THE DEATH OF WALLENSTEIN AND THE TREATY OF PRAGUE.
SECTION I.--_French Influence in Germany._
[Sidenote: 1631.
§ 1. Bernhard of Saxe Weimar.]
In Germany, after the death of Gustavus at Lützen, it was as it was in
Greece after the death of Epaminondas at Mantinea. "There was more
disturbance and more dispute after the battle than before it." In
Sweden, Christina, the infant daughter of Gustavus, succeeded
peaceably to her father's throne, and authority was exercised without
contradiction by the Chancellor Oxenstjerna. But, wise and prudent as
Oxenstjerna was, it was not in the nature of things that he should be
listened to as Gustavus had been listened to. The chiefs of the army, no
longer held in by a soldier's hand, threatened to assume an almost
independent position. Foremost of these was the young Bernhard of
Weimar, demanding, like Wallenstein, a place among the princely houses
of Germany. In his person he hoped the glories of the elder branch of
the Saxon House would revive, and the disgrace inflicted upon it by
Charles V. for its attachment to the Protestant cause would be repaired.
He claimed the rewards of victory for those whose swords had gained it,
and payment for the soldiers, who during the winter months following the
victory at Lützen had received little or nothing. His own share was to
be a new duchy of Franconia, formed out of the united bishoprics of
Würzburg and Bamberg. Oxenstjerna was compelled to admit his
pretensions, and to confirm him in his duchy.
[Sidenote: § 2. The League of Heilbronn.]
The step was thus taken which Gustavus had undoubtedly contemplated, but
which he had prudently refrained from carrying into action. The seizure
of ecclesiastical lands in which the population was Catholic was as
great a barrier to peace on the one side as the seizure of the
Protestant bishoprics in the north had been on the other. There was,
therefore, all the more necessity to be ready for war. If a complete
junction of all the Protestant forces was not to be had, something at
least was attainable. On April 23, 1633, the League of Heilbronn was
signed. The four circles of Swabia, Franconia, and the Upper and Lower
Rhine formed a union with Sweden for mutual support.
[Sidenote: § 3. Defection of Saxony.]
It is not difficult to explain the defection of the Elector of Saxony.
The seizure of a territory by military violence had always been most
obnoxious to him. He had resisted it openly in the case of Frederick in
Bohemia. He had resisted it, as far as he dared, in the case of
Wallenstein in Mecklenburg. He was not inclined to put up with it in the
case of Bernhard in Franconia. Nor could he fail to see that with the
prolongation of the war, the chances of French intervention were
considerably increasing.
[Sidenote: 1631.
§ 4. French politics.]
In 1631 there had been a great effervescence of the French feudal
aristocracy against the royal authority. But Richelieu stood firm. In
March the king's brother, Gaston Duke of Orleans, fled from the country.
In July his mother, Mary of Medici, followed his example. But they had
no intention of abandoning their position. From their exile in the
Spanish Netherlands they formed a close alliance with Spain, and carried
on a thousand intrigues with the nobility at home. The Cardinal smote
right and left with a heavy hand. Amongst his enemies were the noblest
names in France. The Duke of Guise shrank from the conflict and retired
to Italy to die far from his native land. The keeper of the seals died
in prison. His kinsman, a marshal of France, perished on the scaffold.
In the summer of the year 1632, whilst Gustavus was conducting his last
campaign, there was a great rising in the south of France. Gaston
himself came to share in the glory or the disgrace of the rebellion. The
Duke of Montmorenci was the real leader of the enterprise. He was a bold
and vigorous commander, the Rupert of the French cavaliers. But his gay
horsemen dashed in vain against the serried ranks of the royal infantry,
and he expiated his fault upon the scaffold. Gaston, helpless and
low-minded as he was, could live on, secure under an ignominious pardon.
[Sidenote: § 5. Richelieu did for France all that could be done.]
It was not the highest form of political life which Richelieu was
establishing. For the free expression of opinion, as a foundation of
government, France, in that day, was not prepared. But within the limits
of possibility, Richelieu's method of ruling was a magnificent
spectacle. He struck down a hundred petty despotisms that he might exalt
a single despotism in their place. And if the despotism of the Crown was
subject to all the dangers and weaknesses by which sooner or later the
strength of all despotisms is eaten away, Richelieu succeeded for the
time in gaining the co-operation of those classes whose good will was
worth conciliating. Under him commerce and industry lifted up their
heads, knowledge and literature smiled at last. Whilst Corneille was
creating the French drama, Descartes was seizing the sceptre of the
world of science. The first play of the former appeared on the stage in
1629. Year by year he rose in excellence, till in 1636 he produced the
'Cid;' and from that time one masterpiece followed another in rapid
succession. Descartes published his first work in Holland in 1637, in
which he laid down those principles of metaphysics which were to make
his name famous in Europe.
[Sidenote: § 6. Richelieu and Germany.]
All this, however welcome to France, boded no good to Germany. In the
old struggles of the sixteenth century, Catholic and Protestant each
believed himself to be doing the best, not merely for his own country,
but for the world in general. Alva, with his countless executions in the
Netherlands, honestly believed that the Netherlands as well as Spain
would be the better for the rude surgery. The English volunteers, who
charged home on a hundred battle-fields in Europe, believed that they
were benefiting Europe, not England alone. It was time that all this
should cease, and that the long religious strife should have its end. It
was well that Richelieu should stand forth to teach the world that there
were objects for a Catholic state to pursue better than slaughtering
Protestants. But the world was a long way, in the seventeenth century,
from the knowledge that the good of one nation is the good of all, and
in putting off its religious partisanship France became terribly hard
and selfish in its foreign policy. Gustavus had been half a German, and
had sympathized deeply with Protestant Germany. Richelieu had no
sympathy with Protestantism, no sympathy with German nationality. He
doubtless had a general belief that the predominance of the House of
Austria was a common evil for all, but he cared chiefly to see Germany
too weak to support Spain. He accepted the alliance of the League of
Heilbronn, but he would have been equally ready to accept the alliance
of the Elector of Bavaria if it would have served him as well in his
purpose of dividing Germany.
[Sidenote: § 7. His policy French, not European.]
The plan of Gustavus might seem unsatisfactory to a patriotic German,
but it was undoubtedly conceived with the intention of benefiting
Germany. Richelieu had no thought of constituting any new organization
in Germany. He was already aiming at the left bank of the Rhine. The
Elector of Treves, fearing Gustavus, and doubtful of the power of Spain
to protect him, had called in the French, and had established them in
his new fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, which looked down from its height
upon the low-lying buildings of Coblentz, and guarded the junction of
the Rhine and the Moselle. The Duke of Lorraine had joined Spain, and
had intrigued with Gaston. In the summer of 1632 he had been compelled
by a French army to make his submission. The next year he moved again,
and the French again interfered, and wrested from him his capital of
Nancy. Richelieu treated the old German frontier-land as having no
rights against the King of France.
SECTION II.--_Wallenstein's Attempt to dictate Peace._
[Sidenote: § 1. Saxon negotiations with Wallenstein.]
Already, before the League of Heilbronn was signed, the Elector of
Saxony was in negotiation with Wallenstein. In June peace was all but
concluded between them. The Edict of Restitution was to be cancelled. A
few places on the Baltic coast were to be ceded to Sweden, and a
portion at least of the Palatinate was to be restored to the son of the
Elector Frederick, whose death in the preceding winter had removed one
of the difficulties in the way of an agreement. The precise form in
which the restitution should take place, however, still remained to be
settled.
Such a peace would doubtless have been highly disagreeable to
adventurers like Bernhard of Weimar, but it would have given the
Protestants of Germany all that they could reasonably expect to gain,
and would have given the House of Austria one last chance of taking up
the championship of national interests against foreign aggression.
[Sidenote: § 2. Opposition to Wallenstein.]
Such last chances, in real life, are seldom taken hold of for any useful
purpose. If Ferdinand had had it in him to rise up in the position of a
national ruler, he would have been in that position long before. His
confessor, Father Lamormain, declared against the concessions which
Wallenstein advised, and the word of Father Lamormain had always great
weight with Ferdinand.
[Sidenote: § 3. General disapprobation of his proceedings.]
Even if Wallenstein had been single-minded he would have had difficulty
in meeting such opposition. But Wallenstein was not single-minded. He
proposed to meet the difficulties which were made to the restitution of
the Palatinate by giving the Palatinate, largely increased by
neighbouring territories, to himself. He would thus have a fair
recompense for the loss of Mecklenburg, which he could no longer hope to
regain. He fancied that the solution would satisfy everybody. In fact,
it displeased everybody. Even the Spaniards, who had been on his side in
1632 were alienated by it. They were especially jealous of the rise of
any strong power near the line of march between Italy and the Spanish
Netherlands.
[Sidenote: § 4. Wallenstein and the Swedes.]
The greater the difficulties in Wallenstein's way the more determined he
was to overcome them. Regarding himself, with some justification, as a
power in Germany, he fancied himself able to act at the head of his army
as if he were himself the ruler of an independent state. If the Emperor
listened to Spain and his confessor in 1633 as he had listened to
Maximilian and his confessor in 1630, Wallenstein might step forward and
force upon him a wiser policy. Before the end of August he had opened a
communication with Oxenstjerna, asking for his assistance in effecting a
reasonable compromise, whether the Emperor liked it or not. But he had
forgotten that such a proposal as this can only be accepted where there
is confidence in him who makes it. In Wallenstein--the man of many
schemes and many intrigues--no man had any confidence whatever.
Oxenstjerna cautiously replied that if Wallenstein meant to join him
against the Emperor he had better be the first to begin the attack.
[Sidenote: § 5. Was he in earnest?]
Whether Wallenstein seriously meant at this time to move against the
emperor it is impossible to say. He loved to enter upon plots in every
direction without binding himself to any; but he was plainly in a
dangerous position. How could he impose peace upon all parties when no
single party trusted him?
[Sidenote: § 6. He attacks the Saxons.]
If he was not trusted, however, he might still make himself feared.
