Table of Contents

BOOK TWENTY-FIRST

THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR.

BOOK TWENTY-FIRST

THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR.


CHAPTER 1 Back to Top

GREAT PERIODS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.

Dying Utterance of Charles IX of Sweden — Rearing of Gustavus Adolphus — Pacification of Augsburg — "Protestant Union" and "Catholic League:" their Objects — Third Phase of Protestantism in Germany — Beginning of the Thirty Years' War — Troubles at Prague — Insurrection — March of the Bohemians to Vienna — Their Retreat — War — Numbers of the Host — The Leaders on Both Sides — Oscillations of Victory — First Period of the War, from 1618 to 1630 — Second Period, from 1630 to 1634 — Third Period, from 1634 to 1648.

STANDING by the death-bed of Charles IX of Sweden (161l), we saw the monarch, as he ruminated on the conflicts which he but too truly divined the future would bring with it to Protestantism, stretch out his hand, and laying it on the golden locks of his boy, who was watching his father's last moments, utter the prophetic words, "He will do it."[1] It was the grandson of the famous Gustavus Vasa, the yet more renowned Gustavus Adolphus, of whom these words were spoken. They fitly foreshadowed, in their incisive terseness, and vague sublimity, the career of the future hero. We are arrived at one of the most terrible struggles that ever desolated the world — the Thirty Years' War.

In the education of the young Gustavus, who, as a man, was to play so conspicuous a part in the drama about to open, there was nothing lacking which could give him hardiness of body, bravery of spirit, vigor of intellect, and largeness of soul. Though his cradle was placed in a palace, it was surrounded with little of the splendor and nothing of the effeminacy which commonly attend the early lot of those who are royally born. The father was struggling for his crown when the son first saw the light.

Around him, from the first, were commotions and storms. These could admit of no life but a plain and frugal one, verging it may be on roughness, but which brought with it an ample recompense for the inconveniences it imposed, in the health, the buoyancy, and the cheerfulness which it engendered. He grew hale and strong in the pure cold air to which he was continually exposed. "Amid the starry nights and dark forests of his fatherland, he nursed the seriousness which was a part of his nature."[2]

Meanwhile the mind of the future monarch was developing under influences as healthy and stirring as those by which his body was being braced. His father took him with him both to the senate and the camp. In the one he learned to think as the statesman, in the other he imbibed the spirit of the soldier. Yet greater care was taken to develop and strengthen his higher powers. Masters were appointed him in the various languages, ancient and modern; and at the age of twelve he could speak Latin, French, German, and Italian with fluency, and understood Spanish and English tolerably.[3] We hear of his reading Greek with ease, but this is more doubtful. He had studied Grotius. This was a range of accomplishment which no monarch in Northern Europe of his time could boast. Of the prudence and success with which, when he ascended the throne, he set about correcting the abuses and confusions of half a century in his hereditary dominions, and the rigor with which he prosecuted his first wars, we are not here called to speak. The career of Gustavus Adolphus comes into our view at the point where it first specially touches Protestantism. The Thirty Years' War had been going on some years before he appeared on that bloody stage, and mingled in its awful strife.

The first grand settlement between the Romanists and the Protestants was the Pacification of Augsburg, in 1555. This Pacification gathered up in one great edict all the advantages which Protestantism had acquired during its previous existence of nearly forty years, and it expressed them all in one single word — Toleration. The same word which summed up the gains of Protestantism also summed up the losses of the empire; for the empire had beam by pronouncing its ban upon Luther and his followers, and now at the end of forty years, and after all the great wars of Charles V undertaken against the Protestants, the empire was compelled to say, "I tolerate you."

So far had Protestantism molded the law of Christendom, reared a barrier around itself, and set limits to the intolerant and despotic forces that assailed it from without. But this Toleration was neither Perfect in itself, nor was it faithfully observed. It was limited to Protestantism in its Lutheran form, for Calvinists were excluded from it, and, not to speak of the many points which it left open to opposite interpretations, and which were continually giving rise to quarrels, perpetual infringements were taking place on the rights guaranteed under it. The Protestants had long complained of these breaches of the Pacification, but could obtain no redress; and in the view of the general policy of the Popish Powers, which was to sweep away the Pacification of Augsburg altogether as soon as they were strong enough, a number of Protestant princes joined together for mutual defense. On the 4th of May, 1608, was formed the "Protestant Union." At the head of this Union was Frederick IV, the Elector of the Palatinate.

The answer to this was the counter-institution, in the following year, of the "Catholic League." It was formed on July 10th , 1609, and its chief was Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria. Maximilian was a fanatical disciple of the Jesuits, and in the League now formed, and the terrible war to which it led, we see the work of the Society of Jesus. The Duke of Bavaria was joined by Duke Leopold of Austria, and the Prince-bishops of Wurzburg, Ratisbon, Augsburg, Constance, Strasburg, Passau, and by several abbots.

The leading object of the League was the restoration of the Popish faith over Germany, and the extirpation of Protestantism. This was to be accomplished by force of arms. Any moment might bring the outbreak; and Maximilian had all army of Bavarians, zealots like himself, waiting the summons, which, as matters then stood, could not be long deferred. We behold Protestantism entering on its third grand phase in Germany.

The first was the Illumination. From the open Bible, unlocked by the recovered Hebrew and Greek tongues, and from the closets and pulpits of great theologians and scholars, came forth the light, and the darkness which had shrouded the world for a thousand years began to be dispersed. This was the beginning of that world-overturning yet world-restoring movement. The second phase was that of Confession and Martyrdom. During that period societies and States were founding themselves upon the fundamental principle of Protestantism — namely, submission to the Word of God — and were covering Christendom with a new and higher life, individual and national. Protestantism opens its second century with its third grand phase, which is War. The Old now begins clearly to perceive that the New can establish itself only upon its ruins, and accordingly it girds on the sword to fight. The battle-field is all Germany: into that vast arena descend men of all nations, not only of Europe, but even from parts of Asia: the length of the day of battle is thirty years.

Some have preferred this as an indictment against Protestantism; see, it has been said, what convulsions it has brought on. It is true that if Protestantism had never existed this unprecedented conflict would never have taken place, for had the Old been left in unchallenged possession it would have been at peace. It is also true that neither literature nor philosophy ever shook the world with storms like these. But this only proves that conscience alone, quickened by the Word of God, was able to render the service which the world needed; for the Old had to be displaced at whatever cost of tumult and disturbance, that the New, which cannot be shaken, might be set up.

Let us trace the first risings of this great commotion. The "Catholic League" having been formed, and Maximilian of Bavaria placed at the head of it, the Jesuits began to intrigue in order to find work for the army which the duke held in readiness strike. It needed but a spark to kindle a flame.

The spark fell. The "Majestats-Brief," or Royal Letter, granted by Rudolph II, and which was the charter of the Bohemian Protestants, began to be encroached upon. The privileges which that charter conceded to the Protestants, of not only retaining the old churches but of building new ones where they were needed, were denied to those who lived upon the Ecclesiastical States. The Jesuits openly said that this edict of toleration was of no value, seeing the king had been terrified into granting it, and that the time was near when it would be swept away altogether. This sort of talk gave great uneasiness and alarm; alarm was speedily converted into indignation by the disposition now openly evinced by the court to overturn the Majestats-Brief, and confiscate all the rights of the Protestants. Count Thurn, Burgrave of Carlstein, a popular functionary, was dismissed, and his vacant office was filled by two nobles who were specially obnoxious to the Protestants, as prominent enemies of their faith and noted persecutors of their brethren. They were accused of hunting their Protestant tenantry with dogs to mass, of forbidding them the rights of baptism, of marriage, and of burial, and so compelling them to return to the Roman Church. The arm of injustice began to be put forth against the Protestants on the Ecclesiastical States, whose rights were more loosely defined. Their church in the town of Klostergrab was demolished; that at Braunau was forcibly shut up, and the citizens who had opposed these violent proceedings were thrown into prison. Count Thurn, who had been elected by his fellow-Protestants to the office of Defender of the Church's civil rights, thought himself called upon to organize measures of defense.

Deputies were summoned to Prague from every, circle of the kingdom for deliberation. They petitioned the emperor to set free those whom he had cast into prison; but the imperial reply, so far from opening the doors of the gaol, justified the demolition of the churches, branded the opposers of that act as rebels, and dropped some significant threats against all who should oppose the royal will. Bohemia was in a flame. The deputies armed themselves, and believing that this harsh policy had been dictated by the two new members of the vice-regal Council of Prate, they proceeded to the palace, and forcing their way into the hall where the Council was sitting, they laid hold — as we have already narrated — on the two obnoxious members, Martinitz and Slavata, and, "according to a good old Bohemian custom," as one of the deputies termed it, they threw them out at the window. They sustained no harm from their fall, but starting to their feet, made off from their enemies. This was on the 23rd of May, 1618: the Thirty Years' War had begun.

Thirty directors were appointed as a provisional government. Taking possession of all the offices of state and the national revenues, the directors summoned Bohemia to arms. Count Thurn was placed at the head of the army, and the entire kingdom joined the insurrection, three towns excepted — Budweis, Krummau, and Pilsen — in which the majority of the inhabitants were Romanists. The Emperor Matthias was terrified by this display of union and courage on the part of the Bohemians. Innumerable perils at that hour environed his throne. His hereditary States of Austria were nearly as disaffected as Bohemia itself — a spark might kindle them also into revolt: the Protestants were numerous even in them, and, united by a strong bond of sympathy, were not unlikely to make common cause with their brethren. The emperor, dreading a universal conflagration, which might consume his dynasty, made haste to pacify the Bohemian insurgents before they should arrive under the walls of Vienna, and urge their demands for redress in his own palace. Negotiations were in progress, with the best hopes of a pacific issue; but just at that moment the Emperor Matthias died, and was succeeded by the fanatical and stem Ferdinand II.

