THE AGGRANDISEMENT OF FRANCE
Foreign policy of Richelieu--Territorial aggrandisement--Questions of
the Valtelline and the Mantuan Succession--Intrigues of Richelieu in
Germany--Interference of France in the Thirty Years’ War--Alteration
of the character of the war--Unsuccessful operations of
France--Conquest of Alsace--Revolt of Portugal and Catalonia--Position
of France at the death of Richelieu--Policy of Mazarin--Battle
of Rocroy--Conquest of the Upper Rhineland--Campaign of
Turenne--Negotiations for peace--The peace of Westphalia--The solution
of the religious difficulty--The beginning of modern Europe--Permanent
advance of France--Desperate condition of Spain--Outbreak of the
Fronde--Alliance of Mazarin and Cromwell--The peace of the Pyrenees.
[Sidenote: =Foreign policy of Richelieu.=]
When Richelieu in 1624 took the reins of government into his hands in
France, the Thirty Years’ War was just about to envelope the whole of
Germany in its fell embraces. The princes of the lower Saxon circle
had begun to arm, the king of Denmark was about to take the lead of
the Protestant forces, England had already taken active steps for
the recovery of the Palatinate, and the reduction of the power of
Spain. There was every probability that the whole energies of the
Austro-Spanish House would be absorbed in the affairs of Germany for
many years. The necessity of Spain and the Empire was ever in the
seventeenth century the opportunity of France, and Richelieu realised
by a flash of genius that the hour had arrived, which was to make or
mar the influence of France in the world. Three things were necessary
to the establishment of French supremacy in Europe, national unity,
monarchical centralisation, and the extension and security of the
frontiers. To attain these three objects, Richelieu devoted his life,
and he was sensible enough to see that complete success in foreign
affairs must do much to render success in the other two inevitable. If
the crown of France by military and diplomatic conquest could push back
the French frontier towards the Rhine, the Scheldt, and the Pyrenees,
it need have little to fear from its internal foes. So Richelieu took
up again the threads of policy, which had dropped from the lifeless
hands of Henry IV., and directed all his energies to the
resumption of the attack upon the Empire and upon Spain. But there was
this difference between the two men. Henry IV. had dreamed of
establishing the peace and good order of the world upon the ruin of the
Habsburgs. Richelieu cherished no such illusions. Nakedly and avowedly
he sought but the supremacy of France.
[Sidenote: =Its character.=]
Richelieu stands out upon the canvas of history as the first of that
long line of statesmen who were actuated by purely selfish national
interests. Unaffected by moral ideals, such as did so much to disguise
the personal ambitions of the wars of the Middle Ages, uninfluenced
by the religious motives, which often ennobled, even though they
intensified, the ruthlessness of the wars of the sixteenth century,
the rulers of the eighteenth and the latter half of the seventeenth
centuries made war upon each other purely in the interests of their
crowns and of themselves. Personal glory, territorial aggrandisement,
commercial advantage were the motives which led to the great wars
of Europe from the peace of Westphalia to the Congress of Vienna.
Before the fierceness of those appetites the rights of nations, of
races, even of humanity itself weighed not a feather in the balance.
Germans must lose their speech and their fatherland, that France may
push her boundaries to the Rhine. Poland must be wiped out of the map
of Europe, that Prussia and Russia may be bigger and greater. Even
African negroes must be torn from their homes, and sold as chattels in
the market-places of the West, that the pockets of Englishmen and of
English colonists might swell with gold. And if amid the dark scene
of selfishness and rapacity there shines at times the nobler light
which hallows the wars of liberty against the oppression of Louis
XIV. and Napoleon, yet the shadows deepen as they gather
round the career of Frederick the Great, and the closing acts of the
Napoleonic drama at Vienna, and the historian has sadly to acknowledge
that in them are to be found the characteristic scenes of eighteenth
century diplomacy and war. It is the triumph of Macchiavellianism on
the large scale in international politics. It is the adaptation to the
affairs of nations of Hobbes’s description of the natural man. _Homo
homini lupus._ Everything is permissible to a sovereign which tends
to the security and greatness of his power, and nations are to one
another as wild beasts. Man in his personal relations is civilised
Christian and refined. Nations in their ordinary intercourse with one
another are punctilious, courtly and even deferential, but when once
selfish aggrandisement is possible, it becomes allowable. The thin
veneer of civilisation and of consideration is rudely broken through,
and nation stands out against nation in open and barbarous hostility on
the principle of the old moss-trooper’s rule, that they shall win who
have the power and they shall keep who can.
[Sidenote: =Territorial aggrandisement necessary to France.=]
From the point of view of the needs of the French monarchy, there
was no doubt that Richelieu was right in urging France to a policy
of territorial aggrandisement. She was better able to pursue it than
were her neighbours, for she was sufficiently free from religious
difficulties to be able to throw her sword into the Protestant or the
Catholic scale as her interests might suggest. She had more to gain
from such a policy than any other nation in Europe, for almost on all
sides her land frontiers were a source of weakness. In the south the
Spanish provinces of Cerdagne and Roussillon lay on the French side of
the central ridge of the Pyrenees, and gave easy access to the Spanish
armies into rich and disaffected Languedoc. The Italian frontier was
in the keeping of the duke of Savoy, who, as long as he preserved his
independence, was as likely to admit Spanish and imperialist troops
into the valley of the Rhone, as French troops into the plain of
Lombardy. To the east and to the north-east the frontier was still more
insecure. Following roughly the streams of the Saone, the Meuse and
the Somme, it brought the Empire and Spain dangerously near to Paris,
especially as the intervening country was not easily defensible. It is
true that on the eastern side a considerable access of strength had
been gained by the occupation of the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and
Verdun in 1552, which secured to France the important fortress of Metz,
but they were not yet formally annexed to the crown of France, but only
administered by French officials. A glance at the map will therefore
show that the danger from Spain was considerable, and that, until she
had succeeded in breaking the chain which bound her almost from the
Pyrenees to the Straits of Dover, France could not make full use of her
unrivalled geographical position.
