The Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648

by Samuel Rawson Gardiner

All who were concerned were in fact ready to make peace, but they all wished it made on their own terms. Ferdinand III. was not bound by his father's antecedents. The Edict of Restitution had been no work of his. Long before this he had been ready to give all reasonable satisfaction to the Protestants. He had declared his readiness to include Calvinists as well as Lutherans in the religious peace. He had offered to restore the Lower Palatinate to Frederick's son, and he actually issued a general amnesty to all who were still in arms; but he shrank from the demand that these arrangements of the Empire should be treated of, not in the constitutional assemblies of the Empire, but in a congress of European powers. To do so would be to tear the last veil from the sad truth that the Empire was a mere shadow, and that the states of which it was composed had become practically independent sovereignties. And behind this degradation lay another degradation, hardly less bitter to Ferdinand. The proudest title of the great emperors of old had been that of Increaser of the Empire. Was he to go down to posterity with the title of Diminisher of the Empire? And yet it was beyond his power to loosen the hold of France upon Alsace, or of Sweden upon Pomerania.

§ 4. Especially the Breisgau.

Nor was it only as Emperor that Ferdinand would feel the loss of Alsace deeply. Together with the Breisgau it formed one of territories of the House of Austria, but it was not his own. It was the inheritance of the children of his uncle Leopold, and he was loth to purchase peace for himself by agreeing to the spoliation of his orphan nephews.

§ 5. Aims of the Elector of Bavaria.

Maximilian of Bavaria viewed the question of peace from another point of view. To him Alsace was nothing, and he warmly recommended Ferdinand to surrender it for the sake of peace. If concessions were to be made at all, he preferred making them to Catholic France rather than to the Protestants in the Empire, and he was convinced that if Alsace remained under French rule, the motive which had led France to support the Protestants would lose its chief weight. But besides these general considerations, Maximilian, like Ferdinand, had a special interest of his own. He was resolved, come what might, to retain at least the Upper Palatinate, and he trusted to be seconded in his resolve by the good offices of France.

§ 6. The campaign of 1646.

The position of Maximilian was thus something like that of John George of Saxony in 1632. He and his chief ally were both ready for peace, but his ally stood out for higher terms than he was prepared to demand. And as in 1632 Wallenstein saw in the comparative moderation of the Elector of Saxony only a reason for driving him by force to separate his cause from that of Gustavus, so in 1646 the French government resolved to fall upon Bavaria, and to force the elector to separate his cause from that of Ferdinand.

§ 7. Turenne out-manœuvres the Bavarians.

The year before, the Elector of Saxony, crushed and ruined by the Swedes, had consented to a separate truce, and now Turenne was commissioned to do the same with Bavaria. In August he effected a junction on the Lahn with Wrangel and the Swedes, and if Enghien had been there, history would doubtless have had to tell of another butchery as resultless as those of Freiburg and Nördlingen. But Enghien was far away in Flanders, laying siege to Dunkirk, and Turenne, for the first time at the head of a superior force, was about to teach the world a lesson in the art of war. Whilst the enemy was preparing for the expected attack by entrenching his position, the united French and Swedish armies slipped past them and marched straight for the heart of Bavaria, where an enemy had not been seen since Bernhard had been chased out in 1634. That one day, as Turenne truly said, altered the whole face of affairs. Everywhere the roads were open. Provisions were plentiful. The population was in the enjoyment of the blessings of peace. Turenne and Wrangel crossed the Danube without difficulty. Schorndorf, Würzburg, Nördlingen, Donauwörth made no resistance to them. It was not till they came to Augsburg that they met with opposition. The enemy had time to come up. But there was no unanimity in the councils of the enemy. The Bavarian generals wanted to defend Bavaria. The imperialist generals wanted to defend the still remaining Austrian possessions in Swabia. The invaders were allowed to accomplish their purpose. They arrived at the gates of Munich before the citizens knew what had become of their master's army. With grim purpose Turenne and Wrangel set themselves to make desolate the Bavarian plain, so that it might be rendered incapable of supporting a Bavarian army. Maximilian was reduced to straits such as he had not known since the time when Tilly fell at the passage of the Lech. Sorely against his will he signed, in May, 1647, a separate truce with the enemy.

§ 8. Last struggles of the war.