The Thirty Years War

by C. V. Wedgwood

  The situation was not hopeful for the Hapsburg dynasty. Some of the family felt that the Archduke Ferdinand was the last man who could safely be put forward. To say the least of it, he was hardly a ruler who would inspire confidence in a predominantly Protestant country on edge with anxiety for its privileges. The Spaniards argued, justifiably, that to let Ferdinand stand was to court a defeat which might be disastrous for the dynasty. But what other candidate was there? The remaining Austrian archdukes were all too old to offer any permanent safety. The sons of the King of Spain, the eldest of them in his early teens, would be no less suspect to the Protestant Bohemians and, as foreigners educated in Madrid, were even less likely to be popular than the Archduke Ferdinand who at least spoke German and had visited Prague. The suggestion that one of the Spanish princes should stand was therefore hardly serious and, in June 1617, the government at Madrid agreed to drop the project if in return the Archduke Ferdinand would renounce his rights on the Hapsburg fiefs in Alsace in favour of the Spanish crown. This was that celebrated secret agreement by which the united support of the dynasty was gained for Ferdinand on the understanding that he, as King of Bohemia and later as Emperor, should make a way across Germany for Spanish troops.[10]

  The election of the Archduke Ferdinand thus provided an occasion for the Bohemian Protestants and for the enemies of the Hapsburgs in Europe to put forward a rival candidate. The necessity was apparent, the candidate was lacking. Christian of Anhalt had coveted the Bohemian throne for the last five years for his young master, the Elector Palatine, but all his efforts had not sufficed to build up a party strong enough to support Frederick’s candidature. The Elector was a Calvinist, was still without experience and without reputation among European princes; naturally enough the Protestant party in Bohemia, which was mainly Lutheran, was not attracted by the prospect of having him for a king. The only other possible candidate was the neighbouring prince, John George of Saxony. A Lutheran, a mature and tolerant ruler, he would have been more acceptable, but as he persistently disregarded all overtures it was impossible to put his name forward.

  The kingship would thus fall to Ferdinand in default of better candidates unless the Protestant party refused altogether to elect or attempted to impose terms which the new king could not accept. Possibly Thurn would have blocked the election in this way had it fallen to him to do so. But Thurn, as a mere knight in the Estates, had no vote at the election. At this critical moment the guidance of the Protestant party fell to Count Schlick, and Schlick, like the Emperor Matthias, believed in postponement. Rather than precipitate a dangerous crisis he let the opportunity pass, and when Ferdinand’s election was put to the vote on June 17th 1617, he gave his voice without demur in his favour, whilst the bewildered but docile Protestant nobility followed him to a man.[11]

  On the next day the Estates, all but two members, Jaroslav Martinitz and William Slavata, both fanatical Catholics, demanded that the King-elect should guarantee the Letter of Majesty. Slavata urged Ferdinand to refuse, arguing that the extraordinary conduct of Schlick could not be typical of Protestant opinion in general; he felt that the moment had come to deliver a final and crushing blow. The Emperor Matthias and his pacific adviser, Cardinal Khlesl, thought differently; both of them genuinely wanted Ferdinand to guarantee the Letter of Majesty. Even if he meant to attack the Protestants later, it was not necessary to proclaim his intentions from the housetops. Ferdinand himself hesitated: he did not for one moment contemplate standing by the Letter of Majesty, but he was uncertain whether the time was favourable for making his position clear. He was troubled in his conscience at the thought of making even a formal concession to heretics. At the same time he had the measure of Thurn and the extremists and fully realized that he had only to hold his hand until this party perpetrated some act of direct hostility towards the government and gave him the excuse he needed for rescinding Protestant privileges. Some consultation with his confessor convinced him that political necessity did in fact justify a deviation from absolute sincerity and on the following day he formally guaranteed the Letter of Majesty.[12]

  There is no justification for Ferdinand’s disingenuous conduct save the consideration that a definite refusal to guarantee the Letter of Majesty must inevitably have produced a general revolt. As things stood there was still the possibility that Thurn would act aggressively and ill-advisedly, that the Protestant party would become hopelessly divided and that Ferdinand, playing off one group against another, would manage to destroy religious freedom without actual bloodshed.