[Sidenote: =Question of the Valtelline, 1622.=]
Such were the influences which impelled Richelieu to make the
rectification of the frontier of France on the side of the Netherlands,
the Rhine, and the Pyrenees, the first object of his foreign policy;
and to launch France on that career of conquest and aggrandisement at
the expense of the House of Habsburg, which has been from his time
almost to the present day the central feature of European politics.
From the battle of Nördlingen to the battle of Solferino, there has
hardly been a great war in Europe in which the armies of France and
of the House of Austria have not been arrayed against each other as
enemies. Spain was the first foe to be dealt with, for Spain was the
most dangerous to neglect, and the easiest to attack. The Spaniards
who garrisoned the Milanese had, in 1622, seized upon the valley of
the Valtelline, and occupied it by force, in order to secure their
communications with the Empire; and had even obliged Chur, the chief
town of the League of the Grisons, to receive an imperial garrison.
This was undoubtedly an act of aggression on their part, and gave
Richelieu the opportunity of striking a deadly blow at his enemy. The
Valtelline is a broad and rich valley which runs in a north-easterly
direction into the heart of the Rhaetian Alps from the top of the Lake
of Como. About half-way up the valley a mountain pass, practicable for
the passage of troops, leads to the east into the valley of the Adige a
little north of Trent, from which by the well-frequented Brenner Pass
communication with Innsbrück and south Germany was easy and safe. This
was the only route which was certain to be available for the passage
of troops and stores from the Empire to Milan, as the other mountain
passes, which led direct from Tirol and Carinthia into Italy, opened
into the territory of the republic of Venice, and Venice was usually
not inclined to welcome the arrival of imperial troops. Provided,
however, that the passage of the Valtelline was secured, the rest of
the way was safe, as it lay through imperial territory. Hence the
command of the Valtelline was absolutely essential to the maintenance
of the power of the Habsburgs in Italy, but the valley itself was
politically subject to the League of the Grisons, which as long ago as
1509 had come under the protection of France. So then, when Spain moved
troops into the Valtelline, built a fortress in the valley, and obliged
the Grisons to admit an imperial garrison at Chur, Louis XIII.
as the protector of the Grisons had the right to interfere.
[Sidenote: =Its recovery for the Grisons, 1626.=]
Richelieu took his measures promptly. In 1624 he helped to bring about
a marriage alliance between Charles prince of Wales and Henrietta
Maria, the sister of Louis XIII., by which he hoped to gain the
assistance of England against Spain on the sea and in the Netherlands,
while he struck at the Valtelline. An army of the mountaineers of the
Grisons under French leadership drove the imperial troops from Chur,
and the papal troops from the Valtelline, where they had replaced the
Spaniards. Lesdiguières, at the head of a French force, marched to the
assistance of Savoy against Genoa. But just at that time the Huguenots
of La Rochelle flew to arms, and Richelieu, afraid of finding himself
involved at once in war at home and abroad, came to terms with Spain at
the treaty of Monzon, concluded in March 1626, by which the Valtelline
was to remain under the control of the Grisons.
[Sidenote: =The Mantuan succession, 1627.=]
For the next three years the whole energies of Richelieu and of
France were engaged in the reduction of La Rochelle, and in the war
with England, which followed hard upon, and indeed sprung out of,
the marriage treaty of 1624. In 1629 he was once more at liberty to
turn his attention to Italian affairs. In 1627 the duke of Mantua and
Montferrat had died. His nearest heir was a Frenchman, the duke of
Nevers. But the Emperor, at the instigation of Spain, not wishing to
have a French prince so near the Milanese, determined to sequester the
territory on the pretext of a disputed succession. Spanish troops at
once overran both Mantua and Montferrat, and driving the duke of Nevers
into Casale besieged him there. The Italian princes, however, were not
inclined to submit without protest to this exercise by the Emperor
of obsolete and doubtful rights. The Pope (Urban VIII.),
who was strongly French in sympathy, combined with Venice to ask the
assistance of France, and in January 1629 Louis and Richelieu crossed
the Mont Genèvre at the head of a large army, captured Susa, relieved
Casale, and forced the duke of Savoy to make peace. Again, however,
a rebellion of the Huguenots obliged Louis to draw back in the hour
of victory (March 1629), and in the summer of that year fresh troops,
set free by the imperialist successes in Germany, invaded Italy under
Spinola and formed the sieges of Mantua and Casale. In spite of the
most strenuous efforts of Louis himself, who crossed the Alps at the
head of the French armies in the winter of 1629–30, the combined
forces of Spain and the Empire were too strong to be dislodged from
Mantua or Montferrat. [Sidenote: =Peace of Cherasco, 1631.=] But
the invasion of Germany by Gustavus Adolphus, promoted by France and
even by the Pope, made the Emperor anxious for peace, and through the
diplomatic skill of the papal agent, Giulio Mazzarini--afterwards to
become so celebrated in French history--a truce was arranged, which
afterwards ripened into the definitive peace of Cherasco (April 26th,
1631). By this treaty the duke of Nevers was invested with the duchy,
and the fortresses were restored on both sides, except Pinerolo, which
was still held by the French.
So ended the first great effort made by Richelieu against the House of
Habsburg. Like most of his plans it was better conceived than executed,
but it must be remembered that in carrying it out, he was sorely
hampered by opposition to his authority at home both from the Huguenots
and from the nobles. His Italian policy must not be considered by
itself. It is part of a great whole. While he was openly attacking the
imperial forces in Italy, his diplomacy was undermining the imperialist
power in Germany, and if in 1631 he thought it best to rest content
with the reduction of Savoy, and the acquisition of a passage through
the Alps, it was because at that particular moment he could best effect
his purpose by shifting his method from direct to indirect hostility,
and the scene from Italy to Germany.
