Section II. —The War in the Upper Palatinate
§ 1. Frederick does not give up hope.
If Frederick could only have made it clear that he had really renounced all his pretensions to meddle with other people's lands he might possibly have ended his days peaceably at Heidelberg. But he could not give up his hopes of regaining his lost kingdom. One day he talked of peace; another day he talked of war. When he was most peaceably inclined he would give up his claim if he could have an amnesty for the past. But he would not first give up his claim and then ask for an amnesty.
§ 2. Part taken by James of England.
Even to this he had been driven half unwillingly by his father-in-law. The King of England charged himself with the office of a mediator, and fancied that it was unnecessary to arm in the meantime.
§ 3. Dissolution of the Union.
The states of the Union were in great perplexity. The Landgrave of Hesse Cassel was compelled by his own subjects to come to terms with Spinola. The cities of Strasburg, Ulm, and Nüremberg were the next to give way. On April 12 a treaty was signed at Mentz, by which the Union dissolved itself, and engaged to withdraw its troops from the Palatinate. On the other hand, Spinola promised to suspend hostilities till May 14.
§ 4. Chances in Frederick's favour.
The danger to which the Palatinate was exposed, and the hints let drop that the conquest of the Palatinate might be followed by the transference of the electorate, caused alarm in quarters by no means favourable to Frederick. John George began to raise objections, and even the Catholic ecclesiastics were frightened at the prospects of the enlargement of the war, and at the risk of seeing many powers, hitherto neutral, taking the part of the proscribed Elector.
§ 5. He still holds places in Bohemia.
The claim kept up by Frederick to Bohemia was something more than a claim to an empty title. He had appointed Mansfeld to act there as his general; and, though Mansfeld had lost one post after another, at the end of April he still held Tabor and Wittingau in Frederick's name.
§ 6. Mansfeld's army.
The appointment of Mansfeld was unfortunately in itself fatal to the chances of peace. Ever since the capture of Pilsen, his troops, destitute of support, had been the terror of the country they were called upon to defend. In those days, indeed, the most disciplined army was often guilty of excesses from which in our days the most depraved outcasts would shrink. The soldiers, engaged merely for as long a time as they happened to be wanted, passed from side to side as the prospect of pay or booty allured them. No tie of nationality bound the mercenary to the standard under which accident had placed him. He had sold himself to his hirer for the time being, and he sought his recompense in the gratification of every evil passion of which human nature in its deepest degradation is capable.
§ 7. Soldiers of the Thirty Years' War.
Yet, even in this terrible war, there was a difference between one army and another. In an enemy's country all plundered alike. Tilly's Bavarians had been guilty of horrible excesses in Bohemia. But a commander like Tilly, who could pay his soldiers, and could inspire them with confidence in his generalship, had it in his power to preserve some sort of discipline; and if, as Tilly once told a complaining official, his men were not nuns, they were at all events able to refrain on occasion from outrageous villany. A commander, like Mansfeld, who could not pay his soldiers, must, of necessity, plunder wherever he was. His movements would not be governed by military or political reasons. As soon as his men had eaten up one part of the country they must go to another, if they were not to die of starvation. They obeyed, like the elements, a law of their own, quite independent of the wishes or needs of the sovereign whose interests they were supposed to serve.
§ 8. Mansfeld takes the offensive.
Before the end of May the breaking up of the army of the Union sent fresh swarms of recruits to Mansfeld's camp. He was soon at the head of a force of 16,000 men in the Upper Palatinate. The inhabitants suffered terribly, but he was strong enough to maintain his position for a time. Nor was he content with standing on the defensive. He seized a post within the frontiers of Bohemia, and threatened to harry the lands of the Bishop of Bamberg and Würzburg if he did not withdraw his troops from the army of the League. He then fell upon Leuchtenberg, and carried off the Landgrave a prisoner to his camp.
§ 9. A truce impossible for him.
