Germany had but one chance of recovery and that was by the conclusion of the war. Yet hardly a prince or ruling potentate in 1630 so much as considered the quickest way of settlement. John George of Saxony penned a protest of compelling eloquence to Ferdinand, in which he drew the conditions of the country almost in tears of blood,[101] but he revealed the extent to which the sufferings of the populace had touched his blunted sensibilities by refusing to come to Regensburg. He asserted that Ferdinand was trying to intimidate him, and persuaded the Elector of Brandenburg to join with him in a protest meeting at Annaburg.[102] He acted, no doubt, from the highest political motives, but there was small prospect of peace for Germany when two of the Electors refused even to join in a general discussion.
Maximilian was little better. In one respect he was worse, for in his determination to break Wallenstein, he arrived at Regensburg armed with the secret support of the Pope and Richelieu.[103] Believing that Spanish intervention was at the root of the German disaster, Maximilian displayed a fatal, if a common, lack of perception when he sought to rid the Empire of one foreign influence by calling in yet another.
Had Maximilian refused to help or be helped by the French agents at Regensburg, had the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg accepted the defeat of Protestantism instead of making an eleventh hour stand, there might have been peace in Germany. The King of Sweden must have withdrawn and the war between Bourbon and Hapsburg might have been fought out in Flanders and Italy. Surrender in 1630 might have saved Germany from eighteen more years of war, and although the settlement would have been very different from that ultimately enforced by the governments of France and Sweden in 1648, it would not have been appreciably worse. Surrender in 1630 would have meant the abandonment of the German Liberties; these Liberties were the privileges of ruling princes, or at most of municipalities, and had nothing to do with the rights of peoples. Popular liberty was unknown, before, during, and after the war. Ferdinand’s victory would have meant the centralization of the Empire under Austrian control, the establishment of one despotism rather than several in the German-speaking world. It would have meant a heavy defeat for Protestantism but not its extinction. The Catholic Church was already proving itself too weak to carry out the gigantic task which Ferdinand had given it, and the spiritual redemption of secularized lands lagged far behind the political seizure. Admirable as was the constancy of many Protestants, great as was the number of exiles who drifted north to Saxony and Brandenburg and Holland, among the younger generation on both sides indifference was growing. Ferdinand’s organization was already proving unequal to the execution of the Edict of Restitution, and even had he achieved all that was implied by that document, Protestantism would not have been extinguished. There remained Saxony and Brandenburg and the undisputed fragments of Württemberg, Hesse, Baden, and Brunswick.
It would be absurd to pretend that the victory of Ferdinand in 1630 would have been an unmixed blessing. Great was the suffering that the Edict of Restitution had already caused, and great would have been the distress which its further execution would have engendered, but it is at least permissible to ask whether eighteen more years of war were not infinitely worse. There are strong arguments in favour of those who preferred to continue the war: surrender would have been fatal encouragement to the Hapsburg dynasty both in Germany and in Europe; Ferdinand might be encouraged to further aggression and he would almost undoubtedly assist the King of Spain against the Dutch. The power of the Hapsburg would overshadow all Europe. Yet in point of fact the continuation of the struggle led only to the no less threatening dominance of the Bourbon. By the settlement of 1648 the German Liberties were preserved intact by thoughtful foreign allies who saw in them a guarantee of German weakness. Eighteen years of conflict produced a settlement which was no better from the internal point of view, and infinitely worse from the external point of view, than any which could have been made in 1630. The German Liberties were certainly very dearly bought.
They may not have seemed so expensive to the princes, for it was not they who paid the price. Famine in Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel caused the Duke to notice that his table was less plentifully supplied than usual, and three bad wine harvests on the Lower Danube once prevented Ferdinand from sending his annual gift of tokay to John George of Saxony—such minute draughts blew in through palace windows from the hurricane without.[104] Mortgaged lands, empty exchequers, noisy creditors, the discomforts of wounds and imprisonment, the loss of children in battle, these are all griefs which man can bear with comparative equanimity. The bitter mental sufferings which followed from mistaken policies, loss of prestige, the stings of conscience, and the blame of public opinion gave the German rulers cause to regret the war but seldom acted as an incentive to peace. No German ruler perished homeless in the winter’s cold, nor was found dead with grass in his mouth, nor saw his wife and daughters ravished; few, significantly few, caught the pest.[105] Secure in the formalities of their lives, in the food and drink at their tables, they could afford to think in terms of politics and not of human sufferings.
