The Thirty Years War

by C. V. Wedgwood

  But the war had begun in Germany, and in Germany it was to end. Seven years of fighting across a country whose politics were as intricate as those of the Empire left a situation which even Richelieu could not control. There was matter for too much dispute among the north German Bishoprics alone. The situation slipped suddenly out of his hands, and the victories in Italy fixed a milestone but set no limit to the war.

  1. Lundorp, II, p. 381.

  2. Gindely, Geschichte, III, p. 377; IV, p. 49.

  3. d’Elvert, II, pp. 1 f.

  4. Ibid., II, p. 7.

  5. Ibid., pp. 31 f.

  6. Ibid., pp. 41, 45, 55, 58–9.

  7. Ibid., pp. 47–8; Lundorp, II, p. 555.

  8. d’Elvert, II, pp. 54, 56.

  9. Fiedler, p. 109.

  10. d’Elvert, II, pp. 67 f.; Hurter, Ferdinand II, VIII, p. 596.

  11. d’Elvert, II, p. 76.

  12. Annales, IX, p. 1310; Lundorp, II, p. 428.

  13. Reifferscheid, Quellen zur Geschichte des Geistigen Lebens. Heilbronn, 1899, p. 114.

  14. Hennequin de Villermont, L’Infante Isabelle, Paris, 1912, I, pp. 162 f.; Rodriguez-Villa, Ambrosio Spinola, Madrid, 1904, I, p. 731.

  15. Relazioni dagli Ambasciatori, Spagna, I, pp. 600 f.

  16. Richelieu, Mémoires, III, p. 203.

  17. Relazioni dagli Ambasciatori, Spagna, I, p. 65.

  18. Lundorp, II, p. 376; Lünig, VI, i, pp. 339 f.

  19. Gindely, Geschichte, IV, pp. 182 ff.

  20. Hurter, Ferdinand II, IX, p. 77.

  21. Lammert, pp. 55 f.

  22. Walther, Strassburger Chronik, pp. 14–15.

  23. Annales, XI, p. 1701; Acta Mansfeldica, pp. 118 f.; Reuss, Alsace au dixseptième siècle. Paris, 1898, p. 61.

  24. M. A. E. Green, p. 250 n.

  25. Opel, Elisabeth Stuart, Königin von Böhmen, Kurfürstin von der Pfalz. Historische Zeitschrift, XXIII, p. 320.

  26. Old hag, dirty old witch.

  27. Wertheim, Der tolle Halberstädter, I, pp. 223–4.

  28. Ibid., p. 230.

  29. Ibid., pp. 217 f.; Klopp, II, p. 151.

  30. Opel, p. 306; Wertheim, I, pp. 200 f.

  31. Blok, Relazioni Veneziane, p. 223.

  32. Wertheim, I, p. 232.

  33. Rodriguez-Villa, Correspondencia de la Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia con el Duque de Lerma. Madrid, 1906, p. 241.

  34. Aitzema, Saken van Staet en Oorlogh. The Hague, 1657, I, p. 116.

  35. Annales, IX, p. 1705.

  36. Weskamp, Das Heer der Liga, Munich, 1891, pp. 50, 86.

  37. Klopp, II, p. 151.

  38. du Cornet, Histoire générale des guerres de Savoie, de Bohème, du Palatinat et des Pays-Bas. Bruxelles, 1868, p. 30.

  39. Carafa, p. 371; du Cornet, p. 32; Westenrieders Beyträge, Munich, 1792, IV, pp. 110–11.

  40. Dieffenbach, Das Grossherzogtum Hessen, Darmstadt, 1877, p. 159.

  41. Wertheim, II, pp. 412 f.

  42. Ludwig Schädel, Der Gründer der Ludoviciana in der Haft des Winterkönigs. Mitteilungen des oberhessischen Geschichtsvereins. Neue Folge, XIV, p. 54.

