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Chapter Vii. the Thirty-Years' War, to the Peace Op Westphalia

Outlines of Universal History, Designed As a Text-Book and for Private Reading · George Park Fisher — chapter 59 of 83 · ~2,761 words · public domain

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(1618-1648).

ORIGIN OF THE WAR.--In Germany, more than in any other country, the Reformation had sprung from the hearts of the people. Its progress would have been far greater had it not been retarded by political obstacles, and by divisions among Protestants themselves. Germany, to be sure, was not disunited by the Reformation: it was disunited before. But now strong states existed on its borders,--France, even Denmark and Sweden,--which might profit by its internal conflicts. The Peace of Augsburg, unsatisfactory as it was to both parties, availed to prevent open strife as long as Ferdinand I. (1556-1564) and Maximilian II. (1564-1576) held the imperial office. The latter, especially, favored toleration, and did not sympathize with the fanaticism of the Spanish branch of his family. He condemned the cruelties of Alva and the massacre of St. Bartholomew. With the accession of Rudolph II., a change took place. He had been brought up in Spain. The Catholic counter-reformation was now making its advance. The order of the Jesuits was putting forth great and successful exertions to win back lost ground. There were out-breakings of violence between the two religious parties. A Catholic procession was insulted in Donauwörth, a free city of the empire. The city was put under the ban by the emperor; the Bavarian Duke marched against it, and incorporated it in his own territory (1607). On both sides, complaints were made of the infraction of the Peace of Augsburg. The Donauwörth affair led to the formation of the Evangelical Union, a league into which, however, all the Protestant states did not enter. The Catholic League, under the Leadership of Maximilian of Bavaria, was firmly knit together and full of energy.

FIRST STAGE IN THE WAR (to 1629).

THE BOHEMIAN STRUGGLE.--The Bohemians revolted against Ferdinand II. in 1618, when their religious liberties were violated, and shortly after (1619) refused to acknowledge him as their king. He was a narrow and fanatical, though not by nature a cruel, ruler. He gave himself up to the control of the Catholic League. The two branches of the Hapsburg family--the Austrian and Spanish--were now in full accord with each other. The Bohemians gave their crown to Frederick V., the Elector Palatine, the son-in-law of James I. of England. Bohemia was invaded by Ferdinand, aided by the League, and abandoned to fire and sword. The terrible scenes of the Hussite struggle were re-enacted. In the protracted wars that ensued, it was estimated that the Bohemian population was reduced from about four millions to between seven and eight hundred thousand! The Palatinate was conquered and devastated. The electoral dignity was transferred to the Duke of Bavaria. At last, in 1625, England, Holland, and Denmark intervened in behalf of the fugitive Elector Palatine. Christian IV. of Denmark was defeated, and the intervention failed. The power gained by Maximilian, the Bavarian Duke, made his interests separate, in important particulars, from those of Ferdinand. Ferdinand was able to release himself from the virtual control of Maximilian and the League, through Wallenstein, a general of extraordinary ability. He was a Bohemian noble, proud, ambitious, and wealthy. He raised an army, and made it support itself by pillage. The unspeakable miseries of Germany, in this prolonged struggle, were due largely to the composition of the armies, which were made up of hirelings of different nations, whose trade was war, and who were let loose on an unprotected population. Captured cities were given up to the unbridled passions of a fierce and greedy soldiery. Germany, traversed for a whole generation by these organized bands of marauders, was in many places reduced almost to a desert.

EDICT OF RESTITUTION.--Victory attended the arms of Wallenstein, and of Tilly, a brutal commander, the general of the League. The territory of the Dukes of Mecklenburg was given to Wallenstein as a reward (1629). He was anxious to conquer the German towns on the Baltic. Stralsund offered a stubborn resistance, which he could not overcome. The League moved Ferdinand to the adoption of the Edict of Restitution (1629), which put far off the hope of peace. This edict enforced the parts of the Peace of Augsburg which were odious to the Protestants, especially the Ecclesiastical Reservation (p. 410), and abrogated the provisions of an opposite tenor. It was evident that the real aim was the entire extinction of Protestantism. The League, moreover, induced the emperor to remove Wallenstein, of whom they were jealous. The effect of these measures was to rouse the most lukewarm of the Protestant princes, including the electors of Brandenburg and Saxony, to a sense of the common danger. It was plain that Wallenstein was a sacrifice to the League, and to the ambition of Maximilian of Bavaria.

