CHAPTER IX.
THE DEATH OF WALLENSTEIN AND THE TREATY OF PRAGUE
Section I. —French Influence in Germany
1631
§ 1. Bernhard of Saxe Weimar.
In Germany, after the death of Gustavus at Lützen, it was as it was in Greece after the death of Epaminondas at Mantinea. "There was more disturbance and more dispute after the battle than before it." In Sweden, Christina, the infant daughter of Gustavus, succeeded peaceably to her father's throne, and authority was exercised without contradiction by the Chancellor Oxenstjerna. But, wise and prudent as Oxenstjerna was, it was not in the nature of things that he should be listened to as Gustavus had been listened to. The chiefs of the army, no longer held in by a soldier's hand, threatened to assume an almost independent position. Foremost of these was the young Bernhard of Weimar, demanding, like Wallenstein, a place among the princely houses of Germany. In his person he hoped the glories of the elder branch of the Saxon House would revive, and the disgrace inflicted upon it by Charles V. for its attachment to the Protestant cause would be repaired. He claimed the rewards of victory for those whose swords had gained it, and payment for the soldiers, who during the winter months following the victory at Lützen had received little or nothing. His own share was to be a new duchy of Franconia, formed out of the united bishoprics of Würzburg and Bamberg. Oxenstjerna was compelled to admit his pretensions, and to confirm him in his duchy.
§ 2. The League of Heilbronn.
The step was thus taken which Gustavus had undoubtedly contemplated, but which he had prudently refrained from carrying into action. The seizure of ecclesiastical lands in which the population was Catholic was as great a barrier to peace on the one side as the seizure of the Protestant bishoprics in the north had been on the other. There was, therefore, all the more necessity to be ready for war. If a complete junction of all the Protestant forces was not to be had, something at least was attainable. On April 23, 1633, the League of Heilbronn was signed. The four circles of Swabia, Franconia, and the Upper and Lower Rhine formed a union with Sweden for mutual support.
§ 3. Defection of Saxony.
It is not difficult to explain the defection of the Elector of Saxony. The seizure of a territory by military violence had always been most obnoxious to him. He had resisted it openly in the case of Frederick in Bohemia. He had resisted it, as far as he dared, in the case of Wallenstein in Mecklenburg. He was not inclined to put up with it in the case of Bernhard in Franconia. Nor could he fail to see that with the prolongation of the war, the chances of French intervention were considerably increasing.
1631
§ 4. French politics.
In 1631 there had been a great effervescence of the French feudal aristocracy against the royal authority. But Richelieu stood firm. In March the king's brother, Gaston Duke of Orleans, fled from the country. In July his mother, Mary of Medici, followed his example. But they had no intention of abandoning their position. From their exile in the Spanish Netherlands they formed a close alliance with Spain, and carried on a thousand intrigues with the nobility at home. The Cardinal smote right and left with a heavy hand. Amongst his enemies were the noblest names in France. The Duke of Guise shrank from the conflict and retired to Italy to die far from his native land. The keeper of the seals died in prison. His kinsman, a marshal of France, perished on the scaffold. In the summer of the year 1632, whilst Gustavus was conducting his last campaign, there was a great rising in the south of France. Gaston himself came to share in the glory or the disgrace of the rebellion. The Duke of Montmorenci was the real leader of the enterprise. He was a bold and vigorous commander, the Rupert of the French cavaliers. But his gay horsemen dashed in vain against the serried ranks of the royal infantry, and he expiated his fault upon the scaffold. Gaston, helpless and low-minded as he was, could live on, secure under an ignominious pardon.
§ 5. Richelieu did for France all that could be done.
It was not the highest form of political life which Richelieu was establishing. For the free expression of opinion, as a foundation of government, France, in that day, was not prepared. But within the limits of possibility, Richelieu's method of ruling was a magnificent spectacle. He struck down a hundred petty despotisms that he might exalt a single despotism in their place. And if the despotism of the Crown was subject to all the dangers and weaknesses by which sooner or later the strength of all despotisms is eaten away, Richelieu succeeded for the time in gaining the co-operation of those classes whose good will was worth conciliating. Under him commerce and industry lifted up their heads, knowledge and literature smiled at last. Whilst Corneille was creating the French drama, Descartes was seizing the sceptre of the world of science. The first play of the former appeared on the stage in 1629. Year by year he rose in excellence, till in 1636 he produced the 'Cid;' and from that time one masterpiece followed another in rapid succession. Descartes published his first work in Holland in 1637, in which he laid down those principles of metaphysics which were to make his name famous in Europe.
