A History of Germany Part 26

Grumbach was tortured and executed, and John Frederick kept in close confinement until his death, twenty-eight years afterwards. His sons, however, were allowed to succeed him. The severity with which this breach of the internal peace was punished put an end forever, to petty wars in Germany: the measures adopted by the Diet of 1495, under Maximilian I., were at last recognized as binding laws.

[Sidenote: 1576.]

The Revolt of the Netherlands, which broke out immediately after Maximilian II.'s accession to the throne, had little, if any, political relation to Germany. Under Charles V. the Netherlands had been quite separated from any connection with the German Empire, and he was free to introduce the Inquisition there and persecute the Protestants with all the barbarity demanded by Rome. Philip II. followed the same policy: the torture, fire and sword were employed against the people until they arose against the intolerable Spanish rule, and entered upon that struggle of nearly forty years which ended in establishing the independence of Holland.

On the 12th of October, 1576, at a Diet where he had declared his policy in religious matters to be simply the enforcement of the Treaty of Augsburg, Maximilian II. suddenly fell dead. According to the custom which they had now followed for 140 years, of keeping the Imperial dignity in the house of Hapsburg, the Electors immediately chose his son, Rudolf II., an avowed enemy of the Protestants. Unlike his father, his nature was cold, stern and despotic: he was gloomy, unsocial and superst.i.tious, and the circ.u.mstance that he aided and encouraged the great astronomers, Kepler and Tycho de Brahe, was probably owing to his love for astrology and alchemy. He was subject to sudden and violent attacks of pa.s.sion, which were followed by periods of complete indifference to his duties. Like Frederick III., a hundred years before, he concerned himself with the affairs of Austria, his direct inheritance, rather than with those of the Empire; and thus, although internal wars had been suppressed, he encouraged the dissensions in religion and politics, which were gradually bringing on a more dreadful war than Germany had ever known before.

One of Rudolf II.'s first measures was to take from the Austrian Protestants the right of worship which his father had allowed them. He closed their churches, removed them from all the offices they held, and, justifying himself by the Treaty of Augsburg that whoever ruled the people should choose their religious faith, did his best to make Austria wholly Catholic. Many Catholic princes and priests, emboldened by his example, declared that the articles promulgated by the Council of Trent abolished the Treaty of Augsburg and gave them the right to put down heresy by force. When the Archbishop of Cologne became a Protestant and married, the German Catholics called upon Alexander of Parma, who came from the Netherlands with a Spanish army, took possession of the former's territory, and installed a new Catholic Archbishop, without resistance on the part of the Protestant majority of Germany. Thus the hate and bitterness on both sides increased from year to year, without culminating in open hostilities.

[Sidenote: 1600. GROWTH AND CONDITION OF GERMANY.]

The history of Germany, from the accession of Rudolf II. to the end of the century, is marked by no political event of importance. Spain was fully occupied in her hopeless attempt to subdue the Netherlands: in France Henry of Navarre was fighting the Duke of Guise; Hungary and Austria were left to check the advance of the Turkish invasion, and nearly all Germany enjoyed peace for upwards of fifty years. During this time, population and wealth greatly increased, and life in the cities and at courts became luxurious and more or less immoral. The arts and sciences began to flourish, the people grew in knowledge, yet the spirit out of which the Reformation sprang seemed almost dead. The elements of good and evil were strangely mixed together--intelligence and superst.i.tion, piety and bigotry, civilization and barbarism were found side by side. As formerly in her history, it appeared nearly impossible for Germany to grow by a gradual and healthy development: her condition must be bad enough to bring on a violent convulsion, before it could be improved.

Such was the state of affairs at the end of the sixteenth century. In spite of the material prosperity of the country, there was a general feeling among the people that evil days were coming; but the most desponding prophet could hardly have predicted worse misfortunes than they were called upon to suffer during the next fifty years.

CHAPTER XXVII.

BEGINNING OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.

(1600--1625.)

Growth of the Calvinistic or "Reformed" Church. --Persecution of Protestants in Styria. --The Catholic League. --The Struggle for the Succession of Cleves. --Rudolf II. set aside. --His Death.

