The Thirty Years War

by C. V. Wedgwood

  The King of Hungary was neither narrow-minded nor unforeseeing, but his faculties were conditioned by his background, and his actions by his immediate experience. His father had been born and brought up while the shadow of the medieval Empire was still on the dynasty. His birthplace was the provincial court of a Styrian archduke, but the capital of his world was Frankfort-on-the-Main where the imperial elections were held, the spiritual centre of the Holy Roman Empire. To young Ferdinand, Frankfort-on-the-Main had for long been a hostile city, remote beyond the lines of foreign armies, the headquarters of the Swedish invaders. Born in 1608, he could hardly remember a time when the German states had lived in outward peace and open confederation. The Empire was to him no more than a geographical term for a collection of warring fragments. Inevitably he turned to the more obvious solidarity of Vienna, Prague, Pressburg, and built his world on that.

  This was the change in the background. There had grown up, too, another problem in the war. From the beginning the question of the mercenary army had been potentially difficult; nearly a generation of warfare had immensely increased its gravity until it became not a subsidiary but a dominant problem. The army as an entity had to be carefully considered and tactfully handled, as tactfully as any political ally. This had been apparent on the imperial side during the counter-plotting of the Viennese government against Wallenstein, on the Protestant side in the negotiations which stilled the mutiny of 1633.

  The armies themselves were the last to be affected by the growth of nationalism. The Swedish army had had a strong sense of patriotism when it landed with the King, but since then it had been diluted with so many German and foreign recruits that the original feeling was gone. Certain native regiments in the Spanish army felt strongly for their national honour, and later, in the French army, this emotion was to be developed, but the greater number of the soldiers fighting in 1634 regarded themselves merely as soldiers. All peoples were represented among both parties. Among those who signed the Pilsen manifesto there had been Scots, Czechs, Germans, Italians, Flemish, and French, a Pole, a Croatian and a Roumanian. Among the Swedish commanders there were, or had been, the Hessian Falkenberg, the Bohemian Thurn, the Pole Schafflitsky, the Scots Ruthven and Ramsey, the Netherlander Mortaigne, the Frenchman Duval. Among the lesser ranks there were Irishmen, Englishmen, Germans, Bohemians, Poles, French, even occasional Italians. In Bavarian regiments there were Turks and Greeks as well as Poles, Italians, and Lorrainers.[182] There were Catholics in Protestant armies, Protestants among the Catholics; an imperialist regiment had once mutinied as a protest against the celebration of Mass.[183]

  Among these men, each out for his own livelihood, it was vain to think even of military loyalty when pay or food were short. Of two thousand Württembergers who joined Horn in 1632 at least half deserted in less than a month;[184] the mixed garrison under Spanish command at Philippsburg gave the place up to the Swedes by the simple means of changing sides;[185] in Silesia, when Wallenstein took Steinau, the discontented ‘Swedish’ army under Thurn and Duval in the surrounding outposts joined the invaders without hesitation.[186] The case of Arnim, who had held high command on both sides, was paralleled, with less credit, by several others. Werth spontaneously offered to leave the Bavarians for the French,[187] Kratz changed from a responsible position under Wallenstein to a responsible position with the Swedes,[188] Goetz began under Mansfeld and ended under Maximilian of Bavaria, Franz Albrecht of Saxe-Lauenburg fought for the imperialists, for the Swedes, and then for the imperialists again. Even Aldringer was suspected of arranging to change sides just before his death.[189] There were other curious cases. Conrad Wiederhold, governor of Hohentwiel, the fortress overlooking Constance, indignant when his employer, the regent of Württemberg, bade him evacuate the place to the imperialists, put his own staunch Protestantism above the Duke’s feebleness and went on holding the castle—for Bernard of Weimar.