§ 6. Richelieu and Germany.
All this, however welcome to France, boded no good to Germany. In the old struggles of the sixteenth century, Catholic and Protestant each believed himself to be doing the best, not merely for his own country, but for the world in general. Alva, with his countless executions in the Netherlands, honestly believed that the Netherlands as well as Spain would be the better for the rude surgery. The English volunteers, who charged home on a hundred battle-fields in Europe, believed that they were benefiting Europe, not England alone. It was time that all this should cease, and that the long religious strife should have its end. It was well that Richelieu should stand forth to teach the world that there were objects for a Catholic state to pursue better than slaughtering Protestants. But the world was a long way, in the seventeenth century, from the knowledge that the good of one nation is the good of all, and in putting off its religious partisanship France became terribly hard and selfish in its foreign policy. Gustavus had been half a German, and had sympathized deeply with Protestant Germany. Richelieu had no sympathy with Protestantism, no sympathy with German nationality. He doubtless had a general belief that the predominance of the House of Austria was a common evil for all, but he cared chiefly to see Germany too weak to support Spain. He accepted the alliance of the League of Heilbronn, but he would have been equally ready to accept the alliance of the Elector of Bavaria if it would have served him as well in his purpose of dividing Germany.
§ 7. His policy French, not European.
The plan of Gustavus might seem unsatisfactory to a patriotic German, but it was undoubtedly conceived with the intention of benefiting Germany. Richelieu had no thought of constituting any new organization in Germany. He was already aiming at the left bank of the Rhine. The Elector of Treves, fearing Gustavus, and doubtful of the power of Spain to protect him, had called in the French, and had established them in his new fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, which looked down from its height upon the low-lying buildings of Coblentz, and guarded the junction of the Rhine and the Moselle. The Duke of Lorraine had joined Spain, and had intrigued with Gaston. In the summer of 1632 he had been compelled by a French army to make his submission. The next year he moved again, and the French again interfered, and wrested from him his capital of Nancy. Richelieu treated the old German frontier-land as having no rights against the King of France.
Section II. —Wallenstein's Attempt to dictate Peace
§ 1. Saxon negotiations with Wallenstein.
Already, before the League of Heilbronn was signed, the Elector of Saxony was in negotiation with Wallenstein. In June peace was all but concluded between them. The Edict of Restitution was to be cancelled. A few places on the Baltic coast were to be ceded to Sweden, and a portion at least of the Palatinate was to be restored to the son of the Elector Frederick, whose death in the preceding winter had removed one of the difficulties in the way of an agreement. The precise form in which the restitution should take place, however, still remained to be settled.
Such a peace would doubtless have been highly disagreeable to adventurers like Bernhard of Weimar, but it would have given the Protestants of Germany all that they could reasonably expect to gain, and would have given the House of Austria one last chance of taking up the championship of national interests against foreign aggression.
§ 2. Opposition to Wallenstein.
Such last chances, in real life, are seldom taken hold of for any useful purpose. If Ferdinand had had it in him to rise up in the position of a national ruler, he would have been in that position long before. His confessor, Father Lamormain, declared against the concessions which Wallenstein advised, and the word of Father Lamormain had always great weight with Ferdinand.
§ 3. General disapprobation of his proceedings.
Even if Wallenstein had been single-minded he would have had difficulty in meeting such opposition. But Wallenstein was not single-minded. He proposed to meet the difficulties which were made to the restitution of the Palatinate by giving the Palatinate, largely increased by neighbouring territories, to himself. He would thus have a fair recompense for the loss of Mecklenburg, which he could no longer hope to regain. He fancied that the solution would satisfy everybody. In fact, it displeased everybody. Even the Spaniards, who had been on his side in 1632 were alienated by it. They were especially jealous of the rise of any strong power near the line of march between Italy and the Spanish Netherlands.
§ 4. Wallenstein and the Swedes.
