The ascendancy of France, 1598-1715

by Henry Offley Wakeman

The entrance of France into the war did not at first check the tide of imperialist success. Richelieu overestimated the resources and the military strength of France. Unsuccessful campaigns on the frontiers of France, 1635–1637. He put into the field no less than four armies, amounting in the aggregate to 120,000 men; but unaccustomed to war, ill disciplined, ill fed, ill paid, and badly commanded, they were no match for the veterans of Spain and the Emperor. It was the first time that the new monarchy in France had made war upon a grand scale, and it had to buy its experience. The campaigns of the years 1635, 1636, and 1637 told a story of almost unrelieved failure. In Italy the French armies just managed to hold their own. In Alsace and the Netherlands they were everywhere out-generalled and beaten back. In 1636, a Spanish army actually invaded France and threatened Paris. Had it not been for the skilful generalship of Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar in the Rhineland, and the signal success which attended the efforts of the Swedish army, it is not at all improbable that the Emperor would have been able to impose upon all Germany the conditions of the peace of Prague, and by procuring the retirement of the Swedes have narrowed the issues involved to the simple one of a national war between France and Austro-Spain. Already Bavaria and Catholic Germany, as well as Saxony, Brandenburg and nearly all the Lutheran powers, had accepted the treaty. Oxenstjerna and the Swedes had refused after protracted negotiations, only because the Emperor and John George would not hear of making over to them an inch of German soil. On their side they would not be content merely with a money indemnity. Saxony and Brandenburg accordingly joined their forces to those of the Emperor and determined to drive the Swedes back across the sea to their own country. Success of Baner in Germany, Battle of Wittstock, 1636. It was a critical moment. Had the Saxons pressed on vigorously after the final rupture of the negotiations in the autumn of 1635, they could hardly have failed to have crushed Baner the Swedish general at Magdeburg with their superior forces, but the opportunity was allowed to slip. Baner withdrew in safety to the north, and was there strongly reinforced. He now had under his orders an army sufficient to cope with his enemies, and after some marching and countermarching succeeded in throwing himself upon the Saxons and imperialists at Wittstock on the Mecklenberg frontier of Brandenburg on October 4th 1636, before the Brandenburgers could come to their assistance. The victory was one of the most complete won by the Swedes during the whole war. The elector’s army was almost annihilated, and Baner became as paramount in northern Germany as the imperialists were upon the Rhine until the following autumn when he was again driven back into Pomerania.

It is noticeable that both in diplomacy and war Richelieu improved his position year by year. Gradually he learned how to win campaigns, as he had learned gradually how to rule France. In the last four years of his life, he gathered the fruits for which he had so patiently laboured in the previous years. Capture of Breisach by Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, 1638. In 1638 Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar succeeded in making himself master of the upper Rhineland, and having defeated the imperialists at Rheinfelden occupied Freiburg in Breisgau, and on December 19th captured the important fortress of Breisach. Richelieu when he heard the news hurried to the bedside of his dying friend the Capuchin Joseph, ‘Courage, père Joseph,’ he cried, ‘Breisach est à nous,’ and with this characteristic viaticum to console and strengthen him in his last agony, the wily diplomatist passed from this world of intrigue, of which for the last ten years his subtle brain had been the master and the mainspring. Death of Bernhard. His army put under French command. In July of the next year Bernhard himself died, and his army, together with the conquests which it had made, passed directly under the command of the French. French governors ruled in the Alsatian towns, and from that time the annexation of Alsace to the French monarchy became one of the recognised objects of the policy of the Bourbons. The success of Richelieu did not stop with the land. Ever since the fatal day, when the capture of a few French ships by the Huguenot Soubise in the port of Blavet had sent the proud cardinal on his knees to England and the Dutch to borrow ships to use against the revolted Rochellois, Richelieu had devoted special care to the formation of a navy. In 1639 for the first time a French fleet appeared in the Channel, ready to cope with the huge galleons of Spain, and to cut the bond which united her to the Netherlands. France was now to play the same game at the expense of Spain which had been played by Elizabeth of England in the century before. But the time had not yet come when France was to wrest from Spain the command of the sea. Defeat of the Spanish Fleet in the Downs, 1639. The Spaniards succeeded in escaping the French fleet, but only to fall into the hands of their allies the Dutch. Sorely bestead by their quick-sailing antagonists, they took refuge in the Downs under the neutral flag of England, but even there the Dutch admiral pursued them, burned some of their ships, captured others, and forced the remnant to seek the friendly shelter of Dunkirk. From that time the passage of the Channel was closed to a Spanish fleet as long as Spain was at war with the Dutch or the French. Revolt of Portugal and Catalonia, 1640. In the next year still more serious misfortunes awaited the crown of Spain. Portugal assisted by French subsidies successfully reasserted its independence, and re-established its monarchy under the House of Braganza in December 1640, while earlier in the year the revolt of the high spirited Catalans effectually saved France from all danger of invasion from the south and opened her path to Roussillon, while in Italy the French flag was successfully planted on the walls of Turin. The two following years served to make good the ground thus won, and when Richelieu died in December 1642, he had the satisfaction of feeling that he had got his hand upon the throat of his huge antagonist and was choking her. With French armies strongly encamped on the Rhine and the plain of Piedmont, with French governors established in Alsace and Lorraine, with Roussillon and Cerdagne and the passes of Savoy in the possession of France, she had indeed acquired a frontier which not only preserved her from all danger of sudden invasion, but enabled her to strike a swift and deadly blow at her enemies, before they could have time to concentrate their forces against her. Improved position of France at the death of Richelieu, 1642. Richelieu in his eighteen years of power had given France concentration, unity, and a scientific frontier. Seated between the two seas, bounded by the Pyrenees the Alps and the Vosges, with her hand upon the Rhine and the Scheldt, France was prepared to strike for the supremacy of Europe.