There followed with starting rapidity a succession of significant events, all adverse to Bohemia and to the cause of Protestantism. These occurrences form the prologue, as it were, of that great drama of horrors which we are about to narrate. Some of them have already come before us in connection with the history of Protestantism in Bohemia. First of all came the accession of Silesia and Moravia to the insurrection; the deposition of Ferdinand II as King of Bohemia, and the election of Frederick, Elector of the Palatinate, in his room. This was followed by the victorious march of Count Thurn and his army to Vienna. The appearance of the Bohemian army under the walls of the capital raised the Protestant nobles in Vienna, who, while the Bohemian balls were falling on the royal palace, forced their way into Ferdinand's presence, and insisted that he should make peace with Count Thurn by guaranteeing toleration to the Protestants of his empire. One of the Austrian magnates was so urgent that he seized the monarch by the button, and exclaimed, "Ferdinand, wilt thou sign it?" But Ferdinand was immovable. In spite of the extremity in which he stood, he would neither flee from his capital nor make concessions to the Protestants. Suddenly, and while the altercation was still going on, a trumpet-blast was heard in the court of the palace. Five hundred cuirassiers had arrived at that critical moment, under General Dampierre, to defend the monarch. This turned the tide. Vienna was preserved to the Papacy, and with Vienna the Austrian dominions and the imperial throne. There followed the retreat of the Bohemian host from under the walls of the capital; the election of Ferdinand, at the Diet of Frankfort, to the dignity of emperor; the equipment of an army to crush the insurrection in Bohemia; and, in fine, the battle of the Weissenburg under the walls of Prague, which by a single stroke brought the "winter kingdom" of Frederick to an end, laid the provinces of Bohemia, Silesia, and Moravia at the feet of Ferdinand, and enabled him to inaugurate an iron era of persecution by setting up the scaffold at Prague, on which the flower of the country's rank and genius and virtue were offered up in the holocaust we have already described. Such was the series of minor acts which led up to the greater tragedies. Though sufficiently serious in themselves, they are dwarfed into comparative insignificance by the stupendous horrors that tower up behind them.

Before entering on details, we must first of all sketch the general features of this terrible affair. It had long been felt that the antagonism between the old and the new faiths — which every day partook more of passion and less of devotion, and with which so many dynastic and national interests had come to be bound up — would, in the issue, bring on a bloody catastrophe. That catastrophe came at last; but it needed the space of a generation to exhaust its vengeance and consummate its woes. The war was prolonged beyond all previous precedent, mainly from this cause, that no one of the parties engaged in it so far overtopped the others as to be able to end the strife by striking a great and decisive blow. The conflict dragged slowly on from year to year, bearing down before it leaders, soldiers, cities, and provinces, as the lava-flood, slowly descending the mountain-side, buries vineyard and pine-forest, smiling village and populous city, under all ocean of molten rocks.

The armies by which this long-continued and fearfully destructive war was waged were not of overwhelming numbers, according to our modern ideas. The host on either side rarely exceeded 40,000; it oftener fell below than rose above this number; and almost all the great battles of the war were fought with even fewer men. It was then held to be more than doubtful whether a general could efficiently command a greater army than 40,000, or could advantageously employ a more numerous host on one theater.

Once, it is true, Wallenstein assembled round his standard nearly 100,000; but this vast multitude, in point of strategical disposition and obedience to command, hardly deserved the name of an army. It was rather a congeries of fighting and marauding bands, scattered over great part of Germany — a scourge to the unhappy provinces, and a terror to those who had called it into existence. Even when the army-roll exhibited 100,000 names, it was difficult to bring into action the half of that number of fighting men, the absentees were always so numerous, from sickness, from desertion, from the necessity of collecting provisions, and from the greed of plunder. The Bohemian army of 1620 was speedily reduced in the field to one-half of its original numbers; the other half was famished, frozen, or forced to desert by lack of pay, not less than four millions and a half of guldens being owing to it at the close of the campaign. No military chest of those days — not even that of the emperor, and much less that of any of the princes — was rich enough to pay an army of 40,000; and few bankers could be persuaded to lend to monarchs whose ordinary revenues were so disproportionate to their enormous war expenditure. The army was left to feed itself. When one province was eaten up, the army changed to another, which was devoured in its turn. The verdant earth was changed to sackcloth. Citizens and peasants fled in terror-stricken crowds. In the van of the army rose the wail of despair and anguish: in its rear, famine came stalking on in a pavilion of cloud and fire and vapor of smoke.

The masses that swarm and welter in the abyss Germany now became we cannot particularize. But out of the dust, the smoke, and the flame there emerge, towering above the others, a few gigantic forms, which let us name. Ernest of Mansfeld, the fantastic Brunswicker and Bernhard of Weimar form one group. Arrayed against these are Maximilian of Bavaria, and the generals of the League — Tilly and Pappenheim, leaders of the imperial host; the stern, inscrutable Wallenstein, Altringer, and the great Frenchmen, Conde and Turenne; among the Swedes, Horn, Bauer, Torstenson, Wrangel, and over all, lifting himself grandly above the others, is the warrior-prince Gustavus Adolphus. What a prodigious combination of military genius, raised in each case to its highest degree of intensity, by the greatness of the occasion and the wish to cope with a renowned antagonist or rival! The war is one of brilliant battles, of terrible sieges, but of quick alternations of fortune, the conqueror of today becoming often the vanquished of tomorrow. The evolution of political results, however, is slow, and they are often as quickly lost as they had been tediously and laboriously won.

This great war divides itself into three grand periods, the first being from 1618 to 1630. That was the epoch of the imperial victories. Almost defeated at the outset, Ferdinand II brought back success to his standards by the aid of Wallensiein and his immense hordes; and in proportion as the imperial host triumphed, Ferdinand's claims on Germany rose higher and higher: his object being to make his will as absolute and arbitrary over the whole Fatherland as it was in his paternal estates of Austria. In short, the emperor had revived the project which his ancestor Charles V had so nearly realized in his war with the princes of the Schmalkald League — namely, that of making himself the one sole master of Germany.

At the end of the first period we find that the Popish Power has spread itself like a mighty flood over the whole of Germany to the North Sea. But now, with the commencement of the second period — which extends from 1630 to 1634 — the opposing tide of Protestantism begins to set in, and continues to flow, with irresistible force, from north to south, till it has overspread two-thirds of the Fatherland. Nor does the death of its great champion arrest it. Even after the fall of Gustavus Adolphus the Swedish warriors continued for some time to win victories, and still farther to extend the territorial area of Protestantism. The third and closing period of the war extends from 1634 to 1648, and during this time victory and defeat perpetually oscillated from side to side, and shifted from one part of the field to another. The Swedes came down in a mighty wave, which rolled on unchecked till it reached the middle of Germany, the good fortune which attended them receding at times, and then again returning. The French, greedy of booty, spread themselves along the Rhine, hunger and pestilence traversing in their wake the wasted land. In the Swedish army one general after another perished in battle, yet with singular daring and obstinacy the army kept the field, and whether victorious or vanquished in particular battles, always insisted on the former claim of civil and religious liberty to Protestants. In opposition to the Swedes, and quite as immovable, is seen the Prince of the League, Maximilian of Bavaria, and the campaigns which he now fought are amongst the most brilliant which his dynasty have ever achieved. The fanatical Ferdinand II had by this time gone to his grave; the soberer and more tolerant Ferdinand III had succeeded, but he could not disengage himself from the terrible struggle, and it went on for some time longer; but at last peace began to be talked about. Nature itself seemed to cry for a cessation of the awful conflict; cities, towns, and villages were in flames; the land was empty of men; the high-roads were without passengers, and briars and weeds were covering the once richly cultivated fields. Several States had now withdrawn from the conflict: the theater of war was being gradually narrowed, and the House of Hapsburg was eventually so hedged in that it was compelled to come to terms. The countries which had been the seat of the struggle were all but utterly ruined. Germany had lost three-fourths of its population.[4] "Over the brawling of parties a terrible Destiny moved its wings; it lifts up leaders and again casts them down into the bloody mire; the greatest human power is helpless in its hand; at last, satisfied with murder and corpses, it turns its face slowly from the land that is become only a great field of the dead."[5]

CHAPTER 2 Back to Top

THE ARMY AND THE CAMP.

The Battle-fields of the Seventeenth and of the Nineteenth Centuries – All Nationalities drawn into this War – Motley Host around the Banners of the League – Carnage – The Camping-ground – The General's Tent – Officers' Tents – Soldiers' Huts – Change in Method of Fortifying Camps – Sentinels and Outposts – All Languages heard in the Camp – A Flying Plague – Plundering of the Surrounding Country – Prayers and Divine Service – Gambling – Huts of the Sutlers – Camp Signals – Oscillation between Abundance and Famine – Scenes of Profusion – Picture of Famine in the Camp – Superstitions – Morals – Duels.

BEFORE narrating the successive stages of this most extraordinary war, and summing up its gains to the cause of Protestantism, and the general progress of the world, let us briefly sketch its more prominent characteristics. The picture is not like anything with which we are now acquainted. The battles of our own day are on a vaster scale, and the carnage of a modern field is far greater than was that of the battle-fields of 200 years ago; but the miseries attending a campaign now are much less, and the destruction inflicted by war on the country which becomes its seat is not nearly so terrible as it was in the times of which we write. Altogether, the balance of humanity is in favor of war as carried on in modern times, though it is still, and ever must be, one of the most terrible scourges with which the earth is liable to be visited.

The Thirty Years' War was not so much German as (ecumenical. Not only did individual foreign nationalities respond to the recruiting-drum, as crows flock to a battle-field, lured thither by the effluvia of corpses, but all the peoples of Christian Europe were drawn into its all-embracing vortex. From the west and from the east, from the north and from the south, came men to fight on the German plains, and mingle their blood with the waters of the Rhine, the Danube, and the Elbe. Englishmen and Scotchmen crossed the sea and hastened to place themselves under one or other of the opposing standards. Danes, Swedes, Finns, crowding to the theater of action, and mingling with the Netherlanders, contended with them in the bloody fray in behalf of the Protestant liberties. The Laplander, hearing amid his snows the bruit of this great conflict, yoked his reindeer, and hurried in his sledge across the ice, brining with him furs for the clothing of the Swedish troops. The imperial army was even more varied in respect of nationality, of speech, of costume, and of manners. A motley host of Romish Walloons, of Irish adventurers, of Spaniards and Italians were assembled under the banners of the League. Almost every Slav race broke into the land in this day of confusion. The light horseman of the Cossacks was the object of special terror. His movements were rapid, and he passed along plundering and slaughtering without much distinction of friend or foe. There came a mingling of Mohammedans in the corps raised in the provinces which abutted on the Turkish frontier. But most hated of all were the Croats, because they were of all others the most barbarous and the most cruel. So multiform was the host that now covered the Fatherland! We know not where in history another such assemblage of ruffians, plunderers, and murderers is to be beheld as is now seen settling down in Germany. Had the slaughter been confined to the battle-field, the carnage would have been comparatively trifling; but all the land was a battle-field, and every day of the thirty years was a day of battle, for not a day but blood was shed. The times of the Goths furnish us with no such dark picture. When these nations descended from the North to overthrow the Roman Empire, they pressed forward and did not return on their course. The cities, the cultivation, and the men who were trampled down in their march rose up again when they had passed. But the destroying host which we now see collecting from the ends of the earth, and assembling in Germany, does not depart from the land it has invaded. It abides for the space of a generation. It comes to make the land a tomb, and to bury itself in the same vast sepulcher to which it consigned the Germans; for only the merest remnant of that multitudinous host ever returned home. It drew destruction upon itself in the destruction which it inflicted upon the land.

