THE WORKS
OF
FREDERICK SCHILLER
Translated from the German
Illustrated
CONTENTS:
HISTORY:
Thirty Years War: Book I. Book II. Book III. Book IV. Book V.
Revolt of Netherlands: Book I. Book II. Book III. Book IV.
PLAYS:
The Robbers Fiesco Love and Intrigue
The Camp of Wallenstein Piccolomini
The Death of Wallenstein Whilhelm Tell
Don Carlos Demetrius Mary Stuart
The Maid of Orleans The Bride of Messina
POEMS:
1st Period 2nd Period 3rd Period Supressed Poems
PHILOSOPHY:
Aesthetical Essays Philosophical Letters
NOVEL:
The Ghost Seer [or, The Apparitionist] and The Sport of Destiny
HISTORY OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR IN GERMANY.
PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION.
The present is the best collected edition of the important works of
Schiller which is accessible to readers in the English language.
Detached poems or dramas have been translated at various times since
the first publication of the original works; and in several instances
these versions have been incorporated into this collection. Schiller
was not less efficiently qualified by nature for an historian than for
a dramatist. He was formed to excel in all departments of literature,
and the admirable lucidity of style and soundness and impartiality of
judgment displayed in his historical writings will not easily be
surpassed, and will always recommend them as popular expositions of the
periods of which they treat.
Since the publication of the first English edition many corrections and
improvements have been made, with a view to rendering it as acceptable
as possible to English readers; and, notwithstanding the disadvantages
of a translation, the publishers feel sure that Schiller will be
heartily acceptable to English readers, and that the influence of his
writings will continue to increase.
THE HISTORY OF THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS was translated by Lieut.
E. B. Eastwick, and originally published abroad for students' use. But
this translation was too strictly literal for general readers. It has
been carefully revised, and some portions have been entirely rewritten
by the Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, who also has so ably translated the
HISTORY OF THE THIRTY YEARS WAR.
THE CAMP OF WALLENSTEIN was translated by Mr. James Churchill, and first
appeared in "Frazer's Magazine." It is an exceedingly happy version of
what has always been deemed the most untranslatable of Schiller's works.
THE PICCOLOMINI and DEATH OF WALLENSTEIN are the admirable version of
S. T. Coleridge, completed by the addition of all those passages which
he has omitted, and by a restoration of Schiller's own arrangement of
the acts and scenes. It is said, in defence of the variations which
exist between the German original and the version given by Coleridge,
that he translated from a prompter's copy in manuscript, before the
drama had been printed, and that Schiller himself subsequently altered
it, by omitting some passages, adding others, and even engrafting
several of Coleridge's adaptations.
WILHELM TELL is translated by Theodore Martin, Esq., whose well-known
position as a writer, and whose special acquaintance with German
literature make any recommendation superfluous.
DON CARLOS is translated by R. D. Boylan, Esq., and, in the opinion of
competent judges, the version is eminently successful. Mr. Theodore
Martin kindly gave some assistance, and, it is but justice to state,
has enhanced the value of the work by his judicious suggestions.
The translation of MARY STUART is that by the late Joseph Mellish,
who appears to have been on terms of intimate friendship with Schiller.
His version was made from the prompter's copy, before the play was
published, and, like Coleridge's Wallenstein, contains many passages not
found in the printed edition. These are distinguished by brackets. On
the other hand, Mr. Mellish omitted many passages which now form part of
the printed drama, all of which are now added. The translation, as a
whole, stands out from similar works of the time (1800) in almost as
marked a degree as Coleridge's Wallenstein, and some passages exhibit
powers of a high order; a few, however, especially in the earlier
scenes, seemed capable of improvement, and these have been revised,
but, in deference to the translator, with a sparing hand.
THE MAID OF ORLEANS is contributed by Miss Anna Swanwick, whose
translation of Faust has since become well known. It has been.
carefully revised, and is now, for the first time, published complete.
THE BRIDE OF MESSINA, which has been regarded as the poetical
masterpiece of Schiller, and, perhaps of all his works, presents the
greatest difficulties to the translator, is rendered by A. Lodge, Esq.,
M. A. This version, on its first publication in England, a few years
ago, was received with deserved eulogy by distinguished critics. To the
present edition has been prefixed Schiller's Essay on the Use of the
Chorus in Tragedy, in which the author's favorite theory of the "Ideal
of Art" is enforced with great ingenuity and eloquence.
Contents:
Book I.
Introduction.--General effects of the Reformation.--Revolt of Matthias.
--The Emperor cedes Austria and Hungary to him.--Matthias acknowledged
King of Bohemia.--The Elector of Cologne abjures the Catholic Religion.
--Consequences.--The Elector Palatine.--Dispute respecting the
Succession of Juliers.--Designs of Henry IV. of France.--Formation of
the Union.--The League.--Death of the Emperor Rodolph.--Matthias
succeeds him.--Troubles in Bohemia.--Civil War.--Ferdinand extirpates
the Protestant Religion from Styria.--The Elector Palatine, Frederick
V., is chosen King by the Bohemians.--He accepts the Crown of Bohemia.--
Bethlen Gabor, Prince of Transylvania, invades Austria.--The Duke of
Bavaria and the Princes of the League embrace the cause of Ferdinand.--
The Union arm for Frederick.--The Battle of Prague and total subjection
of Bohemia.
Book II.
State of the Empire.--Of Europe.--Mansfeld.--Christian, Duke of
Brunswick.--Wallenstein raises an Imperial Army at his own expense.
--The King of Denmark defeated.--Death of Mansfeld.--Edict of
Restitution in 1628.--Diet at Ratisbon.--Negociations.--Wallenstein
deprived of the Command.--Gustavus Adolphus.--Swedish Army.--Gustavus
Adolphus takes his leave of the States at Stockholm.--Invasion by the
Swedes.--Their progress in Germany.--Count Tilly takes the Command of
the Imperial Troops.--Treaty with France.--Congress at Leipzig.--Siege
and cruel fate of Magdeburg.--Firmness of the Landgrave of Cassel.--
Junction of the Saxons with the Swedes.--Battle of Leipzig.--
Consequences of that Victory.
Book III.
Situation of Gustavus Adolphus after the Battle of Leipzig.--Progress of
Gustavus Adolphus.--The French invade Lorraine.--Frankfort taken.--
Capitulation of Mentz.--Tilly ordered by Maximilian to protect Bavaria.
--Gustavus Adolphus passes the Lech.--Defeat and Death of Tilly.--
Gustavus takes Munich.--The Saxon Army invades Bohemia, and takes
Prague.--Distress of the Emperor.--Secret Triumph of Wallenstein.--
He offers to Join Gustavus Adolphus.--Wallenstein re-assumes the
Command.--Junction of Wallenstein with the Bavarians.--Gustavus Adolphus
defends Nuremberg.--Attacks Wallenstein's Intrenchments.--Enters
Saxony.--Goes to the succour of the Elector of Saxony.--Marches against
Wallenstein.--Battle of Lutzen.--Death of Gustavus Adolphus.--Situation
of Germany after the Battle of Lutzen.
Book IV.
Closer Alliance between France and Sweden.--Oxenstiern takes the
Direction of Affairs.--Death of the Elector Palatine.--Revolt of the
Swedish Officers.--Duke Bernhard takes Ratisbon.--Wallenstein enters
Silesia.--Forms Treasonable Designs.--Forsaken by the Army.--Retires to
Egra.--His associates put to death.--Wallenstein's death.--His
Character.
Book V.
Battle of Nordlingen.--France enters into an Alliance against Austria.--
Treaty of Prague.--Saxony joins the Emperor.--Battle of Wistock gained
by the Swedes.--Battle of Rheinfeld gained by Bernhard, Duke of Weimar.
--He takes Brisach.--His death.--Death of Ferdinand II.--Ferdinand III.
succeeds him.--Celebrated Retreat of Banner in Pomerania.--His
Successes.--Death.--Torstensohn takes the Command.--Death of Richelieu
and Louis XIII.--Swedish Victory at Jankowitz.--French defeated at
Freyburg.--Battle of Nordlingen gained by Turenne and Conde.--Wrangel
takes the Command of the Swedish Army.--Melander made Commander of the
Emperor's Army.--The Elector of Bavaria breaks the Armistice.--He adopts
the same Policy towards the Emperor as France towards the Swedes.--The
Weimerian Cavalry go over to the Swedes.--Conquest of New Prague by
Koenigsmark, and Termination of the Thirty Years' War.
HISTORY OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR IN GERMANY.
BOOK I.
From the beginning of the religious wars in Germany, to the peace of
Munster, scarcely any thing great or remarkable occurred in the
political world of Europe in which the Reformation had not an important
share. All the events of this period, if they did not originate in,
soon became mixed up with, the question of religion, and no state was
either too great or too little to feel directly or indirectly more or
less of its influence.
Against the reformed doctrine and its adherents, the House of Austria
directed, almost exclusively, the whole of its immense political power.
In France, the Reformation had enkindled a civil war which, under four
stormy reigns, shook the kingdom to its foundations, brought foreign
armies into the heart of the country, and for half a century rendered it
the scene of the most mournful disorders. It was the Reformation, too,
that rendered the Spanish yoke intolerable to the Flemings, and awakened
in them both the desire and the courage to throw off its fetters, while
it also principally furnished them with the means of their emancipation.
And as to England, all the evils with which Philip the Second threatened
Elizabeth, were mainly intended in revenge for her having taken his
Protestant subjects under her protection, and placing herself at the
head of a religious party which it was his aim and endeavour to
extirpate. In Germany, the schisms in the church produced also a
lasting political schism, which made that country for more than a
century the theatre of confusion, but at the same time threw up a firm
barrier against political oppression. It was, too, the Reformation
principally that first drew the northern powers, Denmark and Sweden,
into the political system of Europe; and while on the one hand the
Protestant League was strengthened by their adhesion, it on the other
was indispensable to their interests. States which hitherto scarcely
concerned themselves with one another's existence, acquired through the
Reformation an attractive centre of interest, and began to be united by
new political sympathies. And as through its influence new relations
sprang up between citizen and citizen, and between rulers and subjects,
so also entire states were forced by it into new relative positions.
Thus, by a strange course of events, religious disputes were the means
of cementing a closer union among the nations of Europe.
Fearful indeed, and destructive, was the first movement in which this
general political sympathy announced itself; a desolating war of thirty
years, which, from the interior of Bohemia to the mouth of the Scheldt,
and from the banks of the Po to the coasts of the Baltic, devastated
whole countries, destroyed harvests, and reduced towns and villages to
ashes; which opened a grave for many thousand combatants, and for half a
century smothered the glimmering sparks of civilization in Germany, and
threw back the improving manners of the country into their pristine
barbarity and wildness. Yet out of this fearful war Europe came forth
free and independent. In it she first learned to recognize herself as a
community of nations; and this intercommunion of states, which
originated in the thirty years' war, may alone be sufficient to
reconcile the philosopher to its horrors. The hand of industry has
slowly but gradually effaced the traces of its ravages, while its
beneficent influence still survives; and this general sympathy among the
states of Europe, which grew out of the troubles in Bohemia, is our
guarantee for the continuance of that peace which was the result of the
war. As the sparks of destruction found their way from the interior of
Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria, to kindle Germany, France, and the half
of Europe, so also will the torch of civilization make a path for itself
from the latter to enlighten the former countries.
All this was effected by religion. Religion alone could have rendered
possible all that was accomplished, but it was far from being the SOLE
motive of the war. Had not private advantages and state interests been
closely connected with it, vain and powerless would have been the
arguments of theologians; and the cry of the people would never have met
with princes so willing to espouse their cause, nor the new doctrines
have found such numerous, brave, and persevering champions. The
Reformation is undoubtedly owing in a great measure to the invincible
power of truth, or of opinions which were held as such. The abuses in
the old church, the absurdity of many of its dogmas, the extravagance of
its requisitions, necessarily revolted the tempers of men, already
half-won with the promise of a better light, and favourably disposed
them towards the new doctrines. The charm of independence, the rich
plunder of monastic institutions, made the Reformation attractive in the
eyes of princes, and tended not a little to strengthen their inward
convictions. Nothing, however, but political considerations could have
driven them to espouse it. Had not Charles the Fifth, in the
intoxication of success, made an attempt on the independence of the
German States, a Protestant league would scarcely have rushed to arms in
defence of freedom of belief; but for the ambition of the Guises, the
Calvinists in France would never have beheld a Conde or a Coligny at
their head. Without the exaction of the tenth and the twentieth penny,
the See of Rome had never lost the United Netherlands. Princes fought
in self-defence or for aggrandizement, while religious enthusiasm
recruited their armies, and opened to them the treasures of their
subjects. Of the multitude who flocked to their standards, such as were
not lured by the hope of plunder imagined they were fighting for the
truth, while in fact they were shedding their blood for the personal
objects of their princes.
And well was it for the people that, on this occasion, their interests
coincided with those of their princes. To this coincidence alone were
they indebted for their deliverance from popery. Well was it also for
the rulers, that the subject contended too for his own cause, while he
was fighting their battles. Fortunately at this date no European
sovereign was so absolute as to be able, in the pursuit of his political
designs, to dispense with the goodwill of his subjects. Yet how
difficult was it to gain and to set to work this goodwill! The most
impressive arguments drawn from reasons of state fall powerless on the
ear of the subject, who seldom understands, and still more rarely is
interested in them. In such circumstances, the only course open to a
prudent prince is to connect the interests of the cabinet with some one
that sits nearer to the people's heart, if such exists, or if not, to
create it.
In such a position stood the greater part of those princes who embraced
the cause of the Reformation. By a strange concatenation of events, the
divisions of the Church were associated with two circumstances, without
which, in all probability, they would have had a very different
conclusion. These were, the increasing power of the House of Austria,
which threatened the liberties of Europe, and its active zeal for the
old religion. The first aroused the princes, while the second armed the
people.
The abolition of a foreign jurisdiction within their own territories,
the supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, the stopping of the treasure
which had so long flowed to Rome, the rich plunder of religious
foundations, were tempting advantages to every sovereign. Why, then, it
may be asked, did they not operate with equal force upon the princes of
the House of Austria? What prevented this house, particularly in its
German branch, from yielding to the pressing demands of so many of its
subjects, and, after the example of other princes, enriching itself at
the expense of a defenceless clergy? It is difficult to credit that a
belief in the infallibility of the Romish Church had any greater
influence on the pious adherence of this house, than the opposite
conviction had on the revolt of the Protestant princes. In fact,
several circumstances combined to make the Austrian princes zealous
supporters of popery. Spain and Italy, from which Austria derived its
principal strength, were still devoted to the See of Rome with that
blind obedience which, ever since the days of the Gothic dynasty, had
been the peculiar characteristic of the Spaniard. The slightest
approximation, in a Spanish prince, to the obnoxious tenets of Luther
and Calvin, would have alienated for ever the affections of his
subjects, and a defection from the Pope would have cost him the kingdom.
A Spanish prince had no alternative but orthodoxy or abdication. The
same restraint was imposed upon Austria by her Italian dominions, which
she was obliged to treat, if possible, with even greater indulgence;
impatient as they naturally were of a foreign yoke, and possessing also
ready means of shaking it off. In regard to the latter provinces,
moreover, the rival pretensions of France, and the neighbourhood of the
Pope, were motives sufficient to prevent the Emperor from declaring in
favour of a party which strove to annihilate the papal see, and also to
induce him to show the most active zeal in behalf of the old religion.
These general considerations, which must have been equally weighty with
every Spanish monarch, were, in the particular case of Charles V., still
further enforced by peculiar and personal motives. In Italy this
monarch had a formidable rival in the King of France, under whose
protection that country might throw itself the instant that Charles
should incur the slightest suspicion of heresy. Distrust on the part of
the Roman Catholics, and a rupture with the church, would have been
fatal also to many of his most cherished designs. Moreover, when
Charles was first called upon to make his election between the two
parties, the new doctrine had not yet attained to a full and commanding
influence, and there still subsisted a prospect of its reconciliation
with the old. In his son and successor, Philip the Second, a monastic
education combined with a gloomy and despotic disposition to generate an
unmitigated hostility to all innovations in religion; a feeling which
the thought that his most formidable political opponents were also the
enemies of his faith was not calculated to weaken. As his European
possessions, scattered as they were over so many countries, were on all
sides exposed to the seductions of foreign opinions, the progress of the
Reformation in other quarters could not well be a matter of indifference
to him. His immediate interests, therefore, urged him to attach himself
devotedly to the old church, in order to close up the sources of the
heretical contagion. Thus, circumstances naturally placed this prince
at the head of the league which the Roman Catholics formed against the
Reformers. The principles which had actuated the long and active reigns
of Charles V. and Philip the Second, remained a law for their
successors; and the more the breach in the church widened, the firmer
became the attachment of the Spaniards to Roman Catholicism.
The German line of the House of Austria was apparently more unfettered;
but, in reality, though free from many of these restraints, it was yet
confined by others. The possession of the imperial throne--a dignity
it was impossible for a Protestant to hold, (for with what consistency
could an apostate from the Romish Church wear the crown of a Roman
emperor?) bound the successors of Ferdinand I. to the See of Rome.
Ferdinand himself was, from conscientious motives, heartily attached to
it. Besides, the German princes of the House of Austria were not
powerful enough to dispense with the support of Spain, which, however,
they would have forfeited by the least show of leaning towards the new
doctrines. The imperial dignity, also, required them to preserve the
existing political system of Germany, with which the maintenance of
their own authority was closely bound up, but which it was the aim of
the Protestant League to destroy. If to these grounds we add the
indifference of the Protestants to the Emperor's necessities and to the
common dangers of the empire, their encroachments on the temporalities
of the church, and their aggressive violence when they became conscious
of their own power, we can easily conceive how so many concurring
motives must have determined the emperors to the side of popery, and how
their own interests came to be intimately interwoven with those of the
Roman Church. As its fate seemed to depend altogether on the part taken
by Austria, the princes of this house came to be regarded by all Europe
as the pillars of popery. The hatred, therefore, which the Protestants
bore against the latter, was turned exclusively upon Austria; and the
cause became gradually confounded with its protector.
But this irreconcileable enemy of the Reformation--the House of Austria
--by its ambitious projects and the overwhelming force which it could
bring to their support, endangered, in no small degree, the freedom of
Europe, and more especially of the German States. This circumstance
could not fail to rouse the latter from their security, and to render
them vigilant in self-defence. Their ordinary resources were quite
insufficient to resist so formidable a power. Extraordinary exertions
were required from their subjects; and when even these proved far from
adequate, they had recourse to foreign assistance; and, by means of a
common league, they endeavoured to oppose a power which, singly, they
were unable to withstand.
But the strong political inducements which the German princes had to
resist the pretensions of the House of Austria, naturally did not extend
to their subjects. It is only immediate advantages or immediate evils
that set the people in action, and for these a sound policy cannot wait.
Ill then would it have fared with these princes, if by good fortune
another effectual motive had not offered itself, which roused the
passions of the people, and kindled in them an enthusiasm which might be
directed against the political danger, as having with it a common cause
of alarm.
This motive was their avowed hatred of the religion which Austria
protected, and their enthusiastic attachment to a doctrine which that
House was endeavouring to extirpate by fire and sword. Their attachment
was ardent, their hatred invincible. Religious fanaticism anticipates
even the remotest dangers. Enthusiasm never calculates its sacrifices.
What the most pressing danger of the state could not gain from the
citizens, was effected by religious zeal. For the state, or for the
prince, few would have drawn the sword; but for religion, the merchant,
the artist, the peasant, all cheerfully flew to arms. For the state, or
for the prince, even the smallest additional impost would have been
avoided; but for religion the people readily staked at once life,
fortune, and all earthly hopes. It trebled the contributions which
flowed into the exchequer of the princes, and the armies which marched
to the field; and, in the ardent excitement produced in all minds by the
peril to which their faith was exposed, the subject felt not the
pressure of those burdens and privations under which, in cooler moments,
he would have sunk exhausted. The terrors of the Spanish Inquisition,
and the massacre of St. Bartholomew's, procured for the Prince of
Orange, the Admiral Coligny, the British Queen Elizabeth, and the
Protestant princes of Germany, supplies of men and money from their
subjects, to a degree which at present is inconceivable.
But, with all their exertions, they would have effected little against a
power which was an overmatch for any single adversary, however powerful.
At this period of imperfect policy, accidental circumstances alone could
determine distant states to afford one another a mutual support. The
differences of government, of laws, of language, of manners, and of
character, which hitherto had kept whole nations and countries as it
were insulated, and raised a lasting barrier between them, rendered one
state insensible to the distresses of another, save where national
jealousy could indulge a malicious joy at the reverses of a rival. This
barrier the Reformation destroyed. An interest more intense and more
immediate than national aggrandizement or patriotism, and entirely
independent of private utility, began to animate whole states and
individual citizens; an interest capable of uniting numerous and distant
nations, even while it frequently lost its force among the subjects of
the same government. With the inhabitants of Geneva, for instance, of
England, of Germany, or of Holland, the French Calvinist possessed a
common point of union which he had not with his own countrymen. Thus,
in one important particular, he ceased to be the citizen of a single
state, and to confine his views and sympathies to his own country alone.
The sphere of his views became enlarged. He began to calculate his own
fate from that of other nations of the same religious profession, and to
make their cause his own. Now for the first time did princes venture to
bring the affairs of other countries before their own councils; for the
first time could they hope for a willing ear to their own necessities,
and prompt assistance from others. Foreign affairs had now become a
matter of domestic policy, and that aid was readily granted to the
religious confederate which would have been denied to the mere
neighbour, and still more to the distant stranger. The inhabitant of
the Palatinate leaves his native fields to fight side by side with his
religious associate of France, against the common enemy of their faith.
The Huguenot draws his sword against the country which persecutes him,
and sheds his blood in defence of the liberties of Holland. Swiss is
arrayed against Swiss; German against German, to determine, on the banks
of the Loire and the Seine, the succession of the French crown. The
Dane crosses the Eider, and the Swede the Baltic, to break the chains
which are forged for Germany.
It is difficult to say what would have been the fate of the Reformation,
and the liberties of the Empire, had not the formidable power of Austria
declared against them. This, however, appears certain, that nothing so
completely damped the Austrian hopes of universal monarchy, as the
obstinate war which they had to wage against the new religious opinions.
Under no other circumstances could the weaker princes have roused their
subjects to such extraordinary exertions against the ambition of
Austria, or the States themselves have united so closely against the
common enemy.
The power of Austria never stood higher than after the victory which
Charles V. gained over the Germans at Muehlberg. With the treaty of
Smalcalde the freedom of Germany lay, as it seemed, prostrate for ever;
but it revived under Maurice of Saxony, once its most formidable enemy.
All the fruits of the victory of Muehlberg were lost again in the
congress of Passau, and the diet of Augsburg; and every scheme for civil
and religious oppression terminated in the concessions of an equitable
peace.
The diet of Augsburg divided Germany into two religious and two
political parties, by recognizing the independent rights and existence
of both. Hitherto the Protestants had been looked on as rebels; they
were henceforth to be regarded as brethren--not indeed through
affection, but necessity. By the Interim, the Confession of Augsburg
was allowed temporarily to take a sisterly place alongside of the olden
religion, though only as a tolerated neighbour.
[A system of Theology so called, prepared by order of the Emperor
Charles V. for the use of Germany, to reconcile the differences
between the Roman Catholics and the Lutherans, which, however, was
rejected by both parties--Ed.]
To every secular state was conceded the right of establishing the
religion it acknowledged as supreme and exclusive within its own
territories, and of forbidding the open profession of its rival.
Subjects were to be free to quit a country where their own religion was
not tolerated. The doctrines of Luther for the first time received a
positive sanction; and if they were trampled under foot in Bavaria and
Austria, they predominated in Saxony and Thuringia. But the sovereigns
alone were to determine what form of religion should prevail within
their territories; the feelings of subjects who had no representatives
in the diet were little attended to in the pacification. In the
ecclesiastical territories, indeed, where the unreformed religion
enjoyed an undisputed supremacy, the free exercise of their religion was
obtained for all who had previously embraced the Protestant doctrines;
but this indulgence rested only on the personal guarantee of Ferdinand,
King of the Romans, by whose endeavours chiefly this peace was effected;
a guarantee, which, being rejected by the Roman Catholic members of the
Diet, and only inserted in the treaty under their protest, could not of
course have the force of law.
If it had been opinions only that thus divided the minds of men, with
what indifference would all have regarded the division! But on these
opinions depended riches, dignities, and rights; and it was this which
so deeply aggravated the evils of division. Of two brothers, as it
were, who had hitherto enjoyed a paternal inheritance in common, one now
remained, while the other was compelled to leave his father's house, and
hence arose the necessity of dividing the patrimony. For this
separation, which he could not have foreseen, the father had made no
provision. By the beneficent donations of pious ancestors the riches of
the church had been accumulating through a thousand years, and these
benefactors were as much the progenitors of the departing brother as of
him who remained. Was the right of inheritance then to be limited to
the paternal house, or to be extended to blood? The gifts had been made
to the church in communion with Rome, because at that time no other
existed,--to the first-born, as it were, because he was as yet the only
son. Was then a right of primogeniture to be admitted in the church, as
in noble families? Were the pretensions of one party to be favoured by
a prescription from times when the claims of the other could not have
come into existence? Could the Lutherans be justly excluded from these
possessions, to which the benevolence of their forefathers had
contributed, merely on the ground that, at the date of their foundation,
the differences between Lutheranism and Romanism were unknown? Both
parties have disputed, and still dispute, with equal plausibility, on
these points. Both alike have found it difficult to prove their right.
Law can be applied only to conceivable cases, and perhaps spiritual
foundations are not among the number of these, and still less where the
conditions of the founders generally extended to a system of doctrines;
for how is it conceivable that a permanent endowment should be made of
opinions left open to change?
