A Political and Social History of Modern Europe Part 23

[Sidenote: Wallenstein]

Against the Danish invasion, Tilly unaided might have had difficulty to stand, but fortune seemed to have raised up a codefender of the imperialist cause in the person of an extraordinary adventurer, Wallenstein. This man had enriched himself enormously out of the recently confiscated estates of rebellious Bohemians, and now, in order to benefit himself still further, he secured permission from the Emperor Ferdinand II to raise an independent army of his own to restore order in the empire and to expel the Danes. By liberal promises of pay and plunder, the soldier of fortune soon recruited an army of some 50,000 men, and what a motley collection it was! Italian, Swiss, Spaniard, German, Pole, Englishman, and Scot,--Protestant was welcomed as heartily as Catholic,--any one who loved adventure or hoped for gain, all united by the single tie of loyalty and devotion to Wallenstein. The force was whipped into shape by the undoubted genius of its commander and at once became an effective machine of war. Yet the perpetual plundering of the land, on which it lived, was a constant source of reproach to the army of Wallenstein.

The campaigning of the second period of the war took place in North Germany. At Lutter, King Christian IV was defeated overwhelmingly by the combined forces of Tilly and Wallenstein, and the Lutheran states were left at the mercy of the Catholic League. Brandenburg openly espoused the imperialist cause and aided Ferdinand's generals in expelling the Danish king from German soil. Only the lack of naval control of the Baltic and North seas prevented the victors from seizing Denmark. The desperation of Christian and the growingly suspicious activity of Sweden resulted in the peace of Lubeck (1629), by which the king of Denmark was left in possession of Jutland, Schleswig, and Holstein, but deprived of the German bishoprics which various members of his family had taken from the Catholic Church.

Following up its successes, the Catholic League prevailed upon the Emperor Ferdinand II in the same year (1629) to sign the Edict of Rest.i.tution, restoring to the Church all the property that had been secularized in violation of the peace of Augsburg of 1555. The edict was to be executed by imperial commissioners, all of whom were Catholics, and so well did they do their work that, within three years of the promulgation of the edict, Roman Catholicism in the Germanies had recovered five bishoprics, thirty Hanse towns, and nearly a hundred monasteries, to say nothing of parish churches of which the number can hardly be estimated.

So far, the religious and economic grievances against the Habsburgs had been confined mainly to Calvinists, but now the Lutheran princes were alarmed. The enforcement of the Edict of Rest.i.tution against all Protestants alike was the signal for an emphatic protest from Lutherans as well as from Calvinists. A favorable opportunity for intervention seemed to present itself to the foremost Lutheran power--Sweden. Not only were many Protestant princes in Germany in a mood to welcome foreign a.s.sistance against the Catholics, but the emperor was less able to resist invasion, since in 1630, yielding to the urgent entreaties of the Catholic League, he dismissed the plundering and ambitious Wallenstein from his service.

The king of Sweden at this time was Gustavus Adolphus (1611-1632), the grandson of that Gustavus Vasa who had established both the independence and the Lutheranism of his country. Gustavus Adolphus was one of the most attractive figures of his age--in the prime of life, tall, fair, and blue-eyed, well educated and versed in seven languages, fond of music and poetry, skilled and daring in war, impetuous, well balanced, and versatile. A rare combination of the idealist and the practical man of affairs, Gustavus Adolphus had dreamed of making Protestant Sweden the leading power in northern Europe and had vigorously set to work to achieve his ends. His determination to encircle the whole Baltic with his own territories--making it literally a Swedish lake--brought him first into conflict with Muscovy, or, as we call it today, Russia. Finland and Esthonia were occupied, and Russia agreed in 1617 to exclusion from the Baltic sea coast. Next a stubborn conflict with Poland (1621-1629) secured for Sweden the province of Livonia and the mouth of the Vistula River. Gustavus then turned his longing eyes to the Baltic coast of northern Germany, at the very time when the Edict of Rest.i.tution promised him aggrieved allies in that quarter.