The first attack of the Bavarians failed entirely. Bethlen Gabor, too, was again moving in Hungary, had slain Bucquoi, and was driving the Emperor's army before him. Under these circumstances, even Ferdinand seems to have hesitated, and to have doubted whether he had not better accept the English offer of mediation. Yet such was the character of Mansfeld's army that it made mediation impossible. It must attack somebody in order to exist.
§ 10. Vere in the Lower Palatinate.
Yet it was in the Lower, not in the Upper, Palatinate that the first blow was struck. Sir Horace Vere, who had gone out the year before, with a regiment of English volunteers, was now in command for Frederick. But Frederick had neither money nor provisions to give him, and the supplies of the Palatinate were almost exhausted. The existing truce had been prolonged by the Spaniards. But the lands of the Bishop of Spires lay temptingly near. Salving his conscience by issuing the strictest orders against pillage, he quartered some of his men upon them.
§ 11. War recommenced in the Lower Palatinate.
The whole Catholic party was roused to indignation. Cordova, left in command of the Spanish troops after Spinola's return to Brussels, declared the truce to have been broken, and commenced operations against Vere.
§ 12. Mansfeld driven from the Upper Palatinate.
By this time Mansfeld's power of defending the Upper Palatinate was at an end. The magistrates of the towns were sick of his presence, and preferred coming to terms with Maximilian to submitting any longer to the extortions of their master's army. Mansfeld, seeing how matters stood, offered to sell himself and his troops to the Emperor. But he had no real intention of carrying out the bargain. On October 10 he signed an engagement to disband his forces. Before the next sun arose he had slipped away, and was in full march for Heidelberg.
Tilly followed hard upon his heels. But Mansfeld did not stop to fight him. Throwing himself upon Alsace, he seized upon Hagenau, and converted it into a place of strength.
Section III. —Frederick's Allies
§ 1. Proposal to take Mansfeld into English pay.
The winter was coming on, and there would be time for negotiations before another blow was struck. But to give negotiations a chance it was necessary that Mansfeld's army should be fed, in order that he might be able to keep quiet while the diplomatists were disputing. James, therefore, wisely proposed to provide a sum of money for this purpose. But a quarrel with the House of Commons hurried on a dissolution, and he was unable to raise money sufficient for the purpose without a grant from Parliament.
§ 2. England and Spain.
James, poor and helpless, was thus compelled to fall back upon the friendship of Spain, a friendship which he hoped to knit more closely by a marriage between his son, the Prince of Wales, and a Spanish Infanta. The Spanish Government was anxious, if possible, to avoid an extension of the war in Germany. Though all the riches of the Indies were at its disposal, that government was miserably poor. In a land where industry, the source of wealth, was held in dishonour, all the gold in the world was thrown away. Scarcely able to pay the armies she maintained in time of peace, Spain had now again to find money for the war in the Netherlands. In 1621 the twelve years' truce with the Dutch had come to an end, and Spinola's armies in Brabant and Flanders could not live, like Mansfeld's at the expense of the country, for fear of throwing the whole of the obedient provinces, as they were called, into the enemies' hands. If possible, therefore, that yawning gulf of the German war, which threatened to swallow up so many millions of ducats, must be closed. And yet how was it to be done? The great difficulty in the way of peace did not lie in Frederick's pretensions. They could easily be swept aside. The great difficulty lay in this – that the Catholics, having already the institutions of the Empire in their hands, were now also in possession of a successful army. How, under such circumstances, was Protestantism, with which so many temporal interests were bound up, to feel itself secure? And without giving security to Protestantism, how could a permanent peace be obtained?
§ 3. Spanish plans.
To this problem the Spanish ministers did not care to address themselves. They thought that it would be enough to satisfy personal interests. They offered James a larger portion with the Infanta than any other sovereign in Europe would have given. They opposed tooth and nail the project for transferring the Electorate to Maximilian, as likely to lead to endless war. But into the heart of the great question they dared not go, tied and bound as they were by their devotion to the Church. Could not Frederick and James, they asked, be bought off by the assurance of the Palatinate to Frederick's heirs, on the simple condition of his delivering up his eldest son to be educated at Vienna? Though they said nothing whatever about any change in the boy's religion, they undoubtedly hoped that he would there learn to become a good Catholic.