  43. Wertheim, II, pp. 512 f.; du Cornet, p. 51.

  44. Aretin, Beyträge, VII, p. 185.

  45. Klopp, II, pp. 194–5.

  46. Schädel, pp. 54–5.

  47. Wertheim, II, pp. 516 f.

  48. Hurter, Ferdinand II, IX, p. 121.

  49. Klopp, II, pp. 194–5; Wertheim, I, p. 227.

  50. Reuss, Alsace, pp. 61, 65; Klopp, II, pp. 200 f.

  51. Gardiner, History of England, IV, pp. 323, 339.

  52. Lundorp, II, p. 636.

  53. Aretin, Beyträge, VII, p. 188; Ritter, Untersuchungen über die pfälzische Politik. Historische Zeitschrift, LXXIV, pp. 410 ff.

  54. du Cornet, pp. 69–70; J. A. Worp, Briefwisseling van Constantin Huygens. The Hague, 1911, I, p. 125; Theatrum Europaeum, I, pp. 66–8.

  55. Lundorp, II, pp. 630, 743–53; Die Schicksale Heidelbergs im dreissigjährigen Kriege. Archiv für die Geschichte der Stadt Heidelberg, II. Heidelberg, 1869, pp. 29 f.

  56. See Ritter, Untersuchungen über die pfälzische Politik. Historische Zeitschrift, LXXIV, pp. 407–41.

  57. R. Coke, State of England, p. 109.

  58. Two long accounts of the meetings are given in great detail in Goetz, Briefe und Akten, Leipzig, 1907, II, i, pp. 10–22 and pp. 26–46.

  59. Lundorp, II, p. 630.

  60. Annales, IX, pp. 1653, 1799; Lundorp, II, pp. 605, 631, 649–52.

  61. Droysen, Preussische Politik, II, p. 638.

  62. Annales, x, pp. 86, 117–18; Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, i, pp. 4, 22–3.

  63. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, i, p. 568; Schicksale Heidelbergs, p. 188; Carafa, Germania Sacra Restaurata, Cologne, 1637, I, pp. 340 f.

  64. Gindely, Geschichte, IV, p. 383.

  65. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, i, p. 20.

  66. Lundorp, II, p. 501.

  67. Ibid., p. 657 seq.

  68. Lünig, III, ii, pp. 64 f.; V, i, pp. 693 f.; Lundorp, II, pp. 673, 676.

  69. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, i, pp. 44–5.

  70. Annales, X, p. 71; Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, i, pp. 76, 101.

  71. Lundorp, II, p. 733; Gindely, Geschichte, IV, p. 515.

  72. Lundorp, II, pp. 733 f.; Gindely, Geschichte, IV, pp. 501 ff.

  73. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, i, pp. 48–64.

  74. Goetz, passim.

  75. Ibid., pp. 137–44.

  76. This appears to be the most accurate form of the name, which is supposed to be a corruption of La Moire Mannie in the Ardennes, the place of origin of the family. Correspondenz Kaisers Ferdinand II. Herausgegeben von Dr B. Dudik, Archiv für Oesterreichische Geschichte, LIV, p. 228.

  77. Cardinal Khlesl. See supra, p. 82.

  78. Gindely, Geschichte, IV, p. 523.

  79. As late as 1638 Maximilian feared that the passage of one of Frederick’s sons, as a prisoner of war, through the Upper Palatinate might cause trouble.

  80. Högl, Die Bekehrung der Oberpfalz. Regensburg, 1903, pp. 52–3.

  81. Ibid., pp. 85 ff.

  82. Högl, p. 52.

  83. d’Elvert, III, p. 114.

  84. Ibid., II, pp. 151 f.

  85. d’Elvert, III, p. 119; II, p. 33; R. Wuttke, Zur Kipper und Wipperzeit in Kursachsen. Neues Archiv für Sächsische Geschichte, XVI, p. 155; Walther, p. 15.

  86. Gindely, Geschichte, IV, pp. 326–9.

  87. Gindely, Geschichte, IV, p. 338; d’Elvert, III, pp. 117, 128.

  88. Gindely, Geschichte der Gegenreformation in Böhmen. Nach dem Tode des Verfassers herausgegeben von T. Tupetz. Leipzig, 1894, Chapter VIII, passim.

  89. d’Elvert, II, pp. 257, 258, 261.

