The battle of Sablat, the first Catholic victory, had repercussions outside Bohemia. The Crusade sprang once more into life, and followers flocked to Ferdinand with as much zeal as previously they had fled from him. In France, after some weeks of doubt, the young King’s religious convictions triumphed over his political judgement and he agreed to further Ferdinand’s election to the imperial throne by exerting the necessary pressure on the Elector of Treves.[66] In Germany the Catholic League under the presidency of Maximilian of Bavaria declared itself in favour of Ferdinand in the Bohemian quarrel.[67]
Towards the end of July the Electors or their representatives arrived in Frankfort for the Election. Here the atmosphere was heavy with rumour, and Ferdinand’s cavalcade of servants—he had avoided a half-hearted ambush arranged by the Elector Palatine—was set upon by the citizens, who declared that he intended to overawe the Electors. The diplomatic Elector of Cologne quieted the uproar by inviting Ferdinand to a hunting expedition in the neighbouring country until the day of the election.[68]
Meanwhile on July 31st 1619, Lusatia, Silesia, and Moravia signed the terms of a joint confederation with Bohemia in the name of their national integrity and the Protestant faith.[69] Writing to his wife from a sunny seat ‘at the top of the little tower’ at Amberg, the Elector Frederick gave way to irresponsible jubilation. ‘They have agreed to many conditions,’ he wrote, ‘that will hardly please Ferdinand.’[70] His doubts lulled to rest by Anhalt, he felt once again confident and safe.
Hard upon the news of this confederation, Ferdinand received yet worse tidings. On the outskirts of his lands another enemy was in arms. The small principality of Transylvania along the north-eastern border of Hungary acted as the bulwark between the Hapsburg dominions and the Turks; its princes, theoretically vassals of the Hungarian Crown, were virtually independent, since they were too valuable as allies to be treated unceremoniously as subjects. Gabriel Bethlen, or as he is familiarly called, Bethlen Gabor, had been Prince of Transylvania since 1613; his path to the throne had been devious, beset with intrigue and stained, his enemies said, with murder. His method of keeping it was crudely effective, for he staved off internal unrest almost annually by leading his excitable subjects into battle. A brilliant soldier and a wily diplomat, he rang the changes of wars and alliances with the Turks, the Poles, and the Emperor in turn. As he was not only a Calvinist but in his curious way a very devout one, the distress of the Bohemian Protestants gave him all the excuse he needed for his summer campaign in 1619. Thus while Ferdinand was on his way to Frankfort, the swarthy little Tartar with his loyal followers came marching over the border into Hungary. Half Protestant, Hungary rose at once; rebels sprang up on all sides to throw off the yoke of the absent Ferdinand. It was but a few weeks before Thurn entered into communication with this new friend, and on August 20th 1619, they signed an offensive and defensive alliance.
Only a day before, the confederate states of Bohemia, Lusatia, Silesia and Moravia had declared that the election of Ferdinand was invalid and that he had ceased to be their king.[71] The Elector Frederick was one of the first to receive the news. He had not gone in person to Frankfort but had stayed, suspiciously enough, in the Upper Palatinate not far from the Bohemian border. The happy confidence of three weeks before had evaporated, and he now wrote querulously to his wife that the rebels had deposed Ferdinand and he for his part did not know what course to decide on.[72] It was a little late for the Elector to be in doubt; Anhalt was not.
On August 26th the Bohemians at last met to choose their new king. Of the five candidates named, only two, the Electors of Saxony and of the Palatinate, received serious consideration. Count Schlick, striving to guide his compatriots to the less dangerous alternative, urged them to choose John George of Saxony. The Elector had shown little sympathy with the revolt, but his prestige and his wisdom were not to be despised; in a dangerous situation, he might be able to come to an understanding with Ferdinand. The choice of Frederick must mean war to the death, and it might be Bohemia’s death, not Ferdinand’s. Schlick’s moderation was once more swept aside; with Bethlen Gabor in the field and Ferdinand pleasantly remote at Frankfort, the extremists were again in control. Frederick was chosen king by a hundred and forty-six votes to seven.[73]
Two days later, amid a host of lugubrious prognostications, the imperial election took place at Frankfort. The news from Bohemia had not yet reached the Main, but bees had swarmed in front of the Rathaus, which the people reckoned an evil omen,[74] and when Ferdinand took his place among the Electors as King of Bohemia a deputation of the rebels protested and had to be silenced before the meeting could proceed.[75] He wore a new and hastily contrived diadem, for the time-honoured crown of Bohemia was in the hands of the insurgents.
