THE GROWTH OF ABSOLUTISM IN FRANCE AND THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN BOURBONS
AND HABSBURGS, 1589-1661
GROWTH OF ABSOLUTISM IN FRANCE: HENRY IV, RICHELIEU, AND MAZARIN
For the first time in many years France in 1598 was at peace. The Edict
of Nantes, which in that year accorded qualified religious toleration
to the Huguenots, removed the most serious danger to internal order,
and the treaty of Vervins, concluded in the same year with the king of
Spain, put an end to a long and exhausting foreign war. Henry IV was
now free to undertake the internal reformation of his country.
Sorry, indeed, was the plight of France at the close of the sixteenth
century. Protracted civil and foreign wars had produced their
inevitable consequences. The state was nearly bankrupt. Country
districts lay largely uncultivated. Towns were burned or abandoned.
Roads were rough and neglected, and bridges in ruins. Many of the
discharged soldiers turned highwaymen, pillaged farmhouses, and robbed
travelers. Trade was at a standstill and the artisans of the cities
were out of work. During the wars, moreover, great noblemen had taken
many rights into their own hands and had acquired a habit of not
obeying the king. The French crown seemed to be in danger of losing
what power it had gained in the fifteenth century.
That the seventeenth century was to witness not a diminution but a
pronounced increase of royal power, was due to the character of the
French king at this critical juncture. Henry IV (1589-1610) was strong
and vivacious. With his high forehead, sparkling eyes, smiling mouth,
and his neatly pointed beard (_Henri quatre_), he was
prepossessing in looks, while his affability, simplicity, and constant
expression of interest in the welfare of his subjects earned him the
appellation of "Good King Henry." His closest companions knew that he
was selfish and avaricious, but that his quick decisions were likely to
be good and certain to be put in force. Above all, Henry had soldierly
qualities and would brook no disloyalty or disobedience.
[Sidenote: Sully]
Throughout his reign, Henry IV was well served by his chief minister,
the duke of Sully, [Footnote: 1560-1641.] an able, loyal, upright
Huguenot, though avaricious like the king and subject to furious fits
of jealousy and temper. Appointed to the general oversight of financial
affairs, Sully made a tour of inspection throughout the country and
completely reformed the royal finances. He forbade provincial governors
to raise money on their own authority, removed many abuses of tax-
collecting, and by an honest, rigorous administration was able between
1600 and 1610 to save an average of a million livres a year. The king
zealously upheld Sully's policy of retrenchment: he reduced the
subsidies to artists and the grants to favorites, and retained only a
small part of his army, sufficient to overawe rebellious nobles and to
restore order and security throughout the realm. To promote and
preserve universal peace, he even proposed the formation of a World
Confederation--his so-called "Grand Design"--which, however, came to
naught through the mutual jealousies and rival ambitions of the various
European sovereigns. It proved to be much too early to talk
convincingly of general pacifism and disarmament.
[Sidenote: Agricultural Development]
While domestic peace was being established and provision was being made
for immediate financial contingencies, Henry IV and his great minister
were both laboring to increase the resources of their country and
thereby to promote the prosperity and contentment of the people. Sully
believed that the true wealth of the nation lay in farming pursuits,
and, therefore, agriculture should be encouraged even, if necessary, to
the neglect of trade and industry. While the king allowed Sully to
develop the farming interests, he himself encouraged the new commercial
classes.
In order to promote agriculture, Sully urged the abolition of interior
customs lines and the free circulation of grain, subsidized stock
raising, forbade the destruction of the forests, drained swamps,
rebuilt the roads and bridges, and planned a vast system of canals.
On his side, Henry IV was contributing to the wealth of the middle
class. It was he who introduced silkworms and the mulberry trees, on
which they feed, thereby giving an impetus to the industry which is now
one of the most important in France. The beginnings of the industrial
importance of Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles date from the reign of Henry
IV.
The king likewise encouraged commerce. A French merchant marine was
built up by means of royal bounties. A navy was started. Little by
little the French began to compete for trade on the high seas at first
with the Dutch, and subsequently with the English. French trading posts
were established in India; and Champlain was dispatched to the New
World to lay the foundations of a French empire in America. It was
fortunate for France that she had two men like Henry IV and Sully, each
supplementing the work of the other.
The assassination of Henry IV by a crazed fanatic in 1610 threatened
for a time to nullify the effects of his labors, for supreme power
passed to his widow, Marie de' Medici, an ambitious but incompetent
woman, who dismissed Sully and undertook to act as regent for her nine-
year-old son, Louis XIII. The queen-regent was surrounded by worthless
favorites and was hated by the Huguenots, who feared her rigid
Catholicism, and by the nobles, Catholic and Huguenot alike, who were
determined to maintain their privileges and power.
The hard savings of Henry IV were quickly exhausted, and France once
more faced a financial crisis. In this emergency the Estates-General
was again convened (1614). Since the accession of Louis XI (1461), the
French monarchs with their absolutist tendencies had endeavored to
remove this ancient check upon their authority: they had convoked it
only in times of public confusion or economic necessity. Had the
Estates-General really been an effective body in 1614, it might have
taken a position similar to that of the seventeenth-century Parliament
in England and established constitutional government in France, but its
organization and personnel militated against such heroic action. The
three estates--clergy, nobles, and commoners (bourgeois)--sat
separately in as many chambers; the clergy and nobles would neither tax
themselves nor cooperate with the Third Estate; the commoners, many of
whom were Huguenots, were disliked by the court, despised by the First
and Second Estates, and quite out of sympathy with the peasants, the
bulk of the French nation. It is not surprising, under the
circumstances, that the session of 1614 lasted but three weeks and
ended as a farce: the queen-regent locked up the halls and sent the
representatives home--she needed the room for a dance, she said. It was
not until the momentous year of 1789--after a lapse of 175 years--that
the Estates-General again assembled.
After the fiasco of 1614, affairs went from bad to worse. Nobles and
Huguenots contended between themselves, and both against the court
favorites. As many as five distinct uprisings occurred. Marie de'
Medici was forced to relinquish the government, but Louis XIII, on
reaching maturity, gave evidence of little executive ability. The king
was far more interested in music and hunting than in business of state.
No improvement appeared until Cardinal Richelieu assumed the guidance
of affairs of state in 1624. Henceforth, the royal power was exercised
not so much by Louis XIII as by his great minister.
