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Section VI. —More French Victories

1643

§ 1. Rule of Mazarin.

His son and successor, Lewis XIV., was a mere child. His widow, Anne of Austria, claimed the regency, and forgot that she was the sister of the King of Spain and the sister-in-law of the Emperor, in the thought that she was the widow of one king of France and the mother of another. Her minister was Cardinal Mazarin, an Italian, who had commended himself to Richelieu by his capacity for business and his complete independence of French party feeling. If he was noted rather for cleverness than for strength of character, he was at least anxious to carry out the policy of his predecessor, and to maintain the predominance of the crown over aristocratic factions; and for some time Richelieu's policy seemed to carry success with it through the impetus which he had given it. On May 19 a victory came to establish the new authority of the queen-regent, the first of a long series of French victories, which was unbroken till the days of Marlborough and Blenheim.

§ 2. The Spaniards attack Rocroy.

The Spaniards had crossed the frontier of the Netherlands, and were besieging Rocroy. The command of the French forces was held by the duke of Enghien, better known to the world by the title which he afterwards inherited from his father, as the Prince of Condé. Next to Gaston, Duke of Orleans, the late king's brother, he and his father stood first in succession to the throne, and had, for this reason, attached themselves to Richelieu when he was opposed by the great bulk of the aristocracy. Those who placed him at the head of the army probably expected that a prince so young and so inexperienced would content himself with giving his name to the campaign, and would leave the direction of the troops to older heads.

§ 3. Gassion and Enghien.

The older heads, after reconnoitring the Spanish position at Rocroy, advised Enghien not to fight. But there was a certain Gassion among the officers, who had served under Gustavus, and who had seen the solid legions of Tilly break down before the swift blows of the Swedish king at Breitenfeld. Gassion had learned to look upon that close Spanish formation with contempt, and he strove hard to persuade Enghien to give orders for the attack, and, truth to say, he had no very hard task. Enghien was young and sanguine, and whether he had a genius for war or not, he had at least a genius for battles. Already conscious of the skill with which he was to direct the fortunes of many a well-fought field, he heartily adopted the views laid before him by Gassion.

§ 4. Battle of Rocroy.

Rocroy was, so to speak, a second edition of Breitenfeld, a victory gained by vigour and flexibility over solid endurance. Unreasoning obedience once more gave way before disciplined intelligence. The Spanish masses stood with all the strength of a mediæval fortress. There was no manœuvering power in them. The French artillery ploughed its way through the ranks, and the dashing charges of the infantry drove the disaster home. The glories of the Spanish armies, the glories which dated from the days of the Great Captain, were clouded for ever. Yet if victory was lost to Spain, the cherished honour of the Spanish arms was safe. Man by man the warriors fell in the ranks in which they stood, like the English defenders of the banner of Harold at Senlac. Their leader, the Count of Fuentes, an old man worn with years and gout, and unable to stand, was seated in an arm-chair to direct the battle within a square composed of his veteran troops. Death found him at his post. He had fought in the old wars of Philip II. The last of a long heroic race of statesmen and soldiers had bowed his head before the rising genius of France.

§ 5. Extension of the French frontier.

Thionville was then besieged. It surrendered in August. The cautious Richelieu had been contented to announce that he reserved all question of the ownership of his conquests till it should be finally determined by a treaty of peace. After Rocroy, Mazarin had no such scruples. Thionville was formally annexed to France. A medal was struck on which Hope was borne in the hand of Victory, and on which was inscribed the legend, Prima finium propagatic.

§ 6. Enghien and Turenne.

In Germany the campaign of 1643 was less successful. Maximilian of Bavaria had put forth all his resources, and his generals, the dashing John of Werth and the prudent Mercy, of whom it was said that he knew the plans of the enemy as well as if he had sat in their councils, were more than a match for the French commanders. 1644.1644 they were opposed by a soldier of a quality higher than their own. Turenne was sent amongst them, but his forces were too few to enable him to operate with success. Freiburg in the Breisgau was taken before his eyes. Breisach was threatened. Then Enghien came with 10,000 men to assume the command over the head of the modest soldier who had borne the weight of the campaign. Proud of his last year's victory he despised the counsel of Turenne, that it was better to out-manœuvre the enemy than to fight him in an almost inaccessible position.

§ 7. Battle of Freiburg.

