Section IV. —The Siege of Rochelle
§ 1. Stralsund and Rochelle.
The tide was on the turn in Germany. But the tide was not on the turn in France. There, too, a maritime city, greater and wealthier than Stralsund, and supported by fleets and armies from beyond the sea, was defending the cause of Protestantism against the central government. Mainly because in France the central government represented something more than the rule of the priest and the soldier, the resistance which was successful in Germany was overpowered in France.
1625
§ 2. England and France.
During the year 1625 the coolness between England and France had been on the increase. The persecution of the English Catholics by Charles, in contravention of his promises, had greatly exasperated Lewis, and the seizure by the English cruisers of numerous French vessels charged with carrying on a contraband traffic with the Spanish Netherlands had not contributed to calm his indignation. Charles, on the other hand, regarded himself as the natural protector of the French Protestants, and made demands in their favour which only served to make Lewis more resolved to refuse every concession.
§ 3. Richelieu would have made peace with the Huguenots if he could.
Richelieu had therefore a hard part to play. He knew perfectly well that the government had violated its engagements with the Huguenots, especially in keeping up the fortifications of Fort Louis, a work commanding the entrance to the harbour of Rochelle, which it had long ago promised to pull down. If Richelieu had had his way he would have pulled down the fort, and by generous concessions to the Huguenots would have carried them with him to the support of his foreign policy. But such a policy, in appearance so rash, in reality so wise, was not likely to be palatable to Lewis, and Richelieu had to steer his way between the danger of offending the king and the danger of lighting up still more vividly the flames of civil war. In the course of the winter all that could be done he did. Deputies of the Huguenot towns appeared to negotiate a peace, with the support of two English ambassadors. But they were instructed to demand the demolition of the fort, and to this the king steadily refused his consent.
1626
§ 4. An agreement effected.
The priests and the friends of the priests were delighted at the prospect of another civil war. The assembled clergy commissioned one of their number to offer to the king a considerable sum of money for the suppression of rebellion. The time was appointed for his audience, but Richelieu contrived to put it off for a few hours longer, and, by a representation of the dangers of the situation, induced the Huguenot deputies, with the support of the English ambassadors, to be satisfied with a loose verbal promise from the king. When the clerical train swept into the royal presence it was too late. The king had already promised the Huguenot deputies that if they behaved as good subjects he would do for them more than they could possibly expect. His ministers had already assured them that these words pointed to the demolition of the fort.
§ 5. Intervention of Charles I.
If a peace thus made was to be enduring, it would be necessary to keep up for a long time the appearance of its being a submission and not a peace. Unhappily, the intervention of the King of England was not likely to help to keep up appearances. He urged Lewis to engage in the war in Germany in the exact way and to the exact extent that suited the English government, and he put himself ostentatiously forward as the protector of the Huguenots.
§ 6. Lewis indignant.
Such conduct awoke once more the susceptibilities of Lewis. It was bad enough to be bearded by his own subjects. But it was worse to be bearded by a foreign sovereign. A group of Huguenot communities in the south of France supported in practical independence by England would be as insupportable to him as the resistance of the Hanse Towns was two years later to Wallenstein.
1627
§ 7. War between France and England.
Fort Louis, therefore, was not demolished. A peace was patched up between France and Spain. Charles grew more and more angry with Lewis for deserting the common cause. Fresh seizures of French ships by English cruisers came to exasperate the quarrel, and in the early months of 1627 war existed between the two nations, in reality if not in name. In July a great English fleet, with a land army on board, appeared off Rochelle, under the command of Charles' favourite, Buckingham. A landing was effected on the Isle of Rhé, and siege was laid to the principal fort of the island. At last the garrison was almost starved out, and the commander offered to come the next morning into the English quarters to treat for terms of surrender. That night a stiff easterly breeze sprung up, and a French flotilla, heavily laden with provisions, put off from the main land. Some of the boats were taken, but most of them made their way safely through the English guardships, and delivered their precious store under the guns of the fort. Buckingham lingered for some weeks longer. Every day the besiegers swept the horizon in vain with their glasses, looking for succour from England. But Charles, without parliamentary support, was too poor to send off succours hurriedly, and when they were at last ready a long continuance of westerly winds prevented them from leaving the Channel. Before they could put to sea, a French force was landed on the island, and Buckingham, to save himself from defeat, was forced to break up the siege and to return home discomfited.
§ 8. Siege of Rochelle.
Richelieu and the king were now thoroughly of one mind. The French city which could enter into an understanding with the foreigner must be reduced to submission. An army of thirty thousand men gathered round the walls, and on the land side the town was as hopelessly blocked up as Stralsund. The only question was whether it would be possible to cut off the entrance of English supplies by sea. By the end of November a commencement was made of the mole which was to shut off Rochelle from all external help. Piles were driven in with stones between them. Heavily laden vessels were scuttled and sunk. Richelieu himself directed the operations, this time with the full support of the clergy, who poured their money lavishly into the royal treasury. In May, 1628, the work, in spite of the storms of winter, was almost completed. An English fleet, which came up to the succour of the town, retired without accomplishing anything.