[Sidenote: Cardinal Richelieu]
Born of a noble family of Poitou, Armand de Richelieu (1585-1642), at
the age of twenty-one had been appointed bishop of the small diocese of
Luçon. His eloquence and ability as spokesman for the clergy in the
fatuous Estates-General of 1614 attracted the notice of Marie de'
Medici, who invited him to court, gave him a seat in the royal council,
and secured his nomination as a cardinal of the Roman Church. From 1624
until his death in 1642, Richelieu was the most important man in
France.
With undoubted loyalty and imperious will, with the most delicate
diplomacy and all the blandishments of subtle court intrigue, sometimes
with sternest and most merciless cruelty, Richelieu maintained his
influence over the king and proceeded to destroy the enemies of the
French crown.
[Sidenote: Richelieu's Policies]
Richelieu's policies were quite simple: (1) To make the royal power
supreme in France; (2) to make France predominant in Europe. The first
involved the removal of checks upon royal authority and the triumph of
absolutism; the second meant a vigorous foreign policy, leading to the
humiliation of the rival Habsburgs. In both these policies Richelieu
was following the general traditions of the preceding century,
essentially those of Henry IV, but to an exaggerated extent and with
unparalleled success. Postponing consideration of general European
affairs, let us first see what the great cardinal accomplished in
France.
[Sidenote: Disappearance of Representative Government]
First of all, Richelieu disregarded the Estates-General. He was
convinced of its futility and unhesitatingly declined to consult it.
Gradually the idea became current that the Estates-General was an out-
worn, medieval institution, totally unfit for modern purposes, and that
official business could best--and therefore properly--be conducted, not
by the representatives of the chief social classes in the nation, but
by personal appointees of the king. Thus the royal council became the
supreme lawmaking and administrative body in the country.
Local estates, or parliaments, continued to exist in certain of the
most recently acquired provinces of France, such as Brittany, Provence,
Burgundy, and Languedoc, but they had little influence except in
apportioning taxes: Richelieu tampered with their privileges and vetoed
many of their acts.
[Sidenote: The Royal Army]
The royal prerogative extended not only to matters of taxation and
legislation, including the right to levy taxes and to make expenditures
for any purpose without public accounting, but it was preserved and
enforced by means of a large standing army, which received its pay and
its orders exclusively from the crown. To the royal might, as well as
to its right, Richelieu contributed. He energetically aided Louis XIII
in organizing and equipping what proved to be the best army in Europe.
Two factions in the state aroused the cardinal's ire--one the
Huguenots, and the other the nobles--for both threatened the autocracy
which he was bent upon erecting. Both factions suffered defeat and
humiliation at his hands.
Richelieu, though a cardinal of the Roman Church, was more politician
and statesman than ecclesiastic; though living in an age of religious
fanaticism, he was by no means a bigot. As we shall presently see, this
Catholic cardinal actually gave military support to Protestants in
Germany--for political purposes; it was similarly for political
purposes that he attacked the Protestants in France.
As has already been pointed out, French Protestantism meant an
influential political party as well as a religion. Since Henry IV had
issued the Edict of Nantes, the Huguenots had had their own assemblies,
officers, judges, and even certain fortified towns, all of which
interfered with the sovereign authority and impaired that uniformity
which thoughtful royalists believed to be the very cornerstone of
absolutism. Richelieu had no desire to deprive the Huguenots of
religious freedom, but he was resolved that in political matters they
should obey the king. Consequently, when they revolted in 1625, he
determined to crush them. In spite of the considerable aid which
England endeavored to give them, the Huguenots were entirely subdued.
Richelieu's long siege of La Rochelle, lasting nearly fifteen months,
showed his forceful resolution. When the whole country had submitted,
the Edict of Alais was published (1629), leaving to the Protestants
freedom of conscience and of worship but depriving them of their
fortifications and forbidding them to hold assemblies. Public office
was still open to them and their representatives kept their judicial
posts. "The honest Huguenot retained all that he would have been
willing to protect with his life, while the factious and turbulent
Huguenot was deprived of the means of embarrassing the government."
The repression of the nobles was a similar statesmanlike achievement,
and one made in the face of redoubtable opposition. It had long been
customary to name noblemen as governors of the various provinces, but
the governors had gradually become masters instead of administrators:
they commanded detachments of the army; they claimed allegiance of the
garrisons in their towns; they repeatedly and openly defied the royal
will. The country, moreover, was sprinkled with noblemen's castles or
_châteaux_, protected by fortifications and armed retainers,
standing menaces to the prompt execution of the king's orders. Finally,
the noblemen at court, jealous of the cardinal's advancement and
spurred on by the intrigues of the disaffected Marie de' Medici or of
the king's own brother, hampered the minister at every turn. Of such
intolerable conditions, Richelieu determined to be quit.
Into the ranks of noble courtiers, Richelieu struck terror. By means of
spies and trickery, he ferreted out conspiracies and arbitrarily put
their leaders to death. Every attempt at rebellion was mercilessly
punished, no matter how exalted in rank the rebel might be. Richelieu
was never moved by entreaties or threats--he was as inexorable as fate
itself.
[Sidenote: Demolition of Private Fortifications ]
The cardinal did not confine his attention to noblemen at court. As
early as 1626 he published an edict ordering the immediate demolition
of all fortified castles not needed for defense against foreign
invasion. In carrying this edict into force, Richelieu found warm
supporters in peasantry and townsfolk who had long suffered from the
exactions and depredations of their noble but warlike neighbors. The
ruins of many a _chateau_ throughout modern France bear eloquent
witness to the cardinal's activity.
[Sidenote: Centralization of Administration]
[Sidenote: The Intendants]
Another enduring monument to Richelieu was the centralization of French
administration. The great minister was tired of the proud, independent
bearing of the noble governors. Without getting rid of them altogether,
he checked these proud officials by transferring most of their powers
to a new kind of royal officer, the intendant. Appointed by the crown
usually from among the intelligent, loyal middle class, each intendant
had charge of a certain district, supervising therein the assessment
and collection of royal taxes, the organization of local police or
militia, the enforcement of order, and the conduct of courts. These
intendants, with their wide powers of taxation, police, and justice,
were later dubbed, from their approximate number, the "thirty tyrants"
of France. But they owed their positions solely to the favor of the
crown; they were drawn from a class whose economic interests were long
and well served by the royal power; and their loyalty to the king,
therefore, could be depended upon. The intendants constantly made
reports to, and received orders from, the central government at Paris.