[Sidenote: 3. Swedish Intervention: Gustavus Adolphus]

It was likewise at the very time when Cardinal Richelieu had crushed out all insurrection, whether Huguenot or n.o.ble, in France and was seeking some effective means of prolonging the war in the Germanies to the end that the rival Habsburgs might be irretrievably weakened and humiliated. He entered into definite alliance with Gustavus Adolphus and provided him arms and money, for the time asking only that the Protestant champion accord the liberty of Catholic worship in conquered districts.

[Sidenote: French Aid]

Gustavus Adolphus landed in Pomerania in 1630 and proceeded to occupy the chief northern fortresses and to treat for alliances with the influential Protestant electors of Brandenburg and Saxony. While Gustavus tarried at Potsdam, in protracted negotiation with the elector of Brandenburg, Tilly and the imperialists succeeded, after a long siege, in capturing the Lutheran stronghold of Magdeburg (May, 1631).

The fall of the city was attended by a mad ma.s.sacre of the garrison, and of armed and unarmed citizens, in streets, houses, and churches; at least 20,000 perished; wholesale plundering and a general conflagration completed the havoc. The sack of Magdeburg evoked the greatest indignation from the Lutherans. Gustavus Adolphus, now joined by the electors of Brandenburg and Saxony and by many other Protestant princes of northern Germany, advanced into Saxony, where, in September, 1631, he avenged the destruction of Magdeburg by defeating decisively the smaller army of Tilly on the Breitenfeld, near Leipzig. Then Gustavus turned southwestward, making for the Rhine valley, with the idea of forming a union with the Calvinist princes. Only the prompt protest of his powerful ally, Richelieu, prevented the rich archbishoprics of Cologne, Trier, and Mainz from pa.s.sing immediately under Swedish control. Next Gustavus Adolphus turned east and invaded Bavaria. Tilly, who had rea.s.sembled his forces, failed to check the invasion and lost his life in a battle on the Lech (April, 1632). The victorious Swedish king now made ready to carry the war into the hereditary dominions of the Austrian Habsburgs. As a last resort to check the invader, the emperor recalled Wallenstein with full power over his freelance army.

About the same time the emperor concluded a close alliance with his kinsman, the ambitious Philip IV of Spain.

The memorable contest between the two great generals--Gustavus Adolphus and Wallenstein--was brought to a tragic close in the late autumn of the same year on the fateful field of Lutzen. Wallenstein was defeated, but Gustavus was killed. Although the Swedes continued the struggle, they were comparatively few in numbers and possessed no such general as their fallen king. On the other side, Wallenstein's loyalty could not be depended upon; rumors reached the ear of the emperor that his foremost general was negotiating with the Protestants to make peace on his own terms; and Wallenstein was a.s.sa.s.sinated in his camp by fanatical imperialists (February, 1634). The tragic removal of both Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus, the economic exhaustion of the whole empire, and the national desire on the part of many Protestant princes, as well as on the part of the Catholic emperor, to rid the Germanies of foreign soldiers and foreign influence--all these developments seemed to point to the possibility of concluding the third, or Swedish, period of the war, not perhaps as advantageously for the imperialist cause as had ended the Bohemian revolt or the Danish intervention, but at any rate in a spirit of reasonable compromise. In fact, in May, 1635, a treaty was signed at Prague between the emperor and such princes as were then willing to lay down their arms, whereby all the military forces in the empire were henceforth to be under the direct control of the emperor (with the exception of a contingent under the special command of the Lutheran elector of Saxony); all princely leagues within the empire were to be dissolved; mutual restoration of captured territory was to be made; and, as to the fundamental question of the ownership of ecclesiastical lands, it was settled that any such lands actually held in the year 1627, whether acquired before or after the religious peace of Augsburg of 1555, should continue so to be held for forty years or until in each case an amicable arrangement could be reached.