Throwing himself vigorously upon Silesia, he forced the Swedish
garrisons to surrender, and, presenting himself upon the frontiers of
Saxony, again offered peace to the two northern electors.
[Sidenote: § 7. Bernhard at Ratisbon.]
But Wallenstein could not be everywhere. Whilst the electors were still
hesitating, Bernhard made a dash at Ratisbon, and firmly established
himself in the city, within a little distance of the Austrian frontier.
Wallenstein, turning sharply southward, stood in the way of his further
advance, but he did nothing to recover the ground which had been lost.
He was himself weary of the war. In his first command he had aimed at
crushing out all opposition in the name of the imperial authority. His
judgment was too clear to allow him to run the old course. He saw
plainly that strength was now to be gained only by allowing each of the
opposing forces their full weight. 'If the Emperor,' he said, 'were to
gain ten victories it would do him no good. A single defeat would ruin
him.' In December he was back again in Bohemia.
[Sidenote: § 8. Wallenstein's difficulties.]
It was a strange, Cassandra-like position, to be wiser than all the
world, and to be listened to by no one; to suffer the fate of supreme
intelligence which touches no moral chord and awakens no human sympathy.
For many months the hostile influences had been gaining strength at
Vienna. There were War-Office officials whose wishes Wallenstein
systematically disregarded; Jesuits who objected to peace with heretics
at all; friends of the Bavarian Maximilian who thought that the country
round Ratisbon should have been better defended against the enemy; and
Spaniards who were tired of hearing that all matters of importance were
to be settled by Wallenstein alone.
[Sidenote: § 9. Opposition of Spain.]
The Spanish opposition was growing daily. Spain now looked to the German
branch of the House of Austria to make a fitting return for the aid
which she had rendered in 1620. Richelieu, having mastered Lorraine, was
pushing on towards Alsace, and if Spain had good reasons for objecting
to see Wallenstein established in the Palatinate, she had far better
reasons for objecting to see France established in Alsace. Yet for all
these special Spanish interests Wallenstein cared nothing. His aim was
to place himself at the head of a German national force, and to regard
all questions simply from his own point of view. If he wished to see the
French out of Alsace and Lorraine, he wished to see the Spaniards out of
Alsace and Lorraine as well.
[Sidenote: § 10. The Cardinal Infant.]
And, as was often the case with Wallenstein, a personal difference arose
by the side of the political difference. The Emperor's eldest son,
Ferdinand, the King of Hungary, was married to a Spanish Infanta, the
sister of Philip IV., who had once been the promised bride of Charles I.
of England. Her brother, another Ferdinand, usually known from his rank
in Church and State as the Cardinal-Infant, had recently been appointed
Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, and was waiting in Italy for
assistance to enable him to conduct an army through Germany to Brussels.
That assistance Wallenstein refused to give. The military reasons which
he alleged for his refusal may have been good enough, but they had a
dubious sound in Spanish ears. It looked as if he was simply jealous of
Spanish influence in Western Germany.
[Sidenote: § 11. The Emperor's hesitation.]
Such were the influences which were brought to bear upon the Emperor
after Wallenstein's return from Ratisbon in December. Ferdinand, as
usual, was distracted between the two courses proposed. Was he to make
the enormous concessions to the Protestants involved in the plan of
Wallenstein; or was he to fight it out with France and the Protestants
together according to the plan of Spain? To Wallenstein by this time the
Emperor's resolutions had become almost a matter of indifference. He
had resolved to force a reasonable peace upon Germany, with the Emperor,
if it might be so; without him, if he refused his support.
[Sidenote: 1634.
§ 12. Wallenstein and the army.]
Wallenstein was well aware that his whole plan depended on his hold over
the army. In January he received assurances from three of his principal
generals, Piccolomini, Gallas, and Aldringer, that they were ready to
follow him wheresoever he might lead them, and he was sanguine enough to
take these assurances for far more than they were worth. Neither they
nor he himself were aware to what lengths he would go in the end. For
the present it was a mere question of putting pressure upon the Emperor
to induce him to accept a wise and beneficent peace.
SECTION III.--_Resistance to Wallenstein's Plans._
[Sidenote: § 1. Oñate's movements.]
The Spanish ambassador, Oñate, was ill at ease. Wallenstein, he was
convinced, was planning something desperate. What it was he could hardly
guess; but he was sure that it was something most prejudicial to the
Catholic religion and the united House of Austria. The worst was that
Ferdinand could not be persuaded that there was cause for suspicion.
"The sick man," said Oñate, speaking of the Emperor, "will die in my
arms without my being able to help him."
[Sidenote: § 2. Belief at Vienna that Wallenstein was a traitor.]
Such was Oñate's feelings toward the end of January. Then came
information that the case was worse than even he had deemed possible.
Wallenstein, he learned, had been intriguing with the Bohemian exiles,
who had offered, with Richelieu's consent, to place upon his head the
crown of Bohemia, which had fourteen years before been snatched from the
unhappy Frederick. In all this there was much exaggeration. Though
Wallenstein had listened to these overtures, it is almost certain that
he had not accepted them. But neither had he revealed them to the
government. It was his way to keep in his hands the threads of many
intrigues to be used or not to be used as occasion might serve.
[Sidenote: § 3. Oñate informs Ferdinand.]
Oñate, naturally enough, believed the worst. And for him the worst was
the best. He went triumphantly to Eggenberg with his news, and then to
Ferdinand. Coming alone, this statement might perhaps have been received
with suspicion. Coming, as it did, after so many evidences that the
general had been acting in complete independence of the government, it
carried conviction with it.
[Sidenote: § 4. Decision of the Emperor against Wallenstein.]
Ferdinand had long been tossed backwards and forwards by opposing
influences. He had given no answer to Wallenstein's communication of the
terms of peace arranged with Saxony. The necessity of deciding, he said,
would not allow him to sleep. It was in his thoughts when he lay down
and when he arose. Prayers to God to enlighten the mind of the Emperor
had been offered in the churches of Vienna.
[Sidenote: § 5. Determination to displace Wallenstein.]
All this hesitation was now at an end. Ferdinand resolved to continue
the war in alliance with Spain, and, as a necessary preliminary, to
remove Wallenstein from his generalship. But it was more easily said
than done. A declaration was drawn up releasing the army from its
obedience to Wallenstein, and provisionally appointing Gallas, who had
by this time given assurances of loyalty, to the chief command. It was
intended, if circumstances proved favourable, to intrust the command
ultimately to the young King of Hungary.
[Sidenote: § 6. The Generals gained over.]
The declaration was kept secret for many days. To publish it would only
be to provoke the rebellion which was feared. The first thing to be done
was to gain over the principal generals. In the beginning of February
Piccolomini and Aldringer expressed their readiness to obey the Emperor
rather than Wallenstein. Commanders of a secondary rank would doubtless
find their position more independent under an inexperienced young man
like the King of Hungary than under the first living strategist. These
two generals agreed to make themselves masters of Wallenstein's person
and to bring him to Vienna to answer the accusations of treason against
him.
[Sidenote: § 7. Attempt to seize Wallenstein.]
For Oñate this was not enough. It would be easier, he said, to kill the
general than to carry him off. The event proved that he was right. On
February 7, Aldringer and Piccolomini set off for Pilsen with the
intention of capturing Wallenstein. But they found the garrison faithful
to its general, and they did not even venture to make the attempt.
[Sidenote: § 8. Wallenstein at Pilsen.]
Wallenstein's success depended on his chance of carrying with him the
lower ranks of the army. On the 19th he summoned the colonels round him
and assured them that he would stand security for money which they had
advanced in raising their regiments, the repayment of which had been
called in question. Having thus won them to a favourable mood, he told
them that it had been falsely stated that he wished to change his
religion and attack the Emperor. On the contrary, he was anxious to
conclude a peace which would benefit the Emperor and all who were
concerned. As, however, certain persons at Court had objected to it, he
wished to ask the opinion of the army on its terms. But he must first of
all know whether they were ready to support him, as he knew that there
was an intention to put a disgrace upon him.
[Sidenote: § 9. The colonels engage to support him.]
It was not the first time that Wallenstein had appealed to the colonels.
A month before, when the news had come of the alienation of the Court,
he had induced them to sign an acknowledgment that they would stand by
him, from which all reference to the possibility of his dismissal was
expressly excluded. They now, on February 20, signed a fresh agreement,
in which they engaged to defend him against the machinations of his
enemies, upon his promising to undertake nothing against the Emperor or
the Catholic religion.
SECTION IV.--_Assassination of Wallenstein._
[Sidenote: § 1. The garrison of Prague abandons him.]
Wallenstein thus hoped, with the help of the army, to force the
Emperor's hand, and to obtain his signature to the peace. Of the
co-operation of the Elector of Saxony he was already secure; and since
the beginning of February he had been pressing Oxenstjerna and Bernhard
to come to his aid. If all the armies in the field declared for peace,
Ferdinand would be compelled to abandon the Spaniards and to accept the
offered terms. Without some such hazardous venture, Wallenstein would be
checkmated by Oñate. The Spaniard had been unceasingly busy during these
weeks of intrigue. Spanish gold was provided to content the colonels for
their advances, and hopes of promotion were scattered broadcast amongst
them. Two other of the principal generals had gone over to the Court,
and on February 18, the day before the meeting at Pilsen, a second
declaration had been issued accusing Wallenstein of treason, and
formally depriving him of the command. Wallenstein, before this
declaration reached him, had already appointed a meeting of large masses
of troops to take place on the White Hill before Prague on the 21st,
where he hoped to make his intentions more generally known. But he had
miscalculated the devotion of the army to his person. The garrison of
Prague refused to obey his orders. Soldiers and citizens alike declared
for the Emperor. He was obliged to retrace his steps. "I had peace in my
hands," he said. Then he added, "God is righteous," as if still counting
on the aid of Heaven in so good a work.
[Sidenote: § 2. Understanding with the Swedes.]