They were so many eyes, all over the kingdom, for an ever-watchful
Richelieu. And in measure as the power of the _bourgeois_
intendants increased, that of the noble governors diminished, until, by
the eighteenth century, the offices of the latter had become largely
honorary though still richly remunerative. To keep the nobles amused
and in money, and thereby out of mischief and politics, became, from
Richelieu's time, a maxim of the royal policy in France.
[Side Note: Richelieu's Significance]
Such, in brief, was the work of this grim figure that moved across the
stage at a critical period in French history. Richelieu, more than any
other man, was responsible for the assurance of absolutism in his
country at the very time when England, by means of revolution and
bloodshed, was establishing parliamentary government; and, as we shall
soon see, his foreign policy covered France with European glory and
prestige.
In person, Richelieu was frail and sickly, yet when clothed in his
cardinal's red robes he appeared distinguished and commanding. His
pale, drawn face displayed a firm determination and an inflexible will.
Unscrupulous, exacting, and without pity, he preserved to the end a
proud faith in his moral strength and in his loyalty to country and to
king.
Richelieu died in 1642, and the very next year the monarch whom he had
served so gloriously followed him to the grave, leaving the crown to a
boy of five years--Louis XIV.
[Side Note: Minority of Louis XIV]
[Sidenote: Cardinal Mazarin]
The minority of Louis XIV might have been disastrous to France and to
the royal power, had not the strong policies of Richelieu been
exemplified and enforced by another remarkable minister and cardinal,
Mazarin. Mazarin (1602-1661) was an Italian, born near Naples, educated
for an ecclesiastical career at Rome and in Spain. In the discharge of
several delicate diplomatic missions for the pope, he had acted as
nuncio at Paris, where he so ingratiated himself in Richelieu's favor
that he was invited to enter the service of the king of France, and in
1639 he became a naturalized Frenchman.
Despite his foreign birth and the fact that he never spoke French
without a bad accent, he rose rapidly in public service. He was named
cardinal and was recognized as Richelieu's disciple and imitator. From
the death of the greater cardinal in 1642 to his own death in 1661,
Mazarin actually governed France.
[Sidenote: Unrest of the Nobles]
Against the Habsburgs, Mazarin continued the great war which Richelieu
had begun and brought it to a successful conclusion. In domestic
affairs, he encountered greater troubles. The nobles had naturally
taken umbrage at the vigorous policies of Richelieu, from which Mazarin
seemed to have no thought of departing. They were strengthened,
moreover, by a good deal of popular dislike of Mazarin's foreign birth,
his avarice, his unscrupulous plundering of the revenues of the realm
for the benefit of his own family, and his tricky double-dealing ways.
[Sidenote: The Fronde]
The result was the Fronde, [Footnote: Probably so called from the name
of a street game played by Parisian children and often stopped by
policemen.] the last attempt prior to the French Revolution to cast off
royal absolutism in France. It was a vague popular protest coupled with
a selfish reaction on the part of the influential nobles: the pretext
was Mazarin's interference with the parlement of Paris.
[Sidenote: The Parlements]
The parlements were judicial bodies [Footnote: There were thirteen in
the seventeenth century.] which tried important cases and heard appeals
from lower courts. That of Paris, being the most eminent, had, in
course of time, secured to itself the right of registering royal
decrees--that is, of receiving the king's edicts in formal fashion and
entering them upon the statute books so that the law of the land might
be known generally. From making such a claim, it was only a step for
the parlement of Paris to refuse to register certain new edicts on the
ground that the king was not well informed or that they were in
conflict with older and more binding enactments. If these claims were
substantiated, the royal will would be subjected to revision by the
parlement of Paris. To prevent their substantiation, both Louis XIII
and Louis XIV held "beds of justice"--that is, appeared in person
before the parlement, and from their seat of cushions and pillows
declared their will regarding the new edict and directed that it be
promulgated. There were amusing scenes when the boy-king, at the
direction of Mazarin, gave orders in his shrill treble to the learned
lawyers and grave old judges.
Egged on by seeming popular sympathy and no doubt by the
contemporaneous political revolution in England, the parlement of Paris
at length defied the prime minister. It proclaimed its immunity from
royal control; declared the illegality of any public tax which it had
not freely and expressly authorized; ordered the abolition of the
office of intendant; and protested against arbitrary arrest or
imprisonment. To these demands, the people of Paris gave support--
barricades were erected in the streets, and Mazarin, whose loyal army
was still fighting in the Germanies, was obliged temporarily to
recognize the new order. Within six months, however, sufficient troops
had been collected to enable him to overawe Paris and to annul his
concessions.
[Sidenote: Suppression of the Fronde]
[Sidenote: Triumph of Absolutism in France]
Subsequent uprisings, engineered by prominent noblemen, were often more
humorous than harmful. To be sure, no less a commander than the great
Condé, one of the chief heroes of the Thirty Years' War, took arms
against the Cardinalists, as Mazarin's party was called, but so slight
was the aid which he received from the French people that he was
speedily driven from his country and joined the Spanish army. The
upshot of the Fronde was (1) the nobility were more discredited than
ever; (2) the parlement was forbidden to devote attention to political
or financial affairs; (3) Paris was disarmed and lost the right of
electing its own municipal officers; (4) the royal authority was even
stronger than under Richelieu because an unsuccessful attempt had been
made to weaken it. Henry IV, Richelieu, and Mazarin had made straight
the way for the despotism of Louis XIV.
STRUGGLE BETWEEN BOURBONS AND HABSBURGS THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
[Sidenote: Dynastic Character of Wars in the Seventeenth Century.]
Every European country, except England, was marked in the seventeenth
century by a continued growth of monarchical power. The kings were
busily engaged in strengthening their hold upon their respective states
and in reaching out for additional lands and wealth. International
wars, therefore, assumed the character of struggles for dynastic
aggrandizement. How might this or that royal family obtain wider
territories and richer towns? There was certainly sufficient national
life in western Europe to make the common people proud of their
nationality; hence the kings could normally count upon popular support.
But wars were undertaken upon the continent of Europe in the
seventeenth century not primarily for national or patriotic motives,
but for the exaltation of a particular royal family. Citizens of border
provinces were treated like so many cattle or so much soil that might
be conveniently bartered among the kings of France, Spain, or Sweden.
[Sidenote: Habsburg Dominions in 1600.]
