The Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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.

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

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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."

§ 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.

§ 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

§ 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.

§ 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.