The Thirty Years War

by C. V. Wedgwood

  In the spring of 1627 the general opened his campaign by a further shameless violation of princely rights. George William of Brandenburg was the most harmless ruler in Germany except on the rare occasions when he was rushed into a decision against his will. His policy was of a naked, dynastic simplicity; his only desire was that he should continue to be an Elector for all his days and that his son should succeed him.[87] Before judging this principle too harshly, it is fair to remember that George William had ascended the throne in the teeth of intense resistance, and that his court was an asylum for his wife’s relations—she was the sister of Frederick of Bohemia. But a mere chance of geography robbed George William of the fruits of his inoffensive neutrality. His lands lay between the wreck of Mansfeld’s army in Silesia and the King of Denmark’s headquarters. Either of these armies might march across to join the other, and Wallenstein would certainly think nothing of invading Brandenburg to prevent it. Worse still, the King of Sweden was using Prussia as a base in his Polish war, whether George William liked it or no, and had bullied him into ceding the convenient port of Pillau.[88] It was rumoured in 1627 that Gustavus Adolphus might consider coming to help the defeated Christian. If he did, he too would march across Brandenburg, and so would the imperial army which tried to stop him.

  Hoping in vain to save himself, George William had even agreed to recognize Maximilian as an Elector,[89] in the mistaken hope that the League would prevent Wallenstein from attacking him. All in vain; in vain too his protests to Vienna. When his ambassador forced a way into Wallenstein’s presence to entreat the removal of the forces stationed at Crossen, the general, who was in bed, unceremoniously buried his head under the pillows and would not listen.[90]

  Before the summer of 1627, Wallenstein’s troops under the best of his lieutenants, Hans George von Arnim, himself a Protestant and a native of Brandenburg, had advanced into the Elector’s country. The unhappy George William attempted in vain to raise a small force to protect his lands, but when a band of sixty soldiers, the utmost that could be collected, attempted to occupy Berlin, they were driven out by the indignant people who tore up the cobble stones and pelted them out of the town because, being Lutherans, they were persuaded that this was some attempt of the Elector to enforce Calvinism at the sword’s point. In the rest of the province, George William’s subjects preferred submission to the unequal contest: at Neu-Brandenburg resistance was punished by the plundering of the town, so that at Havelberg the people, forewarned, violently expelled the garrison and threw open the gates at the approach of Arnim’s troops.[91] George William had no choice but to follow their example, submit with as good a grace as possible and proclaim throughout the land that the invaders were to be received as friends.[92] About this time his unsuccessful ambassador was on his way back from Vienna, bearing a letter from Ferdinand assuring the Elector of his unalterable regard;[93] it is to be hoped that this was balm to George William.

  With Brandenburg thus occupied, it was easy for Wallenstein to settle the scattered forces of the Protestants. The King of Denmark had passed the winter trying vainly to enlist fresh help. The English government, his only hope now Richelieu had failed, sent him neither ships nor subsidies.[94] Frederick of Bohemia had nothing to send, for the Dutch paid his pension grudgingly, the English not at all, and his house was besieged by unpaid tradesmen. He owed £140 for milk alone and could not lay his hand on a penny.[95] Knowing that the King of Denmark was as good as defeated,[96] he was turning again towards the King of Sweden.[97] The Dukes of Mecklenburg, Christian’s remaining allies, had done likewise, and the subsidies they owed to his army came in slowly or not at all.[98] The Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel had long since made peace with the Emperor and was trying to drive Christian’s troops out of the few districts they still occupied in his land.[99] Short of food and money for his men, short of horses for his cavalry, Christian tried in vain to keep order among the defeated and demoralized troops.[100]

  On August 4th 1627, the remnants of Mansfeld’s army surrendered or fled at Bernstein, and their leader, the Dane Mitzlaff, escaped with a few bedraggled regiments to join the Swedes in Poland. In September, Wallenstein and Tilly joined in the march down the Elbe, in October, Tilly reduced the remaining garrisons in Germany while Wallenstein pursued Christian over the frontiers of Holstein; the last of his cavalry surrendered in the far north at Halborg, and Wallenstein’s army made ready to winter in the unspoiled villages of Jutland.

  5.

