Chapter IV: , VII (33)

In 1570, Pope Pius V. issued against Elizabeth his formal bull
of excommunication, absolving her subjects from their
allegiance. This quickened, of course, the activity of the
plotters against the queen and set treason astir. Priests from
the English Catholic Seminary at Douai, afterwards at Rheims,
began to make their appearance in the country; a few Jesuits
came over; and both were active agents of the schemes on foot
which contemplated the seating of Mary Stuart on the throne of
Elizabeth Tudor. Some of these emissaries were executed, and
they are counted among the martyrs of the Catholic Church,
which is a serious mistake. The Protestantism of the sixteenth
century was quite capable of religious persecution, even to
death; but it has no responsibilities of that nature in these
Elizabethan cases. As a matter of fact, the religion of the
Jesuit sufferers in the reign of Elizabeth was a mere incident
attaching itself to a high political crime, which no nation
has ever forgiven.

The plotting went on for twenty years, keeping the nation in
unrest; while beyond it there were thickening signs of a great
project of invasion in the sinister mind of Philip II. At
last, in 1586, the coolest councillors of Elizabeth persuaded
her to bring Mary Stuart to trial for alleged complicity in a
conspiracy of assassination which had lately come to light.
Convicted, and condemned to death, Mary ended her sad life on
the scaffold, at Fotheringay, on the 8th of February, 1587.
Whether guilty or guiltless of any knowledge of what had been
done in her name, against the peace of England and against the
life of the English queen, it cannot be thought strange that
Protestant England took her life.

The Spanish Armada.

A great burst of wrath in Catholic Europe was caused by the
execution of Mary, and Philip of Spain hastened forward his
vast preparations for the invasion and conquest of England. In
1588, the "invincible armada," as it was believed to be,
sailed out of the harbors of Portugal and Spain, and wrecked
itself with clumsy imbecility on the British and Irish coasts.
It scarcely did more than give sport to the eager English
sailors who scattered its helpless ships and hunted them down.
Philip troubled England no more, and conspiracy ceased.

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England at Sea.

But the undeclared, half-piratical warfare which private
adventurers had been carrying on against Spanish commerce for
many years now acquired fresh energy. Drake, Hawkins,
Frobisher, Grenvil, Raleigh, were the heroic spirits of this
enterprising warfare; but they had many fellows. It was the
school of the future navy of England, and the foundations of
the British Empire were laid down by those who carried it on.

Otherwise, Elizabeth had little war upon her hands, except in
Ireland, where the state of misery and disorder had already
been long chronic. The first really complete conquest of the
island was accomplished by Lord Mountjoy between 1600 and
1603.

Intellectual England.

But neither the political troubles nor the naval and military
triumphs of England during the reign of Elizabeth are of much
importance, after all, compared with the wonderful flowering
of the genius of the nation which took place in that age.
Shakespeare, Spenser, Bacon, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Hooker,
Raleigh, Sidney, are the great facts of Elizabeth's time, and
it shines with the luster of their names, the period most
glorious in English history.

The Religious Wars in France.

Wherever the stealthy arm of the influence of Philip II. of
Spain could reach, there the Catholic reaction of his time
took on a malignant form. In France, it is quite probable that
the Catholics and the Huguenots, if left to themselves, would
have come to blows; but it is certain that the meddling
fingers of the Spanish king put fierceness and fury into the
wars of religion, which raged from 1562 to 1596, and that they
were prolonged by his encouragement and help.

Catherine de' Medici, to strengthen herself against the
Guises, after the death of Francis II., offered attentions for
a time to the Huguenot nobles, and encouraged them to expect a
large and lasting measure of toleration. She went so far that
the Huguenot influence at court, surrounding the young king,
became very seriously alarming to Catholic onlookers, both at
home and abroad. Among the many remonstrances addressed to the
queen-regent, the one which appears to have been decisive in
its effect came from Philip. He coldly sent her word that he
intended to interfere in France and to establish the supremacy
of the Catholic Church; that he should give his support for that
purpose to any true friend of the Church who might request it.
Whether Catherine had entertained an honest purpose or not, in
her dealing with the Huguenots, this threat, with what lay
behind it, put an end to the hope of justice for them. It is
true that an assembly of notables, in January, 1562, did
propose a law which the queen put forth, in what is known as
the "Edict of January," whereby the Huguenots were given, for
the first time, a legal recognition, ceasing to be outlaws,
and were permitted to hold meetings, in the daytime, in open
places, outside of walled cities; but their churches were
taken away from them, they were forbidden to build more, and
they could hold no meetings in walled towns. It was a measure
of toleration very different from that which they had been led
to expect; and even the little meted out by this Edict of January
was soon shown to have no guarantee. Within three months, the
Duke of Guise had found an opportunity for exhibiting his
contempt of the new law, by ordering his armed followers to
attack a congregation at Vassy, killing fifty and wounding two
hundred of the peaceful worshippers. This outrage drove the
Huguenots to arms and the civil wars began.

