The Thirty Years War

by C. V. Wedgwood

  Johann von Werth, racing to the rescue, turned the tide of advance from Augsburg but could not prevent the invasion which in the autumn of 1646 poured across Bavaria. Maximilian himself, terrified of a peasants’ revolt, refused arms to his defenceless subjects and, by destroying mills and storehouses to starve out the invaders, decreed famine for his own people.[125] In the spring he was imploring a truce; in March he signed it, and only in April did Wrangel suspend hostilities.[126]

  But Mazarin had a hydra to deal with in the House of Austria, and weak as the monster was becoming, each lopped-off head was replaced by another. The desertion of Bavaria was balanced by a revival. The coming of Trautmansdorff to Münster had seemed to indicate an abandonment of his Spanish policy by the Emperor. The death of his wife, the Infanta Maria, a few months later increased the hope that Ferdinand would break with Spain. Mazarin, snatching at the auspicious moment, had even thought to break the Austro-Spanish alliance and tempt Ferdinand to a rapid peace by offering him as a bride the strapping hoyden, ‘Mademoiselle’, Gaston of Orleans’s daughter. The offer was refused, on the grounds that the Emperor was yet too deep in his sorrow to think of a second union; but genuine though Ferdinand’s grief undoubtedly was, it did not prevent him seeking a wife within his own family, and he rejected the French alliance in favour of one of those marriages by which, from time to time, the dynasty reinforced itself. His chosen bride was his cousin, Maria Leopoldina of Tyrol.

  This betrothal made less stir in Europe than the simultaneous marriage treaty of the King of Spain. Philip IV, having lost both his wife and only son within a few weeks of each other, began, with indecent haste, to seek out a young bride; he was not a very prepossessing husband, old and glum for his forty-odd years, dumbly stupid; as a ruler, a useless idol. He was devoted only to his one remaining child, the scatter-brained little Infanta who despite the formalities of Madrid and the splendours of Versailles remained through life a foolish, impulsive, perpetually sweet-tempered schoolgirl.[127] The Spanish Empire was dead, but the King of Spain sought an Austrian princess in marriage. He sought his own niece, Ferdinand’s daughter Maria Anna, and Ferdinand consented.[128]

  To bind his Austrian cousins more firmly to him, Philip yielded to Peñaranda’s suggestion, shelved the appointment of his bastard son and made the Archduke Leopold governor of the Netherlands.[129] At the very moment in which Mazarin broke the Bavarian alliance, Spain renewed her hold on Austria. And at that same moment the Spaniards cut away Dutch support from under the Cardinal’s feet.

  The French in the winter and early spring of 1646 had approached the Spaniards with the suggestion that they should exchange Catalonia, now occupied by French troops, for the Netherlands.[130] The Spaniards took up the plan, whether seriously or because they knew that it would make enmity between the Dutch and French, it is hard to say. In any case, as soon as the projected transaction became known the Dutch, furious at these machinations of an already suspect ally, began to prepare peace-terms acceptable to Spain and in total disregard of French interests.[131]

  Not warned by this misfortune, the French let themselves be further deceived by Spanish diplomacy. Philip’s son being dead, they encouraged a plan for the marriage of the Infanta, now sole heiress of Spain, to the boy-King of France. This time the French concealed all from the Dutch, and their childish duplicity met its due reward when the Spaniards, who had not regarded the scheme seriously, suddenly revealed it all and left the French alone to face the music.[132] This time no denials, no protests, no special deputations availed anything.[133] Even the Swedes were indignant and, finally[134] disgusted with their ally, the United Provinces signed a truce with Spain,[135] leaving their untrustworthy friends to extricate themselves alone.

  The abandonment and evaporation of that project for the cession of the Netherlands, drove the French to prosecute the war ardently in the Low Countries. The more so since the Archduke Leopold, travelling rapidly and incognito, had crossed the frontier of Brabant early in the New Year of 1647 and was now preparing for fresh campaigns against France with a zeal reminiscent of the Cardinal-Infant.[136] Bavaria being forced to neutrality, Mazarin designed that Turenne should turn all his forces now in Germany against the Low Countries.[137]

  The plan both for Bavarian neutrality and for Turenne’s attack on Flanders had one serious weakness. On the Bavarian side Johann von Werth, the general of Maximilian’s troops, had no intention of accepting the imposed neutrality and, on the French side, the old Bernardine army had no intention of obeying Turenne. A double mutiny in the summer of 1647 played into the hands of the Hapsburg and for the last time wrecked the matured schemes of France. At the end of June the Bernardines mutinied on the Rhine against their French commanders, at the beginning of July Werth declared his loyalty to the Emperor and not the Elector of Bavaria. No wonder that Trautmansdorff had smiled as he left Münster on the evening of July 16th 1647.