The three Catholic Electors unhesitatingly gave their votes for Ferdinand, the representative of the Elector of Saxony did likewise. He had no alternative, for his master had dispatched him to Frankfort with the discouraging words, ‘I know no good will come of it, I know Ferdinand’, but had not indicated whom else he should support. The Elector, it was said, had been drunk at the time; but the same judgement might well have been given with complete sobriety. The representative of the Elector of Brandenburg copied the others. There followed a tedious dissertation from the deputy of the Elector Palatine, whose instructions were on no account to vote for Ferdinand. After suggesting seven other candidates all equally absurd, he registered a vote for the Duke of Bavaria.[76] The Archbishop of Mainz tactfully pointed out that the Duke of Bavaria had agreed to forgo all his votes in favour of Ferdinand. The Palatine deputy had no choice but to withdraw his vote and register it again for Ferdinand.
The bulky capitulation of constitutional rights which each new Emperor had to guarantee was next handed to Ferdinand, who flicked over the pages with disconcerting rapidity and stood up to take the oath with as little gravity as if he had been stepping out to a dance.[77] Outside, a great crowd had gathered to hail the new Emperor when he appeared according to custom on the balcony, but just before he came out to them a rumour started on the edge of the crowd—news from Prague. It passed, gathering momentum, from lip to lip across the excited throng. Ferdinand had been deposed in Bohemia.[78] And while their voices rose in a hubbub of excitement, the great windows above them were thrown open and before them on the balcony stood the man himself, Ferdinand, deposed King of Bohemia, but irrevocably chosen and sworn, Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation.
4.
The news of the Bohemian and imperial elections reached the Elector Frederick hard upon each other, bringing him face to face with a problem he had not foreseen. His vote had been given to Ferdinand at Frankfort, and almost in the same moment he was asked to assume a crown which had been forcibly taken from Ferdinand. Like his rival he met the situation by prayer, but unlike his rival his prayers remained unanswered, ending only in despondency and tears.[79]
Pleading for time, Frederick withdrew to Heidelberg to consult his councillors and the princes of the Union. At his Court nearly all voices were loud against the offer; even his mother, a daughter of William the Silent, besought him not to go to Bohemia. His council drew up a list of fourteen reasons for refusal against six for acceptance.[80] His chaplain, on the other hand, saw the hand of God in the Bohemian choice and vehemently urged Frederick to agree.[81] The young Electress Elizabeth valiantly assumed a neutral attitude in public, but popular report attributed a different policy to her, and legend put into her mouth the proud statement that she would rather eat sauerkraut with a king than roast meat with an Elector. Whatever her open conduct, she expressed herself frankly in favour of her husband’s acceptance in her letters,[82] and it is difficult to believe that the Bohemian Crown was a subject altogether barred in the electoral bedchamber. Her contempt for Ferdinand was boundless. ‘He hath but one eye, and that not very good,’ she wrote light-heartedly; ‘I am afraid he will be lousy for he hath not money to buy himself clothes.’[83]
On September 12th t
he Union met at Rothenburg, where the deputies, with few exceptions, advised Frederick not to meddle with Bohemia. Anhalt’s other allies were equally intractable. The Duke of Savoy, indignant that neither the imperial nor the Bohemian Crown had been secured for him, threatened to withdraw all help, and the Venetians declined to invest their money in so crazy a venture.[84] The Prince of Orange, it was true, urged Frederick forward, but the recent internal revolution in the Provinces which had ended in the temporary extinction of the anti-Orange party and made Maurice virtually dictator, was not yet complete and the government was still weak. The King of Great Britain had not ceased to deplore the policy of his son-in-law ever since the revolt began. From Hungary the irrepressible Bethlen Gabor sent cordial messages of encouragement, but only a rash man would trust so variable an ally.