  90. Siegl, Wallenstein auf der ‘hohen Schule’, zu Altdorf. Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Deutschen in Böhmen, XLIX, pp. 127–52.

  91. Ernstberger, Wallenstein als Volkswirt im Herzogtum Friedland. Reichenberg, 1929, pp. 96–9, 46; see also Hunziker, Wallenstein als Landesherr, insbesondere als Herzog von Mecklenburg. Zurich, 1875.

  92. Ernstberger, p. 88.

  93. Van Dyck never set eyes on Wallenstein. The portrait in the Bavarian State Collections which is often reproduced is a fancy picture drawn as one of a series of well-known soldiers.

  94. Priorato, Historia della Vita di Alberto Valstein, Duca di Fritland. Lyons, 1643, p. 64.

  95. Helbig, Der Kaiser Ferdinand und der Herzog zu Friedland, während des Winters 1633–4. Dresden, 1852, pp. 62–71.

  96. Ranke, Sämmtliche Werke, XXIII. Geschichte Wallensteins, p. 12.

  97. Stieve, Wallenstein bis zur Übernahme des ersten Generalats. Historische Vierteljahrschrift, 1899, p. 228.

  98. See her letters in Foerster, Wallenstein als Feldherr und Landesfürst. Potsdam, 1834, pp. 320 ff.

  99. Lünig, XXIII, pp. 1454–7.

  100. d’Elvert, II, p. 98; Carafa, p. 151.

  101. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, i, pp. 67 ff.

&nb
sp; 102. Lundorp, II, pp. 631, 633.

  103. Gindely, Geschichte der Gegenreformation, p. 246.

  104. Ibid., p. 245.

  105. Ibid., p. 255; Hurter, Ferdinand II, X, p. 163.

  106. Gindely, pp. 221 ff.

  107. Hurter, Ferdinand II, X, p. 162.

  108. Ernstberger, p. 88; Ranke, Geschichte Wallensteins, p. 17.

  109. Carafa, pp. 251–2.

  110. Gindely, Geschichte der Gegenreformation, pp. 195 ff.

  111. See also Carafa, Germania Sacra Restaurata, pp. 283 ff.

  112. Kröss, Zur Geschichte der Katholischen Generalreformation in Böhmen unter Ferdinand III. Zeitschrift für Katholische Theologie, 1916, p. 772.

  113. Gindely, Geschichte der Gegenreformation, pp. 475 f.; Carafa, Germania Sacra Restaurata, I, p. 162.

  114. B. Dudik, Bericht über die Diöcese Olmütz durch den Kardinal Franz von Dietrichstein. Archiv für Oesterreichische Geschichte, XLII, p. 223; Wolny, Die Wiedertäufer in Mähren. Archiv für Oesterreichische Geschichte, V, pp. 124–5; d’Elvert, I, pp. 147, 229, 282.

  115. Lundorp, III, pp. 770 f.; Carafa, Germania Sacra Restaurata, I, pp. 225, 288.

  116. See Bidermann, Geschichte des Oesterreichischen Gesammtstaatsidee. Innsbruck, 1867, I, pp. 27–36.

  117. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, i, p. 508; Schicksale Heidelbergs, pp. 182–4.

  118. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, i, pp. 124–5.

  119. Lundorp, II, pp. 728–9.

  120. Rusdorf, Mémoires et négociations secrètes, Leipzig, 1789, I, passim; Goetz, II, i, passim.

  121. Lundorp, II, pp. 758–9.

  122. Lünig, V, IV, p. 108.

  123. Lundorp, II, pp. 768 ff.; Gindely, Beiträge zur Geschichte des dreissigjährigen Krieges. Archiv für Oesterreichische Geschichte, LXXXIX, p. 22.