--Matthias becomes Emperor. --Character of Ferdinand of Styria.

--Revolt in Prague. --War in Bohemia. --Death of Matthias.

--Ferdinand besieged in Vienna. --He is Crowned Emperor.

--Blindness of the Protestant Princes. --Frederick of the Palatinate chosen King of Bohemia. --Barbarity of Ferdinand II.

--The Protestants Crushed in Bohemia and Austria. --Count Mansfeld and Prince Christian of Brunswick. --War in Baden and the Palatinate. --Tilly. --His Ravages. --Miserable Condition of Germany. --Union of the Northern States. --Christian IV. of Denmark. --Wallenstein. --His History. --His Proposition to Ferdinand II.

[Sidenote: 1600.]

The beginning of the seventeenth century found the Protestants in Germany still divided. The followers of Zwingli, it is true, had accepted the Augsburg Confession as the shortest means of acquiring freedom of worship; but the Calvinists, who were now rapidly increasing, were not willing to take this step, nor were the Lutherans any more tolerant towards them than at the beginning. The Dutch, in conquering their independence of Spain, gave the Calvinistic, or, as it was called in Germany, the Reformed Church, a new political importance; and it was not long before the Palatinate of the Rhine, Baden, Hesse-Ca.s.sel and Anhalt also joined it. The Protestants were split into two strong and unfriendly sects at the very time when the Catholics, under the teaching of the Jesuits, were uniting against them.

Duke Ferdinand of Styria, a young cousin of Rudolf II., began the struggle. Styria was at that time Protestant, and refused to change its faith at the command of the Duke, whereupon he visited every part of the land with an armed force, closed the churches, burned the hymn-books and Bibles, and banished every one who was not willing to become a Catholic on the spot. He openly declared that it was better to rule over a desert than a land of heretics. Duke Maximilian of Bavaria followed his example: in 1607 he seized the free Protestant city of Donauworth, on the Danube, on account of some quarrel between its inhabitants and a monastery, and held it, in violation of all laws of the Empire. A protest made to the Diet on account of this act was of no avail, since a majority of the members were Catholics. The Protestants of Southern Germany formed a "Union" for mutual protection, in May, 1608, with Frederick IV. of the Palatinate at their head; but, as they were mostly of the Reformed Church, they received little sympathy or support from the Protestant States in the North.

[Sidenote: 1609. THE "SUCCESSION OF CLEVES."]

Maximilian of Bavaria then established a "Catholic League" in opposition, relying on the a.s.sistance of Spain, while the "Protestant Union" relied on that of Henry IV. of France. Both sides began to arm, and they would soon have proceeded to open hostilities, when a dispute of much greater importance diverted their attention to the North of Germany. This was the so-called "Succession of Cleves." Duke John William of Cleves, who governed the former separate dukedoms of Julich, Cleves and Berg, and the countships of Ravensberg and Mark, embracing a large extent of territory on both sides of the Lower Rhine, died in 1609 without leaving a direct heir. He had been a Catholic, but his people were Protestants. John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, and Wolfgang William of the Bavarian Palatinate, both relatives on the female side, claimed the splendid inheritance; and when it became evident that the Catholic interest meant to secure it, they quickly united their forces and took possession. The Emperor then sent the Archduke Leopold of Hapsburg to hold the State in his name, whereupon the Protestant Union made an instant alliance with Henry IV. of France, who was engaged in organizing an army for its aid, when he fell by the dagger of the a.s.sa.s.sin, Ravaillac, in 1610. This dissolved the alliance, and the "Union" and "League," finding themselves agreed in opposing the creation of another Austrian State, on the Lower Rhine, concluded peace before any serious fighting had taken place between them.

[Sidenote: 1606.]

The two claimants to the succession adopted a similar policy. Wolfgang William became a Catholic, married the sister of Maximilian of Bavaria, and so brought the "League" to support him, and the Elector John Sigismund became a Calvinist (which almost excited a rebellion among the Brandenburg Lutherans), in order to get the support of the "Union." The former was a.s.sisted by Spanish troops from Flanders, the latter by Dutch troops from Holland, and the war was carried on until 1614, when it was settled by a division which gave John Sigismund the lion's share.

