Meanwhile the forces of the League had achieved a still greater success on the Weser. Christian IV. could not complete his armament without the English subsidies, but no money came, or could come, from England, where Charles I. was quarrelling with one Parliament after another. Tilly accordingly advanced slowly down the Weser and captured Minden and Göttingen. After the defeat of Mansfeld at Dessau, he was further reinforced by 8000 men from Wallenstein’s army, and Christian felt that if he was to assume the offensive at all, there was no time to be lost. Accordingly in August he hastily advanced into Thuringia, hoping to throw himself upon Tilly and crush him before the imperialist forces arrived, but he was too late. The junction was effected on the 22d of August, and Christian finding himself in the presence of superior numbers retreated. Tilly at once followed, overtook the Danish army on the 26th of August at Lutter, just as it was about to plunge into a narrow defile, and inflicted upon them a severe defeat. Christian, leaving 8000 men and all his artillery on the field of battle, and 2000 prisoners in the enemies’ hands, retired into Holstein and Mecklenberg, while Tilly overran the duchy of Brunswick and quartered his men for the winter along the lower Elbe, and an imperialist detachment occupied the mark of Brandenburg.
Further successes of Tilly and Wallenstein.
In the next year the tide of victory rolled on. Wallenstein, now made duke of Friedland, marched into Silesia with irresistible forces, and sent fifty standards to Vienna as evidence of his conquest. Then, joining hands with Tilly on the lower Elbe, the united armies poured into Holstein, and overran Denmark until stopped by the sea, and forced the unfortunate Christian to take refuge in the islands. In February 1628, Ferdinand, following the precedent of the Elector Palatine, put the dukes of Mecklenberg to the ban for the assistance they had given to Christian, declared their lands forfeited, and authorised Wallenstein to occupy and administer them in pledge for the expenses incurred. Sweeping over the country the imperial general seized upon the ports of Wismar and Rostock, obliged the duke of Pomerania to put the long coast line of his duchy under the care of the imperial troops, and was only checked in his career of conquest in March 1628 by the marshes and the fortifications of Stralsund. Siege of Stralsund, 1628. For five long months the imperialist army lay before the city, attempting the almost impossible feat of the capture of a defended city open to the sea by an attack from the land side only, for none knew better than Wallenstein himself the importance of the issue. All the southern coast of the Baltic from Dantzig to Lübeck, except Stralsund, owned his authority. Across the water lay the only foe he had now to fear. Sovereignty over the Baltic as well as over the Baltic provinces was necessary to him if he was to be safe from the attacks of Sweden. To further this policy, he had already obtained from the Emperor the title of admiral of the Baltic, and he was negotiating with the Hanse towns to provide him with a fleet, which should make the title something of a reality. As long as Stralsund afforded to the enemy an open door into the heart of Germany, the first steps necessary to gain that sovereignty were not complete. Nor was that all. Hitherto the opposition to the Emperor in Germany had been led by furious partisans like Christian of Anhalt, military adventurers like Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick, or self-seeking politicians like Christian of Denmark and the other holders of the ecclesiastical lands. The German people and the cities of Germany had, as a rule, kept themselves aloof from the struggle, or extended their sympathies to the Emperor as the representative of order. But the siege of Stralsund showed that new forces were coming into play. It was the citizens, not their leaders, who insisted on fighting to the last gasp. The independent spirit of civic liberty was determined not to submit to a military dictatorship. The religious spirit of staunch Protestantism was determined not to make terms with the victorious Counter-Reformation. When Wallenstein, foiled and exasperated, drew off his army on August 3d from before the walls of Stralsund, he at least understood that among the cities of Germany there were those who would throw themselves into the arms of the foreigner, and risk all they had, rather than submit to military government and religious persecution. Nor was Stralsund alone in its victory. Glückstadt proved to Tilly as difficult a morsel to digest as Stralsund had been to Wallenstein, and in January 1629 he was forced to raise the siege. Matters had now reached a deadlock. Christian could not venture on the mainland and his enemies could not reach him at sea. The peace of Lübeck, 1629. Wallenstein saw the importance of bringing the Danish war to an end before Sweden appeared on the scene, and opened negotiations for peace. In May the treaty of Lübeck was signed. Christian surrendered all his claims upon the ecclesiastical lands in Germany and received back his hereditary dominions.
Causes of the Imperialist success.