  It is probable that neither Matthias nor Khlesl fully understood what was happening. Nevertheless, in the autumn following the election two edicts were issued. Neither of them was contrary to the constitution although both showed that Ferdinand was already influencing the government. The first gave the King’s judges the right to be present at all local and national meetings, the second brought the press of Prague under royal censorship. Matthias, on leaving the city shortly after, appointed five deputy-governors among whom were Slavata and Martinitz, but neither Thurn nor Schlick.[13]

  Into this atmosphere, surcharged with suspicion, two causes came to be decided. At Klostergrab, a village belonging to the Archbishop of Prague, the Protestants were building a church, asserting that they were freemen of a royal borough and not vassals of the Archbishop. The demand for liberty of conscience was thus dangerously fused with a claim to civic rights. The same fusion occurred at the little town of Braunau where the Protestants were not only building a church but stealing wood from the neighbouring conventual estates to do so. In both cases they claimed that they were building churches on royal land and that the Letter of Majesty expressly guaranteed them such a right. The government replied that, although Protestants were allowed to build on royal land, the Letter of Majesty did not prevent the King from alienating such land; that he had in fact made a gift of this estate subsequently to the Church and that the rights of the Protestants had accordingly lapsed. Protest and answer alike showed the same fusion of ideas; this was not merely a case of Protestant against Catholic, but of the subject against the sovereign. Had the King in fact any right to alienate land without the subject’s consent? The Protestant Bohemians thought not, and thought it the more emphatically because Matthias in the course of the last five years had in this way restored a hundred and thirty-two parishes to the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Prague alone.[14]

  When he left for Vienna, Matthias had given orders that any further objections from the people of Klostergrab and Braunau were to be withstood if necessary by force. The Catholic deputy-governors immediately took advantage of these instructions to imprison some of the more recalcitrant burghers of Braunau. As if drawn by a magnetic force the disunited particles of the Bohemian opposition rushed together: Protestants were indignant at an infringement of their privileges, townsfolk insulted by an attack on the rights of free burghers, and the nobility leaped at the occasion for curtailing the territorial power of the Church.

  Thurn called a meeting of Protestant officials and deputies from all over Bohemia and appealed for the release of the prisoners. When this demonstration proved useless, he urged the Defensors of the Letter of Majesty to call a yet larger assembly of Protestants. This second meeting was fixed for May 1618; it was now March. In the intervening time both parties set themselves to work up the feelings of the people and of the townsfolk of Prague in particular. In spite of Catholic propaganda the Protestant meeting assembled on May 21st, a formidable gathering of noblemen, gentry and burghers from all over the province. The imperial governors in vain commanded them to dissolve. Only then did Slavata and Martinitz grasp the danger in which they stood, and on the evening of the 22nd a secretary of state escaped in disguise towards Vienna to implore immediate help.[15]

  It was too late. That very night Thum called on the leading nobility to form a plan of action. Overruling the protests of Schlick he demanded death for Slavata and Martinitz and the establishment of a Protestant emergency governm
ent. The city was already alive with excitement and when on the following morning the Protestant deputies were seen making their way towards the royal castle of the Hradschin an immense crowd followed in their wake. Through the portals surmounted by the outspread eagle of the Hapsburg they surged into the courtyard; up the staircase the deputies led the way, through the audience hall and into the small room where the governors sat. Trapped between the council table and the wall, the crowd before and the blank stones behind, Slavata and Martinitz stood at bay. Neither doubted that his last hour had come.

  A hundred hands dragged them towards the high window, flung back the casement and hoisted them upwards. Martinitz went first. ‘Jesu Maria! Help!’ he screamed and crashed over the sill. Slavata fought longer, calling on the Blessed Virgin and clawing at the window frame under a rain of blows until someone knocked him senseless and the bleeding hands relaxed. Their shivering secretary clung to Schlick for protection; out of sheer intoxication the crowd hoisted him up and sent him to join his masters.

