An Introduction to the History of Western Europe Part 49

Spain itself had suffered most of all from Philip's reign.[327] His domestic policy and his expensive wars had weakened a country which had never been intrinsically strong. The income from across the sea was bound to decrease as the mines were exhausted. The final expulsion of the industrious Moors, shortly after Philip's death, left the indolent Spaniards to till their own fields, which rapidly declined in fertility under their careless cultivation. Poverty was deemed no disgrace but manual labor was. Some one once ventured to tell a Spanish king that "not gold and silver but sweat is the most precious metal, a coin which is always current and never depreciates"; but it was a rare form of currency in the Spanish peninsula. After Philip II's death Spain sinks to the rank of a secondary European power.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR

[Sidenote: The Thirty Years' War really a series of wars.]

178. The last great conflict caused by the differences between the Catholics and Protestants was fought out in Germany during the first half of the seventeenth century. It is generally known as the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), but there was in reality a series of wars; and although the fighting was done upon German territory, Sweden, France, and Spain played quite as important a part as Germany.

[Sidenote: Weaknesses of the Peace of Augsburg.]

Just before the abdication of Charles V, the Lutheran princes had forced the emperor to acknowledge their right to their own religion and to the church property which they had appropriated. The religious Peace of Augsburg had, however, as we have seen,[328] two great weaknesses. In the first place, only those Protestants who held the Lutheran faith were to be tolerated. The Calvinists, who were increasing in numbers, were not included in the peace. In the second place, the peace did not put a stop to the seizure of church property by the Protestant princes.

[Sidenote: Spread of Protestantism.]

During the last years of Ferdinand I's reign and that of his successor there was little trouble. Protestantism, however, made rapid progress and invaded Bavaria, the Austrian possessions, and above all, Bohemia, where the doctrines of Huss had never died out. So it looked for a time as if even the German Hapsburgs were to see large portions of their territory falling away from the old Church. But the Catholics had in the Jesuits a band of active and efficient missionaries. They not only preached and founded schools, but also succeeded in gaining the confidence of some of the German princes, whose chief advisers they became. Conditions were very favorable, at the opening of the seventeenth century, for a renewal of the religious struggle.

[Sidenote: Formation of the Protestant Union and the Catholic League.]

The Lutheran town of Donauworth permitted the existence of a monastery within its limits. In 1607 a Protestant mob attacked the monks as they were pa.s.sing in procession through the streets. Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, an ardent Catholic, on the border of whose possessions the town lay, gladly undertook to punish this outrage. His army entered Donauworth, reestablished the Catholic worship, and drove out the Lutheran pastor. This event led to the formation of the Protestant Union under the leadership of Frederick, elector of the Palatinate. The Union included by no means all the Protestant princes; for example, the Lutheran elector of Saxony refused to have anything to do with the Calvinistic Frederick. The next year the Catholics, on their part, formed the Catholic League under a far more efficient head, namely, Maximilian of Bavaria.[329]

[Sidenote: Bohemia revolts from the Hapsburg rule, 1618.]

[Sidenote: Frederick, elector of the Palatinate, chosen king of Bohemia.]

These were the preliminaries of the Thirty Years' War. Hostilities began in Bohemia, which had been added to the Hapsburg possessions through the marriage of Ferdinand I. The Protestants were so strong in that country that they had forced the emperor in 1609 to grant them privileges greater even than those enjoyed by the Huguenots in France. The government, however, failed to observe this agreement, and the destruction of two Protestant churches resulted in a revolution at Prague in 1618. Three representatives of the emperor were seized by the irritated Bohemian leaders and thrown out of the window of the palace.

After this emphatic protest against the oppressive measures of the government, Bohemia endeavored to establish itself once more as an independent kingdom. It renounced the rule of the Hapsburgs and chose Frederick, the elector of the Palatinate, as its new king. He appeared to the Bohemians to possess a double advantage; in the first place, he was the head of the Protestant Union, and in the second, he was the son-in-law of the king of England, James I, to whom they looked for help.

[Sidenote: Failure of the Bohemian revolt.]

[Sidenote: Battle on the White Hill, 1620.]

The Bohemian venture proved a most disastrous one for Germany and for Protestantism. The new emperor, Ferdinand II (1619-1637), who was at once an uncompromising Catholic and a person of considerable ability, appealed to the League for a.s.sistance. Frederick, the new king of Bohemia, showed himself entirely unequal to the occasion. He and his English wife, the Princess Elizabeth, made a bad impression on the Bohemians, and they failed to gain the support of the neighboring Lutheran elector of Saxony. A single battle, which the army of the League under Maximilian won in 1620, put to flight the poor "winter king," as he was derisively called on account of his reign of a single season. The emperor and the duke of Bavaria set vigorously to work to suppress Protestantism within their borders. The emperor arbitrarily granted the eastern portion of the Palatinate to Maximilian and gave him the t.i.tle of Elector, without consulting the diet.

[Sidenote: England and France unable to a.s.sist the Protestants.]