SECOND STAGE IN THE WAR (1629-1632).

In the second act of this long drama, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden is the hero. His reign is marked by the rise of his country to the height of its power.

EVENTS IN SWEDEN: CAREER OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS.--Gustavus Vasa made the mistake of undertaking to divide power among his four sons. There was a vein of eccentricity, amounting sometimes to insanity, in the family. Eric XIV. was hasty and jealous, imprisoned his brother John, and committed reckless crimes. In 1569 he was himself confined, and nine years after was secretly put to death. John and another brother, Charles of Südermanland, now reigned together. John was favorable to the Roman-Catholic Church, and offended his Protestant subjects by efforts at union and compromise. Moreover, he unwisely made concessions to the nobles, and increased the burdens of the peasants. Finally, he wanted to make his son Sigismund king of Poland, a country which, from its anarchical constitution, was on the road to ruin. Poland was a Catholic land; and, in order to get the crown, Sigismund avowed himself a Catholic. Charles, a strict Lutheran, drew to his side all who were hostile to John's spirit and policy. On the death of the latter (1592), Duke Charles came into collision with Sigismund and with the nobles, whose power depended on his concessions; and he gained the victory over them (1598). In 1604 the Diet gave him the crown, which he wore for seven years. He had to contend against faction, and to withstand the attacks of Denmark and of Russia. In the midst of these troubles he died, and was succeeded by his son Gustavus Adolphus, then less than eighteen years of age (1611-1632). He was a well-educated prince, early familiar with war, a devoted patriot, and, although tolerant in his temper, was a sincere Protestant, after the type of the old Saxon electors. For eighteen years after his accession, it had been his aim to control the Baltic. This had brought him into conflict with Denmark, Poland, and Russia. His interposition in the German war, a step which was full of peril to himself, was regarded by Brandenburg and Saxony with jealousy and repugnance. But when the savage troops of Tilly (1631) sacked and burned Magdeburg, the neutral party was driven to side with Sweden. Gustavus defeated Tilly, and the advance of his army in the South of Germany prostrated the power of the League. The princes regarded the Swedish king with suspicion: the cities regarded him with cordiality. Whether along with his sagacious and just intentions he connected his own elevation to the rank of King of Rome, and emperor, must be left uncertain. Ferdinand was obliged to call back Wallenstein. The battle of Lützen, in 1632, was a great defeat of Wallenstein, and a grand victory for the Swedes; but it cost them the life of their king.

FRANCE.--THE BOURBON KINGS.

THIRD STAGE IN THE WAR (1632-1648).

FRANCE AFTER HENRY IV.--After the death of Gustavus, in the new phase of the war, the influence of Richelieu, the great minister of France, becomes more and more dominant. Germany was in the end doomed to eat the bitter fruits of civil war, such as spring from foreign interference, even when it comes in the form of help. Henry IV. had died when he was on the point of directing the power of France, as of old, against the house of Hapsburg. The country now fell back for a series of years to a state akin to that under the kings who preceded him, although it was saved from a long civil war. Louis XIII. (1610-1643) was a child; and the queen, Mary de Medici, who was the regent, an Italian woman, with no earnest principles, deprived of the counsels of Sully, lavished the resources of the crown upon nobles, who were greedy of place and pelf. At the assembly of the States-general in 1614, nobles, clergy, and the third estate were loud in reciprocal accusations. The queen fell under the influence of the Concinis, an Italian waiting-maid and her husband, the latter of whom she made a marquis and a marshal of France. She leagued herself in various ways with Spain. As the king grew older, a party rallied about him, and the marshal was assassinated (1617). From that time Louis was under the influence of a favorite, the Duke de Luynes, a native Frenchman, with whom the nobles were in sympathy. The duke died in 1621. Then Richelieu, Bishop of Lucon (made a cardinal in 1622), a statesman of extraordinary genius, began his active career in politics, and after 1624 guided the policy of France, as a sort of Mayor of the Palace. Louis XIII. was not personally fond of him, but felt the need of him. Richelieu's aim, as regards the government of France, was to consolidate the monarchy by bringing the aristocracy into subjection to the king. Under him began the process of centralization, the system of officers appointed and paid by the government, which was fully developed after the great revolution. He accomplished the overthrow of the Huguenots as a political organization, a state within the state. In 1628 Rochelle, the last of their towns, fell into his hands. He was determined to make the civil authority supreme. He resisted interference with its rights on the part of the Church. The nobles were reduced to obedience by the infliction of severe punishments. The common people were kept under. But the domestic government of Richelieu made it possible for the selfish and ruinous policy of Louis XIV. to arise. The key of his foreign policy was hostility to Austria and Spain, to both branches of the Hapsburgs. Before he took active measures against them, he had to procure quiet in France, and to provide himself with money and troops.