Richelieu’s policy continued by Mazarin.

The direction of the policy of France passed on the death of the stern and uncompromising Richelieu into the hands of the supple and intriguing Mazarin, but the change made no difference to the conduct of foreign affairs. Louis XIII. followed his great minister quickly to the grave, and during the minority of his young son, Louis XIV., Anne of Austria, the queen-mother, who was entirely devoted to Mazarin, became regent, and the policy of aggrandisement at the expense of the Austro-Spanish House was vigorously carried on. Within a few months of the accession of the young king, his reign was graced by the most splendid success which had attended the arms of France since the capture of Calais by the duke of Guise. Don Francisco Mello, who had succeeded the cardinal-infant in the government of the Netherlands in December 1641, thought to take advantage of the weakness caused by the change of rulers in France; and sent the count of Fuentes at the head of all the available troops which he could muster, across the frontier. Mazarin, following his habitual policy of trying to attract the princes of the blood to his side, intrusted the command of the French army to the young duc d’Enghien, the eldest son of the prince of Condé, who found the Spaniards on the 19th of May 1643 strongly posted among the marshes which surround the little fortress of Rocroy. Condé, to give him the name by which he is best known, though he never in the course of a long training in war developed any of the higher qualities of a general, had that magnetic personal power over his men which is all-important on the battle-field. Destruction of the military power of Spain at Rocroy, 1643. They would follow him anywhere. The furia francese, which had been often remarked upon in the Italian wars of the sixteenth century, had been but the mad rush of an undisciplined mob, like the rush of African dervishes. Condé was the first great leader to utilise this power among disciplined troops, and to make the peculiar élan of the French charge into one of the most decisive tactics of the battle-field. Ever since the days of the great captain, Gonsalvo da Cordova, the Spanish infantry had been the finest in the world. The solid mass of pikemen, wedged close together in a fortress-like formation, by their stubborn endurance could resist all cavalry attack, and by sheer weight bear down all opposition. But if once the mass became disorganised, it could never reform. Once break the ‘hedgehog’ of pikes, and the day was won. Gustavus Adolphus had shown at Breitenfeld how the superiority of artillery and musketry fire might open lanes in these mighty masses, into which the heavy cavalry might throw themselves, and overcome weight by weight in the shock of hand-to-hand conflict. Condé at Rocroy illustrated a similar principle by his mobile and disciplined infantry. Plunging a deadly fire into the dense immovable masses of the Spaniards, he waited for the moment when the falling men began to create confusion in the ranks, then against their front, and into their flanks he poured the lithe and well-trained infantry with irresistible effect. It was the story of the Armada and the English ships retold on land. The huge masses could do nothing against their swarming antagonists. Taken flank, front, and rear, they could not alter their formation, they could not adapt themselves to this new kind of warfare, they would not break and run, there was nothing left but to die. There is something inexpressibly pathetic in the figure of the old count of Fuentes, seated on his chair in the middle of the fast diminishing square of his choicest troops, for the gout would not permit him even to stand, calmly and patiently awaiting inevitable death, as the defending ranks became thinner and thinner, without the thought of surrender, without the power even of striking a blow in self-defence, the type of his country, and his country’s greatness, which was passing away with the shouts of victory which hailed the young conqueror of Rocroy.

Conquest of the Upper Rhineland by the French, 1644–1645.