What wrecked the peace of Prague was not so much the disinclination of the Protestant princes of Germany to accept its terms as the policy of Cardinal Richelieu of France. Richelieu was convinced more than ever that French greatness depended upon Habsburg defeat; he would not suffer the princes to make peace with the emperor until the latter was soundly trounced and all Germany devastated; instead of supplying the Swedes and the German Protestants with a.s.sistance from behind the scenes, he now would come boldly upon the stage and engage the emperor in open combat.

[Sidenote: 4. French Intervention. Richelieu's Policy in the Germanies]

The final, or French, period of the Thirty Years' War lasted from 1635 to 1648--almost as long as the other three periods put together.

Richelieu entered the war not only to humble the Austrian Habsburgs and, if possible, to wrest the valuable Rhenish province of Alsace from the Holy Roman Empire, but also to strike telling blows at the Continental supremacy of the Spanish Habsburgs, who, since 1632, had been actively helping their German kinsmen. The Spanish king, it will be remembered, still held the Belgian Netherlands, on the northern frontier of France, and Franche Comte on the east, while oft-contested Milan in northern Italy was a Spanish dependency. France was almost surrounded by Spanish possessions, and Richelieu naturally declared war against Spain as against the emperor. The wily French cardinal could count upon the Swedes and many of the German Protestants to keep the Austrian Habsburgs busily engaged and upon the a.s.sistance of the Dutch in humbling the Spaniard, for Spain had not yet formally recognized the independence of the Dutch Netherlands. Inasmuch as England was chiefly concerned with troublesome internal affairs, the enemies of France could hardly expect aid from across the Channel.

[Sidenote: Conde and Turenne]

At first, the French suffered a series of military reverses, due in large part to unpreparedness, incompetent commanders, and ill- disciplined troops. At one time it looked as if the Spaniards might capture Paris. But with unflagging zeal and patriotic devotion, Richelieu pressed on the war. He raised armies, drilled them, and dispatched them into the Netherlands, into Alsace, into Franche Comte, into northern Italy, and into Roussillon. He stirred up the Portuguese to revolt and recover their independence (1640). And Mazarin, who succeeded him in 1642, preserved his foreign policy intact. Young and brilliant generals now appeared at the head of the French forces, among whom were the dashing Prince of Conde (1621-1686), and the master strategist Turenne (1611-1675), the greatest soldier of his day. The former's victory of Rocroi (1643) dated the commencement of the supremacy of France in war, a supremacy which was retained for a century.

[Sidenote: Peace of Westphalia (1648)]

Finally, Turenne's masterly maneuvering against the Spaniards and his forcible detachment of Maximilian of Bavaria from the imperial alliance broke down effective opposition and ended the Thirty Years' War in the Germanies. The various treaties which were signed in 1648 const.i.tuted the peace of Westphalia.

The political clauses of the peace of Westphalia provided: (1) Each German state was free to make peace or war without consulting the emperor--each prince was invested with sovereign authority; (2) France received Alsace, except the free city of Stra.s.sburg, and was confirmed in the possession of the bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun; (3) Sweden was given territory in Pomerania controlling the mouth of the Oder, and the secularized bishopric of Bremen, surrounding the city of that name and dominating the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser; (4) France and Sweden received votes in the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire, with implied rights to exercise an oversight of German affairs; (5) Brandenburg secured eastern Pomerania and several bishoprics, including Magdeburg; (6) The Palatinate was divided between Maximilian of Bavaria and the son of the deposed Frederick--each bearing the t.i.tle of elector; (7) Switzerland and the United Provinces (Holland) were formally recognized as independent of the empire and of Spain respectively.

The religious difficulties were settled as follows: (1) Calvinists were to share all the privileges of their Lutheran fellow-Protestants; (2) All church property was to be secured in the possession of those, whether Catholics or Protestants, who held it on 1 January, 1624; (3) An equal number of Catholic and Protestant judges were to sit in the imperial courts. Inasmuch as after 1648 there was little relative change of religion in Germany, this religious settlement was practically permanent.

[Sidenote: Evil Effects of the Thirty Years' War on Germany]

One of the most striking results of the peace of Westphalia was the completion of a long process of political disruption in the Germanies.