Meanwhile the Emperor Rudolf II. was becoming so old, so whimsical and so useless, that in 1606 the princes of the house of Hapsburg held a meeting, declared him incapable of governing, "on account of occasional imbecilities of mind," and appointed his brother Matthias regent for Austria, Hungary and Moravia. The Emperor refused to yield, but, with the help of the n.o.bility, who were mostly Protestants, Matthias maintained his claim. He was obliged, in return, to grant religious freedom, which so encouraged the oppressed Protestants in Bohemia that they demanded similar rights from the Emperor. In his helpless situation he gave way to the demand, but soon became alarmed at the increase of the heretics, and tried to take back his concession. The Bohemians called Matthias to their a.s.sistance, and in 1611 Rudolf lost his remaining kingdom and his favorite residence of Prague. As he looked upon the city for the last time, he cried out: "May the vengeance of G.o.d overtake thee, and my curse light on thee and all Bohemia!" In less than a year (on the 20th of January, 1612) he died.

Matthias was elected Emperor of Germany, as a matter of course. The house of Hapsburg was now the strongest German power which represented the Church of Rome, and the Catholic majority in the Diet secured to it the Imperial dignity then and thenceforward. The Protestants, however, voted also for Matthias, for the reason that he had already shown a tolerant policy towards their brethren in Austria, Hungary and Bohemia.

His first measures, as Emperor, justified this view of his character. He held a Diet at Ratisbon for the purpose of settling the existing differences between the two, but nothing was accomplished: the Protestants, finding that they would be outvoted, withdrew in a body and thus broke up the Diet. Matthias next endeavored to dissolve both the "Union" and the "League," in which he was only partially successful. At the same time his rule in Hungary was menaced by a revolt of the Transylvanian chief, Bethlen Gabor, who was a.s.sisted by the Turks: he grew weary of his task, and was easily persuaded by the other princes of his house to adopt his nephew, Duke Ferdinand of Styria, as his successor, in the year 1617, having no children of his own.

[Sidenote: 1618. BEGINNING OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.]

Ferdinand, who had been carefully educated by the Jesuits for the part which he was afterwards to play, and whose violent suppression of the Protestant faith in Styria made him acceptable to all the German Catholics, was a man of great energy and force of character. He was stern, bigoted, cruel, yet shrewd, cunning and apparently conciliatory when he found it necessary to be so, resembling, in both respects, his predecessor, Charles V. of Spain. In return for being chosen by the Bohemians to succeed Matthias as king, he confirmed them in the religious freedom which they had extorted from Rudolf II., and then joined the Emperor in an expedition to Hungary, leaving Bohemia to be governed in the interim by a Council of ten, seven Catholics and three Protestants.

The first thing that happened was the destruction of two Protestant churches by Catholic Bishops. The Bohemian Protestants appealed immediately to the Emperor Matthias, but, instead of redress, he gave them only threats. Thereupon they rose in Prague, stormed the Council Hall, seized two of the Councillors and one of their Secretaries, and hurled them out of the windows. Although they fell a distance of twenty-eight feet, they were not killed, and all finally escaped. This event happened on the 23d of May, 1618, and marks the beginning of the Thirty Years' War. After such long chronicles of violence and slaughter, the deed seemed of slight importance; but the hundredth anniversary of the Reformation (counting from Luther's proclamation against Tetzel, on the 31st of October, 1517) had been celebrated by the Protestants the year before, England was lost and France barely restored to the Church of Rome, the power of Spain was declining, and the Catholic priests and princes were resolved to make one more desperate struggle to regain their supremacy in Germany. Only the Protestant princes, as a body, seemed blind to the coming danger. Relying on the fact that four-fifths of the whole population of the Empire were Protestants, they still persisted in regarding all the political forms of the Middle Ages as holy, and in accepting nearly every measure which gave advantage to their enemies.

[Sidenote: 1619.]

