of Stralsund, a town on the Baltic. Its excellent harbour, and the
short passage from it to the Swedish and Danish coasts, peculiarly
fitted it for a naval station in a war with these powers. This town,
the sixth of the Hanseatic League, enjoyed great privileges under the
Duke of Pomerania, and totally independent of Denmark, had taken no
share in the war. But neither its neutrality, nor its privileges, could
protect it against the encroachments of Wallenstein, when he had once
cast a longing look upon it.
The request he made, that Stralsund should receive an imperial garrison,
had been firmly and honourably rejected by the magistracy, who also
refused his cunningly demanded permission to march his troops through
the town, Wallenstein, therefore, now proposed to besiege it.
The independence of Stralsund, as securing the free navigation of the
Baltic, was equally important to the two Northern kings. A common
danger overcame at last the private jealousies which had long divided
these princes. In a treaty concluded at Copenhagen in 1628, they bound
themselves to assist Stralsund with their combined force, and to oppose
in common every foreign power which should appear in the Baltic with
hostile views. Christian IV. also threw a sufficient garrison into
Stralsund, and by his personal presence animated the courage of the
citizens. Some ships of war which Sigismund, King of Poland, had sent
to the assistance of the imperial general, were sunk by the Danish
fleet; and as Lubeck refused him the use of its shipping, this imperial
generalissimo of the sea had not even ships enough to blockade this
single harbour.
Nothing could appear more adventurous than to attempt the conquest of a
strongly fortified seaport without first blockading its harbour.
Wallenstein, however, who as yet had never experienced a check, wished
to conquer nature itself, and to perform impossibilities. Stralsund,
open to the sea, continued to be supplied with provisions and
reinforcements; yet Wallenstein maintained his blockade on the land
side, and endeavoured, by boasting menaces, to supply his want of real
strength. "I will take this town," said he, "though it were fastened by
a chain to the heavens." The Emperor himself, who might have cause to
regret an enterprise which promised no very glorious result, joyfully
availed himself of the apparent submission and acceptable propositions
of the inhabitants, to order the general to retire from the town.
Wallenstein despised the command, and continued to harass the besieged
by incessant assaults. As the Danish garrison, already much reduced,
was unequal to the fatigues of this prolonged defence, and the king was
unable to detach any further troops to their support, Stralsund, with
Christian's consent, threw itself under the protection of the King of
Sweden. The Danish commander left the town to make way for a Swedish
governor, who gloriously defended it. Here Wallenstein's good fortune
forsook him; and, for the first time, his pride experienced the
humiliation of relinquishing his prey, after the loss of many months and
of 12,000 men. The necessity to which he reduced the town of applying
for protection to Sweden, laid the foundation of a close alliance
between Gustavus Adolphus and Stralsund, which greatly facilitated the
entrance of the Swedes into Germany.
Hitherto invariable success had attended the arms of the Emperor and the
League, and Christian IV., defeated in Germany, had sought refuge in his
own islands; but the Baltic checked the further progress of the
conquerors. The want of ships not only stopped the pursuit of the king,
but endangered their previous acquisitions. The union of the two
northern monarchs was most to be dreaded, because, so long as it lasted,
it effectually prevented the Emperor and his general from acquiring a
footing on the Baltic, or effecting a landing in Sweden. But if they
could succeed in dissolving this union, and especially securing the
friendship of the Danish king, they might hope to overpower the
insulated force of Sweden. The dread of the interference of foreign
powers, the insubordination of the Protestants in his own states, and
still more the storm which was gradually darkening along the whole of
Protestant Germany, inclined the Emperor to peace, which his general,
from opposite motives, was equally desirous to effect. Far from wishing
for a state of things which would reduce him from the meridian of
greatness and glory to the obscurity of private life, he only wished to
change the theatre of war, and by a partial peace to prolong the general
confusion. The friendship of Denmark, whose neighbour he had become as
Duke of Mecklenburgh, was most important for the success of his
ambitious views; and he resolved, even at the sacrifice of his
sovereign's interests, to secure its alliance.
