The Thirty Years War
Page 8
12. Paulssen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts. Dritte Auflage, ed. R. Lehmann. Leipzig, 1919, I, p. 471.
13. Ranke, Sämmtliche Werke. Leipzig, 1872–85, XXXVIII. Die römischen Päpste, II, p. 261.
14. Weller, Annalen der poetischen National-Literatur der Deutschen. Freiburg-i.-B., 1862–4, p. 267; Khevenhüller, Annales Ferdinandei. Leipzig, 1721, XII, p. 1281.
15. Thus Philip IV of Spain to the Emperor Ferdinand III and the Elector Maximilian of Bavaria to the Emperor Ferdinand II.
16. Sawyer, Memorials and Affairs of State in the reigns of Elizabeth and King James I, collected from the original papers of Sir Ralph Winwood. London, 1725, II, p. 95; Canovas del Castillo, Bosquejo Historico, Madrid, 1911, p. 221.
17. Spannische Sturmglock und Teutsches Warngloecklein, 1616, p. 2.
18. R. Ehrenberg, Das Zeitalter der Fugger. Geldkapital und Kreditverkehr im 16. Jahrhundert. Jena, 1896, II, pp. 199–200, 259; Altamira y Crevea, Historia de España, Barcelona, 1900, III, p. 447 f. E. J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, Cambridge, Mass., 1934, p. 74 f.
19. Relazioni dagli Ambasciatori, Spagna, I, p. 566.
20. Opere del Cardinal Bentivoglio. Venezia, 1644, pp. 63–4.
21. Ibid., p. 57.
22. Geyl, Geschiedenis van de Nederlandsche Stam, II, p. 9; H. G. R. Reade, Sidelights on the Thirty Years War, I, p. 133.
23. Obras del Ilustrissimo excellentissimo y venerable siervo de Dios Don Juan de Palafox y Mendoza. Madrid, 1762, x; Dialogo politico del estado de Alemania, p. 63.
24. Rommel, Geschichte von Hessen. Marburg, Cassel, 1820–43, II, p. 14; Domke, Die Viril-Stimmen im Reichsfürstenrat von 1495–1654. Untersuchungen zur deutschen Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte, No. XI, Breslau, 1882, pp. 111 ff.; J. S. Pütter, Historical Development of the Political Constitution of the German Empire, London, 1790, I, p. 14.
25. Elsas, Umriss einer Geschichte der Preise und Löhne in Deutschland, Leiden, 1936, p. 78.
26. Domke, p. 23; Pütter, pp. 14–15.
27. Janssen, IV, p. 360.
28. Ibid., p. 204.
29. Ibid., p. 201.
30. Ibid., V, p. 533.
31. Janssen, V, pp. 61–2.
32. Janssen, V, p. 426.
33. Ibid., V, p. 538.
34. Streckfuss, pp. 200 ff.
35. Ibid., p. 195; Janssen, IV, pp. 44, 116; V, p. 105; Adalbert Horawitz, Die Jesuiten in Steiermark. Historische Zeitschrift, XXVII, p. 134.
36. Palafox, Diario del Viaje a Alemania, p. 91; Dialogo politico, p. 67.
37. Handschin, Die Küche des 16. Jahrhunderts nach Johann Fischart. Journal of English and German Philology, V, p. 65.
38. Philip Hainhofers Reisetagebuch im Jahr 1617. Baltische Studien, II, p. 173.
39. Janssen, VIII, pp. 173–4.
40. Tholuck, Die Vorgeschichte des Rationalismus. Halle, 1853, 1861, II, i, pp. 212–13.
41. Gothien, Die Oberrheinischen Lande vor und nach dem dreissigjährigen Kriege. Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins. Neue Folge, I, p. 40.
42. Riezler, Geschichte, VI, pp. 64 f.; Hainhofers Reisetagebuch, p. 29.
43. Karl Schultze-Jahde, Der dreissigjährige Krieg und deutsche Dichtung. Historische Zeitschrift, CXLIII, pp. 266–7.
44. Friedensburg, Münzkunde und Geldgeschichte der Einzelstaaten. Munich and Berlin, 1926, p. 118; W. A. Shaw, Monetary Movements of 1600–21 in Holland and Germany. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Second Series, IX, pp. 199–200; Mayr, p. 11.
45. Ehrenberg, Das Zeitalter der Fugger, I, pp. 184–6, 210, 225, 234.
46. Bruchmüller, Die Folgen der Reformation und des dreissigjährigen Krieges. Crossen, 1897, p. 17.
47. Ibid., p. 20.
48. Janssen, VIII, pp. 135–50.
49. Relazioni Veneziane. Venetiaansche berichten over de Vereenigde Nederlanden van 1600–1795, verzameld en uitgegeven door Dr P. J. Blok. Rijks geschiedkundige publicatien, No. 7, p. 63.