He did not yet despair. He ordered the colonels to meet him at Eger,
assuring them that all that he was doing was for the Emperor's good. He
had now at last hopes of other assistance. Oxenstjerna, indeed, ever
cautious, still refused to do anything for him till he had positively
declared against the Emperor. Bernhard, equally prudent for some time,
had been carried away by the news, which reached him on the 21st, of the
meeting at Pilsen, and the Emperor's denouncement of the general. Though
he was still suspicious, he moved in the direction of Eger.
[Sidenote: § 3. His arrival at Eger.]
On the 24th Wallenstein entered Eger. In what precise way he meant to
escape from the labyrinth in which he was, or whether he had still any
clear conception of the course before him, it is impossible to say. But
Arnim was expected at Eger, as well as Bernhard, and it may be that
Wallenstein fancied still that he could gather all the armies of Germany
into his hands, to defend the peace which he was ready to make. The
great scheme, however, whatever it was, was doomed to failure. Amongst
the officers who accompanied him was a Colonel Butler, an Irish
Catholic, who had no fancy for such dealings with Swedish and Saxon
heretics. Already he had received orders from Piccolomini to bring in
Wallenstein dead or alive. No official instructions had been given to
Piccolomini. But the thought was certain to arise in the minds of all
who retained their loyalty to the Emperor. A general who attempts to
force his sovereign to a certain political course with the help of the
enemy is placed, by that very fact, beyond the pale of law.
[Sidenote: § 4. Wallenstein's assassination.]
The actual decision did not lie with Butler. The fortress was in the
hands of two Scotch officers, Leslie and Gordon. As Protestants, they
might have been expected to feel some sympathy with Wallenstein. But the
sentiment of military honour prevailed. On the morning of the 25th they
were called upon by one of the general's confederates to take orders
from Wallenstein alone. "I have sworn to obey the Emperor," answered
Gordon, at last, "and who shall release me from my oath?" "You,
gentlemen," was the reply, "are strangers in the Empire. What have you
to do with the Empire?" Such arguments were addressed to deaf ears. That
afternoon Butler, Leslie, and Gordon consulted together. Leslie, usually
a silent, reserved man, was the first to speak. "Let us kill the
traitors," he said. That evening Wallenstein's chief supporters were
butchered at a banquet. Then there was a short and sharp discussion
whether Wallenstein's life should be spared. Bernhard's troops were
known to be approaching, and the conspirators dared not leave a chance
of escape open. An Irish captain, Devereux by name, was selected to do
the deed. Followed by a few soldiers, he burst into the room where
Wallenstein was preparing for rest. "Scoundrel and traitor," were the
words which he flung at Devereux as he entered. Then, stretching out his
arms, he received the fatal blow in his breast. The busy brain of the
great calculator was still forever.
[Sidenote: § 5. Reason of his failure.]
The attempt to snatch at a wise and beneficent peace by mingled force
and intrigue had failed. Other generals--Cæsar, Cromwell, Napoleon--have
succeeded to supreme power with the support of an armed force. But they
did so by placing themselves at the head of the civil institutions of
their respective countries, and by making themselves the organs of a
strong national policy. Wallenstein stood alone in attempting to guide
the political destinies of a people, while remaining a soldier and
nothing more. The plan was doomed to failure, and is only excusable on
the ground that there were no national institutions at the head of which
Wallenstein could place himself; not even a chance of creating such
institutions afresh.
[Sidenote: § 6. Comparison between Gustavus and Wallenstein.]
In spite of all his faults, Germany turns ever to Wallenstein as she
turns to no other amongst the leaders of the Thirty Years' War. From
amidst the divisions and weaknesses of his native country, a great poet
enshrined his memory in a succession of noble dramas. Such faithfulness
is not without a reason. Gustavus's was a higher nature than
Wallenstein's. Some of his work, at least the rescue of German
Protestantism from oppression, remained imperishable, whilst
Wallenstein's military and political success vanished into nothingness.
But Gustavus was a hero not of Germany as a nation, but of European
Protestantism. His _Corpus Evangelicorum_ was at the best a choice of
evils to a German. Wallenstein's wildest schemes, impossible of
execution as they were by military violence, were always built upon the
foundation of German unity. In the way in which he walked that unity was
doubtless unattainable. To combine devotion to Ferdinand with religious
liberty was as hopeless a conception as it was to burst all bonds of
political authority on the chance that a new and better world would
spring into being out of the discipline of the camp. But during the long
dreary years of confusion which were to follow, it was something to
think of the last supremely able man whose life had been spent in
battling against the great evils of the land, against the spirit of
religious intolerance, and the spirit of division.
SECTION V.--_Imperialist Victories and the Treaty of Prague._
[Sidenote: § 1. Campaign of 1634.]
For the moment, the House of Austria seemed to have gained everything by
the execution or the murder of Wallenstein, whichever we may choose to
call it. The army was reorganized and placed under the command of the
Emperor's son, the King of Hungary. The Cardinal-Infant, now eagerly
welcomed, was preparing to join him through Tyrol. And while on the one
side there was union and resolution, there was division and hesitation
on the other. The Elector of Saxony stood aloof from the League of
Heilbronn, weakly hoping that the terms of peace which had been offered
him by Wallenstein would be confirmed by the Emperor now that
Wallenstein was gone. Even amongst those who remained under arms there
was no unity of purpose. Bernhard, the daring and impetuous, was not of
one mind with the cautious Horn, who commanded the Swedish forces, and
both agreed in thinking Oxenstjerna remiss because he did not supply
them with more money than he was able to provide.
[Sidenote: § 2. The Battle of Nördlingen.]
As might have been expected under these circumstances, the imperials
made rapid progress. Ratisbon, the prize of Bernhard the year before,
surrendered to the king of Hungary in July. Then Donauwörth was stormed,
and siege was laid to Nördlingen. On September 2 the Cardinal-Infant
came up with 15,000 men. The enemy watched the siege with a force far
inferior in numbers. Bernhard was eager to put all to the test of
battle. Horn recommended caution in vain. Against his better judgment he
consented to fight. On September 6 the attack was made. By the end of
the day Horn was a prisoner, and Bernhard was in full retreat, leaving
10,000 of his men dead upon the field, and 6,000 prisoners in the hands
of the enemy, whilst the imperialists lost only 1,200 men.
[Sidenote: § 3. Important results from it.]
Since the day of Breitenfeld, three years before, there had been no such
battle fought as this of Nördlingen. As Breitenfeld had recovered the
Protestant bishoprics of the north, Nördlingen recovered the Catholic
bishoprics of the south. Bernhard's Duchy of Franconia disappeared in a
moment under the blow. Before the spring of 1635 came, the whole of
South Germany, with the exception of one or two fortified posts, was in
the hands of the imperial commanders. The Cardinal-Infant was able to
pursue his way to Brussels, with the assurance that he had done a good
stroke of work on the way.
[Sidenote: § 4. French intervention.]
The victories of mere force are never fruitful of good. As it had been
after the successes of Tilly in 1622, and the successes of Wallenstein
in 1626 and 1627, so it was now with the successes of the King of
Hungary in 1634 and 1635. The imperialist armies had gained victories,
and had taken cities. But the Emperor was none the nearer to the
confidence of Germans. An alienated people, crushed by military force,
served merely as a bait to tempt foreign aggression, and to make the way
easy before it. After 1622, the King of Denmark had been called in.
After 1627, an appeal was made to the King of Sweden. After 1634,
Richelieu found his opportunity. The bonds between France and the
mutilated League of Heilbronn were drawn more closely. German troops
were to be taken into French pay, and the empty coffers of the League
were filled with French livres. He who holds the purse holds the
sceptre, and the princes of Southern and Western Germany, whether they
wished it or not, were reduced to the position of satellites revolving
round the central orb at Paris.
[Sidenote: § 5. The Peace of Prague.]
Nowhere was the disgrace of submitting to French intervention felt so
deeply as at Dresden. The battle of Nördlingen had cut short any hopes
which John George might have entertained of obtaining that which
Wallenstein would willingly have granted him. But, on the other hand,
Ferdinand had learned something from experience. He would allow the
Edict of Restitution to fall, though he was resolved not to make the
sacrifice in so many words. But he refused to replace the Empire in the
condition in which it had been before the war. The year 1627 was to be
chosen as the starting point for the new arrangement. The greater part
of the northern bishoprics would thus be saved to Protestantism. But
Halberstadt would remain in the hands of a Catholic bishop, and the
Palatinate would be lost to Protestantism for ever. Lusatia, which had
been held in the hands of the Elector of Saxony for his expenses in the
war of 1620, was to be ceded to him permanently, and Protestantism in
Silesia was to be placed under the guarantee of the Emperor. Finally,
Lutheranism alone was still reckoned as the privileged religion, so that
Hesse Cassel and the other Calvinist states gained no security at all.
On May 30, 1635, a treaty embodying these arrangements was signed at
Prague by the representatives of the Emperor and the Elector of Saxony.
It was intended not to be a separate treaty, but to be the starting
point of a general pacification. Most of the princes and towns so
accepted it, after more or less delay, and acknowledged the supremacy of
the Emperor on its conditions. Yet it was not in the nature of things
that it should put an end to the war. It was not an agreement which any
one was likely to be enthusiastic about. The ties which bound Ferdinand
to his Protestant subjects had been rudely broken, and the solemn
promise to forget and forgive could not weld the nation into that unity
of heart and spirit which was needed to resist the foreigner. A
Protestant of the north might reasonably come to the conclusion that the
price to be paid to the Swede and the Frenchman for the vindication of
the rights of the southern Protestants was too high to make it prudent
for him to continue the struggle against the Emperor. But it was hardly
likely that he would be inclined to fight very vigorously for the
Emperor on such terms.
[Sidenote: § 6. It fails in securing general acceptance.]
If the treaty gave no great encouragement to anyone who was comprehended
by it, it threw still further into the arms of the enemy those who were
excepted from its benefits. The leading members of the League of
Heilbronn were excepted from the general amnesty, though hopes of
better treatment were held out to them if they made their submission.
