemberg. They consented, however, in
November, to attend a “composition” meeting to be held at Frankfort in the
February following on the subject of the restitutions. It was known that John
George hoped to assemble the Protestant Princes before that date at Leipzig;
for already Gustavus Adolphus had landed on the Pomeranian coast (July 4), and, though this event had not
made so profound an impression as might have been expected, common action of
some kind could hardly any longer be avoided by the Protestant Princes. But the
proceedings which followed on their part will be more conveniently narrated in
a later chapter.
When the discussions on the Restitutions opened at
Frankfort, George of Hesse-Darmstadt, true to the
tendencies of his line, advocated submission to the Catholic demands; but
Electoral Saxony now insisted on the revocation of the Edict, and the
restoration of spiritual lands and foundations to the condition in which they
had been before 1620.
It has been seen within what narrow limits the
Imperial Commander-in-chief had approved of the Restitution policy adopted by
the Emperor. He was likewise so dissatisfied with the responsibility incurred
by Ferdinand in taking part in the Mantuan War, that
at one time (October, 1629) he seems to have thought of a division of the
supreme command into two departments, of which he would reserve only the
northern to himself. The Mantuan War is described in
another chapter. Here it will suffice to state that in regard to the disputed
succession in Mantua and Montferrat Pope Urban VIII, involved in a variety of
quarrels with Ferdinand (as to the Hungarian sees, as to the Imperial fiefs in
Parma, as to the surrender of Prague University to the detested Jesuits) had
espoused the cause of the French claimant, the Duke of Nevers,
while Ferdinand asserted his right to dispose of Mantua as an Imperial fief. Richelieu,
now master of the Huguenots after the fall of La Rochelle and the suppression
of Henry de Rohan’s rising, had resolved upon
intervention. The successful French campaign of 1629 had led to the rapid
muster of an Imperial army at Lindau, for which Wallenstein
was obliged to detach 20,000 of his troops; and, though in 1630 Richelieu
himself took the field and conquered Savoy, the Imperialists under Gallas and Aldringer, after
repulsing a Venetian attempt at relief, took Mantua (July 18, 1630). They were,
however, unable to take Casale; and the peace with
the Emperor and Savoy, signed at Cherasco (April 16,
1631), which put France in possession of Pinerolo,
entirely justified Wallenstein's doubts as to the expediency of entering into
this war, even though it for the time made it difficult for France to cooperate
actively with Gustavus Adolphus.
When, on July 3, 1630, Ferdinand at last reached Ratisbon, his first concern was the election of his eldest
son and namesake as Roman King. But he was also troubled by the external
dangers threatening the Empire, and by the doubtful attitude of France. The
United Provinces had become more dangerous by their capture of Hertogenbosch
(September, 1629). About the same time Gustavus Adolphus had concluded with his Polish adversary the truce
of Altmark, equivalent to a peace on his own
conditions. His landing in Pomerania was now imminent; and an “honest
conjunction” between the Emperor and the Electors seemed indispensable for the
preservation of the Empire. Unhappily, however, the rift between Ferdinand and
Maximilian was still deep. Not in vain had the Papal suggestion of his own
election as Roman King sounded in the ear of the prudent but ambitious Bavarian
(January, 1629); not in vain had the draft of a French alliance actually been
submitted for his consideration (October). A French ambassador, Brulart, appeared at Ratisbon,
accompanied by the most confidential of all the confidential agents of the
Cardinal, the Capuchin Father Joseph.
The assembled Electors lost no time in replying to the
Emperor’s opening statements. Without ignoring the state of foreign affairs -
suggesting, indeed, that Sweden might be conciliated by the restoration of the
Dukes of Mecklenburg, and the United Provinces by the withdrawal of the Spanish
troops from the Empire - they laid most stress upon the sufferings caused by
the oppressions of the Imperial armies. Among other remedies for this evil,
they demanded the appointment of a “considerable member of the Empire”,
approved by the Electors, to the supreme command of its forces. No
demonstration could have made it more clear that neither Catholic nor
Protestant Electors would support the Emperor against foreign adversaries,
unless he assented to the one measure to which all these representations
pointed. Though taken by surprise, the Emperor, possibly in some measure tempted
by the nascent design of putting his son Ferdinand in the Commander-in-chief’s
place, prepared with magnificent callousness to sacrifice Wallenstein. The army
might thus be preserved though its chief was dismissed, and the wiles of France
be defeated all the same.