By the treaty of Copenhagen, Christian IV. had expressly engaged not to
conclude a separate peace with the Emperor, without the consent of
Sweden. Notwithstanding, Wallenstein's proposition was readily received
by him. In a conference at Lubeck in 1629, from which Wallenstein, with
studied contempt, excluded the Swedish ambassadors who came to intercede
for Mecklenburgh, all the conquests taken by the imperialists were
restored to the Danes. The conditions imposed upon the king were, that
he should interfere no farther with the affairs of Germany than was
called for by his character of Duke of Holstein; that he should on no
pretext harass the Chapters of Lower Germany, and should leave the Dukes
of Mecklenburgh to their fate. By Christian himself had these princes
been involved in the war with the Emperor; he now sacrificed them, to
gain the favour of the usurper of their territories. Among the motives
which had engaged him in a war with the Emperor, not the least was the
restoration of his relation, the Elector Palatine--yet the name of that
unfortunate prince was not even mentioned in the treaty; while in one of
its articles the legitimacy of the Bavarian election was expressly
recognised. Thus meanly and ingloriously did Christian IV. retire from
the field.
Ferdinand had it now in his power, for the second time, to secure the
tranquillity of Germany; and it depended solely on his will whether the
treaty with Denmark should or should not be the basis of a general
peace. From every quarter arose the cry of the unfortunate, petitioning
for an end of their sufferings; the cruelties of his soldiers, and the
rapacity of his generals, had exceeded all bounds. Germany, laid waste
by the desolating bands of Mansfeld and the Duke of Brunswick, and by
the still more terrible hordes of Tilly and Wallenstein, lay exhausted,
bleeding, wasted, and sighing for repose. An anxious desire for peace
was felt by all conditions, and by the Emperor himself; involved as he
was in a war with France in Upper Italy, exhausted by his past warfare
in Germany, and apprehensive of the day of reckoning which was
approaching. But, unfortunately, the conditions on which alone the two
religious parties were willing respectively to sheath the sword, were
irreconcileable. The Roman Catholics wished to terminate the war to
their own advantage; the Protestants advanced equal pretensions. The
Emperor, instead of uniting both parties by a prudent moderation, sided
with one; and thus Germany was again plunged in the horrors of a bloody
war.
From the very close of the Bohemian troubles, Ferdinand had carried on a
counter reformation in his hereditary dominions, in which, however, from
regard to some of the Protestant Estates, he proceeded, at first, with
moderation. But the victories of his generals in Lower Germany
encouraged him to throw off all reserve. Accordingly he had it
intimated to all the Protestants in these dominions, that they must
either abandon their religion, or their native country,--a bitter and
dreadful alternative, which excited the most violent commotions among
his Austrian subjects. In the Palatinate, immediately after the
expulsion of Frederick, the Protestant religion had been suppressed, and
its professors expelled from the University of Heidelberg.
All this was but the prelude to greater changes. In the Electoral
Congress held at Muehlhausen, the Roman Catholics had demanded of the
Emperor that all the archbishoprics, bishoprics, mediate and immediate,
abbacies and monasteries, which, since the Diet of Augsburg, had been
secularized by the Protestants, should be restored to the church, in
order to indemnify them for the losses and sufferings in the war. To a
Roman Catholic prince so zealous as Ferdinand was, such a hint was not
likely to be neglected; but he still thought it would be premature to
arouse the whole Protestants of Germany by so decisive a step. Not a
single Protestant prince but would be deprived, by this revocation of
the religious foundations, of a part of his lands; for where these
revenues had not actually been diverted to secular purposes they had
been made over to the Protestant church. To this source, many princes
owed the chief part of their revenues and importance. All, without
exception, would be irritated by this demand for restoration. The
religious treaty did not expressly deny their right to these chapters,
although it did not allow it. But a possession which had now been held
for nearly a century, the silence of four preceding emperors, and the
law of equity, which gave them an equal right with the Roman Catholics
to the foundations of their common ancestors, might be strongly pleaded
by them as a valid title. Besides the actual loss of power and
authority, which the surrender of these foundations would occasion,
besides the inevitable confusion which would necessarily attend it, one
important disadvantage to which it would lead, was, that the restoration
of the Roman Catholic bishops would increase the strength of that party
in the Diet by so many additional votes. Such grievous sacrifices
likely to fall on the Protestants, made the Emperor apprehensive of a
formidable opposition; and until the military ardour should have cooled
in Germany, he had no wish to provoke a party formidable by its union,
and which in the Elector of Saxony had a powerful leader. He resolved,
therefore, to try the experiment at first on a small scale, in order to
ascertain how it was likely to succeed on a larger one. Accordingly,
some of the free cities in Upper Germany, and the Duke of Wirtemberg,
received orders to surrender to the Roman Catholics several of the
confiscated chapters.
