While the world fell about them, Frederick and his wife resolutely closed their eyes to the catastrophe. The Queen had been rushed to safety in Brandenburg, where she had given birth to a son whom she christened Maurice as a sufficiently broad hint to the Prince of Orange, and wrote with irrepressible gaiety to her friends telling them how they would laugh to hear of the ‘beau voyage’ she had so suddenly made from Prague.[109] Frederick, meanwhile, was spending a cheerful visit with the Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, where he invested something over three hundred florins in pearls for his three-year-old daughter.[110]
His irresponsible behavior arose from no lack of conscience, rather the reverse. Weak and bewildered so long as he had power, the loss of it brought out the fundamental coherence of his character. He could not cease to believe in his cause because he had been defeated; lacking the reckless courage and the gift of leadership which might have saved Bohemia, he lacked also the facile selfishness which might have saved his own possessions. Defeat simplified for him all complicated differences between right and wrong; henceforward there was only one right, to assert the justice of his lost cause regardless of persuasion or treachery. ‘Neither greed nor ambition brought us to Bohemia,’ he proclaimed in a letter to Thurn, ‘neither poverty nor distress shall make us rebel against our dear God nor do anything against honour and conscience.’[111] From the White Hill to the hour of his death he was to follow the rulings of that conscience with superb faith and deplorable consequences.
Ferdinand demanded a formal submission and apology; Frederick replied, with inspired simplicity, that a man who was in the right could not apologize; if, however, the Emperor would guarantee the constitution of Bohemia, pay off the conscripted army and indemnify him for his expenses, he would consider abdicating.[112] This was more than a personal defiance; it was a challenge to the German princes. At Mühlhausen they had declared his seizure of the Crown illegal: by denying the validity of that judgement, Frederick tacitly indicated that he believed they had been forced or bribed by the Emperor. To the end of his life he still declared that he had not broken the imperial peace, that he had rebelled not against the Emperor but against an Archduke of Austria. This was the corner-stone of his policy: he was the rightful King of Bohemia, unlawfully attacked both there and in his German lands.
If Frederick would not submit, Spinola’s troops would stay in the Palatinate. Two of the four postulates were unfulfilled and two doors to peace closed. There remained the questions of Mansfeld’s army and Ferdinand’s debts.
Ernst von Mansfeld, with his unemployed army, lay encamped at Pilsen, under the imperial ban and with a price of three hundred thousand talers on his head. For the immediate future his actions were governed by two considerations, the necessity of getting food for his men and the problem of making himself so valuable to one side, or so dangerous to the other, that he would either find new service or be bought out of the war. Meanwhile he replenished the gaps in his ranks by recruiting, with or without permission, over all south Germany.
He had not only an army to feed but a State to govern. The usual reckoning of a woman and a boy for each soldier was a narrow estimate; in Tilly’s army they counted five servants to each lieutenant and up to eighteen for a colonel. As the men grew rich in booty they hired drudges to carry it. The gunners were hired mechanics who, with their master-gunner, grooms for their huge horse teams, wives and servants, formed a compact unit, separate from, yet essential to, the army.[113] Peasant girls dragged from plundered farms, children kidnapped for ransom and forgotten, hawkers, tricksters, quacks and vagabonds swelled the ranks. In Bucquoy’s army six or seven children were born in a week,[114] and Mansfeld’s women were doubtless as prolific.
The mercenary leader had a responsibility to all these, which he must fulfil or let loose a disorder as dangerous to him as to the country in which he quartered. ‘Neither they nor their horses can live by air,’ wrote Mansfeld. ‘All that they have, whether it be arms or apparel, weareth, wasteth and breaketh. If they must buy more they must have money, and if men have it not to give them, they will take it where they find it, not as in part of that which is due unto them, but without weighing or telling it. This gate being once opened unto them they enter into the large fields of liberty: . . . they spare no person of what quality so ever he be, respect no place how holy so ever, neither Churches, Altars, Tombs, Sepulchres nor the dead bodies that lie in them.’[115] Such was the state which Mansfeld ruled, such the anarchy which followed if his rule broke down.
Mansfeld spent the winter confusing the politics of Europe by offering his troops to Savoy, Venice, and the United Provinces. With the early spring he hastened to Heilbronn to urge the princes of the Union there assembled to sign a contract for his services. It was in vain; retracing his steps to the Bohemian border, he was met by the garrison of Pilsen which had evacuated the town during his absence for the sum of a hundred and fifty thousand gulden.[116] The money was not to be despised, and the troops were more useful to him than the possession of the place; Mansfeld accepted the situation.