  By this time, too, the proportion of the troops to the civilian population had altered radically. Recruiting never ceased in the lands through which the armies passed, and as the life of the peasant and artisan grew harder, the attraction of a soldier’s life increased. Ambitious young men were drawn by the tale of those few, those very few, who had risen from the ranks to the highest places of all; their names were a talisman to the new recruit—Werth, Stalhans, St André.[190] Others thought merely of pay and plunder, of the comparative security of being the robber and not the robbed. With the growth of the armies grew the huge conglomerate mass of the camp followers; it grew faster than the army, so that the old reckoning of a man and a boy for each soldier was no longer adequate, and the women, children, servants and riff-raff who trailed along in the rear outnumbered the soldiers by three or four to one, later even by five to one. It was inevitable that this huge mass, with its particular interests, its future, its women and its children to consider, should exhibit the peculiarities of a self-conscious class and fight for its own advantage. Arnim had, for instance, been afraid that his troops would mutiny if they learnt of his peace negotiations.[191] ‘This widespread state’, Marshal Baner called his army and, after stilling the mutiny of 1633, Oxenstierna observed that he had elevated the army to the rank of a political Estate;[192] he was not wrong to do so, for they were as large as any Estate in Sweden.

  These developments, the shifting of the background and the independent significance of the armies, give its peculiar character to the latter end of the war and more particularly to the negotiations surrounding the Peace of Prague.

  8.

  John George and his general had been negotiating for peace throughout 1634, to the profound annoyance of Baner, who was co-operating with Arnim, and of Oxenstierna. The Elector had exerted all his influence to prevent the two Saxon Circles from joining the Heilbronn League, and indeed to break up the League itself.[193] He honestly wanted peace and the expulsion of the invaders, so also did the Emperor, so much so that he was prepared now to do what he had refused to do four years before at Regensburg, namely to abandon the Edict of Restitution. This was the sacrifice of his spiritual to his temporal policy which Eggenberg had advocated all along and which, had he made it at Regensburg in 1630, would have united Germany against Gustavus Adolphus. Since the sacrifice had to be made in the end, it was regrettable that it should not have been made earlier, but Ferdinand was not in the habit of abandoning his policy without a struggle.

  Before the Battle of Nördlingen confirmed the Hapsburg position, he had gone so far as to ask only the status quo of 1620, but no sooner was the victory won than he increased his claim, and demanded all the land which the Church had regained up to November 1627.[194] There was nothing intolerable in that. Indeed the apparent moral victory of John George’s moderate party was complete, for the Edict of Restitution was gone and the Emperor had agreed at last to a compromise. Ferdinand’s moral retreat served for cover to his political advance. The winning of John George was likely to go far to reunite the leading princes of Germany under imperial dominance.

  This intelligent opportunism may have been in part the work of the King of Hungary who was largely responsible for the negotiations. The terms were temptingly generous. There was complete amnesty for everyone except only the Bohemian exiles and the family of Frederick. John George was to have control of the bishopric of Magdeburg. Above all, private leagues among German princes were henceforward declared illegal, although John George was to continue in semi-independent command of his own army as the Emperor’s ally.

  In its cool and reasonable treatment of the problem, its broad basis of compromise, this was the finest work for peace yet achieved on either side—in appearance at least. The soundness of its theory was proved by the acceptance of much of its matter at the ultimate Peace of Westphalia. But its weakness in practice was shown by the events immediately surrounding its ratification. For the negotiators on the imperial side worked with only a partial hope of peace and a shrewd consideration of the possibility of continued war. If the settlement failed as a se
ttlement, it must at least serve to bind John George, and any who cared to follow him, to the imperial cause. The treaty was open to all, and if all the combatants signed it, then it would bring peace indeed; but in the meantime it must be generous enough to tempt as many as possible of the moderates. The refusal to sign must appear wholly unreasonable, so that those who continued in arms—the French, the Swedes and their dwindling allies—should appear as enemies of the commonweal. Such was the theory. If it worked in practice, it would identify the imperial alliance with the general good and assemble the signatories under the Hapsburg banner. But while Swedish troops remained in Germany the war would go on and the Peace of Prague would be only a new and all-embracing alliance in Ferdinand’s interests.

  At the last minute a dozen obstacles threatened the negotiations. The Emperor had a final qualm over the Edict of Restitution and, for a dizzy moment, contemplated buying the King of France out of the war by the gift of Alsace and thus destroying the financial support of his enemies. The King of Hungary put a stop to this; an Austrian and a Hapsburg before he was a Catholic, he preferred to cede Church land in Germany rather than to give away the dominions of his house and invite France to control the Rhine.