Although the Protestants had only three Councillors out of ten, they were largely in the majority in Bohemia. They knew what retaliation the outbreak in Prague would bring upon them, and antic.i.p.ated it by making the revolution general. They chose Count Thun as their leader, overturned the Imperial government, banished the Jesuits from the country, and entered into relations with the Protestant n.o.bles of Austria, and the insurgent chief Bethlen Gabor in Hungary. The Emperor Matthias was willing to compromise the difficulty, but Ferdinand, stimulated by the Jesuits, declared for war. He sent two small armies into Bohemia, with a proclamation calling upon the people to submit. The Protestants of the North were at last aroused from their lethargy. Count Mansfeld marched with a force of 4,000 men to aid the Bohemians, and 3,000 more came from Silesia; the Imperial army was defeated and driven back to the Danube. At this juncture the Emperor Matthias died, on the 20th of May, 1619.

Ferdinand lost not a day in taking the power into his own hands. But Austria threatened revolution, Hungary had made common cause with Bohemia, Count Thun was marching on Vienna, and he was without an army to support his claims. Count Thun, however, instead of attacking Vienna, encamped outside the walls and began to negotiate. Ferdinand, hard pressed by the demands of the Austrian Protestants, was on the very point of yielding--in fact, a member of a deputation of sixteen n.o.blemen had seized him by the coat,--when trumpets were heard, and a body of 500 cavalry, which had reached the city without being intercepted by the besiegers, appeared before the palace. This enabled him to defend the city, until the defeat of Count Mansfeld by another portion of his army, which had entered Bohemia, compelled Count Thun to raise the siege. Then Ferdinand hastened to Frankfort to look after his election as Emperor by the Diet, which met on the 28th of August, 1619.

It seems almost incredible that now, knowing his character and designs, the three Chief Electors who were Protestants should have voted for him, without being conscious that they were traitors to their faith and their people. It has been charged, but without any clear evidence, that they were bribed: it is probable that Ferdinand, whose Jesuitic education taught him that falsehood and perjury are permitted in serving the Church, misled them by promises of peace and justice; but it is also very likely that they imagined their own sovereignty depended on sustaining every tradition of the Empire. The people, of course, had not yet acquired any rights which a prince felt himself called upon to respect.

[Sidenote: 1620. FREDERICK V. DRIVEN FROM BOHEMIA.]

Ferdinand was elected, and properly crowned in the Cathedral at Frankfort, as Ferdinand II. The Bohemians, who were ent.i.tled to one of the seven chief voices in the Diet, claimed that the election was not binding upon them, and chose Frederick V. of the Palatinate as their king, in the hope that the Protestant "Union" would rally to their support. It was a fatal choice and a false hope. When Maximilian of Bavaria, at the head of the Catholic "League," took the field for the Emperor, the "Union" cowardly withdrew. Frederick V. went to Bohemia, was crowned, and idled his time away in fantastic diversions for one winter, while Ferdinand was calling Spain to attack the Palatinate of the Rhine, and borrowing Cossacks from Poland to put down his Protestant subjects in Austria. The Emperor a.s.sured the Protestant princes that the war should be confined to Bohemia, and one of them, the Elector John George of Saxony, a Lutheran, openly went over to his side in order to defeat Frederick V., a Calvinist. The Bohemians fell back to the walls of Prague before the armies of the Emperor and Bavaria; and there, on the White Mountain, a battle of an hour's duration, in November, 1620, decided the fate of the country. The former scattered in all directions; Frederick V. left Prague never to return, and Spanish, Italian and Hungarian troops overran Bohemia.

Ferdinand II. acted as might have been expected from his despotic and bigoted nature. The 8,000 Cossacks which he had borrowed from his brother-in-law, king Sigismund of Poland, had already closed all Protestant Churches and suppressed freedom of worship in Austria; he now applied the same measures to Bohemia, but in a more violent and b.l.o.o.d.y form. Twenty-seven of the chief Protestant n.o.bles were beheaded at Prague in one day; thousands of families were stripped of all their property and banished; the Protestant churches were given to the Catholics, the Jesuits took possession of the University and the schools, until finally, as a historian says, "the quiet of a sepulchre settled over Bohemia." The Protestant faith was practically obliterated from all the Austrian realm, with the exception of a few scattered congregations in Hungary and Transylvania.