[Sidenote: =Intrigues of Richelieu in Germany, 1630.=]
Already he had endeavoured to keep the flame of opposition to Spain
alive by granting subsidies to the Dutch, and directing Mansfeld’s army
in 1624 to the Netherlands. In July 1630, he sent his most trusted
agent the famous Capuchin, Father Joseph, to the meeting of the diet of
Regensburg, where he laboured with notable skill and success to bring
about the dismissal of Wallenstein, and to pave the way for detaching
Maximilian of Bavaria and the League from their close alliance with
the Emperor and Spain. In the autumn of the year before, another
well-trained diplomatist, Charnacé, had travelled as far as Dantzig to
offer the mediation of France in the quarrel between Sweden and Poland,
and so removed one of the obstacles which made Gustavus Adolphus
hesitate to take part in the German War. At that time Richelieu seems
to have thought that he could use Gustavus merely as a fighting tool,
and by offering him French money and a French alliance could make him
fight the battles of France against the Emperor. But he was quickly
undeceived. Gustavus definitely refused to allow his political or
military independence to be impaired. He was quite willing that France
should interfere openly in the war, if she chose to do so, provided
she would limit her operations to the left bank of the Rhine; but he
would not tolerate for a moment any interference with his own command.
The utmost that Richelieu could obtain from him by the treaty of
Bärwalde in 1631, in return for French gold, was the promise to observe
friendship or neutrality towards Bavaria and the League, so far as they
would observe them towards him. Nor was this promise of much avail, for
when, after the battle of Breitenfeld, Gustavus determined to march
upon central and southern Germany instead of on Vienna, all hope of
detaching Bavaria from the Emperor had to be laid aside.
[Sidenote: =Open interference in Germany, 1632–1634.=]
As long as Gustavus Adolphus lived there was but little room for
Richelieu in German politics. Had he survived a few years longer, it
is not improbable that the world would have seen an alliance of the
Moderates in Germany, under the leadership of Richelieu, supported
possibly by both Maximilian and Wallenstein, against the Emperor and
the king of Sweden. But the death of Gustavus quickly put the decisive
voice in German affairs into the possession of France. Already in
1632 French troops had appeared upon the Rhine, and garrisoned the
new fortress of Ehrenbreitstein at the invitation of the elector of
Trier. In the same year Richelieu became a party to the League of
Heilbronn, and so secured the right to interfere in German affairs. In
1633 a French army entered the old German territory of Lorraine and
captured its capital Nancy, owing to the incessant intrigues against
the all-powerful cardinal of which the duke had been guilty. The battle
of Nördlingen in 1634 put Protestant Germany at the feet of Richelieu.
The soil of Germany, harried and plundered, could with difficulty
sustain the armies which devastated it. Sweden, poor and exhausted,
could make no sacrifices. England was too much occupied with pecuniary
difficulties at home to be able to send assistance to Germany.
[Sidenote: =Declaration of war against Spain, 1635.=] France was
the only power both able and willing to provide the sinews of war. She
became the protector and director of the League of Heilbronn, took
Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar and his army into her pay, claimed from the
Swedes the custody of the fortresses held by them in Alsace, and on
19th May 1635 formally declared war against Spain.
[Sidenote: =The character of the war altered by French interference.=]
From that moment the character of the Thirty Years’ War profoundly
alters. It is no longer a war of religion, to set limits to the
progress of the Counter-Reformation or to save Catholicism or
Protestantism from extinction. It is no longer a war of institutions,
to maintain the authority of the Emperor or to preserve the sovereign
rights of the princes. It is no longer a war of property, to resist the
undoing of the territorial settlement of 1555. It is no longer a war
for the re-settlement of Germany upon a new basis by military force.
German interests no longer have a place in this terrible war waged
for the destruction of Germany on German soil. Primarily, it is a war
between the House of Bourbon and the House of Habsburg, to break the
power of Spain and increase that of France, through the acquisition by
the latter of Alsace and Lorraine. Secondarily, it is a war between the
Swedes and the Empire, to gain for the former out of German soil an
adequate compensation for the money which they had spent and the blood
which they had shed. Two points of interest alone remain in tracing the
melancholy story of the weary years, the gradual development of the
power of France, and the brilliant achievements of skilful generalship.
The entrance of France into the war did not at first check the tide
of imperialist success. Richelieu overestimated the resources and
the military strength of France. [Sidenote: =Unsuccessful campaigns
on the frontiers of France, 1635–1637.=] He put into the field no
less than four armies, amounting in the aggregate to 120,000 men;
but unaccustomed to war, ill disciplined, ill fed, ill paid, and
badly commanded, they were no match for the veterans of Spain and the
Emperor. It was the first time that the new monarchy in France had made
war upon a grand scale, and it had to buy its experience. The campaigns
of the years 1635, 1636, and 1637 told a story of almost unrelieved
failure. In Italy the French armies just managed to hold their own.
In Alsace and the Netherlands they were everywhere out-generalled
and beaten back. In 1636, a Spanish army actually invaded France and
threatened Paris. Had it not been for the skilful generalship of
Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar in the Rhineland, and the signal success which
attended the efforts of the Swedish army, it is not at all improbable
that the Emperor would have been able to impose upon all Germany the
conditions of the peace of Prague, and by procuring the retirement
of the Swedes have narrowed the issues involved to the simple one
of a national war between France and Austro-Spain. Already Bavaria
and Catholic Germany, as well as Saxony, Brandenburg and nearly all
the Lutheran powers, had accepted the treaty. Oxenstjerna and the
Swedes had refused after protracted negotiations, only because the
Emperor and John George would not hear of making over to them an inch
of German soil. On their side they would not be content merely with
a money indemnity. Saxony and Brandenburg accordingly joined their
forces to those of the Emperor and determined to drive the Swedes back
across the sea to their own country. [Sidenote: =Success of Baner
in Germany, Battle of Wittstock, 1636.=] It was a critical moment.
Had the Saxons pressed on vigorously after the final rupture of the
negotiations in the autumn of 1635, they could hardly have failed to
have crushed Baner the Swedish general at Magdeburg with their superior
forces, but the opportunity was allowed to slip. Baner withdrew in
safety to the north, and was there strongly reinforced. He now had
under his orders an army sufficient to cope with his enemies, and after
some marching and countermarching succeeded in throwing himself upon
the Saxons and imperialists at Wittstock on the Mecklenberg frontier
of Brandenburg on October 4th 1636, before the Brandenburgers could
come to their assistance. The victory was one of the most complete
won by the Swedes during the whole war. The elector’s army was almost
annihilated, and Baner became as paramount in northern Germany as the
imperialists were upon the Rhine until the following autumn when he was
again driven back into Pomerania.