The Landgrave of Hesse Cassel was shut out as a Calvinist. Besides such
as nourished legitimate grievances, there were others who, like
Bernhard, were bent upon carving out a fortune for themselves, or who
had so blended in their own minds consideration for the public good as
to lose all sense of any distinction between the two.
[Sidenote: § 7. Degeneration of the war.]
There was no lack here of materials for a long and terrible struggle.
But there was no longer any noble aim in view on either side. The ideal
of Ferdinand and Maximilian was gone. The Church was not to recover its
lost property. The Empire was not to recover its lost dignity. The ideal
of Gustavus of a Protestant political body was equally gone. Even the
ideal of Wallenstein, that unity might be founded on an army, had
vanished. From henceforth French and Swedes on the one side, Austrians
and Spaniards on the other, were busily engaged in riving at the corpse
of the dead Empire. The great quarrel of principle had merged into a
mere quarrel between the Houses of Austria and Bourbon, in which the
shred of principle which still remained in the question of the rights of
the southern Protestants was almost entirely disregarded.
[Sidenote: § 8. Condition of Germany.]
Horrible as the war had been from its commencement, it was every day
assuming a more horrible character. On both sides all traces of
discipline had vanished in the dealings of the armies with the
inhabitants of the countries in which they were quartered. Soldiers
treated men and women as none but the vilest of mankind would now treat
brute beasts. 'He who had money,' says a contemporary, 'was their enemy.
He who had none was tortured because he had it not.' Outrages of
unspeakable atrocity were committed everywhere. Human beings were
driven naked into the streets, their flesh pierced with needles, or cut
to the bone with saws. Others were scalded with boiling water, or hunted
with fierce dogs. The horrors of a town taken by storm were repeated
every day in the open country. Even apart from its excesses, the war
itself was terrible enough. When Augsburg was besieged by the
imperialists, after their victory at Nördlingen, it contained an
industrious population of 70,000 souls. After a siege of seven months,
10,000 living beings, wan and haggard with famine, remained to open the
gates to the conquerors, and the great commercial city of the Fuggers
dwindled down into a country town.
[Sidenote: 1636.
§ 9. Notes of an English traveller.]
How is it possible to bring such scenes before our eyes in their ghastly
reality? Let us turn for the moment to some notes taken by the companion
of an English ambassador who passed through the country in 1636. As the
party were towed up the Rhine from Cologne, on the track so well known
to the modern tourist, they passed "by many villages pillaged and shot
down." Further on, a French garrison was in Ehrenbreitstein, firing down
upon Coblentz, which had just been taken by the imperialists. "They in
the town, if they do but look out of their windows, have a bullet
presently presented at their head." More to the south, things grew
worse. At Bacharach, "the poor people are found dead with grass in their
mouths." At Rüdesheim, many persons were "praying where dead bones were
in a little old house; and here his Excellency gave some relief to the
poor, which were almost starved, as it appeared by the violence they
used to get it from one another." At Mentz, the ambassador was obliged
to remain "on shipboard, for there was nothing to relieve us, since it
was taken by the King of Sweden, and miserably battered.... Here,
likewise, the poor people were almost starved, and those that could
relieve others before now humbly begged to be relieved; and after supper
all had relief sent from the ship ashore, at the sight of which they
strove so violently that some of them fell into the Rhine, and were like
to have been drowned." Up the Main, again, "all the towns, villages, and
castles be battered, pillaged, or burnt." After leaving Würzburg, the
ambassador's train came to plundered villages, and then to Neustadt,
"which hath been a fair city, though now pillaged and burnt miserably."
Poor children were "sitting at their doors almost starved to death," his
Excellency giving them food and leaving money with their parents to help
them, if but for a time. In the Upper Palatinate, they passed "by
churches demolished to the ground, and through woods in danger,
understanding that Croats were lying hereabout." Further on they stayed
for dinner at a poor little village "which hath been pillaged
eight-and-twenty times in two years, and twice in one day." And so on,
and so on. The corner of the veil is lifted up in the pages of the old
book, and the rest is left to the imagination to picture forth, as best
it may, the misery behind. After reading the sober narrative, we shall
perhaps not be inclined to be so very hard upon the Elector of Saxony
for making peace at Prague.
CHAPTER X.
THE PREPONDERANCE OF FRANCE.
SECTION I.--_Open Intervention of France._
[Sidenote: § 1. Protestantism not yet out of danger.]
The peacemakers of Prague hoped to restore the Empire to its old form.
But this could not be. Things done cannot pass away as though they had
never been. Ferdinand's attempt to gain a partizan's advantage for his
religion by availing himself of legal forms had given rise to a general
distrust. Nations and governments, like individual men, are "tied and
bound by the chain of their sins," from which they can be freed only
when a new spirit is breathed into them. Unsatisfactory as the
territorial arrangements of the peace were, the entire absence of
any constitutional reform in connexion with the peace was more
unsatisfactory still. The majority in the two Upper Houses of the Diet
was still Catholic; the Imperial Council was still altogether Catholic.
It was possible that the Diet and Council, under the teaching of
experience, might refrain from pushing their pretensions as far as they
had pushed them before; but a government which refrains from carrying
out its principles from motives of prudence cannot inspire confidence. A
strong central power would never arise in such a way, and a strong
central power to defend Germany against foreign invasion was the
especial need of the hour.
[Sidenote: § 2. The allies of France.]
In the failure of the Elector of Saxony to obtain some of the most
reasonable of the Protestant demands lay the best excuse of men like
Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar and William of Hesse Cassel for refusing the
terms of accommodation offered. Largely as personal ambition and greed
of territory found a place in the motives of these men, it is not
absolutely necessary to assert that their religious enthusiasm was
nothing more than mere hypocrisy. They raised the war-cry of "God with
us" before rushing to the storm of a city doomed to massacre and
pillage; they set apart days for prayer and devotion when battle was at
hand--veiling, perhaps, from their own eyes the hideous misery which
they were spreading around, in contemplation of the loftiness of their
aim: for, in all but the most vile, there is a natural tendency to
shrink from contemplating the lower motives of action, and to fix the
eyes solely on the higher. But the ardour inspired by a military career,
and the mere love of fighting for its own sake, must have counted for
much; and the refusal to submit to a domination which had been so
harshly used soon grew into a restless disdain of all authority
whatever. The nobler motives which had imparted a glow to the work of
Tilly and Gustavus, and which even lit up the profound selfishness of
Wallenstein, flickered and died away, till the fatal disruption of the
Empire was accomplished amidst the strivings and passions of heartless
and unprincipled men.
[Sidenote: § 3. Foreign intervention.]
The work of riving Germany in pieces was not accomplished by Germans
alone. As in nature a living organism which has become unhealthy and
corrupt is seized upon by the lower forms of animal life, a nation
divided amongst itself, and devoid of a sense of life within it higher
than the aims of parties and individuals, becomes the prey of
neighbouring nations, which would not have ventured to meddle with it in
the days of its strength. The carcase was there, and the eagles were
gathered together. The gathering of Wallenstein's army in 1632, the
overthrow of Wallenstein in 1634, had alike been made possible by the
free use of Spanish gold. The victory of Nördlingen had been owing to
the aid of Spanish troops; and the aim of Spain was not the greatness or
peace of Germany, but at the best the greatness of the House of Austria
in Germany; at the worst, the maintenance of the old system of
intolerance and unthinking obedience, which had been the ruin of
Germany. With Spain for an ally, France was a necessary enemy. The
strife for supreme power between the two representative states of the
old system and the new could not long be delayed, and the German parties
would be dragged, consciously or unconsciously, in their wake. If
Bernhard became a tool of Richelieu, Ferdinand became a tool of Spain.
[Sidenote: § 4. Alsace and Lorraine.]
In this phase of the war Protestantism and Catholicism, tolerance and
intolerance, ceased to be the immediate objects of the strife. The
possession of Alsace and Lorraine rose into primary importance, not
because, as in our own days, Germany needed a bulwark against France, or
France needed a bulwark against Germany, but because Germany was not
strong enough to prevent these territories from becoming the highway of
intercourse between Spain and the Spanish Netherlands. The command of
the sea was in the hands of the Dutch, and the valley of the Upper Rhine
was the artery through which the life blood of the Spanish monarchy
flowed. If Spain or the Emperor, the friend of Spain, could hold that
valley, men and munitions of warfare would flow freely to the
Netherlands to support the Cardinal-Infant in his struggle with the
Dutch. If Richelieu could lay his hand heavily upon it, he had seized
his enemy by the throat, and could choke him as he lay.
[Sidenote: § 5. Richelieu asks for fortresses in Alsace.]
After the battle of Nördlingen, Richelieu's first demand from
Oxenstjerna as the price of his assistance had been the strong places
held by Swedish garrisons in Alsace. As soon as he had them safely under
his control, he felt himself strong enough to declare war openly against
Spain.
[Sidenote: § 6. War between France and Spain.]
On May 19, eleven days before peace was agreed upon at Prague, the
declaration of war was delivered at Brussels by a French herald. To the
astonishment of all, France was able to place in the field what was then
considered the enormous number of 132,000 men. One army was to drive the
Spaniards out of the Milanese, and to set free the Italian princes.
Another was to defend Lorraine whilst Bernhard crossed the Rhine and
carried on war in Germany. The main force was to be thrown upon the
Spanish Netherlands, and, after effecting a junction with the Prince of
Orange, was to strike directly at Brussels.
SECTION II.--_Spanish Successes._
[Sidenote: § 1. Failure of the French attack on the Netherlands.]
Precisely in the most ambitious part of his programme Richelieu failed
most signally. The junction with the Dutch was effected without
difficulty; but the hoped-for instrument of success proved the parent of
disaster. Whatever Flemings and Brabanters might think of Spain, they
soon made it plain that they would have nothing to do with the Dutch. A
national enthusiasm against Protestant aggression from the north
made defence easy, and the French army had to return completely
unsuccessful. Failure, too, was reported from other quarters. The
French armies had no experience of war on a large scale, and no military
leader of eminent ability had yet appeared to command them. The Italian
campaign came to nothing, and it was only by a supreme effort of
military skill that Bernhard, driven to retreat, preserved his army from
complete destruction.