The greater the difficulties in Wallenstein's way the more determined he was to overcome them. Regarding himself, with some justification, as a power in Germany, he fancied himself able to act at the head of his army as if he were himself the ruler of an independent state. If the Emperor listened to Spain and his confessor in 1633 as he had listened to Maximilian and his confessor in 1630, Wallenstein might step forward and force upon him a wiser policy. Before the end of August he had opened a communication with Oxenstjerna, asking for his assistance in effecting a reasonable compromise, whether the Emperor liked it or not. But he had forgotten that such a proposal as this can only be accepted where there is confidence in him who makes it. In Wallenstein – the man of many schemes and many intrigues – no man had any confidence whatever. Oxenstjerna cautiously replied that if Wallenstein meant to join him against the Emperor he had better be the first to begin the attack.
§ 5. Was he in earnest?
Whether Wallenstein seriously meant at this time to move against the emperor it is impossible to say. He loved to enter upon plots in every direction without binding himself to any; but he was plainly in a dangerous position. How could he impose peace upon all parties when no single party trusted him?
§ 6. He attacks the Saxons.
If he was not trusted, however, he might still make himself feared. Throwing himself vigorously upon Silesia, he forced the Swedish garrisons to surrender, and, presenting himself upon the frontiers of Saxony, again offered peace to the two northern electors.
§ 7. Bernhard at Ratisbon.
But Wallenstein could not be everywhere. Whilst the electors were still hesitating, Bernhard made a dash at Ratisbon, and firmly established himself in the city, within a little distance of the Austrian frontier. Wallenstein, turning sharply southward, stood in the way of his further advance, but he did nothing to recover the ground which had been lost. He was himself weary of the war. In his first command he had aimed at crushing out all opposition in the name of the imperial authority. His judgment was too clear to allow him to run the old course. He saw plainly that strength was now to be gained only by allowing each of the opposing forces their full weight. 'If the Emperor,' he said, 'were to gain ten victories it would do him no good. A single defeat would ruin him.' In December he was back again in Bohemia.
§ 8. Wallenstein's difficulties.
It was a strange, Cassandra-like position, to be wiser than all the world, and to be listened to by no one; to suffer the fate of supreme intelligence which touches no moral chord and awakens no human sympathy. For many months the hostile influences had been gaining strength at Vienna. There were War-Office officials whose wishes Wallenstein systematically disregarded; Jesuits who objected to peace with heretics at all; friends of the Bavarian Maximilian who thought that the country round Ratisbon should have been better defended against the enemy; and Spaniards who were tired of hearing that all matters of importance were to be settled by Wallenstein alone.
§ 9. Opposition of Spain.
The Spanish opposition was growing daily. Spain now looked to the German branch of the House of Austria to make a fitting return for the aid which she had rendered in 1620. Richelieu, having mastered Lorraine, was pushing on towards Alsace, and if Spain had good reasons for objecting to see Wallenstein established in the Palatinate, she had far better reasons for objecting to see France established in Alsace. Yet for all these special Spanish interests Wallenstein cared nothing. His aim was to place himself at the head of a German national force, and to regard all questions simply from his own point of view. If he wished to see the French out of Alsace and Lorraine, he wished to see the Spaniards out of Alsace and Lorraine as well.
§ 10. The Cardinal Infant.
And, as was often the case with Wallenstein, a personal difference arose by the side of the political difference. The Emperor's eldest son, Ferdinand, the King of Hungary, was married to a Spanish Infanta, the sister of Philip IV., who had once been the promised bride of Charles I. of England. Her brother, another Ferdinand, usually known from his rank in Church and State as the Cardinal-Infant, had recently been appointed Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, and was waiting in Italy for assistance to enable him to conduct an army through Germany to Brussels. That assistance Wallenstein refused to give. The military reasons which he alleged for his refusal may have been good enough, but they had a dubious sound in Spanish ears. It looked as if he was simply jealous of Spanish influence in Western Germany.
§ 11. The Emperor's hesitation.
Such were the influences which were brought to bear upon the Emperor after Wallenstein's return from Ratisbon in December. Ferdinand, as usual, was distracted between the two courses proposed. Was he to make the enormous concessions to the Protestants involved in the plan of Wallenstein; or was he to fight it out with France and the Protestants together according to the plan of Spain? To Wallenstein by this time the Emperor's resolutions had become almost a matter of indifference. He had resolved to force a reasonable peace upon Germany, with the Emperor, if it might be so; without him, if he refused his support.
1634
§ 12. Wallenstein and the army.
Wallenstein was well aware that his whole plan depended on his hold over the army. In January he received assurances from three of his principal generals, Piccolomini, Gallas, and Aldringer, that they were ready to follow him wheresoever he might lead them, and he was sanguine enough to take these assurances for far more than they were worth. Neither they nor he himself were aware to what lengths he would go in the end. For the present it was a mere question of putting pressure upon the Emperor to induce him to accept a wise and beneficent peace.