It is noticeable that both in diplomacy and war Richelieu improved his
position year by year. Gradually he learned how to win campaigns, as
he had learned gradually how to rule France. In the last four years
of his life, he gathered the fruits for which he had so patiently
laboured in the previous years. [Sidenote: =Capture of Breisach by
Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, 1638.=] In 1638 Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar
succeeded in making himself master of the upper Rhineland, and having
defeated the imperialists at Rheinfelden occupied Freiburg in Breisgau,
and on December 19th captured the important fortress of Breisach.
Richelieu when he heard the news hurried to the bedside of his dying
friend the Capuchin Joseph, ‘_Courage, père Joseph_,’ he cried,
‘_Breisach est à nous_,’ and with this characteristic viaticum
to console and strengthen him in his last agony, the wily diplomatist
passed from this world of intrigue, of which for the last ten years
his subtle brain had been the master and the mainspring. [Sidenote:
=Death of Bernhard. His army put under French command.=] In July
of the next year Bernhard himself died, and his army, together with
the conquests which it had made, passed directly under the command of
the French. French governors ruled in the Alsatian towns, and from
that time the annexation of Alsace to the French monarchy became one
of the recognised objects of the policy of the Bourbons. The success
of Richelieu did not stop with the land. Ever since the fatal day,
when the capture of a few French ships by the Huguenot Soubise in the
port of Blavet had sent the proud cardinal on his knees to England
and the Dutch to borrow ships to use against the revolted Rochellois,
Richelieu had devoted special care to the formation of a navy. In 1639
for the first time a French fleet appeared in the Channel, ready to
cope with the huge galleons of Spain, and to cut the bond which united
her to the Netherlands. France was now to play the same game at the
expense of Spain which had been played by Elizabeth of England in the
century before. But the time had not yet come when France was to wrest
from Spain the command of the sea. [Sidenote: =Defeat of the Spanish
Fleet in the Downs, 1639.=] The Spaniards succeeded in escaping
the French fleet, but only to fall into the hands of their allies the
Dutch. Sorely bestead by their quick-sailing antagonists, they took
refuge in the Downs under the neutral flag of England, but even there
the Dutch admiral pursued them, burned some of their ships, captured
others, and forced the remnant to seek the friendly shelter of Dunkirk.
From that time the passage of the Channel was closed to a Spanish fleet
as long as Spain was at war with the Dutch or the French. [Sidenote:
=Revolt of Portugal and Catalonia, 1640.=] In the next year still
more serious misfortunes awaited the crown of Spain. Portugal assisted
by French subsidies successfully reasserted its independence, and
re-established its monarchy under the House of Braganza in December
1640, while earlier in the year the revolt of the high spirited
Catalans effectually saved France from all danger of invasion from the
south and opened her path to Roussillon, while in Italy the French
flag was successfully planted on the walls of Turin. The two following
years served to make good the ground thus won, and when Richelieu died
in December 1642, he had the satisfaction of feeling that he had got
his hand upon the throat of his huge antagonist and was choking her.
With French armies strongly encamped on the Rhine and the plain of
Piedmont, with French governors established in Alsace and Lorraine,
with Roussillon and Cerdagne and the passes of Savoy in the possession
of France, she had indeed acquired a frontier which not only preserved
her from all danger of sudden invasion, but enabled her to strike a
swift and deadly blow at her enemies, before they could have time to
concentrate their forces against her. [Sidenote: =Improved position
of France at the death of Richelieu, 1642.=] Richelieu in his
eighteen years of power had given France concentration, unity, and
a scientific frontier. Seated between the two seas, bounded by the
Pyrenees the Alps and the Vosges, with her hand upon the Rhine and the
Scheldt, France was prepared to strike for the supremacy of Europe.
[Sidenote: =Richelieu’s policy continued by Mazarin.=]
The direction of the policy of France passed on the death of the
stern and uncompromising Richelieu into the hands of the supple and
intriguing Mazarin, but the change made no difference to the conduct
of foreign affairs. Louis XIII. followed his great minister
quickly to the grave, and during the minority of his young son, Louis
XIV., Anne of Austria, the queen-mother, who was entirely
devoted to Mazarin, became regent, and the policy of aggrandisement
at the expense of the Austro-Spanish House was vigorously carried on.
Within a few months of the accession of the young king, his reign was
graced by the most splendid success which had attended the arms of
France since the capture of Calais by the duke of Guise. Don Francisco
Mello, who had succeeded the cardinal-infant in the government of
the Netherlands in December 1641, thought to take advantage of the
weakness caused by the change of rulers in France; and sent the
count of Fuentes at the head of all the available troops which he
could muster, across the frontier. Mazarin, following his habitual
policy of trying to attract the princes of the blood to his side,
intrusted the command of the French army to the young duc d’Enghien,
the eldest son of the prince of Condé, who found the Spaniards on the
19th of May 1643 strongly posted among the marshes which surround
the little fortress of Rocroy. Condé, to give him the name by which
he is best known, though he never in the course of a long training
in war developed any of the higher qualities of a general, had that
magnetic personal power over his men which is all-important on the
battle-field. [Sidenote: =Destruction of the military power of Spain
at Rocroy, 1643.=] They would follow him anywhere. The _furia
francese_, which had been often remarked upon in the Italian wars of
the sixteenth century, had been but the mad rush of an undisciplined
mob, like the rush of African dervishes. Condé was the first great
leader to utilise this power among disciplined troops, and to make
the peculiar _élan_ of the French charge into one of the most
decisive tactics of the battle-field. Ever since the days of the great
captain, Gonsalvo da Cordova, the Spanish infantry had been the finest
in the world. The solid mass of pikemen, wedged close together in a
fortress-like formation, by their stubborn endurance could resist all
cavalry attack, and by sheer weight bear down all opposition. But if
once the mass became disorganised, it could never reform. Once break
the ‘hedgehog’ of pikes, and the day was won. Gustavus Adolphus had
shown at Breitenfeld how the superiority of artillery and musketry fire
might open lanes in these mighty masses, into which the heavy cavalry
might throw themselves, and overcome weight by weight in the shock of
hand-to-hand conflict. Condé at Rocroy illustrated a similar principle
by his mobile and disciplined infantry. Plunging a deadly fire into the
dense immovable masses of the Spaniards, he waited for the moment when
the falling men began to create confusion in the ranks, then against
their front, and into their flanks he poured the lithe and well-trained
infantry with irresistible effect. It was the story of the Armada and
the English ships retold on land. The huge masses could do nothing
against their swarming antagonists. Taken flank, front, and rear,
they could not alter their formation, they could not adapt themselves
to this new kind of warfare, they would not break and run, there was
nothing left but to die. There is something inexpressibly pathetic in
the figure of the old count of Fuentes, seated on his chair in the
middle of the fast diminishing square of his choicest troops, for the
gout would not permit him even to stand, calmly and patiently awaiting
inevitable death, as the defending ranks became thinner and thinner,
without the thought of surrender, without the power even of striking
a blow in self-defence, the type of his country, and his country’s
greatness, which was passing away with the shouts of victory which
hailed the young conqueror of Rocroy.