  124. Aitzema, I, p. 231; Hurter, Ferdinand II, IX, p. 295; Lundorp, II, p. 769.

  125. Opel, Elisabeth Stuart, p. 323.

  126. Rusdorf, I, p. 117.

  127. Aitzema, I, p. 131.

  128. Gindely, Beiträge, pp. 28–9.

  129. Reifferscheid, p. 153.

  130. Calendar of State Papers. Domestic Series, 1623–5, p. 223; Gindely, Beiträge, p. 120.

  131. Rusdorf, I, p. 287.

  132. W. Mommsen, Richelieu als Staatsmann. Historische Zeitschrift, CXXVII, pp. 230 f.

  133. G. Hanotaux and le Duc de la Force, Histoire de Richelieu. Revue des Deux Mondes, July 1934, p. 97.

  134. Richelieu, Mémoires, IV, pp. 46–7.

  135. Rydberg och Hallendorf. Sverges Traktater, Stockholm, 1877, V, i, pp. 317 f.; 321 f.

  136. Calendar of State Papers. Domestic Series, 1623–5, p. 195.

  137. For a careful defence of Papal policy see Auguste Leman, Urbain VIII et la rivalité de la France et da la Maison d’Autriche de 1631 à 1635. Lille, 1920. The author seeks to show that Urban VIII was more scrupulously neutral than most contemporaries thought him to be. I am not wholly convinced of this thesis, but it is at least clear from the evidence that Urban sincerely sought the good of the Church in a very difficult situation.

  138. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, i, p. 549.

  139. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, i, pp. 557–67; Gindely, Beiträge, p. 57.

  140. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, i, p. 115.

  141. Ibid., II, i, p. 283.

  142. Goetz, Pater Hyacinth. Historische Zeitschrift, CIX, p. 117.

  143. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, i, pp. 67, 104, 108.

  144. Rusdorf, I, pp. 156 ff.

  145. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, i, pp. 452–510.

  146. Ibid., II, i, pp. 516 f., 528 f.; Fagniez, Fancan et Richelieu. Revue Historique, CVII, pp. 61 f.; Wiens, Fancan und die französische Politik, 1624–7. Heidelberg, 1908, pp. 18, 27.

  147. Goetz, Briefe und Akten, II, ii, pp. 19, 23–4, 28, 39, 40.

  148. Ibid., II, i, pp. 620, 635, 642, 651.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TOWARDS THE BALTIC

  1625–8

  Legitime certantibus corona

  Device of FERDINAND II

  1.

  The Val Telline was occupied and the divided members of the Hapsburg Empire in Flanders and Austria were thrown on their own resources, with Mansfeld’s army disembarking on the Dutch coast, and the Kings of northern Europe planning a descent on the Baltic shore. The moment had come for the wisdom of Ferdinand’s imperial policy to be proven; since bullion could not come from Spain, the Emperor was cast on the loyalty of his own subjects.

  In the winter of 1624–5 Albrecht von Wallenstein had been in Vienna, suggesting to the Spanish ambassador that he should recruit an army in their interest for service in Italy.[1] At the catastrophic turn of events in that country, he changed his mind, and on the fall of the Val Telline he repeated the offer to the Emperor himself. He would raise fifty thousand men at his own expense, securing quarters and provisions for them by mere force of arms[2] and demanding their pay alone from the imperial coffers.

  Ferdinand dared not refuse. His acceptance would place a dangerous power in the hands of Count Wallenstein, but in his present peril he had no alternative. Maximilian was his only other ally, and while Ferdinand was probably glad to halve his obligations by allowing someone else to put an army in the field, Maximilian himself, in panic at the gathering storm, had urged him to raise troops independently if he could.[3] In the spring of 1625 the Elector of Bavaria saw safety only in arms and was too much afraid of his own possessions to care whose arms they were.

  Wallenstein’s only serious opponent was his rival, the governor of Bohemia, Karl von Liechtenstein, who attempted in vain to wreck the scheme by preferring forty-two charges of financial dishonesty against him.[4] Ferdinand could not pause to consider them. In February 1625, Liechtenstein himself was recalled, and in April Wallenstein was summoned to Vienna.[5] Nevertheless, Ferdinand acted warily, reduced the number of the proffered army from fifty thousand, which would make Wallenstein dangerous, to twenty thousand, which would be enough to meet the immediate crisis, and confined the functions of the general for the time being to the Hapsburg lands alone. If need be, he would use Wallenstein elsewhere later on, but in the meantime he confirmed to Maximilian of Bavaria the dominating control of the operations of war.[6]

