The Thirty Years War

by C. V. Wedgwood

  In the last eight years of the war there were fewer such risings. The cause was twofold. There must come a point beyond which the human mind, singly and collectively, is unable to register further suffering or to sink to further degradation. The accumulated mass of social evidence on the Thirty Years War proves that that point is far to reach. By the time the congress met at Münster it had been reached.

  In the country at large the soldier ruled, without mercy and without regard. Torstensson himself compared the sack of Kremsier in June 1643 to that of Magdeburg;[39] Baner spoke lightly of shooting down civilians and sacking a town for the mere offence of refusing food and drink, which it could probably not have supplied to his men in any case. In Olmütz the daughters of the richest burghers were forcibly married to careerist army officers at the request of their colonel.[40] In Thuringia a father who appealed for justice against a soldier who had raped and killed his daughter was coarsely informed by the commanding officer that if the girl had not been so niggard of her virginity she would still be alive. Here, too, the Swedes enforced a system by which not only food, shelter, and clothing but arrears of pay were exacted from the townsfolk.[41] The ports of the Baltic suffered under a continual and increasing strain, as both the Swedes and the Danes levied higher tolls on their ships and enforced more galling exactions.[42]

  But at Münster and Osnabrück, although there was a famine in the surrounding country, supplies did not run short and nobody was in a hurry. They took six months from the opening of the congress to decide how the delegates were to sit and who were to go into the rooms first. The French ambassadors argued with those of Sweden and Brandenburg[43] as well as with the Spaniards, and quarrelled with the delegates of the Hanseatic League[44] and the Venetian mediator[45] and even more fiercely among themselves;[46] the deputies of Brandenburg and Mainz challenged each other’s superiority,[47] as did also the Venetian mediator and the Bishop of Osnabrück;[48] the chief French ambassador, Longueville, would not enter until he was given the title of ‘Altesse’,[49] and for the entire duration of the congress could never meet the leading Spanish ambassador because the formalities could not be arranged;[50] the Papal nuncio set up a dais for himself in the chief Church, and the French insisted on his taking it down;[51] the Spaniards raided the house of the Portuguese delegate,[52] the Dutch demanded the precedence of a monarchy,[53] and the servants at the French delegation had a brawl with the street scavengers of Münster, who trundled their loads out of the town every night under their windows, making an intolerable noise and stink.[54] As someone remarked, the child that the French ambassador’s wife now carried would be grown-up, dead and buried before the end of the congress.[55]

  Another mistake was the continuation of hostilities during the congress; a general cessation of arms would have brought the negotiations more quickly to an end, but while the war continued the diplomats at Münster and Osnabrück allowed their decisions to be influenced by its movements and were always prepared to postpone matters yet a little longer in the hope of some new advantage in the field. The French, above all, with greater resources and less economic and social compulsion than their adversaries, were prepared to postpone a conclusion indefinitely; it was no small part of their tactics to make a parade of their readiness to hold on for ever, rather than lose what they wanted. Their chief ambassador, Longueville, planted a garden round his lodgings and sent for his wife to bear him company, merely as a demonstration that he could, and would, stay at Münster for ever. At the same time Mazarin urged his commanders to hasten on affairs by a great show of arms in the field.[56]

  The French ambassadors were not very gifted. Claude de Mêsmes, Marquis d’Avaux, had a certain ability but was far too sure of himself to be cautious, and the error he had made in commending Catholic toleration to the Dutch was typical of him. Intolerably haughty and easily offended, he did not get on with the other delegates and least of all with his colleague, Servien. ‘One would have to be an angel to find a remedy for all your weaknesses’,[57] wrote this latter in a fit of passion. Abel Servien, Marquis de Sablé, was less superficially conceited than Avaux, but his letters, and more particularly his quarrel with his colleague, prove that he was no less self-confident. He was Mazarin’s right-hand man, and Avaux was both jealous and afraid of him,[58] a feeling which Servien did nothing to alleviate. Cleverer in his dealings with the other delegates, Servien was undoubtedly the better diplomat, but as, at moments of crisis, the two French ambassadors were frequently not on speaking terms, their single or joint ability was often at a discount. The third French ambassador, the Duc de Longueville, had been sent merely to add lustre to the embassy and to keep him out of mischief in France.[59]