Ultimately the decision would be taken on moral and not on political grounds. The education of seventeenth-century princes inured them to this practice, and Frederick was no exception when he submitted the fate of Bohemia to the judgement of his conscience. He was uncertain both as to the morality of supporting rebels even in a good cause,[85] and as to the sacred nature of his duty to the Emperor. On the one hand, there was his loyalty as a German prince; on the other, the expectations that his policy had so rashly created among the Bohemians. If he abandoned Ferdinand, he could always plead that his quarrel was not with the Emperor as such but with the deposed king of a province outside the bounds of imperial control. If he abandoned Bohemia he would have betrayed a people who had trusted in him. On the one hand, he would be guilty of a common political subterfuge, on the other of a moral treachery. On September 28th 1619, he secretly informed the rebels that he would accept the Crown. Whatever the suspicions of the world there is little doubt that Frederick expressed the sum of his intentions when he wrote to his uncle, the Duke of Bouillon, ‘It is a divine calling which I must not disobey . . . my only end is to serve God and His Church.’[86]
Frederick had forgotten one prince in his calculations. Since the outbreak of the revolt his kinsman, Maximilian of Bavaria, had been working for a peaceful settlement; Frederick’s acceptance of the Crown destroyed that tenuous hope. It destroyed also Maximilian’s other scheme for the coalition of the Catholic and Protestant princes, of the League and the Union,[87] for the defence of the German constitution. It was natural that Maximilian should be indignant with Frederick, but indignation alone did not drive him into the camp of the enemy. As a Catholic, he did not wish to see a Protestant king in Bohemia; as a German prince, he did not wish to see Frederick defeated by troops sent from Spain and Flanders. He found but one way out of this quandary—to espouse the cause of Ferdinand and restore him to his rightful kingdom by the arms of the Catholic League. In this way the Church would be saved in Bohemia, and Ferdinand would be bound by gratitude to the Catholic princes of Germany.
The argument would have been sound had it ended there. Personal and dynastic ambition, strengthened perhaps by some obscure jealousy of his handsome cousin whose wife was young and fruitful, induced this ageing and childless man to go yet farther. As the leader of the Catholic League and the master of one of the best professional armies in Europe, he could afford to sell his alliance dearly. On October 8th 1619, he signed an agreement with Ferdinand by which he was to have absolute control of all operations in Bohemia and was to hold in pledge against the repayment of his expenses all such lands as he conquered.[88] Furthermore, and in this single point personal ambition triumphed over political discretion, by a secret article, Maximilian, on the defeat of Frederick, was to have his Electoral title.
The fatal alliance was all but signed when Frederick rode out of Heidelberg amid the lamentations of his people. ‘He is taking the Palatinate with him into Bohemia,’ said his mother as she watched him go. But he was taking more than the Palatinate into Bohemia. The Truce between Spain and the United Provinces was coming to an end, and here was the man on whom the Dutch depended to guard the Rhine leaving his post to chase a phantom in Bohemia, setting out to dethrone a Hapsburg, blandly defying the lightning of Spain. Here was the leading Protestant ruler in the Empire pledging the cause of constitutional liberties and religious freedom to the support of a national rising in Bohemia. Here was a German prince assuming the leadership of a Slavonic rebellion. When Frederick rode out of Heidelberg in the drizzling mists of an October day[89] he was taking more than the Palatinate into Bohemia, he was taking the fate of Germany and the peace of Europe.
1. Gindely, Geschichte, I, p. 156.
2. Taylor his Travels.
3. Gindely, Geschichte, I, pp. 137 ff.
4. Gindely, Geschichte, I, pp. 138 ff.
5. Hurter, Ferdinand II, VI, p. 694.
6. J. Svoboda, Die Kirchenschliessung zu Klostergrab und Braunau und die Anfänge des dreissigjährigen Krieges. Zeitschrift für Katholische Theologie, X. Innsbruck, 1886, p. 404. Gindely, Geschichte, I, pp. 133–4.
7. Ibid., pp. 117–19.
8. Gindely, Geschichte, I, pp. 140–1.
9. Gindely, Geschichte, I, pp. 90–2.
10. See supra, pp. 58–9.
11. Gindely, Geschichte, I, pp. 167 ff.
12. Hurter, Ferdinand II, VII, p. 243.
13. Gindely, Geschichte, I, pp. 242–5.
14. See the exhaustive article by Svoboda in the Zeitschrift für Katholische Theologie, X, pp. 385 f., for a careful examination of these questions.
15. Gindely, Geschichte, I, p. 275.
16. P. Skály ze Zhoře Historie Česká, ed. K. Tieftrunk. Prague, 1865; Monumenta Historiae Bohemiae, II, pp. 132–3; Paměti Nejvyššiho Kancléře Královstvi českeho Viléma Hraběte Slavaty, ed. Jirecek. Prague, 1866; Monumenta Historiae Bohemiae, I, p. 81. Slavata subsequently embellished the story with a circumstantial account of the number of times he had bounced and told it in this form twelve years later to the younger Christian of Anhalt. A story current in Spain and told in Palafox, Dialogo Politico, p. 59, adds the apocryphal detail that the secretary was so little hurt that he sprang lightly to his feet and apologized for having inconsiderately fallen on top of his masters.