  While Wallenstein conquered in the north, Ferdinand continued his work of consolidation in the south. This same year saw the promulgation of a new constitution for Bohemia in a form which it retained for over two hundred years. Bohemia was still autonomous in theory but the Crown was hereditary, the King appointed his own officials and the Estates lost all coercive power.[101] This was followed in the summer by an edict requiring all those who still persisted in the Protestant religion to choose immediately between conversion and exile. The final purge sent twenty-seven thousand more of Ferdinand’s subjects out of the country.[102]

  In the summer of 1627, Ferdinand had once again taken his favourite pilgrimage to Mariazell, in order to thank his Patroness for the happy completion of half a century of life,[103] and he decided to end the year by a visit to Bohemia. He had never been personally unpopular in Prague and he wisely sought to soften his increasing despotism by giving the townsfolk an excuse for rejoicing and putting money into the pockets of the shopkeepers.

  A lavish coronation had won Frederick and Elizabeth what little popularity they had ever enjoyed: Ferdinand could not be crowned again, but he decided instead to crown his second wife, the Empress Eleanora, a handsome young woman who would make a dignified centre-piece to his political stagecraft. Her coronation, which took place with unexampled splendour, was attended by cheering crowds so thick that she had difficulty in making her way through them, and was followed by fireworks, plays, banquets and dances, while the fountains, as in Frederick’s time, ran red and white wine. Afterwards at a lance-running contest the Emperor’s eldest son, the nineteen-year-old Archduke Ferdinand, carried off the prize,[104] a feat which won him the immediate adulation of the populace and proved highly convenient to his father’s plans. The prince had been privileged to sit on his father’s council since the previous year, and his quiet discretion, so different from his father’s garrulous confidence, fitted him well for the office that the Emperor now put upon him. The Archduke Ferdinand was to have the disagreeable task of being the first hereditary King of Bohemia under the new constitution.

  His coronation, which took place in the same week as that of the Empress his step-mother, was signalized by the same attention to popular taste, so that the bitter sense of wrong was drowned in the temporary prosperity of the overfilled town, where the innkeepers were making their fortunes and everyone who wished could get drunk for nothing. Prague had long had the sinister reputation of being the most vicious town in Europe; the virtuous Ferdinand relied on the baser tastes of his subjects to drown their more noble aspirations. Of the Bohemian revolt nothing now remained but a bankrupt court at The Hague and a hundred and fifty thousand exiles.[105]

  At Brandeis, about a month after the double coronation, Ferdinand met Wallenstein. As things now stood, there was no power in Germany which could make head against them, and Wallenstein informed the Emperor that he could conduct the war for six years more on the resources of the conquered countries without troubling the government for a penny.[106] He intended to establish Ferdinand’s power over all the Empire, by occupying Jutland, Holstein, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, parts of Brandenburg, Franconia, Swabia, and Alsace.[107] In the north, his position was unassailable; Spanish money had breathed new life into the Polish monarchy,[108] so that the King of Sweden had his hands fully occupied and could not come to the rescue of the chastened King of Denmark. At the same time the bewildered Elector of Brandenburg had actually been bullied into sending help, not to his brother-in-law of Sweden but to the Poles: he coul
d not afford to defend himself, but he was forced to dispatch all the men and arms he could raise to fulfil his duty as a vassal to Sigismund of Poland.[109] In these circumstances the Hapsburg plans for launching a fleet on the Baltic and founding a new trading company in conjunction with the Hanseatic towns were all but realized. In the spring, Wallenstein was already arranging to build twenty-four warships for the Baltic, provided Spain sent a like number.[110]

  Ferdinand had dispossessed Frederick in order to secure the Rhine; now, to make doubly certain of the Baltic coast, he again seized the property of a rebel and bestowed it on an ally. On March 11th 1628 he signed a patent conferring the duchies of Mecklenburg, with all the titles and privileges pertaining to them, on Albrecht von Wallenstein.[111]

  Europe reeled. It had shocked statesmen enough when the Duke of Bavaria had been raised to an Electorate, but he was at least a leading prince, and the transfer had been conducted with the actual, if grudging, approval of the spiritual electors. Wallenstein was by birth no more than a nobleman of Bohemia, a subject of that Crown. And was he now to take his place as an independent prince beside the rulers of Württemberg and Hesse? If the Emperor’s word were enough to depose a reigning prince and set up a creature of his own, the whole of Germany would shortly be a province of Austria.