§ 9. Increasing despondency in the town.
Inside the town distress was rapidly growing unendurable. The mayor, Jean Guiton, was still the soul of the resistance. But he had to struggle against an increasing number who counselled surrender. He did not venture to appear in the streets without a pistol in his hand and half-a-dozen stout guardians around him.
§ 10. Failure of the English attempt to succour it.
The only hope for Rochelle lay in the great armament which was known to be prepared in England, and which was to be conducted by Buckingham in person. The House of Commons had purchased the Petition of Right with large subsidies, and Charles, for the first time in his reign, was enabled to make an effort worthy of his dignity. But the popular hatred found a representative in the murderer Felton, and a knife struck home to the favourite's heart put an end to his projects for ever. The dissatisfaction which arrayed the English people against its government had found its way into the naval service. When the fleet arrived in September, under a new commander, all was disorganization and confusion. It returned to England without accomplishing a single object for which it had been sent forth.
§ 11. Surrender of Rochelle.
The surrender of Rochelle followed as a matter of necessity. On November 1 the king entered the conquered town in triumph. The independence of French cities was at an end.
§ 12. Cause of Richelieu's success.
The different success of the two great sieges of the year may partly be accounted for by the difference of vigour in the powers to which the threatened towns looked for succour. Charles was very far from being a Christian IV., much less a Gustavus Adolphus; and if England at unity with itself was stronger than Sweden, England distracted by civil broils was weaker than Sweden. But there were more serious reasons than these for Richelieu's victory and Wallenstein's failure. Richelieu represented what Wallenstein did not – the authority of the state. His armies were under the control of discipline; and, even if the taxation needed to support them pressed hardly upon the poor, the pressure of the hardest taxation was easy to be borne in comparison with a far lighter contribution exacted at random by a hungry and rapacious soldiery. If Richelieu had thus an advantage over Wallenstein, he had a still greater advantage over Ferdinand and Maximilian. He had been able to isolate the Rochellese by making it clear to their fellow Huguenots in the rest of France that no question of religion was at stake. The Stralsunders fought with the knowledge that their cause was the cause of the whole of Protestant Germany. The Rochellese knew that their resistance had been tacitly repudiated by the whole of Protestant France.
§ 13. Religious liberty of the Huguenots.
When Lewis appeared within the walls of Rochelle he cancelled the privileges of the town, ordered its walls to be pulled down and its churches to be given over to the Catholic worship. But under Richelieu's guidance he announced his resolution to assure the Protestants a continuance of the religious liberties granted by his father. No towns in France should be garrisoned by troops other than the king's. No authorities in France should give orders independently of the king. But wherever a religion which was not that of the king had succeeded in establishing its power over men's minds no attempt should be made to effect a change by force. Armed with such a principle as this, France would soon be far stronger than her neighbours. If Catholic and Huguenot could come to regard one another as Frenchmen and nothing else, what chance had foreign powers of resisting her? She had already beaten back the attack of a divided England. Would she not soon acquire a preponderance over a divided Germany? It is time for us now to ask what steps were being taken in Germany to meet or to increase the danger.
CHAPTER VII.
THE EDICT OF RESTITUTION
Section I. —Oppression of the Protestants
1628
§ 1. Siege of Glückstadt.
It was not at Stralsund only that Wallenstein learned that he could be successfully resisted. Stade had surrendered with its English garrison to Tilly in April, but Glückstadt still held out. In vain Wallenstein came in person to Tilly's aid. The Danish cruisers kept the sea open. Wallenstein was obliged to retire. In January, 1629, the works of the besiegers were destroyed by a sally of the garrison.
1629
§ 2. The Peace of Lübeck.
Wallenstein, the great calculator, saw that peace with Denmark was necessary. The Swedes and the Danes were beginning to act together, and resistance to one nation, if there must be resistance, would be easier than resistance to two. Much to his satisfaction he found Christian not unwilling to listen to the voice of his charming. Just as the eagle eye of Gustavus descried the first feeble beams of light on the horizon, the King of Denmark, weary of misfortune and vexed at the prospect of having to crave help from his old competitor of Sweden, laid down his arms. On May 22, 1629, a treaty of peace was signed at Lübeck. Christian received back the whole of his hereditary possessions. In return he resigned all claim to the bishoprics held by his family in the Empire, and engaged to meddle no further with the territorial arrangements of Lower Saxony.
§ 3. Necessity of healing measures.