Ten years had elapsed since the fatal day when the revolted Bohemian diet elected Frederick, Elector Palatine, to the throne of Bohemia, and the margrave of Anspach had exultingly cried, ‘Now we have the means of upsetting the world.’ In those ten years the German world had indeed been upset but not in the sense of the margrave’s prophecy. It was the very fact that in their attack upon the House of Austria the Calvinists were attempting to upset the world of Germany, were attempting to revolutionise German institutions, and were not in any way representing the rights of Protestantism, or the independence of the German princes, that deprived them of support in Germany outside their own body. Cautious and shrewd rulers like John George of Saxony looked upon them as the party of anarchy, and upon the Emperor as the representative of order. The recklessness with which Frederick and his advisers let Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick loose upon the unoffending people, and outraged the sacred name of religion with burning homesteads and tortured peasants, lost them the respect of every right-thinking man. Men felt that to revolutionise Germany and to plunder Germans was not the way to defend the cause of Protestantism, and welcomed the successes of Maximilian and the League in Bohemia, and even in the Palatinate, as securities for the restoration of order upon the traditional lines.
Change brought about by Wallenstein and his army.
But since then a great change had taken place. The advent of Wallenstein upon the scene, with his personal army and transcendent military talents, brought new forces into play. Germany found itself threatened by the rule of the sword. Ferdinand found at his back a power capable of enforcing his will upon Germany, and, if need be, of superintending the reconciliation of German Protestantism to the Church. After the peace of Lübeck, who was to say him nay if he boldly entered upon a policy of Catholic aggression? The Protestant sympathies of his Austrian subjects had been drowned in blood. In Bohemia and Moravia, under their new Catholic landowners, Protestantism was suppressed, and all Protestants had been banished by the Reforming Commissions issued under the new constitution in 1627. Silesia had lately felt the heavy hand of Wallenstein and was in no condition to rebel. The upper Palatinate and part of the lower, lately made over to Maximilian, were already being rapidly converted to Catholicism. Secure then in his own dominions and sure of Maximilian’s support, what opposition was he likely to receive in Germany? The smaller princes of north Germany had been for the most part implicated in the Danish war, and their lands were in the occupation of the armies of the Emperor and of the League. John George of Saxony, the elector of Brandenburg, and the duke of Pomerania, were not likely at such a time to forfeit the protection of the agreement of Mülhausen, which had been faithfully observed on both sides hitherto. Possibly a few free cities, such as Magdeburg and Hamburg, might object, and the king of Sweden across the water might interfere, but no great end was ever achieved without running some risk. In 1627 the Catholic electors and the duke of Bavaria had urged upon Ferdinand that the time was now come to assert the rights of the Church under the peace of Augsburg, and Ferdinand was too strongly himself in favour of the policy to say that they were wrong. On March 29th, 1629, he issued the Edict of Restitution, restoring to the Church all the land secularised since the peace of Augsburg was signed. The Edict of Restitution, 1629. At one stroke the archbishoprics of Magdeburg and Bremen, the bishoprics of Minden, Verden, Halberstadt, Lübeck, Ratzeburg, Misnia, Merseburg, Naumburg, Brandenburg, Havelberg, Lebus and Camin, and about one hundred and twenty smaller foundations were taken away from their Protestant bishops and administrators, and restored to the Church. Never was greater mistake made. To resume lands in the name of the law, which had been from fifty to eighty years in the undisputed possession of Protestant holders, was in itself a straining of the letter of the law in violation of its spirit, which only intensified the sense of wrong brought about by the confiscation. In itself it armed the public opinion of all Germany against the Emperor. It roused the ardent Protestants to frenzy. But to do it in dependence on mere brute force was political suicide. Without the armies of Tilly and Wallenstein the Edict of Restitution was a dead letter, with them it was a military revolution. By it the Emperor stood out to the world as the author of a religious and political revolution, the success of which depended entirely upon military despotism, and was without any moral basis whatever. Germany would not be revolutionised by such measures as these.
CHAPTER V
THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR FROM THE PEACE OF LÜBECK TO THE PEACE OF PRAGUE
Difference between Wallenstein and the Emperor—Opposition of the League to Wallenstein—Dismissal of Wallenstein—Critical state of Protestantism in Germany—Condition of Sweden—Policy of Gustavus Adolphus—His wars with Denmark, Russia, and Poland—His interference in Germany and Alliance with France—The Campaign of 1631 and sack of Magdeburg—Alliance between Saxony and Sweden—Battle of Breitenfeld—Military successes and political difficulties of Gustavus—Wallenstein appointed dictator—Gustavus baffled by Wallenstein at Nuremburg—Battle of Lützen—The League of Heilbronn—The murder of Wallenstein—The battle of Nördlingen—The Peace of Prague—Policy of John George of Saxony.
Difference of policy between Wallenstein and Ferdinand.