This idea had been quite evident in the increase of the Habsburg power
during the sixteenth century. In an earlier chapter we have noticed how
that family had acquired one district after another until their
property included: (1) Under the Spanish branch--Spain, the Two
Sicilies, Milan, Franche Comte, the Belgian Netherlands, Portugal, and
a huge colonial empire; (2) Under the Austrian branch--Austria and its
dependencies, Hungary, Bohemia, and the title of Holy Roman Emperor.
Despite the herculean labors of Philip II, France remained outside
Habsburg influence, a big gap in what would otherwise have been a
series of connected territories.
[Sidenote: Ambition of the Bourbons.]
In measure as the French kings--the Bourbons--strengthened their
position in their own country, they looked abroad not merely to ward
off foreign attacks but to add land at their neighbors' expense.
Richelieu understood that his two policies went hand in glove--to make
the Bourbons predominant in Europe was but a corollary to making the
royal power supreme in France.
[Sidenote: The Thirty Years' War.]
The chief warfare of the seventeenth century centers, therefore, in the
long, terrible conflict between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons. Of this
struggle, the so-called Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) may be treated as
the first stage. Let us endeavor to obtain a clear idea of the
interests involved.
When Richelieu became the chief minister of Louis XIII (1624), he
found the Habsburgs in serious trouble and he resolved to take
advantage of the situation to enhance the prestige of the Bourbons. The
Austrian Habsburgs were facing a vast civil and religious war in the
Germanies, and the Spanish Habsburgs were dispatching aid to their
hard-pressed kinsmen.
The war, which proved momentous both to the Habsburgs and to their
enemies, resulted from a variety of reasons--religious, economic, and
political.
[Sidenote: The Thirty Years' War: Ecclesiastical Causes]
The peace of Augsburg (1555) had been expected to settle the religious
question in the Germanies. But in practice it had failed to fix two
important matters. In the first place, the provision forbidding further
secularization of church property ("Ecclesiastical Reservation") was
not carried out, nor could it be while human nature and human
temptation remained. Every Catholic ecclesiastic who became Protestant
would naturally endeavor to take his church lands with him. Then, in
the second place, the peace had recognized only Catholics and
Lutherans: meanwhile the Calvinists had increased their numbers,
especially in southern and central Germany and in Bohemia, and demanded
equal rights. In order to extort concessions from the emperor, a union
of Protestant princes was formed, containing among its members the
zealous young Calvinist prince of the Palatinate, Frederick, commonly
called the Elector Palatine of the Rhine. The Catholics were in an
equally belligerent frame of mind. Not only were they determined to
prevent further secularization of church property, but, emboldened by
the progress of the Catholic Reformation in the Germanies during the
second half of the sixteenth century, they were now anxious to revise
the earlier religious settlement in their own interest and to regain,
if possible, the lands that had been lost by the Church to the
Protestants. The Catholics relied for political and military support
upon the Catholic Habsburg emperor and upon Maximilian, duke of Bavaria
and head of the Catholic League of Princes. Religiously, the enemies of
the Habsburgs were the German Protestants.
[Sidenote: The Thirty Years' War: Political Causes]
But a hardly less important cause of the Thirty Years' War lay in the
politics of the Holy Roman Empire. The German princes had greatly
increased their territories and their wealth during the Protestant
Revolution. They aspired, each and all, to complete sovereignty. They
would rid themselves of the outworn bonds of a medieval empire and
assume their proper place among the independent and autocratic rulers
of Europe. On his side, the emperor was insistent upon strengthening
his position and securing a united powerful Germany under his personal
control. Politically, the enemies of the Habsburgs were the German
princes.
With the princes was almost invariably allied any European monarch who
had anything to gain from dividing Germany or weakening Habsburg
influence. In case of a civil war, the Habsburgs might reasonably
expect to find enemies in Denmark, Sweden, and France.
[Sidenote: Four Periods in the Thirty Years' War]
The war naturally divides itself into four periods: (1) The Bohemian
Revolt; (2) The Danish Period; (3) The Swedish Period; (4) The French
or International Period.
[Sidenote: 1. The Bohemian Revolt]
The signal for the outbreak of hostilities in the Germanics was given
by a rebellion in Bohemia against the Habsburgs. Following the death of
Rudolph II (1576-1612), a narrow-minded, art-loving, and unbalanced
recluse, his childless brother Matthias (1612-1619) had desired to
secure the succession of a cousin, Ferdinand II (1619-1637), who,
although a man of blameless life and resolute character, was known to
be devoted to the cause of absolutism and fanatically loyal to the
Catholic Church. Little opposition to this settlement was encountered
in the various Habsburg Bohemian dominions, except in Bohemia. In that
country, however, the nobles, many of whom were Calvinists, dreaded the
prospective accession of Ferdinand, who would be likely to deprive them
of their special privileges and to impede, if not to forbid, the
exercise of the Protestant religion in their territories. Already there
had been encroachments on their religious liberty.
One day in 1618, a group of Bohemian noblemen broke into the room where
the imperial envoys were stopping and hurled them out of a window into
a castle moat some sixty feet below. This so-called "defenestration" of
Ferdinand's representatives was followed by the proclamation of the
dethronement of the Habsburgs in Bohemia and the election to the
kingship of Frederick, the Calvinistic Elector Palatine. Frederick was
crowned at Prague and prepared to defend his new lands. Ferdinand II,
raising a large army in his other possessions, and receiving assistance
from Maximilian of Bavaria and the Catholic League as well as from
Tuscany and the Spanish Habsburgs, intrusted the allied forces to an
able veteran general, Count Tilly (1559-1632). King Frederick had
expected support from his father-in-law, James I of England, and from
the Lutheran princes of northern Germany, but in both respects he was
disappointed. What with parliamentary quarrels at home and a curiously
mistaken foreign policy of a Spanish alliance, James confined his
assistance to pompous advice and long words. Then, too, most of the
Lutheran princes, led by the tactful John George, elector of Saxony,
hoped by remaining neutral to obtain special concessions from the
emperor.
Within a very brief period, Tilly subdued Bohemia, drove out Frederick,
and reestablished the Habsburg power. Many rebellious nobles lost their
property and lives, and the practice of the Protestant religion was
again forbidden in Bohemia. Nor was that all. The victorious
imperialists drove the fugitive Frederick, now derisively dubbed the
"winter king," out of his original wealthy possessions on the Rhine,
into miserable exile, an outcast without land or money. The conquered
Palatinate was turned over to Maximilian of Bavaria, who was further
rewarded for his services by being recognized as an elector of the Holy
Roman Empire in place of the deposed Frederick.