  Maximilian had been on bad terms with Werth for long enough; his discipline was non-existent, his birth was low, his manners revolting, he could barely write, and the Elector, although he admitted him to be an admirable cavalry leader, regarded him openly as a drunken boor and refused to gratify his desire to be named field-marshal. Consequently it had been easy for Ferdinand by a few judicious hints to bribe the unscrupulous and discontented careerist. Late in June Maximilian, hearing something of the plot, sent for his general, but he had no definite evidence, and Werth, confronted with an unsupported accusation, swore his innocence with a cheerful disregard for the pains of hell, and rode back to his men to make all ready for immediate action. In the first week of July 1647 he was marching at the head of his army to join the Emperor.

  Meanwhile at Strasbourg the discontent of the Bernardines had come to a head. Turenne had long expected it. Three years earlier a serious mutiny at Breisach had been stilled only by the courage and popularity of Erlach.[138] Since then Erlach had withdrawn and Turenne, who had got on badly with him, got on even worse with his successor, Reinhold von Rosen. The troops were convinced, justly enough, that the French intended to merge them slowly in the main body of the army; they claimed that French officers were appointed over them, that their interests were not considered, and finally that, by the terms of their service, Turenne had no right to order them to Flanders. The mutiny, once started, spread with uncontrollable speed; Rosen, with some mistaken idea of influencing the troops, set himself at the head of them, and when Turenne, somewhat ineptly, arrested him, the Bernardines elected a leader from their ranks and set off four thousand strong, plundering savagely as they went, to join the Swedes.[139]

  After that Turenne, seriously weakened, could no longer march on Flanders. Besides, the collapse of Bavarian neutrality made his presence necessary in Germany. But here, too, the mutiny checked his free action, for Wrangel, after a momentary embarrassment,[140] had coolly enlisted the Bernardines, and Turenne refused at first to act in conjunction with any army stuffed with rebels from his own.[141] It would be dangerous to act without the help of the Swedes and, in the circumstances, impossible to act with it.

  The Bernardine mutiny was successful from the point of view of the mutineers, but Werth’s mutiny benefited only the Emperor. Werth, in fact, had not the character to carry his troops with him; most of his followers went back to Maximilian and he crossed the Austrian frontier almost alone, with a price on his head.[142] Nevertheless, Maximilian had already been frightened out of his peace policy. On September 27th 1647, the exasperated French ambassadors at Münster learnt that he had rejoined Ferdinand with all his forces.[143] They would have been more distressed still had they known that a little later the one-time Hessian general, Melander, now generalissimus of the imperial and Bavarian troops, had joined with Frederick William of Brandenburg in an attempt to form an eleventh-hour ‘German’ party and break this foreign-controlled peace.[144]

  On January 30th 1648, Spain and the United Provinces concluded the Peace of Münster.[145] For the Spanish Netherlands it was the end o
f prosperity; Spain had been prepared to sacrifice the loyal provinces who had fought for her, in order to get better terms for herself. The Scheldt was closed and Antwerp ruined to make way for Amsterdam. But although France was gravely concerned about the peace, it was for no love of Flanders; her ambassadors, after several ineffectual protests,[146] took the decision to call off their own negotiations with the Spanish, citing as their excuse the fact that Peñaranda had left Münster and they could not treat with anyone of less importance. They calculated that they would be able to write off their breaking of their own Dutch alliance against the breaking of the Austro-Spanish pact. The Emperor would not be able to oppose the terms established at Münster and Osnabrück by the assembled German Estates and their foreign allies. When he signed them he would have to renounce all that Spain held in Germany and undertake to help her no more.

