The ascendancy of France, 1598-1715

by Henry Offley Wakeman

Alienation of England and the Lutheran Princes.

The evil consequences which had been threatened at once made their appearance. James I. had never approved of the Bohemian revolution, but he had endeavoured to make use of it in order to mediate between Catholics and Protestants in Germany and establish peace. His son-in-law’s rash act destroyed at once what little chance of success James might have had. But there was worse still behind. It was bad enough that Frederick should have dared to act on his own responsibility, before James had had sufficient time to decide from a study of the Bohemian constitution whether the Bohemian revolution was legally justifiable or not. It was worse still that he should have taken a step which might alarm the susceptibilities of Spain, and endanger the success of the negotiations for a marriage between the prince of Wales and the infanta Maria of Spain, upon which James had set his whole heart. James at once repudiated all complicity with his son-in-law’s conduct, and was fretfully indignant with him for having by it injured his own pet scheme for Europe. If all hope of assistance from England was gone, still less chance was there of aid from Savoy, or from the Lutheran princes of Germany. The Protestant Union only agreed to defend the Elector’s hereditary dominions, in case they were attacked while he was occupied in Bohemia. Frederick had to face the coming struggle with his own resources. Even Bethlen Gabor, the drunken but able prince of Transylvania, who had taken advantage of Ferdinand’s weakness to advance to the gates of Vienna, pillaging as he went, deserted the cause of the Bohemians when he found he could obtain no money from them. On the 17th of January 1620 he made a treaty with the Emperor, by which he was secured in the sovereignty over the larger part of Christian Hungary. Ferdinand on the other hand had no difficulty in obtaining allies, when once it had been recognised how great a menace to German institutions was implied in the action of the Elector Palatine. Alliance between Ferdinand, the League, Spain and the Pope. Maximilian of Bavaria took the lead. Stipulating as his reward the electoral hat which was to be torn from the head of Frederick, and the right of occupying upper Austria as security for his expenses, he placed his army and the resources of the League at Ferdinand’s disposal. In March 1620, under his auspices, a meeting of the League was arranged with the elector of Saxony at Mülhausen, and an agreement arrived at by which the League undertook not to attempt to recover the lands of the Protestant bishops and administrators in north Germany, as long as they continued loyal to the Emperor. This arrangement, though no solution of the question of the ecclesiastical lands, secured at any rate for the time the neutrality of Saxony and the Lutheran princes. The Pope sent money to swell the resources of the League, and Philip of Spain agreed to march troops from the Netherlands to attack the Palatinate.

The war national and religious.

The campaign of 1620 opened, therefore, under very different circumstances from those of 1619. The war had already become a German war. With the certainty of the intervention of Spain and the Pope, with the possibility of that of England, it threatened to assume an European character. With the League on the one side and the Union on the other, it was a war of creeds. Importance of Bavaria. Policy of Maximilian. From a military as well as a political point of view, the accession of Maximilian of Bavaria to the cause of the Emperor made all the difference. Weak in health, and unpleasing in appearance, he concealed under an insignificant exterior an iron will and a faultless judgment. He alone among his contemporaries in Germany had the statesman’s faculty of knowing exactly what was possible. He never struck except to succeed. He never ventured without being sure of his ground. Succeeding to an impoverished exchequer, and a territory disjointed in extent and divided in religion, he had set before himself as the objects of his policy, the supremacy of Catholicism, the consolidation of his dominions, and the acquisition of the electoral dignity. By thrift and good management he had amassed considerable treasure, and had carefully trained a powerful army, which he had intrusted to the command of the Walloon Tilly, who had the reputation of being the greatest general of the day. His opportunity was now come, and he threw himself zealously into the war of ambition and religion with the proud consciousness that he was the real leader of the Catholic cause and the saviour of the House of Austria. In June the toils began to close round the ill-fated Frederick. Philip III., convinced through Gondomar’s diplomacy that James I. would not break his neutrality even though the Palatinate was invaded, sent the necessary orders to Spinola, and by August the Spanish army was at Mainz. At the end of June, Tilly crossed the frontier into Austria, effected a junction with Bucquoi, and advanced slowly into Bohemia, capturing the towns as he went, and driving the enemy back upon Prague. On November 8th, he came in sight of the city, and found Christian of Anhalt and the Bohemian army drawn up on the White Mountain just outside the walls. Battle of the White Mountain, 1620. Regardless of Bucquoi’s desire for delay, Tilly insisted on an immediate attack. Frederick was inside the city when the attack began. Hurrying out to put himself at the head of his troops, he found he was already too late. The army was flying in panic from the face of Tilly’s veterans. Frederick himself was hurried away in the crowd. His own dominions were already in the possession of the Spaniards. An outcast and a fugitive, he fled for his life through Germany, and rested not till he found an asylum with Maurice of Nassau at the Hague. He will only be a winter-king, the Jesuits had sneeringly said, when the summer comes he will melt away. The prophecy was fulfilled almost to the letter, save that it was not the heat of summer but the floods of autumn which swept him to his destruction.