What law cannot decide, is usually determined by might, and such was the
case here. The one party held firmly all that could no longer be
wrested from it--the other defended what it still possessed. All the
bishoprics and abbeys which had been secularized BEFORE the peace,
remained with the Protestants; but, by an express clause, the unreformed
Catholics provided that none should thereafter be secularized. Every
impropriator of an ecclesiastical foundation, who held immediately of
the Empire, whether elector, bishop, or abbot, forfeited his benefice
and dignity the moment he embraced the Protestant belief; he was obliged
in that event instantly to resign its emoluments, and the chapter was to
proceed to a new election, exactly as if his place had been vacated by
death. By this sacred anchor of the Ecclesiastical Reservation,
(`Reservatum Ecclesiasticum',) which makes the temporal existence of a
spiritual prince entirely dependent on his fidelity to the olden
religion, the Roman Catholic Church in Germany is still held fast; and
precarious, indeed, would be its situation were this anchor to give way.
The principle of the Ecclesiastical Reservation was strongly opposed by
the Protestants; and though it was at last adopted into the treaty of
peace, its insertion was qualified with the declaration, that parties
had come to no final determination on the point. Could it then be more
binding on the Protestants than Ferdinand's guarantee in favour of
Protestant subjects of ecclesiastical states was upon the Roman
Catholics? Thus were two important subjects of dispute left unsettled
in the treaty of peace, and by them the war was rekindled.
Such was the position of things with regard to religious toleration and
ecclesiastical property: it was the same with regard to rights and
dignities. The existing German system provided only for one church,
because one only was in existence when that system was framed. The
church had now divided; the Diet had broken into two religious parties;
was the whole system of the Empire still exclusively to follow the one?
The emperors had hitherto been members of the Romish Church, because
till now that religion had no rival. But was it his connexion with Rome
which constituted a German emperor, or was it not rather Germany which
was to be represented in its head? The Protestants were now spread over
the whole Empire, and how could they justly still be represented by an
unbroken line of Roman Catholic emperors? In the Imperial Chamber the
German States judge themselves, for they elect the judges; it was the
very end of its institution that they should do so, in order that equal
justice should be dispensed to all; but would this be still possible, if
the representatives of both professions were not equally admissible to a
seat in the Chamber? That one religion only existed in Germany at the
time of its establishment, was accidental; that no one estate should
have the means of legally oppressing another, was the essential purpose
of the institution. Now this object would be entirely frustrated if one
religious party were to have the exclusive power of deciding for the
other. Must, then, the design be sacrificed, because that which was
merely accidental had changed? With great difficulty the Protestants,
at last, obtained for the representatives of their religion a place in
the Supreme Council, but still there was far from being a perfect
equality of voices. To this day no Protestant prince has been raised to
the imperial throne.
Whatever may be said of the equality which the peace of Augsburg was to
have established between the two German churches, the Roman Catholic had
unquestionably still the advantage. All that the Lutheran Church gained
by it was toleration; all that the Romish Church conceded, was a
sacrifice to necessity, not an offering to justice. Very far was it
from being a peace between two equal powers, but a truce between a
sovereign and unconquered rebels. From this principle all the
proceedings of the Roman Catholics against the Protestants seemed to
flow, and still continue to do so. To join the reformed faith was still
a crime, since it was to be visited with so severe a penalty as that
which the Ecclesiastical Reservation held suspended over the apostacy of
the spiritual princes. Even to the last, the Romish Church preferred to
risk to loss of every thing by force, than voluntarily to yield the
smallest matter to justice. The loss was accidental and might be
repaired; but the abandonment of its pretensions, the concession of a
single point to the Protestants, would shake the foundations of the
church itself. Even in the treaty of peace this principle was not lost
sight of. Whatever in this peace was yielded to the Protestants was
always under condition. It was expressly declared, that affairs were to
remain on the stipulated footing only till the next general council,
which was to be called with the view of effecting an union between the
two confessions. Then only, when this last attempt should have failed,
was the religious treaty to become valid and conclusive. However little
hope there might be of such a reconciliation, however little perhaps the
Romanists themselves were in earnest with it, still it was something to
have clogged the peace with these stipulations.
Thus this religious treaty, which was to extinguish for ever the flames
of civil war, was, in fact, but a temporary truce, extorted by force and
necessity; not dictated by justice, nor emanating from just notions
either of religion or toleration. A religious treaty of this kind the
Roman Catholics were as incapable of granting, to be candid, as in truth
the Lutherans were unqualified to receive. Far from evincing a tolerant
spirit towards the Roman Catholics, when it was in their power, they
even oppressed the Calvinists; who indeed just as little deserved
toleration, since they were unwilling to practise it. For such a peace
the times were not yet ripe--the minds of men not yet sufficiently
enlightened. How could one party expect from another what itself was
incapable of performing? What each side saved or gained by the treaty of
Augsburg, it owed to the imposing attitude of strength which it
maintained at the time of its negociation. What was won by force was to
be maintained also by force; if the peace was to be permanent, the two
parties to it must preserve the same relative positions. The boundaries
of the two churches had been marked out with the sword; with the sword
they must be preserved, or woe to that party which should be first
disarmed! A sad and fearful prospect for the tranquillity of Germany,
when peace itself bore so threatening an aspect.
A momentary lull now pervaded the empire; a transitory bond of concord
appeared to unite its scattered limbs into one body, so that for a time
a feeling also for the common weal returned. But the division had
penetrated its inmost being, and to restore its original harmony was
impossible. Carefully as the treaty of peace appeared to have defined
the rights of both parties, its interpretation was nevertheless the
subject of many disputes. In the heat of conflict it had produced a
cessation of hostilities; it covered, not extinguished, the fire, and
unsatisfied claims remained on either side. The Romanists imagined they
had lost too much, the Protestants that they had gained too little; and
the treaty which neither party could venture to violate, was interpreted
by each in its own favour.
The seizure of the ecclesiastical benefices, the motive which had so
strongly tempted the majority of the Protestant princes to embrace the
doctrines of Luther, was not less powerful after than before the peace;
of those whose founders had not held their fiefs immediately of the
empire, such as were not already in their possession would it was
evident soon be so. The whole of Lower Germany was already secularized;
and if it were otherwise in Upper Germany, it was owing to the vehement
resistance of the Catholics, who had there the preponderance. Each
party, where it was the most powerful, oppressed the adherents of the
other; the ecclesiastical princes in particular, as the most defenceless
members of the empire, were incessantly tormented by the ambition of
their Protestant neighbours. Those who were too weak to repel force by
force, took refuge under the wings of justice; and the complaints of
spoliation were heaped up against the Protestants in the Imperial
Chamber, which was ready enough to pursue the accused with judgments,
but found too little support to carry them into effect. The peace which
stipulated for complete religious toleration for the dignitaries of the
Empire, had provided also for the subject, by enabling him, without
interruption, to leave the country in which the exercise of his religion
was prohibited. But from the wrongs which the violence of a sovereign
might inflict on an obnoxious subject; from the nameless oppressions by
which he might harass and annoy the emigrant; from the artful snares in
which subtilty combined with power might enmesh him--from these, the
dead letter of the treaty could afford him no protection. The Catholic
subject of Protestant princes complained loudly of violations of the
religious peace--the Lutherans still more loudly of the oppression they
experienced under their Romanist suzerains. The rancour and animosities
of theologians infused a poison into every occurrence, however
inconsiderable, and inflamed the minds of the people. Happy would it
have been had this theological hatred exhausted its zeal upon the common
enemy, instead of venting its virus on the adherents of a kindred faith!
Unanimity amongst the Protestants might, by preserving the balance
between the contending parties, have prolonged the peace; but as if to
complete the confusion, all concord was quickly broken. The doctrines
which had been propagated by Zuingli in Zurich, and by Calvin in Geneva,
soon spread to Germany, and divided the Protestants among themselves,
with little in unison save their common hatred to popery. The
Protestants of this date bore but slight resemblance to those who, fifty
years before, drew up the Confession of Augsburg; and the cause of the
change is to be sought in that Confession itself. It had prescribed a
positive boundary to the Protestant faith, before the newly awakened
spirit of inquiry had satisfied itself as to the limits it ought to set;
and the Protestants seemed unwittingly to have thrown away much of the
advantage acquired by their rejection of popery. Common complaints of
the Romish hierarchy, and of ecclesiastical abuses, and a common
disapprobation of its dogmas, formed a sufficient centre of union for
the Protestants; but not content with this, they sought a rallying point
in the promulgation of a new and positive creed, in which they sought to
embody the distinctions, the privileges, and the essence of the church,
and to this they referred the convention entered into with their
opponents. It was as professors of this creed that they had acceded to
the treaty; and in the benefits of this peace the advocates of the
confession were alone entitled to participate. In any case, therefore,
the situation of its adherents was embarrassing. If a blind obedience
were yielded to the dicta of the Confession, a lasting bound would be
set to the spirit of inquiry; if, on the other hand, they dissented from
the formulae agreed upon, the point of union would be lost.
Unfortunately both incidents occurred, and the evil results of both were
quickly felt. One party rigorously adhered to the original symbol of
faith, and the other abandoned it, only to adopt another with equal
exclusiveness.
Nothing could have furnished the common enemy a more plausible defence
of his cause than this dissension; no spectacle could have been more
gratifying to him than the rancour with which the Protestants
alternately persecuted each other. Who could condemn the Roman
Catholics, if they laughed at the audacity with which the Reformers had
presumed to announce the only true belief?--if from Protestants they
borrowed the weapons against Protestants?--if, in the midst of this
clashing of opinions, they held fast to the authority of their own
church, for which, in part, there spoke an honourable antiquity, and a
yet more honourable plurality of voices. But this division placed the
Protestants in still more serious embarrassments. As the covenants of
the treaty applied only to the partisans of the Confession, their
opponents, with some reason, called upon them to explain who were to be
recognized as the adherents of that creed. The Lutherans could not,
without offending conscience, include the Calvinists in their communion,
except at the risk of converting a useful friend into a dangerous enemy,
could they exclude them. This unfortunate difference opened a way for
the machinations of the Jesuits to sow distrust between both parties,
and to destroy the unity of their measures. Fettered by the double fear
of their direct adversaries, and of their opponents among themselves,
the Protestants lost for ever the opportunity of placing their church on
a perfect equality with the Catholic. All these difficulties would have
been avoided, and the defection of the Calvinists would not have
prejudiced the common cause, if the point of union had been placed
simply in the abandonment of Romanism, instead of in the Confession of
Augsburg.
But however divided on other points, they concurred in this--that the
security which had resulted from equality of power could only be
maintained by the preservation of that balance. In the meanwhile, the
continual reforms of one party, and the opposing measures of the other,
kept both upon the watch, while the interpretation of the religious
treaty was a never-ending subject of dispute. Each party maintained
that every step taken by its opponent was an infraction of the peace,
while of every movement of its own it was asserted that it was essential
to its maintenance. Yet all the measures of the Catholics did not, as
their opponents alleged, proceed from a spirit of encroachment--many of
them were the necessary precautions of self-defence. The Protestants
had shown unequivocally enough what the Romanists might expect if they
were unfortunate enough to become the weaker party. The greediness of
the former for the property of the church, gave no reason to expect
indulgence;--their bitter hatred left no hope of magnanimity or
forbearance.
But the Protestants, likewise, were excusable if they too placed little
confidence in the sincerity of the Roman Catholics. By the treacherous
and inhuman treatment which their brethren in Spain, France, and the
Netherlands, had suffered; by the disgraceful subterfuge of the Romish
princes, who held that the Pope had power to relieve them from the
obligation of the most solemn oaths; and above all, by the detestable
maxim, that faith was not to be kept with heretics, the Roman Church, in
the eyes of all honest men, had lost its honour. No engagement, no
oath, however sacred, from a Roman Catholic, could satisfy a Protestant.
What security then could the religious peace afford, when, throughout
Germany, the Jesuits represented it as a measure of mere temporary
convenience, and in Rome itself it was solemnly repudiated.
The General Council, to which reference had been made in the treaty, had
already been held in the city of Trent; but, as might have been
foreseen, without accommodating the religious differences, or taking a
single step to effect such accommodation, and even without being
attended by the Protestants. The latter, indeed, were now solemnly
excommunicated by it in the name of the church, whose representative the
Council gave itself out to be. Could, then, a secular treaty, extorted
moreover by force of arms, afford them adequate protection against the
ban of the church; a treaty, too, based on a condition which the
decision of the Council seemed entirely to abolish? There was then a
show of right for violating the peace, if only the Romanists possessed
the power; and henceforward the Protestants were protected by nothing
but the respect for their formidable array.
Other circumstances combined to augment this distrust. Spain, on whose
support the Romanists in Germany chiefly relied, was engaged in a bloody
conflict with the Flemings. By it, the flower of the Spanish troops
were drawn to the confines of Germany. With what ease might they be
introduced within the empire, if a decisive stroke should render their
presence necessary? Germany was at that time a magazine of war for
nearly all the powers of Europe. The religious war had crowded it with
soldiers, whom the peace left destitute; its many independent princes
found it easy to assemble armies, and afterwards, for the sake of gain,
or the interests of party, hire them out to other powers. With German
troops, Philip the Second waged war against the Netherlands, and with
German troops they defended themselves. Every such levy in Germany was
a subject of alarm to the one party or the other, since it might be
intended for their oppression. The arrival of an ambassador, an
extraordinary legate of the Pope, a conference of princes, every unusual
incident, must, it was thought, be pregnant with destruction to some
party. Thus, for nearly half a century, stood Germany, her hand upon
the sword; every rustle of a leaf alarmed her.
Ferdinand the First, King of Hungary, and his excellent son, Maximilian
the Second, held at this memorable epoch the reins of government. With
a heart full of sincerity, with a truly heroic patience, had Ferdinand
brought about the religious peace of Augsburg, and afterwards, in the
Council of Trent, laboured assiduously, though vainly, at the ungrateful
task of reconciling the two religions. Abandoned by his nephew, Philip
of Spain, and hard pressed both in Hungary and Transylvania by the
victorious armies of the Turks, it was not likely that this emperor
would entertain the idea of violating the religious peace, and thereby
destroying his own painful work. The heavy expenses of the perpetually
recurring war with Turkey could not be defrayed by the meagre
contributions of his exhausted hereditary dominions. He stood,
therefore, in need of the assistance of the whole empire; and the
religious peace alone preserved in one body the otherwise divided
empire. Financial necessities made the Protestant as needful to him as
the Romanist, and imposed upon him the obligation of treating both
parties with equal justice, which, amidst so many contradictory claims,
was truly a colossal task. Very far, however, was the result from
answering his expectations. His indulgence of the Protestants served
only to bring upon his successors a war, which death saved himself the
mortification of witnessing. Scarcely more fortunate was his son
Maximilian, with whom perhaps the pressure of circumstances was the only
obstacle, and a longer life perhaps the only want, to his establishing
the new religion upon the imperial throne. Necessity had taught the
father forbearance towards the Protestants--necessity and justice
dictated the same course to the son. The grandson had reason to repent
that he neither listened to justice, nor yielded to necessity.
Maximilian left six sons, of whom the eldest, the Archduke Rodolph,
inherited his dominions, and ascended the imperial throne. The other
brothers were put off with petty appanages. A few mesne fiefs were held
by a collateral branch, which had their uncle, Charles of Styria, at its
head; and even these were afterwards, under his son, Ferdinand the
Second, incorporated with the rest of the family dominions. With this
exception, the whole of the imposing power of Austria was now wielded by
a single, but unfortunately weak hand.
Rodolph the Second was not devoid of those virtues which might have
gained him the esteem of mankind, had the lot of a private station
fallen to him. His character was mild, he loved peace and the sciences,
particularly astronomy, natural history, chemistry, and the study of
antiquities. To these he applied with a passionate zeal, which, at the
very time when the critical posture of affairs demanded all his
attention, and his exhausted finances the most rigid economy, diverted
his attention from state affairs, and involved him in pernicious
expenses. His taste for astronomy soon lost itself in those
astrological reveries to which timid and melancholy temperaments like
his are but too disposed. This, together with a youth passed in Spain,
opened his ears to the evil counsels of the Jesuits, and the influence
of the Spanish court, by which at last he was wholly governed. Ruled by
tastes so little in accordance with the dignity of his station, and
alarmed by ridiculous prophecies, he withdrew, after the Spanish custom,
from the eyes of his subjects, to bury himself amidst his gems and
antiques, or to make experiments in his laboratory, while the most fatal
discords loosened all the bands of the empire, and the flames of
rebellion began to burst out at the very footsteps of his throne. All
access to his person was denied, the most urgent matters were neglected.
The prospect of the rich inheritance of Spain was closed against him,
while he was trying to make up his mind to offer his hand to the Infanta
Isabella. A fearful anarchy threatened the Empire, for though without
an heir of his own body, he could not be persuaded to allow the election
of a King of the Romans. The Austrian States renounced their
allegiance, Hungary and Transylvania threw off his supremacy, and
Bohemia was not slow in following their example. The descendant of the
once so formidable Charles the Fifth was in perpetual danger, either of
losing one part of his possessions to the Turks, or another to the
Protestants, and of sinking, beyond redemption, under the formidable
coalition which a great monarch of Europe had formed against him. The
events which now took place in the interior of Germany were such as
usually happened when either the throne was without an emperor, or the
Emperor without a sense of his imperial dignity. Outraged or abandoned
by their head, the States of the Empire were left to help themselves;
and alliances among themselves must supply the defective authority of
the Emperor. Germany was divided into two leagues, which stood in arms
arrayed against each other: between both, Rodolph, the despised
opponent of the one, and the impotent protector of the other, remained
irresolute and useless, equally unable to destroy the former or to
command the latter. What had the Empire to look for from a prince
incapable even of defending his hereditary dominions against its
domestic enemies? To prevent the utter ruin of the House of Austria,
his own family combined against him; and a powerful party threw itself
into the arms of his brother. Driven from his hereditary dominions,
nothing was now left him to lose but the imperial dignity; and he was
only spared this last disgrace by a timely death.
At this critical moment, when only a supple policy, united with a
vigorous arm, could have maintained the tranquillity of the Empire, its
evil genius gave it a Rodolph for Emperor. At a more peaceful period
the Germanic Union would have managed its own interests, and Rodolph,
like so many others of his rank, might have hidden his deficiencies in a
mysterious obscurity. But the urgent demand for the qualities in which
he was most deficient revealed his incapacity. The position of Germany
called for an emperor who, by his known energies, could give weight to
his resolves; and the hereditary dominions of Rodolph, considerable as
they were, were at present in a situation to occasion the greatest
embarrassment to the governors.
The Austrian princes, it is true were Roman Catholics, and in addition
to that, the supporters of Popery, but their countries were far from
being so. The reformed opinions had penetrated even these, and favoured
by Ferdinand's necessities and Maximilian's mildness, had met with a
rapid success. The Austrian provinces exhibited in miniature what
Germany did on a larger scale. The great nobles and the ritter class or
knights were chiefly evangelical, and in the cities the Protestants had
a decided preponderance. If they succeeded in bringing a few of their
party into the country, they contrived imperceptibly to fill all places
of trust and the magistracy with their own adherents, and to exclude the
Catholics. Against the numerous order of the nobles and knights, and
the deputies from the towns, the voice of a few prelates was powerless;
and the unseemly ridicule and offensive contempt of the former soon
drove them entirely from the provincial diets. Thus the whole of the
Austrian Diet had imperceptibly become Protestant, and the Reformation
was making rapid strides towards its public recognition. The prince was
dependent on the Estates, who had it in their power to grant or refuse
supplies. Accordingly, they availed themselves of the financial
necessities of Ferdinand and his son to extort one religious concession
after another. To the nobles and knights, Maximilian at last conceded
the free exercise of their religion, but only within their own
territories and castles. The intemperate enthusiasm of the Protestant
preachers overstepped the boundaries which prudence had prescribed. In
defiance of the express prohibition, several of them ventured to preach
publicly, not only in the towns, but in Vienna itself, and the people
flocked in crowds to this new doctrine, the best seasoning of which was
personality and abuse. Thus continued food was supplied to fanaticism,
and the hatred of two churches, that were such near neighbours, was
farther envenomed by the sting of an impure zeal.
Among the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria, Hungary and
Transylvania were the most unstable, and the most difficult to retain.
The impossibility of holding these two countries against the
neighbouring and overwhelming power of the Turks, had already driven
Ferdinand to the inglorious expedient of recognizing, by an annual
tribute, the Porte's supremacy over Transylvania; a shameful confession
of weakness, and a still more dangerous temptation to the turbulent
nobility, when they fancied they had any reason to complain of their
master. Not without conditions had the Hungarians submitted to the
House of Austria. They asserted the elective freedom of their crown,
and boldly contended for all those prerogatives of their order which are
inseparable from this freedom of election. The near neighbourhood of
Turkey, the facility of changing masters with impunity, encouraged the
magnates still more in their presumption; discontented with the Austrian
government they threw themselves into the arms of the Turks;
dissatisfied with these, they returned again to their German sovereigns.
The frequency and rapidity of these transitions from one government to
another, had communicated its influences also to their mode of thinking;
and as their country wavered between the Turkish and Austrian rule, so
their minds vacillated between revolt and submission. The more
unfortunate each nation felt itself in being degraded into a province of
a foreign kingdom, the stronger desire did they feel to obey a monarch
chosen from amongst themselves, and thus it was always easy for an
enterprising noble to obtain their support. The nearest Turkish pasha
was always ready to bestow the Hungarian sceptre and crown on a rebel
against Austria; just as ready was Austria to confirm to any adventurer
the possession of provinces which he had wrested from the Porte,
satisfied with preserving thereby the shadow of authority, and with
erecting at the same time a barrier against the Turks. In this way
several of these magnates, Batbori, Boschkai, Ragoczi, and Bethlen
succeeded in establishing themselves, one after another, as tributary
sovereigns in Transylvania and Hungary; and they maintained their ground
by no deeper policy than that of occasionally joining the enemy, in
order to render themselves more formidable to their own prince.
Ferdinand, Maximilian, and Rodolph, who were all sovereigns of Hungary
and Transylvania, exhausted their other territories in endeavouring to
defend these from the hostile inroads of the Turks, and to put down
intestine rebellion. In this quarter destructive wars were succeeded
but by brief truces, which were scarcely less hurtful: far and wide the
land lay waste, while the injured serf had to complain equally of his
enemy and his protector. Into these countries also the Reformation had
penetrated; and protected by the freedom of the States, and under the
cover of the internal disorders, had made a noticeable progress. Here
too it was incautiously attacked, and party spirit thus became yet more
dangerous from religious enthusiasm. Headed by a bold rebel, Boschkai,
the nobles of Hungary and Transylvania raised the standard of rebellion.
The Hungarian insurgents were upon the point of making common cause with
the discontented Protestants in Austria, Moravia, and Bohemia, and
uniting all those countries in one fearful revolt. The downfall of
popery in these lands would then have been inevitable.
Long had the Austrian archdukes, the brothers of the Emperor, beheld
with silent indignation the impending ruin of their house; this last
event hastened their decision. The Archduke Matthias, Maximilian's
second son, Viceroy in Hungary, and Rodolph's presumptive heir, now came
forward as the stay of the falling house of Hapsburg. In his youth,
misled by a false ambition, this prince, disregarding the interests of
his family, had listened to the overtures of the Flemish insurgents, who
invited him into the Netherlands to conduct the defence of their
liberties against the oppression of his own relative, Philip the Second.
Mistaking the voice of an insulated faction for that of the entire
nation, Matthias obeyed the call. But the event answered the
expectations of the men of Brabant as little as his own, and from this
imprudent enterprise he retired with little credit.
Far more honourable was his second appearance in the political world.
Perceiving that his repeated remonstrances with the Emperor were
unavailing, he assembled the archdukes, his brothers and cousins, at
Presburg, and consulted with them on the growing perils of their house,
when they unanimously assigned to him, as the oldest, the duty of
defending that patrimony which a feeble brother was endangering. In his
hands they placed all their powers and rights, and vested him with
sovereign authority, to act at his discretion for the common good.
Matthias immediately opened a communication with the Porte and the
Hungarian rebels, and through his skilful management succeeded in
saving, by a peace with the Turks, the remainder of Hungary, and by a
treaty with the rebels, preserved the claims of Austria to the lost
provinces. But Rodolph, as jealous as he had hitherto been careless of
his sovereign authority, refused to ratify this treaty, which he
regarded as a criminal encroachment on his sovereign rights. He accused
the Archduke of keeping up a secret understanding with the enemy, and of
cherishing treasonable designs on the crown of Hungary.
The activity of Matthias was, in truth, anything but disinterested; the
conduct of the Emperor only accelerated the execution of his ambitious
views. Secure, from motives of gratitude, of the devotion of the
Hungarians, for whom he had so lately obtained the blessings of peace;
assured by his agents of the favourable disposition of the nobles, and
certain of the support of a large party, even in Austria, he now
ventured to assume a bolder attitude, and, sword in hand, to discuss his
grievances with the Emperor. The Protestants in Austria and Moravia,
long ripe for revolt, and now won over to the Archduke by his promises
of toleration, loudly and openly espoused his cause, and their
long-menaced alliance with the Hungarian rebels was actually effected.
Almost at once a formidable conspiracy was planned and matured against
the Emperor. Too late did he resolve to amend his past errors; in vain
did he attempt to break up this fatal alliance. Already the whole
empire was in arms; Hungary, Austria, and Moravia had done homage to
Matthias, who was already on his march to Bohemia to seize the Emperor
in his palace, and to cut at once the sinews of his power.