If the Peace of Lübeck was really to be a source of strength to Ferdinand it must be accompanied by some such measures as those with which Richelieu was accompanying his victory at Rochelle. It was not enough to have got rid of a foreign enemy. Some means must be found to allay the fears of the Germans themselves, which had found expression in the resistance of Stralsund.
§ 4. Opposite views as to what measures are needed.
That there was much to be done in this direction was openly acknowledged by almost all who had been concerned in the imperialist successes. Maximilian and the League held that it was above all things necessary to restrain the excesses of Wallenstein and his soldiers. Wallenstein held that it was above all things necessary to restrain the excessive demands of Maximilian and the clergy. Ferdinand, the man in whose hands fortune had placed the decision of the great question, probably stood alone in thinking that it was possible to satisfy both the soldiers and the priests without weakening his hold on the Empire.
The first act of Ferdinand after the signature of the treaty was to invest Wallenstein formally with the Duchy of Mecklenburg. Offence was thus given to those who believed that the rights of territorial sovereignty had been unduly invaded, and who were jealous of the right claimed by the Emperor to supersede by his own authority a prince of the Empire in favour of a successful soldier.
§ 5. Ill treatment of the Protestants.
On the other side offence was given still more widely to those who wished to maintain the rights of Protestantism. Without wishing to enter upon a general persecution, Ferdinand was resolved to allow no rights against his church to those who could not conclusively prove to his own satisfaction that those rights were under the guarantee of unassailable law. He had begun in his own hereditary dominions. It is true that in Bohemia and Austria no tortures were inflicted, no martyrs suffered either at the stake or on the scaffold. But it was found that the stern, relentless pressure of daily annoyance was sufficient for the purpose of producing at least external conformity. By 1627 the desired result had been obtained, and Protestantism existed only as a proscribed religion. Then came the turn of the Palatinate. For a time there had been no open persecution. In 1625 Maximilian had written to the governor of Heidelberg not to let any opportunity slip, if he could find an excuse for turning out a Protestant minister from his parish and replacing him by a Catholic priest. In February, 1628, the Jesuits were able to report that they had made 400 converts in Heidelberg itself, and 1,200 in the neighbouring country districts. Then came a further change. In March an agreement was drawn up between Maximilian and Ferdinand. The Emperor received back Upper Austria, and made over to the Elector of Bavaria, in its stead, the Upper Palatinate and that part of the Lower Palatinate which lies on the right bank of the Rhine. Maximilian held that by this transfer he had acquired the full rights of a territorial prince, and that amongst these rights was that of disposing of the religion of his new subjects. In June all noblemen residing in the country were told that they must either change their religion within two months or go into exile. In September the order was extended to the inhabitants generally.
§ 6. The cities of South Germany.
The year 1628 was a year of alarm over all Protestant South Germany. There at least Ferdinand was ready to carry out the wishes expressed by the Catholic electors at Mühlhausen the year before. Whilst Maximilian was threatening the Palatinate, imperial commissioners were passing through the other territories and cities, taking account of churches and church property which had come into Protestant possession since the Convention of Passau. To the wishes of the populations not the slightest attention was paid. In Nördlingen, for instance, not a single Catholic was to be found. Every church in the place was none the less marked down for re-delivery to the Catholic clergy. In some places to which the commissioners came, Shylock-like, to claim their pound of flesh, they demanded more even than the strict letter of the law allowed them. Not content with restoring to the Catholic worship churches which had with general consent been in the hands of Protestants for half a century, they proceeded to compel the inhabitants of the towns to attend the mass.
§ 7. The Edict of Restitution.
The success of these outrageous measures in the south encouraged Ferdinand to pursue the same course in the north. There he had to deal not merely with scattered towns, or a few abbeys, but with the great lay bishoprics, many of which were extensive enough to form the domain of a duke or a landgrave. On March 29, 1629, before the Peace of Lübeck was actually signed, he issued the fatal Edict of Restitution. With a stroke of his pen, the two archbishoprics of Magdeburg and Bremen, the twelve bishoprics of Minden, Verden, Halberstadt, Lübeck, Ratzeburg, Misnia, Merseburg, Naumburg, Brandenburg, Havelberg, Lebus, and Camin, with about a hundred and twenty smaller ecclesiastical foundations, were restored to the Catholic clergy.
§ 8. Real weakness of the Emperor.
The wheel had come full circle round since the day when Christian of Anhalt had planned the great uprising to sweep away the Catholic bishops and the House of Austria. The House of Austria was firmer in its seat than ever. The Catholic bishops were triumphant. But in the midst of their triumph the enemies of the Empire were watching them keenly, and judging that both they and the Emperor were all the weaker for this grand vindication of legality.
Section II. —French Intervention in Italy
§ 1. Gustavus and Richelieu.
In the north Gustavus had an eye not likely to be deceived for the joints of Ferdinand's harness. In the west Richelieu was preparing for the day when he too might aid in the overthrow of the Colossus. It is true that his first thought was of Spain and not of Germany. But he could hardly be brought into collision with one branch of the House of Austria without having sooner or later to deal with the other.