179. Matters were becoming serious for the Protestant party, and England might have intervened had it not been that James I believed that he could by his personal influence restore peace to Europe and induce the emperor and Maximilian of Bavaria to give back the Palatinate to the "winter king." Even France might have taken a hand, for although Richelieu, then at the head of affairs, had no love for the Protestants, he was still more bitterly opposed to the Hapsburgs. However, his hands were tied for the moment, for he was just undertaking to deprive the Huguenots of their strong towns.

[Sidenote: Christian IV of Denmark invades Germany, but is defeated.]

[Sidenote: Wallenstein.]

A diversion came, nevertheless, from without. Christian IV, king of Denmark, invaded northern Germany in 1625 with a view of relieving his fellow Protestants. In addition to the army of the League which was dispatched against him, a new army was organized by the notorious commander, Wallenstein. The emperor was poor and gladly accepted the offer of this ambitious Bohemian n.o.bleman[330] to collect an army which should support itself upon the proceeds of the war, to wit, confiscation and robbery. Christian met with two serious defeats in northern Germany; even his peninsula was invaded by the imperial forces, and in 1629 he agreed to retire from the conflict.

[Sidenote: The Edict of Rest.i.tution, 1629.]

[Sidenote: Dismissal of Wallenstein.]

[Sidenote: Appearance of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, 1594-1632.]

The emperor was encouraged by the successes of the Catholic armies to issue that same year an Edict of Rest.i.tution. In this he ordered the Protestants throughout Germany to give back all the church possessions which they had seized since the religious Peace of Augsburg (1555).

These included two archbishoprics (Magdeburg and Bremen), nine bishoprics, about one hundred and twenty monasteries, and other church foundations. Moreover, he decreed that only the Lutherans might enjoy the practice of their religion; the other "sects" were to be broken up.

As Wallenstein was preparing to execute this decree in his usual merciless fashion, the war took a new turn. The League had become jealous of a general who threatened to become too powerful, and it accordingly joined in the complaints, which came from every side, of the terrible extortions and incredible cruelty practiced by Wallenstein's troops. The emperor consented, therefore, to dismiss this most competent commander and lose a large part of his army. Just as the Catholics were thus weakened, a new enemy arrived upon the scene who was far more dangerous than any they had yet had to face, Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden.[331]

[Sidenote: The kingdom of Sweden.]

[Sidenote: Gustavus Vasa, 1523-1560.]

180. We have had no occasion hitherto to speak of the Scandinavian kingdoms of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, which the northern German peoples had established about Charlemagne's time; but from now on they begin to take part in the affairs of central Europe. The Union of Calmar (1397) had brought these three kingdoms, previously separate, under a single ruler. About the time that the Protestant revolt began in Germany the union was broken by the withdrawal of Sweden. Gustavus Vasa, a Swedish n.o.ble, led the movement and was subsequently chosen king of Sweden (1523). In the same year Protestantism was introduced. Vasa confiscated the church lands, got the better of the aristocracy, and started Sweden on its way toward national greatness. Under his successor the eastern sh.o.r.es of the Baltic were conquered and the Russians cut off from the sea.

[Sidenote: Motives of Gustavus Adolphus in invading Germany, 1630.]

Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632) was induced to invade Germany for two reasons. In the first place, he was a sincere and enthusiastic Protestant and by far the most generous and attractive figure of his time. He was genuinely afflicted by the misfortunes of his Protestant brethren and anxious to devote himself to their welfare. Secondly, he dreamed of extending his domains so that one day the Baltic might perhaps become a Swedish lake. He undoubtedly hoped by his invasion not only to free his co-religionists from the oppression of the emperor and of the League, but to gain a strip of territory for Sweden.

[Sidenote: Destruction of Magdeburg, 1631.]

[Sidenote: Gustavus Adolphus victorious at Breitenfeld, 1631.]

Gustavus was not received with much cordiality at first by the Protestant princes of the north; but they were brought to their senses by the awful destruction of Magdeburg by the troops of the League under General Tilly. Magdeburg was the most important town of northern Germany. When it finally succ.u.mbed after an obstinate and difficult siege, twenty thousand of its inhabitants were killed and the town burned to the ground. Although Tilly's reputation for cruelty is quite equal to that of Wallenstein, he was probably not responsible for the fire. After Gustavus Adolphus had met Tilly near Leipsic and victoriously routed the army of the League, the Protestant princes began to look with more favor on the foreigner. Gustavus then moved westward and took up his winter quarters on the Rhine.

[Sidenote: Wallenstein recalled.]

[Sidenote: Gustavus Adolphus killed at Lutzen, 1632.]

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 Lutzen, 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.

[Sidenote: Murder of Wallenstein.]

[Sidenote: Battle of Nordlingen, 1634.]

The Swedes did not, however, retire from Germany, but continued to partic.i.p.ate 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 Nordlingen, one of the most b.l.o.o.d.y 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]

[Sidenote: 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-Comte) and a number of fortified towns which would afford protection against the Spanish Netherlands.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: Richelieu's intervention prolongs the war.]

Richelieu declared war against Spain in May, 1635. He had already concluded an alliance with the chief enemies of the house of Austria.

Sweden agreed not to negotiate for peace until France was ready for it.