When the field-master received orders to look out for new camping-ground, he chose a spot if possible near a flowing stream, and one capable of being fortified. His first care was to measure off a certain space, in the center of the ground. There was pitched the general's tent. That tent rose in the midst of the host, distinguished from the others by its superior size and greater grandeur. Over it floated the imperial standard, and there the general abode as in the heart of a fortress. Around this central tent was an open space, on which other tent must not be pitched, and which was walled in by spikes stuck in the ground, and sometimes by a more substantial rampart. Immediately outside the space appropriated to the general and his staff were the tents of the officers. They were made of canvas, and conical in form. Outside these, running in parallel rows or streets, were the huts of the common soldiers. They were composed of boards and straw, and the soldiers were huddled together in them, two and four, with their wives, daughters, boys, and dogs. The whole formed a great square or circle, regiment lying alongside regiment, the encampment being strongly fortified; and out beyond its defense there stretched away a wide cleared space, to admit of the enemy being espied a long while before he could make his near approach.

In former times it had been customary to utilize the baggage wagons in fortifying an encampment. The wagons were ranged all round the tents, sometimes in double, sometimes in treble line; they were fastened the one to the other by iron chains, forming a rampart not easily to be breached by an enemy. Such, as we have already seen, were the fortifications within which the Hussites were wont to encamp. But by the time of which we write this method of defense had been abandoned. Armies in the field now sought to protect themselves by ditches, walls, and other field fortifications. At the outlets or portals of the camp were posted sentinels, who stood grasping in the one hand the musket, its butt-end resting on the ground, and in the other holding the burning torch. At a greater distance were troops of horsemen and pickets of sharp-shooters, to detain the enemy should he appear, and give time to those within the entrenchments to get under arms.

The camp was a city. It was a reproduction of the ancient Babel, for in it were to be heard all the tongues of Europe and some of those of Asia. The German language predominated, but it was almost lost within the encampment by adulteration from so many foreign sources, and especially by the ample addition of oaths and terms of blasphemy. Into the encampment were gathered all the peculiarities, prejudices, and hates of the various nationalities of Europe. These burned all the more fiercely by reason of the narrow space in which they were cooped up, and it was no easy matter to maintain the peace between the several regiments, or even in the same regiment, and prevent the outbreak of war within the camp itself. Other cities cannot change their site, they are tied with their wickedness to the spot on which they stand; but this city was a movable plague, it flitted from province to province, throwing a stream of moral Poison into the air. Even in a friendly country the camp was an insufferable nuisance. Within its walls was, of course, neither seed-time nor harvest, and the provinces, cities, and villages around had to feed it. Hardly had the ground been selected, or the first tent set up, when orders were sent out to all the inhabitants of the surrounding country to bring wood, straw, meat, and provender to the army. On all the roads rolled trams of wagons, laden with provisions, for the camp. Droves of cattle might be seen moving toward the same point. The villages for miles around speedily vanished from sight, the thatch was torn off their roofs, and their woodwork carried away by the soldiers for the building of their own huts, and only the crumbling clay walls were left, to be swept away by the first tempest. Their former inhabitants found refuge in the woods, or with their acquaintances in some remoter village. Besides this general sack a great deal of private plundering and stealing went on; soldiers were continually prowling about in all directions, and Sutlers were constantly driving to and from the camp with what articles they had been able to collect, and which they meant to retail to the soldiers. While the men lounged about in the rows and avenues of the encampment, drinking, gambling, or settling points of national or individual honor with their side-arms, the women cooked, washed, mended clothes, or quarreled with one another, their vituperation often happily unintelligible to the object of it, because uttered in a tongue the other did not understand.

Every morning the drum beat, and an accompanying herald called the soldiers to prayers. This practice was observed even in the imperial camp. On Sunday only did the preacher of the regiment conduct public worship, the soldiers with their families being assembled before him, and seated orderly upon the ground. They were forbidden, during the time of Divine service, to lie about in their huts, or to visit the tents of the Sutlers; and the latter were not to sell drink or food to any one during these hours. In the camp of Gustavus Adolphus prayers were read twice a day. The military discipline enforced by that great leader was much more strict, and the moral decorum of his army far higher, as the comparatively untouched aspect of the fields and villages around bore witness.

In the open space within the enclosure of the camp, near the guard-house, stood the gambling-tables, the ground around being strewed over with mantles, for the convenience of the players. Instead of the slow shuffling of the cards, the speedier throw of the dice was often had recourse to, to decide the stakes; and when the dice were forbidden, the players hid themselves behind hedges and there pursued their game, staking their food, their weapons, their horses, and their booty, when booty they happened to possess. Behind the tent of the upper officer, separated by a broad street, stood the stalls and huts of the Sutlers, butchers, and master of the cook-shops; the price of all foods and drinks being fixed by a certain officer. The luxury and profusion that prevailed in the officers' tents, where the most expensive wines were drunk, and only viands prepared by a French cook were eaten, offered an indifferent example of economy and carefulness to the common soldier. The military signals of the camp were the beat of a large drum for the foot-soldier, and the peal of a trumpet for the cavalry. When any important operation was to be undertaken on the morrow, a herald, attired in a bright silk robe, embroidered before and behind with the arms of his prince, rode through the host on the previous evening, attended by the trumpeter, and announced the order for the coming day. This was fatal to discipline, inasmuch as it gave warning to the lounger and the plunderer to set out during the night in search of booty.

The camp oscillated between overflowing abundance and stark famine. When the army had won a battle, and victory gave them the plunder of a city as the recompense of their bravery, there came a good time to the soldiers. Food and drink were then plentiful, and of course cheap. In the last year of the war a cow might be bought in the Bavarian host for almost literally the smallest coin. Then, too, came good times to the merchants in the camp, for then they could command any amount of sale, and obtain any price for their wares. The soldiers tricked themselves out with expensive feathers, scarlet hose, with gold lacings, and rich sables, and they purchased showy dresses and mules for the females of their establishments. Grooms rode out dressed from head to heel in velvet. The Croats in the winter of 1630-31 were so amply supplied with the precious metals that not only were their girdles filled and distended with the number of their gold coins, but they wore golden plates as breast-plates. Paul Stockman, Pastor of Lutzen, a small town in Saxony, relates that before the battle of Lutzen one soldier rode a horse adorned with gold and silver stars, and another had his steed ornamented with 300 silver moons.[1]

The camp-women, and sometimes the horsemen, arrayed themselves in altar-cloths, mass-robes, and priests' coats. The topers pledged one another in the most expensive wines, which they drank out of the altar-cups; and from their stolen gold they fabricated long chains, from which they were accustomed to wrench off a link when they had a reckoning to discharge or a debt to pay.

The longer the war continued, the less frequent and less joyous became these halcyon days. Want then began to be more frequent in the camp than superfluity. "The spoiling of the provinces avenged itself frightfully on the spoilers themselves. The pale specter of hunger, the forerunner of plague, crept through the lanes of the camp, and raised its bony hand before the door of every straw hut. Then the supplies from the neighborhood stopped; neither fatted ox nor laden cart was now seen moving towards the camp. The price of living became at these times exorbitant; for example, in 1640 a loaf of bread could not be purchased by the Swedish army in the neighborhood of Gotha for a less sum than a ducat. The sojourn in the camp became, even for the most inured soldier, unendurable. Everywhere were hollow-eyed parchment faces; in every row of huts were sick and dying; the neighborhood of the camp was infected by the putrid bodies of dead horses and mules; all around was a desert of untilled fields, and blackened ruins of villages, and the camp itself became a dismal city of the dead. The accompaniments of the host, the women and children namely, speedily vanished in the burial-trenches; only the most wretched dogs kept themselves alive on the most disgusting food; the others were killed and eaten.[2] At such a time the army melted quickly, away, and no skill of the ablest leader could avert its ruin."[3]

There arose a mingled and luxuriant crop of Norse, German, and Roman superstitions in the camp. The soldiers had unbounded faith in charms and incantations, and sought by their use to render their weapons powerful and themselves invulnerable. They had prayers and forms of words by which they hoped to obtain the mastery in the fight, and they wore amulets to protect them from the deadly bullet and the fatal thrust of dagger. The camp was visited by gypsies and soothsayers, who sold secret talismans to the soldiers as infallible protections in the hour of danger. Blessings, conjurations, witchcrafts, in all their various forms abounded in the imperial army as much as did guns and swords and pikes. The soldiers fell all the same in the deadly breach, in the shock of battle, and in the day of pale famine, The morals of the camp were without shame, speaking generally. Almost every virtue perished but that of soldierly honor and fidelity to one's flag, so long as one served under it; for the mercenary often changed his master, and with him the cause for which he fought. The mood of mind prevalent in the camp is well hit off by Schiller's Norseman's song – "A sharp sword is my field, plunder is my plough, the earth is my bed, the sky is my covering, my cloak is my house, and wine is my eternal life." Duels were of daily occurrence, and when at last they were forbidden, the soldiers sought secret places beyond the lines, where they settled their quarrels. Gustavus Adolphus punished dueling with death, even in the case of his highest officers, but no law could suppress the practice.

CHAPTER 3 Back to Top

THE MARCH AND ITS DEVASTATIONS.

Germany before the War – Its Husbandry – Its Villages – Its Cities – Dress, &c., of the Citizens – Schools – Its Protestantism – Memories of the Past – Foreign Soldiers Enter Thuringia – Their Oppressions of the Peasants – Exactions – Portents – Demoralization of Society – Villagers Driven into Hiding-places – Cruelties on Protestant Pastors – Michel Ludwig – George Faber – John Otto – Andrew Pochmann – The Pastor of Stelzen.

To know the desolation to which Germany was reduced by the long war, it is necessary to recall the picture of what it was before it became the theater of that unspeakable tragedy. In 1618, the opening year of a dismal era, Germany was accounted a rich country. Under the influence of a long peace its towns had enlarged in size, its villages had increased in number, and its smiling fields testified to the excellence of its husbandry. The early dew of the Reformation was not yet exhaled. The sweet breath of that morning gave it a healthy moral vigor, quickened its art and industry, and filled the land with all good things. Wealth abounded in the cities, and even the country people lived in circumstances of comfort and ease.

In Thuringia and Franconia the villages were numerous. They were not left open and without defense. Some of them were surrounded with a broad trench or ditch; others were defended with stone walls, in which were openings or gateways opposite all the principal streets, with heavy doors to shut them in at night. Nor was the churchyard left unprotected; walls enclosed the resting-places of the dead; and these, oftener than once, formed the last refuge of the living. As a further security against surprise or molestation, village and meadow were patrolled night and day by watchmen. The houses were built of wood or clay; they stood close to each other, ranged in narrow streets, and though their exteriors were mean, within they were not deficient in furnishings and comfort.