§ 2. The Mantuan War.
In Italy, the death of the Duke of Mantua and Montferrat without near heirs had given rise to war. The next heir was a very distant relation, the Duke of Nevers, whose family had long been naturalized in France. To Spain the presence of a dependent of France so near her possessions in the Milanese was in the highest degree undesirable, and she called upon Ferdinand to sequester the territory till another way of disposing it could be found. If in Germany before Ferdinand's election the rights of the Emperors had been but a shadow, those which they possessed in the old kingdom of Italy were but the shadow of a shade. But whatever they were, Ferdinand was the man to put them forth, and whilst Richelieu was engaged at Rochelle, Spanish troops had overrun Mantua, and in conjunction with the Duke of Savoy, ready now to seek his own interests by fighting for Spain, as in earlier days to seek his own interests by fighting against her, were besieging the Duke of Nevers in Casale, the only fortress which remained to him.
§ 3. Italian feeling against the Emperor.
This intervention of the Spaniards in the Emperor's name caused even greater indignation in Italy than their intervention in the Palatinate had caused in Germany. For in Germany the Emperor's name was in 1621 still connected with the ideas of law and order. In Italy it reminded men of nothing but foreign domination, a memory which was none the less vivid when the Emperor used his authority, whatever it might be, to support the real foreign domination of the immediate present, the Spanish domination in Milan. The Italian princes took alarm. Venice and the pope summoned France to their aid, and in March, 1629, Richelieu, taking Lewis with him across the snowy passes of the Alps, reduced the Duke of Savoy to submission, and forced the Spaniards to raise the siege of Casale.
§ 4. Check inflicted on him by Richelieu.
Casale was the Stralsund of Italy. A power which had ventured to clothe itself in the attributes of a national authority, with even less reason than in Germany, had found its limits. Richelieu had the general feeling on his side.
§ 5. The last Huguenot rebellion.
He did not venture to do more in Italy. The Duke of Rohan, the brother of that Soubise who had begun the war of Rochelle in 1625, had roused the Huguenots of Languedoc and the Cevennes to a fresh attempt at resistance, half Protestant, half aristocratic. As if the Rochellese had not sufficiently suffered for the mistake of calling in foreign aid, Rohan followed their example, and was foolish enough to ask for help from Spain. But the Spanish troops came not to his aid. Richelieu hurried back from Italy, made peace with England, and pitilessly crushed the rebellion in the south. Once more the victory was attended by the confirmation of the religious liberties of the Huguenots. They might worship as they pleased, but political independence they were not to have.
§ 6. Strength of France.
The French monarchy was stronger for external enterprise than ever. By crushing all resistance, it had no longer to fear occupation for its energies at home, and by its tolerance of religion it had rendered itself capable of accepting the service of all its subjects, and it could offer its alliance to Protestant states without fear of suffering a rebuff.
§ 7. Richelieu and the Imperialists in Italy.
Richelieu was again able to turn his attention to Italy. In the summer of 1629 an imperialist force of 20,000 men descended from the Alps and laid siege to Mantua. Ferdinand, having established peace in Germany, fancied that he could take up again in Italy the work which had been too great for Barbarossa. Spinola came to his aid with an army of equal force, and recommenced the attack upon Casale. In the spring of 1630 Richelieu was once more in Italy. Cardinal as he was, he was placed in command of the army. But instead of marching against the Spaniards, he turned first upon the Duke of Savoy. Seizing Pignerol and Saluces, he gained possession of the Alpine passes. Then, with Piedmont at his feet, he passed on to relieve Casale, and forced the Spanish besiegers to retreat. But Richelieu was prudent as well as daring, and he left Mantua for the present in the hands of Spain and the Emperor.
§ 8. State of Germany.
It was a hard thing to attack the united forces of Spain and the Empire face to face. It might be easier to support their enemies abroad, and to favour dissensions at home. In the Netherlands, the Dutch, encouraged by the diversion of the Italian war, were at last taking the offensive, and entering upon that aggressive warfare which ended by bringing the whole of North Brabant under their authority. In the north, Gustavus had concluded a peace with Poland, and was making preparations for actual intervention in Germany. In all this Richelieu was deeply interested. An ambassador of Lewis was engaged in arranging with Gustavus the terms on which France should assist him in the attack upon the Empire which he already contemplated.
§ 9. Richelieu's expectations.
Not that even Richelieu foresaw the possibility of the magnificent results which were to follow from that enterprise. In 1630, as in 1624 and 1625, he would have preferred that a Protestant power should not be too successful. He would rather conquer with Sweden than not at all. But he would rather conquer with the help of the League than with the help of Sweden. Gustavus might be pushed on to do his best. He would effect a diversion, and that would be enough.