The state of affairs in Saxony enabled the Emperor to make some bolder
experiments in that quarter. In the bishoprics of Magdeburg and
Halberstadt, the Protestant canons had not hesitated to elect bishops of
their own religion. Both bishoprics, with the exception of the town of
Magdeburg itself, were overrun by the troops of Wallenstein. It
happened, moreover, that by the death of the Administrator Duke
Christian of Brunswick, Halberstadt was vacant, as was also the
Archbishopric of Magdeburg by the deposition of Christian William, a
prince of the House of Brandenburgh. Ferdinand took advantage of the
circumstance to restore the see of Halberstadt to a Roman Catholic
bishop, and a prince of his own house. To avoid a similar coercion, the
Chapter of Magdeburg hastened to elect a son of the Elector of Saxony as
archbishop. But the pope, who with his arrogated authority interfered
in this matter, conferred the Archbishopric of Magdeburg also on the
Austrian prince. Thus, with all his pious zeal for religion, Ferdinand
never lost sight of the interests of his family.
At length, when the peace of Lubeck had delivered the Emperor from all
apprehensions on the side of Denmark, and the German Protestants seemed
entirely powerless, the League becoming louder and more urgent in its
demands, Ferdinand, in 1629, signed the Edict of Restitution, (so famous
by its disastrous consequences,) which he had previously laid before the
four Roman Catholic electors for their approbation. In the preamble, he
claimed the prerogative, in right of his imperial authority, to
interpret the meaning of the religious treaty, the ambiguities of which
had already caused so many disputes, and to decide as supreme arbiter
and judge between the contending parties. This prerogative he founded
upon the practice of his ancestors, and its previous recognition even by
Protestant states. Saxony had actually acknowledged this right of the
Emperor; and it now became evident how deeply this court had injured the
Protestant cause by its dependence on the House of Austria. But though
the meaning of the religious treaty was really ambiguous, as a century
of religious disputes sufficiently proved, yet for the Emperor, who must
be either a Protestant or a Roman Catholic, and therefore an interested
party, to assume the right of deciding between the disputants, was
clearly a violation of an essential article of the pacification. He
could not be judge in his own cause, without reducing the liberties of
the empire to an empty sound.
And now, in virtue of this usurpation, Ferdinand decided, "That every
secularization of a religious foundation, mediate or immediate, by the
Protestants, subsequent to the date of the treaty, was contrary to its
spirit, and must be revoked as a breach of it." He further decided,
"That, by the religious peace, Catholic proprietors of estates were no
further bound to their Protestant subjects than to allow them full
liberty to quit their territories." In obedience to this decision, all
unlawful possessors of benefices--the Protestant states in short
without exception--were ordered, under pain of the ban of the empire,
immediately to surrender their usurped possessions to the imperial
commissioners.
This sentence applied to no less than two archbishoprics and twelve
bishoprics, besides innumerable abbacies. The edict came like a
thunderbolt on the whole of Protestant Germany; dreadful even in its
immediate consequences; but yet more so from the further calamities it
seemed to threaten. The Protestants were now convinced that the
suppression of their religion had been resolved on by the Emperor and
the League, and that the overthrow of German liberty would soon follow.