Bohemia was not a more peaceable possession for Austria than Hungary;
with this difference only, that, in the latter, political
considerations, in the former, religious dissensions, fomented
disorders. In Bohemia, a century before the days of Luther, the first
spark of the religious war had been kindled; a century after Luther, the
first flames of the thirty years' war burst out in Bohemia. The sect
which owed its rise to John Huss, still existed in that country;--it
agreed with the Romish Church in ceremonies and doctrines, with the
single exception of the administration of the Communion, in which the
Hussites communicated in both kinds. This privilege had been conceded
to the followers of Huss by the Council of Basle, in an express treaty,
(the Bohemian Compact); and though it was afterwards disavowed by the
popes, they nevertheless continued to profit by it under the sanction of
the government. As the use of the cup formed the only important
distinction of their body, they were usually designated by the name of
Utraquists; and they readily adopted an appellation which reminded them
of their dearly valued privilege. But under this title lurked also the
far stricter sects of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren, who differed
from the predominant church in more important particulars, and bore, in
fact, a great resemblance to the German Protestants. Among them both,
the German and Swiss opinions on religion made rapid progress; while the
name of Utraquists, under which they managed to disguise the change of
their principles, shielded them from persecution.
In truth, they had nothing in common with the Utraquists but the name;
essentially, they were altogether Protestant. Confident in the strength
of their party, and the Emperor's toleration under Maximilian, they had
openly avowed their tenets. After the example of the Germans, they drew
up a Confession of their own, in which Lutherans as well as Calvinists
recognized their own doctrines, and they sought to transfer to the new
Confession the privileges of the original Utraquists. In this they were
opposed by their Roman Catholic countrymen, and forced to rest content
with the Emperor's verbal assurance of protection.
As long as Maximilian lived, they enjoyed complete toleration, even
under the new form they had taken. Under his successor the scene
changed. An imperial edict appeared, which deprived the Bohemian
Brethren of their religious freedom. Now these differed in nothing from
the other Utraquists. The sentence, therefore, of their condemnation,
obviously included all the partisans of the Bohemian Confession.
Accordingly, they all combined to oppose the imperial mandate in the
Diet, but without being able to procure its revocation. The Emperor and
the Roman Catholic Estates took their ground on the Compact and the
Bohemian Constitution; in which nothing appeared in favour of a religion
which had not then obtained the voice of the country. Since that time,
how completely had affairs changed! What then formed but an
inconsiderable opinion, had now become the predominant religion of the
country. And what was it then, but a subterfuge to limit a newly
spreading religion by the terms of obsolete treaties? The Bohemian
Protestants appealed to the verbal guarantee of Maximilian, and the
religious freedom of the Germans, with whom they argued they ought to be
on a footing of equality. It was in vain--their appeal was dismissed.
Such was the posture of affairs in Bohemia, when Matthias, already
master of Hungary, Austria, and Moravia, appeared in Kolin, to raise the
Bohemian Estates also against the Emperor. The embarrassment of the
latter was now at its height. Abandoned by all his other subjects, he
placed his last hopes on the Bohemians, who, it might be foreseen, would
take advantage of his necessities to enforce their own demands. After
an interval of many years, he once more appeared publicly in the Diet at
Prague; and to convince the people that he was really still in
existence, orders were given that all the windows should be opened in
the streets through which he was to pass--proof enough how far things
had gone with him. The event justified his fears. The Estates,
conscious of their own power, refused to take a single step until their
privileges were confirmed, and religious toleration fully assured to
them. It was in vain to have recourse now to the old system of evasion.
The Emperor's fate was in their hands, and he must yield to necessity.
At present, however, he only granted their other demands--religious
matters he reserved for consideration at the next Diet.
The Bohemians now took up arms in defence of the Emperor, and a bloody
war between the two brothers was on the point of breaking out. But
Rodolph, who feared nothing so much as remaining in this slavish
dependence on the Estates, waited not for a warlike issue, but hastened
to effect a reconciliation with his brother by more peaceable means. By
a formal act of abdication he resigned to Matthias, what indeed he had
no chance of wresting from him, Austria and the kingdom of Hungary, and
acknowledged him as his successor to the crown of Bohemia.
Dearly enough had the Emperor extricated himself from one difficulty,
only to get immediately involved in another. The settlement of the
religious affairs of Bohemia had been referred to the next Diet, which
was held in 1609. The reformed Bohemians demanded the free exercise of
their faith, as under the former emperors; a Consistory of their own;
the cession of the University of Prague; and the right of electing
`Defenders', or `Protectors' of `Liberty', from their own body. The
answer was the same as before; for the timid Emperor was now entirely
fettered by the unreformed party. However often, and in however
threatening language the Estates renewed their remonstrances, the
Emperor persisted in his first declaration of granting nothing beyond
the old compact. The Diet broke up without coming to a decision; and
the Estates, exasperated against the Emperor, arranged a general meeting
at Prague, upon their own authority, to right themselves.
They appeared at Prague in great force. In defiance of the imperial
prohibition, they carried on their deliberations almost under the very
eyes of the Emperor. The yielding compliance which he began to show,
only proved how much they were feared, and increased their audacity.
Yet on the main point he remained inflexible. They fulfilled their
threats, and at last resolved to establish, by their own power, the free
and universal exercise of their religion, and to abandon the Emperor to
his necessities until he should confirm this resolution. They even went
farther, and elected for themselves the DEFENDERS which the Emperor had
refused them. Ten were nominated by each of the three Estates; they
also determined to raise, as soon as possible, an armed force, at the
head of which Count Thurn, the chief organizer of the revolt, should be
placed as general defender of the liberties of Bohemia. Their
determination brought the Emperor to submission, to which he was now
counselled even by the Spaniards. Apprehensive lest the exasperated
Estates should throw themselves into the arms of the King of Hungary, he
signed the memorable Letter of Majesty for Bohemia, by which, under the
successors of the Emperor, that people justified their rebellion.
The Bohemian Confession, which the States had laid before the Emperor
Maximilian, was, by the Letter of Majesty, placed on a footing of
equality with the olden profession. The Utraquists, for by this title
the Bohemian Protestants continued to designate themselves, were put in
possession of the University of Prague, and allowed a Consistory of
their own, entirely independent of the archiepiscopal see of that city.
All the churches in the cities, villages, and market towns, which they
held at the date of the letter, were secured to them; and if in addition
they wished to erect others, it was permitted to the nobles, and
knights, and the free cities to do so. This last clause in the Letter
of Majesty gave rise to the unfortunate disputes which subsequently
rekindled the flames of war in Europe.
The Letter of Majesty erected the Protestant part of Bohemia into a kind
of republic. The Estates had learned to feel the power which they
gained by perseverance, unity, and harmony in their measures. The
Emperor now retained little more than the shadow of his sovereign
authority; while by the new dignity of the so-called defenders of
liberty, a dangerous stimulus was given to the spirit of revolt. The
example and success of Bohemia afforded a tempting seduction to the
other hereditary dominions of Austria, and all attempted by similar
means to extort similar privileges. The spirit of liberty spread from
one province to another; and as it was chiefly the disunion among the
Austrian princes that had enabled the Protestants so materially to
improve their advantages, they now hastened to effect a reconciliation
between the Emperor and the King of Hungary.
But the reconciliation could not be sincere. The wrong was too great to
be forgiven, and Rodolph continued to nourish at heart an
unextinguishable hatred of Matthias. With grief and indignation he
brooded over the thought, that the Bohemian sceptre was finally to
descend into the hands of his enemy; and the prospect was not more
consoling, even if Matthias should die without issue. In that case,
Ferdinand, Archduke of Graetz, whom he equally disliked, was the head of
the family. To exclude the latter as well as Matthias from the
succession to the throne of Bohemia, he fell upon the project of
diverting that inheritance to Ferdinand's brother, the Archduke Leopold,
Bishop of Passau, who among all his relatives had ever been the dearest
and most deserving. The prejudices of the Bohemians in favour of the
elective freedom of their crown, and their attachment to Leopold's
person, seemed to favour this scheme, in which Rodolph consulted rather
his own partiality and vindictiveness than the good of his house. But
to carry out this project, a military force was requisite, and Rodolph
actually assembled an army in the bishopric of Passau. The object of
this force was hidden from all. An inroad, however, which, for want of
pay it made suddenly and without the Emperor's knowledge into Bohemia,
and the outrages which it there committed, stirred up the whole kingdom
against him. In vain he asserted his innocence to the Bohemian Estates;
they would not believe his protestations; vainly did he attempt to
restrain the violence of his soldiery; they disregarded his orders.
Persuaded that the Emperor's object was to annul the Letter of Majesty,
the Protectors of Liberty armed the whole of Protestant Bohemia, and
invited Matthias into the country. After the dispersion of the force he
had collected at Passau, the Emperor remained helpless at Prague, where
he was kept shut up like a prisoner in his palace, and separated from
all his councillors. In the meantime, Matthias entered Prague amidst
universal rejoicings, where Rodolph was soon afterwards weak enough to
acknowledge him King of Bohemia. So hard a fate befell this Emperor; he
was compelled, during his life, to abdicate in favour of his enemy that
very throne, of which he had been endeavouring to deprive him after his
own death. To complete his degradation, he was obliged, by a personal
act of renunciation, to release his subjects in Bohemia, Silesia, and
Lusatia from their allegiance, and he did it with a broken heart. All,
even those he thought he had most attached to his person, had abandoned
him. When he had signed the instrument, he threw his hat upon the
ground, and gnawed the pen which had rendered so shameful a service.
While Rodolph thus lost one hereditary dominion after another, the
imperial dignity was not much better maintained by him. Each of the
religious parties into which Germany was divided, continued its efforts
to advance itself at the expense of the other, or to guard against its
attacks. The weaker the hand that held the sceptre, and the more the
Protestants and Roman Catholics felt they were left to themselves, the
more vigilant necessarily became their watchfulness, and the greater
their distrust of each other. It was enough that the Emperor was ruled
by Jesuits, and was guided by Spanish counsels, to excite the
apprehension of the Protestants, and to afford a pretext for hostility.
The rash zeal of the Jesuits, which in the pulpit and by the press
disputed the validity of the religious peace, increased this distrust,
and caused their adversaries to see a dangerous design in the most
indifferent measures of the Roman Catholics. Every step taken in the
hereditary dominions of the Emperor, for the repression of the reformed
religion, was sure to draw the attention of all the Protestants of
Germany; and this powerful support which the reformed subjects of
Austria met, or expected to meet with from their religious confederates
in the rest of Germany, was no small cause of their confidence, and of
the rapid success of Matthias. It was the general belief of the Empire,
that they owed the long enjoyment of the religious peace merely to the
difficulties in which the Emperor was placed by the internal troubles in
his dominions, and consequently they were in no haste to relieve him
from them.
Almost all the affairs of the Diet were neglected, either through the
procrastination of the Emperor, or through the fault of the Protestant
Estates, who had determined to make no provision for the common wants of
the Empire till their own grievances were removed. These grievances
related principally to the misgovernment of the Emperor; the violation
of the religious treaty, and the presumptuous usurpations of the Aulic
Council, which in the present reign had begun to extend its jurisdiction
at the expense of the Imperial Chamber. Formerly, in all disputes
between the Estates, which could not be settled by club law, the
Emperors had in the last resort decided of themselves, if the case were
trifling, and in conjunction with the princes, if it were important; or
they determined them by the advice of imperial judges who followed the
court. This superior jurisdiction they had, in the end of the fifteenth
century, assigned to a regular and permanent tribunal, the Imperial
Chamber of Spires, in which the Estates of the Empire, that they might
not be oppressed by the arbitrary appointment of the Emperor, had
reserved to themselves the right of electing the assessors, and of
periodically reviewing its decrees. By the religious peace, these
rights of the Estates, (called the rights of presentation and
visitation,) were extended also to the Lutherans, so that Protestant
judges had a voice in Protestant causes, and a seeming equality obtained
for both religions in this supreme tribunal.
But the enemies of the Reformation and of the freedom of the Estates,
vigilant to take advantage of every incident that favoured their views,
soon found means to neutralize the beneficial effects of this
institution. A supreme jurisdiction over the Imperial States was
gradually and skilfully usurped by a private imperial tribunal, the
Aulic Council in Vienna, a court at first intended merely to advise the
Emperor in the exercise of his undoubted, imperial, and personal
prerogatives; a court, whose members being appointed and paid by him,
had no law but the interest of their master, and no standard of equity
but the advancement of the unreformed religion of which they were
partisans. Before the Aulic Council were now brought several suits
originating between Estates differing in religion, and which, therefore,
properly belonged to the Imperial Chamber. It was not surprising if the
decrees of this tribunal bore traces of their origin; if the interests
of the Roman Church and of the Emperor were preferred to justice by
Roman Catholic judges, and the creatures of the Emperor. Although all
the Estates of Germany seemed to have equal cause for resisting so
perilous an abuse, the Protestants alone, who most sensibly felt it, and
even these not all at once and in a body, came forward as the defenders
of German liberty, which the establishment of so arbitrary a tribunal
had outraged in its most sacred point, the administration of justice.
In fact, Germany would have had little cause to congratulate itself upon
the abolition of club-law, and in the institution of the Imperial
Chamber, if an arbitrary tribunal of the Emperor was allowed to
interfere with the latter. The Estates of the German Empire would
indeed have improved little upon the days of barbarism, if the Chamber
of Justice in which they sat along with the Emperor as judges, and for
which they had abandoned their original princely prerogative, should
cease to be a court of the last resort. But the strangest
contradictions were at this date to be found in the minds of men. The
name of Emperor, a remnant of Roman despotism, was still associated with
an idea of autocracy, which, though it formed a ridiculous inconsistency
with the privileges of the Estates, was nevertheless argued for by
jurists, diffused by the partisans of despotism, and believed by the
ignorant.
To these general grievances was gradually added a chain of singular
incidents, which at length converted the anxiety of the Protestants into
utter distrust. During the Spanish persecutions in the Netherlands,
several Protestant families had taken refuge in Aix-la-Chapelle, an
imperial city, and attached to the Roman Catholic faith, where they
settled and insensibly extended their adherents. Having succeeded by
stratagem in introducing some of their members into the municipal
council, they demanded a church and the public exercise of their
worship, and the demand being unfavourably received, they succeeded by
violence in enforcing it, and also in usurping the entire government of
the city. To see so important a city in Protestant hands was too heavy
a blow for the Emperor and the Roman Catholics. After all the Emperor's
requests and commands for the restoration of the olden government had
proved ineffectual, the Aulic Council proclaimed the city under the ban
of the Empire, which, however, was not put in force till the following
reign.
Of yet greater importance were two other attempts of the Protestants to
extend their influence and their power. The Elector Gebhard, of
Cologne, (born Truchsess--[Grand-master of the kitchen.]--of Waldburg,)
conceived for the young Countess Agnes, of Mansfield, Canoness of
Gerresheim, a passion which was not unreturned. As the eyes of all
Germany were directed to this intercourse, the brothers of the Countess,
two zealous Calvinists, demanded satisfaction for the injured honour of
their house, which, as long as the elector remained a Roman Catholic
prelate, could not be repaired by marriage. They threatened the elector
they would wash out this stain in his blood and their sister's, unless
he either abandoned all further connexion with the countess, or
consented to re-establish her reputation at the altar. The elector,
indifferent to all the consequences of this step, listened to nothing
but the voice of love. Whether it was in consequence of his previous
inclination to the reformed doctrines, or that the charms of his
mistress alone effected this wonder, he renounced the Roman Catholic
faith, and led the beautiful Agnes to the altar.
This event was of the greatest importance. By the letter of the clause
reserving the ecclesiastical states from the general operation of the
religious peace, the elector had, by his apostacy, forfeited all right
to the temporalities of his bishopric; and if, in any case, it was
important for the Catholics to enforce the clause, it was so especially
in the case of electorates. On the other hand, the relinquishment of so
high a dignity was a severe sacrifice, and peculiarly so in the case of
a tender husband, who had wished to enhance the value of his heart and
hand by the gift of a principality. Moreover, the Reservatum
Ecclesiasticum was a disputed article of the treaty of Augsburg; and all
the German Protestants were aware of the extreme importance of wresting
this fourth electorate from the opponents of their faith.--[Saxony,
Brandenburg, and the Palatinate were already Protestant.]--The example
had already been set in several of the ecclesiastical benefices of Lower
Germany, and attended with success. Several canons of Cologne had also
already embraced the Protestant confession, and were on the elector's
side, while, in the city itself, he could depend upon the support of a
numerous Protestant party. All these considerations, greatly
strengthened by the persuasions of his friends and relations, and the
promises of several German courts, determined the elector to retain his
dominions, while he changed his religion.
But it was soon apparent that he had entered upon a contest which he
could not carry through. Even the free toleration of the Protestant
service within the territories of Cologne, had already occasioned a
violent opposition on the part of the canons and Roman Catholic
`Estates' of that province. The intervention of the Emperor, and a
papal ban from Rome, which anathematized the elector as an apostate, and
deprived him of all his dignities, temporal and spiritual, armed his own
subjects and chapter against him. The Elector assembled a military
force; the chapter did the same. To ensure also the aid of a strong
arm, they proceeded forthwith to a new election, and chose the Bishop of
Liege, a prince of Bavaria.
A civil war now commenced, which, from the strong interest which both
religious parties in Germany necessarily felt in the conjuncture, was
likely to terminate in a general breaking up of the religious peace.
What most made the Protestants indignant, was that the Pope should have
presumed, by a pretended apostolic power, to deprive a prince of the
empire of his imperial dignities. Even in the golden days of their
spiritual domination, this prerogative of the Pope had been disputed;
how much more likely was it to be questioned at a period when his
authority was entirely disowned by one party, while even with the other
it rested on a tottering foundation. All the Protestant princes took up
the affair warmly against the Emperor; and Henry IV. of France, then
King of Navarre, left no means of negotiation untried to urge the German
princes to the vigorous assertion of their rights. The issue would
decide for ever the liberties of Germany. Four Protestant against three
Roman Catholic voices in the Electoral College must at once have given
the preponderance to the former, and for ever excluded the House of
Austria from the imperial throne.
But the Elector Gebhard had embraced the Calvinist, not the Lutheran
religion; and this circumstance alone was his ruin. The mutual rancour
of these two churches would not permit the Lutheran Estates to regard
the Elector as one of their party, and as such to lend him their
effectual support. All indeed had encouraged, and promised him
assistance; but only one appanaged prince of the Palatine House, the
Palsgrave John Casimir, a zealous Calvinist, kept his word. Despite of
the imperial prohibition, he hastened with his little army into the
territories of Cologne; but without being able to effect any thing,
because the Elector, who was destitute even of the first necessaries,
left him totally without help. So much the more rapid was the progress
of the newly-chosen elector, whom his Bavarian relations and the
Spaniards from the Netherlands supported with the utmost vigour. The
troops of Gebhard, left by their master without pay, abandoned one place
after another to the enemy; by whom others were compelled to surrender.
In his Westphalian territories, Gebhard held out for some time longer,
till here, too, he was at last obliged to yield to superior force.
After several vain attempts in Holland and England to obtain means for
his restoration, he retired into the Chapter of Strasburg, and died dean
of that cathedral; the first sacrifice to the Ecclesiastical
Reservation, or rather to the want of harmony among the German
Protestants.
To this dispute in Cologne was soon added another in Strasburg. Several
Protestant canons of Cologne, who had been included in the same papal
ban with the elector, had taken refuge within this bishopric, where they
likewise held prebends. As the Roman Catholic canons of Strasburg
hesitated to allow them, as being under the ban, the enjoyment of their
prebends, they took violent possession of their benefices, and the
support of a powerful Protestant party among the citizens soon gave them
the preponderance in the chapter. The other canons thereupon retired to
Alsace-Saverne, where, under the protection of the bishop, they
established themselves as the only lawful chapter, and denounced that
which remained in Strasburg as illegal. The latter, in the meantime,
had so strengthened themselves by the reception of several Protestant
colleagues of high rank, that they could venture, upon the death of the
bishop, to nominate a new Protestant bishop in the person of John George
of Brandenburg. The Roman Catholic canons, far from allowing this
election, nominated the Bishop of Metz, a prince of Lorraine, to that
dignity, who announced his promotion by immediately commencing
hostilities against the territories of Strasburg.
That city now took up arms in defence of its Protestant chapter and the
Prince of Brandenburg, while the other party, with the assistance of the
troops of Lorraine, endeavoured to possess themselves of the
temporalities of the chapter. A tedious war was the consequence, which,
according to the spirit of the times, was attended with barbarous
devastations. In vain did the Emperor interpose with his supreme
authority to terminate the dispute; the ecclesiastical property remained
for a long time divided between the two parties, till at last the
Protestant prince, for a moderate pecuniary equivalent, renounced his
claims; and thus, in this dispute also, the Roman Church came off
victorious.
An occurrence which, soon after the adjustment of this dispute, took
place in Donauwerth, a free city of Suabia, was still more critical for
the whole of Protestant Germany. In this once Roman Catholic city, the
Protestants, during the reigns of Ferdinand and his son, had, in the
usual way, become so completely predominant, that the Roman Catholics
were obliged to content themselves with a church in the Monastery of the
Holy Cross, and for fear of offending the Protestants, were even forced
to suppress the greater part of their religious rites. At length a
fanatical abbot of this monastery ventured to defy the popular
prejudices, and to arrange a public procession, preceded by the cross
and banners flying; but he was soon compelled to desist from the
attempt. When, a year afterwards, encouraged by a favourable imperial
proclamation, the same abbot attempted to renew this procession, the
citizens proceeded to open violence. The inhabitants shut the gates
against the monks on their return, trampled their colours under foot,
and followed them home with clamour and abuse. An imperial citation was
the consequence of this act of violence; and as the exasperated populace
even threatened to assault the imperial commissaries, and all attempts
at an amicable adjustment were frustrated by the fanaticism of the
multitude, the city was at last formally placed under the ban of the
Empire, the execution of which was intrusted to Maximilian, Duke of
Bavaria. The citizens, formerly so insolent, were seized with terror at
the approach of the Bavarian army; pusillanimity now possessed them,
though once so full of defiance, and they laid down their arms without
striking a blow. The total abolition of the Protestant religion within
the walls of the city was the punishment of their rebellion; it was
deprived of its privileges, and, from a free city of Suabia, converted
into a municipal town of Bavaria.
Two circumstances connected with this proceeding must have strongly
excited the attention of the Protestants, even if the interests of
religion had been less powerful on their minds. First of all, the
sentence had been pronounced by the Aulic Council, an arbitrary and
exclusively Roman Catholic tribunal, whose jurisdiction besides had been
so warmly disputed by them; and secondly, its execution had been
intrusted to the Duke of Bavaria, the head of another circle. These
unconstitutional steps seemed to be the harbingers of further violent
measures on the Roman Catholic side, the result, probably, of secret
conferences and dangerous designs, which might perhaps end in the entire
subversion of their religious liberty.
In circumstances where the law of force prevails, and security depends
upon power alone, the weakest party is naturally the most busy to place
itself in a posture of defence. This was now the case in Germany. If
the Roman Catholics really meditated any evil against the Protestants in
Germany, the probability was that the blow would fall on the south
rather than the north, because, in Lower Germany, the Protestants were
connected together through a long unbroken tract of country, and could
therefore easily combine for their mutual support; while those in the
south, detached from each other, and surrounded on all sides by Roman
Catholic states, were exposed to every inroad. If, moreover, as was to
be expected, the Catholics availed themselves of the divisions amongst
the Protestants, and levelled their attack against one of the religious
parties, it was the Calvinists who, as the weaker, and as being besides
excluded from the religious treaty, were apparently in the greatest
danger, and upon them would probably fall the first attack.
Both these circumstances took place in the dominions of the Elector
Palatine, which possessed, in the Duke of Bavaria, a formidable
neighbour, and which, by reason of their defection to Calvinism,
received no protection from the Religious Peace, and had little hope of
succour from the Lutheran states. No country in Germany had experienced
so many revolutions in religion in so short a time as the Palatinate.
In the space of sixty years this country, an unfortunate toy in the
hands of its rulers, had twice adopted the doctrines of Luther, and
twice relinquished them for Calvinism. The Elector Frederick III.
first abandoned the confession of Augsburg, which his eldest son and
successor, Lewis, immediately re-established. The Calvinists throughout
the whole country were deprived of their churches, their preachers and
even their teachers banished beyond the frontiers; while the prince, in
his Lutheran zeal, persecuted them even in his will, by appointing none
but strict and orthodox Lutherans as the guardians of his son, a minor.
But this illegal testament was disregarded by his brother the Count
Palatine, John Casimir, who, by the regulations of the Golden Bull,
assumed the guardianship and administration of the state. Calvinistic
teachers were given to the Elector Frederick IV., then only nine years
of age, who were ordered, if necessary, to drive the Lutheran heresy out
of the soul of their pupil with blows. If such was the treatment of the
sovereign, that of the subjects may be easily conceived.
It was under this Frederick that the Palatine Court exerted itself so
vigorously to unite the Protestant states of Germany in joint measures
against the House of Austria, and, if possible, bring about the
formation of a general confederacy. Besides that this court had always
been guided by the counsels of France, with whom hatred of the House of
Austria was the ruling principle, a regard for his own safety urged him
to secure in time the doubtful assistance of the Lutherans against a
near and overwhelming enemy. Great difficulties, however, opposed this
union, because the Lutherans' dislike of the Reformed was scarcely less
than the common aversion of both to the Romanists. An attempt was first
made to reconcile the two professions, in order to facilitate a
political union; but all these attempts failed, and generally ended in
both parties adhering the more strongly to their respective opinions.
Nothing then remained but to increase the fear and the distrust of the
Evangelicals, and in this way to impress upon them the necessity of this
alliance. The power of the Roman Catholics and the magnitude of the
danger were exaggerated, accidental incidents were ascribed to
deliberate plans, innocent actions misrepresented by invidious
constructions, and the whole conduct of the professors of the olden
religion was interpreted as the result of a well-weighed and systematic
plan, which, in all probability, they were very far from having
concerted.
The Diet of Ratisbon, to which the Protestants had looked forward with
the hope of obtaining a renewal of the Religious Peace, had broken up
without coming to a decision, and to the former grievances of the
Protestant party was now added the late oppression of Donauwerth. With
incredible speed, the union, so long attempted, was now brought to bear.
