And now, at last, France seemed to have attained the great object of its
policy, that of depriving the Emperor of the support of the League, and
of his Protestant allies, and of dictating to him, sword in hand, the
conditions of peace. Of all his once formidable power, an army, not
exceeding 12,000, was all that remained to him; and this force he was
driven to the necessity of entrusting to the command of a Calvinist, the
Hessian deserter Melander, as the casualties of war had stripped him of
his best generals. But as this war had been remarkable for the sudden
changes of fortune it displayed; and as every calculation of state
policy had been frequently baffled by some unforeseen event, in this
case also the issue disappointed expectation; and after a brief crisis,
the fallen power of Austria rose again to a formidable strength. The
jealousy which France entertained of Sweden, prevented it from
permitting the total ruin of the Emperor, or allowing the Swedes to
obtain such a preponderance in Germany, as might have been destructive
to France herself. Accordingly, the French minister declined to take
advantage of the distresses of Austria; and the army of Turenne,
separating from that of Wrangel, retired to the frontiers of the
Netherlands. Wrangel, indeed, after moving from Suabia into Franconia,
taking Schweinfurt, and incorporating the imperial garrison of that
place with his own army, attempted to make his way into Bohemia, and
laid siege to Egra, the key of that kingdom. To relieve this fortress,
the Emperor put his last army in motion, and placed himself at its head.
But obliged to take a long circuit, in order to spare the lands of Von
Schlick, the president of the council of war, he protracted his march;
and on his arrival, Egra was already taken. Both armies were now in
sight of each other; and a decisive battle was momentarily expected, as
both were suffering from want, and the two camps were only separated
from each other by the space of the entrenchments. But the
Imperialists, although superior in numbers, contented themselves with
keeping close to the enemy, and harassing them by skirmishes, by
fatiguing marches and famine, until the negociations which had been
opened with Bavaria were brought to a bearing.

The neutrality of Bavaria, was a wound under which the Imperial court
writhed impatiently; and after in vain attempting to prevent it, Austria
now determined, if possible, to turn it to advantage. Several officers
of the Bavarian army had been offended by this step of their master,
which at once reduced them to inaction, and imposed a burdensome
restraint on their restless disposition. Even the brave John de Werth
was at the head of the malcontents, and encouraged by the Emperor, he
formed a plot to seduce the whole army from their allegiance to the
Elector, and lead it over to the Emperor. Ferdinand did not blush to
patronize this act of treachery against his father's most trusty ally.
He formally issued a proclamation to the Bavarian troops, in which he
recalled them to himself, reminded them that they were the troops of the
empire, which the Elector had merely commanded in name of the Emperor.
Fortunately for Maximilian, he detected the conspiracy in time enough to
anticipate and prevent it by the most rapid and effective measures.

This disgraceful conduct of the Emperor might have justified a reprisal,
but Maximilian was too old a statesman to listen to the voice of
passion, where policy alone ought to be heard. He had not derived from
the truce the advantages he expected. Far from tending to accelerate a
general peace, it had a pernicious influence upon the negociations at
Munster and Osnaburg, and had made the allies bolder in their demands.
The French and Swedes had indeed removed from Bavaria; but, by the loss
of his quarters in the Suabian circle, he found himself compelled either
to exhaust his own territories by the subsistence of his troops, or at
once to disband them, and to throw aside the shield and spear, at the
very moment when the sword alone seemed to be the arbiter of right.
Before embracing either of these certain evils, he determined to try a
third step, the unfavourable issue of which was at least not so certain,
viz., to renounce the truce and resume the war.

This resolution, and the assistance which he immediately despatched to
the Emperor in Bohemia, threatened materially to injure the Swedes, and
Wrangel was compelled in haste to evacuate that kingdom. He retired
through Thuringia into Westphalia and Lunenburg, in the hope of forming
a junction with the French army under Turenne, while the Imperial and
Bavarian army followed him to the Weser, under Melander and Gronsfeld.
His ruin was inevitable, if the enemy should overtake him before his
junction with Turenne; but the same consideration which had just saved
the Emperor, now proved the salvation of the Swedes. Even amidst all
the fury of the conquest, cold calculations of prudence guided the
course of the war, and the vigilance of the different courts increased,
as the prospect of peace approached. The Elector of Bavaria could not
allow the Emperor to obtain so decisive a preponderance as, by the
sudden alteration of affairs, might delay the chances of a general
peace. Every change of fortune was important now, when a pacification
was so ardently desired by all, and when the disturbance of the balance
of power among the contracting parties might at once annihilate the work
of years, destroy the fruit of long and tedious negociations, and
indefinitely protract the repose of Europe. If France sought to
restrain the Swedish crown within due bounds, and measured out her
assistance according to her successes and defeats, the Elector of
Bavaria silently undertook the same task with the Emperor his ally, and
determined, by prudently dealing out his aid, to hold the fate of
Austria in his own hands. And now that the power of the Emperor
threatened once more to attain a dangerous superiority, Maximilian at
once ceased to pursue the Swedes. He was also afraid of reprisals from
France, who had threatened to direct Turenne's whole force against him
if he allowed his troops to cross the Weser.