[Sidenote: =Conquest of the Upper Rhineland by the French,
1644–1645.=]
The victory of Rocroy made France the first military power of Europe,
but it was on the Rhine and not in the Netherlands that she put forth
all her energies. During the remaining years of the war, the chief
struggle was for the possession of the upper Rhineland. France wished
to secure her hold over Alsace by occupying both banks of the great
river, and making herself permanently mistress of the fortresses of
Breisach and Philipsburg. The Emperor and Maximilian fought stubbornly,
the one to save the Breisgau, one of the oldest possessions of the
House of Habsburg, from falling into the hand of the enemy, the other
to defend the frontiers of Bavaria from insult and plunder. In the
cautious Mercy, and the dashing Werth, they obtained the services of
generals not unfit to be matched with Condé and Turenne. At Freiburg
in Breisgau for three days the impetuous Condé dashed himself in vain
against the intrenchments of Mercy in August 1644, neglecting the wiser
counsel of Turenne, who showed how easily a flank march through the
mountains in the rear must compel the Bavarian general to retire. Just
a year afterwards, on August 3d, 1645, Condé won a Pyrrhic victory at
Nördlingen by his reckless and irresistible attack, but at too great
an expenditure of life to permit him to make use of it, although the
Imperialists were sore beset at the time, and Vienna itself threatened
by the Swedes under Torstenson.
The honour of giving the final determination to the war belongs to
Turenne. In 1646 he found himself for the first time at the head of
an adequate force, and his own master, and he at once determined to
put a stop to the ruinous system of frittering away advantages by
acting on two different centres. [Sidenote: =Campaign of Turenne and
Wrangel, 1646–1647.=] By combining his army with that of the Swedes,
he saw that he could oppose an overwhelming force to the enemy, and
end the war at a blow. Having procured the assent of Wrangel to his
plan, who had replaced Torstenson in command of the Swedes, Turenne
crossed the Rhine at Wesel, below Köln, and effected his junction with
Wrangel on the Main. Slipping cleverly between the archduke Leopold
William and the Bavarians, who sought to bar their passage, the united
armies marched straight upon the Danube, seized Donauwörth, and spread
themselves over the rich plain of Bavaria, plundering and burning up
to the gates of Munich, and even penetrating as far as Bregenz in the
Vorarlberg. Maximilian in despair deserted the Emperor, and signed a
separate truce with the allies in May 1647. He did not keep it long.
Stung in conscience, and afraid of after all losing the electoral hat,
which he had risked so much to win, he again joined the Emperor in
September of the same year. Terrible was the retribution which awaited
him. Turenne and Wrangel returned into Bavaria with an army swollen
with campfollowers to the number of 127,000. Beating the elector’s
troops at Zusmarshausen on May 17th, 1648, they fastened like locusts
on the land, and soon reduced it to the state of desolation in which
the rest of Germany lay. Maximilian summoned Wallenstein’s old general
Piccolomini to his aid, and prepared to strike one more blow for house
and home, but before the armies met, the welcome news came that peace
had been signed on the 24th of October at Münster, and the Thirty
Years’ War was at an end.
[Sidenote: =Negotiations for peace, 1642.=]
For some years the desire for peace had been getting stronger and
stronger. In Germany it was felt that the main obstacles to peace
had passed away with the chief actors in the struggle. Ferdinand II.
had died in the year 1637, and his son Ferdinand III. was not bound
in conscience or in policy to the Edict of Restitution. The Elector
Palatine, Frederick V., had preceded him in 1632. Christian of Anhalt,
Christian of Brunswick, Wallenstein, Gustavus Adolphus, and Bethlen
Gabor had long passed away, and the policies which they had represented
had taken other forms. There was no German question left seriously
difficult of solution. The real obstacles of peace were the ambition
of France, and the determination of Oxenstjerna to carve a territory
for the Swedes out of the Baltic provinces of Germany. But they could
not prevent the beginning of negotiations, though they could do much to
hinder their progress, and in 1642 it was agreed that representatives
should meet in Westphalia, at the towns of Münster and Osnabrück, to
discuss the preliminaries of a treaty. [Sidenote: =Congress of Münster
and Osnabrück.=] So many were the obstructions thrown in the way that
it was not till 1644 that the congress actually met. At Münster, which
was the meeting-place of the Catholic powers, there appeared under
the presidency of the papal nuncio (Chigi) and the ambassador of
Venice--the two mediating powers--the representatives of the Empire, of
France, of Spain, of the Catholic electors, and the Catholic princes of
the Empire. At Osnabrück were gathered the representatives of Sweden,
of the Protestant electors, and the Protestant princes and cities of
the Empire, together with envoys of France, which was thus represented
at both places. It was one thing to get the representatives to meet,
it was quite another to get them to set to work. The proposal of an
armistice during the negotiations had been definitely refused, and
consequently it became to the interest of each of the chief combatants
in turn to delay or promote the conclusion of peace as the fortune of
war shifted from one side to the other. Questions of precedence and
etiquette, always dear to the diplomatic mind, raised themselves in
plenty from the side of France or Spain or Sweden, whenever things
seemed to be going too quick. Months accordingly passed away and no
progress was made.