A conference took place at Anhausen, in Franconia, at which were present
the Elector Frederick IV., from the Palatinate, the Palsgrave of
Neuburg, two Margraves of Brandenburg, the Margrave of Baden, and the
Duke John Frederick of Wirtemburg,--Lutherans as well as Calvinists,--
who for themselves and their heirs entered into a close confederacy
under the title of the Evangelical Union. The purport of this union
was, that the allied princes should, in all matters relating to religion
and their civil rights, support each other with arms and counsel against
every aggressor, and should all stand as one man; that in case any
member of the alliance should be attacked, he should be assisted by the
rest with an armed force; that, if necessary, the territories, towns,
and castles of the allied states should be open to his troops; and that,
whatever conquests were made, should be divided among all the
confederates, in proportion to the contingent furnished by each.
The direction of the whole confederacy in time of peace was conferred
upon the Elector Palatine, but with a limited power. To meet the
necessary expenses, subsidies were demanded, and a common fund
established. Differences of religion (betwixt the Lutherans and the
Calvinists) were to have no effect on this alliance, which was to
subsist for ten years, every member of the union engaged at the same
time to procure new members to it. The Electorate of Brandenburg
adopted the alliance, that of Saxony rejected it. Hesse-Cashel could
not be prevailed upon to declare itself, the Dukes of Brunswick and
Luneburg also hesitated. But the three cities of the Empire, Strasburg,
Nuremburg, and Ulm, were no unimportant acquisition for the league,
which was in great want of their money, while their example, besides,
might be followed by other imperial cities.
After the formation of this alliance, the confederate states,
dispirited, and singly, little feared, adopted a bolder language.
Through Prince Christian of Anhalt, they laid their common grievances
and demands before the Emperor; among which the principal were the
restoration of Donauwerth, the abolition of the Imperial Court, the
reformation of the Emperor's own administration and that of his
counsellors. For these remonstrances, they chose the moment when the
Emperor had scarcely recovered breath from the troubles in his
hereditary dominions,--when he had lost Hungary and Austria to Matthias,
and had barely preserved his Bohemian throne by the concession of the
Letter of Majesty, and finally, when through the succession of Juliers
he was already threatened with the distant prospect of a new war. No
wonder, then, that this dilatory prince was more irresolute than ever in
his decision, and that the confederates took up arms before he could
bethink himself.
The Roman Catholics regarded this confederacy with a jealous eye; the
Union viewed them and the Emperor with the like distrust; the Emperor
was equally suspicious of both; and thus, on all sides, alarm and
animosity had reached their climax. And, as if to crown the whole, at
this critical conjuncture by the death of the Duke John William of
Juliers, a highly disputable succession became vacant in the territories
of Juliers and Cleves.
Eight competitors laid claim to this territory, the indivisibility of
which had been guaranteed by solemn treaties; and the Emperor, who
seemed disposed to enter upon it as a vacant fief, might be considered
as the ninth. Four of these, the Elector of Brandenburg, the Count
Palatine of Neuburg, the Count Palatine of Deux Ponts, and the Margrave
of Burgau, an Austrian prince, claimed it as a female fief in name of
four princesses, sisters of the late duke. Two others, the Elector of
Saxony, of the line of Albert, and the Duke of Saxony, of the line of
Ernest, laid claim to it under a prior right of reversion granted to
them by the Emperor Frederick III., and confirmed to both Saxon houses
by Maximilian I. The pretensions of some foreign princes were little
regarded. The best right was perhaps on the side of Brandenburg and
Neuburg, and between the claims of these two it was not easy to decide.
Both courts, as soon as the succession was vacant, proceeded to take
possession; Brandenburg beginning, and Neuburg following the example.
Both commenced their dispute with the pen, and would probably have ended
it with the sword; but the interference of the Emperor, by proceeding to
bring the cause before his own cognizance, and, during the progress of
the suit, sequestrating the disputed countries, soon brought the
contending parties to an agreement, in order to avert the common danger.
They agreed to govern the duchy conjointly. In vain did the Emperor
prohibit the Estates from doing homage to their new masters; in vain did
he send his own relation, the Archduke Leopold, Bishop of Passau and
Strasburg, into the territory of Juliers, in order, by his presence, to
strengthen the imperial party. The whole country, with the exception of
Juliers itself, had submitted to the Protestant princes, and in that
capital the imperialists were besieged.
The dispute about the succession of Juliers was an important one to the
whole German empire, and also attracted the attention of several
European courts. It was not so much the question, who was or was not to
possess the Duchy of Juliers;--the real question was, which of the two
religious parties in Germany, the Roman Catholic or the Protestant, was
to be strengthened by so important an accession--for which of the two
RELIGIONS this territory was to be lost or won. The question in short
was, whether Austria was to be allowed to persevere in her usurpations,
and to gratify her lust of dominion by another robbery; or whether the
liberties of Germany, and the balance of power, were to be maintained
against her encroachments. The disputed succession of Juliers,
therefore, was matter which interested all who were favourable to
liberty, and hostile to Austria. The Evangelical Union, Holland,
England, and particularly Henry IV. of France, were drawn into the
strife.
This monarch, the flower of whose life had been spent in opposing the
House of Austria and Spain, and by persevering heroism alone had
surmounted the obstacles which this house had thrown between him and the
French throne, had been no idle spectator of the troubles in Germany.
This contest of the Estates with the Emperor was the means of giving and
securing peace to France. The Protestants and the Turks were the two
salutary weights which kept down the Austrian power in the East and
West; but it would rise again in all its terrors, if once it were
allowed to remove this pressure. Henry the Fourth had before his eyes
for half a lifetime, the uninterrupted spectacle of Austrian ambition
and Austrian lust of dominion, which neither adversity nor poverty of
talents, though generally they check all human passions, could
extinguish in a bosom wherein flowed one drop of the blood of Ferdinand
of Arragon. Austrian ambition had destroyed for a century the peace of
Europe, and effected the most violent changes in the heart of its most
considerable states. It had deprived the fields of husbandmen, the
workshops of artisans, to fill the land with enormous armies, and to
cover the commercial sea with hostile fleets. It had imposed upon the
princes of Europe the necessity of fettering the industry of their
subjects by unheard-of imposts; and of wasting in self-defence the best
strength of their states, which was thus lost to the prosperity of their
inhabitants. For Europe there was no peace, for its states no welfare,
for the people's happiness no security or permanence, so long as this
dangerous house was permitted to disturb at pleasure the repose of the
world.
Such considerations clouded the mind of Henry at the close of his
glorious career. What had it not cost him to reduce to order the
troubled chaos into which France had been plunged by the tumult of civil
war, fomented and supported by this very Austria! Every great mind
labours for eternity; and what security had Henry for the endurance of
that prosperity which he had gained for France, so long as Austria and
Spain formed a single power, which did indeed lie exhausted for the
present, but which required only one lucky chance to be speedily
re-united, and to spring up again as formidable as ever. If he would
bequeath to his successors a firmly established throne, and a durable
prosperity to his subjects, this dangerous power must be for ever
disarmed. This was the source of that irreconcileable enmity which
Henry had sworn to the House of Austria, a hatred unextinguishable,
ardent, and well-founded as that of Hannibal against the people of
Romulus, but ennobled by a purer origin.
The other European powers had the same inducements to action as Henry,
but all of them had not that enlightened policy, nor that disinterested
courage to act upon the impulse. All men, without distinction, are
allured by immediate advantages; great minds alone are excited by
distant good. So long as wisdom in its projects calculates upon wisdom,
or relies upon its own strength, it forms none but chimerical schemes,
and runs a risk of making itself the laughter of the world; but it is
certain of success, and may reckon upon aid and admiration when it finds
a place in its intellectual plans for barbarism, rapacity, and
superstition, and can render the selfish passions of mankind the
executors of its purposes.
In the first point of view, Henry's well-known project of expelling the
House of Austria from all its possessions, and dividing the spoil among
the European powers, deserves the title of a chimera, which men have so
liberally bestowed upon it; but did it merit that appellation in the
second? It had never entered into the head of that excellent monarch,
in the choice of those who must be the instruments of his designs, to
reckon on the sufficiency of such motives as animated himself and Sully
to the enterprise. All the states whose co-operation was necessary,
were to be persuaded to the work by the strongest motives that can set a
political power in action. From the Protestants in Germany nothing more
was required than that which, on other grounds, had been long their
object,--their throwing off the Austrian yoke; from the Flemings, a
similar revolt from the Spaniards. To the Pope and all the Italian
republics no inducement could be more powerful than the hope of driving
the Spaniards for ever from their peninsula; for England, nothing more
desirable than a revolution which should free it from its bitterest
enemy. By this division of the Austrian conquests, every power gained
either land or freedom, new possessions or security for the old; and as
all gained, the balance of power remained undisturbed. France might
magnanimously decline a share in the spoil, because by the ruin of
Austria it doubly profited, and was most powerful if it did not become
more powerful. Finally, upon condition of ridding Europe of their
presence, the posterity of Hapsburg were to be allowed the liberty of
augmenting her territories in all the other known or yet undiscovered
portions of the globe. But the dagger of Ravaillac delivered Austria
from her danger, to postpone for some centuries longer the tranquillity
of Europe.
With his view directed to this project, Henry felt the necessity of
taking a prompt and active part in the important events of the
Evangelical Union, and the disputed succession of Juliers. His
emissaries were busy in all the courts of Germany, and the little which
they published or allowed to escape of the great political secrets of
their master, was sufficient to win over minds inflamed by so ardent a
hatred to Austria, and by so strong a desire of aggrandizement. The
prudent policy of Henry cemented the Union still more closely, and the
powerful aid which he bound himself to furnish, raised the courage of
the confederates into the firmest confidence. A numerous French army,
led by the king in person, was to meet the troops of the Union on the
banks of the Rhine, and to assist in effecting the conquest of Juliers
and Cleves; then, in conjunction with the Germans, it was to march into
Italy, (where Savoy, Venice, and the Pope were even now ready with a
powerful reinforcement,) and to overthrow the Spanish dominion in that
quarter. This victorious army was then to penetrate by Lombardy into
the hereditary dominions of Hapsburg; and there, favoured by a general
insurrection of the Protestants, destroy the power of Austria in all its
German territories, in Bohemia, Hungary, and Transylvania. The
Brabanters and Hollanders, supported by French auxiliaries, would in the
meantime shake off the Spanish tyranny in the Netherlands; and thus the
mighty stream which, only a short time before, had so fearfully
overflowed its banks, threatening to overwhelm in its troubled waters
the liberties of Europe, would then roll silent and forgotten behind the
Pyrenean mountains.
At other times, the French had boasted of their rapidity of action, but
upon this occasion they were outstripped by the Germans. An army of the
confederates entered Alsace before Henry made his appearance there, and
an Austrian army, which the Bishop of Strasburg and Passau had assembled
in that quarter for an expedition against Juliers, was dispersed. Henry
IV. had formed his plan as a statesman and a king, but he had intrusted
its execution to plunderers. According to his design, no Roman Catholic
state was to have cause to think this preparation aimed against itself,
or to make the quarrel of Austria its own. Religion was in nowise to be
mixed up with the matter. But how could the German princes forget their
own purposes in furthering the plans of Henry? Actuated as they were by
the desire of aggrandizement and by religious hatred, was it to be
supposed that they would not gratify, in every passing opportunity,
their ruling passions to the utmost? Like vultures, they stooped upon
the territories of the ecclesiastical princes, and always chose those
rich countries for their quarters, though to reach them they must make
ever so wide a detour from their direct route. They levied
contributions as in an enemy's country, seized upon the revenues, and
exacted, by violence, what they could not obtain of free-will. Not to
leave the Roman Catholics in doubt as to the true objects of their
expedition, they announced, openly and intelligibly enough, the fate
that awaited the property of the church. So little had Henry IV. and
the German princes understood each other in their plan of operations, so
much had the excellent king been mistaken in his instruments. It is an
unfailing maxim, that, if policy enjoins an act of violence, its
execution ought never to be entrusted to the violent; and that he only
ought to be trusted with the violation of order by whom order is held
sacred.
Both the past conduct of the Union, which was condemned even by several
of the evangelical states, and the apprehension of even worse treatment,
aroused the Roman Catholics to something beyond mere inactive
indignation. As to the Emperor, his authority had sunk too low to
afford them any security against such an enemy. It was their Union that
rendered the confederates so formidable and so insolent; and another
union must now be opposed to them.
The Bishop of Wurtzburg formed the plan of the Catholic union, which was
distinguished from the evangelical by the title of the League. The
objects agreed upon were nearly the same as those which constituted the
groundwork of the Union. Bishops formed its principal members, and at
its head was placed Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria. As the only
influential secular member of the confederacy, he was entrusted with far
more extensive powers than the Protestants had committed to their chief.
In addition to the duke's being the sole head of the League's military
power, whereby their operations acquired a speed and weight unattainable
by the Union, they had also the advantage that supplies flowed in much
more regularly from the rich prelates, than the latter could obtain them
from the poor evangelical states. Without offering to the Emperor, as
the sovereign of a Roman Catholic state, any share in their confederacy,
without even communicating its existence to him as emperor, the League
arose at once formidable and threatening; with strength sufficient to
crush the Protestant Union and to maintain itself under three emperors.
It contended, indeed, for Austria, in so far as it fought against the
Protestant princes; but Austria herself had soon cause to tremble before
it.
The arms of the Union had, in the meantime, been tolerably successful in
Juliers and in Alsace; Juliers was closely blockaded, and the whole
bishopric of Strasburg was in their power. But here their splendid
achievements came to an end. No French army appeared upon the Rhine;
for he who was to be its leader, he who was the animating soul of the
whole enterprize, Henry IV., was no more! Their supplies were on the
wane; the Estates refused to grant new subsidies; and the confederate
free cities were offended that their money should be liberally, but
their advice so sparingly called for. Especially were they displeased
at being put to expense for the expedition against Juliers, which had
been expressly excluded from the affairs of the Union--at the united
princes appropriating to themselves large pensions out of the common
treasure--and, above all, at their refusing to give any account of its
expenditure.
The Union was thus verging to its fall, at the moment when the League
started to oppose it in the vigour of its strength. Want of supplies
disabled the confederates from any longer keeping the field. And yet it
was dangerous to lay down their weapons in the sight of an armed enemy.
To secure themselves at least on one side, they hastened to conclude a
peace with their old enemy, the Archduke Leopold; and both parties
agreed to withdraw their troops from Alsace, to exchange prisoners, and
to bury all that had been done in oblivion. Thus ended in nothing all
these promising preparations.
The same imperious tone with which the Union, in the confidence of its
strength, had menaced the Roman Catholics of Germany, was now retorted
by the League upon themselves and their troops. The traces of their
march were pointed out to them, and plainly branded with the hard
epithets they had deserved. The chapters of Wurtzburg, Bamberg,
Strasburg, Mentz, Treves, Cologne, and several others, had experienced
their destructive presence; to all these the damage done was to be made
good, the free passage by land and by water restored, (for the
Protestants had even seized on the navigation of the Rhine,) and
everything replaced on its former footing. Above all, the parties to
the Union were called on to declare expressly and unequivocally its
intentions. It was now their turn to yield to superior strength. They
had not calculated on so formidable an opponent; but they themselves had
taught the Roman Catholics the secret of their strength. It was
humiliating to their pride to sue for peace, but they might think
themselves fortunate in obtaining it. The one party promised
restitution, the other forgiveness. All laid down their arms. The
storm of war once more rolled by, and a temporary calm succeeded. The
insurrection in Bohemia then broke out, which deprived the Emperor of
the last of his hereditary dominions, but in this dispute neither the
Union nor the League took any share.
At length the Emperor died in 1612, as little regretted in his coffin as
noticed on the throne. Long afterwards, when the miseries of succeeding
reigns had made the misfortunes of his reign forgotten, a halo spread
about his memory, and so fearful a night set in upon Germany, that, with
tears of blood, people prayed for the return of such an emperor.
Rodolph never could be prevailed upon to choose a successor in the
empire, and all awaited with anxiety the approaching vacancy of the
throne; but, beyond all hope, Matthias at once ascended it, and without
opposition. The Roman Catholics gave him their voices, because they
hoped the best from his vigour and activity; the Protestants gave him
theirs, because they hoped every thing from his weakness. It is not
difficult to reconcile this contradiction. The one relied on what he
had once appeared; the other judged him by what he seemed at present.
The moment of a new accession is always a day of hope; and the first
Diet of a king in elective monarchies is usually his severest trial.
Every old grievance is brought forward, and new ones are sought out,
that they may be included in the expected reform; quite a new world is
expected to commence with the new reign. The important services which,
in his insurrection, their religious confederates in Austria had
rendered to Matthias, were still fresh in the minds of the Protestant
free cities, and, above all, the price which they had exacted for their
services seemed now to serve them also as a model.
It was by the favour of the Protestant Estates in Austria and Moravia
that Matthias had sought and really found the way to his brother's
throne; but, hurried on by his ambitious views, he never reflected that
a way was thus opened for the States to give laws to their sovereign.
This discovery soon awoke him from the intoxication of success.
Scarcely had he shown himself in triumph to his Austrian subjects, after
his victorious expedition to Bohemia, when a humble petition awaited him
which was quite sufficient to poison his whole triumph. They required,
before doing homage, unlimited religious toleration in the cities and
market towns, perfect equality of rights between Roman Catholics and
Protestants, and a full and equal admissibility of the latter to all
offices of state. In several places, they of themselves assumed these
privileges, and, reckoning on a change of administration, restored the
Protestant religion where the late Emperor had suppressed it. Matthias,
it is true, had not scrupled to make use of the grievances of the
Protestants for his own ends against the Emperor; but it was far from
being his intention to relieve them. By a firm and resolute tone he
hoped to check, at once, these presumptuous demands. He spoke of his
hereditary title to these territories, and would hear of no stipulations
before the act of homage. A like unconditional submission had been
rendered by their neighbours, the inhabitants of Styria, to the Archduke
Ferdinand, who, however, had soon reason to repent of it. Warned by
this example, the Austrian States persisted in their refusal; and, to
avoid being compelled by force to do homage, their deputies (after
urging their Roman Catholic colleagues to a similar resistance)
immediately left the capital, and began to levy troops.
They took steps to renew their old alliance with Hungary, drew the
Protestant princes into their interests, and set themselves seriously to
work to accomplish their object by force of arms.
With the more exorbitant demands of the Hungarians Matthias had not
hesitated to comply. For Hungary was an elective monarchy, and the
republican constitution of the country justified to himself their
demands, and to the Roman Catholic world his concessions. In Austria,
on the contrary, his predecessors had exercised far higher prerogatives,
which he could not relinquish at the demand of the Estates without
incurring the scorn of Roman Catholic Europe, the enmity of Spain and
Rome, and the contempt of his own Roman Catholic subjects. His
exclusively Romish council, among which the Bishop of Vienna, Melchio
Kiesel, had the chief influence, exhorted him to see all the churches
extorted from him by the Protestants, rather than to concede one to them
as a matter of right.
But by ill luck this difficulty occurred at a time when the Emperor
Rodolph was yet alive, and a spectator of this scene, and who might
easily have been tempted to employ against his brother the same weapons
which the latter had successfully directed against him--namely, an
understanding with his rebellious subjects. To avoid this blow,
Matthias willingly availed himself of the offer made by Moravia, to act
as mediator between him and the Estates of Austria. Representatives of
both parties met in Vienna, when the Austrian deputies held language
which would have excited surprise even in the English Parliament. "The
Protestants," they said, "are determined to be not worse treated in
their native country than the handful of Romanists. By the help of his
Protestant nobles had Matthias reduced the Emperor to submission; where
80 Papists were to be found, 300 Protestant barons might be counted.
The example of Rodolph should be a warning to Matthias. He should take
care that he did not lose the terrestrial, in attempting to make
conquests for the celestial." As the Moravian States, instead of using
their powers as mediators for the Emperor's advantage, finally adopted
the cause of their co-religionists of Austria; as the Union in Germany
came forward to afford them its most active support, and as Matthias
dreaded reprisals on the part of the Emperor, he was at length compelled
to make the desired declaration in favour of the Evangelical Church.
This behaviour of the Austrian Estates towards their Archduke was now
imitated by the Protestant Estates of the Empire towards their Emperor,
and they promised themselves the same favourable results. At his first
Diet at Ratisbon in 1613, when the most pressing affairs were waiting
for decision--when a general contribution was indispensable for a war
against Turkey, and against Bethlem Gabor in Transylvania, who by
Turkish aid had forcibly usurped the sovereignty of that land, and even
threatened Hungary--they surprised him with an entirely new demand.
The Roman Catholic votes were still the most numerous in the Diet; and
as every thing was decided by a plurality of voices, the Protestant
party, however closely united, were entirely without consideration. The
advantage of this majority the Roman Catholics were now called on to
relinquish; henceforward no one religious party was to be permitted to
dictate to the other by means of its invariable superiority. And in
truth, if the evangelical religion was really to be represented in the
Diet, it was self-evident that it must not be shut out from the
possibility of making use of that privilege, merely from the
constitution of the Diet itself. Complaints of the judicial usurpations
of the Aulic Council, and of the oppression of the Protestants,
accompanied this demand, and the deputies of the Estates were instructed
to take no part in any general deliberations till a favourable answer
should be given on this preliminary point.
The Diet was torn asunder by this dangerous division, which threatened
to destroy for ever the unity of its deliberations. Sincerely as the
Emperor might have wished, after the example of his father Maximilian,
to preserve a prudent balance between the two religions, the present
conduct of the Protestants seemed to leave him nothing but a critical
choice between the two. In his present necessities a general
contribution from the Estates was indispensable to him; and yet he could
not conciliate the one party without sacrificing the support of the
other. Insecure as he felt his situation to be in his own hereditary
dominions, he could not but tremble at the idea, however remote, of an
open war with the Protestants. But the eyes of the whole Roman Catholic
world, which were attentively regarding his conduct, the remonstrances
of the Roman Catholic Estates, and of the Courts of Rome and Spain, as
little permitted him to favour the Protestant at the expense of the
Romish religion.
So critical a situation would have paralysed a greater mind than
Matthias; and his own prudence would scarcely have extricated him from
his dilemma. But the interests of the Roman Catholics were closely
interwoven with the imperial authority; if they suffered this to fall,
the ecclesiastical princes in particular would be without a bulwark
against the attacks of the Protestants. Now, then, that they saw the
Emperor wavering, they thought it high time to reassure his sinking
courage. They imparted to him the secret of their League, and
acquainted him with its whole constitution, resources and power. Little
comforting as such a revelation must have been to the Emperor, the
prospect of so powerful a support gave him greater boldness to oppose
the Protestants. Their demands were rejected, and the Diet broke up
without coming to a decision. But Matthias was the victim of this
dispute. The Protestants refused him their supplies, and made him alone
suffer for the inflexibility of the Roman Catholics.
The Turks, however, appeared willing to prolong the cessation of
hostilities, and Bethlem Gabor was left in peaceable possession of
Transylvania. The empire was now free from foreign enemies; and even at
home, in the midst of all these fearful disputes, peace still reigned.
An unexpected accident had given a singular turn to the dispute as to
the succession of Juliers. This duchy was still ruled conjointly by the
Electoral House of Brandenburg and the Palatine of Neuburg; and a
marriage between the Prince of Neuburg and a Princess of Brandenburg was
to have inseparably united the interests of the two houses. But the
whole scheme was upset by a box on the ear, which, in a drunken brawl,
the Elector of Brandenburg unfortunately inflicted upon his intended
son-in-law. From this moment the good understanding between the two
houses was at an end. The Prince of Neuburg embraced popery. The hand
of a princess of Bavaria rewarded his apostacy, and the strong support
of Bavaria and Spain was the natural result of both. To secure to the
Palatine the exclusive possession of Juliers, the Spanish troops from
the Netherlands were marched into the Palatinate. To rid himself of
these guests, the Elector of Brandenburg called the Flemings to his
assistance, whom he sought to propitiate by embracing the Calvinist
religion. Both Spanish and Dutch armies appeared, but, as it seemed,
only to make conquests for themselves.
The neighbouring war of the Netherlands seemed now about to be decided
on German ground; and what an inexhaustible mine of combustibles lay
here ready for it! The Protestants saw with consternation the Spaniards
establishing themselves upon the Lower Rhine; with still greater anxiety
did the Roman Catholics see the Hollanders bursting through the
frontiers of the empire. It was in the west that the mine was expected
to explode which had long been dug under the whole of Germany. To the
west, apprehension and anxiety turned; but the spark which kindled the
flame came unexpectedly from the east.
The tranquillity which Rodolph II.'s 'Letter of Majesty' had established
in Bohemia lasted for some time, under the administration of Matthias,
till the nomination of a new heir to this kingdom in the person of
Ferdinand of Gratz.
This prince, whom we shall afterwards become better acquainted with
under the title of Ferdinand II., Emperor of Germany, had, by the
violent extirpation of the Protestant religion within his hereditary
dominions, announced himself as an inexorable zealot for popery, and was
consequently looked upon by the Roman Catholic part of Bohemia as the
future pillar of their church. The declining health of the Emperor
brought on this hour rapidly; and, relying on so powerful a supporter,
the Bohemian Papists began to treat the Protestants with little
moderation. The Protestant vassals of Roman Catholic nobles, in
particular, experienced the harshest treatment. At length several of
the former were incautious enough to speak somewhat loudly of their
hopes, and by threatening hints to awaken among the Protestants a
suspicion of their future sovereign. But this mistrust would never have
broken out into actual violence, had the Roman Catholics confined
themselves to general expressions, and not by attacks on individuals
furnished the discontent of the people with enterprising leaders.