Soon after he found out that the Dutch would be willing to subsidize his old master Frederick, and making a virtue of necessity he signed a further contract with the defeated prince. He was staking his own and his army’s fortune on a gamble, but he had a double chance of winning. Either he could reestablish Frederick by force of arms in his own lands, or—and this was likelier—he could make himself so dangerous to the Catholic commanders that they would pay him off on his own terms. A landless man with a price on his head, Mansfeld wanted a free pardon, a generous grant of money and a modest but independent principality: he might get these by continuing the war in the heart of Germany. The third gate to peace was closed.
Lastly there was the problem of Maximilian’s payment. He was already occupying Upper Austria until Ferdinand could redeem it by reimbursing his war expenses, and at the New Year of 1621 that day seemed far distant. Ferdinand’s private resources had never been large, and Bohemia, the richest province of all the Hapsburg dominions, the source from which so many of the imperial charges had been met, was after two years of war a ruined country.
More serious was Ferdinand’s promise to give Frederick’s Electoral title to the victor. Frederick could not be deprived of his title without the consent of his fellow-princes, and when at Mühlhausen in the previous year Ferdinand had attempted to sound them on this question he had found them obdurate; apart from Maximilian of Bavaria, none of the princes who had wished to drive Frederick out of Bohemia had also wished to deprive him of his lands and titles in Germany. They had made this clear by opposing Ferdinand’s suggestion that Frederick should be put to the ban of the Empire.[117] Ferdinand, therefore, could not satisfy Maximilian without offending the majority of his powerful subjects, and could not punish Frederick without opposing the decisions reached at Mühlhausen.
To depose Frederick was to force the issue with the princes, and wisely Ferdinand decided to approach it slowly, first placing Frederick under the ban, and when he had watched the effect of this, transferring the Electorate to Maximilian. With whatever specious pretences he might surround these two acts, they had to be performed by his authority and prestige alone, to be in fact a trial of strength between the Emperor and the constitution.
Maximilian of Bavaria was, in the eyes of his contemporaries, a very much cleverer man than Ferdinand, over whom his wealth and army gave him the whip hand. But Ferdinand, who never in the course of his career freed his policy from the control of wealthier allies, had a gift for twisting the ambitions of his paymasters to suit his own. Pitied by many for being bound to Maximilian by an agreement which inevitably continued the war, he was in fact using the agreement as an excuse, and Maximilian’s ambition as a cover for his own. Ferdinand was preparing to lay a new foundation for imperial power by redistributing the land itself. Maximilian gave him the opportunity.
On January 29th 1621, the ban was pronounced against Frederick.[118] Eight days later the princes and c
ities of the Protestant Union assembled at Heilbronn. If Frederick had broken the constitution by seizing the Bohemian crown, Ferdinand had violated it further by issuing the ban. He had by this action wilfully broken the oath which he had sworn at Frankfort when he was crowned, and thereby linked the cause of the German Liberties irrevocably once again with that of the broken King of Bohemia.
The moment had come for the Union to stand out in defence of the constitution, the moment at which they could be certain of the support of the Elector of Saxony and even of some Catholic constitutional princes. The first fruit of the meeting was a vigorous protest to Vienna.[119] Now came the trial of strength which Ferdinand had anticipated. In answer to their protest he refused to withdraw the ban and commanded them in the name of imperial peace to disband the few troops which they still had in arms. At the same time a detachment of Spinola’s troops on the Rhine made a significant movement. It was a brilliant bluff, for the truce with the United Provinces had only a few weeks to run, and the Brussels government had ordered Spinola to make an armistice with the Union on any terms and return at once to the Netherlands.[120] With admirable coolness he made the menacing gesture which he knew he could not carry to its conclusion, and he was successful. The cities of the Union, knowing nothing of Spinola’s obligations, gave way, unwilling to be overrun by Spanish armies for the sake of a constitutional quibble. Bereft of their support the princes collapsed. On April 1st the delegates of the Union agreed with Spinola to disband their army if he would guarantee their rights as neutrals.[121] The Mainz Accord, as the treaty was called, was the last public document signed by the Protestant Union, and on May 14th the delegates broke up, never to reassemble. The evidence of immediate danger had been stronger than the fear of disaster to come; without a blow the defenders of the constitution had abandoned their leader and their principles, and made way for foreigners and adventurers to fight the cause of German liberty on German soil.