Only the form of the Holy Roman Empire survived. The already shadowy imperial power became a mere phantom, nor was a change destined to come until, centuries later, the Prussian Hohenzollerns should replace the Austrian Habsburgs. Meanwhile the weakness of Germany enabled France to extend her northern boundaries toward the Rhine.

Far more serious than her political losses were the economic results to Germany. The Thirty Years' War left Germany almost a desert. "About two-thirds of the total population had disappeared; the misery of those that survived was piteous in the extreme. Five-sixths of the villages in the empire had been destroyed. We read of one in the Palatinate that in two years had been plundered twenty-eight times. In Saxony, packs of wolves roamed about, for in the north quite one-third of the land had gone out of cultivation, and trade had drifted into the hands of the French or Dutch. Education had almost disappeared; and the moral decline of the people was seen in the coa.r.s.ening of manners and the growth of superst.i.tion, as witnessed by frequent burning of witches."

[Sidenote: Continuation of War between French Bourbons and Spanish Hapsburgs. Peace of the Pyrenees 1659]

The peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War in the Germanies, but it did not stop the bitter contest between France and Spain.

Mazarin was determined to secure even greater territorial gains for his country, and, although Conde deserted to Spain, Turenne was more than a match for any commander whom the Spaniards could put in the field.

Mazarin, moreover, by ceding the fortress of Dunkirk to the English, obtained aid from the veteran troops of Cromwell. It was not until 1659 that, in the celebrated treaty of the Pyrenees, peace was concluded between France and Spain. This provided: (1) France added the province of Roussillon on her southern frontier and that of Artois on the north; (2) France was recognized as protector of the duchy of Lorraine; (3) Conde was pardoned and reinstated in French service; (4) Maria Theresa, eldest daughter of the Spanish Habsburg king, Philip IV, was to marry the young French Bourbon king, Louis XIV, and, in consideration of the payment of a large dowry, was to renounce all claims to the Spanish dominions.

The treaty of the Pyrenees was the last important achievement of Cardinal Mazarin. But before he died in 1661 he had the satisfaction of seeing the triumph of those policies which he had adopted from Richelieu: the royal power firmly established within France; the Habsburgs, whether Austrian or Spanish, defeated and humiliated; the Bourbon king of France respected and feared throughout Europe.

[Sidenote: Development of International Law]

[Sidenote: In Italy]

Not least among the results of the conflict between Habsburgs and Bourbons was the stimulus given to the acceptance of fixed principles of international law and of definite usages for international diplomacy. In ancient times the existence of the all-embracing Roman Empire had militated against the development of international relations as we know them to-day. In the early middle ages feudal society had left little room for diplomacy. Of course, both in ancient times and in the middle ages, there had been emba.s.sies and negotiations and treaties; but the emba.s.sies had been no more than temporary missions directed to a particular end, and there had been neither permanent diplomatic agents nor a professional diplomatic cla.s.s. To the development of such a cla.s.s the Italy of the fifteenth century had given the first impetus. Northern and central Italy was then filled, as we have discovered, with a large number of city-states, all struggling for political and economic mastery, all dependent for the maintenance of a "balance of power" upon alliances and counter alliances, all employing diplomacy quite as much as war in the game of peninsular politics. It was in Italy that there grew up the inst.i.tution of pa.s.sports, the distinction between armed forces and civilians, international comity, and in fact the very notion that states have an interest in the observance of law and order among themselves. Of special importance, in this connection, was Venice, which gradually evolved a regular system of permanent diplomats, and incidentally obliged her amba.s.sadors to present detailed reports on foreign affairs; and, because of their commercial preeminence in the Mediterranean, the Venetians contributed a good deal to the development of rules of the sea first in time of peace, and subsequently in time of war.

[Sidenote: In Europe in Sixteenth Century]

During the sixteenth century the Italian ideas of statecraft and inter- state relations, ably championed by Machiavelli, were communicated to the nations of western Europe. Permanent emba.s.sies were established in foreign countries by the kings of Spain, Portugal, France, and England.