50. Taylor his Travels.
51. Konstantin Höfler, Böhmische Studien. Archiv für Oesterreichische Geschichte, XII, Vienna, 1854, p. 388.
52. Gindeley, Geschichte des dreissigjährigen Krieges, Prague, 1869, I, p. 186.
53. Sawyer, Memorials, III, p. 404.
54. Spanheim, Mémoires sur la vie et la mort de Loyse Juliane, Électrice Palatine. Leyden, 1645, p. 315.
55. Friedrich Schmidt, Geschichte der Erziehung der pfälzischen Wittelsbacher. Monumenta Germaniae Paedagogica. Berlin, 1899, XIX, pp. XlV f., 61 f.
56. Wäschke, XVI, V., p. 124.
57. Lundorp, Frankfort, 1688, III, p. 603; see also J. K. Krebs, Christian von Anhalt und die Kurpfälzische Politik am Beginn des dreissigjährigen Krieges. Leipzig, 1872, pp. 1–60 passim.
58. He signed his letters ‘Céladon’, the name of the lovesick shepherd in d’Urfé’s Astrée.
59. Lonchay and Cuvelier, I, p. 492.
60. Khevenhüller, Jahrbücher. Leipzig, 1778, I, p. 4.
61. Hurter, Geschichte Kaiser Ferdinands II. und seiner Eltern. Schaffhausen, 1850–61, III, pp. 436, 589; IV, p. 593.
62. Ibid., III, p. 410.
63. Relationen Venetianischer Botschafter, ed. Fiedler. Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, II, XXVI, Vienna, 1866, p. 102.
64. Carafa, Relatione dello stato dell’imperio. Archiv für oesterreichische Geschichte, XXIII, Vienna, 1859, p. 265.
65. Fiedler, p. 114.
66. Carafa, p. 296.
67. Barthold, Geschichte der Fruchtbringenden Gesellschaft. Berlin, 1848, p. 54.
68. Hainhofers Reisetagebuch, pp. 239–40.
69. Kern, Deutsche Hofordnungen, II, p. 67.
70. Hainhofers Reisetagebuch, p. 188.
71. Ibid., p. 211 f.
72. Tholuck, II, i, p. 213.
73. Voigt, Des Grafen von Dohna Hofleben. Historisches Taschenbuch. Dritte Folge, IV, pp. 135, 137.
74. Barthold, Geschichte der Fruchtbringenden Gesellschaft, p. 55.
75. H. Knapp, Matthias Höe von Hoenegg. Halle, 1902, p. 77.
76. Hurter, Ferdinand II, VIII, p. 77.
77. Ludwig Schwabe, Kursächsische Kirchenpolitik im dreissigjährigen Kriege. Neues Archiv für Sächsische Geschichte, XI, p. 300.
78. Knapp, p. 12.
79. Schwabe, pp. 302–4.
80. Riezler, Geschichte, VI, pp. 61 f.; Geschichte der Hexenprozesse in Bayern, Stuttgart, 1896, pp. 194–5.
81. Palafox, Dialogo Politico, p. 65.
82. Carafa, p. 336 f.
83. Maximilian’s aunt was Ferdinand’s mother, his sister was Ferdinand’s first wife.
84. Carafa, p. 338.
85. Riezler, Geschichte, V, p. 116.
86. La Nunziatura di Bentivoglio, III, p. 406. Some attempt was made to gain the support of the French government for this scheme. See Tapié, Politique étrangère de la France au début de la Guerre de Trente Ans, p. 252.
CHAPTER TWO
A KING FOR BOHEMIA
1617–19
Moreover we considered that if we came to reject this rightful calling, the effusion of much blood and the wasting of many lands must have been laid to our account. . . .
DECLARATION OF FREDERICK V
1.
The kingdom of Bohemia was only a small province, but the kingship carried with it sovereign rights in the duchies of Silesia and Lusatia and the margravate of Moravia. The four provinces had separate capitals at Prague, Breslau, Bautzen and Brünn, held separate Estates, made and kept separate laws. German and Polish were spoken in Silesia, German and Wendish in Lusatia, German and Czech in Bohemia, Slovak in Moravia.
It was doubtful whether all or any of the four were within the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire.