  On the Protestant side, the Elector Palatine and the King of England clamoured of betrayal,[195] and nearer home prophets appeared among the people in Saxony itself foretelling a heavenly vengeance on John George if he forsook the Cause. His wife was against the peace[196] and so also was Arnim. The unhappy general had worked hard for a settlement ever since 1632—when the Peace of Prague was all but concluded he was so filled with joy that he even composed a poem on it—but he could not in honour accept a treaty which excluded the Swedes.[197] He would not buy a useless settlement by the cynical desertion of his allies. The treaty was not a peace, but a new alliance for war—and with the opposite side.

  The King of Hungary signed a truce, which later became a final truce, with Saxony at Laun on February 28th 1635.[198] The emotions of Oxenstierna at this news may well be imagined. The desertion of John George was now inevitable, and he would probably carry with him George William of Brandenburg, who had failed to secure from Sweden a guarantee that he could keep Pomerania. Richelieu was Oxenstierna’s only hope, his only friend even, for Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, with the shameless opportunism of the mercenary, was blackmailing him. Oxenstierna had admitted to Feuquières after Nördlingen that he feared, without the restraining influence of Horn, that Bernard would be dangerous; Feuquières immediately hastened off privately to see Bernard and secure what remained of his army for France.[199] Too wily to be hurried, Bernard temporized, and in the winter of 1634–5 received and apparently considered requests from both Saxony and the Emperor to join them with what was left of his troops.[200] He was thus able to force Oxenstierna, the Heilbronn League and Feuquières to offer him anything that he requested if he would but agree to act in their interests. He played his cards with ruthless skill and secured what he wanted; in the spring of 1635 he was appointed commander-in-chief in Germany both for the Heilbronn League and the King of France. He demanded the power, independent of political control, to wage war and exact contributions as he pleased, and claimed a satisfactory indemnity in case of peace;[201] helpless, the politicians once again bowed before the indispensable soldier.

  Oxenstierna’s genius was to draw a qualified advantage out of every disadvantage. Although he was dependent on Richelieu to pay Bernard, yet Richelieu was partly dependent on him, since Bernard would not willingly abandon the advantages he could gain from a double mandate of command. So with the Saxon desertion; dismayed as Oxenstierna was at the prospect of a hostile eastern and north-eastern Germany, he hastened to point out that Richelieu could not possibly dispense with the Swedish alliance now that the Emperor had strengthened himself by winning John George, and the only support left in the region of the Elbe was a contingent of the Swedish army under Baner.[202]

  He had been right not to ratify that treatment of despair signed between the King of France and the Heilbronn League in November, for out of his own disaster, dangers to Richelieu were fast growing, and not on his own strength but on Richelieu’s fears, he made better terms in the spring. The retreat of Bernard to the left bank of the Rhine, the advance of the Spaniards to within a perilous distance of the French frontier, the appearance of an active governor, the Cardinal-Infant, in the Netherlands, and the sudden revival and reunion of the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburg, awakened Richelieu to the fact that the defeat of the Swedes at Nördlingen had a singularly dangerous side.[203] Before the end of September news came that the Spaniards were raising still more armies in Sicily and Sardinia, and by October he feared a sea attack on Provence.[204] Working rapidly, he made a new Dutch alliance in February 1635, the terms of which reflected his fears. Under pressure, he agreed to put an army of thirty thousand in the field against Spain and to leave the direction of the joint war to the Prince of Orange.[205]

  Axel Oxenstierna, counting on the usual dilatory opening of the spring campaign, put off the conclusion of terms for another two months. Thinking it best to deal with the slippery Cardinal himself rather than his still more slippery agents, he came in April to Paris where he was graciously received. The negotiations, in spite of the suspicion of both parties, went well: ‘the French manner of negotiating is very strange, and depends much on finesse’,[206] Oxenstierna once complained, but it seemed that his own nordic method, ‘un peu gothique et beaucoup finoise’,[207] as Richelieu described it, was a match for it. On April 30th 1635, they signed the Treaty of Compiègne. By this the French government, in return for the left bank of the Rhine from Breisach to Strasbourg, was to recognize Sweden as an equal ally, to give her the control of Worms, Mainz, and Benfeld, to agree to make no peace without her, and to declare open war on Spain.[208] It was the best Oxenstierna could do, and it was infinitely better than the treaty of the previous November. Richelieu, with the greater resources, was bound to be the dominant partner, but at least the Chancellor had secured partnership and not mere vassalage for himself. Seeing that he had nothing behind him save an impoverished country under a quarrelsome regency, and Baner’s mutinous troops in Halberstadt and Magdeburg, Oxenstierna had squeezed every drop of advantage from the situation.