Customs of international intercourse grew up. Diplomacy became a recognized occupation of distinguished statesmen.

[Sidenote: Thirty Years' War and International Law]

Two inst.i.tutions might have thwarted or r.e.t.a.r.ded the development of international law: one was the Catholic Church with its international organization and its claim to universal spiritual supremacy; the other was the Holy Roman Empire, with its claim to temporal predominance and with its insistence upon the essential inequality between itself and all other states. But the Protestant Revolt in the sixteenth century dealt a severe blow to the claim and power of the Catholic Church. And the long struggle between Bourbons and Habsburgs, culminating in the Thirty Years' War, reduced the Holy Roman Empire to a position, in theory as well as in fact, certainly no higher than that of the national monarchies of France, England, and Spain, or that of the Dutch Republic.

From the treaties of Westphalia emerged a real state-system in Europe, based on the theory of the essential equality of independent sovereign states, though admitting of the fact that there were Great Powers.

Henceforth the public law of Europe was to be made by diplomats and by congresses of amba.s.sadors. Westphalia pointed the new path.

Another aspect of international relations was emphasized in the first half of the seventeenth century. It was the Thirty Years' War, with its revolting cruelty, which brought out the contrast between the more humane practice of war as an art in Italy and the savagery which disgraced the Germanies. The brutality of the struggle turned thinkers'

attention to the need of formulating rules for the protection of non- combatants in time of war, the treatment of the sick and wounded, the prohibition of wanton pillage and other horrors which shocked the awakening conscience of seventeenth-century Europe. It was the starting-point of the publication of treatises on international law.

[Sidenote: Grotius]

The first effective work, the one which was destined long to influence sovereigns and diplomats, was Grotius's _On the Law of War and Peace_. Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) [Footnote: Known in his native country as Huig van Groot. The last years of his life he spent as amba.s.sador of Sweden at the French court.] was a learned Dutch humanist, whose active partic.i.p.ation in politics against the stadholder of the Netherlands and whose strong protests for religious toleration against the dominant orthodox Calvinists of his country combined to bring upon himself a sentence of life imprisonment. Immured in a Dutch fortress in 1619, he managed to escape and fled to Paris, where he prepared and in 1625 published his immortal work. _On the Law of War and Peace_ is an exhaustive and masterly text-book--the first and one of the best of the systematic treatises on the fundamental principles of international law.

ADDITIONAL READING

HENRY IV, RICHELIEU, AND MAZARIN. Brief general accounts: H. O.

Wakeman, _The Ascendancy of France, 1598-1715_ (1894), ch. i-vii; Mary A. Hollings, _Renaissance and Reformation, 1453-1660_ (1910), ch. xi, xii; J. H. Sacret, _Bourbon and Vasa, 1610-1715_ (1914), ch. i-vii; A.

J. Grant, _The French Monarchy, 1483-1789_, Vol. I (1900), ch. vi-ix; G. W. Kitchin, _A History of France_, 3d and 4th editions (1894-1899), Vol. II, Book IV, ch. i-iii, Vol. III, Book IV, ch. iv-viii; H. T.

Dyer, _A History of Modern Europe from the Fall of Constantinople_, 3d ed. rev. by Arthur Ha.s.sall (1901), ch. xxix-x.x.xv; Victor Duruy, _History of Modern Times_, trans. and rev. by E. A. Grosvenor (1894), ch. xvii, xviii, xx; _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. II, ch. xx (by Stanley Leathes, on Henry IV), Vol. IV, ch. iv (on Richelieu), xxi (on Mazarin); _Histoire generale_, Vol. V, ch. vi-viii, Vol. VI, ch. i.

More detailed works: _Histoire de France_, ed. by Ernest Lavisse, Vol.

VI, Part I (1904), Livre IV (on Henry IV), Vol. VI, Part II (1905), Livres I-III (on Henry IV and Richelieu, by J. H. Mariejol), Vol. VII, Part I (1906), Livre I (on Mazarin, by E. Lavisse); P. F. Willert, _Henry of Navarre_ (1897), in "Heroes of the Nations" Series; C. C.