Bohemia, the richest province, dominated the other three. Here the movements towards religious independence, national integrity and political liberty which were stirring in the rest of Europe had attained an early maturity. The Czechs were divided from the Germans by language, and from the Sla
vs by religion and character; self-reliant and resourceful, they had early gained a reputation for commercial acumen, and their folklore glorified the virtues of labour. They had learnt Christianity from Byzantine missionaries, but had modified their form of worship to suit themselves; when they were later merged in the Catholic Church they maintained their native speech in the services and adopted for their patron not one of the famous saints of Christendom but their own King Wenceslas, whose sanctity rested on scarcely better authority than popular affection.
Inevitably they were among the first to defy the authority of Rome, giving Europe at the same time two great teachers, John Hus and Jerome of Prague, who were burnt for heresy at Constance in 1417. The reformers were condemned, but the Czechs set their national honour on their teaching, and finding a leader in Zizka and a fortress on the wide hill of Tabor, reconquered their country. A generation later, George of Podiebrad, the first non-Catholic King in Western Europe, established the religion of Hus throughout Bohemia and set up on the front of every church a sculptured chalice, the symbol of reform. The distinguishing mark of Utraquism, the new religion, was that the laity might receive the Communion in both kinds; otherwise it differed only in detail from Catholicism. Fifty years later the German Reformation burst upon Europe and brought Lutheranism, followed by Calvinism, into Bohemia.
About this time Bohemia fell into the hands of the Hapsburg dynasty, with whom it remained. The kingdom was an important prize, being in fact so rich both in agriculture and commerce that the yield of its taxes covered more than half the total cost of the administration of the Empire.[1] ‘Everything that belonged to the use and commodity of man was and is there . . . nature seemed to make the country her storehouse or granary’ an admiring traveller commented.[2] It is difficult to understand why the Czechs submitted for so long to Hapsburg kings who used their wealth for foreign purposes; this was the more extraordinary because the monarchy was not hereditary but elective.
The truth was that Bohemia in the later sixteenth century was in the most dismal confusion. While Utraquists, Lutherans and Calvinists fought among themselves for privileges, the Hapsburg kings re-established Catholicism as the official religion, granting the other three toleration only. Meanwhile a decline had begun; the old values based on land died hard in Bohemia, where there were no less than fourteen hundred noble families dividing a small country between them and each asserting social distinctions which had to be wastefully maintained.[3] The greater number of these families were Lutheran, but fear of the fanatical Calvinist minority made them cling for safety to the Hapsburg government, Catholic though it was. In addition, the nobility were on equally bad terms with the burghers and the peasants.[4]
These internal divisions gave the Hapsburg throne a negative security. Nevertheless, an occasional crisis brought the Bohemians together: in 1609, when the Emperor Rudolf had attempted to withdraw toleration from the Protestants, even the Catholic nobility cried out against an infringement of privilege. A threat of general revolt forced the Emperor to grant the so-called Letter of Majesty by which Protestant worship was guaranteed and a body known as the Defensors set up to safeguard it.
The Emperor Rudolf made Prague his imperial capital. Here he passed the darkening later years of his reign among the astrolabes and celestial diagrams of his laboratories, filling the stables with horses he never rode, and the imperial apartments with concubines he seldom saw and never touched; closeting himself for hours with his astrologers and astronomers, while edicts and dispatches accumulated the dust of weeks, unsigned upon his desk. The Lutheran nobility in Bohemia finally enforced his deposition and elevated his brother Matthias to the throne.
‘The Bohemians’, wrote an anonymous politician, ‘intend everything for the destruction of the Catholic Church and nothing for the greater glory of Matthias’,[5] and indeed the Lutheran party had intended to bind the new ruler by ties of gratitude, but the Catholic tradition of the Hapsburg dynasty was too strong for them. It was not long before Matthias infringed the spirit if not the actual provisions of the Letter of Majesty; meanwhile he moved his residence to Vienna. Both nobility and townsfolk felt themselves betrayed, and resentfully suspected that their country was being degraded into a mere province of Austria.[6] In revenge the Estates at Prague passed laws forbidding any man to settle in the country or acquire rights of citizenship unless he could speak Czech.[7]
The Estates of Bohemia consisted of three divisions, nobles, burghers and peasants, of which only the first had the right to vote, while the others acted as advisory bodies. Land was the sole basis of nobility and its loss entailed the forfeiture of all right to sit or vote; conversely, the man who acquired land acquired also the privileges of the landowner. Thus the Bohemian estates consisted of fourteen hundred landed proprietors, for the most part scarcely more than gentlemen-farmers, acting on the advice of committees of peasants and burghers. These latter, on whom the government depended for the collection and provision of taxes, could exert a decisive pressure on the actions of the voting nobility; in particular the forty-two free royal cities were important enough in the national economy of Bohemia to make their goodwill worth courting.[8]
The landowners were divided into two classes, the lords and the knights, the lords exercising two votes each. The knights, on the other hand, outnumbered the lords by about three to one. The total lack of the representative principle has blinded many observers to the elements of democratic government in the Bohemian Estates; England, with a larger population, had a Parliament of less than half the number, counting Lords and Commons, and although there was some rudimentary idea of territorial representation there was no attempt, as in Bohemia, to account for the varying interests of different classes. There was nothing rotten in the constitution of Bohemia.