  Within the Hapsburg dynasty the movement would have been greeted with more enthusiasm had Ferdinand’s cousins been convinced that he was in fact the master of the situation. The Spaniards shared with the German princes and with Wallenstein himself the belief that the Emperor was a mere pawn in the general’s hand. ‘The Duke is so powerful,’ wrote the Spanish ambassador, ‘that one must almost be grateful to him for contenting himself with a land like Mecklenburg . . . The Emperor in his goodness, in spite of all warnings, has given the Duke such power that one cannot fail to be anxious.’[112] It is clear from this report that Ferdinand had yet again refused to listen to Spanish advice, and perhaps not entirely out of such weakness as the writer imagined. Ferdinand’s generosity was dictated by motives of policy more complicated than the ambassador had wit to grasp.

  Nailing the constitutional colours to the mast, John George protested against the elevation of Wallenstein with dignified futility.[113] The Dukes of Mecklenburg, in exile, set up a wail for help and threw themselves on the mercy of the King of Sweden. But the act was bitterest of all to Maximilian of Bavaria who had first instructed Ferdinand in the practice of disregarding the constitution. He was now nearly sixty, an age at which the seventeenth-century ruler began to think of withdrawal and rest, but with all his ambition and dynastic greed, he could nevertheless recognize his duty, and it was not for himself but for the Liberties of the German princes that he now collected his wasted forces for a new resistance.

  All through the winter and early spring a meeting of the German Electors had been in session at Mühlhausen. At first it revealed only the deepening fissures of the Empire.[114] The ecclesiastical princes wanted the victories of Wallenstein used to advance the Church in north Germany, and were not impressed by Maximilian’s warning that Wallenstein was becoming a serious menace;[115] he had weakened his position shortly before the assembly met by accepting the right bank of the Rhine and the Upper Palatinate in hereditary possession from Ferdinand.[116] But the elevation of Wallenstein in March proved Maximilian’s prognostications right and frightened his fellow Electors into forgetting his personal ambition and their jealousy. On the eve of dissolution the meeting at last found unity.

  The alliance of Ferdinand and Wallenstein had one weak point. The Emperor was fundamentally conventional. He prided himself that he had never broken his word, and could justify all his unconstitutional acts on specious grounds. Finding it very easy to believe what he wanted to believe, he deceived himself into thinking that he had kept the letter of every oath he had ever sworn unless circumstances had made it impossible. He revered the forms of the Empire and for the past year had been wooing the Electors to make his eldest son ‘King of the Romans’, a formality tantamount to a guarantee of his succession to the imperial throne. Apparently it did not occur to Ferdinand that if he made full use of the power Wallenstein was pouring into his hands he could dispense altogether with forms. Even should the Elector of Bavaria stand against him,[117] young Ferdinand would be Emperor, because he would be the strongest prince in Germany. Destroying the constitution with one hand, Ferdinand clung to it with the other, and he wanted now, above everything, to secure his dynasty on the throne in the traditional fashion.

  Seventeen days after the elevation of Wallenstein to the dukedom of Mecklenburg, the Elector of Mainz indicted a manifesto to Ferdinand in the name of all his fellows, emphatically stating that while the imperial armies continued under Wallenstein’s command, he would not guarantee the election of the prince.[118] It was not difficult to guess who had prompted the Elector of Mainz. Across the victorious advance of Ferdinand and his general, Maximilian of Bavaria interposed the barrier of his disapproval, saying: thus far and no farther.

  1. Gindely, Waldstein während seines ersten Generalats im Lichte der gleichzeitigen Quellen. Prague-Vienna, 1886, I, pp. 46 ff.; Zwiedineck-Sudenhorst, II, p. 223.

  2. Hurter, Zur Geschichte Wallenstein, Schaffhausen, 1855, p. 27.

  3. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, ii, pp. 39–40.

  4. Stieve, Wallenstein bis zur Übernahme des ersten Generalats, pp. 229–30.

  5. d’Elvert, III, p. 135; Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, ii, p. 148.

