The Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648

by Samuel Rawson Gardiner

In 1631 there had been a great effervescence of the French feudal aristocracy against the royal authority. But Richelieu stood firm. In March the king's brother, Gaston Duke of Orleans, fled from the country. In July his mother, Mary of Medici, followed his example. But they had no intention of abandoning their position. From their exile in the Spanish Netherlands they formed a close alliance with Spain, and carried on a thousand intrigues with the nobility at home. The Cardinal smote right and left with a heavy hand. Amongst his enemies were the noblest names in France. The Duke of Guise shrank from the conflict and retired to Italy to die far from his native land. The keeper of the seals died in prison. His kinsman, a marshal of France, perished on the scaffold. In the summer of the year 1632, whilst Gustavus was conducting his last campaign, there was a great rising in the south of France. Gaston himself came to share in the glory or the disgrace of the rebellion. The Duke of Montmorenci was the real leader of the enterprise. He was a bold and vigorous commander, the Rupert of the French cavaliers. But his gay horsemen dashed in vain against the serried ranks of the royal infantry, and he expiated his fault upon the scaffold. Gaston, helpless and low-minded as he was, could live on, secure under an ignominious pardon.

§ 5. Richelieu did for France all that could be done.

It was not the highest form of political life which Richelieu was establishing. For the free expression of opinion, as a foundation of government, France, in that day, was not prepared. But within the limits of possibility, Richelieu's method of ruling was a magnificent spectacle. He struck down a hundred petty despotisms that he might exalt a single despotism in their place. And if the despotism of the Crown was subject to all the dangers and weaknesses by which sooner or later the strength of all despotisms is eaten away, Richelieu succeeded for the time in gaining the co-operation of those classes whose good will was worth conciliating. Under him commerce and industry lifted up their heads, knowledge and literature smiled at last. Whilst Corneille was creating the French drama, Descartes was seizing the sceptre of the world of science. The first play of the former appeared on the stage in 1629. Year by year he rose in excellence, till in 1636 he produced the 'Cid;' and from that time one masterpiece followed another in rapid succession. Descartes published his first work in Holland in 1637, in which he laid down those principles of metaphysics which were to make his name famous in Europe.

§ 6. Richelieu and Germany.

All this, however welcome to France, boded no good to Germany. In the old struggles of the sixteenth century, Catholic and Protestant each believed himself to be doing the best, not merely for his own country, but for the world in general. Alva, with his countless executions in the Netherlands, honestly believed that the Netherlands as well as Spain would be the better for the rude surgery. The English volunteers, who charged home on a hundred battle-fields in Europe, believed that they were benefiting Europe, not England alone. It was time that all this should cease, and that the long religious strife should have its end. It was well that Richelieu should stand forth to teach the world that there were objects for a Catholic state to pursue better than slaughtering Protestants. But the world was a long way, in the seventeenth century, from the knowledge that the good of one nation is the good of all, and in putting off its religious partisanship France became terribly hard and selfish in its foreign policy. Gustavus had been half a German, and had sympathized deeply with Protestant Germany. Richelieu had no sympathy with Protestantism, no sympathy with German nationality. He doubtless had a general belief that the predominance of the House of Austria was a common evil for all, but he cared chiefly to see Germany too weak to support Spain. He accepted the alliance of the League of Heilbronn, but he would have been equally ready to accept the alliance of the Elector of Bavaria if it would have served him as well in his purpose of dividing Germany.

§ 7. His policy French, not European.

The plan of Gustavus might seem unsatisfactory to a patriotic German, but it was undoubtedly conceived with the intention of benefiting Germany. Richelieu had no thought of constituting any new organization in Germany. He was already aiming at the left bank of the Rhine. The Elector of Treves, fearing Gustavus, and doubtful of the power of Spain to protect him, had called in the French, and had established them in his new fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, which looked down from its height upon the low-lying buildings of Coblentz, and guarded the junction of the Rhine and the Moselle. The Duke of Lorraine had joined Spain, and had intrigued with Gaston. In the summer of 1632 he had been compelled by a French army to make his submission. The next year he moved again, and the French again interfered, and wrested from him his capital of Nancy. Richelieu treated the old German frontier-land as having no rights against the King of France.

[Section II.]—Wallenstein's Attempt to dictate Peace.

§ 1. Saxon negotiations with Wallenstein.

Already, before the League of Heilbronn was signed, the Elector of Saxony was in negotiation with Wallenstein. In June peace was all but concluded between them. The Edict of Restitution was to be cancelled. A few places on the Baltic coast were to be ceded to Sweden, and a portion at least of the Palatinate was to be restored to the son of the Elector Frederick, whose death in the preceding winter had removed one of the difficulties in the way of an agreement. The precise form in which the restitution should take place, however, still remained to be settled.