The victory of Rocroy made France the first military power of Europe, but it was on the Rhine and not in the Netherlands that she put forth all her energies. During the remaining years of the war, the chief struggle was for the possession of the upper Rhineland. France wished to secure her hold over Alsace by occupying both banks of the great river, and making herself permanently mistress of the fortresses of Breisach and Philipsburg. The Emperor and Maximilian fought stubbornly, the one to save the Breisgau, one of the oldest possessions of the House of Habsburg, from falling into the hand of the enemy, the other to defend the frontiers of Bavaria from insult and plunder. In the cautious Mercy, and the dashing Werth, they obtained the services of generals not unfit to be matched with Condé and Turenne. At Freiburg in Breisgau for three days the impetuous Condé dashed himself in vain against the intrenchments of Mercy in August 1644, neglecting the wiser counsel of Turenne, who showed how easily a flank march through the mountains in the rear must compel the Bavarian general to retire. Just a year afterwards, on August 3d, 1645, Condé won a Pyrrhic victory at Nördlingen by his reckless and irresistible attack, but at too great an expenditure of life to permit him to make use of it, although the Imperialists were sore beset at the time, and Vienna itself threatened by the Swedes under Torstenson.

The honour of giving the final determination to the war belongs to Turenne. In 1646 he found himself for the first time at the head of an adequate force, and his own master, and he at once determined to put a stop to the ruinous system of frittering away advantages by acting on two different centres. Campaign of Turenne and Wrangel, 1646–1647. By combining his army with that of the Swedes, he saw that he could oppose an overwhelming force to the enemy, and end the war at a blow. Having procured the assent of Wrangel to his plan, who had replaced Torstenson in command of the Swedes, Turenne crossed the Rhine at Wesel, below Köln, and effected his junction with Wrangel on the Main. Slipping cleverly between the archduke Leopold William and the Bavarians, who sought to bar their passage, the united armies marched straight upon the Danube, seized Donauwörth, and spread themselves over the rich plain of Bavaria, plundering and burning up to the gates of Munich, and even penetrating as far as Bregenz in the Vorarlberg. Maximilian in despair deserted the Emperor, and signed a separate truce with the allies in May 1647. He did not keep it long. Stung in conscience, and afraid of after all losing the electoral hat, which he had risked so much to win, he again joined the Emperor in September of the same year. Terrible was the retribution which awaited him. Turenne and Wrangel returned into Bavaria with an army swollen with campfollowers to the number of 127,000. Beating the elector’s troops at Zusmarshausen on May 17th, 1648, they fastened like locusts on the land, and soon reduced it to the state of desolation in which the rest of Germany lay. Maximilian summoned Wallenstein’s old general Piccolomini to his aid, and prepared to strike one more blow for house and home, but before the armies met, the welcome news came that peace had been signed on the 24th of October at Münster, and the Thirty Years’ War was at an end.

Negotiations for peace, 1642.

For some years the desire for peace had been getting stronger and stronger. In Germany it was felt that the main obstacles to peace had passed away with the chief actors in the struggle. Ferdinand II. had died in the year 1637, and his son Ferdinand III. was not bound in conscience or in policy to the Edict of Restitution. The Elector Palatine, Frederick V., had preceded him in 1632. Christian of Anhalt, Christian of Brunswick, Wallenstein, Gustavus Adolphus, and Bethlen Gabor had long passed away, and the policies which they had represented had taken other forms. There was no German question left seriously difficult of solution. The real obstacles of peace were the ambition of France, and the determination of Oxenstjerna to carve a territory for the Swedes out of the Baltic provinces of Germany. But they could not prevent the beginning of negotiations, though they could do much to hinder their progress, and in 1642 it was agreed that representatives should meet in Westphalia, at the towns of Münster and Osnabrück, to discuss the preliminaries of a treaty. Congress of Münster and Osnabrück. So many were the obstructions thrown in the way that it was not till 1644 that the congress actually met. At Münster, which was the meeting-place of the Catholic powers, there appeared under the presidency of the papal nuncio (Chigi) and the ambassador of Venice—the two mediating powers—the representatives of the Empire, of France, of Spain, of the Catholic electors, and the Catholic princes of the Empire. At Osnabrück were gathered the representatives of Sweden, of the Protestant electors, and the Protestant princes and cities of the Empire, together with envoys of France, which was thus represented at both places. It was one thing to get the representatives to meet, it was quite another to get them to set to work. The proposal of an armistice during the negotiations had been definitely refused, and consequently it became to the interest of each of the chief combatants in turn to delay or promote the conclusion of peace as the fortune of war shifted from one side to the other. Questions of precedence and etiquette, always dear to the diplomatic mind, raised themselves in plenty from the side of France or Spain or Sweden, whenever things seemed to be going too quick. Months accordingly passed away and no progress was made.

Separate treaties made by Brandenburg, Saxony, and Bavaria.