The Protestant princes had thought to end the war by sacrificing Frederick; the Catholics to prevent foreign interference by themselves supporting Ferdinand. They had alike forgotten that although no one cared for Frederick or Bohemia, there were many princes in Europe who feared the House of Austria or coveted the valley of the Rhine. With the collapse of Bohemia the centre of conflict had shifted two hundred miles to the west. Prague fell into the background and all eyes were turned to the Emperor’s Spanish allies in the Palatinate. In an emphatic protest to Vienna, the King of Denmark laid an unerring finger on the spot: not Frederick’s broken forces, he said, but Spanish troops were the source of unrest in Europe.[122]
But what had the King of Denmark to do with it? Judging by his actions, a great deal, for he had received Frederick at Segeberg in Holstein on his flight from Bohemia and had urged the authorities of the Lower Saxon Circle, in which Holstein was situated, to defend his cause. When this had failed, he had himself come forward with an offer to mediate at Vienna between Frederick and the Emperor.[123] And all because the King of Denmark feared that the destruction of the Protestant opposition in Bohemia would increase Hapsburg power on the head-waters of the Elbe and encourage them to push their dominion northward to the Baltic.
The King of Denmark was the first but not the most important prince to move. The governments of the United Provinces, of France, of England, all alike realized with dismay that under the smoke clouds of the Bohemian war they had allowed the Spaniards to occupy the Palatinate. The phantom danger against which they had made plots and treaties for the past ten years had become real, and they had looked away. Too late the English government had sent thirty thousand pounds to the princes of the Union,[124] the handful of troops which had gone to the Palatinate under Sir Horace Vere was already cut off at Mannheim and Frankenthal, while at Heidelberg a mixed garrison of Germans and Dutch still held the city. A temporary obstruction to the Spanish army these garrisons might be, but no permanent barrier. At Vienna the French ambassador was exposed to the acrimonious reproaches of the English, as the author of the fatal Treaty of Ulm.[125] Meanwhile, since the Catholic rising of the previous year, the passes of the Val Telline were open to Spain, so that armies and funds could be plentifully replenished from North Italy.
The United Provinces stood in graver and more immediate danger than France, England or Denmark. For some anxious weeks the Prince of Orange contemplated signing an unfavourable peace with the Brussels government but, certain of their military advantage, they would not offer terms which he could accept. There was an alternative; while defending their own frontiers as best they might, the Dutch could subsidize Frederick and his allies to regain the Rhine. An alliance was hastily signed with the King of Denmark, and letters sent to Mansfeld promising him rewards if he should be loyal to the Protestant cause.[126] On April 9th 1621, the truce with Spain expired; five days later the King and Queen of Bohemia were received in The Hague with all the honours due to reigning sovereigns, and on April 27th Frederick set his hand to a treaty by which he accepted the subsidies of the Dutch to reconquer his lands on the Rhine. The second act of the German tragedy had begun.
1. Lundorp, III, p. 616; Höfler, p. 391; Béthune, pp. 97 f.
2. Höfler, p. 393.
3. Lünig, VI, ii, pp. 150 f.
4. Höfler, p. 391.
5. Bruchmann, Archivalia inedita zur Geschichte des Winterkönigs. Breslau, 1909, p. 10.
6. Höfler, p. 394; Lundorp, I, p. 850.
7. Lammert, p. 50.
8. Annales, IX, p. 414; Gindely, Geschichte, II, p. 286.
9. Lünig, VI, ii, p. 179.
10. Lundorp, I, pp. 717, 722.
11. Lundorp, I, pp. 724 ff., 926; d’Elvert, I, pp. 62 f.
12. Lundorp, I, p. 727.
13. Béthune, p. 143.
14. J. G. Droysen, Geschichte der Preussischen Politik. Berlin, 1885-6; Theil, III, pp. 23-4.
15. Schwabe, pp. 306, 315; Knapp, p. 15.
16. Gindely, Geschichte, II, pp. 301 f.
17. Lundorp, III, p. 678.
18. Ibid., II, pp. 12 f.; Lünig, VI, i, pp. 321 f.
19. Gardiner, History of England. London, 1883, III, p. 24.
20. Letters and Documents, II, p. 23.
21. Calendar of State Papers. Domestic Series 1619–23. London, 1858, p. 132 and elsewhere.
22. Letters and Documents, II, p. 189; Lundorp, I, p. 860.
23. G. Groen van Prinsterer, Archives de la Maison d’Orange-Nassau. Leyden, The Hague, Utrecht, 1835 sq., II, ii, p. 572.