[Sidenote: =Separate treaties made by Brandenburg, Saxony, and
Bavaria.=]
The German princes, who saw their lands devastated, their villages
burned, their towns depopulated, their subjects obliged to turn
soldiers or brigands, or, where that was impossible, driven to stave
off the pangs of hunger by eating grass and roots, and even human
flesh, in order that France might annex Alsace, or Sweden seize
Pomerania, soon lost all faith in the tortuous dealings of the
diplomatists in Westphalia, and began to shift for themselves. On the
24th of July 1642, the young elector of Brandenburg, Frederick William,
made a separate treaty of neutrality with the Swedes, which practically
withdrew Brandenburg from the area of the war. On the 31st of August
1645, John George of Saxony followed the example of Brandenburg but on
far worse terms. In 1647, as we have seen, even Maximilian of Bavaria
was induced under stress of the invasion of Turenne to conclude for
a short time a separate truce. These acts showed how passionately
Germany longed for peace, but its actual conclusion was due to the
pressure exercised upon the Emperor and Maximilian by the successes
of Turenne, and upon Oxenstjerna and the Swedes by their young queen.
[Sidenote: =Interference of Christina of Sweden in favour of
peace.=] Christina, the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, had come of
age in the year 1644, and had at once begun to show that masterful
spirit and commanding ability which were to make her one of the most
interesting characters of the century. Partly from a real desire to end
the barbarities of the war, partly from the necessities of her crown,
she at once applied herself to bring the Westphalian negotiations to
a successful issue, sent a special embassy to the court of Paris, and
insisted, sorely against the old chancellor’s will, upon accepting in
behalf of Sweden far less than had hitherto been demanded.
[Sidenote: =The peace of Westphalia, 1648.=]
By the peace of Westphalia, signed at last on the 24th of October 1648,
exactly thirty years and five months since the regents were thrown out
of the window at Prague, the religious difficulty in Germany was met
by the extension to the Calvinists of all the rights enjoyed by the
Lutherans under the religious peace. [Sidenote: =1. Solution of the
religious questions.=] The first day of the year 1624 was taken as
the test day by which the question of the ecclesiastical lands was to
be settled. All that was in Catholic hands on that day was to remain
Catholic, all that was in Protestant hands was to remain Protestant.
Roughly speaking the line thus laid down was the line which answered
to the facts. It preserved the bishoprics of the south, which were
avowedly Catholic, to the Catholics; and the secularised lands of the
north, such as Bremen and Verden, Halberstadt and Magdeburg, where
the Protestants were in a large majority, to Protestantism; and it
secured to Catholicism the victories of the Counter-Reformation in the
hereditary dominions of Austria, in Bohemia, in Bavaria, and in the
upper Palatinate. Finally, the treaty provided for the equal division
of the two interests in the imperial court of justice. There was little
difficulty in thus finding a satisfactory solution of the questions
connected with religion, which had been at the beginning of the war so
grave and alarming. [Sidenote: =2. Territorial compensation.=]
Both sides had by the process of time become aware that they could
not destroy the other, and had learned, if they did not admit, the
necessity of toleration. The serious problems for solution were those
connected with compensation. Eventually, however, the following
arrangements were agreed to.
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE MARCH OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, AND
THE TERRITORIAL CHANGES EFFECTED BY THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA.]
1. Maximilian of Bavaria retained the electorate, which was made
hereditary in his family, and was permitted to add the upper Palatinate
to his duchy of Bavaria.
2. A new electorate was created for Charles Lewis, the eldest son of
Frederick, Elector Palatine, and the lower Palatinate was restored to
him.
3. Sweden received western Pomerania, including the mouth of the Oder,
and the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden, which gave her a commanding
strategical and commercial position on the German rivers, and the right
of being represented in the German Diet.
4. Brandenburg was compensated for her loss of western Pomerania by
the addition of the bishoprics of Halberstadt, Camin, Minden, and the
greater part of Magdeburg, to her dominions; and by the confirmation
of her inheritance in eastern Pomerania. In addition to this, she now
obtained control over the duchies of Cleves, Mark and Ravensberg, which
had been apportioned to her by the treaty of Xanten in 1614, but during
the war had been occupied by the rival armies of the Spaniards and the
Dutch.
5. France obtained possession of Austrian Alsace, including Breisach,
and the right to garrison Philipsburg; but the free city of Strasburg
was expressly reserved to the Empire. The three bishoprics of Metz,
Toul and Verdun were formally annexed to the crown of France, while in
Italy she received the fortress of Pinerolo.
6. Saxony retained Lusatia, and acquired part of the diocese of
Magdeburg, and the independence of the Dutch and the Swiss was finally
acknowledged.