  6. Gindely, Waldstein, p. 54.

  7. Aitzema, p. 269.

  8. Blok, Relazioni Veneziane, p. 182.

  9. See Moser, Patriotisches Archiv, XI, pp. 175–206.

  10. Rusdorf, I, p. 485.

  11. Aitzema, I, p. 405.

  12. Ibid., I, pp. 408, 416.

  13. Messow, Die Hansestädte und die Habsburger Ostseepolitik, p. 11.

  14. Gindely, Die maritimen Pläne der Habsburger. Vienna, 1891, pp. 2–3.

  15. Hallwich, Fünf Bücher zur Geschichte Wallensteins. Leipzig, 1910, III, p. 12.

  16. Hurter, Zur Geschichte Wallensteins, pp. 20–1.

  17. Rusdorf, I, pp. 439 f.; Moser, Patriotisches Archiv, V, p. 107.

  18. Rusdorf, I, pp. 464, 496,545–9; II, p. 29.

  19. Ibid., I, pp. 554 f.; see also Moser, Patriotisches Archiv, V, pp. 159 ff., passim.

  20. Moser, Patriotisches Archiv, VI, p. 21.

  21. Bentivoglio, Opere, p. 90.

  22. Loc. cit.

  23. Lundorp, III, p. 807.

  24. Lundorp, III, pp. 812, 813.

  25. Ibid., III, pp. 824 ff.

  26. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, ii, p. 324.

  27. Ibid., pp. 355, 377.

  28. Gindely, Waldstein, I, p. 63.

  29. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, ii, pp. 377–8.

  30. Lammert, pp. 67 f.; Theatrum Europaeum, I, p. 999; d’Elvert, II, p. 193, III, pp. 138 f.; Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, ii, p. 308.

  31. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, ii, p. 408.

  32. Goetz, p. 438.

  33. Ibid., p. 441.

  34. Ibid., p. 407.

  35. Hurter, Ferdinand II, VIII, pp. 658-60.

  36. Ranke, Geschichte Wallensteins, p. 29.

  37. Ritter, Das Kontributionssystem Wallensteins. Historische Zeitschrift, XC, pp. 211–20, 239–46.

  38. V. Loewe, Die Organisation und Verwaltung der wallensteinischen Heere. Leipzig, 1895.

  39. Aitzema, I, p. 482; Lundorp, III, p. 802.

  40. Rusdorf, II, pp. 58, 189.

  41. Weskamp, Das Heer der Liga, p. 357.

  42. C. F. Bricka and J. A. Fridericia, Kong Christian den Fjerdes egenhaendige Breve. Copenhagen, 1878–91, I, pp. 461–2.

  43. Tadra, Briefe Albrechts von Waldstein an Karl von Harrach, 1625–7. Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, II, xli, p. 356; Hallwich, Gestalten aus Wallensteins Lager, Leipzig, 1885, II, pp. 118 f., 144 f.

  44. Hallwich, Fünf Bücher, I, p. 375.

  45. Ibid., III, p. 42.

  46. ‘
Tintenfresser’; lit. ‘ink-eater’.

  47. Hallwich, Gestalten aus Wallensteins Lager, pp. 144, 163, 164.

  48. Aretin, Bayerns auswärtige Verhältnisse, Passau, 1839, Urkunden, pp. 224–40.

  49. Lundorp, III, pp. 876 f.; Bricka and Fridericia, II, pp. 31–2; see also H. Voges, Die Schlacht bei Lutter am Barenberge. Leipzig, 1922.

  50. Lundorp, III, pp. 977 f., 991–2.

  51. Poyntz, p. 50.

  52. Haeberlin, XXV, p. 471; Poyntz, p. 50.

  53. Lundorp, III, pp. 767 f.

  54. Gindely, Die Gegenreformation und der Aufstand in Oberoesterreich im Jahre 1626. Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Klasse der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. cxviii, Vienna, 1889, pp. 7f.

  55. See the song in Stieve, Der oberösterreichische Bauernaufstand. Munich, 1891, I, p. 90:

  ‘Von Bayerns Joch und Tyrannei,

  Und seiner grossen Schinderei

  Mach uns, o lieber Herr Gott, frei!’

  56. Gindely, Die Gegenreformation und der Aufstand, p. 21.

  57. Hartmann, Historische Volkslieder. Munich, 1907, I, p. 177.

  58. Lundorp, III, p. 927; Czerny, Bilder aus der Zeit der Bauernunruhen in Oberösterreich. Linz, 1876, pp. 61 f.

  59. Lundorp, III, pp. 925–7; Hurter, Ferdinand II, X, p. 92.

  60. Stieve, Bauernaufstand, I, p. 228.

  61. Stieve, pp. 298–303; Lundorp, III, p. 952.

  62. Czerny, Ein Tourist in Oesterreich, Linz, 1874, p. 17.

  63. Jacob Franc, 1626–7, p. 81.

  64. Walther, p. 20.

  65. Duhr, Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Ländern deutscher Zunge. Freiburg, 1907, II, ii, p. 130.

  66. Gebauer, Kurbrandenburg in der Krisis des Jahres 1627. Halle, 1896, p. 9; Lammert, pp. 80 f.