§ 4. Frederick not likely to accede to them.
Such a policy was hopeless from the beginning. Frederick had many faults. He was shallow and obstinate. But he really did believe in his religion as firmly as any Spaniard in Madrid believed in his; and it was certain that he would never expose his children to the allurements of the Jesuits of Vienna.
§ 5. A conference to be held at Brussels.
It was settled that a conference should be held at Brussels, the capital of the Spanish Netherlands, first to arrange terms for a suspension of arms, and then to prepare the way for a general peace. The Spanish plan of pacification was not yet announced. But Frederick can hardly be blamed for suspecting that no good would come from diplomacy, or for discerning that a few regiments on his side would weigh more heavily in his favour than a million of words.
§ 6. Where was Frederick to expect help?
The only question for him to decide was the quarter in which he should seek for strength. His weakness had hitherto arisen from his confidence in physical strength alone. To get together as many thousand men as possible and to launch them at the enemy had been his only policy, and he had done nothing to conciliate the order-loving portion of the population. The cities stood aloof from his cause. The North German princes would have nothing to say to him. If he could only have renounced his past, if he could have acknowledged that all he had hitherto done had been the fruitful root of disaster, if he could, with noble self-renunciation, have entreated others to take up the cause of German Protestantism, which in his hands had suffered so deeply, then it is not impossible that opinion, whilst opinion was still a power in Germany, would have passed over to his side, and that the coming mischief might yet have been averted.
§ 7. His preparations for war.
But Frederick did not do this. If he had been capable of doing it he must have been other than he was. In 1622, as in 1619, the pupil of Christian of Anhalt looked to the mere development of numerical strength, without regard to the moral basis of force.
§ 8. Frederick's allies.
It must be acknowledged that if numbers could give power, Frederick's prospects were never better than in the spring of 1622. Mansfeld's army was not, this time, to stand alone. In the south the Margrave of Baden-Durlach was arming in Frederick's cause. In the north, Christian of Brunswick was preparing to march to the aid of the Palatinate. Such names as these call up at once before us the two main difficulties which would have remained in the way of peace even if the question of the Palatinate could have been laid aside.
§ 9. The Margrave of Baden.
The Margrave of Baden-Durlach had long been notorious for the skill with which he had found excuses for appropriating ecclesiastical property, and for defeating legal attempts to embarrass him in his proceedings.
1616
§ 10. Christian of Brunswick.
Christian of Brunswick was a younger brother of the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. By the influence of his family he secured in 1616 his election to the bishopric or administratorship of Halberstadt. The ceremonies observed at the institution of the youth, who had nothing of the bishop but the name, may well have seemed a degrading profanation in the eyes of a Catholic of that day. As he entered the Cathedral the Te Deum was sung to the pealing organ. He was led to the high altar amidst the blaze of lighted candles. Then, whilst the choir sang 'Oh Lord! save thy people,' the four eldest canons placed him upon the altar. Subsequently he descended and, kneeling with the canons before the altar, three times intoned the words 'Oh Lord, save thy servant.' Then he was placed again upon the altar whilst a hymn of praise was sung. Lastly, he took his place opposite the pulpit whilst the courtly preacher explained that Christian's election had been in accordance with the express will of God. 'This,' he cried triumphantly, 'is the bishop whom God himself has elected. This is the man whom God has set as the ruler of the land.'
§ 11. Christian's fondness for fighting.
Christian's subsequent proceedings by no means corresponded with the expectations of his enthusiastic admirers. Like one who has been handed down to evil renown in early English history, he did nought bishoplike. He was not even a good ruler of his domain. He left his people to be misgoverned by officials, whilst he wandered about the world in quest of action. As brainless for all higher purposes as Murat, the young Bishop was a born cavalry officer. He took to fighting for very love of it, just as young men in more peaceful times take to athletic sports.