[Sidenote: =The Peace, a solution of the religious difficulty.=]
The peace of Westphalia, like the war to which it put an end, marks
the close of one epoch and the beginning of another. It closes the
long chapter of the religious troubles in Germany, which grew out of
the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and it did so in the most
satisfactory manner possible, not by laying down any great principle of
religious toleration or religious domination, but simply by recognising
accomplished facts. Calvinism had worked its way to an equal position
with Lutheranism among the religious forces of Germany, and that
fact was accordingly recognised. The supremacy of each prince in his
own dominions over the religious as well as the political conduct
of his people had been recognised by the peace of Augsburg in 1555,
and been uniformly acted upon by Catholic and Protestant alike ever
since. It was now definitely, if tacitly admitted, and possible evils
guarded against by drawing the territorial line between Catholicism
and Protestantism as nearly as possible to coincide with the actual
difference of belief. It was still possible for a Protestant prince
in the north to oppress his Catholic subjects, it was still possible
for a Catholic prince of the south to banish all Protestants from
his dominions, but the question henceforth was but a local one, a
matter solely between the prince and his subjects, which imposed upon
Protestants and Catholics elsewhere in Germany no greater duty and gave
them no more right to interfere, than did the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes by Louis XIV. in France. Such a solution may not
have been from the point of view of morals the best conceivable. It was
under the circumstances of the time the best possible. To modern ideas
it may seem that the negotiators of Westphalia lost a great opportunity
of forcing into the unwilling hands of Germany the priceless boon of
religious toleration. Had they attempted to do so, they would only have
kept alive the spirit of religious animosity, and given to political
ambition the right again to shelter itself under the claims of religion
and renew the flame of war. By making the question wholly one between
prince and people, they ensured that all the conservative forces of
human nature, the forces that make against novelty, disturbance, and
revolution, the forces which impel men and governments so powerfully to
take the line of the least resistance, should be enlisted on the side
of religious peace. If the door was still left open to an archbishop of
Salzburg to banish all Protestants from his dominions, the paucity of
such instances of oppression after the peace of Westphalia, is alone
sufficient proof of the truce in religious affairs which it practically
brought about; while the danger of a hundred such acts of tyranny
cannot weigh as a feather in the balance against the unspeakable horror
of a renewal of the war.
[Sidenote: =The Peace the beginning of modern Europe.=]
The peace of Westphalia is also the beginning of a new era. It marks
the formation of the modern European states system. In Germany itself
the central fact registered by the peace is the final disintegration of
the Empire. The machinery it is true was still left intact. There was
an Emperor and a diet, electors and an imperial court of justice, but
all reality had passed away from them as a governing power in Germany.
The German people were governed by the German princes, who had all
the rights of sovereignty. They could coin money, make war, organise
armies, and send representatives to other courts. [Sidenote: =1. The
Empire becomes Austrian.=] The central authority was reduced to a
minimum, and if the Emperor was still a power in Germany, it was not
because he was Emperor, but because he was archduke of Austria and
many other German duchies, king of Bohemia, and king of Hungary. The
effect is at once visible in the policy of the House of Austria. The
Emperor still maintained his interests in Germany and on the Rhine,
still he stood forward as the champion of Germany to prevent France
from dominating over Europe, still from time to time he waged war to
check the growing power of Prussia, to develop schemes of commercial
enterprise in the Netherlands, but nevertheless, irresistibly, in spite
of tradition, and of association, his real attention became fixed more
and more irrevocably on the east and on the south. His policy in fact
in its heart of hearts ceased to be imperial or even German and became
purely Austrian. He sought compensation on the Danube for his losses on
the Rhine. He sacrificed much for a hold over Italy, which should give
to his impoverished and land-locked country the riches of the plain of
Lombardy and ports on the Adriatic. Insensibly and steadily he pushed
his territorial frontier more and more to the east and south, while
Brandenburg actuated by similar forces was pushing hers to the west and
to the north.
[Sidenote: =2. Sovereignty of the German princes.=]
Set free from even the shadow of imperial centralisation, Germany was
enabled to follow unimpeded her own laws of development. In central
Germany the spirit of disintegration, and the fearful desolation caused
by the war conquered all desire for unity. Almost to the present
day it has remained a heap of undistinguished and undistinguishable
atoms. [Sidenote: =3. Growth of Brandenburg and Bavaria.=] But in
north Germany, the natural tendency of small states to coalesce with
larger states began to show itself, and Brandenburg at once started
on that career of conquest and aggrandisement which has brought her
in our own day to the headship of Europe, while Bavaria, in alliance
with France, bid with some success against the House of Austria for
the leadership of south Germany, which since 1866 she has practically
attained. Thus, with regard to the internal politics of Germany, the
peace of Westphalia set in motion the forces, which, by ousting the
Emperor from predominance in Germany, throwing the energies of the
House of Austria towards Italy and the lower Danube, and enabling the
House of Hohenzollern to strike for the leadership of north Germany
and the command of the Rhine, have during the last two hundred years
permanently affected the balance of power in Europe and the condition
of the German people.
[Sidenote: =4. Diminished influence of the Papacy.=]
Outside the boundaries of Germany, the treaties of Westphalia mark no
less a change in the relations of the great powers of Europe. It is
the last time that the Pope appears as the mediator of the peace of
nations. His refusal to sanction the treaties was simply set on one
side by Catholic and Protestant powers alike, and from that time his
influence in the international politics of Europe ceased. [Sidenote:
=5. Transitory character of Swedish greatness.=] France and
Sweden are the two nations who have most right to claim the peace of
Westphalia as marking an epoch in their national history. With Sweden
it is the high-water mark of her European influence. The treaties
recognised her as one of the great powers of Europe, and secured to
her the supremacy of the Baltic, and the right to claim the allegiance
of north Germany, if she could win it. But the task proved beyond
her capacity, and she slowly shrank before the advancing power of
Brandenburg and of Russia, until before a hundred years had passed it
had become abundantly clear that with regard to Sweden the peace did
not mark the permanent inclusion of a new power among the great nations
of Europe.
[Sidenote: =6. Permanent advance of France.=]
With France the case was quite different. The peace is but one step on
the long road of territorial aggrandisement on which she had definitely
entered at the bidding of Richelieu and Mazarin. She became by the
war the first military power in Europe. By the peace she was planted
securely upon the Rhine and acquired not merely a scientific frontier
for offence and defence in the virgin fortress of Metz, the mountains
of the Vosges, and the strongholds of Breisach and Philipsburg, but an
incentive to future exertion, and a spur to criminal ambition, in the
desire to make her hold upon the Rhine but the beginning of a vaster
scheme of conquest. The _damnosa hereditas_ of the Rhine frontier
for France, sanctioned in part by the peace of Westphalia, has been the
chief disturbing element in European politics for nearly two centuries
and a half, and the malignancy of its poison shows even now no signs
of abatement. The great questions, which have agitated Europe during
the years which have elapsed since the Thirty Years’ War, have mainly
centred round the rivalry of Russia and of Austria for the command of
the Danube and the inheritance of the Turk, and the rivalry of France
and Germany for the possession of the Rhine. The great settlements of
European affairs, which have taken place since that time at Utrecht,
at Vienna, at Paris, and at Berlin, have been but the hatching of the
fully developed chicks from the eggs laid in Westphalia in 1648.