The fruit-trees stood round the village, perfuming the air with their spring blossoms, and delighting the eye with their autumn fruits. At the village gates, or under the boughs of one of its embowering trees, a fountain would gush out, and pour its crystal waters into a stone trough. Here weary traveler might halt, and here ox or horse, toiling under the load, might drink. The quiet courtyards were filled with domestic fowls; squadrons of white geese sallied across the stubble-fields, or, like fleet at anchor, basked in the sun; teams of horses were ranged in the stalls, and among them might be some great hard-boned descendant of the old charger.

But the special pride of the husbandman were the flocks of sheep and oxen that roamed in the meadow, or grazed on the hill-side. Besides the ordinary cereals, crops of flax and hops covered his fields. It is believed that the cultivation of Germany in 1618 was not inferior to its cultivation in 1818.

The cities were strongly fortified: their walls were not infrequently double, flanked by towers, and defended by broad and deep moats. It was observed that stone walls crumbled under the stroke of cannon-balls, and this led to the adoption of external defenses, formed of earthen mounds, as in the case of the Antwerp citadel. Colleges, gymnasia, and printing-presses flourished in the towns, as did trade and commerce. The great road passing by Nuremberg, that ancient entrepot of the commerce of the West, diffused over Germany the merchandise which still continued to flow, in part at least, in its old channel. The Sunday was not honored as it ought to have been within their gates. When Divine service was over, the citizens were wont to assemble on the exchange, where amusement or business would profane the sacred hours. They were much given to feasting: their attire was richer than at the present day: the burghers wore velvets, silks, and laces, and adorned themselves with feathers, gold and silver clasps, and finely mounted side-arms. The table of the citizen was regulated by a sumptuary law: the rich were not to exceed the number of courses prescribed to them; and the ordinary citizen was not to dine in plainer style than was appointed his rank. Dancing parties were forbidden after sunset. Those who went out at night had to carry lanterns or torches: ultimately torches were interdicted, and a metal basket fixed at the street-corners, filled with blazing tar-wood, would dispel the darkness.

Since the Reformation, a school had existed in every town and village in which there was a church. In the decline of the Lutheran Reformation, the incumbent discharged, in many cases, the duties of both pastor and schoolmaster. He instructed the youth on the week-days, and preached to their parents on the Sunday. Sometimes there was also a schoolmistress. A small fee was exacted from the scholars. The capacity of reading and writing was pretty generally diffused amongst the people. Catechisms, Psalters, and Bibles were common in the houses of the Protestants. The hymns of Luther were sung in their sanctuaries and dwellings, and might often be heard resounding from garden and rural lane. The existing generation of Germans were the grandchildren of the men who had been the contemporaries of Luther. They loved to recall the wonders of the olden time, when more eyes were turned upon Wittemberg than upon Rome, and the Reformer filled a larger space in the world's gaze than either the emperor or the Pope. As they sat under the shade of their linden-trees, the father would tell the son how Tetzel came with his great red cross; how a monk left his cell to cry aloud that "God only can forgive sin," and how the pardon-monger fled at the sound of his voice; how the Pope next took up the quarrel, and launched his bull, which Luther burned; how the emperor unsheathed his great sword, but instead of extinguishing, only spread the conflagration wider. He would speak of the great day of Worms, of the ever-memorable victory at Spires; and how the princes and knights of old were wont to ride to the Diet, or march to battle, singing Luther's hymns, and having verses of Holy Scripture blazoned on their banners. He would tell how in those days the tents of Protestantism spread themselves out till they filled the land, and how the hosts of Rome retreated and pitched their encampment afar off. But when he compared the present with the past, he would heave a sigh. "Alas!" we hear the aged narrator say, "the glory is departed." The fire is now cold on the national hearth; no longer do eloquent doctors and chivalrous princes arise to do battle for the Protestantism of the Fatherland. Alas! the roll of victories is closed, and the territory over which the Reformation stretched its scepter grows narrower every year. Deep shadows gather on the horizon, and through its darkness may be seen the shapes of mustering hosts, while dreadful sounds as of battle strike upon the ear. It is a night of storms that is descending on the grandchildren of the Reformers.

At last came the gathering of foreign troops, and their converging march on the scene of operations. Startling forms began to show themselves on the frontiers of Thuringia, and its vast expanse of glade and forest, of village and town, became the scene of oft-repeated alarms and of frightful sufferings. Foreign soldiers, with the savage looks of battle, and raiment besmeared with blood, marched into its villages, and entering its thresholds, took possession of house and bed, and terrifying the owner and family, peremptorily demanded provisions and contributions. Not content with what was supplied them for their present necessities, they destroyed and plundered whatever their eyes lighted upon. After 1626, these scenes continued year by year, growing only the worse each successive year. Band followed band, and more than one army seated itself in the villages of Thuringia for the winter. The demands of the soldiery were endless, and compliance was enforced by blows and cruel torturings.

The peasant most probably had hidden his treasures in the earth on the approach of the host; but he saw with terror the foreign man-at-arms exercising a power, which to him seemed magical, of discovering the place where his hoards were concealed. If it happened that the soldier was baffled in the search, the fate of the poor man was even worse, for then he himself was seized, and by torments which it would be painful to describe, was compelled to discover where his money and goods lay buried. On the fate of his wife and his daughters we shall be silent. The greatest imaginable horrors were so customary that their non-perpetration was a matter of surprise. Of all was the unhappy husbandman plundered. His bondman was carried off to serve in the war; his team was unyoked from the plough to drag the baggage or the cannon; his flocks and herds were driven off from the meadow to be slaughtered and eaten by the army; and the man who had risen in affluence in the morning, was stripped of all and left penniless before night.

It was not till after the death of Gustavus Adolphus that the sufferings of the country people reached their maximum. The stricter discipline maintained by that great leader had its effect not only in emboldening the peasants, and giving them some little sense of security in these awful times, but also in restraining the other military corps, and rendering their license less capricious and reckless than it otherwise would have been.

There was some system in the levying of supplies and the recruiting of soldiers during the life of Gustavus; but after the fall of the Swedish king these bonds were relaxed, and the greatest sufferings of the past appeared tolerable in comparison with the evils that now afflicted the Germans. In addition to their other endurances, they were oppressed by superstitious terrors and forebodings. Their minds, full of superstition, became the prey of credulous fancies. They interpreted everything, if removed in the least from the ordinary course, into a portent of calamity. They saw terrible sights in the sky, they heard strange and menacing voices speaking out of heaven and specters gliding past on the earth. In the Dukedom of Hildburghausen, white crosses lighted up the firmament when the enemy approached. When the soldiers entered the office of the town clerk, they were met by a spirit clothed in white, who waved them back. After their departure, there was heard during eight days, in the choir of the burned church, a loud snorting and sighing. At Gumpershausen was a girl whose visions and revelations spread excitement over the whole district. She had been visited, she said, by a little angel, who appeared first in a red and then in a blue mantle, and who, sitting in her sight upon the bed, cried, "Woe!" to the inhabitants, and admonished them against blasphemy and cursing, and foretold the most frightful shedding of blood if they did not leave off their wickedness.[1] After the terror came defiance and despair. An utter demoralization of society followed. Wives deserted their husbands, and children their parents. The army passed on, but the vices and diseases which they had brought with them continued to linger in the devastated and half- peopled villages behind them. To other vices, drunkenness was added. Excess in ardent spirits had deformed the German peasantry since the period of the Peasant-war, and now it became a prevalent habit, and regard for the rights and property of one's neighbor soon ceased. At the beginning of the war, village aided village, and mutually lightened each other's calamities so far as was in their power. When a village was robbed of its cattle, and sold to the adjoining one by the marauding host, that other village returned the oxen to their original owners on repayment of the price which they had paid to the soldiers. Even in Franconia these mutual services were frequently exchanged between Popish and Protestant communities. But gradually, their oppression and their demoralization advancing step by step, the country people began to steal and plunder like the soldiers. Armed bands would cross the boundaries of their commune, and carry off from their neighbors whatsoever they coveted. Brigandage was now added to robbery. They lurked in the woods and the mountain passes, lying in wait for the stragglers of the army, and often took a red revenge. How sad the change! The woodman, who had once on a time awakened all the echoes of the forest glades with his artless songs, now terrified them with the shrieks of his victim. A bunting hatred arose between the soldiers and the peasantry, which lasted till the very end of the war, and the frightful traces of which long survived the conflict.

So long as their money lasted, the villagers bought themselves off from the obligation of having the soldiers billeted upon them; but when their money was spent they were without defense. Watchmen were stationed on the steeples and high places in the neighborhood, who gave warning the moment they descried on the far-off horizon the approach of the host. The villagers would then bring out their furniture and valuables, and convey them to hiding-places selected weeks before, and themselves live the while in these places a most miserable life. They dived into the darkest parts of the forests; they burrowed in the bleakest moors; they lurked in old clay pits and in masses of fallen masonry; and to this day the people of those parts show with much interest the retreats where their wretched forefathers sought refuge from the fury of the soldiery. The peasant always came back to his village – too commonly to find it only a ruin; but his attachment to the spot set him eagerly to work to rebuild his overturned habitation, and sow the little seed he had saved in the down-trodden soil. He had been robbed of his horse, it may be, but he would harness himself to the plough, and obeying the force of habit, would continue the processes of tilling and sowing, though he had but small hopes of reaping. The little left him he was careful to conceal, and strove to look even poorer than he was. He taught himself to live amid dirt and squalor and apparent poverty, and he even extinguished, the fire on his hearth, lest its light, shining through the casement, should attract to his dwelling any straggler who might be on the outlook for a comfortable lodging for the night. "His scanty food he concealed in places from which even the ruthless enemy turned away in horror, such as graves, coffins, and amongst skulls."[2]

The clergy were the chief consolers of the people in these miserable scenes, and at the same time the chief sufferers in them. The flint brunt of the imperial troops fell on the village pastor; his church was first spoiled, then burned down, and his flock scattered. He would then assemble his congregation, or such as remained of them, for worship in a granary or similar place, or on the open common, or in a wood. Not infrequently were himself and his family singled out by the imperial soldiers as the special objects of rudeness and violence. His house was commonly the first to be robbed, his family the first to suffer outrage; but generally the pastors took patiently the spoiling of their goods and the buffetings of their persons, and by their heroic behavior did much to support the hearts of the people in those awful times.

We give a few instances extracted from the brief registers of those times. Michel Ludwig was pastor in Sonnenfeld since 1633. When the times of suffering came he preached in the wood, under the open heaven, to his flock. He summoned his congregation with the drum, for bell he had none, and armed men were on the outlook while he preached. He continued these ministrations during eight years, till his congregation had entirely disappeared. A Swedish colonel invited the brave man to be preacher to the regiment, and he became at a later date president of the field consistory near Torstenson, and superintendent at Weimar.