Dismissal of Wallenstein. [1630
Wallenstein, with his usual sensitiveness to changes
in the political atmosphere, had of late shown himself conciliatory in some
matters of foreign policy; but he had steadily gone on increasing the Imperial
army, till in April, 1630, he had been explicitly ordered to stop further
levies and to take steps towards the reduction of the existing bodies of
troops. In June he moved his head-quarters as near as Memmingen in Swabia. On August 11 certain of the Imperial councilors entered into pourparlers with the French ambassador at Ratisbon as to the renewal of peace; and two days later the
Emperor announced to the Catholic Electors his intention of making a change in
the command of his army. While the Protestant Electors, opposed to the
existence of any Imperial army at all, stood apart, the Catholic promptly took
up the question of the command; and, having secured the “hard assent” of
Maximilian, the Spiritual Electors proposed him as the new commander-in-chief,
a demand which if successful would have placed both the Catholic armies in the
Empire under the control of a sagacious politician wholly devoid of military
qualities. The Spanish ambassador vehemently protested; but the Emperor was
ready to discuss the proposal, though desirous of modifying it in various ways,
more especially by blending the two armies into one.
Though an understanding on this head was really
remote, and the suggestion of Archduke Ferdinand's succession as Imperial
Commander-in-chief had been quietly dropped, both Emperor and Electors adhered
to the conclusion that Wallenstein was to be dismissed. Early in September two
councilors were sent to break the decision to him, when it appeared that he was
prepared to accept it without any demur. Making no conditions, not even
providing for the safety of his Mecklenburg duchy, he withdrew to his Bohemian
domains; and on September 13 the Emperor informed all the heads of the
regiments of his army that its Commander-in-chief had been dismissed.
Wallenstein was a man of violent passions, and was rarely at pains to place any
restraint upon his expression of them. Who can say whether, with all his
insight - actual or fancied - into the future, he knew that his day of
retaliation would come?
For the moment, Tilly, who
never shrank from a duty imposed upon him, assumed the temporary command over
both armies, which it was intended to reduce to a total of 39,000 men. But the
difficulty as to how the Imperialist forces were to be maintained was of course
hard to meet, and a rapid diminution of them was inevitable. In these
circumstances there was but faint hope of a successful negotiation with France.
Notwithstanding the tidings of the fall of Mantua (July), French diplomacy
pressed the withdrawal of the Spanish and Imperial troops from Italy, while
Richelieu was secretly urging Gustavus Adolphus through Hercule de Charnacé, the French ambassador, to make war upon the
Emperor. The Catholic Electors were so intent upon a pacification with France
that on this head too Ferdinand was ready to give way. But Richelieu had no
present wish for a general peace, and, after the Kurfürstentag had broken up,
contented himself with concluding the Treaty of Cherasco and a subsequent agreement (April and June, 1631), limited to Italian affairs.
Thus the Spanish and Imperialist forces, at all events, were once more free.
The Emperor was unable at Ratisbon to carry the election of his eldest son as Roman King. The question of the
Edict of Restitution was urged by Saxony and Brandenburg, who went so far as to
announce a separate meeting of Protestant Estates which might have proceeded to
discuss the question of war contributions; but, as has been seen, it was
relegated to a “composition” meeting, to be held at Frankfort early in the
following year. When, in November, 1630, the Ratisbon assembly came to an end, unanimity had been reached by the Emperor, the
Catholic, and the Protestant Electors, on one point only. They had all agreed
on a missive to King Gustavus Adolphus,
in which they pointed out the unlawfulness of his recent irruption into the
Empire, and requested him to return home.
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