The frivolous Anthony, King of Navarre, had been won back to
the Catholic side. His staunch wife, Jeanne d'Albret, with her
young son, the future Henry IV., and his brother, Louis,
Prince of Condé, remained true to their faith. Condé was the
chief of the party. Next to him in rank, and first in real
worth and weight, was the noble Admiral Coligny. The first war
was brief, though long enough to end the careers of Anthony of
Navarre, killed in battle, and the Duke of Guise,
assassinated. Peace was made in 1563 through a compromise,
which conceded certain places to the Huguenots, wherein they
might worship God in their own way. But it was a hollow peace,
and the malicious finger of the great master of assassins at
Madrid never ceased picking at it. In 1566, civil war broke
out a second time, continuing until 1570. Its principal
battles were that of Jarnac, in which Condé was taken prisoner
and basely assassinated by his captors, and that of
Moncontour. The Huguenots were defeated in both. After the
death of Condé, young Henry of Navarre, who had reached his
fifteenth year, was chosen to be the chief of the party, with
Coligny for his instructor in war.

Again peace was made, on a basis of slight concessions. Henry
of Navarre married the King's sister, Margaret of Valois;
prior to which he and his mother took up their residence with
the court, at Paris, where Jeanne d'Albret soon sickened and
died. The Admiral Coligny acquired, apparently, a marked
influence over the mind of the young king; and once more there
seemed to be a smiling future for the Reformed. But damnable
treacheries were hidden underneath this fair showing. The most
hideous conspiracy of modern times was being planned, at the
very moment of the ostentatious peace-marriage of the King of
Navarre, and the chief parties to it were Catherine de' Medici
and the Guises, whose evil inclinations in common had brought
them together at last. On the 22d of August, 1572, Coligny was
wounded by an assassin, employed by the widow and son of the
late Duke of Guise, whose death they charged against him,
notwithstanding his protestations of innocence. Two days
later, the monstrous and almost incredible massacre of St.
Bartholomew's Day was begun. Paris was full of Huguenots--the
heads of the party--its men of weight and influence--who had
been drawn to the capital by the King of Navarre's marriage
and by the supposed new era of favor in which they stood. To
cut these off was to decapitate Protestantism in France, and
that was the purpose of the infernal scheme. The weak-minded
young king was not an original party to the plot. When
everything had been planned, he was easily excited by a tale
of pretended Huguenot conspiracies, and his assent to summary
measures of prevention was secured. A little after midnight,
on the morning of Sunday, August 24, the signal was given, by
Catherine's order, which let loose a waiting swarm of
assassins, throughout Paris, on the victims who had been
marked for them. The Huguenots had had no warning; they were
taken everywhere by surprise, and they were easily murdered in
their beds, or hunted down in their hopeless flight.

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The noble Coligny, prostrated by the wound he had received two
days before, was killed in his chamber, and his body flung out
of the window. The young Duke of Guise stood waiting in the
court below, to gloat on the corpse and to basely spurn it
with his foot.

The massacre in Paris was carried on through two nights and
two days; and, for more than a month following, the example of
the capital was imitated in other cities of France, as the
news of what were called "the Paris Matins" reached them. The
total number of victims in the kingdom is estimated variously
to have been between twenty thousand and one hundred thousand.
Henry of Navarre and the young Prince of Condé escaped the
massacre, but they saved their lives by a hypocritical
abjuration of their religion.

The strongest town in the possession of the Huguenots was La
Rochelle, and great numbers of their ministers and people of
mark who survived the massacre now took refuge in that city,
with a considerable body of armed men. The royal forces laid
siege to the city, but made no impression on its defences.
Peace was conceded in the end on terms which again promised
the Huguenots some liberty of worship. But there was no
sincerity in it.