Section III. —Resistance to Wallenstein's Plans
§ 1. Oñate's movements.
The Spanish ambassador, Oñate, was ill at ease. Wallenstein, he was convinced, was planning something desperate. What it was he could hardly guess; but he was sure that it was something most prejudicial to the Catholic religion and the united House of Austria. The worst was that Ferdinand could not be persuaded that there was cause for suspicion. "The sick man," said Oñate, speaking of the Emperor, "will die in my arms without my being able to help him."
§ 2. Belief at Vienna that Wallenstein was a traitor.
Such was Oñate's feelings toward the end of January. Then came information that the case was worse than even he had deemed possible. Wallenstein, he learned, had been intriguing with the Bohemian exiles, who had offered, with Richelieu's consent, to place upon his head the crown of Bohemia, which had fourteen years before been snatched from the unhappy Frederick. In all this there was much exaggeration. Though Wallenstein had listened to these overtures, it is almost certain that he had not accepted them. But neither had he revealed them to the government. It was his way to keep in his hands the threads of many intrigues to be used or not to be used as occasion might serve.
§ 3. Oñate informs Ferdinand.
Oñate, naturally enough, believed the worst. And for him the worst was the best. He went triumphantly to Eggenberg with his news, and then to Ferdinand. Coming alone, this statement might perhaps have been received with suspicion. Coming, as it did, after so many evidences that the general had been acting in complete independence of the government, it carried conviction with it.
§ 4. Decision of the Emperor against Wallenstein.
Ferdinand had long been tossed backwards and forwards by opposing influences. He had given no answer to Wallenstein's communication of the terms of peace arranged with Saxony. The necessity of deciding, he said, would not allow him to sleep. It was in his thoughts when he lay down and when he arose. Prayers to God to enlighten the mind of the Emperor had been offered in the churches of Vienna.
§ 5. Determination to displace Wallenstein.
All this hesitation was now at an end. Ferdinand resolved to continue the war in alliance with Spain, and, as a necessary preliminary, to remove Wallenstein from his generalship. But it was more easily said than done. A declaration was drawn up releasing the army from its obedience to Wallenstein, and provisionally appointing Gallas, who had by this time given assurances of loyalty, to the chief command. It was intended, if circumstances proved favourable, to intrust the command ultimately to the young King of Hungary.
§ 6. The Generals gained over.
The declaration was kept secret for many days. To publish it would only be to provoke the rebellion which was feared. The first thing to be done was to gain over the principal generals. In the beginning of February Piccolomini and Aldringer expressed their readiness to obey the Emperor rather than Wallenstein. Commanders of a secondary rank would doubtless find their position more independent under an inexperienced young man like the King of Hungary than under the first living strategist. These two generals agreed to make themselves masters of Wallenstein's person and to bring him to Vienna to answer the accusations of treason against him.
§ 7. Attempt to seize Wallenstein.
For Oñate this was not enough. It would be easier, he said, to kill the general than to carry him off. The event proved that he was right. On February 7, Aldringer and Piccolomini set off for Pilsen with the intention of capturing Wallenstein. But they found the garrison faithful to its general, and they did not even venture to make the attempt.
§ 8. Wallenstein at Pilsen.
Wallenstein's success depended on his chance of carrying with him the lower ranks of the army. On the 19th he summoned the colonels round him and assured them that he would stand security for money which they had advanced in raising their regiments, the repayment of which had been called in question. Having thus won them to a favourable mood, he told them that it had been falsely stated that he wished to change his religion and attack the Emperor. On the contrary, he was anxious to conclude a peace which would benefit the Emperor and all who were concerned. As, however, certain persons at Court had objected to it, he wished to ask the opinion of the army on its terms. But he must first of all know whether they were ready to support him, as he knew that there was an intention to put a disgrace upon him.
§ 9. The colonels engage to support him.
It was not the first time that Wallenstein had appealed to the colonels. A month before, when the news had come of the alienation of the Court, he had induced them to sign an acknowledgment that they would stand by him, from which all reference to the possibility of his dismissal was expressly excluded. They now, on February 20, signed a fresh agreement, in which they engaged to defend him against the machinations of his enemies, upon his promising to undertake nothing against the Emperor or the Catholic religion.