24. Lundorp, II, p. 19.
25. H. v. Zwiedineck-Südenhorst, Die Politik der Republik Venedigs. Stuttgart, 1882–5, I, pp. 101–3.
26. Letters and Documents, II, p. 31.
27. Gindely, Geschichte, II, pp. 283 f.; III, p. 156.
28. Lundorp, I, pp. 545–6.
29. Höfler, p. 400.
30. Gindely, Die Berichte über die Schlacht auf dem Weissenberge bei Prag. Archiv für Oesterreichische Geschichte, LVI. Vienna, 1878, pp. 23–4.
31. Richelieu, Mémoires, ed. Société de l’histoire de France, Paris, 1907, II, pp. 400–1.
32. Bentivoglio, Opere, p. 668.
33. Ponchartrain, Mémoires. Petitot, II, xvii, Paris, 1822, p. 297; Nunziatura di Bentivoglio, I, pp. 110–11, III, p. 504, IV, pp. 9, 153.
34. Richelieu, Mémoires, III, pp. 112 f.; Lünig, V, i, p. 285; Béthune, pp. 144 f., 163 f.
35. See Tapié, Politique étrangère de la France au commencement de la Guerre de Trente Ans, pp. 510 f., 624 f.
36. Nunziatura di Bentivoglio, IV, pp. 295, 308.
37. Béthune, pp. 225–31.
38. Gindely, Geschichte, II, p. 406.
39. See Lonchay and Cuvelier, I, pp. 546 f., 558 ff.
40. E. A. Beller, Caricatures of the Winter King of Bohemia, 1928, passim.
41. Lonchay and Cuvelier, pp. 510, 564.
42. Ibid., I, p. 547; Höfler, p. 399; Fortescue Papers, pp. 91.
43. Ferdinand’s capitulation oath is given in Lünig, III, p. 57 f.
&nb
sp; 44. Lonchay and Cuvelier, I, p. 550.
45. Lundorp, II, p. 171.
46. Fiedler, p. 117.
47. Béthune, p. 227.
48. Droysen, Preussische Politik, Theil III, pp. 30 ff.
49. Hurter, Ferdinand II, VIII, p. 673.
50. Gindely, Geschichte, II, p. 442.
51. Lundorp, I, p. 986; d’Elvert, I, p. 113.
52. Aretin, Beyträge, VII, pp. 155, 158.
53. Ibid., II, vi, pp. 74–5; VII, p. 153.
54. Lundorp, I, pp. 859–60, 987.
55. Moser, Patriotisches Archiv, VII, p. 65.
56. Lünig, VI, ii, pp. 172, 175; Calendar of State Papers. Domestic Series, 1619–23, p. 131.
57. Annales, IX, p. 1002.
58. B. Dudik, Chronik der Stadt Olmütz über die Jahre 1619, 1620. Schriften der historisch-statistischen Section der mährischschlesischen Gesellschaft zur Beförderung des Ackerbaues, I, p. 44.
59. The Appollogie of Ernestus, Earle of Mansfielde, 1622, pp. 34–5.
60. Loyse Juliane, Mémoires, p. 164.
61. Lundorp, I, pp. 925–6; Riezler, Kriegstagebücher aus dem ligistischen Hauptquartier, 1620. Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Historische Classe, xxiii. Munich, 1906, p. 187.
62. Taylor his Travels.
63. Gindely, Geschichte, II, p. 308.
64. Hurter, Ferdinand II, VIII, p. 126; Lundorp, I, pp. 926, 861.
65. Hurter, loc. cit.; Höfler, p. 400; H. Palm, Acta Publica. Verhandlungen und Correspondenzen der schlesischen Fürsten und Stände. Jahrgang 1620. Breslau, 1872, p. 132 f.
66. Hurter, loc. cit.
67. Lundorp, I, pp. 923 ff.; Kriegstagebücher, p. 205.
68. Lundorp, II, p. 221.
69. Berichte über dem Weissenberge, p. 130.
70. Morel-Fatio, L’Espagne au XVI et au XVII siècle. Heilbronn, 1878, p. 348.
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