Henry Matthias, Count Thurn, not a native of Bohemia, but proprietor of
some estates in that kingdom, had, by his zeal for the Protestant cause,
and an enthusiastic attachment to his newly adopted country, gained the
entire confidence of the Utraquists, which opened him the way to the
most important posts. He had fought with great glory against the Turks,
and won by a flattering address the hearts of the multitude. Of a hot
and impetuous disposition, which loved tumult because his talents shone
in it--rash and thoughtless enough to undertake things which cold
prudence and a calmer temper would not have ventured upon--unscrupulous
enough, where the gratification of his passions was concerned, to sport
with the fate of thousands, and at the same time politic enough to hold
in leading-strings such a people as the Bohemians then were. He had
already taken an active part in the troubles under Rodolph's
administration; and the Letter of Majesty which the States had extorted
from that Emperor, was chiefly to be laid to his merit. The court had
intrusted to him, as burgrave or castellan of Calstein, the custody of
the Bohemian crown, and of the national charter. But the nation had
placed in his hands something far more important--ITSELF--with the
office of defender or protector of the faith. The aristocracy by which
the Emperor was ruled, imprudently deprived him of this harmless
guardianship of the dead, to leave him his full influence over the
living. They took from him his office of burgrave, or constable of the
castle, which had rendered him dependent on the court, thereby opening
his eyes to the importance of the other which remained, and wounded his
vanity, which yet was the thing that made his ambition harmless. From
this moment he was actuated solely by a desire of revenge; and the
opportunity of gratifying it was not long wanting.
In the Royal Letter which the Bohemians had extorted from Rodolph II.,
as well as in the German religious treaty, one material article remained
undetermined. All the privileges granted by the latter to the
Protestants, were conceived in favour of the Estates or governing
bodies, not of the subjects; for only to those of the ecclesiastical
states had a toleration, and that precarious, been conceded. The
Bohemian Letter of Majesty, in the same manner, spoke only of the
Estates and imperial towns, the magistrates of which had contrived to
obtain equal privileges with the former. These alone were free to erect
churches and schools, and openly to celebrate their Protestant worship;
in all other towns, it was left entirely to the government to which they
belonged, to determine the religion of the inhabitants. The Estates of
the Empire had availed themselves of this privilege in its fullest
extent; the secular indeed without opposition; while the ecclesiastical,
in whose case the declaration of Ferdinand had limited this privilege,
disputed, not without reason, the validity of that limitation. What was
a disputed point in the religious treaty, was left still more doubtful
in the Letter of Majesty; in the former, the construction was not
doubtful, but it was a question how far obedience might be compulsory;
in the latter, the interpretation was left to the states. The subjects
of the ecclesiastical Estates in Bohemia thought themselves entitled to
the same rights which the declaration of Ferdinand secured to the
subjects of German bishops, they considered themselves on an equality
with the subjects of imperial towns, because they looked upon the
ecclesiastical property as part of the royal demesnes. In the little
town of Klostergrab, subject to the Archbishop of Prague; and in
Braunau, which belonged to the abbot of that monastery, churches were
founded by the Protestants, and completed notwithstanding the opposition
of their superiors, and the disapprobation of the Emperor.
In the meantime, the vigilance of the defenders had somewhat relaxed,
and the court thought it might venture on a decisive step. By the
Emperor's orders, the church at Klostergrab was pulled down; that at
Braunau forcibly shut up, and the most turbulent of the citizens thrown
into prison. A general commotion among the Protestants was the
consequence of this measure; a loud outcry was everywhere raised at this
violation of the Letter of Majesty; and Count Thurn, animated by
revenge, and particularly called upon by his office of defender, showed
himself not a little busy in inflaming the minds of the people. At his
instigation deputies were summoned to Prague from every circle in the
empire, to concert the necessary measures against the common danger. It
was resolved to petition the Emperor to press for the liberation of the
prisoners. The answer of the Emperor, already offensive to the states,
from its being addressed, not to them, but to his viceroy, denounced
their conduct as illegal and rebellious, justified what had been done at
Klostergrab and Braunau as the result of an imperial mandate, and
contained some passages that might be construed into threats.
Count Thurn did not fail to augment the unfavourable impression which
this imperial edict made upon the assembled Estates. He pointed out to
them the danger in which all who had signed the petition were involved,
and sought by working on their resentment and fears to hurry them into
violent resolutions. To have caused their immediate revolt against the
Emperor, would have been, as yet, too bold a measure. It was only step
by step that he would lead them on to this unavoidable result. He held
it, therefore, advisable first to direct their indignation against the
Emperor's counsellors; and for that purpose circulated a report, that
the imperial proclamation had been drawn up by the government at Prague,
and only signed in Vienna. Among the imperial delegates, the chief
objects of the popular hatred, were the President of the Chamber,
Slawata, and Baron Martinitz, who had been elected in place of Count
Thurn, Burgrave of Calstein. Both had long before evinced pretty openly
their hostile feelings towards the Protestants, by alone refusing to be
present at the sitting at which the Letter of Majesty had been inserted
in the Bohemian constitution. A threat was made at the time to make
them responsible for every violation of the Letter of Majesty; and from
this moment, whatever evil befell the Protestants was set down, and not
without reason, to their account. Of all the Roman Catholic nobles,
these two had treated their Protestant vassals with the greatest
harshness. They were accused of hunting them with dogs to the mass, and
of endeavouring to drive them to popery by a denial of the rites of
baptism, marriage, and burial. Against two characters so unpopular the
public indignation was easily excited, and they were marked out for a
sacrifice to the general indignation.
On the 23rd of May, 1618, the deputies appeared armed, and in great
numbers, at the royal palace, and forced their way into the hall where
the Commissioners Sternberg, Martinitz, Lobkowitz, and Slawata were
assembled. In a threatening tone they demanded to know from each of
them, whether he had taken any part, or had consented to, the imperial
proclamation. Sternberg received them with composure, Martinitz and
Slawata with defiance. This decided their fate; Sternberg and
Lobkowitz, less hated, and more feared, were led by the arm out of the
room; Martinitz and Slawata were seized, dragged to a window, and
precipitated from a height of eighty feet, into the castle trench.
Their creature, the secretary Fabricius, was thrown after them. This
singular mode of execution naturally excited the surprise of civilized
nations. The Bohemians justified it as a national custom, and saw
nothing remarkable in the whole affair, excepting that any one should
have got up again safe and sound after such a fall. A dunghill, on
which the imperial commissioners chanced to be deposited, had saved them
from injury.
It was not to be expected that this summary mode of proceeding would
much increase the favour of the parties with the Emperor, but this was
the very position to which Count Thurn wished to bring them. If, from
the fear of uncertain danger, they had permitted themselves such an act
of violence, the certain expectation of punishment, and the now urgent
necessity of making themselves secure, would plunge them still deeper
into guilt. By this brutal act of self-redress, no room was left for
irresolution or repentance, and it seemed as if a single crime could be
absolved only by a series of violences. As the deed itself could not be
undone, nothing was left but to disarm the hand of punishment. Thirty
directors were appointed to organise a regular insurrection. They
seized upon all the offices of state, and all the imperial revenues,
took into their own service the royal functionaries and the soldiers,
and summoned the whole Bohemian nation to avenge the common cause. The
Jesuits, whom the common hatred accused as the instigators of every
previous oppression, were banished the kingdom, and this harsh measure
the Estates found it necessary to justify in a formal manifesto. These
various steps were taken for the preservation of the royal authority and
the laws--the language of all rebels till fortune has decided in their
favour.
The emotion which the news of the Bohemian insurrection excited at the
imperial court, was much less lively than such intelligence deserved.
The Emperor Matthias was no longer the resolute spirit that formerly
sought out his king and master in the very bosom of his people, and
hurled him from three thrones. The confidence and courage which had
animated him in an usurpation, deserted him in a legitimate
self-defence. The Bohemian rebels had first taken up arms, and the
nature of circumstances drove him to join them. But he could not hope
to confine such a war to Bohemia. In all the territories under his
dominion, the Protestants were united by a dangerous sympathy--the
common danger of their religion might suddenly combine them all into a
formidable republic. What could he oppose to such an enemy, if the
Protestant portion of his subjects deserted him? And would not both
parties exhaust themselves in so ruinous a civil war? How much was at
stake if he lost; and if he won, whom else would he destroy but his own
subjects?
Considerations such as these inclined the Emperor and his council to
concessions and pacific measures, but it was in this very spirit of
concession that, as others would have it, lay the origin of the evil.
The Archduke Ferdinand of Gratz congratulated the Emperor upon an event,
which would justify in the eyes of all Europe the severest measures
against the Bohemian Protestants. "Disobedience, lawlessness, and
insurrection," he said, "went always hand-in-hand with Protestantism.
Every privilege which had been conceded to the Estates by himself and
his predecessor, had had no other effect than to raise their demands.
All the measures of the heretics were aimed against the imperial
authority. Step by step had they advanced from defiance to defiance up
to this last aggression; in a short time they would assail all that
remained to be assailed, in the person of the Emperor. In arms alone
was there any safety against such an enemy--peace and subordination
could be only established upon the ruins of their dangerous privileges;
security for the Catholic belief was to be found only in the total
destruction of this sect. Uncertain, it was true, might be the event of
the war, but inevitable was the ruin if it were pretermitted. The
confiscation of the lands of the rebels would richly indemnify them for
its expenses, while the terror of punishment would teach the other
states the wisdom of a prompt obedience in future." Were the Bohemian
Protestants to blame, if they armed themselves in time against the
enforcement of such maxims? The insurrection in Bohemia, besides, was
directed only against the successor of the Emperor, not against himself,
who had done nothing to justify the alarm of the Protestants. To
exclude this prince from the Bohemian throne, arms had before been taken
up under Matthias, though as long as this Emperor lived, his subjects
had kept within the bounds of an apparent submission.
But Bohemia was in arms, and unarmed, the Emperor dared not even offer
them peace. For this purpose, Spain supplied gold, and promised to send
troops from Italy and the Netherlands. Count Bucquoi, a native of the
Netherlands, was named generalissimo, because no native could be
trusted, and Count Dampierre, another foreigner, commanded under him.
Before the army took the field, the Emperor endeavoured to bring about
an amicable arrangement, by the publication of a manifesto. In this he
assured the Bohemians, "that he held sacred the Letter of Majesty--that
he had not formed any resolutions inimical to their religion or their
privileges, and that his present preparations were forced upon him by
their own. As soon as the nation laid down their arms, he also would
disband his army." But this gracious letter failed of its effect,
because the leaders of the insurrection contrived to hide from the
people the Emperor's good intentions. Instead of this, they circulated
the most alarming reports from the pulpit, and by pamphlets, and
terrified the deluded populace with threatened horrors of another Saint
Bartholomew's that existed only in their own imagination. All Bohemia,
with the exception of three towns, Budweiss, Krummau, and Pilsen, took
part in this insurrection. These three towns, inhabited principally by
Roman Catholics, alone had the courage, in this general revolt, to hold
out for the Emperor, who promised them assistance. But it could not
escape Count Thurn, how dangerous it was to leave in hostile hands three
places of such importance, which would at all times keep open for the
imperial troops an entrance into the kingdom. With prompt determination
he appeared before Budweiss and Krummau, in the hope of terrifying them
into a surrender. Krummau surrendered, but all his attacks were
steadfastly repulsed by Budweiss.
And now, too, the Emperor began to show more earnestness and energy.
Bucquoi and Dampierre, with two armies, fell upon the Bohemian
territories, which they treated as a hostile country. But the imperial
generals found the march to Prague more difficult than they had
expected. Every pass, every position that was the least tenable, must
be opened by the sword, and resistance increased at each fresh step they
took, for the outrages of their troops, chiefly consisting of Hungarians
and Walloons, drove their friends to revolt and their enemies to
despair. But even now that his troops had penetrated into Bohemia, the
Emperor continued to offer the Estates peace, and to show himself ready
for an amicable adjustment. But the new prospects which opened upon
them, raised the courage of the revolters. Moravia espoused their
party; and from Germany appeared to them a defender equally intrepid and
unexpected, in the person of Count Mansfeld.
The heads of the Evangelic Union had been silent but not inactive
spectators of the movements in Bohemia. Both were contending for the
same cause, and against the same enemy. In the fate of the Bohemians,
their confederates in the faith might read their own; and the cause of
this people was represented as of solemn concern to the whole German
union. True to these principles, the Unionists supported the courage of
the insurgents by promises of assistance; and a fortunate accident now
enabled them, beyond their hopes, to fulfil them.
The instrument by which the House of Austria was humbled in Germany, was
Peter Ernest, Count Mansfeld, the son of a distinguished Austrian
officer, Ernest von Mansfeld, who for some time had commanded with
repute the Spanish army in the Netherlands. His first campaigns in
Juliers and Alsace had been made in the service of this house, and under
the banner of the Archduke Leopold, against the Protestant religion and
the liberties of Germany. But insensibly won by the principles of this
religion, he abandoned a leader whose selfishness denied him the
reimbursement of the monies expended in his cause, and he transferred
his zeal and a victorious sword to the Evangelic Union. It happened
just then that the Duke of Savoy, an ally of the Union, demanded
assistance in a war against Spain. They assigned to him their newly
acquired servant, and Mansfeld received instructions to raise an army of
4000 men in Germany, in the cause and in the pay of the duke. The army
was ready to march at the very moment when the flames of war burst out
in Bohemia, and the duke, who at the time did not stand in need of its
services, placed it at the disposal of the Union. Nothing could be more
welcome to these troops than the prospect of aiding their confederates
in Bohemia, at the cost of a third party. Mansfeld received orders
forthwith to march with these 4000 men into that kingdom; and a
pretended Bohemian commission was given to blind the public as to the
true author of this levy.
This Mansfeld now appeared in Bohemia, and, by the occupation of Pilsen,
strongly fortified and favourable to the Emperor, obtained a firm
footing in the country. The courage of the rebels was farther increased
by succours which the Silesian States despatched to their assistance.
Between these and the Imperialists, several battles were fought, far
indeed from decisive, but only on that account the more destructive,
which served as the prelude to a more serious war. To check the vigour
of his military operations, a negotiation was entered into with the
Emperor, and a disposition was shown to accept the proffered mediation
of Saxony. But before the event could prove how little sincerity there
was in these proposals, the Emperor was removed from the scene by death.
What now had Matthias done to justify the expectations which he had
excited by the overthrow of his predecessor? Was it worth while to
ascend a brother's throne through guilt, and then maintain it with so
little dignity, and leave it with so little renown? As long as Matthias
sat on the throne, he had to atone for the imprudence by which he had
gained it. To enjoy the regal dignity a few years sooner, he had
shackled the free exercise of its prerogatives. The slender portion of
independence left him by the growing power of the Estates, was still
farther lessened by the encroachments of his relations. Sickly and
childless he saw the attention of the world turned to an ambitious heir
who was impatiently anticipating his fate; and who, by his interference
with the closing administration, was already opening his own.
With Matthias, the reigning line of the German House of Austria was in a
manner extinct; for of all the sons of Maximilian, one only was now
alive, the weak and childless Archduke Albert, in the Netherlands, who
had already renounced his claims to the inheritance in favour of the
line of Gratz. The Spanish House had also, in a secret bond, resigned
its pretensions to the Austrian possessions in behalf of the Archduke
Ferdinand of Styria, in whom the branch of Hapsburg was about to put
forth new shoots, and the former greatness of Austria to experience a
revival.
The father of Ferdinand was the Archduke Charles of Carniola, Carinthia,
and Styria, the youngest brother of the Emperor Maximilian II.; his
mother a princess of Bavaria. Having lost his father at twelve years of
age, he was intrusted by the archduchess to the guardianship of her
brother William, Duke of Bavaria, under whose eyes he was instructed and
educated by Jesuits at the Academy of Ingolstadt. What principles he
was likely to imbibe by his intercourse with a prince, who from motives
of devotion had abdicated his government, may be easily conceived. Care
was taken to point out to him, on the one hand, the weak indulgence of
Maximilian's house towards the adherents of the new doctrines, and the
consequent troubles of their dominions; on the other, the blessings of
Bavaria, and the inflexible religious zeal of its rulers; between these
two examples he was left to choose for himself.
Formed in this school to be a stout champion of the faith, and a prompt
instrument of the church, he left Bavaria, after a residence of five
years, to assume the government of his hereditary dominions. The
Estates of Carniola, Carinthia, and Styria, who, before doing homage,
demanded a guarantee for freedom of religion, were told that religious
liberty has nothing to do with their allegiance. The oath was put to
them without conditions, and unconditionally taken. Many years,
however, elapsed, ere the designs which had been planned at Ingolstadt
were ripe for execution. Before attempting to carry them into effect,
he sought in person at Loretto the favour of the Virgin, and received
the apostolic benediction in Rome at the feet of Clement VIII.
These designs were nothing less than the expulsion of Protestantism from
a country where it had the advantage of numbers, and had been legally
recognized by a formal act of toleration, granted by his father to the
noble and knightly estates of the land. A grant so formally ratified
could not be revoked without danger; but no difficulties could deter the
pious pupil of the Jesuits. The example of other states, both Roman
Catholic and Protestant, which within their own territories had
exercised unquestioned a right of reformation, and the abuse which the
Estates of Styria made of their religious liberties, would serve as a
justification of this violent procedure. Under the shelter of an absurd
positive law, those of equity and prudence might, it was thought, be
safely despised. In the execution of these unrighteous designs,
Ferdinand did, it must be owned, display no common courage and
perseverance. Without tumult, and we may add, without cruelty, he
suppressed the Protestant service in one town after another, and in a
few years, to the astonishment of Germany, this dangerous work was
brought to a successful end.
But, while the Roman Catholics admired him as a hero, and the champion
of the church, the Protestants began to combine against him as against
their most dangerous enemy. And yet Matthias's intention to bequeath to
him the succession, met with little or no opposition in the elective
states of Austria. Even the Bohemians agreed to receive him as their
future king, on very favourable conditions. It was not until
afterwards, when they had experienced the pernicious influence of his
councils on the administration of the Emperor, that their anxiety was
first excited; and then several projects, in his handwriting, which an
unlucky chance threw into their hands, as they plainly evinced his
disposition towards them, carried their apprehension to the utmost
pitch. In particular, they were alarmed by a secret family compact with
Spain, by which, in default of heirs-male of his own body, Ferdinand
bequeathed to that crown the kingdom of Bohemia, without first
consulting the wishes of that nation, and without regard to its right of
free election. The many enemies, too, which by his reforms in Styria
that prince had provoked among the Protestants, were very prejudicial to
his interests in Bohemia; and some Styrian emigrants, who had taken
refuge there, bringing with them into their adopted country hearts
overflowing with a desire of revenge, were particularly active in
exciting the flame of revolt. Thus ill-affected did Ferdinand find the
Bohemians, when he succeeded Matthias.
So bad an understanding between the nation and the candidate for the
throne, would have raised a storm even in the most peaceable succession;
how much more so at the present moment, before the ardour of
insurrection had cooled; when the nation had just recovered its dignity,
and reasserted its rights; when they still held arms in their hands, and
the consciousness of unity had awakened an enthusiastic reliance on
their own strength; when by past success, by the promises of foreign
assistance, and by visionary expectations of the future, their courage
had been raised to an undoubting confidence. Disregarding the rights
already conferred on Ferdinand, the Estates declared the throne vacant,
and their right of election entirely unfettered. All hopes of their
peaceful submission were at an end, and if Ferdinand wished still to
wear the crown of Bohemia, he must choose between purchasing it at the
sacrifice of all that would make a crown desirable, or winning it sword
in hand.
But with what means was it to be won? Turn his eyes where he would, the
fire of revolt was burning. Silesia had already joined the insurgents
in Bohemia; Moravia was on the point of following its example. In Upper
and Lower Austria the spirit of liberty was awake, as it had been under
Rodolph, and the Estates refused to do homage. Hungary was menaced with
an inroad by Prince Bethlen Gabor, on the side of Transylvania; a secret
arming among the Turks spread consternation among the provinces to the
eastward; and, to complete his perplexities, the Protestants also, in
his hereditary dominions, stimulated by the general example, were again
raising their heads. In that quarter, their numbers were overwhelming;
in most places they had possession of the revenues which Ferdinand would
need for the maintenance of the war. The neutral began to waver, the
faithful to be discouraged, the turbulent alone to be animated and
confident. One half of Germany encouraged the rebels, the other
inactively awaited the issue; Spanish assistance was still very remote.
The moment which had brought him every thing, threatened also to deprive
him of all.
And when he now, yielding to the stern law of necessity, made overtures
to the Bohemian rebels, all his proposals for peace were insolently
rejected. Count Thurn, at the head of an army, entered Moravia to bring
this province, which alone continued to waver, to a decision. The
appearance of their friends is the signal of revolt for the Moravian
Protestants. Bruenn is taken, the remainder of the country yields with
free will, throughout the province government and religion are changed.
Swelling as it flows, the torrent of rebellion pours down upon Austria,
where a party, holding similar sentiments, receives it with a joyful
concurrence. Henceforth, there should be no more distinctions of
religion; equality of rights should be guaranteed to all Christian
churches. They hear that a foreign force has been invited into the
country to oppress the Bohemians. Let them be sought out, and the
enemies of liberty pursued to the ends of the earth. Not an arm is
raised in defence of the Archduke, and the rebels, at length, encamp
before Vienna to besiege their sovereign.
Ferdinand had sent his children from Gratz, where they were no longer
safe, to the Tyrol; he himself awaited the insurgents in his capital. A
handful of soldiers was all he could oppose to the enraged multitude;
these few were without pay or provisions, and therefore little to be
depended on. Vienna was unprepared for a long siege. The party of the
Protestants, ready at any moment to join the Bohemians, had the
preponderance in the city; those in the country had already begun to
levy troops against him. Already, in imagination, the Protestant
populace saw the Emperor shut up in a monastery, his territories
divided, and his children educated as Protestants. Confiding in secret,
and surrounded by public enemies, he saw the chasm every moment widening
to engulf his hopes and even himself. The Bohemian bullets were already
falling upon the imperial palace, when sixteen Austrian barons forcibly
entered his chamber, and inveighing against him with loud and bitter
reproaches, endeavoured to force him into a confederation with the
Bohemians. One of them, seizing him by the button of his doublet,
demanded, in a tone of menace, "Ferdinand, wilt thou sign it?"
Who would not be pardoned had he wavered in this frightful situation?
Yet Ferdinand still remembered the dignity of a Roman emperor. No
alternative seemed left to him but an immediate flight or submission;
laymen urged him to the one, priests to the other. If he abandoned the
city, it would fall into the enemy's hands; with Vienna, Austria was
lost; with Austria, the imperial throne. Ferdinand abandoned not his
capital, and as little would he hear of conditions.
The Archduke is still engaged in altercation with the deputed barons,
when all at once a sound of trumpets is heard in the palace square.
Terror and astonishment take possession of all present; a fearful report
pervades the palace; one deputy after another disappears. Many of the
nobility and the citizens hastily take refuge in the camp of Thurn.
This sudden change is effected by a regiment of Dampierre's cuirassiers,
who at that moment marched into the city to defend the Archduke. A body
of infantry soon followed; reassured by their appearance, several of the
Roman Catholic citizens, and even the students themselves, take up arms.
A report which arrived just at the same time from Bohemia made his
deliverance complete. The Flemish general, Bucquoi, had totally
defeated Count Mansfeld at Budweiss, and was marching upon Prague. The
Bohemians hastily broke up their camp before Vienna to protect their own
capital.
And now also the passes were free which the enemy had taken possession
of, in order to obstruct Ferdinand's progress to his coronation at
Frankfort. If the accession to the imperial throne was important for
the plans of the King of Hungary, it was of still greater consequence at
the present moment, when his nomination as Emperor would afford the most
unsuspicious and decisive proof of the dignity of his person, and of the
justice of his cause, while, at the same time, it would give him a hope
of support from the Empire. But the same cabal which opposed him in his
hereditary dominions, laboured also to counteract him in his canvass for
the imperial dignity. No Austrian prince, they maintained, ought to
ascend the throne; least of all Ferdinand, the bigoted persecutor of
their religion, the slave of Spain and of the Jesuits. To prevent this,
the crown had been offered, even during the lifetime of Matthias, to the
Duke of Bavaria, and on his refusal, to the Duke of Savoy. As some
difficulty was experienced in settling with the latter the conditions of
acceptance, it was sought, at all events, to delay the election till
some decisive blow in Austria or Bohemia should annihilate all the hopes
of Ferdinand, and incapacitate him from any competition for this
dignity. The members of the Union left no stone unturned to gain over
from Ferdinand the Electorate of Saxony, which was bound to Austrian
interests; they represented to this court the dangers with which the
Protestant religion, and even the constitution of the empire, were
threatened by the principles of this prince and his Spanish alliance.
By the elevation of Ferdinand to the imperial throne, Germany, they
further asserted, would be involved in the private quarrels of this
prince, and bring upon itself the arms of Bohemia. But in spite of all
opposing influences, the day of election was fixed, Ferdinand summoned
to it as lawful king of Bohemia, and his electoral vote, after a
fruitless resistance on the part of the Bohemian Estates, acknowledged
to be good. The votes of the three ecclesiastical electorates were for
him, Saxony was favourable to him, Brandenburg made no opposition, and a
decided majority declared him Emperor in 1619. Thus he saw the most
doubtful of his crowns placed first of all on his head; but a few days
after he lost that which he had reckoned among the most certain of his
possessions. While he was thus elected Emperor in Frankfort, he was in
Prague deprived of the Bohemian throne.
Almost all of his German hereditary dominions had in the meantime
entered into a formidable league with the Bohemians, whose insolence now
exceeded all bounds. In a general Diet, the latter, on the 17th of
August, 1619, proclaimed the Emperor an enemy to the Bohemian religion
and liberties, who by his pernicious counsels had alienated from them
the affections of the late Emperor, had furnished troops to oppress
them, had given their country as a prey to foreigners, and finally, in
contravention of the national rights, had bequeathed the crown, by a
secret compact, to Spain: they therefore declared that he had forfeited
whatever title he might otherwise have had to the crown, and immediately
proceeded to a new election. As this sentence was pronounced by
Protestants, their choice could not well fall upon a Roman Catholic
prince, though, to save appearances, some voices were raised for Bavaria
and Savoy. But the violent religious animosities which divided the
evangelical and the reformed parties among the Protestants, impeded for
some time the election even of a Protestant king; till at last the
address and activity of the Calvinists carried the day from the
numerical superiority of the Lutherans.