[Sidenote: 1621.]

There is hardly anywhere, in the history of the world, such an instance of savage despotism. A large majority of the population of Austria, Bohemia and Styria were Protestants; they were rapidly growing in intelligence, in social order and material prosperity; but the will of one man was allowed to destroy the progress of a hundred years, to crush both the faith and freedom of the people, plunder them of their best earnings and make them ignorant slaves for 200 years longer. The property which was seized by Ferdinand II., in Bohemia alone, was estimated at forty millions of florins! And the strength of Germany, which was Protestant, looked on and saw all this happen! Only the common people of Austria arose against the tyrant, and gallantly struggled for months, at first under the command of a farmer named Stephen Fadinger, and, when he was slain in the moment of victory, under an unknown young hero, who had no other name than "the Student." The latter defeated the Bavarian army, resisted the famous Austrian general, Pappenheim, in many battles, and at last fell, after the most of his followers had fallen, without leaving his name to history. The Austrian peasants rivalled the Swiss of three centuries before in their bravery and self-sacrifice: had they been successful (as they might have been, with small help from their Protestant brethren), they would have changed the course of German history, and have become renowned among the heroes of the world.

The fate of Austria, from that day to this, was now sealed. Both parties--the Catholics, headed by Ferdinand II., and the Protestants, without any head,--next turned to the Palatinate of the Rhine, where a Spanish army, sent from Flanders, was wasting and plundering in the name of the Emperor. Count Ernest of Mansfeld and Prince Christian of Brunswick, who had supported Frederick V. in Bohemia, endeavored to save at least the Palatinate for him. They were dashing and eccentric young generals, whose personal reputation attracted all sorts of wild and lawless characters to take service under them. Mansfeld, who had been originally a Catholic, was partly supported by contributions from England and Holland, but he also took what he could get from the country through which he marched. Christian of Brunswick was a fantastic prince, who tried to imitate the knights of the Middle Ages. He was a great admirer of the Countess Elizabeth of the Palatinate (sister of Charles I. of England), and always wore her glove on his helmet. In order to obtain money for his troops, he plundered the bishoprics in Westphalia, and forced the cities and villages to pay him heavy contributions. When he entered the cathedral at Paderborn and saw the silver statues of the Apostles around the altar, he cried out: "What are you doing here? You were ordered to go forth into the world, but wait a bit--I'll send you!"

So he had them melted and coined into dollars, upon which the words were stamped: "Friend of G.o.d, foe of priests!" He afterwards gave himself that name, but the soldiers generally called him "Mad Christian."

[Sidenote: 1621. PRINCE CHRISTIAN OF BRUNSWICK.]

Against these two, and George Frederick of Baden, who joined them, Ferdinand II. sent Maximilian of Bavaria, to whom he promised the Palatinate as a reward, and Tilly, a general already famous both for his military talent and his inhumanity. The latter, who had been educated by the Jesuits for a priest, was in the Bavarian service. He was a small, lean man, with a face almost comical in its ugliness. His nose was like a parrot's beak, his forehead seamed with deep wrinkles, his eyes sunk in their sockets and his cheek-bones projecting. He usually wore a dress of green satin, with a c.o.c.ked hat and long red feather, and rode a small, mean-looking gray horse.

Early in 1622 the Imperial army under Tilly was defeated, or at least checked, by the united forces of Mansfeld and Prince Christian. But in May of the same year, the forces of the latter, with those of George Frederick of Baden, were almost cut to pieces by Tilly, at Wimpfen. They retreated into Alsatia, where they burned and plundered at will, while Tilly pursued the same course on the eastern side of the Rhine. He took and destroyed the cities of Mannheim and Heidelberg, closed the Protestant churches, banished the clergymen and teachers, and supplied their places with Jesuits. The invaluable library of Heidelberg was sent to Pope Gregory XV. at Rome, and remained there until 1815, when a part of it came back to the University by way of Paris.