§ 12. He takes up the cause of Elizabeth.
And, if he was to fight at all, there could be no question on which side he would be found. There was a certain heroism about him which made him love to look upon himself as the champion of high causes and the promoter of noble aims. To such an one it would seem to be altogether debasing to hold his bishopric on the mere tenure of the agreement of Mühlhausen, to be debarred from taking the place due to him in the Diet of the Empire, and to be told that if he was very loyal and very obedient to the Emperor, no force would be employed to wrest from him that part of the property of the Church which he held through a system of iniquitous robbery. Then, too, came a visit to the Hague, where the bright eyes of his fair cousin the titular Queen of Bohemia chained him for ever to her cause, a cause which might soon become his own. For who could tell, when once the Palatinate was lost, whether the agreement of Mühlhausen would be any longer regarded?
§ 13. His ravages in the diocese of Paderborn.
In the summer of 1621 Christian levied a force with which he marched into the Catholic bishopric of Paderborn. The country was in the course of forcible conversion by its bishop, and there was still in it a strong Lutheran element, which would perhaps have answered the appeal of a leader who was less purely an adventurer. But except in word, Catholic and Protestant were alike to Christian, so long as money could be got to support his army. Castles, towns, farmhouses were ransacked for the treasure of the rich, and the scanty hoard of the poor. We need not be too hard on him if he tore down the silver shrine of a saint in the cathedral of Paderborn, and melted it into coin bearing the legend: – 'The friend of God and the enemy of the priests.' But it is impossible to forget he was the enemy of the peasants as well. Burning-masters appear among the regular officers of his army; and many a village, unable to satisfy his demands, went up in flames, with its peaceful industry ruined for ever. At last, satiated with plunder, he turned southward to the support of Mansfeld.
§ 14. Mansfeld will not make peace.
Such were the commanders into whose hands the fortunes of German Protestantism had fallen. Mansfeld told Vere plainly that whether there were a truce or not, he at least would not lay down his arms unless he were indemnified for his expenses by a slice out of the Austrian possession of Alsace.
§ 15. Tilly in the midst of his enemies.
If the three armies of the Margrave of Baden, of Christian of Brunswick, and of Mansfeld, could be brought to co-operate, Tilly, even if supported by Cordova's Spaniards, would be in a decided numerical inferiority. But he had the advantage of a central situation, of commanding veteran troops by whom he was trusted, and above all of being able to march or remain quiet at his pleasure, as not being dependent on mere pillage for his commissariat. He was inspired, too, by a childlike faith in the cause for which he was fighting as the cause of order and religion against anarchy and vice.
Section IV. —The Fight for the Lower Palatinate
§ 1. Frederick joins Mansfeld in the Palatinate.
By the middle of April the hostile armies were in movement, converging upon the Palatinate, where the fortresses of Heidelberg, Mannheim, and Frankenthal were safe in Vere's keeping. Frederick himself had joined Mansfeld's army in Alsace, and his first operations were attended with success. Effecting a junction with the Margrave of Baden he inflicted a severe check upon Tilly at Wiesloch. The old Walloon retreated to Wimpfen, calling Cordova to his aid, and he did not call in vain. Mansfeld, on the other hand, and the Margrave could not agree. Each had his own plan for the campaign, and neither would give way to the other. Besides, there were no means of feeding so large an army if it kept together. Mansfeld marched away, leaving the Margrave to his fate.
§ 2. Battle of Wimpfen.
The battle of Wimpfen was the result. On May 6 Tilly and Cordova caught the Margrave alone, and defeated him completely. As soon as the action was over, Cordova left the field to resist the progress of Mansfeld; and Mansfeld, whose men were almost starving, was unable to overcome serious resistance. There was nothing for it but a speedy retreat to Alsace.
§ 3. The Congress at Brussels.