The danger lay in her too active political and religious life, in the conflicting aspirations of religions and classes. Some wanted to assert national independence, some to gain religious liberty, some to establish the Estates in actual control of the central government. All three could have been combined, but the burghers feared that the nobility, the country’s natural leaders in time of war, might turn armed rebellion to their personal advantage; the free peasants, living a life too close to the level of subsistence to risk present security for future improvement, feared alike greedy townsfolk and oppressive landowners. Lutheran, Utraquists, Calvinists, Catholics, each feared the intolerance of the others. National independence could in fact only be gained by deposing the one dynasty which, unpopular as it was, yet guaranteed a balance between the parties.
But this uncomfortable neutrality was drawing fast to an end, for Matthias was childless and his successor both in the Empire and in Bohemia was likely to be that Archduke Ferdinand of Styria whose political and religious views were already notorious. No one doubted that he would treat Protestantism and popular government in Bohemia with the same thoroughness he had used in Styria.
It remained to be seen whether, as in the crisis of 1609, the Bohemians would be able to stand together. The three guiding principles of nationalism, toleration and democracy alike drew them away from Ferdinand, an Austrian, a Catholic, and a despot—but drew them in three different directions. If religious liberty was to be their banner, then they must join their cause to that of the German Protestants, already preparing to unite against Ferdinand; if popular government, then nobles and burghers must make common cause to thrust constitutional reform on their future king; if nationalism, then the Bohemians must fly to open revolt, and sacrifice all to the immediate necessities of war. The three points of view were each held by an approximately equal number of people throughout the country but none was distinct enough to produce the alignment of a party. All outlines were blurred by private interests and local quarrels, with the dead weight of conservative timidity dragging behind.
The right man might have found some common rallying cry, but while on the one side the Archduke Ferdinand stood ready to contest Bohemian liberty in three fields, there was
no one in Bohemia who could combine those elements by political skill which were combined in Ferdinand by the chances of race, birth and conviction. By seniority and rank the leader of the Protestant nobility was a nobleman of ancient family, Andreas Schlick. In religion a Lutheran, Count Schlick was an honourable, peace-loving gentleman who had spent a useful life defending the privileges of his countrymen by constitutional means. Intelligent, brave, conscientious, Schlick was no leader; he had too philosophic an outlook, too much sense of humour, and perhaps also too much to lose. With a tradition of honourable citizenship behind him, he saw the future in terms of security for his sons.
This weakness of Schlick left the initiative to a less important and less intelligent man. Heinrich Matthias, Count Thurn, was of that type which is often thrown into a position of leadership in times of unrest. A German-speaking nobleman with lands outside Bohemia as well as the small estate that gave him his seat in the Estates, he knew little Czech and had been educated in Italy; at first under Catholic influence he had latterly become an active figure in the Protestant party.[9] A soldier by profession, he was quick in decision, resolute and unscrupulous in action, endowed with all too much of that quality in which Schlick was lacking–self-confidence. He fancied himself both as a diplomat, a political leader and a general. Unhappily he possessed few of the qualities on which he prided himself: his diplomacy was mere intrigue, his political acumen a blundering guess-work, his soldiering largely bluster. He was brave and, according to his own peculiar standard, honourable, but he had neither tact, patience, judgement nor insight; moreover he was covetous, overbearing and boastful, so that although he had many supporters he had few friends.
The choice of a ruler for Bohemia should have concerned no one but the Bohemians. The unhappy fact that their King was also an Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, and had been for nearly a century an Elector in the Hapsburg interest, made it an event of European importance; but the Bohemians were interested in the government of their country, the rest of Europe simply in the disposal of one vote at an imperial election.
The Emperor Matthias had been elected to the Bohemian throne, on the deposition of his brother Rudolf, by a strong Protestant party within the country. He had disappointed that party and by disappointing it had made the election of yet another Hapsburg to succeed him extremely questionable. Knowing this he had postponed the election until the eleventh hour, even arranging for his wife to simulate pregnancy as an excuse for leaving the succession open. There was a time limit, however, to such a pretence and by 1617, with Matthias every day more old and feeble, further delay was impossible.