[Sidenote: =Desperate condition of Spain, 1648.=]
Spain was not included in the peace of Westphalia. The war between
her and France still continued for twelve years more, though at the
time the peace was signed at Münster it seemed as if the unwieldy
monarchy was on the brink of dissolution. Portugal had asserted its
independence, Catalonia assisted by a French army was in full revolt.
Roussillon and Cerdagne were in French hands. Flanders and the port of
Dunkirk had fallen under the spell of the conqueror of Rocroy. In 1646
a naval battle off the coast of Tuscany made the French for the first
time masters of the Mediterranean. Finally in 1648 Naples revolted
at the bidding of a fisherman named Masaniello, and, had Mazarin
shown a little more vigour and decision, might have been entirely
lost to the Spanish monarchy. Freed from the necessity of exertion on
the side of the Rhine, Mazarin had but to press his victories home
in the Netherlands and Catalonia to force Spain to a dishonourable
peace. [Sidenote: =Spain saved by the outbreak of the Fronde,
1648.=] But suddenly all these advantages were lost, and the tables
completely turned, by the grotesque outbreak of personal ambition, and
constitutional factiousness, known as the Fronde. For six years the
nobles and the citizens of Paris played at revolution, in order to
wrest power out of the hands of Mazarin and transfer it to their own.
Maddened by the spirit of faction, they did not hesitate to call in the
enemy and join themselves to Spain, if thereby they could wreak their
vengeance on the hated minister. Even Turenne and Condé were found
at different times leading armies against France. But in the end the
cleverness of the minister, the stubbornness of the queen-mother, and
the influence of the royal authority prevailed; and in 1653 Mazarin
returned from his second exile to take up again the reins of government
which he held until his death.
[Sidenote: =Weakness of France after the Fronde, 1653.=]
How different were the circumstances under which he again resumed
the war against Spain! The resources of France had been squandered,
the armies of France had become demoralised, the authority of the
government weakened, while Spain had profited by the difficulties
of her enemy to recover the Netherlands and Catalonia, and, through
the treason of Condé, was enabled to place one of the best generals
of the day at the head of her armies. In 1653 he invaded France and
threatened Paris, but was foiled by the superior strategy of Turenne,
and obliged to retreat. In the three following years France slowly won
back the frontier towns of the Netherlands. It was clear that neither
side was able to inflict upon the other such a defeat as would end the
war. [Sidenote: =Alliance between Mazarin and Cromwell, 1657.=] So in
1656 Mazarin, cardinal and absolutist though he was, sought for the
alliance of Cromwell, the Protestant hero of the English revolution.
Cromwell looked upon Spain with the eyes of Elizabeth, and saw in her
but the chief supporter of Popery in Europe, and the chief obstacle
to English trade. An agreement was soon arrived at by which 6000 of
Cromwell’s soldiers, probably the best in Europe, were put at the
disposal of Mazarin. In 1657 a change was quickly perceived in the war.
Turenne, with the assistance of his new allies, defeated the Spaniards
at the battle of the Dunes, captured Mardyke and Dunkirk, which was
handed over to England, and overran the country almost up to Brussels
in June 1658. This blow determined the Spanish government to treat
for peace. Conferences were held between the ambassadors of the two
countries on the Bidassoa during 1659, and on November 7th the peace
of the Pyrenees was signed. [Sidenote: =The Peace of the Pyrenees,
1659.=] By it France acquired Artois, Roussillon, and Cerdagne, and the
towns of Thionville, Landreçies, and Avesnes. She agreed to restore the
duke of Lorraine to his duchy, on condition that the fortifications of
Nancy were destroyed, and the armies of France allowed free passage
through the country. Condé was pardoned and restored to his property
and dignities. Finally the alliance was cemented by the marriage of
Louis XIV. to Maria Theresa, the daughter of Philip IV., who on her
marriage renounced on the part of herself and her children all claim
to the throne of Spain, on receipt of a dowry of 500,000 crowns. This
dowry was never paid, and in consequence it became a question whether
the renunciation was of any effect at all.
[Sidenote: =Commanding position of France, 1660.=]
The peace of the Pyrenees is the complement of that of Westphalia.
It marks the completion of the scientific frontier of France to the
south. The primary work of Richelieu had been accomplished. On the
south, on the south-east, and on the east, France was now possessed of
a frontier not merely defensible, but equally available for offence
or defence. Through the passes of the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the
Vosges, her armies could pour at a moment’s notice into the valleys of
the Ebro, the Po, and the Rhine. Only to the north was the frontier
still unmarked by natural boundaries. The annexation of Artois removed
the danger some few miles farther away from Paris, but that was all.
So grew up on the side of the Netherlands a desire for the Scheldt and
the Demer as the natural boundaries of France to the north, analogous
to the passion so fondly cherished by all French statesmen with regard
to the Rhine to the east. The politics of the future were coloured and
affected by the rivalry of the French and the Dutch on the Scheldt, as
by the rivalry of the French and the Germans on the Rhine. Among the
fondest dreams of French statesmen, second only to the acquisition of
the Rhine, has been the annexation of the Netherlands as a legitimate
object of French ambition, and it may be questioned whether any policy
has cost France more blood and treasure than that which has turned some
of the fairest and richest districts of the world into the cockpit of
Europe. To Spain the peace of the Pyrenees is a great epoch. The peace
of Vervins marked her failure, the peace of the Pyrenees marked her
fall. She had once bid for supremacy over Europe and had failed. She
had then entered the lists as the equal and rival of France and had
been beaten. France issued from the contest victorious both by land
and sea, and could condescend to take her former rival into protection
and partnership. After the peace of the Pyrenees, France and Spain
from being deadly rivals tended to become more and more the closest
of friends, until the time came when, owing to the provisions of the
peace, France stretched out its hands to absorb its mighty neighbour,
and the family compacts of the Bourbons dominated the politics of the
world.