  The success of French diplomacy was sealed by her armies. The desertion of Bavaria forced Turenne to act in unison with Wrangel and abandon his Flemish plan; their differences over the Bernardines shelved, not settled, the two generals at length converged together upon south Germany.[147] On the surface the outlook was not very hopeful. Wrangel, who feared that the end of the war would be the end of his power, had only been forced to act by the appointment of the Queen’s cousin as commander-in-chief, and the news that he was on his way to Germany stung the jealous marshal to further effort. If the war had to be ended, better end it himself than leave it to another.[148] He did not, however, hesitate to let it be known that Turenne was trying to evade battle in order to prolong the war.[149] Indeed the weakness of the enemy made further postponement impossible to justify. Melander, imperial field-marshal since the previous year, was entrenching himself on the line of the Danube. But the joint Bavarian and imperial armies were outnumbered by the Swedes and French, and Groensfeld, the Bavarian commander, was hampering their joint action by demanding precedence over Melander.[150] In this plight they were surprised in broken, rolling country not far from Augsburg and close to the village of Zusmarshausen. Impeded by an intolerable train of camp followers—they outnumbered the men, it was reckoned, at the rate of four to one—Melander tried to get the artillery and baggage away, leaving the Italian general Montecuculi to defend the rear; with dogged courage Montecuculi retreated from ridge to ridge, using his cavalry to beat off the attacking forces while the infantry withdrew. Melander coming up to his help was mortally wounded. The Italian decided to save the army rather than its impedimenta, now in hopeless confusion, and fell back to Landsberg with the loss of everything except his troops.

  In the last, darkest hour Piccolomini came back to Austria to save the situation, but it needed more than his immense energy and tenacity to make an army out of the scattered, demoralized fragments left after Zusmarshausen, and Maximilian did not ease matters by arresting Groensfeld for treason directly after the battle.[151]

  Turenne and Wrangel, meanwhile, overran Bavaria, wreaking horrible vengeance on the people for the fickle policy of their master. In fact, as Wrangel tersely wrote to the Elector, he had but one way to save his country and that was to make another truce.

  A second Swedish army under Königsmarck invaded Bohemia and summoned Prague to surrender. On July 26th 1648, they took the Kleinseite, and it seemed that all was lost, but the restored Catholic and Hapsburg city fought for its religion and its King as it had never fought before. Taken in 1620 and in 1635 almost without a shot fired, it would have held out in 1648 to the last man. The students, the monks, the burghers defended the Charles Bridge, shoulder to shoulder with the soldiers, never slacking in their efforts. How long they could or would have resisted it is impossible to say. Hope of relief they had almost none, yet for more than three months they held on, and peace, not surrender, ended their long defence.

  While the people of Prague stood at bay, Ferdinand, clinging to his religious conviction, his father’s heritage, his dynastic obligation, refused to sign the peace. The religious settlement was the ostensible barrier to his signing, yet he had political reasons. Could Ferdinand fail his Spanish cousins when they had made peace with the Dutch and were at last in hopes of meeting the French as equals?[152] His own much beloved brother was supporting that desperate conflict in the Low Countries, confident that he would not be abandoned.

  The Archduke had shown himself from the beginning of his governorship an active commander and a firm disciplinarian; he had broken through on the French frontier, reconquering Armentières, Comines, Lens, Landrecies. In those first months of his rule he was strangely unlike the Archduke of later years, that lank, disappointed man who stands in the documentary pictures of David Teniers, waggling an ineffective cane at some favourite masterpiece in a lofty Brussels studio. In that first year he seemed the equal of the Cardinal-Infant. And then, at Lens in August 1648, by carelessness, incompetence or bad luck, or by all three, he was trapped by Enghien and his whole army blotted out.[153]

  That was the end for Ferdinand. Bavaria lost at Zusmarshausen, Prague besieged, Leopold broken at Lens. He bowed to the inevitable, accepted the religious settlement and agreed to sign the peace. But the delegates at Münster had not taken three years to make a peace to sign it in three minutes. When Ferdinand’s final resolution reached Münster, the key had been lost and it could not be decoded. This delay overcome, there began a lengthy discussion of the order in which the treaties should be signed, and not until Saturday, October 24th, nearly three weeks after the solution of all political difficulties, were the actual signatures written. Even on the day the deputies, having waited from nine till one at Münster, were told to come back again at two. Only then did the leading ambassadors appear, and both the treaties of peace were signed. The action was greeted by three successive salvos from seventy cannon ranged on the walls.

  That was not the last shot of the Thirty Years War. All those weeks, all those days, all those last futile hours, they had been fighting at Prague, and went on fighting for nine days longer before they, too, had news of the peace.[154] Then they, too, fired their salvos to the skies, sang their Te Deum and rang their church bells because the war was over.