[Sidenote: § 2. Spanish invasion of France.]
In 1636 France was invaded. The Cardinal-Infant crossed the Somme, took
Corbie, and advanced to the banks of the Oise. All Paris was in
commotion. An immediate siege was expected, and inquiry was anxiously
made into the state of the defences. Then Richelieu, coming out of his
seclusion, threw himself upon the nation. He appealed to the great
legal, ecclesiastical, and commercial corporations of Paris, and he did
not appeal in vain. Money, voluntarily offered, came pouring into the
treasury for the payment of the troops. Those who had no money gave
themselves eagerly for military service. It was remarked that Paris, so
fanatically Catholic in the days of St. Bartholomew and the League,
entrusted its defence to the Protestant marshal La Force, whose
reputation for integrity inspired universal confidence.
[Sidenote: § 3. The invaders driven back.]
The resistance undertaken in such a spirit in Paris was imitated by the
other towns of the kingdom. Even the nobility, jealous as they were of
the Cardinal, forgot their grievances as an aristocracy in their duties
as Frenchmen. Their devotion was not put to the test of action. The
invaders, frightened at the unanimity opposed to them, hesitated and
turned back. In September, Lewis took the field in person. In November
he appeared before Corbie; and the last days of the year saw the
fortress again in the keeping of a French garrison. The war, which was
devastating Germany, was averted from France by the union produced by
the mild tolerance of Richelieu.
[Sidenote: § 4. Battle of Wittstock.]
In Germany, too, affairs had taken a turn. The Elector of Saxony had
hoped to drive the Swedes across the sea; but a victory gained on
October 4, at Wittstock, by the Swedish general, Baner, the ablest of
the successors of Gustavus, frustrated his intentions. Henceforward
North Germany was delivered over to a desolation with which even the
misery inflicted by Wallenstein affords no parallel.
[Sidenote: § 5. Death of Ferdinand II.]
Amidst these scenes of failure and misfortune the man whose policy had
been mainly responsible for the miseries of his country closed his eyes
for ever. On February 15, 1637, Ferdinand II. died at Vienna. Shortly
before his death the King of Hungary had been elected King of the
Romans, and he now, by his father's death, became the Emperor Ferdinand
III.
[Sidenote: § 6. Ferdinand III.]
The new Emperor had no vices. He did not even care, as his father did,
for hunting and music. When the battle of Nördlingen was won under his
command he was praying in his tent whilst his soldiers were fighting. He
sometimes took upon himself to give military orders, but the handwriting
in which they were conveyed was such an abominable scrawl that they only
served to enable his generals to excuse their defeats by the
impossibility of reading their instructions. His great passion was for
keeping strict accounts. Even the Jesuits, it is said, found out that,
devoted as he was to his religion, he had a sharp eye for his
expenditure. One day they complained that some tolls bequeathed to them
by his father had not been made over to them, and represented the value
of the legacy as a mere trifle of 500 florins a year. The Emperor at
once gave them an order upon the treasury for the yearly payment of the
sum named, and took possession of the tolls for the maintenance of the
fortifications of Vienna. The income thus obtained is said to have been
no less than 12,000 florins a year.
[Sidenote: § 7. Campaign of 1637.]
Such a man was not likely to rescue the Empire from its miseries. The
first year of his reign, however, was marked by a gleam of good fortune.
Baner lost all that he had gained at Wittstock, and was driven back to
the shores of the Baltic. On the western frontier the imperialists were
equally successful. Würtemberg accepted the Peace of Prague, and
submitted to the Emperor. A more general peace was talked of. But till
Alsace was secured to one side or the other no peace was possible.
SECTION III.--_The Struggle for Alsace._
[Sidenote: § 1. The capture of Breisach.]
The year 1638 was to decide the question. Bernhard was looking to the
Austrian lands in Alsace and the Breisgau as a compensation for his lost
duchy of Franconia. In February he was besieging Rheinfelden. Driven off
by the imperialists on the 26th, he re-appeared unexpectedly on March 3,
taking the enemy by surprise. They had not even sufficient powder with
them to load their guns, and the victory of Rheinfelden was the result.
On the 24th Rheinfelden itself surrendered. Freiburg followed its
example on April 22, and Bernhard proceeded to undertake the siege of
Breisach, the great fortress which domineered over the whole valley of
the Upper Rhine. Small as his force was, he succeeded, by a series of
rapid movements, in beating off every attempt to introduce supplies, and
on December 19 he entered the place in triumph.
[Sidenote: § 2. The capture a turning point in the war.]
The campaign of 1638 was the turning point in the struggle between
France and the united House of Austria. A vantage ground was then won
which was never lost.
[Sidenote: § 3. Bernhard wishes to keep Breisach.]
Bernhard himself, however, was loth to realize the world-wide importance
of the events in which he had played his part. He fancied that he had
been fighting for his own, and he claimed the lands which he had
conquered for himself. He received the homage of the citizens of
Breisach in his own name. He celebrated a Lutheran thanksgiving festival
in the cathedral. But the French Government looked upon the rise of an
independent German principality in Alsace with as little pleasure as the
Spanish government had contemplated the prospect of the establishment of
Wallenstein in the Palatinate. They ordered Bernhard to place his
conquests under the orders of the King of France.
[Sidenote: § 4. Refuses to dismember the Empire.]
Strange as it may seem, the man who had done so much to tear in pieces
the Empire believed, in a sort of way, in the Empire still. "I will
never suffer," he said, in reply to the French demands, "that men can
truly reproach me with being the first to dismember the Empire."
[Sidenote: § 5. Death of Bernhard.]
The next year he crossed the Rhine with the most brilliant expectations.
Baner had recovered strength, and was pushing on through North Germany
into Bohemia. Bernhard hoped that he too might strike a blow which would
force on a peace on his own conditions. But his greatest achievement,
the capture of Breisach, was also his last. A fatal disease seized upon
him when he had hardly entered upon the campaign. On July 8, 1639, he
died.
[Sidenote: § 6. Alsace in French possession.]
There was no longer any question of the ownership of the fortresses in
Alsace and the Breisgau. French governors entered into possession. A
French general took the command of Bernhard's army. For the next two or
three years Bernhard's old troops fought up and down Germany in
conjunction with Baner, not without success, but without any decisive
victory. The French soldiers were becoming, like the Germans, inured to
war. The lands on the Rhine were not easily to be wrenched out of the
strong hands which had grasped them.
SECTION IV.--_French Successes._
[Sidenote: § 1. State of Italy.]
Richelieu had other successes to count besides these victories on the
Rhine. In 1637 the Spaniards drove out of Turin the Duchess-Regent
Christina, the mother of the young Duke of Savoy. She was a sister of
the King of France; and, even if that had not been the case, the enemy
of Spain was, in the nature of the case, the friend of France. In 1640
she re-entered her capital with French assistance.
[Sidenote: § 2. Maritime warfare.]
At sea, too, where Spain, though unable to hold its own against the
Dutch, had long continued to be superior to France, the supremacy of
Spain was coming to an end. During the whole course of his ministry,
Richelieu had paid special attention to the encouragement of commerce
and the formation of a navy. Troops could no longer be despatched with
safety to Italy from the coasts of Spain. In 1638 a French squadron
burnt Spanish galleys in the Bay of Biscay.
[Sidenote: § 3. The Spanish fleet in the Downs.]
In 1639 a great Spanish fleet on its way to the Netherlands was strong
enough to escape the French, who were watching to intercept it. It
sailed up the English Channel with the not distant goal of the
Flemish ports almost in view. But the huge galleons were ill-manned
and ill-found. They were still less able to resist the lighter,
well-equipped vessels of the Dutch fleet, which was waiting to intercept
them, than the Armada had been able to resist Drake and Raleigh
fifty-one years before. The Spanish commander sought refuge in the
Downs, under the protection of the neutral flag of England.
[Sidenote: § 4. Destruction of the fleet.]
The French ambassador pleaded hard with the king of England to allow the
Dutch to follow up their success. The Spanish ambassador pleaded hard
with him for protection to those who had taken refuge on his shores.
Charles saw in the occurrence an opportunity to make a bargain with one
side or the other. He offered to abandon the Spaniards if the French
would agree to restore his nephew, Charles Lewis, the son of his sister
Elizabeth, to his inheritance in the Palatinate. He offered to protect
the Spaniards if Spain would pay him the large sum which he would want
for the armaments needed to bid defiance to France. Richelieu had no
intention of completing the bargain offered to him. He deluded Charles
with negotiations, whilst the Dutch admiral treated the English
neutrality with scorn. He dashed amongst the tall Spanish ships as they
lay anchored in the Downs: some he sank, some he set on fire. Eleven of
the galleons were soon destroyed. The remainder took advantage of a
thick fog, slipped across the Straits, and placed themselves in safety
under the guns of Dunkirk. Never again did such a fleet as this venture
to leave the Spanish coast for the harbours of Flanders. The injury to
Spain went far beyond the actual loss. Coming, as the blow did, within a
few months after the surrender of Breisach, it all but severed the
connexion for military purposes between Brussels and Madrid.
[Sidenote: § 5. France and England.]
Charles at first took no umbrage at the insult. He still hoped that
Richelieu would forward his nephew's interests, and he even expected
that Charles Lewis would be placed by the King of France in command of
the army which had been under Bernhard's orders. But Richelieu was in no
mood to place a German at the head of these well-trained veterans, and
the proposal was definitively rejected. The King of England,
dissatisfied at this repulse, inclined once more to the side of Spain.
But Richelieu found a way to prevent Spain from securing even what
assistance it was in the power of a king so unpopular as Charles to
render. It was easy to enter into communication with Charles's domestic
enemies. His troubles, indeed, were mostly of his own making, and he
would doubtless have lost his throne whether Richelieu had stirred the
fire or not. But the French minister contributed all that was in his
power to make the confusion greater, and encouraged, as far as possible,
the resistance which had already broken out in Scotland, and which was
threatening to break out in England.