Among all the princes who were competitors for this dignity, the Elector
Palatine Frederick V. had the best grounded claims on the confidence
and gratitude of the Bohemians; and among them all, there was no one in
whose case the private interests of particular Estates, and the
attachment of the people, seemed to be justified by so many
considerations of state. Frederick V. was of a free and lively spirit,
of great goodness of heart, and regal liberality. He was the head of
the Calvinistic party in Germany, the leader of the Union, whose
resources were at his disposal, a near relation of the Duke of Bavaria,
and a son-in-law of the King of Great Britain, who might lend him his
powerful support. All these considerations were prominently and
successfully brought forward by the Calvinists, and Frederick V. was
chosen king by the Assembly at Prague, amidst prayers and tears of joy.
The whole proceedings of the Diet at Prague had been premeditated, and
Frederick himself had taken too active a share in the matter to feel at
all surprised at the offer made to him by the Bohemians. But now the
immediate glitter of this throne dazzled him, and the magnitude both of
his elevation and his delinquency made his weak mind to tremble. After
the usual manner of pusillanimous spirits, he sought to confirm himself
in his purpose by the opinions of others; but these opinions had no
weight with him when they ran counter to his own cherished wishes.
Saxony and Bavaria, of whom he sought advice, all his brother electors,
all who compared the magnitude of the design with his capacities and
resources, warned him of the danger into which he was about to rush.
Even King James of England preferred to see his son-in-law deprived of
this crown, than that the sacred majesty of kings should be outraged by
so dangerous a precedent. But of what avail was the voice of prudence
against the seductive glitter of a crown? In the moment of boldest
determination, when they are indignantly rejecting the consecrated
branch of a race which had governed them for two centuries, a free
people throws itself into his arms. Confiding in his courage, they
choose him as their leader in the dangerous career of glory and liberty.
To him, as to its born champion, an oppressed religion looks for shelter
and support against its persecutors. Could he have the weakness to
listen to his fears, and to betray the cause of religion and liberty?
This religion proclaims to him its own preponderance, and the weakness
of its rival,--two-thirds of the power of Austria are now in arms
against Austria itself, while a formidable confederacy, already formed
in Transylvania, would, by a hostile attack, further distract even the
weak remnant of its power. Could inducements such as these fail to
awaken his ambition, or such hopes to animate and inflame his
resolution?
A few moments of calm consideration would have sufficed to show the
danger of the undertaking, and the comparative worthlessness of the
prize. But the temptation spoke to his feelings; the warning only to
his reason. It was his misfortune that his nearest and most influential
counsellors espoused the side of his passions. The aggrandizement of
their master's power opened to the ambition and avarice of his Palatine
servants an unlimited field for their gratification; this anticipated
triumph of their church kindled the ardour of the Calvinistic fanatic.
Could a mind so weak as that of Ferdinand resist the delusions of his
counsellors, who exaggerated his resources and his strength, as much as
they underrated those of his enemies; or the exhortations of his
preachers, who announced the effusions of their fanatical zeal as the
immediate inspiration of heaven? The dreams of astrology filled his mind
with visionary hopes; even love conspired, with its irresistible
fascination, to complete the seduction. "Had you," demanded the
Electress, "confidence enough in yourself to accept the hand of a king's
daughter, and have you misgivings about taking a crown which is
voluntarily offered you? I would rather eat bread at thy kingly table,
than feast at thy electoral board."
Frederick accepted the Bohemian crown. The coronation was celebrated
with unexampled pomp at Prague, for the nation displayed all its riches
in honour of its own work. Silesia and Moravia, the adjoining provinces
to Bohemia, followed their example, and did homage to Frederick. The
reformed faith was enthroned in all the churches of the kingdom; the
rejoicings were unbounded, their attachment to their new king bordered
on adoration. Denmark and Sweden, Holland and Venice, and several of
the Dutch states, acknowledged him as lawful sovereign, and Frederick
now prepared to maintain his new acquisition.
His principal hopes rested on Prince Bethlen Gabor of Transylvania.
This formidable enemy of Austria, and of the Roman Catholic church, not
content with the principality which, with the assistance of the Turks,
he had wrested from his legitimate prince, Gabriel Bathori, gladly
seized this opportunity of aggrandizing himself at the expense of
Austria, which had hesitated to acknowledge him as sovereign of
Transylvania. An attack upon Hungary and Austria was concerted with the
Bohemian rebels, and both armies were to unite before the capital.
Meantime, Bethlen Gabor, under the mask of friendship, disguised the
true object of his warlike preparations, artfully promising the Emperor
to lure the Bohemians into the toils, by a pretended offer of
assistance, and to deliver up to him alive the leaders of the
insurrection. All at once, however, he appeared in a hostile attitude
in Upper Hungary. Before him went terror, and devastation behind; all
opposition yielded, and at Presburg he received the Hungarian crown.
The Emperor's brother, who governed in Vienna, trembled for the capital.
He hastily summoned General Bucquoi to his assistance, and the retreat
of the Imperialists drew the Bohemians, a second time, before the walls
of Vienna. Reinforced by twelve thousand Transylvanians, and soon after
joined by the victorious army of Bethlen Gabor, they again menaced the
capital with assault; all the country round Vienna was laid waste, the
navigation of the Danube closed, all supplies cut off, and the horrors
of famine were threatened. Ferdinand, hastily recalled to his capital
by this urgent danger, saw himself a second time on the brink of ruin.
But want of provisions, and the inclement weather, finally compelled the
Bohemians to go into quarters, a defeat in Hungary recalled Bethlen
Gabor, and thus once more had fortune rescued the Emperor.
In a few weeks the scene was changed, and by his prudence and activity
Ferdinand improved his position as rapidly as Frederick, by indolence
and impolicy, ruined his. The Estates of Lower Austria were regained to
their allegiance by a confirmation of their privileges; and the few who
still held out were declared guilty of `lese-majeste' and high treason.
During the election of Frankfort, he had contrived, by personal
representations, to win over to his cause the ecclesiastical electors,
and also Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, at Munich. The whole issue of the
war, the fate of Frederick and the Emperor, were now dependent on the
part which the Union and the League should take in the troubles of
Bohemia. It was evidently of importance to all the Protestants of
Germany that the King of Bohemia should be supported, while it was
equally the interest of the Roman Catholics to prevent the ruin of the
Emperor. If the Protestants succeeded in Bohemia, all the Roman
Catholic princes in Germany might tremble for their possessions; if they
failed, the Emperor would give laws to Protestant Germany. Thus
Ferdinand put the League, Frederick the Union, in motion. The ties of
relationship and a personal attachment to the Emperor, his
brother-in-law, with whom he had been educated at Ingolstadt, zeal for
the Roman Catholic religion, which seemed to be in the most imminent
peril, and the suggestions of the Jesuits, combined with the suspicious
movements of the Union, moved the Duke of Bavaria, and all the princes
of the League, to make the cause of Ferdinand their own.
According to the terms of a treaty with the Emperor, which assured to
the Duke of Bavaria compensation for all the expenses of the war, or the
losses he might sustain, Maximilian took, with full powers, the command
of the troops of the League, which were ordered to march to the
assistance of the Emperor against the Bohemian rebels. The leaders of
the Union, instead of delaying by every means this dangerous coalition
of the League with the Emperor, did every thing in their power to
accelerate it. Could they, they thought, but once drive the Roman
Catholic League to take an open part in the Bohemian war, they might
reckon on similar measures from all the members and allies of the Union.
Without some open step taken by the Roman Catholics against the Union,
no effectual confederacy of the Protestant powers was to be looked for.
They seized, therefore, the present emergency of the troubles in Bohemia
to demand from the Roman Catholics the abolition of their past
grievances, and full security for the future exercise of their religion.
They addressed this demand, which was moreover couched in threatening
language, to the Duke of Bavaria, as the head of the Roman Catholics,
and they insisted on an immediate and categorical answer. Maximilian
might decide for or against them, still their point was gained; his
concession, if he yielded, would deprive the Roman Catholic party of its
most powerful protector; his refusal would arm the whole Protestant
party, and render inevitable a war in which they hoped to be the
conquerors. Maximilian, firmly attached to the opposite party from so
many other considerations, took the demands of the Union as a formal
declaration of hostilities, and quickened his preparations. While
Bavaria and the League were thus arming in the Emperor's cause,
negotiations for a subsidy were opened with the Spanish court. All the
difficulties with which the indolent policy of that ministry met this
demand were happily surmounted by the imperial ambassador at Madrid,
Count Khevenhuller. In addition to a subsidy of a million of florins,
which from time to time were doled out by this court, an attack upon the
Lower Palatinate, from the side of the Spanish Netherlands, was at the
same time agreed upon.
During these attempts to draw all the Roman Catholic powers into the
League, every exertion was made against the counter-league of the
Protestants. To this end, it was important to alarm the Elector of
Saxony and the other Evangelical powers, and accordingly the Union were
diligent in propagating a rumour that the preparations of the League had
for their object to deprive them of the ecclesiastical foundations they
had secularized. A written assurance to the contrary calmed the fears
of the Duke of Saxony, whom moreover private jealousy of the Palatine,
and the insinuations of his chaplain, who was in the pay of Austria, and
mortification at having been passed over by the Bohemians in the
election to the throne, strongly inclined to the side of Austria. The
fanaticism of the Lutherans could never forgive the reformed party for
having drawn, as they expressed it, so many fair provinces into the gulf
of Calvinism, and rejecting the Roman Antichrist only to make way for an
Helvetian one.
While Ferdinand used every effort to improve the unfavourable situation
of his affairs, Frederick was daily injuring his good cause. By his
close and questionable connexion with the Prince of Transylvania, the
open ally of the Porte, he gave offence to weak minds; and a general
rumour accused him of furthering his own ambition at the expense of
Christendom, and arming the Turks against Germany. His inconsiderate
zeal for the Calvinistic scheme irritated the Lutherans of Bohemia, his
attacks on image-worship incensed the Papists of this kingdom against
him. New and oppressive imposts alienated the affections of all his
subjects. The disappointed hopes of the Bohemian nobles cooled their
zeal; the absence of foreign succours abated their confidence. Instead
of devoting himself with untiring energies to the affairs of his
kingdom, Frederick wasted his time in amusements; instead of filling his
treasury by a wise economy, he squandered his revenues by a needless
theatrical pomp, and a misplaced munificence. With a light-minded
carelessness, he did but gaze at himself in his new dignity, and in the
ill-timed desire to enjoy his crown, he forgot the more pressing duty of
securing it on his head.
But greatly as men had erred in their opinion of him, Frederick himself
had not less miscalculated his foreign resources. Most of the members
of the Union considered the affairs of Bohemia as foreign to the real
object of their confederacy; others, who were devoted to him, were
overawed by fear of the Emperor. Saxony and Hesse Darmstadt had already
been gained over by Ferdinand; Lower Austria, on which side a powerful
diversion had been looked for, had made its submission to the Emperor;
and Bethlen Gabor had concluded a truce with him. By its embassies, the
court of Vienna had induced Denmark to remain inactive, and to occupy
Sweden in a war with the Poles. The republic of Holland had enough to
do to defend itself against the arms of the Spaniards; Venice and Saxony
remained inactive; King James of England was overreached by the artifice
of Spain. One friend after another withdrew; one hope vanished after
another--so rapidly in a few months was every thing changed.
In the mean time, the leaders of the Union assembled an army;--the
Emperor and the League did the same. The troops of the latter were
assembled under the banners of Maximilian at Donauwerth, those of the
Union at Ulm, under the Margrave of Anspach. The decisive moment seemed
at length to have arrived which was to end these long dissensions by a
vigorous blow, and irrevocably to settle the relation of the two
churches in Germany. Anxiously on the stretch was the expectation of
both parties. How great then was their astonishment when suddenly the
intelligence of peace arrived, and both armies separated without
striking a blow!
The intervention of France effected this peace, which was equally
acceptable to both parties. The French cabinet, no longer swayed by the
counsels of Henry the Great, and whose maxims of state were perhaps not
applicable to the present condition of that kingdom, was now far less
alarmed at the preponderance of Austria, than of the increase which
would accrue to the strength of the Calvinists, if the Palatine house
should be able to retain the throne of Bohemia. Involved at the time in
a dangerous conflict with its own Calvinistic subjects, it was of the
utmost importance to France that the Protestant faction in Bohemia
should be suppressed before the Huguenots could copy their dangerous
example. In order therefore to facilitate the Emperor's operations
against the Bohemians, she offered her mediation to the Union and the
League, and effected this unexpected treaty, of which the main article
was, "That the Union should abandon all interference in the affairs of
Bohemia, and confine the aid which they might afford to Frederick the
Fifth, to his Palatine territories." To this disgraceful treaty, the
Union were moved by the firmness of Maximilian, and the fear of being
pressed at once by the troops of the League, and a new Imperial army
which was on its march from the Netherlands.
The whole force of Bavaria and the League was now at the disposal of the
Emperor to be employed against the Bohemians, who by the pacification of
Ulm were abandoned to their fate. With a rapid movement, and before a
rumour of the proceedings at Ulm could reach there, Maximilian appeared
in Upper Austria, when the Estates, surprised and unprepared for an
enemy, purchased the Emperor's pardon by an immediate and unconditional
submission. In Lower Austria, the duke formed a junction with the
troops from the Low Countries under Bucquoi, and without loss of time
the united Imperial and Bavarian forces, amounting to 50,000 men,
entered Bohemia. All the Bohemian troops, which were dispersed over
Lower Austria and Moravia, were driven before them; every town which
attempted resistance was quickly taken by storm; others, terrified by
the report of the punishment inflicted on these, voluntarily opened
their gates; nothing in short interrupted the impetuous career of
Maximilian. The Bohemian army, commanded by the brave Prince Christian
of Anhalt, retreated to the neighbourhood of Prague; where, under the
walls of the city, Maximilian offered him battle.
The wretched condition in which he hoped to surprise the insurgents,
justified the rapidity of the duke's movements, and secured him the
victory. Frederick's army did not amount to 30,000 men. Eight thousand
of these were furnished by the Prince of Anhalt; 10,000 were Hungarians,
whom Bethlen Gabor had despatched to his assistance. An inroad of the
Elector of Saxony upon Lusatia, had cut off all succours from that
country, and from Silesia; the pacification of Austria put an end to all
his expectations from that quarter; Bethlen Gabor, his most powerful
ally, remained inactive in Transylvania; the Union had betrayed his
cause to the Emperor. Nothing remained to him but his Bohemians; and
they were without goodwill to his cause, and without unity and courage.
The Bohemian magnates were indignant that German generals should be put
over their heads; Count Mansfeld remained in Pilsen, at a distance from
the camp, to avoid the mortification of serving under Anhalt and
Hohenlohe. The soldiers, in want of necessaries, became dispirited; and
the little discipline that was observed, gave occasion to bitter
complaints from the peasantry. It was in vain that Frederick made his
appearance in the camp, in the hope of reviving the courage of the
soldiers by his presence, and of kindling the emulation of the nobles by
his example.
The Bohemians had begun to entrench themselves on the White Mountain
near Prague, when they were attacked by the Imperial and Bavarian
armies, on the 8th November, 1620. In the beginning of the action, some
advantages were gained by the cavalry of the Prince of Anhalt; but the
superior numbers of the enemy soon neutralized them. The charge of the
Bavarians and Walloons was irresistible. The Hungarian cavalry was the
first to retreat. The Bohemian infantry soon followed their example;
and the Germans were at last carried along with them in the general
flight. Ten cannons, composing the whole of Frederick's artillery, were
taken by the enemy; four thousand Bohemians fell in the flight and on
the field; while of the Imperialists and soldiers of the League only a
few hundred were killed. In less than an hour this decisive action was
over.
Frederick was seated at table in Prague, while his army was thus cut to
pieces. It is probable that he had not expected the attack on this day,
since he had ordered an entertainment for it. A messenger summoned him
from table, to show him from the walls the whole frightful scene. He
requested a cessation of hostilities for twenty-four hours for
deliberation; but eight was all the Duke of Bavaria would allow him.
Frederick availed himself of these to fly by night from the capital,
with his wife, and the chief officers of his army. This flight was so
hurried, that the Prince of Anhalt left behind him his most private
papers, and Frederick his crown. "I know now what I am," said this
unfortunate prince to those who endeavoured to comfort him; "there are
virtues which misfortune only can teach us, and it is in adversity alone
that princes learn to know themselves."
Prague was not irretrievably lost when Frederick's pusillanimity
abandoned it. The light troops of Mansfeld were still in Pilsen, and
were not engaged in the action. Bethlen Gabor might at any moment have
assumed an offensive attitude, and drawn off the Emperor's army to the
Hungarian frontier. The defeated Bohemians might rally. Sickness,
famine, and the inclement weather, might wear out the enemy; but all
these hopes disappeared before the immediate alarm. Frederick dreaded
the fickleness of the Bohemians, who might probably yield to the
temptation to purchase, by the surrender of his person, the pardon of
the Emperor.
Thurn, and those of this party who were in the same condemnation with
him, found it equally inexpedient to await their destiny within the
walls of Prague. They retired towards Moravia, with a view of seeking
refuge in Transylvania. Frederick fled to Breslau, where, however, he
only remained a short time. He removed from thence to the court of the
Elector of Brandenburg, and finally took shelter in Holland.
The battle of Prague had decided the fate of Bohemia. Prague
surrendered the next day to the victors; the other towns followed the
example of the capital. The Estates did homage without conditions, and
the same was done by those of Silesia and Moravia. The Emperor allowed
three months to elapse, before instituting any inquiry into the past.
Reassured by this apparent clemency, many who, at first, had fled in
terror appeared again in the capital. All at once, however, the storm
burst forth; forty-eight of the most active among the insurgents were
arrested on the same day and hour, and tried by an extraordinary
commission, composed of native Bohemians and Austrians. Of these,
twenty-seven, and of the common people an immense number, expired on the
scaffold. The absenting offenders were summoned to appear to their
trial, and failing to do so, condemned to death, as traitors and
offenders against his Catholic Majesty, their estates confiscated, and
their names affixed to the gallows. The property also of the rebels who
had fallen in the field was seized. This tyranny might have been borne,
as it affected individuals only, and while the ruin of one enriched
another; but more intolerable was the oppression which extended to the
whole kingdom, without exception. All the Protestant preachers were
banished from the country; the Bohemians first, and afterwards those of
Germany. The `Letter of Majesty', Ferdinand tore with his own hand, and
burnt the seal. Seven years after the battle of Prague, the toleration
of the Protestant religion within the kingdom was entirely revoked. But
whatever violence the Emperor allowed himself against the religious
privileges of his subjects, he carefully abstained from interfering with
their political constitution; and while he deprived them of the liberty
of thought, he magnanimously left them the prerogative of taxing
themselves.
The victory of the White Mountain put Ferdinand in possession of all his
dominions. It even invested him with greater authority over them than
his predecessors enjoyed, since their allegiance had been
unconditionally pledged to him, and no Letter of Majesty now existed to
limit his sovereignty. All his wishes were now gratified, to a degree
surpassing his most sanguine expectations.
It was now in his power to dismiss his allies, and disband his army. If
he was just, there was an end of the war--if he was both magnanimous and
just, punishment was also at an end. The fate of Germany was in his
hands; the happiness and misery of millions depended on the resolution
he should take. Never was so great a decision resting on a single mind;
never did the blindness of one man produce so much ruin.
Book II.
The resolution which Ferdinand now adopted, gave to the war a new
direction, a new scene, and new actors. From a rebellion in Bohemia,
and the chastisement of rebels, a war extended first to Germany, and
afterwards to Europe. It is, therefore, necessary to take a general
survey of the state of affairs both in Germany and the rest of Europe.
Unequally as the territory of Germany and the privileges of its members
were divided among the Roman Catholics and the Protestants, neither
party could hope to maintain itself against the encroachments of its
adversary otherwise than by a prudent use of its peculiar advantages,
and by a politic union among themselves. If the Roman Catholics were
the more numerous party, and more favoured by the constitution of the
empire, the Protestants, on the other hand, had the advantage of
possessing a more compact and populous line of territories, valiant
princes, a warlike nobility, numerous armies, flourishing free towns,
the command of the sea, and even at the worst, certainty of support from
Roman Catholic states. If the Catholics could arm Spain and Italy in
their favour, the republics of Venice, Holland, and England, opened
their treasures to the Protestants, while the states of the North and
the formidable power of Turkey, stood ready to afford them prompt
assistance. Brandenburg, Saxony, and the Palatinate, opposed three
Protestant to three Ecclesiastical votes in the Electoral College; while
to the Elector of Bohemia, as to the Archduke of Austria, the possession
of the Imperial dignity was an important check, if the Protestants
properly availed themselves of it. The sword of the Union might keep
within its sheath the sword of the League; or if matters actually came
to a war, might make the issue of it doubtful. But, unfortunately,
private interests dissolved the band of union which should have held
together the Protestant members of the empire. This critical
conjuncture found none but second-rate actors on the political stage,
and the decisive moment was neglected because the courageous were
deficient in power, and the powerful in sagacity, courage, and
resolution.
The Elector of Saxony was placed at the head of the German Protestants,
by the services of his ancestor Maurice, by the extent of his
territories, and by the influence of his electoral vote. Upon the
resolution he might adopt, the fate of the contending parties seemed to
depend; and John George was not insensible to the advantages which this
important situation procured him. Equally valuable as an ally, both to
the Emperor and to the Protestant Union, he cautiously avoided
committing himself to either party; neither trusting himself by any
irrevocable declaration entirely to the gratitude of the Emperor, nor
renouncing the advantages which were to be gained from his fears.
Uninfected by the contagion of religious and romantic enthusiasm which
hurried sovereign after sovereign to risk both crown and life on the
hazard of war, John George aspired to the more solid renown of improving
and advancing the interests of his territories. His cotemporaries
accused him of forsaking the Protestant cause in the very midst of the
storm; of preferring the aggrandizement of his house to the emancipation
of his country; of exposing the whole Evangelical or Lutheran church of
Germany to ruin, rather than raise an arm in defence of the Reformed or
Calvinists; of injuring the common cause by his suspicious friendship
more seriously than the open enmity of its avowed opponents. But it
would have been well if his accusers had imitated the wise policy of the
Elector. If, despite of the prudent policy, the Saxons, like all
others, groaned at the cruelties which marked the Emperor's progress; if
all Germany was a witness how Ferdinand deceived his confederates and
trifled with his engagements; if even the Elector himself at last
perceived this--the more shame to the Emperor who could so basely betray
such implicit confidence.
If an excessive reliance on the Emperor, and the hope of enlarging his
territories, tied the hands of the Elector of Saxony, the weak George
William, Elector of Brandenburg, was still more shamefully fettered by
fear of Austria, and of the loss of his dominions. What was made a
reproach against these princes would have preserved to the Elector
Palatine his fame and his kingdom. A rash confidence in his untried
strength, the influence of French counsels, and the temptation of a
crown, had seduced that unfortunate prince into an enterprise for which
he had neither adequate genius nor political capacity. The partition of
his territories among discordant princes, enfeebled the Palatinate,
which, united, might have made a longer resistance.
This partition of territory was equally injurious to the House of Hesse,
in which, between Darmstadt and Cassel, religious dissensions had
occasioned a fatal division. The line of Darmstadt, adhering to the
Confession of Augsburg, had placed itself under the Emperor's
protection, who favoured it at the expense of the Calvinists of Cassel.
While his religious confederates were shedding their blood for their
faith and their liberties, the Landgrave of Darmstadt was won over by
the Emperor's gold. But William of Cassel, every way worthy of his
ancestor who, a century before, had defended the freedom of Germany
against the formidable Charles V., espoused the cause of danger and of
honour. Superior to that pusillanimity which made far more powerful
princes bow before Ferdinand's might, the Landgrave William was the
first to join the hero of Sweden, and to set an example to the princes
of Germany which all had hesitated to begin. The boldness of his
resolve was equalled by the steadfastness of his perseverance and the
valour of his exploits. He placed himself with unshrinking resolution
before his bleeding country, and boldly confronted the fearful enemy,
whose hands were still reeking from the carnage of Magdeburg.
The Landgrave William deserves to descend to immortality with the heroic
race of Ernest. Thy day of vengeance was long delayed, unfortunate John
Frederick! Noble! never-to-be-forgotten prince! Slowly but brightly it
broke. Thy times returned, and thy heroic spirit descended on thy
grandson. An intrepid race of princes issues from the Thuringian
forests, to shame, by immortal deeds, the unjust sentence which robbed
thee of the electoral crown--to avenge thy offended shade by heaps of
bloody sacrifice. The sentence of the conqueror could deprive thee of
thy territories, but not that spirit of patriotism which staked them,
nor that chivalrous courage which, a century afterwards, was destined to
shake the throne of his descendant. Thy vengeance and that of Germany
whetted the sacred sword, and one heroic hand after the other wielded
the irresistible steel. As men, they achieved what as sovereigns they
dared not undertake; they met in a glorious cause as the valiant
soldiers of liberty. Too weak in territory to attack the enemy with
their own forces, they directed foreign artillery against them, and led
foreign banners to victory.
The liberties of Germany, abandoned by the more powerful states, who,
however, enjoyed most of the prosperity accruing from them, were
defended by a few princes for whom they were almost without value. The
possession of territories and dignities deadened courage; the want of
both made heroes. While Saxony, Brandenburg, and the rest drew back in
terror, Anhalt, Mansfeld, the Prince of Weimar and others were shedding
their blood in the field. The Dukes of Pomerania, Mecklenburg,
Luneburg, and Wirtemberg, and the free cities of Upper Germany, to whom
the name of EMPEROR was of course a formidable one, anxiously avoided a
contest with such an opponent, and crouched murmuring beneath his mighty
arm.