17. Annales, IX, p. 32.
18. Lünig, Teutsches Reichsarchiv, Leipzig, 1710, VI, ii, pp. 133 f.
19. Epitome Historica Rerum Bohemicarum, authore Bohuslao Balbino e Societate Jesu. Prague, 1677, pp. 626–9.
20. Stanka, Boehmische Confederationsakten, pp. 74 ff.
21. Lünig, VI, ii, pp. 141 f.
22. Ibid., pp. 144 f.
23. Bentivoglio, Opere, p. 650.
24. Letters and Documents, I, p. 12; Lonchay and Cuvelier, I, pp. 524 f.
25. La Nunziatura di Bentivoglio, II, pp. 500, 518.
26. Ibid., p. 528.
27. Krebs, Christian von Anhalt, pp. 94 ff.; Lundorp, III, p. 606.
28. Krebs, Christian von Anhalt, pp. 596, 603.
29. Gindely, Geschichte, I, p. 387.
30. Lundorp, I, pp. 502 f.
31. Lundorp, I, pp. 508 f.
32. Klopp, Tilly im dreissigjährigen Kriege. Stuttgart, 1861, I, pp. 215–16.
33. Letters and Documents, I, p. 9; Lundorp, I, pp. 503 ff.
34. Weigel, Franken, Kurpfalz und der Böhmische Aufstand, I, pp. 192 ff. and pp. 145 ff.
35. Ibid., I, pp. 144–5.
36. Gindely, Geschichte, I, p. 445.
37. Lundorp, III, p. 608.
38. Stieve, Ernst von Mansfeld. Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-philologisch—unde historischen Classe der königlich bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. 1890, p. 521.
39. Delbrück, pp. 171 ff.
40. Klopp, III, i, p. 228.
41. The United Provinces.
42. The Diary of Thomas Crosfield, ed. F. S. Boas for the Royal Society of Literature. London, 1935, p. 67.
43. Lundorp, III, pp. 619, 632 f.
44. Ibid., pp. 632 ff.
45. Voigt, pp. 127–8.
46. Lundorp, I, pp. 559–72, passim.
47. Lundorp, I, pp. 496–7, 503–8, 535–7, 575–6.
48. Ibid., I, p. 643 f.
49. Gindely, Geschichte, I, p. 476.
50. Svoboda, p. 414.
51. Gindely, Geschichte, I, p. 472; Letters and Documents, I, p. 198.
52. Lünig, VI, ii, p. 947 ff.
53. Letters and Documents, I, p. 88; see also Lundorp, I, pp. 610 f.
54. La Nunziatura di Bentivoglio, III, p. 379.
55. Loc. cit.; Lonchay and Cuvelier, I, pp. 537 f.
56. Letters and Documents, I, p. 107.
57. Gindely, Geschichte, II, pp. 74 f.
58. Lammert, Geschichte der Seuchen, Hunger und Kriegsnot. Wiesbaden, 1890, p. 49.
59. Hurter, Ferdinand II, VII, p. 553.
60. Annales, XII, pp. 2386–7.
61. The story that one of the deputies addressed him as ‘Nandel’—the colloquial abbreviation of Ferdinand—and took hold of him by his doublet buttons rests on doubtful authority. Schmertosch, Vertriebene und bedrängte Protestanten in Leipzig. Neues Archiv für Sächsische Geschichte, XVI, p. 271.
62. Gindely, Geschichte, II, pp. 76–80; Klopp, I, pp. 353–4.
63. Theatrum Europaeum, Frankfort, 1635, I, i, p. 153.
64. Lundorp, I, pp. 657 ff.
65. Gindely, Geschichte, II, pp. 148–9.
66. Relazioni dagli Ambasciatori, Francia, II, p. 134; La Nunziatura di Bentivoglio, pp. 405–6.
67. Lünig, VII, iv, pp. 286–7.
68. Annales, IX, p. 414.
69. See Stanka, 74 f.
70. Aretin, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Literatur, VII. Sammlung noch ungedruckter Briefe des Churfürsten Friedrich V. von der Pfalz. Munich, 1806, p. 148.
71. Lünig, VI, i, pp. 167 f.; Lundorp, I, pp. 675 f.
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