7.
The Regensburg Electoral meeting of 1630 is only important in imperial history because its governing considerations were remote from Germany. The old problem of the Dutch war, the old enmity of Bourbon and Hapsburg, controlled the discussion on both sides.
Now that Ferdinand was master in Germany, the Spanish government demanded that he should summon the princes to help them subdue the Dutch. They were not discouraged at Madrid by the failure of all the efforts they had hitherto made to induce in the German rulers a more favourable attitude towards this programme. Bribes in the shape of pensions were regularly paid to the Electors of Cologne and Treves, to the Duke of Neuburg, to certain officers in the army, and ministers at the Court of Vienna, even to servants in Wallenstein’s household—all without result.[106] The Elector of Cologne made a few protests against Dutch military operations actually within his own lands, but even when their proximity caused Tilly some military anxiety, Maximilian forbade any attack on them.[107] Once indeed the Electors had requested the Archduchess Isabella to withdraw all restrictions on Dutch trade, seeing that the Provinces, whatever their relations with Spain, were technically members of the Empire and ought to share its privileges.[108]
Ferdinand needed all his optimism to think that he could induce the princes to declare war on the Dutch. Yet his obligation to Spain forced him to set this point almost first among his demands when he opened the meeting at Regensburg early in July 1630. Justifying his own armaments by a reference to the Mantuan war, he pointed out that the Dutch had infringed the integrity of the Empire, and urged the Electors to take measures against them. Led by Maximilian, they answered that they could discuss nothing until Ferdinand reduced his army and found a new commander-in-chief. As for Dutch hostility, they had noticed none; on the other hand the Spaniards were making unpardonable use of German soil for their military operations.[109]
This was attack and counter-attack leading to deadlock. Ferdinand’s answer was conciliatory in manner but not in matter. He pointed out that he had personally always insisted on discipline in his army, and promised that he would find a new commander-in-chief.[110] The answer was ill-received, partly because of its vagueness, but more because of the rumour that Ferdinand intended his own son for the new commander, a change which would be in some respects a change for the worse. On July 29th, the Electors responded with a second and more emphatic series of complaints.[111]
Ferdinand had gone hunting while the Electors discussed their grievances, and did not get back until the evening of July 31st. In the intervening time two French agents had arrived, one of them being Father Joseph himself. The news of these arrivals, or a more mature consideration of the Electoral complaints, or both, destroyed Ferdinand’s good cheer, and when he rode in on the evening of the 31st he passed silently to his apartments and sat there until three in the morning of August 1st closeted with his nearest councillors.[112]
The events of
the next days justified anxiety. Both Father Joseph and the Papal nuncio strengthened the princes in their determination neither to sanction a war against the Dutch, nor to elect the young Archduke as King of the Romans. Father Joseph saw to it so thoroughly that no aspect of Spanish intervention in Germany was lost on the Electors,[113] that Brulart, the second of the French agents, was able to assert complacently soon after that these princes were all ‘good French-men’.[114] John George of Saxony, meanwhile, made his position clear by sending in a schedule of six leading stipulations which he considered essential preliminaries to any discussion of peace. The chief of these were the religious settlement of the Empire as it had been in 1618, the withdrawal of the Edict of Restitution and the drastic reduction of war contributions.[115]
On August 7th, at Regensburg, Ferdinand once again attempted to reduce the Catholic Electors by argument. He denied that he had ever acted as anything but a defender of the constitution against aggression, and inserted unobtrusively in his speech the suggestion that the duchy of Cleves-Jülich, the succession of which was still doubtful, should be sequestered.[116] This was a further sidelong attempt to help the Spanish in the Dutch war by giving them strong foothold on the Lower Rhine. To sweeten their consideration of these propositions, Ferdinand entertained the princes on the following day with an exhibition of riding at the ring, in which his eldest son again carried off the prize.[117] Fortunately for the Emperor’s stage-management, young Ferdinand had a keen eye and a good seat on a horse, but if his father thought that these qualities would soften the hearts of the assembled Electors, he thought wrong. Their answer to his new propositions was cold to the point of hostility. They dragged the slyly inserted reference to Cleves-Jülich into the daylight, recognized its full implications and flatly refused to countenance any sequestration.[118]