[Sidenote: § 6. Insurrection in Catalonia.]
The failure of 1636 had been fully redeemed. No longer attacking any one
of the masses of which the Spanish monarchy was composed, Richelieu
placed his hands upon the lines of communication between them. He made
his presence felt not at Madrid, at Brussels, at Milan, or at Naples,
but in Alsace, in the Mediterranean, in the English Channel. The effect
was as complete as is the effect of snapping the wire of a telegraph. At
once the Peninsula startled Europe by showing signs of dissolution. In
1639 the Catalonians had manfully defended Roussillon against a French
invasion. In 1640 they were prepared to fight with equal vigour. But the
Spanish Government, in its desperate straits, was not content to leave
them to combat in their own way, after the irregular fashion which
befitted mountaineers. Orders were issued commanding all men capable of
fighting to arm themselves for the war, all women to bear food and
supplies for the army on their backs. A royal edict followed,
threatening those who showed themselves remiss with imprisonment and the
confiscation of their goods.
[Sidenote: § 7. Break-up of the Spanish monarchy.]
The cord which bound the hearts of Spaniards to their king was a strong
one; but it snapped at last. It was not by threats that Richelieu had
defended France in 1636. The old traditions of provincial independence
were strong in Catalonia, and the Catalans were soon in full revolt. Who
were they, to be driven to the combat by menaces, as the Persian slaves
had been driven on at Thermopylæ by the blows of their masters'
officers?
[Sidenote: § 8. Independence of Portugal.]
Equally alarming was the news which reached Madrid from the other side
of the Peninsula. Ever since the days of Philip II. Portugal had formed
an integral part of the Spanish monarchy. In December 1640 Portugal
renounced its allegiance, and reappeared amongst European States under a
sovereign of the House of Braganza.
[Sidenote: § 9. Failure of Soissons in France.]
Everything prospered in Richelieu's hands. In 1641 a fresh attempt was
made by the partizans of Spain to raise France against him. The Count of
Soissons, a prince of the blood, placed himself at the head of an
imperialist army to attack his native country. He succeeded in defeating
the French forces sent to oppose him not far from Sedan. But a chance
shot passing through the brain of Soissons made the victory a barren
one. His troops, without the support of his name, could not hope to
rouse the country against Richelieu. They had become mere invaders, and
they were far too few to think of conquering France.
[Sidenote: § 10. Richelieu's last days.]
Equal success attended the French arms in Germany. In 1641 Guebriant,
with his German and Swedish army, defeated the imperialists at
Wolfenbüttel, in the north. In 1642 he defeated them again at Kempten,
in the south. In the same year Roussillon submitted to France. Nor was
Richelieu less fortunate at home. The conspiracy of a young courtier,
the last of the efforts of the aristocracy to shake off the heavy rule
of the Cardinal, was detected, and expiated on the scaffold. Richelieu
did not long survive his latest triumph. He died on December 4, 1642.
SECTION V.--_Aims and Character of Richelieu._
[Sidenote: § 1. Richelieu's domestic policy.]
Unlike Lewis XIV. and Napoleon, Richelieu counts amongst those few
French statesmen whose fortune mounted with their lives. It is not
difficult to discover the cause. As in Gustavus, love of action was
tempered by extreme prudence and caution. But in Richelieu these
ingredients of character were mingled in different proportions. The love
of action was far less impetuous. The caution was far stronger. No man
had a keener eye to distinguish the conditions of success, or was more
ready to throw aside the dearest schemes when he believed them to be
accompanied by insuperable difficulties. Braver heart never was. There
was the highest courage in the constancy with which he, an invalid
tottering for years on the brink of the grave, and supported by a king
whose health was as feeble as his own, faced the whole might of the
aristocracy of France. If he was harsh and unpitying it was to the
enemies of the nation, to the nobles who trod under their feet the
peasant and the serf, and who counted the possession of power merely as
the high-road to the advancement of their private fortunes. The
establishment of a strong monarchical power was, as France was then
constituted, the only chance for industry and commerce to lift up their
heads, for the peaceable arts of life to develop themselves in security,
for the intellect of man to have free course, and for the poor to be
protected from oppression.
[Sidenote: § 2. His designs only partially accomplished.]
All this was in Richelieu's heart; and some little of this he
accomplished. The work of many generations was in this man's brain. Yet
he never attempted to do more than the work of his own. As Bacon
sketched out the lines within which science was to move in the days of
Newton and of Faraday, so Richelieu sketched out the lines within which
French statesmanship was to move in the days of Colbert and of Turgot,
or in those of the great Revolution itself.
[Sidenote: § 3. The people nothing in France.]
"All things for the people, nothing by the people." This maxim
attributed to Napoleon embodied as well the policy of Richelieu. In it
are embalmed the strength and weakness of French statesmanship. The late
growth of the royal power and the long continuance of aristocratic
oppression threw the people helpless and speechless into the arms of the
monarchy. They were happy if some one should prove strong enough to take
up their cause without putting them to the trouble or the risk of
thinking and speaking for themselves. It is no blame to Richelieu if,
being a Frenchman of the seventeenth century, he worked under the only
conditions which Frenchmen of the seventeenth century would admit. We
can well fancy that he would think with scorn and contempt of the
English Revolution, which was accomplishing itself under his eyes. Yet
in the England of the Civil War, men were learning not merely to be
governed well, but to know what good government was. It was a greater
thing for a nation to learn to choose good and to refuse evil, even if
the progress was slow, than to be led blindfold with far more rapid
steps.
[Sidenote: § 4. His foreign policy.]
Richelieu's foreign policy was guided by the same deep calculation as
his home policy. If at home he saw that France was greater than any
faction, he had not arrived at the far higher notion that Europe was
greater than France, excepting so far as he saw in the system of
intolerance supported by Spain an evil to be combated for the sake of
others who were not Frenchmen. But there is no sign that he really cared
for the prosperity of other nations when it was not coincident with the
prosperity of France. As it is for the present generation a matter of
complete indifference whether Breisach was to be garrisoned by Frenchmen
or imperialists, it would be needless for us, if we regarded Richelieu's
motives alone, to trouble ourselves much with the later years of the
Thirty Years' War.
[Sidenote: § 5. His support of rising causes.]
But it is not always by purity of motive only that the world's progress
advances. Richelieu, in order to make France strong, needed help, and he
had to look about for help where the greatest amount of strength was to
be found. An ordinary man would have looked to the physical strength of
armies, as Wallenstein did, or to the ideal strength of established
institutions, as Ferdinand did. Richelieu knew better. He saw that for
him who knows how to use it there is no lever in the world like that of
a rising cause, for a rising cause embodies the growing dissatisfaction
of men with a long-established evil, which they have learned to detest,
but which they have not yet learned to overthrow.
[Sidenote: § 6. And of those causes which were in themselves good.]
In England Richelieu was on the side of Parliamentary opposition to the
crown. In Germany he was on the side of the opposition of the princes
against the Emperor. In Italy he was on the side of the independence of
the states against Spain. In the Peninsula he was on the side of the
provinces against the monarchy. There is not the slightest reason to
suppose that he cared one atom for any of those causes except so far as
they might promote his own ends. Yet in every case he selected those
causes by which the real wants of the several countries were best
expressed.
[Sidenote: § 7. Contrast between Richelieu and later French
politicians.]
It is this which distinguishes Richelieu from those who in later times
have measured the foreign policy of France by French interests alone.
They have taken up any cause which promised to weaken a powerful
neighbour, without considering what the cause was worth. They favoured
Italian division in 1860, and German division in 1870. Richelieu had a
clearer insight into the nature of things than that. There can be no
doubt that he would far rather have attacked Spain and Austria through
the instrumentality of the League than through the instrumentality of
Gustavus and the Protestants; but he saw that the future was with
Gustavus and not with the League. He sacrificed his wishes to his
policy. He coquetted with the League, but he supported Gustavus.
[Sidenote: § 8. He has no exorbitant aims.]
When once Richelieu had gained his point, he was contented with his
success. He never aspired to more than he could accomplish: never
struck, excepting for a purpose: never domineered through the mere
insolence of power. He took good care to get Alsace into his hands, and
to make himself master of the passes of the Alps by the possession of
Pignerol; but he never dreamed of founding, like Napoleon, a French
Confederation of the Rhine, or a French kingdom of Italy. His
interference with his neighbours was as little obtrusive as possible.
[Sidenote: 1643.
§ 9. Death of Lewis XIII.]
Richelieu was quickly followed to the grave by the sovereign in whose
name he had accomplished so much. Lewis XIII. died on the 14th of May,
1643.
SECTION VI.--_More French Victories._
[Sidenote: 1643.
§ 1. Rule of Mazarin.]
His son and successor, Lewis XIV., was a mere child. His widow, Anne of
Austria, claimed the regency, and forgot that she was the sister of the
King of Spain and the sister-in-law of the Emperor, in the thought that
she was the widow of one king of France and the mother of another. Her
minister was Cardinal Mazarin, an Italian, who had commended himself to
Richelieu by his capacity for business and his complete independence of
French party feeling. If he was noted rather for cleverness than for
strength of character, he was at least anxious to carry out the policy
of his predecessor, and to maintain the predominance of the crown over
aristocratic factions; and for some time Richelieu's policy seemed to
carry success with it through the impetus which he had given it. On May
19 a victory came to establish the new authority of the queen-regent,
the first of a long series of French victories, which was unbroken till
the days of Marlborough and Blenheim.
[Sidenote: § 2. The Spaniards attack Rocroy.]
The Spaniards had crossed the frontier of the Netherlands, and were
besieging Rocroy. The command of the French forces was held by the duke
of Enghien, better known to the world by the title which he afterwards
inherited from his father, as the Prince of Condé. Next to Gaston, Duke
of Orleans, the late king's brother, he and his father stood first in
succession to the throne, and had, for this reason, attached themselves
to Richelieu when he was opposed by the great bulk of the aristocracy.