Instances occur of studious habits pursued through these unsettled times. George Faber, at Gellershausen, preached to a little flock of some three or four at the constant peril of life. He rose every morning at three, studied and carefully committed to memory his sermon, besides writing learned commentaries on several books of the Bible.

John Otto, Rector of Eisfeld in 1635, just married, in addition to the. duties of his office had to teach the public school during eight years, and supported himself by threshing oats, cutting wood, and similar occupations. The record of these vicissitudes is contained in jottings by himself in his Euclid. Forty-two years he held his office in honor. His successor, John Schmidt, was a famous Latin scholar, and owed his appointment to the fact of his being found reading a Greek poem in the guard-house, to which he had been taken by the soldiers.

The story of Andrew Pochmann, afterwards superintendent, illustrates the life led in those times, so full of deadly dangers, narrow escapes, and marvelous interpositions, which strengthened the belief of the men who experienced them in a watchful Providence which protected them, while millions were perishing around them. Pochmann was an orphan, who had been carried off with two brothers by the Croats. Escaping with his brothers during the night, he found means of entering a Latin school. Being a second time taken by the soldiers, he was made quarter-master gunner. In the garrison he continued his studies, and finding among his comrades scholars from Paris and London, he practiced with them the speaking of Latin. Once, when sick, he lay down by the watch-fire with his powder-flask, containing a pound and a half of powder, under his sleeve. As he lay, the fire reached his sleeve and burned a large portion of it, but without exploding his powder-flask. He awoke to find himself alone in the deserted camp, and without a farthing in his pocket. Among the ashes of the now extinct watch-fire he found two thalers, and with these he set out for Gotha. On the way he halted at Langensalza, and turned into a small and lonely house on the wall. He was received by an old woman, who, commiserating his wretched plight, as shown in his haggard looks and emaciated frame, laid him upon a bed to rest. His hostess chanced to be a plague nurse, and the couch on which he was laid had but recently been occupied by a plague patient. The disease was raging in the town; nevertheless, the poor wanderer remained unattacked, and went on his way, to close his life amid happier scenes than those that had marked its opening.

The village and Pastor of Stelzen will also interest us. The spring of the Itz was a holy place in even pagan times. It rises at the foot of the mountains, where they sink down in terraces to the banks of the Maine, and gushes out from the corner of a cave, which is overshadowed by ancient beeches and linden-trees. Near this well stood, before the era of the Reformation, a chapel to the Virgin; and at times hundreds of nobles, with an endless retinue of servants, and troops of pilgrims would assemble on the spot. In 1632 the village in the neighborhood of the well was burned down, and only the church, school-house, and a shepherd's hut remained standing. The pastor, Nicolas Schubert, was reduced to extreme misery. In the ensuing winter we find him inditing the following heart-rending letter to the magistrate: – "I have nothing more, except my eight small naked children; I live in a very old and dangerously dilapidated school-house, without floors or chimneys, in which I find it impossible to study, or to do anything to help myself. I am in want of food, clothes – in short, of everything. – Given at the place of my misery – Stelzen. – Your respectful, poor, and burned-up pastor."

Pastor Schubert was removed, whether to a richer living we know not – a poorer it could not be. His successor was also plundered, and received in addition a blow from a dagger by a soldier. A second successor was unable to keep himself alive. After that, for fourteen years the parish had no pastor. Every third Sunday the neighboring clergyman visited and conducted Divine service in the destroyed village. At last, in 1647, the church itself was burned to the bare walls. Such was the temporal and spiritual destitution that now overwhelmed that land which, half a century before, had been so full of "the bread that perisheth," and also of that "which endures to eternal life."[3]

CHAPTER 4 Back to Top

CONQUEST OF NORTH GERMANY BY FERDINAND II AND THE "CATHOLIC LEAGUE."

Ferdinand II's Aims – Extinction of Protestantism and the German Liberties – Ban of the Empire pronounced on Frederick V – Apathy of the Protestant Princes – They Withdraw from the Protestant Union – Count Mansfeld – Duke of Brunswick – The Number and Devastation of their Armies – Heidelberg Taken – The Palatinate Occupied – James I of England – Outwitted by Ferdinand and Philip II – Electorate of the Rhine Given to the Duke of Bavaria – Treaty between England, Holland, and Denmark – Christian IV of Denmark – Leads the Protestant Host – Ferdinand II Raises an Army – Wallenstein – His Character – Grandeur – Personal Appearance -His Method of Maintaining an Army – Movements of the Campaign of 1626 – Battle of Lutter – Victory of Tilly – Campaign of 1627 – North Germany Occupied by the League – Further Projects of Ferdinand

FROM this general picture of the war, which shows us fanaticism and ruffianism holding saturnalia inside the camp, and terror and devastation extending their gloomy area from day to day outside of it, we turn to follow the progress of its campaigns and battles, and the slow and gradual evolution of its moral results, till they issue in the Peace of Westphalia, which gave a larger measure of toleration to the Protestants than they had ever hitherto enjoyed.

The iron hand of military violence, moved by the Jesuits, was at this hour crushing out Protestantism in Bohemia, in Hungary, in Transylvania, in Styria, and in Carinthia. Dragonnades, confiscations, and executions were there the order of the day. The nobles were dying on the scaffold, the ministers were shut up in prison or chained to the galleys, churches and school-houses were lying in ruins, and the people, driven into exile or slaughtered by soldiers, had disappeared from the land, and such as remained had found refuge within the pale of the Church of Rome. But the extermination of the Protestant faith in his own dominions could not satisfy the vast zeal of Ferdinand II. He aimed at nothing less than its overthrow throughout all Germany. When there would not be one Protestant church or a single Lutheran throughout that whole extent of territory lying between the German Sea and the Carpathian chain, then, and only then, would Ferdinand have accomplished the work for which the Jesuits had trained him, and fulfilled the vow he made when he lay prostrate before the Virgin of Loretto. But ambition was combined with his fanaticism. He aimed also at sweeping away all the charters and constitutions which conferred independent rights on the German States, and subjecting both princes and people to his own will. Henceforward, Germany should know only two masters: the Church of Rome was to reign supreme and uncontrolled in things spiritual, and he himself should exercise an equally absolute sway in things political and civil. It was a two-fold tide of despotism that was about to overflow the countries of the Lutheran Reformation.

Having inaugurated a reaction on the east of Germany, Ferdinand now set on foot a "Catholic restoration" on the west of it. He launched this part of his scheme by fulminating against Frederick V, Palatine of the Rhine, the ban of the empire. Frederick had offended by assuming the crown of Bohemia. After reigning during only one winter lie was chased from Prague, as we have seen, by the arms of the Catholic Leslie. But the matter did not end there: the occasion offered a fair pretext for advancing the scheme of restoring the Church of Rome once more to supreme and universal dominancy in Germany. Ferdinand accordingly passed sentence on Frederick, depriving him of his dominions and dignities, as a traitor to the emperor and a disturber of the public peace. He empowered Maximilian of Bavaria, as head of the League, to execute the ban – that is, to take military possession of the Palatinate. Now was the time for the princes of the Protestant Union to unsheathe the sword, and by wielding it in defense of the Palatine, their confederate, who had risked more in the common cause than any one of them all, to prove their zeal and sincerity in the great object for which they were associated. They would, at t]he same time, shut the door at which the triumphant tide of armed Romanism was sure to flow in and overwhelm their own dominions. But, unhappily for themselves and their cause, instead of acting in the spirit of their Confederacy, they displayed an extraordinary degree of pusillanimity and coldness. The terror of Ferdinand and the Catholic Leslie had fallen upon them, and they left their chief to his fate, congratulating themselves that their superior prudence had saved them from the disasters by which Frederick was overtaken. The free cities of the Confederacy forsook him; and, as if to mark still more their indifference to the cause to which they had so lately given their most solemn pledge, they withdrew from the Union, and the example of cowardly defection thus set by them was soon followed by the princes. How sure a sign of the approach of evil days! We behold zeal on the Popish side, and only faint-heartedness and indifference on that of the Protestants.

The troops of the League, under Duke Maximilian's famous general, Tilly, were now on their march to the Palatinate; but the Protestant princes and free cities sat still, content to see the fall of that powerful Protestant province, without lifting a finger on its behalf. At that moment a soldier of fortune, whose wealth lay in his sword, assembled an army of 20,000, and came forward to fill the vacant place of the cities and princes. Ernest, Count Mansfeld, offered battle to the troops of Spain and Bavaria, on behalf of the Elector Frederick. Mansfeld was soon joined by the Margrave of Baden, with a splendid troop. Christian, Duke of Brunswick, who had conceived a romantic passion for Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Electress-Palatine, whose glove he always wore in his hat, also joined Count Mansfeld, with an army of some 20,000, which he had raised in Lower Saxony, and which lie maintained without pay, a secret he had learnt from Mansfeld.

These combined hosts, which the hope of plunder, quite as much as the desire of replacing Frederick V on his throne, had drawn together, could not be much if at all below 50,000. They were terrible scourges to the country which became the scene of their marches and of their battles. They alighted like a flock of vultures on the rich chapters and bishoprics of the Rhine. During the summers of 1621 and 1622, they marched backwards and forwards, as the fortune of battle impelled them, in that rich valley, robbing the peasantry, levying contributions upon the towns, slaughtering their opponents, and being themselves slaughtered in turn. When hard pressed they would cross the river into France, and continue, in that new and unexhausted field, their devastations and plunderings. But ultimately the arms of Tilly prevailed. After murderous conflicts, in which both sides sustained terrible loss, the bands of Mansfeld retreated northward, leaving the cities and lands of the Palatinate to be occupied by the troops of the League. On the 17th of September, 1622, Heidelberg was taken, after a terrible storm; its magnificent palace was partially burned, its university was closed, and the treasures of its world-renowned library were carried away in fifty wagon-loads to Rome. The rich city of Mannheim was taken by the soldiers of the League in the November following Thus the gates of the Palatinate were opened to the invading hosts, and they entered and gleaned where the troops of Mansfeld and Brunswick had reaped the first rich harvest.