  Somewhat the same ill-feeling reigned between the Swedish ambassadors. The chief of them, Johan Oxenstierna, had no claim to his position at all save that of being the son of Axel Oxenstierna; he was a large, red-faced, rather stupid man, easily rattled, very haughty, too fond of wine and women.[60] He signalled the hours of his rising, dining and retiring by a fanfare which could be heard all over Osnabrück.[61] His subordinate, Johan Adler Salvius, was one of the few comparatively able men at the congress, determined, clearheaded, resourceful and with a pleasant humour. Oxenstierna was said to be against peace because it would diminish his own and his father’s importance. But Salvius had instructions from the Queen to prevent him from needlessly holding up the negotiations; he had her word for it that any peace would be pleasing to her, regardless of the private or public wishes of the Oxenstiernas, father and son.[62] Salvius thus stood in much the same relationship to Oxenstierna as Servien to Avaux: each was the lesser of the ambassadors, yet each was in closer personal touch with the home powers than his superior.

  The Spanish ambassador, Count Guzman de Peñaranda, was not remarkable for intelligence. A handsome man with elegant manners, he was extremely proud and gained the reputation for being both impulsive and deceitful.[63] He had, strongly marked, the Spanish tendency to strain over details and miss the main issue. In so far as Spanish diplomacy achieved any success at Münster, it was through his singularly able second, Antoine Brun,[64] a man of letters, a humanist, but bred of the official class with all the qualities of the good administrator, the flair for practical needs and the gift of compromise.

  The chief ambassadors of the United Provinces were Adrian Pauw for Holland and Jan van Knuyt for Zeeland, between whom again there was that same element of tension though it never came to the surface. Pauw represented the peace, or pro-Spanish party who suspected France: Knuyt the Orange party with their French leaning. Both were able men, Pauw perhaps exceptionally so. He was said to be the only man who had ever outwitted Richelieu.[65] Neither of the Dutchmen inspired confidence, but they never betrayed themselves and, although the French and Swedes had the gravest suspicions of their actions, they could never gain confirmation of them until it was too late.

  The two mediators, or chairmen in the modern sense, were the Papal nuncio, Fabio Chigi, and the Venetian ambassador, Alvise Contarini. They exerted just enough influence for almost everyone to accuse them of prejudice, and just too little to have any marked effect. Chigi was on the whole easy tempered and prepared to smooth matters out as best he could; Contarini, on the other hand, was more difficult and inclined to lose his temper completely if contradicted.[66]

  For the rest, the hundred and thirty-five deputies[67] assembled at Münster and Osnabrück included several men distinguished in other walks of life, theologians, writers, philosophers. But when the negotiations are considered, one is forced to admit that, with the exception of Pauw, Brun, and Salvius, there is little evidence of anything save a good-natured or an egotistical muddle-headedness. Even the success of French diplomacy at the end was in great part due to the simplicity of Peñaranda and the victories of Turenne in the field.

  One other man who showed, if not outstanding ability, at least great perseverance and great tact, was the imperial ambassador Trautmansdorff. He did not, however, arrive in Münster
until the end of November 1645. Until then the imperial case was defended by Isaac Volmar, an acute lawyer and government official, whom the French, however, persistently regarded as unequal to his office by reason of his rank. The Emperor, foreseeing this objection, had appointed the affable Count John of Nassau as a purely decorative addition to the embassy. The French, nevertheless, declared that they would not believe in the Emperor’s good faith unless he sent a man whose rank and qualifications were alike equal to the task.[68] It was not, therefore, until Trautmansdorff’s arrival, eleven months after the opening ceremony, that anything but the barest preliminaries could be discussed.

  3.