The victory of the White Mountain marks the end of the attempt of Protestantism to establish its supremacy in Bohemia. Ferdinand at once sent for the Royal Charter and tore it up with his own hands. Suppression of Protestantism in Bohemia. The leaders of the revolution were executed, and their lands confiscated. Frederick was placed under the ban of the Empire, and his lands and titles declared to be forfeited. The Protestant clergy were for the most part banished, and a heavy war indemnity exacted from the rebels whose lives and possessions were spared. A new race of landowners, Catholic and German, became the possessors of the confiscated lands, and by their means Catholic worship was gradually restored throughout the country districts. Jesuit colleges were planted in the chief towns to complete by persuasion what force had begun, and before another generation had passed away Bohemia was definitely ranged among the Catholic countries of Europe. Only Silesia and Lusatia succeeded in retaining something of their old rights and much of their old religion. The war against these allies of Bohemia had fallen to the lot of John George of Saxony, and when the battle of the White Mountain had made it plain that they must treat for peace, they did not find the Lutheran leader a hard taskmaster. Toleration granted to Silesia, 1621. On his own responsibility, he concluded peace with the Silesian estates by an instrument known as the Accord on January 21st, 1621, by which they recognised Ferdinand as their duly elected and crowned king and supreme duke, and agreed to pay a fine of 300,000 florins on condition that their political and religious liberties were respected. Ferdinand when he heard of this was naturally very angry at the mention of the words ‘elected king,’ but found it prudent to accept the treaty rather than affront the elector of Saxony.

Continued success of Ferdinand and Maximilian, 1621–1622.

By the beginning of 1621, Ferdinand and Maximilian found their policy completely crowned with success. The Bohemian revolution was crushed, the lower Palatinate was in the hands of the Spaniards, Frederick had been declared to have forfeited his electoral dignity, the Counter-Reformation was victorious in Austria, Moravia, and Bohemia. In April 1621 the Protestant Union itself was dissolved. Yet there were rocks ahead which would require very careful seamanship to avoid. The Spanish court was indignant at the idea of the transference of the Palatine Electorate to Bavaria. James of England was so moved by the seizure of his son-in-law’s hereditary dominions, that he authorised the enlistment of Englishmen under Vere to defend the lower Palatinate against Spinola, and made its restoration to Frederick the central point of the long negotiations he was carrying on with Spain for a family alliance. The truce of Antwerp between the Spaniards and the Dutch had just come to an end by lapse of time, and Maurice of Nassau was minded to place his unrivalled military talents in the scale against the House of Austria. The German princes of the Rhineland were frightened at the success of the League, and were looking out for allies even beyond the limits of Germany. But at present no one stirred except the margrave of Baden-Durlach and Christian of Brunswick, both of whom held large estates which had been secularised since the peace of Augsburg, and were consequently in danger from the success of the Counter-Reformation. Christian, besides being Protestant bishop of Halberstadt, was a military adventurer of the knight-errant pattern. He liked fighting for its own sake and loved still better to surround it with a halo of romance. Fired by a glance from the beautiful eyes of the queen of Bohemia, and wearing her glove on his helmet, he posed before the world as the chivalrous protector and avenger of beauty in misfortune. The new allies of Frederick did not avail him much. In October 1621, Mansfeld had to abandon the upper Palatinate and take refuge across the Rhine in Alsace. In the summer of 1622, in conjunction with the margrave of Baden and Christian of Brunswick, he advanced to the recovery of the lower Palatinate, but Tilly crushed the margrave at Wimpfen on the Neckar on May 6th, and Christian at Höcht on the Main on the 20th of June. Christian and Mansfeld with the remnants of their armies had to retire across the Rhine into Lorraine, where they lived at free quarters upon the wretched inhabitants. On September 16th Heidelberg surrendered to Tilly, and on November 8th Mannheim followed the example of the capital, and by the end of the year Frankenthal was the only city in his hereditary dominions which still belonged to the unfortunate Elector. Deprived of his land and his resources, he was now obliged to deprive himself of his own remaining army, and formally dismissed from his service Christian of Brunswick and Mansfeld on finding himself without authority over them and yet looked upon by Europe as responsible for their crimes. Fortune had still one more blow in reserve. Transference of the Electorate from Frederick to Maximilian, 1623. On February 13th, 1623, Ferdinand, having succeeded in pacifying the opposition of the elector of Saxony and the Spaniards, solemnly transferred the electorate to Maximilian of Bavaria for his life at the meeting of the diet at Regensburg, and gave him the administration of the upper Palatinate as additional security for the expenses of the war.

Extension of the war to Northern Germany, 1623–1624.

The transference of the electorate to Maximilian of Bavaria fitly marks the close of the first act of the great drama of the Thirty Years’ War, namely, that signalised by the Bohemian Revolution, for he was the person to whom the success achieved was due. His army had won the victories, his head had directed the policy, his purse had paid the soldiers—could he only now have enforced a peace upon a reasonable basis, he would have stood forth before the world as the greatest statesman in Germany, and the saviour of the House of Austria. The difficulties in the way were serious. The Dutch, since the expiration of the truce of Antwerp, had been at open war with the Spaniards, and at the beginning of 1623, being hard pressed by Spinola, summoned the brigand bands of Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick to their aid. Insensibly the war was beginning to affect the north German princes. Many of them felt that if the Emperor succeeded in crushing the bishop of Halberstadt, other Protestant bishoprics might prove too tempting a prey to be resisted, and rallied to the standard of Christian. The lower Saxon circle, animated by similar fears, actually began to arm. With these dangers looming in the distance, it was impossible for the League to lay down its arms. Even the crushing defeat inflicted by Tilly upon Christian of Brunswick at Stadtlohn in the bishopric of Münster in August 1623 was not a sufficient guarantee of peace, whilst Mansfeld was still at large; and so the war simmered on through 1623 and 1624, and the opportunity for a satisfactory peace in which German interests alone should be consulted passed away never to return.

Interference of England, 1624.