The man whom we have seen first driven from the throne of Bohemia, and next despoiled of his hereditary dominions was, as our readers know, the son-in-law of the King of England. It is with some astonishment that we see James I standing by a quiet spectator of the ruin of his daughter's husband. Elizabeth, and the great statesmen who gave such glory to her throne, would have seen in the swelling wave, crested with victory, that was setting in upon Germany, peril to England; and, even though the happiness of no relation had been at stake, would, for the safety of her throne and the welfare of her realm, have found means of moderating, if not arresting, the reaction, before it had overwhelmed those princes and lands where she must ever look for her trustiest allies. But James I and his minister Buckingham had neither the capacity to devise, nor the spirit to pursue, so large a policy as this. They allowed themselves to be befooled by the two leading Popish Powers. Ferdinand of Austria buoyed up the English monarch with hopes that he would yet restore his son-in-law to his Electorate, although he had already decided that Frederick should see his dominions no more; and Philip II took care to amuse the English king with the proposal of a Spanish marriage for his son, and James was mean-spirited enough to be willing to wed the heir of his crown to the daughter of the man who, had he been able to compass his designs, would have left him neither throne nor kingdom. The dupe of both Austria and Spain, James I. sat still till the ruin of the Elector Frederick was almost completed. When he saw what had happened he was willing to give both money and troops, but it was too late. The occupation of Frederick's dominions by the army of the League made the proffered assistance not only useless it gave it even an air of irony. The Electorate of the Rhine was bestowed upon the Duke of Bavaria, as a recompense for his services.[1]

The territory was added to the area of Romanism, the Protestant ministers were driven out, and Jesuits and priests crowded in flocks to take possession of the newly subjugated domains. The former sovereign of these domains found asylum in a corner of Holland. It was a bitter cup to Elizabeth, the wife of Frederick, and the daughter of the King of England, who is reported to have said that she would rather live on bread and water as a queen than, occupying a lower station, inhabit the most magnificent mansion, and sit down at the most luxurious table.[2]

Other princes, besides the King of England, now opened their eyes. The Elector of Saxony, the descendant of that Maurice who had chased Charles V. across the Alps of the Tyrol, and wrested from him by force of arms the Treaty of Passau, which gave toleration to the Lutherans, was not only indifferent to the misfortunes of the Elector Frederick, but saw without concern the cruel suppression of Protestantism in Bohemia. Content to be left in peace in his own dominions, and not ill-pleased, it may be, to see his rivals the Calvinists humbled, he refused to act the part which his descent and his political power made incumbent upon him. The Elector of Brandenburg, the next in rank to Saxony, showed himself at this crisis equally unpatriotic and shortsighted. But now they saw – what they might have foreseen long before, but for the blindness that selfishness ever inflicts that the policy of Ferdinand had placed them in a new and most critical position.[3] East and west the Catholic reaction had hemmed them in; Protestantism had disappeared in the kingdoms beyond the Danube, and now the Rhine Electorate had undergone a forced conversion. On all sides the wave of a triumphant reaction was rolling onward, and how soon it might sweep over their own territories, now left almost like islands in the midst of a raging sea, they could not tell. The tremendous blunder they had committed was plain enough, but how to remedy it was more than their wisdom could say.

At this moment the situation of affairs in England changed, and a prospect began to open up of a European coalition against the Powers of Spain and Austria. The "Spanish sleeping-cup," as the English nation termed it, had been rudely dashed from the lip of James I, and the monarch saw that he had been practiced upon by Philip II. The marriage with the Infanta of Spain was broken off at the last moment; there followed a rapture with that Power, and the English king, smarting from the insult, applied to Parliament (February, 1624) for the means of reinstating Frederick in the Palatinate by force of arms.[4] The Parliament, who had felt the nation lowered, and the Protestant cause brought into peril, by the truckling of the king, heartily responded to the royal request, and voted a liberal subsidy. Mansfeld and Brunswick came over to London, where they met with a splendid reception. A new army was provided for them, and they sailed to begin operations on the Rhine; but the expedition did not prosper. Before they had struck a single blow the plague broke out in the camp of Mansfeld, and swept away half his army, amid revolting horrors. Brunswick had no better fortune than his companion. He was over-taken by Tilly on the Dutch frontier, and experienced a tremendous defeat. During the winter that followed, the two generals wandered about with the remains of their army, and a few new recruits, whom they had persuaded to join their banners, but they accomplished nothing save the terror they inspired in the districts which they visited, and the money given them by the inhabitants, on the condition of their departure with their banditti.

Charles I having now succeeded his father on the throne of England, the war was resumed on a larger scale, and with a more persistent energy. On the 9th of December, 1625, a treaty was concluded at the Hague between England, Holland, and Denmark, for opposing by joint arms the power of Hapsburg, and reinstating the Elector Frederick.[5] It was a grave question who should head the expedition as leader of its armies. Proposals had been made to Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, but at that moment he had on his hands a war with Poland, and could not embark in another and more onerous campaign. England was not in a condition for carrying on hostilities in Germany on her own account. Holland had not yet ended its great struggle with Spain, and dared not expend on other countries the strength so much needed within itself. Of the three contracting Powers, Denmark was the one which was most at liberty to charge itself with the main burden of the enterprise. It was ultimately arranged that the Danish king should conduct the campaign, and the support of the joint enterprise was distributed among the parties as follows: – Denmark was to raise an army of 30,000, or thereabouts; England was to furnish L 30,000, and Holland L 5,000, month by month, as subsidy. The latter engaged, moreover, should the imperial army press upon the King of Denmark, to make a diversion next summer by placing a fair army in the field, and by contributing a number of ships to strengthen the English fleet on the coast.[6]

Christian IV of Denmark, who was now placed at the head of the Protestant armies in this great war, was one of the most courageous, enlightened, and patriotic monarchs of his time. He hid under a rough exterior and bluff manners a mind of great shrewdness, and a generous and noble disposition. He labored with equal wisdom and success to elevate the condition of the middle class of his subjects. He lightened their burdens, he improved their finance, and he incited them to engage in the pursuits of commerce and trade. These measures, which laid the foundations of that material prosperity which Denmark long enjoyed, made him beloved at home, and greatly raised his influence abroad. His kingdom, he knew, had risen by the Reformation, and its standing, political and social, was fatally menaced by the Popish reaction now in progress.

As Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, he was a prince of the German Empire, and might therefore, without wounding the self-love of others, take a prominent position in checking a movement which threatened the liberties of all Germany, as well as the independence of his own dominions. The appearance of Christian IV at the head of the army of the Protestant Confederacy makes it necessary that we should introduce ourselves to another – a different, but a very powerful figure – that now stood up on the other side. The combinations on the one side rendered it advisable that Ferdinand should make a new disposition of the forces on his. Hitherto he had carried on the war with the arms of the Catholic League. Maximilian of Bavaria and his general, Tilly, occupied the foreground, and were the most prominent actors in the business. Ferdinand now resolved to come to the front in person, by raising an army of his own, and appointing a general to lead it. But a formidable obstacle met him on the threshold of his new project – his military chest was empty. He had gathered many millions front his confiscations in Bohemia, but these had been swallowed up by the Jesuits, or spent on the wars in Hungary, and nothing remained wherewith to fight the battles of the "Restoration." In his difficulty, he applied to one of his generals, who had served with distinction against the Turks and Venetians, and had borne arms nearer home in Bohemia and Hungary. This soldier was Albrecht von Wallenstein, a man of undeniable abilities, but questionable designs. It was this gloomy personage who gave Ferdinand an army.

The same war-like race which had sent forth Zisca to fight the battles of the Hussite Reformers, gave Wallenstein to Rome. He was born on the 15th of September, 1583, of Protestant parents, who had, indeed, been Calixtines through several generations. Being early left an orphan, he was adopted by an uncle, who sent him to the Jesuit college at Olmutz. The Fathers could have no difficulty in discerning the genius of the boy, and they would spare no pains to adapt that genius to the purposes in which they might afterwards have occasion to employ it. The Jesuits had already fashioned a class of men for the war, of whom they had every reason to be proud, and who will remain to all time monuments of their skill and of the power of their maxims in making human souls pliant and terrible instruments of their will. Ferdinand of Austria, Maximilian of Bavaria, and his general, Tilly, were their handiwork. To these they were about to add a fourth. With a dark soul, a resolute will, and a heart which ambition had rendered hard as the nether mill-stone, the Jesuits beheld in Wallenstein a war-machine of their own creating, in the presence of which they themselves at times trembled. The same hands which had fashioned these terrible instruments put them forth, and moved them to and fro over the vast stage which we see swimming in blood.

Wallenstein was now in the prime of life. He had acquired in former campaigns great experience in the raising and disciplining of troops. To his fame as a soldier he now added the prestige of an enormous fortune. An exceedingly rich old widow had fallen in love with him, and overcome by the philter she gave him, and not, it is to be presumed, by the love of her gold, he married her. Next came the confiscations of estates in Bohemia, and Wallenstein bought at absurdly low prices not fewer than sixty-seven estates.[7] Ferdinand gave him in addition the Duchy of Friedland, containing nine towns, fifty-seven castles, and villages. After the king, he was the richest landed proprietor in Bohemia Not content with these hoards, he sought to increase his goods by trading with the bankers, by lending to the court, and by imposing taxes on both friend and foe.

But if his revenues were immense, amounting to many millions of florins annually, his expenditure was great. He lived surrounded by the pomp of an Eastern monarch. His table was sumptuous, and some hundred guests sat down at it daily. Six gates gave entrance to his palace, which still stands on the right bank of the Moldau, on the slope of the Hradschin at Prague. The pile is immense, and similar chateaux were erected on his numerous estates elsewhere. His chamberlains were twenty-four, and were selected from the noblest families in Bohemia. Sixty pages, in blue velvet dresses bordered with gold, waited on him. Fifty men-at-arms kept guard, day and night, in his antechamber. A thousand persons formed the usual complement of his household. Upwards of a thousand homes filled the stalls of his stables, and fed from marble mangers. When he journeyed, ten trumpeters with silver bugles preceded the march; there followed a hundred carriages, laden with his servants and baggage; sixty carriages and fifty led homes conveyed his suite; and last of all, suitably escorted, came the chariot of the man who formed the center of all this splendor.

Wallenstein, although the champion of Rome, neither believed her creed nor loved her clergy. He would, admit no priest into his camp, wishing, doubtless, to be master there himself. He issued his orders in few but peremptory words, and exacted instant and blind obedience. The slightest infraction of discipline brought down swift and severe chastisement upon the person guilty of it. But though rigid in all matters of discipline, he winked at the grossest excesses of his troops outside the camp, and shut his ear to the oft-repeated complaints of the pillagings and murders which they committed upon the peasantry. The most unbounded license was tolerated in his camp, and only one thing was needful – implicit submission to his authority. He had a quick eye for talent, and never hesitated to draw from the crowd, and reward with promotion, those whom he thought fitted to serve him in a higher rank. He was a diligent student of the stars, and never undertook anything of moment without first trying to discover, with the help of an Italian astrologer whom he kept under his roof, whether the constellations promised success, or threatened disaster, to the project he was meditating. Like all who have been believers in the occult sciences, he was reserved, haughty, inscrutable, and whether in the saloons of his palace, or in his tent, there was a halo of mystery around him. No one shared his secrets, no one could read his thoughts: on his face there never came smile; nor did mirth ever brighten the countenances of those who stood around him. In his palace no heavy footfall, no loud voices, might be heard: all noises must be hushed; silence and awe must wait continually in that grand but gloomy chamber, where Wallenstein sat apart from his fellows, while the stars, as they traced their path in the firmament, were slowly working out the brilliant destinies which an eternal Fate had decreed for him. The master-passions of his soul were pride and ambition; and if he served Rome it was because he judged that this was his road to those immense dignities and powers which he had been born to possess. He followed his star.