In 1574, Charles IX. died, and his brother, the Duke of Anjou,
who had lately been elected King of Poland, ran away from his
Polish capital with disgraceful haste and secrecy, to secure
the French crown. He was the most worthless of the
Valois-Medicean brood, and the French court in his reign
attained its lowest depth of degradation. The contending
religions were soon at war again, with the accustomed result,
in 1576, of another short-lived peace. The Catholics were
divided into two factions, one fanatical, following the
Guises, the other composed of moderate men, calling themselves
the Politiques, who hated the Spanish influence under which
the Guises were always acting, and who were willing to make
terms with the Huguenots. The Guises and the ultra-Catholics
now organized throughout France a great oath-bound "Holy
League", which became so formidable in power that the king
took fright, put himself at the head of it, and reopened war
with the Reformed.

More and more, the conflict of religions became confused with
questions of politics and mixed with personal quarrels. At one
time, the king's younger brother, the Duke of Alençon, had
gone over to the Huguenot side; but stayed only long enough to
extort from the court some appointments which he desired. The
king, more despised by his subjects than any king of France
before him had ever been, grew increasingly jealous and afraid
of the popularity and strength of the Duke of Guise, who was
proving to be a man quite superior to his father in
capability. Guise, on his side, was made arrogant by his sense
of power, and his ambition soared high. There were reasons for
believing that he did not look upon the throne itself as
beyond his reach.

After 1584, when the Duke of Alençon (Duke of Anjou under his
later title) died, a new political question, vastly
disturbing, was brought into affairs. That death left no heir
to the crown in the Valois line, and the King of Navarre, of
the House of Bourbon, was now nearer in birth to the throne
than any other living person. Henry had, long ere this,
retracted his abjuration of 1572, had rejoined the Huguenots
and taken his place as their chief. The head of the Huguenots
was now the heir presumptive to the crown, and the wretched,
incapable king was being impelled by his fear of Guise to look
to his Huguenot heir for support. It was a strange situation.
In 1588 it underwent a sinister change. Guise and his brother,
the Cardinal, were both assassinated by the king's body-guard,
acting under the king's orders, in the royal residence at the
Castle of Blois. When the murder had been done, the cowardly
king spurned his dead enemy with his foot, as Guise, sixteen
years before, had spurned the murdered Coligny, and said "I am
King at last." He was mistaken. His authority vanished with
the vile deed by which he expected to reinvigorate it. Paris
broke into open rebellion. The League renewed its activity
throughout France. The king, abandoned and cursed on all
sides, had now no course open to him but an alliance with
Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots. The alliance was effected,
and the two Henrys joined forces to subdue insurgent Paris.
While the siege of the city was in progress (1589), Henry III.
fell a victim, in his turn, to the murderous mania of his
depraved age and court. He was assassinated by a fanatical
monk.

Henry of Navarre.

Henry of Navarre now steps into the foreground of French
history, as Henry IV., lawful King of France as well as of
Navarre, and ready to prove his royal title by a more useful
reign than the French nation had known since it buried St.
Louis, his last ancestor on the throne. But his title was
recognized at first by few outside the party of the Huguenots.
The League went openly into alliance with Philip of Spain, who
even half-stopped his war in the Netherlands to send money and
troops into France. The energies of his insignificant soul
were all concentrated on the desire to keep the heretical
Béarnese from the throne of France. But happily his powers
were no longer equal to his malice; he was still staggering
under the blow which destroyed his great Armada.

Henry received some help in money from Queen Elizabeth, and
5,000 English and Scotch came over to join his army. He was an
abler general than any among his opponents, and he made
headway against them. His splendid victory at Ivry, on the
14th of March, 1590, inspirited his followers and took heart
from the League. He was driven from his subsequent siege of
Paris by a Spanish army, under the Duke of Parma; but the very
interference of the Spanish king helped to turn French feeling
in Henry's favor. On the 25th of July, 1593, he practically
extinguished the opposition to himself by his final submission
to the Church of Rome. It was an easy thing for him to do. His
religion sat lightly on him. He had accepted it from his
mother; he had adhered to it--not faithfully--as the creed of
a party. He could give it up, in exchange for the crown of
France, and feel no trouble of conscience. But the Reformed
religion in France was really benefited by his apostacy. Peace
came to the kingdom, as the consequence,--a peace of many
years,--and the Huguenots were sheltered in considerable
religious freedom by the peace. Henry secured it to them in
1598 by the famous Edict of Nantes, which remained in force
for nearly a hundred years.