Ferdinand had two trumps in his hand, Wallenstein and the Edict of Restitution. The abandonment of the general might pacify the Catholic Electors, the abandonment of the Edict would pacify Saxony and Brandenburg and possibly force them, belatedly, to attend the meeting. He decided to play the first of these cards at once, and on August 17th called his councillors together to discuss the best means of dismissing the general. Wallenstein was only a few miles off at Memmingen with a large following, and the Emperor himself admitted that he could not answer for the way in which he might take a demand for his resignation.[119] Surprisingly, however, a preliminary messenger brought the news that Wallenstein would withdraw if the Emperor personally desired it. On August 24th an imperial embassy arrived at Memmingen;[120] Wallenstein received its members with sombre dignity and sent them back to Regensburg with his formal resignation. He had shown them an astral diagram on which it was shown that the fate of Ferdinand was controlled at certain crises by Maximilian. Within limits Wallenstein let the decree of Heaven govern his actions, but submitting in public he nourished in private the well-laid plans of his revenge.[121]
His dismissal robbed the French agents of Bavarian support. With Wallenstein gone, Maximilian saw his way to regaining his military dominance over Ferdinand and was no longer interested in foreign allies. At the same time Ferdinand’s troops had taken Mantua and forced the French duke to fly. Defeated in Italy and deprived of Maximilian’s support in Germany, the French were in a weak position, and Ferdinand pushed his advantage home. He offered to confirm Charles of Nevers as Duke of Mantua, provided Casale and Pinerolo were guaranteed to Spain, and that the French government undertook to enter into no alliance with those within the Empire. It was a direct thrust at the Franco-Dutch alliance, a barrier against Richelieu’s projected Swedish treaty. In France the King was ill and the desperate requests of the ambassadors for further instructions remained unanswered. Father Joseph and Brulart had to decide for themselves. On October 13th 1630 they agreed provisionally to all Ferdinand’s demands, and the Treaty of Regensburg was signed.
The news was received with dismay in France. Richelieu, his features drawn with anxiety and anger, declared to the Venetian ambassador that he intended to abandon politics and enter a monastery.[122] Casale and Pinerolo lost, the alliances with the Dutch and Swedes renounced, the friendship of the German princes waning—this was the outcome of Father Joseph’s diplomacy. Meanwhile Ferdinand, suffused with the benevolence of the victor to the vanquished, was saying farewell to the ambassadors with expressions of exceptional regard for Richelieu and the King of France.[123]
Ferdinand had squeezed all that he could out of Wallenstein’s dismissal. His other possible move, the withdrawal of the Edict of Restitution, might yield even greater advantages. Eggenberg besought him to make it.[124] The King of Sweden was invading; every day brought fresh rumours of his advance—he had fifty thousand men—he had taken Gustrow—he had taken Weimar—Regensburg was alive with misinformation and fear.[125] This was no moment to quarrel with the Protestant Electors. Abandon the Edict of Restitution, and the protest meeting of Saxony and Brandenburg must come to an end, since they had themselves issued a manifesto declaring that the Edict alone prevented peace in the Empire. The Catholic Electors were prepared to discuss the matter with them. Surely Ferdinand for the sake of his dynasty would yield.
But Eggenberg came up against uncompromising obstinacy. Ferdinand had played half his hand admirably; he refused to play the second half. The abandonment of Wallenstein and of the Edict were for him on incomparably different planes. The one was concerned merely with politics, the other was an article of faith. That underlying fanaticism, which had so far carried him safely through all the risks of his career, played him false here.