  1. Urkunden und Aktenstücke, I, pp. 832–3.

  2. Meiern, Acta Pacis, I, pp. 11–12.

  3. Lundorp, V, pp. 905 f.

  4. Ibid., pp. 912–13.

  5. Meiern, Acta Pacis, I, pp. 223–8.

  6. Stöckert, Die Reichsstände und der Friedenskongress. Kiel, 1869, p. 23.

  7. Lundorp, V, pp. 831–3.

  8. Koch, I, pp. 469 f.

  9. Fiedler, p. 283.

  10. Dengel, Kardinal Rossettis Wanderung. Forschungen und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte Tyrols und Vorarlbergs, I, p. 267.

  11. Elster, Piccolomini Studien, pp. 101 ff.

  12. Chéruel, pp. 475–9; Heilmann, p. 91; Chemnitz, IV, iii, pp. 185–6.

  13. Heilmann, pp. 97 f., 122–5.

  14. Ibid., pp. 138–55; Besse, Relation de Rocroy et de Fribourg, pp. 356–7, 365 f.

  15. Hugo Grotii Bref till Svenska Konungahuset. Historiska Handlingar. Ny följd, XIII, ii, p. 6.

  16. Chéruel, I, pp. 40–1.

  17. Mazarin, Lettres à la Reine, ed. Ravenel. Paris, 1886, pp. 31, 338.

  18. Prinsterer, II, iv, p. 272.

  19. Huygens, Mémoires, p. 90.

  20. Prinsterer, IV, p. 159.

  21. Geest, Amalia van Solms en de Nederlansche politiek. Baarn, 1909, p. 21.

  22. Dohna, Mémoires. Königsberg, 1898, p. 31.

  23. Aitzema, II, p. 417.

  24. Waddington, La République des Provinces Unies, pp. 383–5.

  25. Le Clerc, p. 193.

  26. Chéruel, pp. 656, 690.

  27. Relazioni Veneziane, Roma, II, pp. 69–70, 88–9; Coville, Mazarin et Innocent X, p. 30.

  28. Brosch, Geschichte des Kirchenstaates. Gotha, 1880, I, p. 410.

  29. Bougeant, III, pp. 107–8.

  30. See Coville, Mazarin et Innocent X, for a full account of these difficulties.

  31. Ogier, J
ournal du Congrès de Münster. Paris, 1893, p. 51.

  32. Prestage, Diplomatic Relations of Portugal to France, England and Holland. Watford, 1925, p. 17.

  33. Fiedler, pp. 301–2; Meiern, Acta Pacis, pp. 195–7.

  34. Meiern, Acta Pacis, I, pp. 88–116, 175; Bougeant, III, pp. 119–26.

  35. Gärtner, Westphälische Friedenscanzlei. Leipzig, 1731, II, pp. 337–9.

  36. Chemnitz, III, iv, pp. 167–8.

  37. Chanut, Mémoires, Paris, 1675, I, p. 28.

  38. Urkunden und Aktenstücke, XXIII, i, p. 67.

  39. Brefvexling, II, viii, p. 408.

  40. Chronik des Minoriten Guardians, pp. 466, 469.

  41. Einert, p. 35.

  42. Brefvexling, p. 630.

  43. Le Clerc, II, pp. 22, 25.

  44. Meiern, Acta Pacis, I, pp. 363–8, 393.

  45. Bougeant, II, p. 411.

  46. Meiern, Acta Pacis, I, p. 382; Le Clerc, II, p. 123.

  47. Gärtner, V, p. 5.

  48. Bougeant, III, p. 256.

  49. Meiern, Acta Pacis, I, pp. 424, 495–6.

  50. Fiedler, p. 315.

  51. Bougeant, II, p. 416.

  52. Prestage, Diplomatic Relations, p. 18.

  53. Bougeant, III, p. 247.

  54. Le Clerc, II, p. 4.

  55. Ogier, p. 88.

  56. Chéruel, II, pp. 306–7; Le Clerc, III, pp. 136–7.

  57. Ibid., I, p. 102.

  58. Fiedler, p. 300; Correspondencia diplomatica de los plenipotenciarios Españoles en el congreso de Munster, 1643–8. Madrid, 1884, II, p. 344.

  59. Bougeant, IV, pp. 61–2.

  60. Fiedler, pp. 310–11.

  61. Bougeant, III, p. 67.

  62. Fiedler, p. 394; Chanut, I, pp. 26, 28, 83.

  63. Fiedler, p. 334; Wicquefort, L’Ambassadeur. The Hague, 1681, p. 208.