The first period of the war was thus favorable to the Habsburg and
Catholic causes. Between 1618 and 1620, revolt had been suppressed in
Bohemia and an influential Rhenish electorate had been transferred from
Calvinist to Catholic hands.
Now, however, the northern Protestant princes took alarm. If they had
viewed with composure the failure of Frederick's foolhardy efforts in
Bohemia, they beheld with downright dismay the expansion of Bavaria and
the destruction of a balance of power long maintained between Catholic
and Protestant Germany. And so long as the ill-disciplined remnants of
Frederick's armies were behaving like highwaymen, pillaging and burning
throughout the Germanics, the emperor declined to consider the grant of
any concessions.
[Sidenote: 2. Danish Intervention. Christian IV]
At this critical juncture, while the Protestant princes were wavering
between obedience and rebellion, Christian IV of Denmark intervened and
precipitated the second period of the war. Christian IV (1588-1648) was
impulsive and ambitious: as duke of Holstein he was a member of the
Holy Roman Empire and opposed to Habsburg domination; as king of
Denmark and Norway he was anxious to extend his influence over the
North Sea ports; and as a Lutheran, he sought to champion the rights of
his German co-religionists and to help them retain the rich lands which
they had appropriated from the Catholic Church. In 1625, therefore,
Christian invaded Germany, supported by liberal grants of money from
England and by the troops of many of the German princes, both Calvinist
and Lutheran.
[Sidenote: Wallenstein]
Against the Danish invasion, Tilly unaided might have had difficulty to
stand, but fortune seemed to have raised up a codefender of the
imperialist cause in the person of an extraordinary adventurer,
Wallenstein. This man had enriched himself enormously out of the
recently confiscated estates of rebellious Bohemians, and now, in order
to benefit himself still further, he secured permission from the
Emperor Ferdinand II to raise an independent army of his own to restore
order in the empire and to expel the Danes. By liberal promises of pay
and plunder, the soldier of fortune soon recruited an army of some
50,000 men, and what a motley collection it was! Italian, Swiss,
Spaniard, German, Pole, Englishman, and Scot,--Protestant was welcomed
as heartily as Catholic,--any one who loved adventure or hoped for
gain, all united by the single tie of loyalty and devotion to
Wallenstein. The force was whipped into shape by the undoubted genius
of its commander and at once became an effective machine of war. Yet
the perpetual plundering of the land, on which it lived, was a constant
source of reproach to the army of Wallenstein.
The campaigning of the second period of the war took place in North
Germany. At Lutter, King Christian IV was defeated overwhelmingly by
the combined forces of Tilly and Wallenstein, and the Lutheran states
were left at the mercy of the Catholic League. Brandenburg openly
espoused the imperialist cause and aided Ferdinand's generals in
expelling the Danish king from German soil. Only the lack of naval
control of the Baltic and North seas prevented the victors from seizing
Denmark. The desperation of Christian and the growingly suspicious
activity of Sweden resulted in the peace of Lubeck (1629), by which the
king of Denmark was left in possession of Jutland, Schleswig, and
Holstein, but deprived of the German bishoprics which various members
of his family had taken from the Catholic Church.
Following up its successes, the Catholic League prevailed upon the
Emperor Ferdinand II in the same year (1629) to sign the Edict of
Restitution, restoring to the Church all the property that had been
secularized in violation of the peace of Augsburg of 1555. The edict
was to be executed by imperial commissioners, all of whom were
Catholics, and so well did they do their work that, within three years
of the promulgation of the edict, Roman Catholicism in the Germanies
had recovered five bishoprics, thirty Hanse towns, and nearly a hundred
monasteries, to say nothing of parish churches of which the number can
hardly be estimated.
So far, the religious and economic grievances against the Habsburgs had
been confined mainly to Calvinists, but now the Lutheran princes were
alarmed. The enforcement of the Edict of Restitution against all
Protestants alike was the signal for an emphatic protest from Lutherans
as well as from Calvinists. A favorable opportunity for intervention
seemed to present itself to the foremost Lutheran power--Sweden. Not
only were many Protestant princes in Germany in a mood to welcome
foreign assistance against the Catholics, but the emperor was less able
to resist invasion, since in 1630, yielding to the urgent entreaties of
the Catholic League, he dismissed the plundering and ambitious
Wallenstein from his service.
The king of Sweden at this time was Gustavus Adolphus (1611-1632), the
grandson of that Gustavus Vasa who had established both the
independence and the Lutheranism of his country. Gustavus Adolphus was
one of the most attractive figures of his age--in the prime of life,
tall, fair, and blue-eyed, well educated and versed in seven languages,
fond of music and poetry, skilled and daring in war, impetuous, well
balanced, and versatile. A rare combination of the idealist and the
practical man of affairs, Gustavus Adolphus had dreamed of making
Protestant Sweden the leading power in northern Europe and had
vigorously set to work to achieve his ends. His determination to
encircle the whole Baltic with his own territories--making it literally
a Swedish lake--brought him first into conflict with Muscovy, or, as we
call it today, Russia. Finland and Esthonia were occupied, and Russia
agreed in 1617 to exclusion from the Baltic sea coast. Next a stubborn
conflict with Poland (1621-1629) secured for Sweden the province of
Livonia and the mouth of the Vistula River. Gustavus then turned his
longing eyes to the Baltic coast of northern Germany, at the very time
when the Edict of Restitution promised him aggrieved allies in that
quarter.
[Sidenote: 3. Swedish Intervention: Gustavus Adolphus]
It was likewise at the very time when Cardinal Richelieu had crushed
out all insurrection, whether Huguenot or noble, in France and was
seeking some effective means of prolonging the war in the Germanies to
the end that the rival Habsburgs might be irretrievably weakened and
humiliated. He entered into definite alliance with Gustavus Adolphus
and provided him arms and money, for the time asking only that the
Protestant champion accord the liberty of Catholic worship in conquered
districts.
[Sidenote: French Aid]
Gustavus Adolphus landed in Pomerania in 1630 and proceeded to occupy
the chief northern fortresses and to treat for alliances with the
influential Protestant electors of Brandenburg and Saxony. While
Gustavus tarried at Potsdam, in protracted negotiation with the elector
of Brandenburg, Tilly and the imperialists succeeded, after a long
siege, in capturing the Lutheran stronghold of Magdeburg (May, 1631).