  The congress had been sitting for nearly a year when the delegates found that they were still in doubt as to the subjecta belligerantia. A debate was therefore held with the purpose of forming a clear idea of what had been fought for, what was being fought for, and what subjects the peace conference should handle.[69] It is not surprising that they felt the need of greater clarity on these questions. Reduced as far as possible to simplicity, there were four main subjects for discussion: the complaints of the imperial Estates, the conditions of amnesty towards rebels, the satisfaction of foreign allies, and the compensation of the dispossessed. The first group covered nearly all the internal causes of the war; it covered the cause of Donauwörth, undecided since 1608; the Cleves-Jülich succession, still only temporarily settled; the vexed problem of the judicial rights of the Reichshofrat; the constitutional rights of the Emperor; the position of the Calvinists; above all, the distribution of land between Catholic and Protestant rulers.

  The second group of problems were those connected with the amnesty; this covered the question of restitution for the Elector Palatine and his uncle the Count of Pfalz-Zimmern, for the Margrave of Baden-Durlach to lands forfeited during the war to Baden-Baden, for the Landgravine of Hesse-Cassel, in the name of her son, to the lands bestowed on Hesse-Darmstadt, and of the return of Protestant exiles to their homes.

  The third group, the satisfaction of the allies, overtopped all others in importance at the congress. There could not be peace until the allies were satisfied, whereas in point of fact there could be, and was, peace before all the internal problems were settled. Sweden demanded Pomerania, Silesia less seriously, Wismar, the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden, and money to disband her army. France required Alsace, which her armies had long occupied, with Breisach, the confirmation of her rights to Metz, Toul, and Verdun, and in imperial Italy the fortress of Pinerolo. She also required a guarantee that the Emperor would give no further assistance to Spain.

  The fourth group was closely allied to both the second and third. It covered the question of compensation for those who had suffered during the war or as a result of the peace. It would include, for instance, the question of recompensing the Elector of Brandenburg should the peace give Pomerania to Sweden, the satisfaction of Maximilian of Bavaria should he have to yield either land or titles to the Elector Palatine.

  The congress was divided roughly into two groups: Sweden and the German Protestants at Osnabrück; France, the Emperor and the German Catholics at Münster. At Münster, also, two separate peaces were under discussion: peace between Spain and the United Provinces, and peace between France and Spain. France and Spain had a stake in all these peace conferences, France as the ally of the Dutch in that between Spain and the Provinces, Spain as the ally of the Emperor in that between the Empire, France, and Sweden.

  The conduct of the peace conference was thus as complicated and as subject to the violent disagreements of the allies as the war itself. The French and Swedes regarded each other with the gravest mistrust, the French being particularly anxious to dispense as far as possible with Swedish interference in Germany. They wanted to create a predominantly Catholic constitutionalist party as a check on the Emperor, whereas the Swedes, hotly supporting the Protestant deputies at Osnabrück, wanted a predominantly Protestant Empire. The Swedes clamoured for the total restitution of the Elector Palatine, the abolition of the Ecclesiastical Reservation, the religious status quo of 1618. The French, who never tired of trying to win over Maximilian from the imperial alliance, wanted him to retain his Electorate and the lands he had won, and for the rest supported the German Catholic delegates at Münster in asking for the religious status quo of 1627, that fixed by the Peace of Prague.

  The nervous exasperation between the French and their Dutch allies continued throughout with varying intensity, while on the opposite side Maximilian of Bavaria kept the Viennese Court in constant apprehension, and the friendship between Austria and Spain was brought more than once almost to breaking point.

  The ambassadors of each country had a double task, to negotiate peace for their own government and to divide their enemies one from another. Spanish diplomacy with the Dutch was intended to split up the Franco-Dutch alliance, and in the end did so. Imperial diplomacy with the French was intended to break the Franco-Swedish coalition and set their German allies against them.[70] French diplomacy with the Catholic Germans was directed at detaching Bavaria from Austria.[71] This elaborate game at cross purposes was further complicated by the presence of various minor powers on the edge of the European conflict, delegates from the King of Portugal, the Swiss Confederation, the Dukes of Savoy and Lorraine.