Jackson, _The First of the Bourbons_, 2 vols. (1890); J. B. Perkins, _Richelieu and the Growth of French Power_ (1900), in the "Heroes of the Nations" Series, and, by the same author, an admirable writer and authority on the whole period, _France under Mazarin_, 2 vols. (1886); Georges (Vicomte) d'Avenel, _Richelieu et la monarchie absolue_, 4 vols. (1884-1890), the foremost French work on the subject; Gabriel Hanotaux, _Origines de l'inst.i.tution des intendants de provinces_ (1884), a careful study of the beginnings of the office of intendant by a famous French statesman and historian; P. A. Cheruel, _Histoire de France pendant la minorite de Louis XIV_, 4 vols. (1879-1880), and, by the same author, _Histoire de France sous le ministere de Mazarin, 1651-1661_, 3 vols. (1882), a very elaborate treatment of Mazarin's public career in France; Louis Batiffol, _The Century of the Renaissance in France_, Eng. trans. by Elsie F. Buckley (1916), containing an excellent chapter on the French monarchy at the close of the sixteenth century.

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. General treatments: E. F. Henderson, _A Short History of Germany_, Vol. I (1902), ch. xvii, xviii, a good, short introduction; S. R. Gardiner, _The Thirty Years' War_ (1897), in the "Epochs of Modern History" Series, the best brief survey; _History of All Nations_, Vol. XII, ch. iv-viii, by Martin Philippson, a well-known German historian; _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. IV (1906), ch. i, iii, v-vii, xiii, xiv, xx, xxii; _Histoire generale_, Vol. V, ch. xii; Anton Gindely, _The Thirty Years' War_, trans. from the German by Andrew Ten Brook, 2 vols. (1884), a popular treatment by a recognized authority in this field, breaking off, unfortunately, in the year 1623; Gustav Droysen, _Das Zeitalter des dreissigjahrigen Krieges_ (1888) and Georg Winter, _Geschichte des dreissigjahrigen Krieges_ (1893), two bulky volumes in the Oncken Series devoted respectively to the political and military aspects of the war; emile Charveriat, _Histoire de la guerre de trente ans_, 2 vols. (1878), a reliable French account of the whole struggle. On the history of the Germanies from the religious peace of Augsburg to the peace of Westphalia there is the painstaking _Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Gegenreformation und des dreissigjahrigen Krieges, 1555-1648_, by Moritz Ritter, 3 vols.

(1889-1908). For the history of Austria during the period, see Franz Kroncs, _Handbuch der Geschichte Oesterreichs von der altesten Zeit_, Vol. III (1877), Books XIV-XV. For the Netherlands, with special reference to Spain's part in the war: Henri Pirenne, _Histoire de Belgique_, Vol. IV, _1567-1648_ (1911). For Bohemia: Ernest Denis, _Fin de l'independance boheme_, Vol. II (1890), and, by the same author, _La Boheme depuis la Montagne-Blanche_, Vol. I (1903). For Denmark and Sweden: R. N. Bain, _Scandinavia, a Political History of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, from 1513 to 1900_ (1905). There is a convenient biography of _Gustavus Adolphus_ by C. R. L. Fletcher in the "Heroes of the Nations" Series (1890), and a more detailed study in German by Gustav Droysen, 2 vols. (1869-1870). On Wallenstein there are two standard German works: Leopold von Ranke, _Geschichte Wallensteins_, 3d ed. (1872), and Anton Gindely, _Waldstein_, 1625-1630, 2 vols. (1886).

The best brief treatment of European international relations in the time of Richelieu and Mazarin is Emile Bourgeois, _Manuel historique de politique etrangere_, 4th ed., Vol. I (1906), ch. i, ii, vi. For a brief treatment of the development of international law during the period, see D. J. Hill, _History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe_, Vol. II (1906), ch. vii. The treaties of Westphalia are in the famous old compilation of Jean Dumont, _Corps universel diplomatique du droit des gens_, 8 vols. (1726-1731).