  One of the rebels leant over the ledge, jeering: ‘We will see if your Mary can help you!’ A second later, between exasperation and amazement, ‘By God, his Mary has helped,’ he exclaimed, for Martinitz was already stirring. Suddenly a ladder protruded from a neighbouring window; Martinitz and the secretary made for it under a hail of misdirected missiles. Some of Slavata’s servants, braving the mob, went down to his help and carried him after the others, unconscious but alive.[16]

  The extraordinary chance which had saved three lives was a holy miracle or a comic accident according to the religion of the beholder, but it had no political significance. Martinitz fled that night in disguise and Slavata continued, ill and a prisoner, in the house whither he had been carried. That evening his wife knelt before the Countess Thurn entreating some guarantee for her husband’s life, a request which the lady granted with the pessimistic stipulation that the Countess Slavata should do her a like service after the next Bohemian revolution.[17]

  Murder or no murder, the coup d’état was complete, and since Thum had overruled many of his supporters in demanding death it was as well for the conscience of his allies that a pile of mouldering filth in the courtyard of the Hradschin had made soft falling for the governors.

  No time was lost in setting the mechanism of the State once more in order. All officials who agreed to recognize the new power were confirmed in their positions, nor was there at first any attempt to displace Catholics. A provisional government of thirteen Directors was appointed by the Protestant assembly which then voted the raising of an army of sixteen thousand men at the country’s expense, Thurn to be in command. For the better enlightenment of Europe they issued an Apologia setting forth the causes of the revolt.[18]> Having thus provided for the continuance of civil governments and against the possibility of war, the meeting dissolved within five days of the revolt and within ten of its original opening.

  2.

  In speed, efficiency and moderation the revolt might serve as a model, but under a smooth surface the new state concealed disastrous elements. The pressure which had forced the various parties to combine could not last and, as the immediate crisis lessened, the united front resolved into its component parts. Was it a revolt purely for religious liberty, or for national freedom, or for the rights of the subject against the sovereign? The truth was that nobody knew, and each party was prepared to sacrifice the interests of the other to further its own.

  Besides, the country had not even been fully united in revolt. The extreme Catholics, of whom Slavata and Martinitz were typical representatives, were indeed a minority, but they were not negligible. The original intention of the new government to give equal rights to all their compatriots proved utterly unpractical, for Catholic nobility everywhere, Catholic burghers, even Catholic townships—Budweis, Krummau, Pilsen—were storm-centres of resistance.[19]

  Had Thurn made himself the leader of the State, had he choked the protests of his allies and concentrated his forces on the struggle for independence, the revolt might at least have ensured the national future of Bohemia. But constitutional tradition was too strong, and Thurn either could not or would not overrule it. He commanded the army but it was subject to the thirteen Directors; they in turn were subject to the Estates who alone could vote supplies. Thurn, as a knight, had a seat and a vote in the Estates, but he refused to be made a Director. He seems to have thought that while Bohemia’s safety depended on her ability to defend herself in arms the power of the Directorate over the army would be theoretical only. He was wrong. Throughout the thirty months of Bohemia’s struggle he remained dependent on the grudging subsidies of quarrelsome Estates and a disunited Directorate.[20]

  The internal truce with the Catholics broke down at once. On June 9th the Jesuits were expelled from the country[21] and before midsummer Thurn had attacked and subdued Krummau. Acting on the advice of the conciliatory Cardinal Khlesl, the Emperor Matthias at first sent offers of amnesty and peaceful discussion.[22] The rebels defiantly refused to consider them, shocking the Catholic opinion of Europe and confirming their enemies in the belief that religion was a mere cover for national and political motives.[23] Slowly the revolt assumed significance in the problems of Europe; in Brussels and Madrid the prestige of the dynasty was felt to be at stake; money and troops were hastily dispatched to help the Archduke Ferdinand defend his throne,[24] while the Papal Nuncio in Paris received commands from the Vatican to impress the King of France with the danger to the Bohemian Catholics.[25]