The battle fought amongst the vineyards of Freiburg was the bloodiest battle of a bloody war. For three days Enghien led his men to the butchery. At last Mercy, unable to provide food any longer for his troops, effected his retreat. The French reaped the prizes of a victory which they had not gained.

1645

§ 8. Battle of Nördlingen.

On the 3d of August, 1645, a second battle of Nördlingen was fought. It was almost a repetition of the slaughter of Freiburg. As in the year before, Turenne had been left to do the hard work at the opening of the campaign with inferior forces, and had even suffered a check. Once more Enghien came up, gay and dashing, at the head of a reinforcement of picked men. Once more a fearful butchery ensued. But that Mercy was slain early in the fight, the day might have gone hard with the French. As it was, they were able to claim a victory. The old German bands which had served under Bernhard held out to the uttermost and compelled the enemy to retreat. But the success was not lasting. The imperialists received reinforcements, and the French were driven back upon the Rhine.

§ 9. Battle of Jankow.

The same year had opened with splendid expectations on the other side of the theatre of the war. The gouty Swedish general, Torstenson, who had taken up Baner's work in the north, burst suddenly into Bohemia, and on the 6th of March inflicted a crushing defeat on the imperialists at Jankow. He then harried Moravia, and pressed on to lay siege to Vienna, as if to repair the fault which it was the fashion to ascribe to Gustavus. But Vienna was unassailable, and Torstenson, like Turenne, was driven to retreat. He next tried to reduce Brünn. Failing in this he returned to Bohemia, where, worn out with his maladies, he delivered over the command to Wrangel, his appointed successor.

CHAPTER XI.
THE END OF THE WAR

Section I. —Turenne's Strategy

1643

§ 1. Thoughts of peace.

At last the thought entered into men's minds that it was time to put a stop to this purposeless misery and slaughter. It was hopeless to think any longer of shaking the strong grasp of France upon the Rhine; and if Sweden had been foiled in striking to the heart of the Austrian monarchy, she could not be driven from the desolate wilderness which now, by the evil work of men's hands, stretched from the Baltic far away into the interior of Germany. Long ago the disciplined force which Gustavus had brought across the sea had melted away, and a Swedish army was now like other armies – a mere collection of mercenaries, without religion, without pity, and without remorse.

§ 2. Meeting of diplomatists.

Negotiations for peace were spoken of from time to time, and preparations were at last made for a great meeting of diplomatists. In order to prevent the usual quarrel about precedency it was decided that some of the ambassadors should hold their sittings at Osnabrück and others at Münster, an arrangement which was not likely to conduce to a speedy settlement. 1644, 1645. Emperor proved his sincerity by sending his representative early enough to arrive at Münster in July, 1643, whilst the Swedish and French ambassadors only made their appearance in the March and April of the following year, and it was only in June, 1645, that the first formal proposition was handed in.

§ 3. Reluctance of the Emperor to give up all that is asked.

All who were concerned were in fact ready to make peace, but they all wished it made on their own terms. Ferdinand III. was not bound by his father's antecedents. The Edict of Restitution had been no work of his. Long before this he had been ready to give all reasonable satisfaction to the Protestants. He had declared his readiness to include Calvinists as well as Lutherans in the religious peace. He had offered to restore the Lower Palatinate to Frederick's son, and he actually issued a general amnesty to all who were still in arms; but he shrank from the demand that these arrangements of the Empire should be treated of, not in the constitutional assemblies of the Empire, but in a congress of European powers. To do so would be to tear the last veil from the sad truth that the Empire was a mere shadow, and that the states of which it was composed had become practically independent sovereignties. And behind this degradation lay another degradation, hardly less bitter to Ferdinand. The proudest title of the great emperors of old had been that of Increaser of the Empire. Was he to go down to posterity with the title of Diminisher of the Empire? And yet it was beyond his power to loosen the hold of France upon Alsace, or of Sweden upon Pomerania.

§ 4. Especially the Breisgau.

Nor was it only as Emperor that Ferdinand would feel the loss of Alsace deeply. Together with the Breisgau it formed one of territories of the House of Austria, but it was not his own. It was the inheritance of the children of his uncle Leopold, and he was loth to purchase peace for himself by agreeing to the spoliation of his orphan nephews.

§ 5. Aims of the Elector of Bavaria.