The fall of the city was attended by a mad massacre of the garrison,
and of armed and unarmed citizens, in streets, houses, and churches; at
least 20,000 perished; wholesale plundering and a general conflagration
completed the havoc. The sack of Magdeburg evoked the greatest
indignation from the Lutherans. Gustavus Adolphus, now joined by the
electors of Brandenburg and Saxony and by many other Protestant princes
of northern Germany, advanced into Saxony, where, in September, 1631,
he avenged the destruction of Magdeburg by defeating decisively the
smaller army of Tilly on the Breitenfeld, near Leipzig. Then Gustavus
turned southwestward, making for the Rhine valley, with the idea of
forming a union with the Calvinist princes. Only the prompt protest of
his powerful ally, Richelieu, prevented the rich archbishoprics of
Cologne, Trier, and Mainz from passing immediately under Swedish
control. Next Gustavus Adolphus turned east and invaded Bavaria. Tilly,
who had reassembled his forces, failed to check the invasion and lost
his life in a battle on the Lech (April, 1632). The victorious Swedish
king now made ready to carry the war into the hereditary dominions of
the Austrian Habsburgs. As a last resort to check the invader, the
emperor recalled Wallenstein with full power over his freelance army.
About the same time the emperor concluded a close alliance with his
kinsman, the ambitious Philip IV of Spain.
The memorable contest between the two great generals--Gustavus Adolphus
and Wallenstein--was brought to a tragic close in the late autumn of
the same year on the fateful field of Lützen. Wallenstein was defeated,
but Gustavus was killed. Although the Swedes continued the struggle,
they were comparatively few in numbers and possessed no such general as
their fallen king. On the other side, Wallenstein's loyalty could not
be depended upon; rumors reached the ear of the emperor that his
foremost general was negotiating with the Protestants to make peace on
his own terms; and Wallenstein was assassinated in his camp by
fanatical imperialists (February, 1634). The tragic removal of both
Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus, the economic exhaustion of the whole
empire, and the national desire on the part of many Protestant princes,
as well as on the part of the Catholic emperor, to rid the Germanies of
foreign soldiers and foreign influence--all these developments seemed
to point to the possibility of concluding the third, or Swedish, period
of the war, not perhaps as advantageously for the imperialist cause as
had ended the Bohemian revolt or the Danish intervention, but at any
rate in a spirit of reasonable compromise. In fact, in May, 1635, a
treaty was signed at Prague between the emperor and such princes as
were then willing to lay down their arms, whereby all the military
forces in the empire were henceforth to be under the direct control of
the emperor (with the exception of a contingent under the special
command of the Lutheran elector of Saxony); all princely leagues within
the empire were to be dissolved; mutual restoration of captured
territory was to be made; and, as to the fundamental question of the
ownership of ecclesiastical lands, it was settled that any such lands
actually held in the year 1627, whether acquired before or after the
religious peace of Augsburg of 1555, should continue so to be held for
forty years or until in each case an amicable arrangement could be
reached.
What wrecked the peace of Prague was not so much the disinclination of
the Protestant princes of Germany to accept its terms as the policy of
Cardinal Richelieu of France. Richelieu was convinced more than ever
that French greatness depended upon Habsburg defeat; he would not
suffer the princes to make peace with the emperor until the latter was
soundly trounced and all Germany devastated; instead of supplying the
Swedes and the German Protestants with assistance from behind the
scenes, he now would come boldly upon the stage and engage the emperor
in open combat.
[Sidenote: 4. French Intervention. Richelieu's Policy in the Germanies]
The final, or French, period of the Thirty Years' War lasted from 1635
to 1648--almost as long as the other three periods put together.
Richelieu entered the war not only to humble the Austrian Habsburgs
and, if possible, to wrest the valuable Rhenish province of Alsace from
the Holy Roman Empire, but also to strike telling blows at the
Continental supremacy of the Spanish Habsburgs, who, since 1632, had
been actively helping their German kinsmen. The Spanish king, it will
be remembered, still held the Belgian Netherlands, on the northern
frontier of France, and Franche Comté on the east, while oft-contested
Milan in northern Italy was a Spanish dependency. France was almost
surrounded by Spanish possessions, and Richelieu naturally declared war
against Spain as against the emperor. The wily French cardinal could
count upon the Swedes and many of the German Protestants to keep the
Austrian Habsburgs busily engaged and upon the assistance of the Dutch
in humbling the Spaniard, for Spain had not yet formally recognized the
independence of the Dutch Netherlands. Inasmuch as England was chiefly
concerned with troublesome internal affairs, the enemies of France
could hardly expect aid from across the Channel.
[Sidenote: Condé and Turenne]
At first, the French suffered a series of military reverses, due in
large part to unpreparedness, incompetent commanders, and ill-
disciplined troops. At one time it looked as if the Spaniards might
capture Paris. But with unflagging zeal and patriotic devotion,
Richelieu pressed on the war. He raised armies, drilled them, and
dispatched them into the Netherlands, into Alsace, into Franche Comté,
into northern Italy, and into Roussillon. He stirred up the Portuguese
to revolt and recover their independence (1640). And Mazarin, who
succeeded him in 1642, preserved his foreign policy intact. Young and
brilliant generals now appeared at the head of the French forces, among
whom were the dashing Prince of Condé (1621-1686), and the master
strategist Turenne (1611-1675), the greatest soldier of his day. The
former's victory of Rocroi (1643) dated the commencement of the
supremacy of France in war, a supremacy which was retained for a
century.
[Sidenote: Peace of Westphalia (1648)]
Finally, Turenne's masterly maneuvering against the Spaniards and his
forcible detachment of Maximilian of Bavaria from the imperial alliance
broke down effective opposition and ended the Thirty Years' War in the
Germanies. The various treaties which were signed in 1648 constituted
the peace of Westphalia.
The political clauses of the peace of Westphalia provided: (1) Each
German state was free to make peace or war without consulting the
emperor--each prince was invested with sovereign authority; (2) France
received Alsace, except the free city of Strassburg, and was confirmed
in the possession of the bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun; (3)
Sweden was given territory in Pomerania controlling the mouth of the
Oder, and the secularized bishopric of Bremen, surrounding the city of
that name and dominating the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser; (4)
France and Sweden received votes in the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire,
with implied rights to exercise an oversight of German affairs; (5)
Brandenburg secured eastern Pomerania and several bishoprics, including
Magdeburg; (6) The Palatinate was divided between Maximilian of Bavaria
and the son of the deposed Frederick--each bearing the title of
elector; (7) Switzerland and the United Provinces (Holland) were
formally recognized as independent of the empire and of Spain
respectively.