[Sidenote: 1623.]

Frederick V., who had fled from the country, entered into negotiations with the Emperor, in the hope of retaining the Palatinate. He dissolved his connection with Mansfeld and Prince Christian, who thereupon offered their services to the Emperor, on condition that he would pay their soldiers! Receiving no answer, they marched through Lorraine and Flanders, laying waste the country as they went, and finally took refuge in Holland. Frederick V.'s humiliation was of no avail; none of the Protestant princes supported his claim. The Emperor gave his land, with the Electoral dignity, to Maximilian of Bavaria, and this act, although a direct violation of the laws which the German princes held sacred, was acquiesced in by them at a Diet held at Ratisbon in 1623. John George of Saxony, who saw clearly that it was a fatal blow aimed both at the Protestants and at the rights of the reigning princes, was persuaded to be silent by the promise of having Lusatia added to Saxony.

By this time, Germany was in a worse condition than she had known for centuries. The power of the Jesuits, represented by Ferdinand II., his councillors and generals, was supreme almost everywhere; the Protestant princes vied with each other in meanness, selfishness and cowardice; the people were slaughtered, robbed, driven hither and thither by both parties: there seemed to be neither faith nor justice left in the land.

The other Protestant nations--England, Holland, Denmark and Sweden--looked on with dismay, and even Cardinal Richelieu, who was then practically the ruler of France, was willing to see Ferdinand II.'s power crippled, though the Protestants should gain thereby. England and Holland a.s.sisted Mansfeld and Prince Christian with money, and the latter organized new armies, with which they ravaged Friesland and Westphalia. Prince Christian was on his way to Bohemia, in order to unite with the Hungarian chief, Bethlen Gabor, when, on the 6th of August, 1623, he met Tilly at a place called Stadtloon, near Munster, and, after a murderous battle which lasted three days, was utterly defeated. About the same time Mansfeld, needing further support, went to England, where he was received with great honor.

Ferdinand II. had in the meantime concluded a peace with Bethlen Gabor, and his authority was firmly established over Austria and Bohemia. Tilly with his Bavarians was victorious in Westphalia; all armed opposition to the Emperor's rule was at an end, yet instead of declaring peace established, and restoring the former order of the Empire, his agents continued their work of suppressing religious freedom and civil rights in all the States which had been overrun by the Catholic armies. The whole Empire was threatened with the fate of Austria. Then, at last, in 1625, Brunswick, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, Hamburg, Lubeck and Bremen formed a union for mutual defence, choosing as their leader king Christian IV. of Denmark, the same monarch who had broken down the power of the Hanseatic League in the Baltic and North Seas! Although a Protestant, he was no friend to the North-German States, but he energetically united with them in the hope of being able to enlarge his kingdom at their expense.

[Sidenote: 1625. ALLIANCE WITH CHRISTIAN IV.]

Christian IV. lost no time in making arrangements with England and Holland which enabled both Mansfeld and Prince Christian of Brunswick to raise new forces, with which they returned to Germany. Tilly, in order to intercept them, entered the territory of the States which had united, and thus gave Christian IV. a pretext for declaring war. The latter marched down from Denmark at once, but found no earnest union among the States, and only 7,000 men collected. He soon succeeded, however, in bringing together a force much larger than that commanded by Tilly, and was only hindered in his plan of immediate action by a fall from his horse, which crippled him for six weeks. The city of Hamelin was taken, and Tilly compelled to fall back, but no other important movements took place during the year 1625.

Ferdinand II. was already growing jealous of the increasing power of Bavaria, and determined that the Catholic and Imperial cause should not be entrusted to Tilly alone. But he had little money, his own military force had been wasted by the wars in Bohemia, Austria and Hungary, and there was no other commander of sufficient renown to attract men to his standard. Yet it was necessary that Tilly should be reinforced as soon as possible, or his scheme of crushing the whole of Germany, and laying it, as a fettered slave, at the feet of the Roman Church, might fail, and at the very moment when success seemed sure.