INTERVENTION OF RICHELIEU.--The pretext of Richelieu for taking part in the German war was the alleged ambitious aim of the Hapsburgs to destroy the independence of other nations. He helped Gustavus with money; but the Swedish king would neither allow him to take territory, nor to dictate the method of prosecuting the contest. It was agreed that the Catholic religion as such should not be attacked. Oxenstiern, the Swedish chancelor, in the Heilbronn Treaty (1633) adhered to the same policy.

DEATH OF WALLENSTEIN.--Wallenstein had now become dangerous to the emperor. He negotiated with the Protestants, the Swedes, and the French, possibly to confront the emperor with the accomplished fact of peace and to claim as a reward the Palatinate or the Kingdom of Bohemia. Deprived of his command and declared a traitor, he was assassinated by some of his officers (1634).

END OF THE WAR.--The imperial victory of Nordlingen (1634) made the active assistance of France necessary. But it was not until the death of Bernard of Weimar, the foremost general of the Germans (1639), that Richelieu found himself at the goal of his efforts. The armies opposed to the emperor were now under the control of the French. The character of the war had changed. Protestant states were fighting on the imperial side: the old theological issues were largely forgotten. Yet the Court of Vienna still clung to the Edict of Restitution (p. 424) for eight long years, during which the confused, frightful warfare was kept up. At last the military reverses of the emperor, Ferdinand III. (1637-1657), who, unlike his father, was not indisposed to peace, wrung from him a consent to the necessary conditions.

EFFECTS OF THE WAR.--The barbarities of this long war are indescribable. The unarmed people were treated with brutal ferocity. The population of Germany is said to have diminished in thirty years from twenty to fifty per cent. The population of one city, Augsburg, fell from eighty to eighteen thousand. There were four hundred thousand people in Würtemberg: in 1641 only forty-eight thousand were left. In fertile districts, the destruction of the crops had caused great numbers to perish by famine. It is only in recent years that the number of horned cattle in Germany has come to equal what it was in 1618. Cities, villages, castles, and dwellings innumerable, had been burned to the ground.

THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA.--The Peace of Westphalia, concluded in 1648, was a great European settlement. It was agreed, that in Germany, whatever might be the faith of the prince, the religion of each state was to be Catholic or Protestant, according to its position in 1624, which was fixed upon as the "normal year." In the imperial administration, the two religions were to be substantially equal. Religious freedom and civil equality were extended to the Calvinists. The empire was reduced to a shadow by giving to the Diet the power to decide in all important matters, and by the permission given to its members to make alliances with one another and with foreign powers, with the futile proviso that no prejudice should come thereby to the empire or the emperor. The independence of Holland and Switzerland was acknowledged. Sweden obtained the territory about the Baltic, in addition to other important places, and became a member of the German Diet. Among the acquisitions of France were the three bishoprics, Metz, Toul, and Verdun, and the landgraviate of Upper and Lower Alsace. Thus France gained access to the Rhine. Sweden and France, by becoming guarantors of the peace, obtained the right to interfere in the internal affairs of Germany.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE TREATY.--By this treaty, what was left of central authority in Germany was destroyed: the empire existed only in name; the mediæval union of empire and papacy was at an end. Valuable German territories were given up to ambitious neighbors. France had extended her bounds, and disciplined her troops. Sweden had gained what Gustavus had coveted, and, for the time, was a power of the first class. Spain and Austria were both disabled, and reduced in rank.

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