The religious difficulties were settled as follows: (1) Calvinists were
to share all the privileges of their Lutheran fellow-Protestants; (2)
All church property was to be secured in the possession of those,
whether Catholics or Protestants, who held it on 1 January, 1624; (3)
An equal number of Catholic and Protestant judges were to sit in the
imperial courts. Inasmuch as after 1648 there was little relative
change of religion in Germany, this religious settlement was
practically permanent.
[Sidenote: Evil Effects of the Thirty Years' War on Germany]
One of the most striking results of the peace of Westphalia was the
completion of a long process of political disruption in the Germanies.
Only the form of the Holy Roman Empire survived. The already shadowy
imperial power became a mere phantom, nor was a change destined to come
until, centuries later, the Prussian Hohenzollerns should replace the
Austrian Habsburgs. Meanwhile the weakness of Germany enabled France to
extend her northern boundaries toward the Rhine.
Far more serious than her political losses were the economic results to
Germany. The Thirty Years' War left Germany almost a desert. "About
two-thirds of the total population had disappeared; the misery of those
that survived was piteous in the extreme. Five-sixths of the villages
in the empire had been destroyed. We read of one in the Palatinate that
in two years had been plundered twenty-eight times. In Saxony, packs of
wolves roamed about, for in the north quite one-third of the land had
gone out of cultivation, and trade had drifted into the hands of the
French or Dutch. Education had almost disappeared; and the moral
decline of the people was seen in the coarsening of manners and the
growth of superstition, as witnessed by frequent burning of witches."
[Sidenote: Continuation of War between French Bourbons and Spanish
Hapsburgs. Peace of the Pyrenees 1659]
The peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War in the Germanies,
but it did not stop the bitter contest between France and Spain.
Mazarin was determined to secure even greater territorial gains for his
country, and, although Condé deserted to Spain, Turenne was more than a
match for any commander whom the Spaniards could put in the field.
Mazarin, moreover, by ceding the fortress of Dunkirk to the English,
obtained aid from the veteran troops of Cromwell. It was not until 1659
that, in the celebrated treaty of the Pyrenees, peace was concluded
between France and Spain. This provided: (1) France added the province
of Roussillon on her southern frontier and that of Artois on the north;
(2) France was recognized as protector of the duchy of Lorraine; (3)
Condé was pardoned and reinstated in French service; (4) Maria Theresa,
eldest daughter of the Spanish Habsburg king, Philip IV, was to marry
the young French Bourbon king, Louis XIV, and, in consideration of the
payment of a large dowry, was to renounce all claims to the Spanish
dominions.
The treaty of the Pyrenees was the last important achievement of
Cardinal Mazarin. But before he died in 1661 he had the satisfaction of
seeing the triumph of those policies which he had adopted from
Richelieu: the royal power firmly established within France; the
Habsburgs, whether Austrian or Spanish, defeated and humiliated; the
Bourbon king of France respected and feared throughout Europe.
[Sidenote: Development of International Law]
[Sidenote: In Italy]
Not least among the results of the conflict between Habsburgs and
Bourbons was the stimulus given to the acceptance of fixed principles
of international law and of definite usages for international
diplomacy. In ancient times the existence of the all-embracing Roman
Empire had militated against the development of international relations
as we know them to-day. In the early middle ages feudal society had
left little room for diplomacy. Of course, both in ancient times and in
the middle ages, there had been embassies and negotiations and
treaties; but the embassies had been no more than temporary missions
directed to a particular end, and there had been neither permanent
diplomatic agents nor a professional diplomatic class. To the
development of such a class the Italy of the fifteenth century had
given the first impetus. Northern and central Italy was then filled, as
we have discovered, with a large number of city-states, all struggling
for political and economic mastery, all dependent for the maintenance
of a "balance of power" upon alliances and counter alliances, all
employing diplomacy quite as much as war in the game of peninsular
politics. It was in Italy that there grew up the institution of
passports, the distinction between armed forces and civilians,
international comity, and in fact the very notion that states have an
interest in the observance of law and order among themselves. Of
special importance, in this connection, was Venice, which gradually
evolved a regular system of permanent diplomats, and incidentally
obliged her ambassadors to present detailed reports on foreign affairs;
and, because of their commercial preeminence in the Mediterranean, the
Venetians contributed a good deal to the development of rules of the
sea first in time of peace, and subsequently in time of war.
[Sidenote: In Europe in Sixteenth Century]
During the sixteenth century the Italian ideas of statecraft and inter-
state relations, ably championed by Machiavelli, were communicated to
the nations of western Europe. Permanent embassies were established in
foreign countries by the kings of Spain, Portugal, France, and England.
Customs of international intercourse grew up. Diplomacy became a
recognized occupation of distinguished statesmen.
[Sidenote: Thirty Years' War and International Law]
Two institutions might have thwarted or retarded the development of
international law: one was the Catholic Church with its international
organization and its claim to universal spiritual supremacy; the other
was the Holy Roman Empire, with its claim to temporal predominance and
with its insistence upon the essential inequality between itself and
all other states. But the Protestant Revolt in the sixteenth century
dealt a severe blow to the claim and power of the Catholic Church. And
the long struggle between Bourbons and Habsburgs, culminating in the
Thirty Years' War, reduced the Holy Roman Empire to a position, in
theory as well as in fact, certainly no higher than that of the
national monarchies of France, England, and Spain, or that of the Dutch
Republic.
From the treaties of Westphalia emerged a real state-system in Europe,
based on the theory of the essential equality of independent sovereign
states, though admitting of the fact that there were Great Powers.
Henceforth the public law of Europe was to be made by diplomats and by
congresses of ambassadors. Westphalia pointed the new path.
Another aspect of international relations was emphasized in the first
half of the seventeenth century. It was the Thirty Years' War, with its
revolting cruelty, which brought out the contrast between the more
humane practice of war as an art in Italy and the savagery which
disgraced the Germanies. The brutality of the struggle turned thinkers'
attention to the need of formulating rules for the protection of non-
combatants in time of war, the treatment of the sick and wounded, the
prohibition of wanton pillage and other horrors which shocked the
awakening conscience of seventeenth-century Europe. It was the
starting-point of the publication of treatises on international law.