  While Ferdinand thus used the loyalty of one of his own creatures to help him in Austria, Spinola redoubled his efforts in the Low Countries, trying to bring the Dutch War to a conclusion before the seizure of the Val Telline could tell on his men and his supplies. Hitherto his progress, though slow, had been continuous, and it seemed that his long-planned scheme for wearing down his opponents was all but realized. Bergenrop-Zoom had been preserved from the Spaniards only by the chance intervention of Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick in 1622; the Rhine was lost, the neighbouring province of Jülich was overrun by Spanish troops, and two savage winters had nipped for the time being the prosperity of the Dutch farmers. The phenomenal frosts of January and February 1624 had been followed by the bursting of dykes and destructive floods which sent crowds of homeless peasants flocking into the towns; bitter winds raced over the country, tearing the thatch off the roofs, while Spinola’s disciplined troops, recking nothing of the weather, broke the frontier defences, and the Dutch army, underfed, underpaid, wet and cold, mutinied at Breda; it looked for a moment as though there was nothing left for the Provinces to do but ask for terms.[7] The Dutch rallied in time to stem the invasion, but matters had not greatly altered by the spring of 1625, when Spinola formed the siege of Breda, the key fortress on the frontier of Brabant which guarded the roads to Utrecht and Amsterdam.

  At this time Maurice of Orange died in The Hague. On his deathbed he sent for his younger half-brother, Frederick Henry, the prince who would undoubtedly succeed him in the stadholderate of five provinces and the command of the army. To the Dutch in general this youngest son of William the Silent was still unknown; believed to have sympathies with the defeated party, he had lived in retirement since the coup d’état of 1619,
anxious above all to avoid forming a party in the State against the elder brother to whom he was devoted. He was over forty; by the standards of his times he was therefore old to assume the reins of government, and he was still unmarried.

  Maurice’s mind during his last illness hovered between his anxiety for the Dutch people and for his own dynasty; he commanded his brother to save Breda and to find a wife. As far as the latter duty went, Frederick Henry was willing enough; it seemed that he had for some time loved a buxom young maid-of-honour of the Queen of Bohemia. Dowerless but for her peerless beauty—so the courtly Venetian ambassador put it[8]—Amalia von Solms was nevertheless welcome to the dying Maurice as the instrument through whom the dynasty should be continued. She was the daughter of a noble German house devoted to the interests of the dispossessed Frederick, and she would bind her husband closely to that Rhenish alliance which was likely to be the only means of breaking Spanish power on the Rhine. The wedding was privately solemnized in The Hague early in April; a few days later Maurice died, and the bridegroom left the capital at the head of an army bound for Breda.[9]

  Spinola’s outworks proved too strong for the Dutch relieving force to break through. Frederick Henry hoped in vain that Mansfeld would bring up his English troops to the rescue, but James I wished them to be employed rather in north Germany,[10] and they themselves, or such as were left of them after a winter spent without pay and short of all necessities of life, took the law into their own hands and deserted wholesale to the Spaniards.[11] Defeated at last by hunger, the garrison of Breda sued for terms, and on June 5th 1625 marched out with the honours of war after a defence of more than six months. Spinola himself, deeply moved, embraced the Dutch commander before the whole army.[12]

  The Hapsburg dynasty could now set off the help of Wallenstein against the help which their enemies might receive from France, the fall of Breda against the seizure of the Val Telline. There remained that dangerous northern coalition, and here too the dynasty had a plan. The possible alliance of Sweden, Denmark, England and the United Provinces left one jealous northern power in the cold, the Hanseatic League. In February 1625, Olivarez dropped hints to the Austrian ambassador in Madrid,[13] and in April the Spanish ambassador at Vienna approached the Emperor with a scheme, by which the Hanseatic League were to be tempted into an alliance with the Hapsburg dynasty by the offer of a fleet to protect them against their rivals, and special trading preferences in the Spanish Indies—so many bribes to make Lübeck, Stralsund, Hamburg and Bremen into naval bases on the Baltic.[14]