Their remonstrances were unheeded; the commissioners were named, and an
army assembled to enforce obedience. The edict was first put in force
in Augsburg, where the treaty was concluded; the city was again placed
under the government of its bishop, and six Protestant churches in the
town were closed. The Duke of Wirtemberg was, in like manner, compelled
to surrender his abbacies. These severe measures, though they alarmed
the Protestant states, were yet insufficient to rouse them to an active
resistance. Their fear of the Emperor was too strong, and many were
disposed to quiet submission. The hope of attaining their end by gentle
measures, induced the Roman Catholics likewise to delay for a year the
execution of the edict, and this saved the Protestants; before the end
of that period, the success of the Swedish arms had totally changed the
state of affairs.
In a Diet held at Ratisbon, at which Ferdinand was present in person (in
1630), the necessity of taking some measures for the immediate
restoration of a general peace to Germany, and for the removal of all
grievances, was debated. The complaints of the Roman Catholics were
scarcely less numerous than those of the Protestants, although Ferdinand
had flattered himself that by the Edict of Restitution he had secured
the members of the League, and its leader by the gift of the electoral
dignity, and the cession of great part of the Palatinate. But the good
understanding between the Emperor and the princes of the League had
rapidly declined since the employment of Wallenstein. Accustomed to
give law to Germany, and even to sway the Emperor's own destiny, the
haughty Elector of Bavaria now at once saw himself supplanted by the
imperial general, and with that of the League, his own importance
completely undermined. Another had now stepped in to reap the fruits of
his victories, and to bury his past services in oblivion. Wallenstein's
imperious character, whose dearest triumph was in degrading the
authority of the princes, and giving an odious latitude to that of the
Emperor, tended not a little to augment the irritation of the Elector.
Discontented with the Emperor, and distrustful of his intentions, he had
entered into an alliance with France, which the other members of the
League were suspected of favouring. A fear of the Emperor's plans of
aggrandizement, and discontent with existing evils, had extinguished
among them all feelings of gratitude. Wallenstein's exactions had
become altogether intolerable. Brandenburg estimated its losses at
twenty, Pomerania at ten, Hesse Cassel at seven millions of dollars, and
the rest in proportion. The cry for redress was loud, urgent, and
universal; all prejudices were hushed; Roman Catholics and Protestants
were united on this point. The terrified Emperor was assailed on all
sides by petitions against Wallenstein, and his ear filled with the most
fearful descriptions of his outrages. Ferdinand was not naturally
cruel. If not totally innocent of the atrocities which were practised
in Germany under the shelter of his name, he was ignorant of their
extent; and he was not long in yielding to the representation of the
princes, and reduced his standing army by eighteen thousand cavalry.
While this reduction took place, the Swedes were actively preparing an
expedition into Germany, and the greater part of the disbanded
Imperialists enlisted under their banners.
The Emperor's concessions only encouraged the Elector of Bavaria to
bolder demands. So long as the Duke of Friedland retained the supreme
command, his triumph over the Emperor was incomplete. The princes of
the League were meditating a severe revenge on Wallenstein for that
haughtiness with which he had treated them all alike. His dismissal was
demanded by the whole college of electors, and even by Spain, with a
degree of unanimity and urgency which astonished the Emperor. The
anxiety with which Wallenstein's enemies pressed for his dismissal,
ought to have convinced the Emperor of the importance of his services.
Wallenstein, informed of the cabals which were forming against him in
Ratisbon, lost no time in opening the eyes of the Emperor to the real
views of the Elector of Bavaria. He himself appeared in Ratisbon, with
a pomp which threw his master into the shade, and increased the hatred
of his opponents.
Long was the Emperor undecided. The sacrifice demanded was a painful
one. To the Duke of Friedland alone he owed his preponderance; he felt
how much he would lose in yielding him to the indignation of the
princes. But at this moment, unfortunately, he was under the necessity
of conciliating the Electors. His son Ferdinand had already been chosen
King of Hungary, and he was endeavouring to procure his election as his
successor in the empire. For this purpose, the support of Maximilian
was indispensable. This consideration was the weightiest, and to oblige
the Elector of Bavaria he scrupled not to sacrifice his most valuable
servant.
