The next spring he entered Bavaria and once more defeated Tilly (who was mortally wounded in the battle), and forced Munich to surrender. There seemed now to be no reason why he should not continue his way to Vienna. At this juncture the emperor recalled Wallenstein, who collected a new army over which the emperor gave him absolute command. After some delay Gustavus met Wallenstein on the field of Lützen, in November, 1632, where, after a fierce struggle, the Swedes gained the victory. But they lost their leader and Protestantism its hero, for the Swedish king ventured too far into the lines of the enemy and was surrounded and killed.
Murder of Wallenstein.
Battle of Nördlingen, 1634.
The Swedes did not, however, retire from Germany, but continued to participate in the war, which now degenerated into a series of raids by leaders whose soldiers depopulated the land by their unspeakable atrocities. Wallenstein roused the suspicions of the Catholics by entering into mysterious negotiations with Richelieu and with the German Protestants. This treasonable correspondence quickly reached the ears of the emperor. Wallenstein, who had long been detested by even the Catholics, was deserted by his soldiers and murdered (in 1634), to the great relief of all parties. In the same year the imperial army won the important battle of Nördlingen, one of the most bloody and at the same time decisive engagements of the war. Shortly after, the elector of Saxony withdrew from his alliance with the Swedes and made peace with the emperor. It looked as if the war were about to come to an end, for many others among the German princes were quite ready to lay down their arms.[332]
Richelieu renews the struggle of France against the Hapsburgs.
181. Just at this critical moment Richelieu decided that it would be to the interest of France to renew the old struggle with the Hapsburgs by sending troops against the emperor. France was still shut in, as she had been since the time of Charles V, by the Hapsburg lands. Except on the side toward the ocean her boundaries were in the main artificial ones, and not those established by great rivers and mountains. She therefore longed to weaken her enemy and strengthen herself by winning Roussillon on the south, and so make the crest of the Pyrenees the line of demarcation between France and Spain. She dreamed, too, of extending her sway toward the Rhine by adding the county of Burgundy (i.e., Franche-Comté) and a number of fortified towns which would afford protection against the Spanish Netherlands.
Richelieu checks Spanish aggression in Italy.
Richelieu had been by no means indifferent to the Thirty Years' War. He had encouraged the Swedish king to intervene, and had supplied him with funds if not with troops. Moreover, he himself had checked Spanish progress in northern Italy. In 1624 Spanish troops had invaded the valley of the Adda, a Protestant region, with the evident purpose of conquest. This appeared a most serious aggression to Richelieu, for if the Spanish won the valley of the Adda, the last barrier between the Hapsburg possessions in Italy and in Germany would be removed. French troops were dispatched to drive out the Spaniards, but it was in the interest of France rather than in that of the oppressed Calvinists, for whom Richelieu could hardly have harbored a deep affection. A few years later it became a question whether a Spanish or a French candidate should obtain the vacant duchy of Mantua, and Richelieu led another French army in person to see that Spain was again discomfited. It was, then, not strange that he should decide to deal a blow at the emperor when the war appeared to be coming to a close that was tolerably satisfactory from the standpoint of the Hapsburgs.