  The Archduke Ferdinand who, as the King-elect of the rebellious country, stood to lose the most, asked for nothing better than the immediate inception of a Crusade while the enthusiasm of the Catholic world was yet warm. Only the waning life of Matthias and the persistent desire of Cardinal Khlesl for compromise stood in his way. On July 20th 1618, Ferdinand seized Khlesl and sent him prisoner to a fortress in Tyrol. The Emperor’s indignant outcry was in vain; Ferdinand apologized courteously but would not release the Cardinal; Matthias was forced to bow before his cousin’s inspired obstinacy and to trust the guidance of his policy in future to hands which had already seized it for themselves.

  Less than a month after Khlesl’s fall the first imperial army crossed the Bohemian border. The army and the general came from Flanders, the money from Spain; in answer the rebels would inevitably appeal to the enemies of Spain and Flanders. Thurn, bringing his vaunted talents as a diplomatist to reinforce his prowess as a general, had in fact already done so. But the appeal to France was coldly rejected by a king who had not yet grasped the dynastic significance of the revolt and was too devout a son of the Church to support Protestant rebels.[26]

  On the other hand, the Elector Palatine, Frederick, or at least his chancellor Christian of Anhalt, hastened to meet Thurn’s overtures half-way. Before the end of June, Frederick had an agent in Prague, and met the indignant protest of the Emperor with the cool explanation that he only wished to persuade the rebels towards compromise. His ambassador chose a curious means to this end, in urging the Bohemians to increase and improve their army and in suggesting that Anhalt himself should take command.[27]

  These were not words without deeds, for at the same time couriers had gone from Heidelberg to the Duke of Savoy’s capital in Turin to negotiate with him for the loan of the large mercenary army at present in his employ. The Duke, an old enemy of the Hapsburg family, grasped joyfully at the occasion of injuring them, and terms were rapidly signed by which he agreed with the Elector Palatine to share the expenses of transporting and maintaining an army for the Bohemians.[28] The joint offer of the two princes reached Prague not a moment too soon. One imperial army was already over the border and a second was preparing to follow. Thurn’s rapidly recruited troops were without the experience to stand against the Flemish professionals, even had their numbers been adequate. When the Duke of Savoy and the Elector Palatine offered to provide a highly trained army which was already only a few days’ march away under the command of Ernst von Mansf
eld, a general of European reputation, hesitation was impossible.

  On August 28th 1618, the second imperial army left Vienna and two days later the Bohemians accepted the offer of help.[29] On September 9th the two invading armies joined and would infallibly have marched on Prague but for the rumoured approach of Mansfeld. Harassed by skirmishing attacks from Thurn, the invaders fell back towards Budweis, while Mansfeld crossed the border with twenty thousand men and laid siege to Pilsen, the richest and most important stronghold of the Catholic loyalists. All over Bohemia enthusiasm for the Protestant cause flamed up once again. On November 21st, after fifteen hours of desperate fighting, Pilsen fell,[30] and with the deepening winter, Thurn and Schlick at the head of the native army shut in the Flemish troops in Budweis and laid waste the Austrian border.

  Bohemia had been saved, and for the moment no one counted the cost. But she had been freed from Austrian domination only to be sold to the Elector Palatine and the Duke of Savoy; jealous lest their country should be exploited by the Hapsburg dynasty, the rebels exposed her to exploitation by the enemies of the Hapsburg, and the individual problem of Bohemia was gradually sucked in towards the centre of the European whirlpool.

  While the Austrian frontiers went up in flames, the Elector Palatine called a meeting of the Protestant Union at Rothenburg. If Frederick or Christian of Anhalt had expected to be congratulated on their actions, they were gravely disillusioned, for the princes of the Union took discretion to be the better part of valour and indignantly repudiated all that had been done. They did not wish to pay Mansfeld or to enter into any understanding with the rebels; they absolutely refused to raise a joint army at Frederick’s suggestion, and they established their impartiality by publishing a memorial exhorting both the Emperor and his subjects to compromise.[31]