  The war was still in part, if only in a small part, a German civil war, and little as native interests might dominate the congress in Westphalia, they could not be altogether forgotten. Unable to assert control in the war, the two princes who had intermittently attempted to form a German party tried once again to assert themselves at the peace. John George of Saxony and Maximilian of Bavaria did not act in alliance; the centre party had failed too often and too dismally for there to be any question of reviving it. Yet in the intricacies of the negotiations at Münster and Osnabrück the separate threads of Saxon and Bavarian policy tended each to the same end—the settlement of imperial affairs as far as possible without giving dominant control to any foreign power.

  In this swan-song of the two princes, each revealed the singularities which had all along characterized his policy, John George being as always too direct, and Maximilian too indirect, in his plans. John George aimed all along at reconciling the chief quarrels between Catholic and Protestant Germans, in the hope that thus neither party would be tempted to enlist foreign help in the settlement of this central dispute. His policy would have been more effective if it could have achieved an earlier success. Germany settled her religious problem for herself, but not before the French and Swedes had derived what advantage they wished from it.

  Maximilian’s policy was more complicated. He feared Spain rather than Sweden or France. He therefore required that any demands of France and Sweden should be met outright, that Alsace should be given to France, Pomerania to Sweden, so that both should be deprived of further excuse to meddle in Germany. This done he imagined that the deserted Protestants would be easily quelled and a strong Catholic constitutionalist party would be able to assert itself against the Emperor and his Spanish allies without further foreign intervention. He was prepared to sacrifice the territorial integrity of Germany to strengthen her inner solidarity against the Emperor and Spain.[72]

  His policy had more influence on the congress than that of Saxony, and this influence was altogether disastrous. He secured Pomerania for Sweden, Alsace for France, without gaining any guarantee that they would refrain from meddling in constitutional problems, and without uniting the Catholic party against the Emperor. The Empire preserved neither her constitutional nor her territorial integrity, the French exploited Maximilian, and the Swedes took no notice of him. The lesser rulers of Germany continued at Osnabrück and Münster to enlist the help of whatever foreign power was likely to be most helpful at the moment. John George and Maximilian managed this last crisis as badly as those which had gone before.

  4.

  During the first year of the congress, from its opening in December 1644 to the arrival of Trautmansdorff in No
vember 1645, the military situation had darkened for the Emperor. In the New Year of 1645 Torstensson, commanding the Swedes on the Elbe, crossed the Erzgebirge[73] and by the fourth week in February was advancing rapidly on Prague. At Jankau, about nine miles from Tabor, a mixed force of imperialists and Bavarians cut him off and forced him to fight. He had the best of it from the first. The ground was very uneven and thickly wooded, so that the engagement was rather a series of skirmishes than the pitched battle in which the superior numbers of the enemy would have told.[74] Torstensson first outmanoeuvred Goetz, the opposing cavalry general, then charging him at a disadvantage scattered his troops. Goetz himself was killed in the flight, and the news of his death spread to the infantry, who fled in panic leaving the guns behind. When the Bavarian cavalry under Mercy and Werth, and the imperialist reserves under Hatzfeld, attempted to hold the Swedes back, their valiant efforts on the difficult ground with inferior numbers led only to a heavy loss of life. General Hatzfeld was taken, and the remnant of the Bavarian and imperialist cavalry fled towards Prague.[75]

  Jankau was in some sort the Rocroy of Germany, for it destroyed the Bavarian cavalry, the backbone of the army, just as Rocroy had destroyed the Spanish infantry.[76] More immediately important, it laid Prague open to Torstensson’s victorious army. There was panic in the Hapsburg lands. Ferdinand, himself at Prague, dragged the incompetent Gallas out of his brief retirement to collect and reorganize what was left of the imperial army. He abandoned all hope of saving his capital and left at once, with only a few servants, for Regensburg; thence down the Danube through Linz, where he joined his wife, to Vienna. His own people spoke of this journey as his ‘Friedrichsflucht’, and indeed he had gone almost as quickly and almost as much alone as had the Winter King a quarter of a century earlier.[77] Ferdinand himself stayed in Vienna, but the extent of his fears may be gauged from the fact that he sent his stepmother and his children to Graz.[78]