Those who placed him at the head of the army probably expected that a
prince so young and so inexperienced would content himself with giving
his name to the campaign, and would leave the direction of the troops to
older heads.
[Sidenote: § 3. Gassion and Enghien.]
The older heads, after reconnoitring the Spanish position at Rocroy,
advised Enghien not to fight. But there was a certain Gassion among the
officers, who had served under Gustavus, and who had seen the solid
legions of Tilly break down before the swift blows of the Swedish king
at Breitenfeld. Gassion had learned to look upon that close Spanish
formation with contempt, and he strove hard to persuade Enghien to give
orders for the attack, and, truth to say, he had no very hard task.
Enghien was young and sanguine, and whether he had a genius for war or
not, he had at least a genius for battles. Already conscious of the
skill with which he was to direct the fortunes of many a well-fought
field, he heartily adopted the views laid before him by Gassion.
[Sidenote: § 4. Battle of Rocroy.]
Rocroy was, so to speak, a second edition of Breitenfeld, a victory
gained by vigour and flexibility over solid endurance. Unreasoning
obedience once more gave way before disciplined intelligence. The
Spanish masses stood with all the strength of a mediæval fortress. There
was no manoeuvering power in them. The French artillery ploughed its
way through the ranks, and the dashing charges of the infantry drove the
disaster home. The glories of the Spanish armies, the glories which
dated from the days of the Great Captain, were clouded for ever. Yet if
victory was lost to Spain, the cherished honour of the Spanish arms was
safe. Man by man the warriors fell in the ranks in which they stood,
like the English defenders of the banner of Harold at Senlac. Their
leader, the Count of Fuentes, an old man worn with years and gout, and
unable to stand, was seated in an arm-chair to direct the battle within
a square composed of his veteran troops. Death found him at his post. He
had fought in the old wars of Philip II. The last of a long heroic race
of statesmen and soldiers had bowed his head before the rising genius of
France.
[Sidenote: § 5. Extension of the French frontier.]
Thionville was then besieged. It surrendered in August. The cautious
Richelieu had been contented to announce that he reserved all question
of the ownership of his conquests till it should be finally determined
by a treaty of peace. After Rocroy, Mazarin had no such scruples.
Thionville was formally annexed to France. A medal was struck on which
Hope was borne in the hand of Victory, and on which was inscribed the
legend, _Prima finium propagatic_.
[Sidenote: § 6. Enghien and Turenne.]
In Germany the campaign of 1643 was less successful. Maximilian of
Bavaria had put forth all his resources, and his generals, the dashing
John of Werth and the prudent Mercy, of whom it was said that he knew
the plans of the enemy as well as if he had sat in their councils, were
more than a match for the French commanders. [Sidenote: 1644.] In 1644
they were opposed by a soldier of a quality higher than their own.
Turenne was sent amongst them, but his forces were too few to enable him
to operate with success. Freiburg in the Breisgau was taken before his
eyes. Breisach was threatened. Then Enghien came with 10,000 men to
assume the command over the head of the modest soldier who had borne the
weight of the campaign. Proud of his last year's victory he despised the
counsel of Turenne, that it was better to out-manoeuvre the enemy than
to fight him in an almost inaccessible position.
[Sidenote: § 7. Battle of Freiburg.]
The battle fought amongst the vineyards of Freiburg was the bloodiest
battle of a bloody war. For three days Enghien led his men to the
butchery. At last Mercy, unable to provide food any longer for his
troops, effected his retreat. The French reaped the prizes of a victory
which they had not gained.
[Sidenote: 1645.
§ 8. Battle of Nördlingen.]
On the 3d of August, 1645, a second battle of Nördlingen was fought. It
was almost a repetition of the slaughter of Freiburg. As in the year
before, Turenne had been left to do the hard work at the opening of the
campaign with inferior forces, and had even suffered a check. Once more
Enghien came up, gay and dashing, at the head of a reinforcement of
picked men. Once more a fearful butchery ensued. But that Mercy was
slain early in the fight, the day might have gone hard with the French.
As it was, they were able to claim a victory. The old German bands which
had served under Bernhard held out to the uttermost and compelled the
enemy to retreat. But the success was not lasting. The imperialists
received reinforcements, and the French were driven back upon the
Rhine.
[Sidenote: § 9. Battle of Jankow.]
The same year had opened with splendid expectations on the other side of
the theatre of the war. The gouty Swedish general, Torstenson, who had
taken up Baner's work in the north, burst suddenly into Bohemia, and on
the 6th of March inflicted a crushing defeat on the imperialists at
Jankow. He then harried Moravia, and pressed on to lay siege to Vienna,
as if to repair the fault which it was the fashion to ascribe to
Gustavus. But Vienna was unassailable, and Torstenson, like Turenne, was
driven to retreat. He next tried to reduce Brünn. Failing in this he
returned to Bohemia, where, worn out with his maladies, he delivered
over the command to Wrangel, his appointed successor.
CHAPTER XI.
THE END OF THE WAR.
SECTION I.--_Turenne's Strategy._
[Sidenote: 1643.
§ 1. Thoughts of peace.]
At last the thought entered into men's minds that it was time to put a
stop to this purposeless misery and slaughter. It was hopeless to think
any longer of shaking the strong grasp of France upon the Rhine; and if
Sweden had been foiled in striking to the heart of the Austrian
monarchy, she could not be driven from the desolate wilderness which
now, by the evil work of men's hands, stretched from the Baltic far away
into the interior of Germany. Long ago the disciplined force which
Gustavus had brought across the sea had melted away, and a Swedish army
was now like other armies--a mere collection of mercenaries, without
religion, without pity, and without remorse.
[Sidenote: § 2. Meeting of diplomatists.]
Negotiations for peace were spoken of from time to time, and
preparations were at last made for a great meeting of diplomatists. In
order to prevent the usual quarrel about precedency it was decided that
some of the ambassadors should hold their sittings at Osnabrück and
others at Münster, an arrangement which was not likely to conduce to a
speedy settlement. [Sidenote: 1644, 1645.] The Emperor proved his
sincerity by sending his representative early enough to arrive at
Münster in July, 1643, whilst the Swedish and French ambassadors only
made their appearance in the March and April of the following year, and
it was only in June, 1645, that the first formal proposition was handed
in.
[Sidenote: § 3. Reluctance of the Emperor to give up all that is asked.]
All who were concerned were in fact ready to make peace, but they all
wished it made on their own terms. Ferdinand III. was not bound by his
father's antecedents. The Edict of Restitution had been no work of his.
Long before this he had been ready to give all reasonable satisfaction
to the Protestants. He had declared his readiness to include Calvinists
as well as Lutherans in the religious peace. He had offered to restore
the Lower Palatinate to Frederick's son, and he actually issued a
general amnesty to all who were still in arms; but he shrank from the
demand that these arrangements of the Empire should be treated of, not
in the constitutional assemblies of the Empire, but in a congress of
European powers. To do so would be to tear the last veil from the sad
truth that the Empire was a mere shadow, and that the states of which it
was composed had become practically independent sovereignties. And
behind this degradation lay another degradation, hardly less bitter to
Ferdinand. The proudest title of the great emperors of old had been
that of Increaser of the Empire. Was he to go down to posterity with the
title of Diminisher of the Empire? And yet it was beyond his power to
loosen the hold of France upon Alsace, or of Sweden upon Pomerania.
[Sidenote: § 4. Especially the Breisgau.]
Nor was it only as Emperor that Ferdinand would feel the loss of Alsace
deeply. Together with the Breisgau it formed one of territories of the
House of Austria, but it was not his own. It was the inheritance of the
children of his uncle Leopold, and he was loth to purchase peace for
himself by agreeing to the spoliation of his orphan nephews.
[Sidenote: § 5. Aims of the Elector of Bavaria.]
Maximilian of Bavaria viewed the question of peace from another point of
view. To him Alsace was nothing, and he warmly recommended Ferdinand to
surrender it for the sake of peace. If concessions were to be made at
all, he preferred making them to Catholic France rather than to the
Protestants in the Empire, and he was convinced that if Alsace remained
under French rule, the motive which had led France to support the
Protestants would lose its chief weight. But besides these general
considerations, Maximilian, like Ferdinand, had a special interest of
his own. He was resolved, come what might, to retain at least the Upper
Palatinate, and he trusted to be seconded in his resolve by the good
offices of France.
[Sidenote: § 6. The campaign of 1646.]
The position of Maximilian was thus something like that of John George
of Saxony in 1632. He and his chief ally were both ready for peace, but
his ally stood out for higher terms than he was prepared to demand. And
as in 1632 Wallenstein saw in the comparative moderation of the Elector
of Saxony only a reason for driving him by force to separate his cause
from that of Gustavus, so in 1646 the French government resolved to
fall upon Bavaria, and to force the elector to separate his cause from
that of Ferdinand.
[Sidenote: § 7. Turenne out-manoeuvres the Bavarians.]
The year before, the Elector of Saxony, crushed and ruined by the
Swedes, had consented to a separate truce, and now Turenne was
commissioned to do the same with Bavaria. In August he effected a
junction on the Lahn with Wrangel and the Swedes, and if Enghien had
been there, history would doubtless have had to tell of another butchery
as resultless as those of Freiburg and Nördlingen. But Enghien was far
away in Flanders, laying siege to Dunkirk, and Turenne, for the first
time at the head of a superior force, was about to teach the world a
lesson in the art of war. Whilst the enemy was preparing for the
expected attack by entrenching his position, the united French and
Swedish armies slipped past them and marched straight for the heart of
Bavaria, where an enemy had not been seen since Bernhard had been chased
out in 1634. That one day, as Turenne truly said, altered the whole face
of affairs. Everywhere the roads were open. Provisions were plentiful.