Austria and Roman Catholic Germany possessed in Maximilian of Bavaria a
champion as prudent as he was powerful. Adhering throughout the war to
one fixed plan, never divided between his religion and his political
interests; not the slavish dependent of Austria, who was labouring for
HIS advancement, and trembled before her powerful protector, Maximilian
earned the territories and dignities that rewarded his exertions. The
other Roman Catholic states, which were chiefly Ecclesiastical, too
unwarlike to resist the multitudes whom the prosperity of their
territories allured, became the victims of the war one after another,
and were contented to persecute in the cabinet and in the pulpit, the
enemy whom they could not openly oppose in the field. All of them,
slaves either to Austria or Bavaria, sunk into insignificance by the
side of Maximilian; in his hand alone their united power could be
rendered available.
The formidable monarchy which Charles V. and his son had unnaturally
constructed of the Netherlands, Milan, and the two Sicilies, and their
distant possessions in the East and West Indies, was under Philip III.
and Philip IV. fast verging to decay. Swollen to a sudden greatness by
unfruitful gold, this power was now sinking under a visible decline,
neglecting, as it did, agriculture, the natural support of states. The
conquests in the West Indies had reduced Spain itself to poverty, while
they enriched the markets of Europe; the bankers of Antwerp, Venice, and
Genoa, were making profit on the gold which was still buried in the
mines of Peru. For the sake of India, Spain had been depopulated, while
the treasures drawn from thence were wasted in the re-conquest of
Holland, in the chimerical project of changing the succession to the
crown of France, and in an unfortunate attack upon England. But the
pride of this court had survived its greatness, as the hate of its
enemies had outlived its power. Distrust of the Protestants suggested
to the ministry of Philip III. the dangerous policy of his father; and
the reliance of the Roman Catholics in Germany on Spanish assistance,
was as firm as their belief in the wonder-working bones of the martyrs.
External splendour concealed the inward wounds at which the life-blood
of this monarchy was oozing; and the belief of its strength survived,
because it still maintained the lofty tone of its golden days. Slaves
in their palaces, and strangers even upon their own thrones, the Spanish
nominal kings still gave laws to their German relations; though it is
very doubtful if the support they afforded was worth the dependence by
which the emperors purchased it. The fate of Europe was decided behind
the Pyrenees by ignorant monks or vindictive favourites. Yet, even in
its debasement, a power must always be formidable, which yields to none
in extent; which, from custom, if not from the steadfastness of its
views, adhered faithfully to one system of policy; which possessed
well-disciplined armies and consummate generals; which, where the sword
failed, did not scruple to employ the dagger; and converted even its
ambassadors into incendiaries and assassins. What it had lost in three
quarters of the globe, it now sought to regain to the eastward, and all
Europe was at its mercy, if it could succeed in its long cherished
design of uniting with the hereditary dominions of Austria all that lay
between the Alps and the Adriatic.
To the great alarm of the native states, this formidable power had
gained a footing in Italy, where its continual encroachments made the
neighbouring sovereigns to tremble for their own possessions. The Pope
himself was in the most dangerous situation; hemmed in on both sides by
the Spanish Viceroys of Naples on the one side, and that of Milan upon
the other. Venice was confined between the Austrian Tyrol and the
Spanish territories in Milan. Savoy was surrounded by the latter and
France. Hence the wavering and equivocal policy, which from the time of
Charles V. had been pursued by the Italian States. The double
character which pertained to the Popes made them perpetually vacillate
between two contradictory systems of policy. If the successors of St.
Peter found in the Spanish princes their most obedient disciples, and
the most steadfast supporters of the Papal See, yet the princes of the
States of the Church had in these monarchs their most dangerous
neighbours, and most formidable opponents. If, in the one capacity,
their dearest wish was the destruction of the Protestants, and the
triumph of Austria, in the other, they had reason to bless the arms of
the Protestants, which disabled a dangerous enemy. The one or the other
sentiment prevailed, according as the love of temporal dominion, or zeal
for spiritual supremacy, predominated in the mind of the Pope. But the
policy of Rome was, on the whole, directed to immediate dangers; and it
is well known how far more powerful is the apprehension of losing a
present good, than anxiety to recover a long lost possession. And thus
it becomes intelligible how the Pope should first combine with Austria
for the destruction of heresy, and then conspire with these very
heretics for the destruction of Austria. Strangely blended are the
threads of human affairs! What would have become of the Reformation,
and of the liberties of Germany, if the Bishop of Rome and the Prince of
Rome had had but one interest?
France had lost with its great Henry all its importance and all its
weight in the political balance of Europe. A turbulent minority had
destroyed all the benefits of the able administration of Henry.
Incapable ministers, the creatures of court intrigue, squandered in a
few years the treasures which Sully's economy and Henry's frugality had
amassed. Scarce able to maintain their ground against internal
factions, they were compelled to resign to other hands the helm of
European affairs. The same civil war which armed Germany against
itself, excited a similar commotion in France; and Louis XIII. attained
majority only to wage a war with his own mother and his Protestant
subjects. This party, which had been kept quiet by Henry's enlightened
policy, now seized the opportunity to take up arms, and, under the
command of some adventurous leaders, began to form themselves into a
party within the state, and to fix on the strong and powerful town of
Rochelle as the capital of their intended kingdom. Too little of a
statesman to suppress, by a prudent toleration, this civil commotion in
its birth, and too little master of the resources of his kingdom to
direct them with energy, Louis XIII. was reduced to the degradation of
purchasing the submission of the rebels by large sums of money. Though
policy might incline him, in one point of view, to assist the Bohemian
insurgents against Austria, the son of Henry the Fourth was now
compelled to be an inactive spectator of their destruction, happy enough
if the Calvinists in his own dominions did not unseasonably bethink them
of their confederates beyond the Rhine. A great mind at the helm of
state would have reduced the Protestants in France to obedience, while
it employed them to fight for the independence of their German brethren.
But Henry IV. was no more, and Richelieu had not yet revived his system
of policy.
While the glory of France was thus upon the wane, the emancipated
republic of Holland was completing the fabric of its greatness. The
enthusiastic courage had not yet died away which, enkindled by the House
of Orange, had converted this mercantile people into a nation of heroes,
and had enabled them to maintain their independence in a bloody war
against the Spanish monarchy. Aware how much they owed their own
liberty to foreign support, these republicans were ready to assist their
German brethren in a similar cause, and the more so, as both were
opposed to the same enemy, and the liberty of Germany was the best
warrant for that of Holland. But a republic which had still to battle
for its very existence, which, with all its wonderful exertions, was
scarce a match for the formidable enemy within its own territories,
could not be expected to withdraw its troops from the necessary work of
self-defence to employ them with a magnanimous policy in protecting
foreign states.
England too, though now united with Scotland, no longer possessed, under
the weak James, that influence in the affairs of Europe which the
governing mind of Elizabeth had procured for it. Convinced that the
welfare of her dominions depended on the security of the Protestants,
this politic princess had never swerved from the principle of promoting
every enterprise which had for its object the diminution of the Austrian
power. Her successor was no less devoid of capacity to comprehend, than
of vigour to execute, her views. While the economical Elizabeth spared
not her treasures to support the Flemings against Spain, and Henry IV.
against the League, James abandoned his daughter, his son-in-law, and
his grandchild, to the fury of their enemies. While he exhausted his
learning to establish the divine right of kings, he allowed his own
dignity to sink into the dust; while he exerted his rhetoric to prove
the absolute authority of kings, he reminded the people of theirs; and
by a useless profusion, sacrificed the chief of his sovereign rights--
that of dispensing with his parliament, and thus depriving liberty of
its organ. An innate horror at the sight of a naked sword averted him
from the most just of wars; while his favourite Buckingham practised on
his weakness, and his own complacent vanity rendered him an easy dupe of
Spanish artifice. While his son-in-law was ruined, and the inheritance
of his grandson given to others, this weak prince was imbibing, with
satisfaction, the incense which was offered to him by Austria and Spain.
To divert his attention from the German war, he was amused with the
proposal of a Spanish marriage for his son, and the ridiculous parent
encouraged the romantic youth in the foolish project of paying his
addresses in person to the Spanish princess. But his son lost his
bride, as his son-in-law lost the crown of Bohemia and the Palatine
Electorate; and death alone saved him from the danger of closing his
pacific reign by a war at home, which he never had courage to maintain,
even at a distance.
The domestic disturbances which his misgovernment had gradually excited
burst forth under his unfortunate son, and forced him, after some
unimportant attempts, to renounce all further participation in the
German war, in order to stem within his own kingdom the rage of faction.
Two illustrious monarchs, far unequal in personal reputation, but equal
in power and desire of fame, made the North at this time to be
respected. Under the long and active reign of Christian IV., Denmark
had risen into importance. The personal qualifications of this prince,
an excellent navy, a formidable army, well-ordered finances, and prudent
alliances, had combined to give her prosperity at home and influence
abroad. Gustavus Vasa had rescued Sweden from vassalage, reformed it by
wise laws, and had introduced, for the first time, this newly-organized
state into the field of European politics. What this great prince had
merely sketched in rude outline, was filled up by Gustavus Adolphus, his
still greater grandson.
These two kingdoms, once unnaturally united and enfeebled by their
union, had been violently separated at the time of the Reformation, and
this separation was the epoch of their prosperity. Injurious as this
compulsory union had proved to both kingdoms, equally necessary to each
apart were neighbourly friendship and harmony. On both the evangelical
church leaned; both had the same seas to protect; a common interest
ought to unite them against the same enemy. But the hatred which had
dissolved the union of these monarchies continued long after their
separation to divide the two nations. The Danish kings could not
abandon their pretensions to the Swedish crown, nor the Swedes banish
the remembrance of Danish oppression. The contiguous boundaries of the
two kingdoms constantly furnished materials for international quarrels,
while the watchful jealousy of both kings, and the unavoidable collision
of their commercial interests in the North Seas, were inexhaustible
sources of dispute.
Among the means of which Gustavus Vasa, the founder of the Swedish
monarchy, availed himself to strengthen his new edifice, the Reformation
had been one of the principal. A fundamental law of the kingdom
excluded the adherents of popery from all offices of the state, and
prohibited every future sovereign of Sweden from altering the religious
constitution of the kingdom. But the second son and second successor of
Gustavus had relapsed into popery, and his son Sigismund, also king of
Poland, had been guilty of measures which menaced both the constitution
and the established church. Headed by Charles, Duke of Sudermania, the
third son of Gustavus, the Estates made a courageous resistance, which
terminated, at last, in an open civil war between the uncle and nephew,
and between the King and the people. Duke Charles, administrator of the
kingdom during the absence of the king, had availed himself of
Sigismund's long residence in Poland, and the just displeasure of the
states, to ingratiate himself with the nation, and gradually to prepare
his way to the throne. His views were not a little forwarded by
Sigismund's imprudence. A general Diet ventured to abolish, in favour
of the Protector, the rule of primogeniture which Gustavus had
established in the succession, and placed the Duke of Sudermania on the
throne, from which Sigismund, with his whole posterity, were solemnly
excluded. The son of the new king (who reigned under the name of
Charles IX.) was Gustavus Adolphus, whom, as the son of a usurper, the
adherents of Sigismund refused to recognize. But if the obligations
between monarchy and subjects are reciprocal, and states are not to be
transmitted, like a lifeless heirloom, from hand to hand, a nation
acting with unanimity must have the power of renouncing their allegiance
to a sovereign who has violated his obligations to them, and of filling
his place by a worthier object.
Gustavus Adolphus had not completed his seventeenth year, when the
Swedish throne became vacant by the death of his father. But the early
maturity of his genius enabled the Estates to abridge in his favour the
legal period of minority. With a glorious conquest over himself he
commenced a reign which was to have victory for its constant attendant,
a career which was to begin and end in success. The young Countess of
Brahe, the daughter of a subject, had gained his early affections, and
he had resolved to share with her the Swedish throne. But, constrained
by time and circumstances, he made his attachment yield to the higher
duties of a king, and heroism again took exclusive possession of a heart
which was not destined by nature to confine itself within the limits of
quiet domestic happiness.
Christian IV. of Denmark, who had ascended the throne before the birth
of Gustavus, in an inroad upon Sweden, had gained some considerable
advantages over the father of that hero. Gustavus Adolphus hastened to
put an end to this destructive war, and by prudent sacrifices obtained a
peace, in order to turn his arms against the Czar of Muscovy. The
questionable fame of a conqueror never tempted him to spend the blood of
his subjects in unjust wars; but he never shrunk from a just one. His
arms were successful against Russia, and Sweden was augmented by several
important provinces on the east.
In the meantime, Sigismund of Poland retained against the son the same
sentiments of hostility which the father had provoked, and left no
artifice untried to shake the allegiance of his subjects, to cool the
ardour of his friends, and to embitter his enemies. Neither the great
qualities of his rival, nor the repeated proofs of devotion which Sweden
gave to her loved monarch, could extinguish in this infatuated prince
the foolish hope of regaining his lost throne. All Gustavus's overtures
were haughtily rejected. Unwillingly was this really peaceful king
involved in a tedious war with Poland, in which the whole of Livonia and
Polish Prussia were successively conquered. Though constantly
victorious, Gustavus Adolphus was always the first to hold out the hand
of peace.
This contest between Sweden and Poland falls somewhere about the
beginning of the Thirty Years' War in Germany, with which it is in some
measure connected. It was enough that Sigismund, himself a Roman
Catholic, was disputing the Swedish crown with a Protestant prince, to
assure him the active support of Spain and Austria; while a double
relationship to the Emperor gave him a still stronger claim to his
protection. It was his reliance on this powerful assistance that
chiefly encouraged the King of Poland to continue the war, which had
hitherto turned out so unfavourably for him, and the courts of Madrid
and Vienna failed not to encourage him by high-sounding promises. While
Sigismund lost one place after another in Livonia, Courland, and
Prussia, he saw his ally in Germany advancing from conquest after
conquest to unlimited power. No wonder then if his aversion to peace
kept pace with his losses. The vehemence with which he nourished his
chimerical hopes blinded him to the artful policy of his confederates,
who at his expense were keeping the Swedish hero employed, in order to
overturn, without opposition, the liberties of Germany, and then to
seize on the exhausted North as an easy conquest. One circumstance
which had not been calculated on--the magnanimity of Gustavus--
overthrew this deceitful policy. An eight years' war in Poland, so far
from exhausting the power of Sweden, had only served to mature the
military genius of Gustavus, to inure the Swedish army to warfare, and
insensibly to perfect that system of tactics by which they were
afterwards to perform such wonders in Germany.
After this necessary digression on the existing circumstances of Europe,
I now resume the thread of my history.
Ferdinand had regained his dominions, but had not indemnified himself
for the expenses of recovering them. A sum of forty millions of
florins, which the confiscations in Bohemia and Moravia had produced,
would have sufficed to reimburse both himself and his allies; but the
Jesuits and his favourites soon squandered this sum, large as it was.
Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, to whose victorious arm, principally, the
Emperor owed the recovery of his dominions; who, in the service of
religion and the Emperor, had sacrificed his near relation, had the
strongest claims on his gratitude; and moreover, in a treaty which,
before the war, the duke had concluded with the Emperor, he had
expressly stipulated for the reimbursement of all expenses. Ferdinand
felt the full weight of the obligation imposed upon him by this treaty
and by these services, but he was not disposed to discharge it at his
own cost. His purpose was to bestow a brilliant reward upon the duke,
but without detriment to himself. How could this be done better than at
the expense of the unfortunate prince who, by his revolt, had given the
Emperor a right to punish him, and whose offences might be painted in
colours strong enough to justify the most violent measures under the
appearance of law. That, then, Maximilian may be rewarded, Frederick
must be further persecuted and totally ruined; and to defray the
expenses of the old war, a new one must be commenced.
But a still stronger motive combined to enforce the first. Hitherto
Ferdinand had been contending for existence alone; he had been
fulfilling no other duty than that of self-defence. But now, when
victory gave him freedom to act, a higher duty occurred to him, and he
remembered the vow which he had made at Loretto and at Rome, to his
generalissima, the Holy Virgin, to extend her worship even at the risk
of his crown and life. With this object, the oppression of the
Protestants was inseparably connected. More favourable circumstances
for its accomplishment could not offer than those which presented
themselves at the close of the Bohemian war. Neither the power, nor a
pretext of right, were now wanting to enable him to place the Palatinate
in the hands of the Catholics, and the importance of this change to the
Catholic interests in Germany would be incalculable. Thus, in rewarding
the Duke of Bavaria with the spoils of his relation, he at once
gratified his meanest passions and fulfilled his most exalted duties; he
crushed an enemy whom he hated, and spared his avarice a painful
sacrifice, while he believed he was winning a heavenly crown.
In the Emperor's cabinet, the ruin of Frederick had been resolved upon
long before fortune had decided against him; but it was only after this
event that they ventured to direct against him the thunders of arbitrary
power. A decree of the Emperor, destitute of all the formalities
required on such occasions by the laws of the Empire, pronounced the
Elector, and three other princes who had borne arms for him at Silesia
and Bohemia, as offenders against the imperial majesty, and disturbers
of the public peace, under the ban of the empire, and deprived them of
their titles and territories. The execution of this sentence against
Frederick, namely the seizure of his lands, was, in further contempt of
law, committed to Spain as Sovereign of the circle of Burgundy, to the
Duke of Bavaria, and the League. Had the Evangelic Union been worthy of
the name it bore, and of the cause which it pretended to defend,
insuperable obstacles might have prevented the execution of the
sentence; but it was hopeless for a power which was far from a match
even for the Spanish troops in the Lower Palatinate, to contend against
the united strength of the Emperor, Bavaria, and the League. The
sentence of proscription pronounced upon the Elector soon detached the
free cities from the Union; and the princes quickly followed their
example. Fortunate in preserving their own dominions, they abandoned
the Elector, their former chief, to the Emperor's mercy, renounced the
Union, and vowed never to revive it again.
But while thus ingloriously the German princes deserted the unfortunate
Frederick, and while Bohemia, Silesia, and Moravia submitted to the
Emperor, a single man, a soldier of fortune, whose only treasure was his
sword, Ernest Count Mansfeld, dared, in the Bohemian town of Pilsen, to
defy the whole power of Austria. Left without assistance after the
battle of Prague by the Elector, to whose service he had devoted
himself, and even uncertain whether Frederick would thank him for his
perseverance, he alone for some time held out against the imperialists,
till the garrison, mutinying for want of pay, sold the town to the
Emperor. Undismayed by this reverse, he immediately commenced new
levies in the Upper Palatinate, and enlisted the disbanded troops of the
Union. A new army of 20,000 men was soon assembled under his banners,
the more formidable to the provinces which might be the object of its
attack, because it must subsist by plunder. Uncertain where this swarm
might light, the neighbouring bishops trembled for their rich
possessions, which offered a tempting prey to its ravages. But, pressed
by the Duke of Bavaria, who now entered the Upper Palatinate, Mansfeld
was compelled to retire. Eluding, by a successful stratagem, the
Bavarian general, Tilly, who was in pursuit of him, he suddenly appeared
in the Lower Palatinate, and there wreaked upon the bishoprics of the
Rhine the severities he had designed for those of Franconia. While the
imperial and Bavarian allies thus overran Bohemia, the Spanish general,
Spinola, had penetrated with a numerous army from the Netherlands into
the Lower Palatinate, which, however, the pacification of Ulm permitted
the Union to defend. But their measures were so badly concerted, that
one place after another fell into the hands of the Spaniards; and at
last, when the Union broke up, the greater part of the country was in
the possession of Spain. The Spanish general, Corduba, who commanded
these troops after the recall of Spinola, hastily raised the siege of
Frankenthal, when Mansfeld entered the Lower Palatinate. But instead of
driving the Spaniards out of this province, he hastened across the Rhine
to secure for his needy troops shelter and subsistence in Alsace. The
open countries on which this swarm of maurauders threw themselves were
converted into frightful deserts, and only by enormous contributions
could the cities purchase an exemption from plunder. Reinforced by this
expedition, Mansfeld again appeared on the Rhine to cover the Lower
Palatinate.
So long as such an arm fought for him, the cause of the Elector
Frederick was not irretrievably lost. New prospects began to open, and
misfortune raised up friends who had been silent during his prosperity.
King James of England, who had looked on with indifference while his
son-in-law lost the Bohemian crown, was aroused from his insensibility
when the very existence of his daughter and grandson was at stake, and
the victorious enemy ventured an attack upon the Electorate. Late
enough, he at last opened his treasures, and hastened to afford supplies
of money and troops, first to the Union, which at that time was
defending the Lower Palatinate, and afterwards, when they retired, to
Count Mansfeld. By his means his near relation, Christian, King of
Denmark, was induced to afford his active support. At the same time,
the approaching expiration of the truce between Spain and Holland
deprived the Emperor of all the supplies which otherwise he might expect
from the side of the Netherlands. More important still was the
assistance which the Palatinate received from Transylvania and Hungary.
The cessation of hostilities between Gabor and the Emperor was scarcely
at an end, when this old and formidable enemy of Austria overran Hungary
anew, and caused himself to be crowned king in Presburg. So rapid was
his progress that, to protect Austria and Hungary, Boucquoi was obliged
to evacuate Bohemia. This brave general met his death at the siege of
Neuhausel, as, shortly before, the no less valiant Dampierre had fallen
before Presburg. Gabor's march into the Austrian territory was
irresistible; the old Count Thurn, and several other distinguished
Bohemians, had united their hatred and their strength with this
irreconcileable enemy of Austria. A vigorous attack on the side of
Germany, while Gabor pressed the Emperor on that of Hungary, might have
retrieved the fortunes of Frederick; but, unfortunately, the Bohemians
and Germans had always laid down their arms when Gabor took the field;
and the latter was always exhausted at the very moment that the former
began to recover their vigour.
Meanwhile Frederick had not delayed to join his protector Mansfeld. In
disguise he entered the Lower Palatinate, of which the possession was at
that time disputed between Mansfeld and the Bavarian general, Tilly, the
Upper Palatinate having been long conquered. A ray of hope shone upon
him as, from the wreck of the Union, new friends came forward. A former
member of the Union, George Frederick, Margrave of Baden, had for some
time been engaged in assembling a military force, which soon amounted to
a considerable army. Its destination was kept a secret till he suddenly
took the field and joined Mansfeld. Before commencing the war, he
resigned his Margraviate to his son, in the hope of eluding, by this
precaution, the Emperor's revenge, if his enterprize should be
unsuccessful. His neighbour, the Duke of Wirtemberg, likewise began to
augment his military force. The courage of the Palatine revived, and he
laboured assiduously to renew the Protestant Union. It was now time for
Tilly to consult for his own safety, and he hastily summoned the Spanish
troops, under Corduba, to his assistance. But while the enemy was
uniting his strength, Mansfeld and the Margrave separated, and the
latter was defeated by the Bavarian general near Wimpfen (1622).
To defend a king whom his nearest relation persecuted, and who was
deserted even by his own father-in-law, there had come forward an
adventurer without money, and whose very legitimacy was questioned. A
sovereign had resigned possessions over which he reigned in peace, to
hazard the uncertain fortune of war in behalf of a stranger. And now
another soldier of fortune, poor in territorial possessions, but rich in
illustrious ancestry, undertook the defence of a cause which the former
despaired of. Christian, Duke of Brunswick, administrator of
Halberstadt, seemed to have learnt from Count Mansfeld the secret of
keeping in the field an army of 20,000 men without money. Impelled by
youthful presumption, and influenced partly by the wish of establishing
his reputation at the expense of the Roman Catholic priesthood, whom he
cordially detested, and partly by a thirst for plunder, he assembled a
considerable army in Lower Saxony, under the pretext of espousing the
defence of Frederick, and of the liberties of Germany. "God's Friend,
Priest's Foe", was the motto he chose for his coinage, which was struck
out of church plate; and his conduct belied one half at least of the
device.
The progress of these banditti was, as usual, marked by the most
frightful devastation. Enriched by the spoils of the chapters of Lower
Saxony and Westphalia, they gathered strength to plunder the bishoprics
upon the Upper Rhine. Driven from thence, both by friends and foes, the
Administrator approached the town of Hoechst on the Maine, which he
crossed after a murderous action with Tilly, who disputed with him the
passage of the river. With the loss of half his army he reached the
opposite bank, where he quickly collected his shattered troops, and
formed a junction with Mansfeld. Pursued by Tilly, this united host
threw itself again into Alsace, to repeat their former ravages. While
the Elector Frederick followed, almost like a fugitive mendicant, this
swarm of plunderers which acknowledged him as its lord, and dignified
itself with his name, his friends were busily endeavouring to effect a
reconciliation between him and the Emperor. Ferdinand took care not to
deprive them of all hope of seeing the Palatine restored to his
dominion. Full of artifice and dissimulation, he pretended to be
willing to enter into a negotiation, hoping thereby to cool their ardour
in the field, and to prevent them from driving matters to extremity.
James I., ever the dupe of Spanish cunning, contributed not a little, by
his foolish intermeddling, to promote the Emperor's schemes. Ferdinand
insisted that Frederick, if he would appeal to his clemency, should,
first of all, lay down his arms, and James considered this demand
extremely reasonable. At his instigation, the Elector dismissed his
only real defenders, Count Mansfeld and the Administrator, and in
Holland awaited his own fate from the mercy of the Emperor.
Mansfeld and Duke Christian were now at a loss for some new name; the
cause of the Elector had not set them in motion, so his dismissal could
not disarm them. War was their object; it was all the same to them in
whose cause or name it was waged. After some vain attempts on the part
of Mansfeld to be received into the Emperor's service, both marched into
Lorraine, where the excesses of their troops spread terror even to the
heart of France. Here they long waited in vain for a master willing to
purchase their services; till the Dutch, pressed by the Spanish General
Spinola, offered to take them into pay. After a bloody fight at Fleurus
with the Spaniards, who attempted to intercept them, they reached
Holland, where their appearance compelled the Spanish general forthwith
to raise the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom. But even Holland was soon weary
of these dangerous guests, and availed herself of the first moment to
get rid of their unwelcome assistance. Mansfeld allowed his troops to
recruit themselves for new enterprises in the fertile province of East
Friezeland. Duke Christian, passionately enamoured of the Electress
Palatine, with whom he had become acquainted in Holland, and more
disposed for war than ever, led back his army into Lower Saxony, bearing
that princess's glove in his hat, and on his standards the motto "All
for God and Her". Neither of these adventurers had as yet run their
career in this war.