Melander, prevented by the Bavarians from further pursuing Wrangel,
crossed by Jena and Erfurt into Hesse, and now appeared as a dangerous
enemy in the country which he had formerly defended. If it was the
desire of revenge upon his former sovereign, which led him to choose
Hesse for the scene of his ravage, he certainly had his full
gratification. Under this scourge, the miseries of that unfortunate
state reached their height. But he had soon reason to regret that, in
the choice of his quarters, he had listened to the dictates of revenge
rather than of prudence. In this exhausted country, his army was
oppressed by want, while Wrangel was recruiting his strength, and
remounting his cavalry in Lunenburg. Too weak to maintain his wretched
quarters against the Swedish general, when he opened the campaign in the
winter of 1648, and marched against Hesse, he was obliged to retire with
disgrace, and take refuge on the banks of the Danube.

France had once more disappointed the expectations of Sweden; and the
army of Turenne, disregarding the remonstrances of Wrangel, had remained
upon the Rhine. The Swedish leader revenged himself, by drawing into
his service the cavalry of Weimar, which had abandoned the standard of
France, though, by this step, he farther increased the jealousy of that
power. Turenne received permission to join the Swedes; and the last
campaign of this eventful war was now opened by the united armies.
Driving Melander before them along the Danube, they threw supplies into
Egra, which was besieged by the Imperialists, and defeated the Imperial
and Bavarian armies on the Danube, which ventured to oppose them at
Susmarshausen, where Melander was mortally wounded. After this
overthrow, the Bavarian general, Gronsfeld, placed himself on the
farther side of the Lech, in order to guard Bavaria from the enemy.

But Gronsfeld was not more fortunate than Tilly, who, in this same
position, had sacrificed his life for Bavaria. Wrangel and Turenne
chose the same spot for passing the river, which was so gloriously
marked by the victory of Gustavus Adolphus, and accomplished it by the
same means, too, which had favoured their predecessor. Bavaria was now
a second time overrun, and the breach of the truce punished by the
severest treatment of its inhabitants. Maximilian sought shelter in
Salzburgh, while the Swedes crossed the Iser, and forced their way as
far as the Inn. A violent and continued rain, which in a few days
swelled this inconsiderable stream into a broad river, saved Austria
once more from the threatened danger. The enemy ten times attempted to
form a bridge of boats over the Inn, and as often it was destroyed by
the current. Never, during the whole course of the war, had the
Imperialists been in so great consternation as at present, when the
enemy were in the centre of Bavaria, and when they had no longer a
general left who could be matched against a Turenne, a Wrangel, and a
Koenigsmark. At last the brave Piccolomini arrived from the
Netherlands, to assume the command of the feeble wreck of the
Imperialists. By their own ravages in Bohemia, the allies had rendered
their subsistence in that country impracticable, and were at last driven
by scarcity to retreat into the Upper Palatinate, where the news of the
peace put a period to their activity.

Koenigsmark, with his flying corps, advanced towards Bohemia, where
Ernest Odowalsky, a disbanded captain, who, after being disabled in the
imperial service, had been dismissed without a pension, laid before him
a plan for surprising the lesser side of the city of Prague.
Koenigsmark successfully accomplished the bold enterprise, and acquired
the reputation of closing the thirty years' war by the last brilliant
achievement. This decisive stroke, which vanquished the Emperor's
irresolution, cost the Swedes only the loss of a single man. But the
old town, the larger half of Prague, which is divided into two parts by
the Moldau, by its vigorous resistance wearied out the efforts of the
Palatine, Charles Gustavus, the successor of Christina on the throne,
who had arrived from Sweden with fresh troops, and had assembled the
whole Swedish force in Bohemia and Silesia before its walls. The
approach of winter at last drove the besiegers into their quarters, and
in the mean time, the intelligence arrived that a peace had been signed
at Munster, on the 24th October.

The colossal labour of concluding this solemn, and ever memorable and
sacred treaty, which is known by the name of the peace of Westphalia;
the endless obstacles which were to be surmounted; the contending
interests which it was necessary to reconcile; the concatenation of
circumstances which must have co-operated to bring to a favourable
termination this tedious, but precious and permanent work of policy; the
difficulties which beset the very opening of the negociations, and
maintaining them, when opened, during the ever-fluctuating vicissitudes
of the war; finally, arranging the conditions of peace, and still more,
the carrying them into effect; what were the conditions of this peace;
what each contending power gained or lost, by the toils and sufferings
of a thirty years' war; what modification it wrought upon the general
system of European policy;--these are matters which must be relinquished
to another pen. The history of the peace of Westphalia constitutes a
whole, as important as the history of the war itself. A mere abridgment
of it, would reduce to a mere skeleton one of the most interesting and
characteristic monuments of human policy and passions, and deprive it of
every feature calculated to fix the attention of the public, for which I
write, and of which I now respectfully take my leave.




[Note From the first PG etext of this work:
Separate sources indicate that at the beginning of this war there were
about 15 million people in Germany, and at the end of the war there were
about 4 million. If this is not surprising enough, war broke out again
only 10 years after the conclusion of this war.]