The population was in the enjoyment of the blessings of peace. Turenne
and Wrangel crossed the Danube without difficulty. Schorndorf, Würzburg,
Nördlingen, Donauwörth made no resistance to them. It was not till they
came to Augsburg that they met with opposition. The enemy had time to
come up. But there was no unanimity in the councils of the enemy. The
Bavarian generals wanted to defend Bavaria. The imperialist generals
wanted to defend the still remaining Austrian possessions in Swabia. The
invaders were allowed to accomplish their purpose. They arrived at the
gates of Munich before the citizens knew what had become of their
master's army. With grim purpose Turenne and Wrangel set themselves to
make desolate the Bavarian plain, so that it might be rendered incapable
of supporting a Bavarian army. Maximilian was reduced to straits such as
he had not known since the time when Tilly fell at the passage of the
Lech. Sorely against his will he signed, in May, 1647, a separate truce
with the enemy.
[Sidenote: § 8. Last struggles of the war.]
The truce did not last long. In September Maximilian was once more on
the Emperor's side. Bavaria paid dearly for the elector's defection. All
that had been spared a year before fell a sacrifice to new devastation.
The last great battle of the war was fought at Zusmarshausen on May 17,
1648. The Bavarians were defeated and the work of the destroyer went on
yet for a while unchecked. In Bohemia half of Prague fell into the hands
of the Swedes, and the Emperor was left unaided to bear up in the
unequal fight.
SECTION II.--_The Treaty of Westphalia._
[Sidenote: § 1. The Peace of Westphalia.]
Ferdinand could resist no longer. On the 24th of October, 1648, a few
months before Charles I. ascended the scaffold at Whitehall, the Peace
of Westphalia was signed.
[Sidenote: § 2. Religious settlement.]
The religious difficulty in Germany was settled as it ought to have been
settled long before. Calvinism was to be placed on the same footing as
Lutheranism. New-Year's day 1624 was fixed upon as the date by which all
disputes were to be tested. Whatever ecclesiastical benefice was in
Catholic hands at that date was to remain in Catholic hands forever.
Ecclesiastical benefices in Protestant hands at that date were to remain
in Protestant keeping. Catholics would never again be able to lay claim
to the bishoprics of the north. Even Halberstadt, which had been
retained at the Peace of Prague, was now lost to them. To make this
settlement permanent, the Imperial Court was reconstituted. Protestants
and Catholics were to be members of the court in equal numbers. And if
the judicial body was such as to make it certain that its sanction would
never be given to an infringement of the peace, the Catholic majority in
the Diet became powerless for evil.
[Sidenote: § 3. Political settlement.]
In political matters, Maximilian permanently united the Upper Palatinate
to his duchy of Bavaria, and the Electorate was confirmed to him and his
descendants. An eighth electorate was created in favour of Charles
Lewis, the worthless son of the Elector, Frederick, and the Lower
Palatinate was given up to him. Sweden established herself firmly on the
mouths of the great northern rivers. The Eastern part of Pomerania she
surrendered to Brandenburg. But Western Pomerania, including within its
frontier both banks of the lower Vistula, was surrendered to her; whilst
the possession of the bishoprics of Bremen and Verdun, on which
Christian of Denmark had set his eyes at the beginning of the war, gave
her a commanding position at the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser. The
bishoprics of Halberstadt, Camin, Minden, and the greater part of the
diocese of Magdeburg, were made over to Brandenburg as a compensation
for the loss of its claims to the whole of Pomerania, whilst a smaller
portion of the diocese of Magdeburg was assigned to Saxony, that power,
as a matter of course, retaining Lusatia.
[Sidenote: § 4. Gains of France.]
France, as a matter of course, retained its conquests. It kept its hold
upon Austrian Alsace, Strasburg, as a free city, and the immediate
vassals of the Empire being, however, excluded from the cession. The
strong fortress of Philippsburg, erected by the warlike Elector of
Treves, received a French garrison, and the three bishoprics, Metz,
Toul, and Verdun, which had been practically under French rule since the
days of Henry II. of France, were now formally separated from the
Empire. Equally formal was the separation of Switzerland and the
Netherlands, both of which countries had long been practically
independent.
[Sidenote: § 5. The question of toleration left to the German princes.]
The importance of the peace of Westphalia in European history goes far
beyond these territorial changes. That France should have a few miles
more and Germany a few miles less, or even that France should have
acquired military and political strength whilst Germany lost it, are
facts which in themselves need not have any very great interest for
others than Frenchmen or Germans. That which gives to the Peace of
Westphalia its prominent place amongst treaties is that it drew a final
demarcation between the two religions which divided Europe. The struggle
in England and France for the right of settling their own religious
affairs without the interference of foreign nations had been brought to
a close in the sixteenth century. In Germany it had not been brought to
a close for the simple reason that it was not decided how far Germany
was a nation at all. The government of England or France could tolerate
or persecute at home as far as its power or inclination permitted. But
the central government of Germany was not strong enough to enforce its
will upon the territorial governments; nor on the other hand were the
territorial governments strong enough to enforce their will without
regard for the central government. Thirty years of war ended by a
compromise under which the religious position of each territory was
fixed by the intervention of foreign powers, whilst the rights of the
central government were entirely ignored.
[Sidenote: § 6. How toleration was the result of this.]
Such a settlement was by no means necessarily in favour of religious
toleration. The right of an Elector of Bavaria or an Elector of Saxony
to impose his belief by force upon his dissident subjects was even more
fully acknowledged than before. He could still give them their choice
between conversion or banishment. As late as in 1729 an Archbishop of
Salzburg could drive thousands of industrious Protestants into exile
from his Alpine valleys, leaving a void behind them which has not been
filled up to this day. But if such cases were rare, their rarity was
indirectly owing to the Peace of Westphalia. In 1617 a bishop who had to
consider the question of religious persecution, had to consider it with
the fear of Christian of Anhalt before his eyes. Every Protestant in his
dominions was a possible traitor who would favour, if he did not
actively support, the revolutionary attacks of the neighbouring
Protestants. In 1649 all such fear was at an end for ever. The bishop
was undisputed master of his territory, and he could look on with
contemptuous indifference if a few of his subjects had sufficient love
of singularity to profess a religion other than his own.
[Sidenote: § 7. The Peace of Westphalia compared with the Peace of
Augsburg.]
It may perhaps be said that the assurance given by the Peace of
Westphalia was after all no better than the assurance given by the Peace
of Augsburg, but even so far as the letter of the two documents was
concerned, this was very far from being the case. The Peace of Augsburg
was full of uncertainties, because the contracting parties were unable
to abandon their respective desires. In the Peace of Westphalia all was
definite. Evasion or misinterpretation was no longer possible.
[Sidenote: § 8. General desire for the continuance of peace.]
If the letter of the two treaties was entirely different, it was because
the spirit in which they were conceived was also entirely different. In
1555 Protestantism was on the rise. The peace of 1555 was a vain attempt
to shut out the tide by artificial dykes and barriers. In 1648 the tide
had receded. The line which divided the Protestant from the Catholic
princes formed almost an exact division between the Protestant and
Catholic populations. The desire for making proselytes, once so strong
on both sides, had been altogether extinguished by the numbing agony of
the war. All Germany longed for peace with an inexpressible longing. The
mutual distrust of Catholic and Protestant had grown exceedingly dull.
The only feeling yet alive was hatred of the tyranny and exactions of
the soldiers.
SECTION III.--_Condition of Germany._
[Sidenote: § 1. Effects of the war.]
What a peace it was when it really came at last! Whatever life there was
under that deadly blast of war had been attracted to the camps. The
strong man who had lost his all turned soldier that he might be able to
rob others in turn. The young girl, who in better times would have
passed on to a life of honourable wedlock with some youth who had been
the companion of her childhood in the sports around the village
fountain, had turned aside, for very starvation, to a life of shame in
the train of one or other of the armies by which her home had been made
desolate. In the later years of the war it was known that a body of
40,000 fighting men drew along with it a loathsome following of no less
than 140,000 men, women, and children, contributing nothing to the
efficiency of the army, and all of them living at the expense of the
miserable peasants who still contrived to hold on to their ruined
fields. If these were to live, they must steal what yet remained to be
stolen; they must devour, with the insatiable hunger of locusts, what
yet remained to be devoured. And then, if sickness came, or wounds--and
sickness was no infrequent visitor in those camps--what remained but
misery or death? Nor was it much better with the soldiers themselves. No
careful surgeons passed over the battle-field to save life or limb. No
hospitals received the wounded to the tender nursing of loving, gentle
hands. Recruits were to be bought cheaply, and it cost less to enrol a
new soldier than to cure an old one.
[Sidenote: § 2. Decrease of the population.]
The losses of the civil population were almost incredible. In a certain
district of Thuringia which was probably better off than the greater
part of Germany, there were, before the war cloud burst, 1,717 houses
standing in nineteen villages. In 1649, only 627 houses were left. And
even of the houses which remained many were untenanted. The 1,717 houses
had been inhabited by 1,773 families. Only 316 families could be found
to occupy the 627 houses. Property fared still worse. In the same
district 244 oxen alone remained of 1,402. Of 4,616 sheep, not one was
left. Two centuries later the losses thus suffered were scarcely
recovered.
[Sidenote: § 3. Moral decadence.]
And, as is always the case, the physical decline of the population was
accompanied by moral decadence. Men who had been accustomed to live by
the strong arm, and men who had been accustomed to suffer all things
from those who were strong, met one another, even in the days of peace,
without that mutual respect which forms the basis of well-ordered life.
Courts were crowded with feather-brained soldiers whose highest ambition
was to bedeck themselves in a splendid uniform and to copy the latest
fashion or folly which was in vogue at Paris or Versailles. In the
country district a narrow-minded gentry, without knowledge or culture,
domineered over all around, and strove to exact the uttermost farthing
from the peasant in order to keep up the outward appearance of rank. The
peasant whose father had been bullied by marauding soldiers dared not
lift up his head against the exactions of the squire. The burden of the
general impoverishment fell heavily upon his shoulders. The very pattern
of the chairs on which he sat, of the vessels out of which he ate and
drank, assumed a ruder appearance than they had borne before the war. In
all ranks life was meaner, poorer, harder than it had been at the
beginning of the century.
[Sidenote: § 4. Intellectual decline even before the war.]