All the imperial territories were now free from the enemy; the Union was
dissolved; the Margrave of Baden, Duke Christian, and Mansfeld, driven
from the field, and the Palatinate overrun by the executive troops of
the empire. Manheim and Heidelberg were in possession of Bavaria, and
Frankenthal was shortly afterwards ceded to the Spaniards. The
Palatine, in a distant corner of Holland, awaited the disgraceful
permission to appease, by abject submission, the vengeance of the
Emperor; and an Electoral Diet was at last summoned to decide his fate.
That fate, however, had been long before decided at the court of the
Emperor; though now, for the first time, were circumstances favourable
for giving publicity to the decision. After his past measures towards
the Elector, Ferdinand believed that a sincere reconciliation was not to
be hoped for. The violent course he had once begun, must be completed
successfully, or recoil upon himself. What was already lost was
irrecoverable; Frederick could never hope to regain his dominions; and a
prince without territory and without subjects had little chance of
retaining the electoral crown. Deeply as the Palatine had offended
against the House of Austria, the services of the Duke of Bavaria were
no less meritorious. If the House of Austria and the Roman Catholic
church had much to dread from the resentment and religious rancour of
the Palatine family, they had as much to hope from the gratitude and
religious zeal of the Bavarian. Lastly, by the cession of the Palatine
Electorate to Bavaria, the Roman Catholic religion would obtain a
decisive preponderance in the Electoral College, and secure a permanent
triumph in Germany.
The last circumstance was sufficient to win the support of the three
Ecclesiastical Electors to this innovation; and among the Protestants
the vote of Saxony was alone of any importance. But could John George
be expected to dispute with the Emperor a right, without which he would
expose to question his own title to the electoral dignity? To a prince
whom descent, dignity, and political power placed at the head of the
Protestant church in Germany, nothing, it is true, ought to be more
sacred than the defence of the rights of that church against all the
encroachments of the Roman Catholics. But the question here was not
whether the interests of the Protestants were to be supported against
the Roman Catholics, but which of two religions equally detested, the
Calvinistic and the Popish, was to triumph over the other; to which of
the two enemies, equally dangerous, the Palatinate was to be assigned;
and in this clashing of opposite duties, it was natural that private
hate and private gain should determine the event. The born protector of
the liberties of Germany, and of the Protestant religion, encouraged the
Emperor to dispose of the Palatinate by his imperial prerogative; and to
apprehend no resistance on the part of Saxony to his measures on the
mere ground of form. If the Elector was afterwards disposed to retract
this consent, Ferdinand himself, by driving the Evangelical preachers
from Bohemia, was the cause of this change of opinion; and, in the eyes
of the Elector, the transference of the Palatine Electorate to Bavaria
ceased to be illegal, as soon as Ferdinand was prevailed upon to cede
Lusatia to Saxony, in consideration of six millions of dollars, as the
expenses of the war.
Thus, in defiance of all Protestant Germany, and in mockery of the
fundamental laws of the empire, which, as his election, he had sworn to
maintain, Ferdinand at Ratisbon solemnly invested the Duke of Bavaria
with the Palatinate, without prejudice, as the form ran, to the rights
which the relations or descendants of Frederick might afterwards
establish. That unfortunate prince thus saw himself irrevocably driven
from his possessions, without having been even heard before the tribunal
which condemned him--a privilege which the law allows to the meanest
subject, and even to the most atrocious criminal.
This violent step at last opened the eyes of the King of England; and as
the negociations for the marriage of his son with the Infanta of Spain
were now broken off, James began seriously to espouse the cause of his
son-in-law. A change in the French ministry had placed Cardinal
Richelieu at the head of affairs, and this fallen kingdom soon began to
feel that a great mind was at the helm of state. The attempts of the
Spanish Viceroy in Milan to gain possession of the Valtelline, and thus
to form a junction with the Austrian hereditary dominions, revived the
olden dread of this power, and with it the policy of Henry the Great.
The marriage of the Prince of Wales with Henrietta of France,
established a close union between the two crowns; and to this alliance,
Holland, Denmark, and some of the Italian states presently acceded. Its
object was to expel, by force of arms, Spain from the Valtelline, and to
compel Austria to reinstate Frederick; but only the first of these
designs was prosecuted with vigour. James I. died, and Charles I.,
involved in disputes with his Parliament, could not bestow attention on
the affairs of Germany. Savoy and Venice withheld their assistance; and
the French minister thought it necessary to subdue the Huguenots at
home, before he supported the German Protestants against the Emperor.
Great as were the hopes which had been formed from this alliance, they
were yet equalled by the disappointment of the event.
Mansfeld, deprived of all support, remained inactive on the Lower Rhine;
and Duke Christian of Brunswick, after an unsuccessful campaign, was a
second time driven out of Germany. A fresh irruption of Bethlen Gabor
into Moravia, frustrated by the want of support from the Germans,
terminated, like all the rest, in a formal peace with the Emperor. The
Union was no more; no Protestant prince was in arms; and on the
frontiers of Lower Germany, the Bavarian General Tilly, at the head of a
victorious army, encamped in the Protestant territory. The movements of
the Duke of Brunswick had drawn him into this quarter, and even into the
circle of Lower Saxony, when he made himself master of the
Administrator's magazines at Lippstadt. The necessity of observing this
enemy, and preventing him from new inroads, was the pretext assigned for
continuing Tilly's stay in the country. But, in truth, both Mansfeld
and Duke Christian had, from want of money, disbanded their armies, and
Count Tilly had no enemy to dread. Why, then, still burden the country
with his presence?
It is difficult, amidst the uproar of contending parties, to distinguish
the voice of truth; but certainly it was matter for alarm that the
League did not lay down its arms. The premature rejoicings of the Roman
Catholics, too, were calculated to increase apprehension. The Emperor
and the League stood armed and victorious in Germany without a power to
oppose them, should they venture to attack the Protestant states and to
annul the religious treaty. Had Ferdinand been in reality far from
disposed to abuse his conquests, still the defenceless position of the
Protestants was most likely to suggest the temptation. Obsolete
conventions could not bind a prince who thought that he owed all to
religion, and believed that a religious creed would sanctify any deed,
however violent. Upper Germany was already overpowered. Lower Germany
alone could check his despotic authority. Here the Protestants still
predominated; the church had been forcibly deprived of most of its
endowments; and the present appeared a favourable moment for recovering
these lost possessions. A great part of the strength of the Lower
German princes consisted in these Chapters, and the plea of restoring
its own to the church, afforded an excellent pretext for weakening these
princes.
Unpardonable would have been their negligence, had they remained
inactive in this danger. The remembrance of the ravages which Tilly's
army had committed in Lower Saxony was too recent not to arouse the
Estates to measures of defence. With all haste, the circle of Lower
Saxony began to arm itself. Extraordinary contributions were levied,
troops collected, and magazines filled. Negociations for subsidies were
set on foot with Venice, Holland, and England. They deliberated, too,
what power should be placed at the head of the confederacy. The kings
of the Sound and the Baltic, the natural allies of this circle, would
not see with indifference the Emperor treating it as a conqueror, and
establishing himself as their neighbour on the shores of the North Sea.
The twofold interests of religion and policy urged them to put a stop to
his progress in Lower Germany. Christian IV. of Denmark, as Duke of
Holstein, was himself a prince of this circle, and by considerations
equally powerful, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden was induced to join the
confederacy.
These two kings vied with each other for the honour of defending Lower
Saxony, and of opposing the formidable power of Austria. Each offered
to raise a well-disciplined army, and to lead it in person. His
victorious campaigns against Moscow and Poland gave weight to the
promises of the King of Sweden. The shores of the Baltic were full of
the name of Gustavus. But the fame of his rival excited the envy of the
Danish monarch; and the more success he promised himself in this
campaign, the less disposed was he to show any favour to his envied
neighbour. Both laid their conditions and plans before the English
ministry, and Christian IV. finally succeeded in outbidding his rival.
Gustavus Adolphus, for his own security, had demanded the cession of
some places of strength in Germany, where he himself had no territories,
to afford, in case of need, a place of refuge for his troops. Christian
IV. possessed Holstein and Jutland, through which, in the event of a
defeat, he could always secure a retreat.
Eager to get the start of his competitor, the King of Denmark hastened
to take the field. Appointed generalissimo of the circle of Lower
Saxony, he soon had an army of 60,000 men in motion; the administrator
of Magdeburg, and the Dukes of Brunswick and Mecklenburgh, entered into
an alliance with him. Encouraged by the hope of assistance from
England, and the possession of so large a force, he flattered himself he
should be able to terminate the war in a single campaign.
At Vienna, it was officially notified that the only object of these
preparations was the protection of the circle, and the maintenance of
peace. But the negociations with Holland, England, and even France, the
extraordinary exertions of the circle, and the raising of so formidable
an army, seemed to have something more in view than defensive
operations, and to contemplate nothing less than the complete
restoration of the Elector Palatine, and the humiliation of the dreaded
power of Austria.
After negociations, exhortations, commands, and threats had in vain been
employed by the Emperor in order to induce the King of Denmark and the
circle of Lower Saxony to lay down their arms, hostilities commenced,
and Lower Germany became the theatre of war. Count Tilly, marching
along the left bank of the Weser, made himself master of all the passes
as far as Minden. After an unsuccessful attack on Nieuburg, he crossed
the river and overran the principality of Calemberg, in which he
quartered his troops. The king conducted his operations on the right
bank of the river, and spread his forces over the territories of
Brunswick, but having weakened his main body by too powerful
detachments, he could not engage in any enterprise of importance. Aware
of his opponent's superiority, he avoided a decisive action as anxiously
as the general of the League sought it.
With the exception of the troops from the Spanish Netherlands, which had
poured into the Lower Palatinate, the Emperor had hitherto made use only
of the arms of Bavaria and the League in Germany. Maximilian conducted
the war as executor of the ban of the empire, and Tilly, who commanded
the army of execution, was in the Bavarian service. The Emperor owed
superiority in the field to Bavaria and the League, and his fortunes
were in their hands. This dependence on their goodwill, but ill
accorded with the grand schemes, which the brilliant commencement of the
war had led the imperial cabinet to form.
However active the League had shown itself in the Emperor's defence,
while thereby it secured its own welfare, it could not be expected that
it would enter as readily into his views of conquest. Or, if they still
continued to lend their armies for that purpose, it was too much to be
feared that they would share with the Emperor nothing but general odium,
while they appropriated to themselves all advantages. A strong army
under his own orders could alone free him from this debasing dependence
upon Bavaria, and restore to him his former pre-eminence in Germany.
But the war had already exhausted the imperial dominions, and they were
unequal to the expense of such an armament. In these circumstances,
nothing could be more welcome to the Emperor than the proposal with
which one of his officers surprised him.
This was Count Wallenstein, an experienced officer, and the richest
nobleman in Bohemia. From his earliest youth he had been in the service
of the House of Austria, and several campaigns against the Turks,
Venetians, Bohemians, Hungarians, and Transylvanians had established his
reputation. He was present as colonel at the battle of Prague, and
afterwards, as major-general, had defeated a Hungarian force in Moravia.
The Emperor's gratitude was equal to his services, and a large share of
the confiscated estates of the Bohemian insurgents was their reward.
Possessed of immense property, excited by ambitious views, confident in
his own good fortune, and still more encouraged by the existing state of
circumstances, he offered, at his own expense and that of his friends,
to raise and clothe an army for the Emperor, and even undertook the cost
of maintaining it, if he were allowed to augment it to 50,000 men. The
project was universally ridiculed as the chimerical offspring of a
visionary brain; but the offer was highly valuable, if its promises
should be but partially fulfilled. Certain circles in Bohemia were
assigned to him as depots, with authority to appoint his own officers.
In a few months he had 20,000 men under arms, with which, quitting the
Austrian territories, he soon afterwards appeared on the frontiers of
Lower Saxony with 30,000. The Emperor had lent this armament nothing
but his name. The reputation of the general, the prospect of rapid
promotion, and the hope of plunder, attracted to his standard
adventurers from all quarters of Germany; and even sovereign princes,
stimulated by the desire of glory or of gain, offered to raise regiments
for the service of Austria.
Now, therefore, for the first time in this war, an imperial army
appeared in Germany;--an event which if it was menacing to the
Protestants, was scarcely more acceptable to the Catholics. Wallenstein
had orders to unite his army with the troops of the League, and in
conjunction with the Bavarian general to attack the King of Denmark.
But long jealous of Tilly's fame, he showed no disposition to share with
him the laurels of the campaign, or in the splendour of his rival's
achievements to dim the lustre of his own. His plan of operations was
to support the latter, but to act entirely independent of him. As he
had not resources, like Tilly, for supplying the wants of his army, he
was obliged to march his troops into fertile countries which had not as
yet suffered from war. Disobeying, therefore, the order to form a
junction with the general of the League, he marched into the territories
of Halberstadt and Magdeburg, and at Dessau made himself master of the
Elbe. All the lands on either bank of this river were at his command,
and from them he could either attack the King of Denmark in the rear,
or, if prudent, enter the territories of that prince.
Christian IV. was fully aware of the danger of his situation between
two such powerful armies. He had already been joined by the
administrator of Halberstadt, who had lately returned from Holland; he
now also acknowledged Mansfeld, whom previously he had refused to
recognise, and supported him to the best of his ability. Mansfeld amply
requited this service. He alone kept at bay the army of Wallenstein
upon the Elbe, and prevented its junction with that of Tilly, and a
combined attack on the King of Denmark. Notwithstanding the enemy's
superiority, this intrepid general even approached the bridge of Dessau,
and ventured to entrench himself in presence of the imperial lines. But
attacked in the rear by the whole force of the Imperialists, he was
obliged to yield to superior numbers, and to abandon his post with the
loss of 3,000 killed. After this defeat, Mansfeld withdrew into
Brandenburg, where he soon recruited and reinforced his army; and
suddenly turned into Silesia, with the view of marching from thence into
Hungary; and, in conjunction with Bethlen Gabor, carrying the war into
the heart of Austria. As the Austrian dominions in that quarter were
entirely defenceless, Wallenstein received immediate orders to leave the
King of Denmark, and if possible to intercept Mansfeld's progress
through Silesia.
The diversion which this movement of Mansfeld had made in the plans of
Wallenstein, enabled the king to detach a part of his force into
Westphalia, to seize the bishoprics of Munster and Osnaburg. To check
this movement, Tilly suddenly moved from the Weser; but the operations
of Duke Christian, who threatened the territories of the League with an
inroad in the direction of Hesse, and to remove thither the seat of war,
recalled him as rapidly from Westphalia. In order to keep open his
communication with these provinces, and to prevent the junction of the
enemy with the Landgrave of Hesse, Tilly hastily seized all the tenable
posts on the Werha and Fulda, and took up a strong position in Minden,
at the foot of the Hessian Mountains, and at the confluence of these
rivers with the Weser. He soon made himself master of Goettingen, the
key of Brunswick and Hesse, and was meditating a similar attack upon
Nordheim, when the king advanced upon him with his whole army. After
throwing into this place the necessary supplies for a long siege, the
latter attempted to open a new passage through Eichsfeld and Thuringia,
into the territories of the League. He had already reached Duderstadt,
when Tilly, by forced marches, came up with him. As the army of Tilly,
which had been reinforced by some of Wallenstein's regiments, was
superior in numbers to his own, the king, to avoid a battle, retreated
towards Brunswick. But Tilly incessantly harassed his retreat, and
after three days' skirmishing, he was at length obliged to await the
enemy near the village of Lutter in Barenberg. The Danes began the
attack with great bravery, and thrice did their intrepid monarch lead
them in person against the enemy; but at length the superior numbers and
discipline of the Imperialists prevailed, and the general of the League
obtained a complete victory. The Danes lost sixty standards, and their
whole artillery, baggage, and ammunition. Several officers of
distinction and about 4,000 men were killed in the field of battle; and
several companies of foot, in the flight, who had thrown themselves into
the town-house of Lutter, laid down their arms and surrendered to the
conqueror.
The king fled with his cavalry, and soon collected the wreck of his army
which had survived this serious defeat. Tilly pursued his victory, made
himself master of the Weser and Brunswick, and forced the king to retire
into Bremen. Rendered more cautious by defeat, the latter now stood
upon the defensive; and determined at all events to prevent the enemy
from crossing the Elbe. But while he threw garrisons into every tenable
place, he reduced his own diminished army to inactivity; and one after
another his scattered troops were either defeated or dispersed. The
forces of the League, in command of the Weser, spread themselves along
the Elbe and Havel, and everywhere drove the Danes before them. Tilly
himself crossing the Elbe penetrated with his victorious army into
Brandenburg, while Wallenstein entered Holstein to remove the seat of
war to the king's own dominions.
This general had just returned from Hungary whither he had pursued
Mansfeld, without being able to obstruct his march, or prevent his
junction with Bethlen Gabor. Constantly persecuted by fortune, but
always superior to his fate, Mansfeld had made his way against countless
difficulties, through Silesia and Hungary to Transylvania, where, after
all, he was not very welcome. Relying upon the assistance of England,
and a powerful diversion in Lower Saxony, Gabor had again broken the
truce with the Emperor. But in place of the expected diversion in his
favour, Mansfeld had drawn upon himself the whole strength of
Wallenstein, and instead of bringing, required, pecuniary assistance.
The want of concert in the Protestant counsels cooled Gabor's ardour;
and he hastened, as usual, to avert the coming storm by a speedy peace.
Firmly determined, however, to break it, with the first ray of hope, he
directed Mansfeld in the mean time to apply for assistance to Venice.
Cut off from Germany, and unable to support the weak remnant of his
troops in Hungary, Mansfeld sold his artillery and baggage train, and
disbanded his soldiers. With a few followers, he proceeded through
Bosnia and Dalmatia, towards Venice. New schemes swelled his bosom; but
his career was ended. Fate, which had so restlessly sported with him
throughout, now prepared for him a peaceful grave in Dalmatia. Death
overtook him in the vicinity of Zara in 1626, and a short time before
him died the faithful companion of his fortunes, Christian, Duke of
Brunswick--two men worthy of immortality, had they but been as superior
to their times as they were to their adversities.
The King of Denmark, with his whole army, was unable to cope with Tilly
alone; much less, therefore, with a shattered force could he hold his
ground against the two imperial generals. The Danes retired from all
their posts on the Weser, the Elbe, and the Havel, and the army of
Wallenstein poured like a torrent into Brandenburg, Mecklenburg,
Holstein and Sleswick. That general, too proud to act in conjunction
with another, had dispatched Tilly across the Elbe, to watch, as he gave
out, the motions of the Dutch in that quarter; but in reality that he
might terminate the war against the king, and reap for himself the
fruits of Tilly's conquests. Christian had now lost all his fortresses
in the German States, with the exception of Gluckstadt; his armies were
defeated or dispersed; no assistance came from Germany; from England,
little consolation; while his confederates in Lower Saxony were at the
mercy of the conqueror. The Landgrave of Hesse Cassel had been forced
by Tilly, soon after the battle of Lutter, to renounce the Danish
alliance. Wallenstein's formidable appearance before Berlin reduced the
Elector of Brandenburgh to submission, and compelled him to recognise,
as legitimate, Maximilian's title to the Palatine Electorate. The
greater part of Mecklenburgh was now overrun by imperial troops; and
both dukes, as adherents of the King of Denmark, placed under the ban of
the empire, and driven from their dominions. The defence of the German
liberties against illegal encroachments, was punished as a crime
deserving the loss of all dignities and territories; and yet this was
but the prelude to the still more crying enormities which shortly
followed.
The secret how Wallenstein had purposed to fulfil his extravagant
designs was now manifest. He had learned the lesson from Count
Mansfeld; but the scholar surpassed his master. On the principle that
war must support war, Mansfeld and the Duke of Brunswick had subsisted
their troops by contributions levied indiscriminately on friend and
enemy; but this predatory life was attended with all the inconvenience
and insecurity which accompany robbery. Like a fugitive banditti, they
were obliged to steal through exasperated and vigilant enemies; to roam
from one end of Germany to another; to watch their opportunity with
anxiety; and to abandon the most fertile territories whenever they were
defended by a superior army. If Mansfeld and Duke Christian had done
such great things in the face of these difficulties, what might not be
expected if the obstacles were removed; when the army raised was
numerous enough to overawe in itself the most powerful states of the
empire; when the name of the Emperor insured impunity to every outrage;
and when, under the highest authority, and at the head of an
overwhelming force, the same system of warfare was pursued, which these
two adventurers had hitherto adopted at their own risk, and with only an
untrained multitude?
Wallenstein had all this in view when he made his bold offer to the
Emperor, which now seemed extravagant to no one. The more his army was
augmented, the less cause was there to fear for its subsistence, because
it could irresistibly bear down upon the refractory states; the more
violent its outrages, the more probable was impunity. Towards hostile
states it had the plea of right; towards the favourably disposed it
could allege necessity. The inequality, too, with which it dealt out
its oppressions, prevented any dangerous union among the states; while
the exhaustion of their territories deprived them of the power of
vengeance. Thus the whole of Germany became a kind of magazine for the
imperial army, and the Emperor was enabled to deal with the other states
as absolutely as with his own hereditary dominions. Universal was the
clamour for redress before the imperial throne; but there was nothing to
fear from the revenge of the injured princes, so long as they appealed
for justice. The general discontent was directed equally against the
Emperor, who had lent his name to these barbarities, and the general who
exceeded his power, and openly abused the authority of his master. They
applied to the Emperor for protection against the outrages of his
general; but Wallenstein had no sooner felt himself absolute in the
army, than he threw off his obedience to his sovereign.
The exhaustion of the enemy made a speedy peace probable; yet
Wallenstein continued to augment the imperial armies until they were at
least 100,000 men strong. Numberless commissions to colonelcies and
inferior commands, the regal pomp of the commander-in-chief, immoderate
largesses to his favourites, (for he never gave less than a thousand
florins,) enormous sums lavished in corrupting the court at Vienna--all
this had been effected without burdening the Emperor. These immense
sums were raised by the contributions levied from the lower German
provinces, where no distinction was made between friend and foe; and the
territories of all princes were subjected to the same system of marching
and quartering, of extortion and outrage. If credit is to be given to
an extravagant contemporary statement, Wallenstein, during his seven
years command, had exacted not less than sixty thousand millions of
dollars from one half of Germany. The greater his extortions, the
greater the rewards of his soldiers, and the greater the concourse to
his standard, for the world always follows fortune. His armies
flourished while all the states through which they passed withered.
What cared he for the detestation of the people, and the complaints of
princes? His army adored him, and the very enormity of his guilt
enabled him to bid defiance to its consequences.
It would be unjust to Ferdinand, were we to lay all these irregularities
to his charge. Had he foreseen that he was abandoning the German States
to the mercy of his officer, he would have been sensible how dangerous
to himself so absolute a general would prove. The closer the connexion
became between the army, and the leader from whom flowed favour and
fortune, the more the ties which united both to the Emperor were
relaxed. Every thing, it is true, was done in the name of the latter;
but Wallenstein only availed himself of the supreme majesty of the
Emperor to crush the authority of other states. His object was to
depress the princes of the empire, to destroy all gradation of rank
between them and the Emperor, and to elevate the power of the latter
above all competition. If the Emperor were absolute in Germany, who
then would be equal to the man intrusted with the execution of his will?
The height to which Wallenstein had raised the imperial authority
astonished even the Emperor himself; but as the greatness of the master
was entirely the work of the servant, the creation of Wallenstein would
necessarily sink again into nothing upon the withdrawal of its creative
hand. Not without an object, therefore, did Wallenstein labour to
poison the minds of the German princes against the Emperor. The more
violent their hatred of Ferdinand, the more indispensable to the Emperor
would become the man who alone could render their ill-will powerless.
His design unquestionably was, that his sovereign should stand in fear
of no one in all Germany--besides himself, the source and engine of
this despotic power.
As a step towards this end, Wallenstein now demanded the cession of
Mecklenburg, to be held in pledge till the repayment of his advances for
the war. Ferdinand had already created him Duke of Friedland,
apparently with the view of exalting his own general over Bavaria; but
an ordinary recompense would not satisfy Wallenstein's ambition. In
vain was this new demand, which could be granted only at the expense of
two princes of the empire, actively resisted in the Imperial Council; in
vain did the Spaniards, who had long been offended by his pride, oppose
his elevation. The powerful support which Wallenstein had purchased
from the imperial councillors prevailed, and Ferdinand was determined,
at whatever cost, to secure the devotion of so indispensable a minister.
For a slight offence, one of the oldest German houses was expelled from
their hereditary dominions, that a creature of the Emperor might be
enriched by their spoils (1628).
Wallenstein now began to assume the title of generalissimo of the
Emperor by sea and land. Wismar was taken, and a firm footing gained on
the Baltic. Ships were required from Poland and the Hanse towns to
carry the war to the other side of the Baltic; to pursue the Danes into
the heart of their own country, and to compel them to a peace which
might prepare the way to more important conquests. The communication
between the Lower German States and the Northern powers would be broken,
could the Emperor place himself between them, and encompass Germany,
from the Adriatic to the Sound, (the intervening kingdom of Poland being
already dependent on him,) with an unbroken line of territory. If such
was the Emperor's plan, Wallenstein had a peculiar interest in its
execution. These possessions on the Baltic should, he intended, form
the first foundation of a power, which had long been the object of his
ambition, and which should enable him to throw off his dependence on the
Emperor.
To effect this object, it was of extreme importance to gain possession
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.