At the Diet at Ratisbon, there were present ambassadors from France,
empowered to adjust the differences which seemed to menace a war in
Italy between the Emperor and their sovereign. Vincent, Duke of Mantua
and Montferrat, dying without issue, his next relation, Charles, Duke of
Nevers, had taken possession of this inheritance, without doing homage
to the Emperor as liege lord of the principality. Encouraged by the
support of France and Venice, he refused to surrender these territories
into the hands of the imperial commissioners, until his title to them
should be decided. On the other hand, Ferdinand had taken up arms at
the instigation of the Spaniards, to whom, as possessors of Milan, the
near neighbourhood of a vassal of France was peculiarly alarming, and
who welcomed this prospect of making, with the assistance of the
Emperor, additional conquests in Italy. In spite of all the exertions
of Pope Urban VIII. to avert a war in that country, Ferdinand marched a
German army across the Alps, and threw the Italian states into a general
consternation. His arms had been successful throughout Germany, and
exaggerated fears revived the olden apprehension of Austria's projects
of universal monarchy. All the horrors of the German war now spread
like a deluge over those favoured countries which the Po waters; Mantua
was taken by storm, and the surrounding districts given up to the
ravages of a lawless soldiery. The curse of Italy was thus added to the
maledictions upon the Emperor which resounded through Germany; and even
in the Roman Conclave, silent prayers were offered for the success of
the Protestant arms.
Alarmed by the universal hatred which this Italian campaign had drawn
upon him, and wearied out by the urgent remonstrances of the Electors,
who zealously supported the application of the French ambassador, the
Emperor promised the investiture to the new Duke of Mantua.
This important service on the part of Bavaria, of course, required an
equivalent from France. The adjustment of the treaty gave the envoys of
Richelieu, during their residence in Ratisbon, the desired opportunity
of entangling the Emperor in dangerous intrigues, of inflaming the
discontented princes of the League still more strongly against him, and
of turning to his disadvantage all the transactions of the Diet. For
this purpose Richelieu had chosen an admirable instrument in Father
Joseph, a Capuchin friar, who accompanied the ambassadors without
exciting the least suspicion. One of his principal instructions was
assiduously to bring about the dismissal of Wallenstein. With the
general who had led it to victory, the army of Austria would lose its
principal strength; many armies could not compensate for the loss of
this individual. It would therefore be a masterstroke of policy, at the
very moment when a victorious monarch, the absolute master of his
operations, was arming against the Emperor, to remove from the head of
the imperial armies the only general who, by ability and military
experience, was able to cope with the French king. Father Joseph, in
the interests of Bavaria, undertook to overcome the irresolution of the
Emperor, who was now in a manner besieged by the Spaniards and the
Electoral Council. "It would be expedient," he thought, "to gratify the
Electors on this occasion, and thereby facilitate his son's election to
the Roman Crown. This object once gained, Wallenstein could at any time
resume his former station." The artful Capuchin was too sure of his man
to touch upon this ground of consolation.
The voice of a monk was to Ferdinand II. the voice of God. "Nothing on
earth," writes his own confessor, "was more sacred in his eyes than a
priest. If it could happen, he used to say, that an angel and a Regular
were to meet him at the same time and place, the Regular should receive
his first, and the angel his second obeisance." Wallenstein's dismissal
was determined upon.
In return for this pious concession, the Capuchin dexterously
counteracted the Emperor's scheme to procure for the King of Hungary the
further dignity of King of the Romans. In an express clause of the
treaty just concluded, the French ministers engaged in the name of their
sovereign to observe a complete neutrality between the Emperor and his
enemies; while, at the same time, Richelieu was actually negociating
with the King of Sweden to declare war, and pressing upon him the
alliance of his master. The latter, indeed, disavowed the lie as soon
as it had served its purpose, and Father Joseph, confined to a convent,
must atone for the alleged offence of exceeding his instructions.
Ferdinand perceived, when too late, that he had been imposed upon. "A
wicked Capuchin," he was heard to say, "has disarmed me with his rosary,
and thrust nothing less than six electoral crowns into his cowl."