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READING HALL DOORS OF WISDOM

CAMBRIDGE MODERN HISTORY.THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR

 

CHAPTER III.

THE PROTESTANT COLLAPSE

1620-1630.

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 alchemists 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 Emperors 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 emigrants 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 Ferdinands 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 Fredericks 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 Elizabeths 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. ian of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, brother to the reigning Duke Frederick Ulric, and like his father, Duke Henry Julius (Rudolf IIs steadfast adherent), occupant of the see of Halberstadt, which he did not resign till 1623. This “temporal bishop”, as a contemporary English letter correctly calls him, was, to adopt Gardiners euphemistic phrase, “a born cavalry-officer” of the most irregular type, and had served the Dutch as a captain of dragoons before he was chosen, in 1616, by the Halberstadt Chapter. There is no evidence of his having met his kinswoman, the Queen of Bohemia, before; in the autumn of 1621 he levied on his own account a force of 10,000 men; but he may have made her acquaintance during her visit to the Court of his brother, when the latter, anxious to preserve his neutrality, discreetly stayed away. His declared devotion to her service casts a gleam of chivalrous romance over his career; but he was at the same time one of the most brutal of the condottieri of the war, and a foul-mouthed censor of would-be peacemakers, such as Elizabeths father. His earliest operations were, in connivance with Maurice of Hesse-Cassel, who had some 20,000 soldiery under arms, directed against Hesse-Darmstadt, but were frustrated, together with the junction of forces that might have ensued, by Tilly’s lieutenant, Count von Anholt. Christian then went into winter quarters in the dioceses of Paderborn and Münster; and the intolerable oppressions which he here practiced in the character of “God’s friend and the priest’s foe” (the superscription of the dollars coined by him out of the silver statue of St Liborius at Paderborn) were continued during his subsequent advance through the lands of Fulda and the Wetterau to Frankfort, which he reached in June, 1622.

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 captains 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 Badens 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 Margraves 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 Maximilians 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 Is 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.

B.

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. There was, however, another way of inducing the Emperor to act. The great north-German bishoprics, Bremen, Verden, and Minden, might, together with Halberstadt and Magdeburg, be secured to the Emperor's son, Archduke Leopold William, who would thus acquire a domain larger than any of the spiritual electorates. This was a scheme that commended itself not only to Ferdinand, but also to Wallenstein, who had hitherto looked askance at the principle of restitution, but who had nothing to say against it if so applied as to benefit the Imperial House and to advance its military power. And now the religious zeal of another group of the Emperor's advisers - the Nuncio Caraffa, and the confessor Lamormain - and Ferdinand's own religious enthusiasm, rarely appealed to in vain, were fired by the project of a great Counter-reformation, to go hand in hand with the restitution. On September 13, 1628. the order was given to draft the Edict; and after having been submitted to Mainz and Bavaria it was promulgated on March 6, 1629.

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. On these demands John George insisted, though willing to limit their adoption to a period of fifty years; and on the Catholic side a moderate party, headed by Maximilian of Bavaria, was now willing to postpone for forty years any further proceedings under the Edict. But before any settlement could be reached -and if reached, it could have had little practical value- the news came that Tilly had advanced into Saxony, and that the Saxon ambassadors had taken their departure from Frankfort. The Edict of Restitution remained uncancelled by the Emperor. Its provisions and its policy had deepened the animosity of the Protestant Princes and done something towards driving into armed resistance the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg. The difficulties and jealousies to which its execution had given rise had also augmented the bitter resentment nourished by Maximilian of Bavaria and the League against the Imperial policy and its all-powerful representative and agent, and had helped to bring about the dismissal of Wallenstein.

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.