Maximilian of Bavaria viewed the question of peace from another point of view. To him Alsace was nothing, and he warmly recommended Ferdinand to surrender it for the sake of peace. If concessions were to be made at all, he preferred making them to Catholic France rather than to the Protestants in the Empire, and he was convinced that if Alsace remained under French rule, the motive which had led France to support the Protestants would lose its chief weight. But besides these general considerations, Maximilian, like Ferdinand, had a special interest of his own. He was resolved, come what might, to retain at least the Upper Palatinate, and he trusted to be seconded in his resolve by the good offices of France.

§ 6. The campaign of 1646.

The position of Maximilian was thus something like that of John George of Saxony in 1632. He and his chief ally were both ready for peace, but his ally stood out for higher terms than he was prepared to demand. And as in 1632 Wallenstein saw in the comparative moderation of the Elector of Saxony only a reason for driving him by force to separate his cause from that of Gustavus, so in 1646 the French government resolved to fall upon Bavaria, and to force the elector to separate his cause from that of Ferdinand.

§ 7. Turenne out-manœuvres the Bavarians.

The year before, the Elector of Saxony, crushed and ruined by the Swedes, had consented to a separate truce, and now Turenne was commissioned to do the same with Bavaria. In August he effected a junction on the Lahn with Wrangel and the Swedes, and if Enghien had been there, history would doubtless have had to tell of another butchery as resultless as those of Freiburg and Nördlingen. But Enghien was far away in Flanders, laying siege to Dunkirk, and Turenne, for the first time at the head of a superior force, was about to teach the world a lesson in the art of war. Whilst the enemy was preparing for the expected attack by entrenching his position, the united French and Swedish armies slipped past them and marched straight for the heart of Bavaria, where an enemy had not been seen since Bernhard had been chased out in 1634. That one day, as Turenne truly said, altered the whole face of affairs. Everywhere the roads were open. Provisions were plentiful. The population was in the enjoyment of the blessings of peace. Turenne and Wrangel crossed the Danube without difficulty. Schorndorf, Würzburg, Nördlingen, Donauwörth made no resistance to them. It was not till they came to Augsburg that they met with opposition. The enemy had time to come up. But there was no unanimity in the councils of the enemy. The Bavarian generals wanted to defend Bavaria. The imperialist generals wanted to defend the still remaining Austrian possessions in Swabia. The invaders were allowed to accomplish their purpose. They arrived at the gates of Munich before the citizens knew what had become of their master's army. With grim purpose Turenne and Wrangel set themselves to make desolate the Bavarian plain, so that it might be rendered incapable of supporting a Bavarian army. Maximilian was reduced to straits such as he had not known since the time when Tilly fell at the passage of the Lech. Sorely against his will he signed, in May, 1647, a separate truce with the enemy.

§ 8. Last struggles of the war.

The truce did not last long. In September Maximilian was once more on the Emperor's side. Bavaria paid dearly for the elector's defection. All that had been spared a year before fell a sacrifice to new devastation. The last great battle of the war was fought at Zusmarshausen on May 17, 1648. The Bavarians were defeated and the work of the destroyer went on yet for a while unchecked. In Bohemia half of Prague fell into the hands of the Swedes, and the Emperor was left unaided to bear up in the unequal fight.

Section II. —The Treaty of Westphalia

§ 1. The Peace of Westphalia.

Ferdinand could resist no longer. On the 24th of October, 1648, a few months before Charles I. ascended the scaffold at Whitehall, the Peace of Westphalia was signed.

§ 2. Religious settlement.

The religious difficulty in Germany was settled as it ought to have been settled long before. Calvinism was to be placed on the same footing as Lutheranism. New-Year's day 1624 was fixed upon as the date by which all disputes were to be tested. Whatever ecclesiastical benefice was in Catholic hands at that date was to remain in Catholic hands forever. Ecclesiastical benefices in Protestant hands at that date were to remain in Protestant keeping. Catholics would never again be able to lay claim to the bishoprics of the north. Even Halberstadt, which had been retained at the Peace of Prague, was now lost to them. To make this settlement permanent, the Imperial Court was reconstituted. Protestants and Catholics were to be members of the court in equal numbers. And if the judicial body was such as to make it certain that its sanction would never be given to an infringement of the peace, the Catholic majority in the Diet became powerless for evil.

§ 3. Political settlement.