We must add the picture of his personal appearance as Michiels has drawn it. "His tall, thin figure; his haughty attitude; the stern expression of his pale face; his wide forehead, that seemed formed to command; his black hair, close shorn and harsh; his little dark eyes, in which the flame of authority shone; his haughty and suspicious look; his thick moustaches and tufted beard, produced, at the first glance, a startling sensation. His usual dress consisted of a justaucorps of elk-skin, covered by a white doublet and cloak; round his neck he wore a Spanish ruff, in his hat fluttered a large and red plume, while scarlet pantaloons and boots of Cordovan leather, carefully padded on account of the gout, completed his ordinary attire."[8]

Such was the man to whom Ferdinand of Austria applied for assistance in raising an army.

Wallenstein's grandeur had not as yet developed to so colossal a pitch as to overshadow his sovereign, but his ambition was already fully grown, and in the necessities of Ferdinand he saw another stage opening in his own advancement. He undertook at once to raise an army for the emperor. "How many does your Majesty require?" he asked. "Twenty thousand," replied Ferdinand. "Twenty thousand ?" responded Wallenstein, with an air of surprise. "That is not enough; say forty thousand or fifty thousand."[9] The monarch hinted that there might be a difficulty in provisioning so many. "Fifty thousand," promptly responded Wallenstein, "will have abundance where twenty thousand would starve."

The calculation by which he arrived at this conclusion was sure, but atrocious. A force of only twenty thousand might find their entrance barred into a rich province, whereas an army of fifty thousand was strong enough to force admission anywhere, and to remain so long as there was anything to eat or to waste. The general meant that the army should subsist by plunder; and fifty thousand would cost the emperor no more than twenty thousand, for neither would cost him anything. The royal permission was given, and an army which speed fly attained this number was soon in the field. It was a mighty assemblage of various nationalities, daring characters and diverse faiths; and, however formidable to the cities and provinces amid which it was encamped, it adored and obeyed the iron man around whom it was gathered.

In the autumn of 1625 six armies were in the field, prepared to resume the bloody strife, and devastate the land they professed to liberate. The winter of 1625 passed without any event of moment. With the spring of 1626 the campaign was opened in earnest. The King of Denmark, with 30,000 troops, had passed the winter in the neighborhood of Bremen, and now, putting his army in motion, he acted along the right bank of the Weser.

Tilly, with the army of the League, descended along the left bank of the same river, in the hope of meeting the Danish force and joining battle with it. Wallenstein, who did not care to share his victories and divide his laurels with Tilly, had encamped on the Elbe, and strongly fortified himself at the bridge of Dessau. It would be easy for him to march across the country to the Weser, and fall upon the rear of the King of Denmark, should the latter come to an engagement with Tilly. Christian IV saw the danger, and arranged with Count Mansfeld, who had under him a finely equipped force, to make a diversion in his favor, by marching through Germany to Hungary, joining Gabriel Bethlen, and attacking Vienna. This maneuver would draw off Wallenstein, and leave him to cope with only the troops under Tilly. Duke Christian of Brunswick had orders to enter Westphalia, and thence extend his operations into the Palatinate; and Duke John Ernest of Saxe-Weimar, who was also in the field, was to act in Saxony, and assist Mansfeld in executing the diversion by which Wallenstein was to be drawn off from the theater of war between the Weser and the Elbe, and allow the campaign to be decided by a trial of strength between Christian IV and the general of the League.

Count Mansfeld set about executing his part of the plan. He marched against Wallenstein, attacked him in his strong position on the Elbe, but he was routed with great loss. He retreated through Silesia, pursued by his terrible antagonist, and arrived in Hungary, but only to find a cold reception from Prince Bethlen. Worn out by toil and defeat, he set out to return to England by way of Venice; it was his last journey, for falling sick, he died by the way. He was soon followed to the grave by his two companions in arms, the Duke of Brunswick and Ernest of Saxe-Weimar.

Of the four generals on the Protestant side, only one now survived, Christian IV of Denmark. The deaths of these leaders, and the dispersion of their corps, decided the fate of the campaign. Tilly, his army reinforced by detachments which Wallenstein had sent to his aid, now bore down on the Danish host, which was retreating northwards. He overtook it at Lutter, in Bernburg, and compelled it to accept battle. The Danish monarch three times rallied his soldiers, and led them against the enemy, but in vain did Christian IV contend against greatly superior numbers. The Danes were completely routed; 4,000 lay dead on the field; the killed included many officers. Artillery, ammunition, and standards became the booty of the imperialists, and the Danish king, escaping through a narrow defile with a remnant of his cavalry, presented himself, on the evening of the day of battle, at the gates of Wolfenbuttel.

Pursuing his victory, and driving the Danes before him, Tilly made himself master of the Weser and the territories of Brunswick. Still advancing, he entered Hanover, crossed the Elbe, and spread the troops of the League over the territories of Brandenburg. The year closed with the King of Denmark in Holstein, and the League master of great part of North Germany.

In the spring of next year (1627), Wallenstein returned from Hungary, tracing a second time the march of his troops through Silesia and Germany in a black line of desolation. On joining Tilly, the combined army amounted to 80,000. The two generals, having now no enemy in their path capable of opposing them, resumed their victorious advance. Rapidly overrunning the Dukedoms of Mecklenburg, and putting garrisons in all the fortresses, they soon made themselves masters of the whole of Germany to the North Sea. Wallenstein next poured his troops into Schleswig-Holstein, and attacked Christian IV in his own territories, and soon the Danish king saw his dominions and sovereignty all but wrested from him.

So disastrous for the Protestant interests was the issue of the campaign, illustrating how questionable in such a controversy is the interference of the sword, and how uncertain the results which it works out. Not only had the Protestants not recovered the Palatinate of the Rhine, but the tide of Popish and imperialist victory had rolled on, along the course of the Weser and the Elbe, stopping only on the shores of the Baltic. The Elector of Brandenburg saw the imperial troops at the gate of Berlin, and had to send in his submission to Ferdinand. The Dukes of Mecklenburg had been placed under the ban of the empire, and expelled from their territories. The Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel had been compelled to abandon the Danish alliance. The King of Denmark had lost all his fortresses in Germany; his army had. been dispersed; and Schleswig-Holstein was trembling in the balance. Wallenstein was master of most of the German towns on the shores of the Baltic and the North Sea, but these successes only instigated to greater. The duke was at that moment revolving mighty projects, which would vastly extend both his own and the emperor's power. He dropped hints from which it was plain that he meditated putting down all the German princes, with their "German liberty," and installing one emperor and one law in the Fatherland. He would dethrone the King of Denmark, and proclaim Ferdinand in his room. The whole of Germany, Denmark included, was to be governed from Vienna. There was to be one exception: the Dukedoms of Mecklenburg had become his own special principality, and as this was but a narrow land territory, lie proposed to add thereto the dominion of the seas. By way of carrying out this dream of a vast maritime empire, he Bad already assumed the title of "Admiral of the North and Baltic Seas." He had east his eyes on two points of the Baltic shore, the towns of Rugen and Stralsund, as specially adapted for being the site of his arsenals and dockyards, where he might fit out his fleets, to be sent forth on the errands of peaceful commerce, or more probably on the hostile expeditions of conquest.

Such was the wretched condition of Germany when the year 1627 closed upon it. Everywhere the League had been triumphant, and all was gloom – nay, darkness. The land lay beaten down and trampled upon by its two masters, a fanatical emperor and a dark, inscrutable, and insatiably ambitious soldier. Its princes had been humiliated, its towns garrisoned with foreign troops, and an army of banditti, now swollen to 100,000, were marching hither and thither in it, and in the exercise of a boundless license were converting its fair fields into a wilderness. As if the calamities of the present were not enough, its masters were revolving new schemes of confiscation and oppression, which would complete the ruin they had commenced, and plunge the Fatherland into an abyss of misery.

CHAPTER 5 Back to Top

EDICT OF RESTITUTION.

Edict of Restitution – Its Injustice – Amount of Property to be Restored – Imperial Commissaries – Commencement at Augsburg – Bulk of Property Seized by Ferdinand and the Jesuits – Greater Projects meditated – Denmark and Sweden marked for Conquest – Retribution – Ferdinand asked to Disarm – Combination against Ferdinand – Father Joseph – Outwits the Emperor – Ferdinand and the Jesuits Plot their own Undoing.

THE party of the League were now masters of Germany. Front the foot of the Tyrol and the banks of the Danube all northwards to the shores of the Baltic, and the coast of Denmark, the Jesuit might survey the land and proudly say, "I am lord of it all." Like the persecutor of early times, he might rear his pillar, and write upon it that once Lutheranism existed here, but now it was extinct, and henceforth Rome resumed her sway. Such were the hopes confidently entertained by the Fathers, and accordingly the year 1629 was signalized by an edict which surpassed in its sweeping injustice all that had gone before it. Protestantism had been slain by the sword of Wallenstein, and the decree that was now launched was meant to consign it to its grave.

On the 6th of March, 1629, was issued the famous "Edict of Restitution." This commanded that all the archbishoprics, bishoprics, abbacies, and monasteries, in short all the property and goods which had belonged to the Romish Church, and which since the Religious Peace of Passau had been taken possession of by the Protestants, should be restored. This was a revolution the extent of which it was not easy to calculate, seeing it overturned a state of things which had existed for now nearly a century, and implied the transference of an amount of property so vast as to affect almost every interest and person in Germany. "It was a coup-d'etat as furious," says Michiels, "as if the French were now to be asked to restore the clerical property seized during the Revolution."[1]

Part of that property went to the payment of the Protestant ministers: good part of it was held by the princes; in some cases it formed the entire source of their revenue; its restitution would beggar some of them, and irritate all of them. The princes might plead that the settlement which this edict proposed to overturn had lasted now seventy-five years; that it had been acquiesced in by the silence of four preceding emperors, and that these secularizations had received a legal ratification at the Pacification of Augsburg in 1555, when a proposed clause enjoining restitution had been rejected. They might farther plead that they were entitled to an equal share in those foundations which had been contributed by their common ancestors, and that the edict would disturb the balance of the constitution of Germany, by creating an overwhelming majority of Popish votes in the Diet.