  On May 21st 1635, in accordance with the obligations of the French government, a herald in the Grande Place at Brussels formally proclaimed that the most Christian King, Louis XIII of France, declared war on his Catholic Majesty, Philip IV of Spain. The technical excuse for the action was that Spanish troops had raided Treves and carried off the Elector, prisoner; for the last three years he had been by treaty under the special protection of France.

  At Vienna nine days later the terms of the Peace of Prague were published. They were open to any ruler who wished to sign them. The terms had been drawn up wholeheartedly on Saxony’s side, and partially at least on the imperial side, with the intention of bringing peace to Germany. But the appearance of France as the ally of Sweden on the left bank of the Rhine, followed by the declaration of war by France on Spain, altered the situation. Those who subscribed to the Peace found that they had not merely to drive Swedish armies out of Germany but French also. And if they closed in conflict with France, they must make common cause with the King of Spain. The Peace of Prague was metamorphosed into an alliance for war, and those who signed it bound themselves to fight the battles of the House of Austria.

  ‘Saxony had made his peace’, wrote Richelieu, ‘but that will have no effect on us save to make us renew our efforts to keep all in train.’[209] The last act of the German tragedy had begun.

  1. See Leman, Urbain VIII, passim.

  2. Ibid., pp. 134 f., 563–4.

  3. Abreu y Bertodano, IV, pp. 262 f.

  4. Avenel, IV, pp. 416, 419, 431–4; VIII, pp. 248, 252; Feuquières, Lettres et négociations, Amsterdam, 1753, I, pp. 5–6.

  5. Brefvexling, II, i, p. 870.

  6. Feuquières, II, i, pp. 10–26.

  7. N. A.
Kullberg, Svenska Riksrådets Protokoll. Händlingar rörande Sveriges Historia, 1878, III, p. 12.

  8. Brefvexling, op. cit., I, vii, p. 637.

  9. Struck, Johann Georg und Oxenstierna. Stralsund, 1899, pp. 19–20.

  10. Hallwich, Wallensteins Ende, Leipzig, 1879, I, pp. 47, 102; Irmer, Die Verhandlungen Schwedens, II, pp. 11–12.

  11. A. Küsel, Der Heilbronner Konvent. Halle, 1878, p. 18.

  12. Helbig, Wallenstein und Arnim. Dresden, 1850, p. 15; Hallwich, Wallensteins Ende, II, p. 254.

  13. Brefväxling mellan Oxenstierna och Svenska Riksrådet. Händlingar rörande Skandinaviens Historia, XXV, p. 196.

  14. Sverges Traktater, V, ii, pp. 18 ff.; Lundorp, VI, pp. 317 f.

  15. Feuquières, passim.

  16. Ibid., I, pp. 75–6, 94, 112, 113, 135–6.

  17. Ibid., pp. 140, 147.

  18. Ibid., pp. 85–8,217.

  19. Feuquières, pp. 113, 221; Sverges Traktater, V, ii, pp. 12–18.

  20. Feuquières, I, pp. 64–5, 141.

  21. Brefväxling mellan Oxenstierna och Svenska Riksrådet. Händlingar rörande Skandinaviens Historia, XXV, p. 207; Hallwich, Wallensteins Ende, I, p. 355.

  22. Helbig, Wallenstein und Arnim, p. 18; see also G. Droysen, Holks Einfall in Sachsen. Neues Archiv für Sächsische Geschichte, I, pp. 53 ff.

  23. Geyl, pp. 132–3.

  24. Ibid., p. 96.

  25. Waddington, Les Provinces Unies en 1630. Paris, 1893, pp. 6 f.