In political matters, Maximilian permanently united the Upper Palatinate to his duchy of Bavaria, and the Electorate was confirmed to him and his descendants. An eighth electorate was created in favour of Charles Lewis, the worthless son of the Elector, Frederick, and the Lower Palatinate was given up to him. Sweden established herself firmly on the mouths of the great northern rivers. The Eastern part of Pomerania she surrendered to Brandenburg. But Western Pomerania, including within its frontier both banks of the lower Vistula, was surrendered to her; whilst the possession of the bishoprics of Bremen and Verdun, on which Christian of Denmark had set his eyes at the beginning of the war, gave her a commanding position at the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser. The bishoprics of Halberstadt, Camin, Minden, and the greater part of the diocese of Magdeburg, were made over to Brandenburg as a compensation for the loss of its claims to the whole of Pomerania, whilst a smaller portion of the diocese of Magdeburg was assigned to Saxony, that power, as a matter of course, retaining Lusatia.

§ 4. Gains of France.

France, as a matter of course, retained its conquests. It kept its hold upon Austrian Alsace, Strasburg, as a free city, and the immediate vassals of the Empire being, however, excluded from the cession. The strong fortress of Philippsburg, erected by the warlike Elector of Treves, received a French garrison, and the three bishoprics, Metz, Toul, and Verdun, which had been practically under French rule since the days of Henry II. of France, were now formally separated from the Empire. Equally formal was the separation of Switzerland and the Netherlands, both of which countries had long been practically independent.

§ 5. The question of toleration left to the German princes.

The importance of the peace of Westphalia in European history goes far beyond these territorial changes. That France should have a few miles more and Germany a few miles less, or even that France should have acquired military and political strength whilst Germany lost it, are facts which in themselves need not have any very great interest for others than Frenchmen or Germans. That which gives to the Peace of Westphalia its prominent place amongst treaties is that it drew a final demarcation between the two religions which divided Europe. The struggle in England and France for the right of settling their own religious affairs without the interference of foreign nations had been brought to a close in the sixteenth century. In Germany it had not been brought to a close for the simple reason that it was not decided how far Germany was a nation at all. The government of England or France could tolerate or persecute at home as far as its power or inclination permitted. But the central government of Germany was not strong enough to enforce its will upon the territorial governments; nor on the other hand were the territorial governments strong enough to enforce their will without regard for the central government. Thirty years of war ended by a compromise under which the religious position of each territory was fixed by the intervention of foreign powers, whilst the rights of the central government were entirely ignored.

§ 6. How toleration was the result of this.

Such a settlement was by no means necessarily in favour of religious toleration. The right of an Elector of Bavaria or an Elector of Saxony to impose his belief by force upon his dissident subjects was even more fully acknowledged than before. He could still give them their choice between conversion or banishment. As late as in 1729 an Archbishop of Salzburg could drive thousands of industrious Protestants into exile from his Alpine valleys, leaving a void behind them which has not been filled up to this day. But if such cases were rare, their rarity was indirectly owing to the Peace of Westphalia. In 1617 a bishop who had to consider the question of religious persecution, had to consider it with the fear of Christian of Anhalt before his eyes. Every Protestant in his dominions was a possible traitor who would favour, if he did not actively support, the revolutionary attacks of the neighbouring Protestants. In 1649 all such fear was at an end for ever. The bishop was undisputed master of his territory, and he could look on with contemptuous indifference if a few of his subjects had sufficient love of singularity to profess a religion other than his own.

§ 7. The Peace of Westphalia compared with the Peace of Augsburg.

It may perhaps be said that the assurance given by the Peace of Westphalia was after all no better than the assurance given by the Peace of Augsburg, but even so far as the letter of the two documents was concerned, this was very far from being the case. The Peace of Augsburg was full of uncertainties, because the contracting parties were unable to abandon their respective desires. In the Peace of Westphalia all was definite. Evasion or misinterpretation was no longer possible.

§ 8. General desire for the continuance of peace.

If the letter of the two treaties was entirely different, it was because the spirit in which they were conceived was also entirely different. In 1555 Protestantism was on the rise. The peace of 1555 was a vain attempt to shut out the tide by artificial dykes and barriers. In 1648 the tide had receded. The line which divided the Protestant from the Catholic princes formed almost an exact division between the Protestant and Catholic populations. The desire for making proselytes, once so strong on both sides, had been altogether extinguished by the numbing agony of the war. All Germany longed for peace with an inexpressible longing. The mutual distrust of Catholic and Protestant had grown exceedingly dull. The only feeling yet alive was hatred of the tyranny and exactions of the soldiers.