[Sidenote: Grotius]
The first effective work, the one which was destined long to influence
sovereigns and diplomats, was Grotius's _On the Law of War and
Peace_. Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) [Footnote: Known in his native
country as Huig van Groot. The last years of his life he spent as
ambassador of Sweden at the French court.] was a learned Dutch
humanist, whose active participation in politics against the stadholder
of the Netherlands and whose strong protests for religious toleration
against the dominant orthodox Calvinists of his country combined to
bring upon himself a sentence of life imprisonment. Immured in a Dutch
fortress in 1619, he managed to escape and fled to Paris, where he
prepared and in 1625 published his immortal work. _On the Law of War
and Peace_ is an exhaustive and masterly text-book--the first and
one of the best of the systematic treatises on the fundamental
principles of international law.
ADDITIONAL READING
HENRY IV, RICHELIEU, AND MAZARIN. Brief general accounts: H. O.
Wakeman, _The Ascendancy of France, 1598-1715_ (1894), ch. i-vii; Mary
A. Hollings, _Renaissance and Reformation, 1453-1660_ (1910), ch. xi,
xii; J. H. Sacret, _Bourbon and Vasa, 1610-1715_ (1914), ch. i-vii; A.
J. Grant, _The French Monarchy, 1483-1789_, Vol. I (1900), ch. vi-ix;
G. W. Kitchin, _A History of France_, 3d and 4th editions (1894-1899),
Vol. II, Book IV, ch. i-iii, Vol. III, Book IV, ch. iv-viii; H. T.
Dyer, _A History of Modern Europe from the Fall of Constantinople_, 3d
ed. rev. by Arthur Hassall (1901), ch. xxix-xxxv; Victor Duruy,
_History of Modern Times_, trans. and rev. by E. A. Grosvenor (1894),
ch. xvii, xviii, xx; _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. II, ch. xx (by
Stanley Leathes, on Henry IV), Vol. IV, ch. iv (on Richelieu), xxi (on
Mazarin); _Histoire générale_, Vol. V, ch. vi-viii, Vol. VI, ch. i.
More detailed works: _Histoire de France_, ed. by Ernest Lavisse, Vol.
VI, Part I (1904), Livre IV (on Henry IV), Vol. VI, Part II (1905),
Livres I-III (on Henry IV and Richelieu, by J. H. Mariéjol), Vol. VII,
Part I (1906), Livre I (on Mazarin, by E. Lavisse); P. F. Willert,
_Henry of Navarre_ (1897), in "Heroes of the Nations" Series; C. C.
Jackson, _The First of the Bourbons_, 2 vols. (1890); J. B. Perkins,
_Richelieu and the Growth of French Power_ (1900), in the "Heroes of
the Nations" Series, and, by the same author, an admirable writer and
authority on the whole period, _France under Mazarin_, 2 vols. (1886);
Georges (Vicomte) d'Avenel, _Richelieu et la monarchie absolue_, 4
vols. (1884-1890), the foremost French work on the subject; Gabriel
Hanotaux, _Origines de l'institution des intendants de provinces_
(1884), a careful study of the beginnings of the office of intendant by
a famous French statesman and historian; P. A. Chéruel, _Histoire de
France pendant la minorité de Louis XIV_, 4 vols. (1879-1880), and, by
the same author, _Histoire de France sous le ministère de Mazarin,
1651-1661_, 3 vols. (1882), a very elaborate treatment of Mazarin's
public career in France; Louis Batiffol, _The Century of the
Renaissance in France_, Eng. trans. by Elsie F. Buckley (1916),
containing an excellent chapter on the French monarchy at the close of
the sixteenth century.
THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. General treatments: E. F. Henderson, _A Short
History of Germany_, Vol. I (1902), ch. xvii, xviii, a good, short
introduction; S. R. Gardiner, _The Thirty Years' War_ (1897), in the
"Epochs of Modern History" Series, the best brief survey; _History of
All Nations_, Vol. XII, ch. iv-viii, by Martin Philippson, a well-known
German historian; _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. IV (1906), ch. i,
iii, v-vii, xiii, xiv, xx, xxii; _Histoire générale_, Vol. V, ch. xii;
Anton Gindely, _The Thirty Years' War_, trans. from the German by
Andrew Ten Brook, 2 vols. (1884), a popular treatment by a recognized
authority in this field, breaking off, unfortunately, in the year 1623;
Gustav Droysen, _Das Zeitalter des dreissigjährigen Krieges_ (1888) and
Georg Winter, _Geschichte des dreissigjährigen Krieges_ (1893), two
bulky volumes in the Oncken Series devoted respectively to the
political and military aspects of the war; Émile Charvériat, _Histoire
de la guerre de trente ans_, 2 vols. (1878), a reliable French account
of the whole struggle. On the history of the Germanies from the
religious peace of Augsburg to the peace of Westphalia there is the
painstaking _Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Gegenreformation und
des dreissigjährigen Krieges, 1555-1648_, by Moritz Ritter, 3 vols.
(1889-1908). For the history of Austria during the period, see Franz
Kroncs, _Handbuch der Geschichte Oesterreichs von der ältesten Zeit_,
Vol. III (1877), Books XIV-XV. For the Netherlands, with special
reference to Spain's part in the war: Henri Pirenne, _Histoire de
Belgique_, Vol. IV, _1567-1648_ (1911). For Bohemia: Ernest Denis, _Fin
de l'indépendance bohême_, Vol. II (1890), and, by the same author, _La
Bohême depuis la Montagne-Blanche_, Vol. I (1903). For Denmark and
Sweden: R. N. Bain, _Scandinavia, a Political History of Denmark,
Norway, and Sweden, from 1513 to 1900_ (1905). There is a convenient
biography of _Gustavus Adolphus_ by C. R. L. Fletcher in the "Heroes of
the Nations" Series (1890), and a more detailed study in German by
Gustav Droysen, 2 vols. (1869-1870). On Wallenstein there are two
standard German works: Leopold von Ranke, _Geschichte Wallensteins_, 3d
ed. (1872), and Anton Gindely, _Waldstein_, 1625-1630, 2 vols. (1886).
The best brief treatment of European international relations in the
time of Richelieu and Mazarin is Emile Bourgeois, _Manuel historique de
politique étrangère_, 4th ed., Vol. I (1906), ch. i, ii, vi. For a
brief treatment of the development of international law during the
period, see D. J. Hill, _History of Diplomacy in the International
Development of Europe_, Vol. II (1906), ch. vii. The treaties of
Westphalia are in the famous old compilation of Jean Dumont, _Corps
universel diplomatique du droit des gens_, 8 vols. (1726-1731).