Before the end of August it was said in Regensburg that he would never yield,[126] and all through the Electoral meeting imperial troops in Württemberg continued their brutal redemption of monastic lands. His triumph therefore at Regensburg was over Richelieu alone, not over the princes, and the meeting broke up in November with almost every problem it had come to settle still unsolved.
On the agreement of the Dutch to withdraw any troops they had in Cleves and Jülich, Ferdinand was forced to promise the evacuation of all other troops, thus abandoning the idea of sequestration and shelving the vexed question of Dutch neutrality.[127] The imperial army was to be placed under the command of Maximilian and Tilly, leaving the Emperor in his position of five years previously, before the intervention of Wallenstein. The Edict of Restitution was to be fully discussed at a general meeting of the princes.[128] No King of the Romans was elected, no war in the Spanish interest declared.
Against the single diplomatic victory over France, Ferdinand had to balance these two heavy defeats. Nor did he receive any sympathy from that very government to whose interests he had so fatally sacrificed his own. At Madrid they were indignant at the Cleves-Jülich settlement and had not the intelligence to appreciate what had been done for them in the Mantuan affair.
Within the Empire Ferdinand’s policy had broken down. The pressure of Spain’s demands had been too heavy on the still unstable structure. Instead of uniting Germany, the Regensburg meeting had divided it, leaving Maximilian and the League to dominate Ferdinand’s policy once again, and the two Protestant Electors to dissociate themselves by a new minority protest from the actions of their colleagues.[129] Into this growing rift the invading King of Sweden was even now driving a wedge which split the Empire like a rotten plank.
Ferdinand had failed, Maximilian had failed, John George had hardly tried, to create a native body strong enough to deal with native problems. The Regensburg meeting marks the end of what alone has some right to be called the German period of the war, and the beginning of the foreign period. The King of Sweden had landed in Pomerania, and the German people bowed once again under the scourge of a war they had not started and could not stop. The conference which should have brought relief after twelve years of disaster, heralded only the eighteen that were to come.
1. Gaedeke, Zur Politik Wallensteins und Kursachsens in den Jahren 1630–4. Neues Archiv für Sächsische Geschichte, X, p. 35.
3. The mother of Philip IV was the Archduchess Margaret of Styria, Ferdinand’s younger sister.
4. Dudik, Correspondenz Kaiser Ferdinands II, p. 273.
5. See supra, Chapter IV, pp. 188–9.
6. See Richelieu, Mémoires, VIII, pp. 114 ff.
7. Hanotaux and de la Force. Revue des Deux Mondes, March 1935, p. 62.
8. Brants, Albert et Isabelle, Louvain, 1910, p. 180.
9. H. G. R. Reade, Sidelights on the Thirty Years War, I, p. 75.
10. Quazza, Guerra di Mantova, I, p. 130; Lünig, op. cit., X, ii, pp. 694–6; Richelieu, Mémoires, VIII, p. 184.
11. Annales, XI, p. 1504; Fiedler, p. 190.
12. Abreu y Bertodano, Colleccion de los Tratados, Madrid, 1740, IV, pp. 89 f.
13. Lundorp, III, pp. 1006–7,1083.
14. Gindely, Die maritimen Pläne, pp. 28–9.
15. Sverges Traktater, V, i, pp. 242–5.
16. Monro, I, p. 67, gives one version of this story.
17. Chlumecky, p. 75; Foerster, Wallenstein, I, pp. 342 ff.
18. Droysen, Gustaf Adolf, I, pp. 346–7.
19. Chlumecky, p. 78.
20. Kiewning, Nuntiatur des Pallottos, Rome, 1895, I, p. 81.
21. Riezler, Geschichte Bayerns, VI, p. 170.
22. Dudik, Correspondenz, p. 316.
23. Annales, IX, p. 93; Lundorp, III, pp. 1009, 1042.
24. Lundorp, III, p. 1023.
25. Aretin, Wallenstein, Regensburg, 1846, I, p. 20; Gindely, Wallenstein während seines ersten Generalats, I, p. 87.
26. Lundorp, III, pp. 1018–19; also Hallwich, Fünf Bücher, III, pp. 355–6.
The Thirty Years War Page 29