In the meantime the diplomatists had met at Brussels. After some difficulties of form had been got over, Sir Richard Weston, the representative of England, sent to ask Frederick to agree to a truce. When the message reached him the battle of Wimpfen had not been fought, and his hopes were still high. A truce, he wrote to his father-in-law, would be his utter ruin. The country was exhausted. Unless his army lived by plunder it could not exist. A few days later he was a beaten man. On May 13 he gave way, and promised to agree to the truce. On the 28th all was again changed. He had learned that the Margrave of Baden hoped to bring back his army into the field. He knew that Christian of Brunswick was approaching from beyond the Main; and he informed Weston that he could do nothing to assist the negotiations at Brussels.
§ 4. Seizure of the Landgrave of Darmstadt.
On June 1 Frederick and Mansfeld marched out of Mannheim to meet Christian. On their way they passed by Darmstadt. The Landgrave was especially obnoxious to them, as a Lutheran prince who had warmly adopted the Emperor's side. Love of peace, combined with pretensions to lands in dispute with the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, in which he hoped to be supported by Ferdinand, had made him a bitter enemy of Mansfeld and his proceedings; and though it was not known at the time that he was actually in receipt of a Spanish pension, Frederick was not likely to attribute to other than interested motives a line of action which seemed so incomprehensible.
§ 5. Mansfeld unable to pass the Main.
As soon as the troops reached Darmstadt, they commenced their usual work, ravaging the country, and driving off the cattle. To the Landgrave, who recommended submission to the Emperor as the best way of recovering peace, Frederick used high language. It was not in quest of peace that he had come so far. The Landgrave had a fortified post which commanded a passage over the Main, and its possession would enable the army to join Christian without difficulty. But the Landgrave was firm; and finding that a denial would not be taken, tried to avoid his importunate guests by flight. He was overtaken and brought back a prisoner. But even in this plight he would give no orders for the surrender of the post, and its commander resolutely refused to give it up without instructions. Before another passage could be found, Tilly had received reinforcements, and Frederick, carrying the Landgrave with him, was driven to retreat to Mannheim, not without loss.
§ 6. Condition of Mansfeld's army.
Once more Frederick was ready to consent to the cessation of arms proposed at Brussels. But Cordova and Tilly were now of a different opinion. Christian, they knew, would soon be on the Main, and they were resolved to crush him whilst he was still unaided. Lord Chichester, who had come out to care for English interests in the Palatinate, and who judged all that he saw with the eye of an experienced soldier, perceived clearly the causes of Frederick's failure. 'I observe,' he wrote, 'so much of the armies of the Margrave of Baden and of Count Mansfeld, which I have seen, and of their ill discipline and order, that I must conceive that kingdom and principality for which they shall fight to be in great danger and hazard. The Duke of Brunswick's, it is said, is not much better governed: and how can it be better or otherwise where men are raised out of the scum of the people by princes who have no dominion over them, nor power, for want of pay, to punish them, nor means to reward them, living only upon rapine and spoil as they do?'
§ 7. Battle of Höchst.
On June 20, the day before these words were written, Tilly and Cordova had met with Christian at Höchst, and though they did not prevent him from crossing the Main, they inflicted on him such enormous losses that he joined Mansfeld with the mere fragments of his army.
§ 8. Mansfeld abandons the Palatinate.
Great was the consternation at Mannheim when the truth was known. The Margrave of Baden at once abandoned his associates. Mansfeld and Christian, taking Frederick with them, retreated into Alsace, where Frederick formally dismissed them from his service, and thus washed his hands of all responsibility for their future proceedings.
§ 9. Frederick goes back to the Hague.
Retiring for a time to Sedan, he watched events as they passed from that quiet retreat. 'Would to God,' he wrote to his wife, 'that we possessed a little corner of the earth where we could rest together in peace.' The destinies of Germany and Europe had to be decided by clearer heads and stronger wills than his. After a short delay he found his way back to the Hague, to prove, as many a wiser man had proved before him, how bitter a lot it is to go up and down on the stairs which lead to the antechambers of the great: to plead for help which never is given, and to plan victories which never come.