The hardships of the edict were still farther intensified by the addition of a clause which touched the conscience. Popish landed proprietors were empowered to compel their vassals to adopt their religion, or leave the country. When it was objected that this was contrary to the spirit of the Religious Peace, it was coolly replied that "Catholic proprietors of estates were no farther bound than to allow their Protestant subjects full liberty to emigrate."[2]

Commissaries were appointed for carrying out the edict; and all unlawful possessors of church benefices, and all the Protestant States without exception, were ordered, under pain of the ban of the empire, to make immediate restitution of their usurped possessions. Behind the imperial Commissaries stood two powerful armies, ready with their swords to enforce the orders of the Commissaries touching the execution of the edict.

The decree fell upon Germany like a thunderbolt. The bishoprics alone were extensive enough to form a kingdom; the abbacies were numberless; lands and houses scattered throughout all Northern Germany would have to be reft from their proprietors, powerful princes would be left without a penny, and thousands would have to exile themselves; in short, endless confusion would ensue. The Elector of Saxony and the Duke of Brandenburg, whose equanimity had not been disturbed so long as religion only was in question, were now alarmed in earnest. They could no longer hide from themselves that the destruction of the Protestant religion, and the ruin of the German liberties, had been resolved on by the emperor and the Catholic League.

A commencement was made of the edict in Augsburg. This was eminently a city of Protestant memories, for there the Augustan Confession had been read, and the Religious Peace concluded, and that doubtless made this city a delicious conquest to the Jesuits. Augsburg was again placed under the government of its bishop, and all the Lutheran churches were shut up. In all the free cities the Romish worship was restored by the soldiers. As regards the richer bishoprics, the emperor, having regard to the maxim that all well-regulated charity begins at home, got the chapters to elect his sons to them. His second son, Leopold William, a lad of fifteen already nominated Bishop of Strasburg, Passau, Breslau, and Olmutz, obtained as his share of the spoil gathered under the edict, the Bishopric of Halberstadt, and the Archiepiscopates of Magdeburg and Bremen. When the ancient heritages of the Benedictines, Augustines, and other orders came to be distributed anew, by whom should they be claimed but by the Jesuits, an order which had no existence when these foundations were first created! To benefice a youth of fifteen, and endow the new order of Loyola, with this wealth, Ferdinand called "making restitution to the original owners." "If its confiscation was called plunder, it could not be made good by fresh robbery."[3]

Meanwhile the camarilla at Vienna, whose counsels had given birth to this Edict of Restitution, with all the mischiefs with which it was pregnant to its authors, but which it had not yet disclosed, were indulging in dreams of yet greater conquest. The tide of success which had flowed upon them so suddenly had turned their heads, and nothing was too impracticable or chimerical for them to attempt. East and west they beheld the trophies of their victories. The once powerful Protestant Churches of Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary were in ruins; the Palatinate of the Rhine, including that second fountain of Calvinism, Heidelberg, had been added to their dominions; their victorious arms had been carried along the Weser, the Elbe, and the Oder, and had stopped only on the shores of the Baltic. But there was no reason why the Baltic should be the boundary of their triumphs. They would make a new departure. They would carry their victories into the North Sea, and recover for Rome the Kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden. When they had reached this furthest limit on the north, they would return and would essay with their adventurous arms France and England. in both of these countries Protestantism seemed on the ebb, and the thrones so lately occupied by all Elizabeth and a Henry IV, were now filled by pedantic or senile sovereigns, and a second period of juvenescence seemed there to be awaiting their Church. This was the moment when the "Catholic Restoration" had reached its height, when the House of Hapsburg was in its glory, and when the scheme of gigantic dominion at which Loyola aimed when he founded his order, had approached more nearly than ever before or since its full and perfect consummation.

The dreams of aggression which were now inflaming the imaginations of the Jesuits were shared in by Ferdinand; although, as was natural, he contemplated these anticipated achievements more from the point of his own and his house's aggrandizement, and less from that of the exaltation of the Vatican, and the propagation over Europe of that teaching which it styles Christianity. The emperor viewed the contemplated conquests as sound in principle, and he could not see why they should not be found as easily practicable as they were undoubtedly right. He had a general of consummate ability, and an army of 100,000 strong, that cost him nothing: might he not with a force so overwhelming walk to and fro over Europe, as he had done over Germany, and prescribe to its peoples what law they were to obey, and what creed they were to believe? This he meant assuredly to do in that vast territory which stretches from the Balkan and the Carpathians to the German Sea, and the northern coast of Sweden. The next conquest of his arms he fully intended should be the two Kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden; and then changing the German Confederacy into an absolute monarchy, sweeping away the charters and rights of its several States, which he regarded but as so much rubbish, shutting up all its heretical churches, and permitting only the Roman religion to be professed, the whole to the extreme north of Sweden would be brought under what he accounted "the best political constitution – namely, one king,, one law, one God."[4]

But to the emperor, and the Jesuits, his counselors, giddy with the achievements of the past, and yet more so with the dreams of the future, defeat was treading upon the heels of success. Retribution came sooner than Ferdinand had foreseen, and in a way he could not calculate, inasmuch as it grew out of those very schemes, the success of which seemed to guard him against any such reverse as that which was now approaching. The man who had lifted him up to his dizzy height was to be, indirectly, the occasion of his downfall. The first turn in the tide was visible in the jealousy which at this stage sprang up between Ferdinand and the Catholic League. The emperor had become suddenly too powerful to be safe for Catholic interests, and the Jesuits of the League resolved to humble or to break him. So long as Ferdinand was content to owe his victories to Maximilian of Bavaria as head of the League, and conquer only by the sword of Tilly, the Jesuits were willing to permit him to go on. He was their servant while he leaned upon the League, and they could use him or throw him aside as they found it expedient. The moment they saw him disposed to use his power for personal or dynastic ends in opposition to the interests of the order, they could check him, or even strip him of that power altogether. But it was wholly different when Ferdinand separated his military operations from those of the League, called Wallenstein to his service, raised an army of overwhelming numbers, and was winning victories which, although they brought with them the spread of the Roman faith, brought with them still more power to the House of Hapsburg, and glory to its general, Wallenstein. Ferdinand was now dangerous, and they must take measures for curtailing a power that was becoming formidable to themselves. Maximilian of Bavaria summoned a meeting of the League at Heidelberg, and after discussing the matter, a demand was sent to the emperor that he should disarm – that is, dismiss Wallenstein, and dissolve his army.[5] Remove the pedestal, thought the meeting, and the figure will fall.

Other parties came forward to urge the same demand on Ferdinand. These were the princes of Germany, to whom the army of Wallenstein had become a terror, a scourge, and a destruction. We can imagine, or rather we cannot imagine, the state of that land with an assemblage of banditti, now swollen to somewhere about 100,000, [6] roaming over it, reaping the harvest of its fields, gathering the spoil of its cities, torturing the inhabitants to compel them to disclose their treasures, causing whole villages on the line of their march, or in the neighborhood of their encampment, to disappear, and leaving their occupants to find a home in the woods. The position of the princes was no longer endurable. It did not matter much whether they were with or against Ferdinand. The ruffians assembled under Wallenstein selected as the scene of their encampment not the most heterodox, but the most fertile province, and carried away the cattle, the gold, and the goods which it contained, without stopping to inquire whether the owner was a Romanist or a Protestant. "Brandenburg estimated its losses at 20,000,000, Pomerania at 10,000,000, Hesse-Cassel at 7,000,000 of dollars, and the rest in proportion. The cry for redress was loud, urgent, and universal; on this point Catholics and Protestants were agreed."[7]

Ferdinand for some time obstinately shut his ear to the complaints and accusations which reached him on all sides against his general and his army. At last he deemed it prudent to make some concession to the general outcry. He dismissed 18,000 of his soldiers. Under the standard of Wallenstein there remained more marauders than had been sent away; but, over and above, the master-grievance still existed – Wallenstein was still in command, and neither the League nor the princes would be at rest till he too had quitted the emperor's service.

A council of the princes was held at Ratisbon (June, 1630), and the demand was renewed, and again pressed upon Ferdinand. Host painful it was to dismiss the man to whom he owed his greatness; but with a singular unanimity the demand was joined in by the whole Electoral College, by the princes of the League, the Protestant princes, and by the ambassadors of France and of Spain. Along with the ambassadors of France had come a Capuchin friar, Father Joseph, whom Richelieu had sent as an admirable instrument for working on the emperor. This monk has received the credit, of giving the last touch that turned the scale in this delicate affair. "The voice of a monk," says Schiller, "was to Ferdinand the voice of God." Ferdinand was then negotiating for the election of his son as King of the Romans, with the view of his succeeding him in the empire.

"It will be necessary," softly whispered the Capuchin, "to gratify the electors on this occasion, and thereby facilitate your son's election to the Roman crown. When this object has been gained, Wallenstein will always be ready to resume his former station."[8] The argument of Father Joseph prevailed; Wallenstein's dismissal was determined on; and when it was intimated to him the general submitted, only saying to the messenger who brought the unwelcome tidings, that he had learned his errand from the stars before his arrival. Ferdinand faded to carry his son's election as King of the Romans; and when he found how he had been outwitted, he vented his rage, exclaiming, "A rascally Capuchin has disarmed me with his rosary, and crammed into his cowl six electoral bonnets."[9]

All parties in this transaction appear as if smitten with blindness and infatuation. We behold each in turn laying the train for its own overthrow. The cause of Protestantism seemed eternally ruined in the land of Luther, and lo, the emperor and the Jesuits combine to lift it up! Ferdinand prepares the means for his own discomfiture and humiliation when in the first place he quarrels with the League, and in the second when he issues the Edict of Restitution. He drives both Jesuits and Protestants from him in turn. Next it is the Jesuits who plot their own undoing. They compel the emperor to reduce his army, and not only so, but they also make him dismiss a general who is more to him than an army. And what is yet more strange, the time they select for making these great changes is the moment when a hero, who had bound victory to his standards by his surpassing bravery and skill, was stepping upon the shore of Northern Germany to do battle for a faith which they had trodden into the dust, and the name of which would soon, they hoped, perish from the Fatherland.

CHAPTER 6 Back to Top

ARRIVAL OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS IN GERMANY.

The Reaction – Its Limits – Preparatory Campaigns of Gustavus – All Ready – No Alternative left to Gustavus – His Motives – His Character – His Farewell to the Diet – His Parting Address – Embarkation – Lands in Germany – Contempt of Gustavus by the Court of Vienna – Marches on Stettin – Is Admitted into it – Takes Possession of Pomerania – Imperialists Driven out of Mecklenburg – Alliance with France – Edict of Restitution – John George, Elector of Saxony – His Project – The Convention at Leipsic – Its Failure.

THE Catholic reaction, borne onwards by the force of the imperial arms, had rolled up to the borders of Sweden, chasing before it Christian of Denmark, and every one who had striven to stem its advancing torrent. But a mightier Potentate than Ferdinand or any earthly emperor had fixed the limits of the reaction, and decreed that beyond the line it had