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The reign of Henry IV. was one of the satisfactory periods in
the life of France, so far as concerns the material prosperity
of the nation. He was a man of strong, keen intellect, with
firmness of will and elasticity of temper, but weak on the
moral side. He was of those who win admiration and friendship
easily, and he remains traditionally the most popular of
French kings. He had the genius for government which so rarely
coincides with royal birth. A wise minister, the Duke of
Sully, gave stability to his measures, and between them they
succeeded in remarkably improving and promoting the
agricultural and the manufacturing industries of France,
effacing the destructive effects of the long civil wars, and
bringing economy and order into the finances of the
overburdened nation. His useful career was ended by an
assassin in 1610.

Germany and the Thirty Years War.

The reactionary wars of religion in Germany came
half-a-century later than in France. While the latter country
was being torn by the long civil conflicts which Henry IV.
brought to an end, the former was as nearly in the enjoyment
of religious peace as the miserable contentions in the bosom
of Protestantism, between Lutherans and Calvinists (the latter
more commonly called "the Reformed"), would permit. On the
abdication of Charles V., in 1556, he had fortunately failed
to bring about the election of his son Philip to the imperial
throne. His brother Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and King of
Bohemia and Hungary, was chosen Emperor, and that sovereign
had too many troubles in his immediate dominions to be willing
to invite a collision with the Protestant princes of Germany
at large. The Turks had overrun Hungary and established
themselves in possession of considerable parts of the country.
Ferdinand obtained peace with the redoubtable Sultan Suleiman,
but only by payments of money which bore a strong likeness to
tribute. He succeeded, through his prudent and skilful policy,
in making both the Hungarian and the Bohemian crowns practically
hereditary in the House of Austria.

Dying in 1564, Ferdinand transmitted both those kingdoms, with
the Austrian Archduchy and the imperial office, to his son,
Maximilian II., the broadest and most liberal minded of his
race. Though educated in Spain, and in companionship with his
cousin, Philip II., Maximilian exhibited the most tolerant
spirit that appears anywhere in his age. Perhaps it was the
hatefulness of orthodox zeal as exemplified in Philip which
drove the more generous nature of Maximilian to revolt. He
adhered to the Roman communion; but he manifested so much
respect for the doctrines of the Lutheran that his father felt
called upon at one time to make apologies for him to the Pope.
Throughout his reign he held himself aloof from religious
disputes, setting an example of tolerance and spiritual
intelligence to all his subjects, Lutherans, Calvinists and
Catholics alike, which ought to have influenced them more for
their good than it did. Under the shelter of the toleration
which Maximilian gave it, Protestantism spread quickly over
Austria, where it had had no opportunity before; revived the
old Hussite reform in Bohemia; made great gains in Hungary,
and advanced in all parts of his dominions except the Tyrol.
The time permitted to it for this progress was short, since
Maximilian reigned but twelve years. He died in 1576, and his
son Rudolph, who followed him, brought evil changes upon the
country in all things. He, too, had been educated in Spain,
but with a very different result. He came back a creature of
the Jesuits; but so weakly wilful a creature that even they
could do little with him. Authority of government went to
pieces in his incompetent hands, and at last, in 1606, a
family conclave of princes of the Austrian house began
measures which aimed at dispossessing Rudolph of his various
sovereignties, so far as possible, in favor of his brother
Matthias. Rudolph resisted with some effect, and in the
contests which ensued the Protestants of Austria and Bohemia
improved their opportunity for securing an enlargement of
their rights. Matthias made the concession of complete
toleration in Austria, while Rudolph, in Bohemia, granted the
celebrated charter, called the Letter of Majesty (1609), which
gave entire religious liberty to all sects.

These concessions were offensive to two princes, the Archduke
Ferdinand of Styria, and Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, who had
already taken the lead in a vigorous movement of Catholic
reaction. Some proceedings on the part of Maximilian, which
the Emperor sanctioned, against the Protestant free city of
Donauwörth, had caused certain Protestant princes and cities,
in 1608, to form a defensive Union. But the Elector Palatine,
who attached himself to the Reformed or Calvinist Church, was
at the head of this Union, and the bigoted Lutherans,
especially the Elector of Saxony, looked with coldness upon
it. On the other hand, the Catholic states formed a
counter-organization--a Holy League--which was more compact
and effective. The two parties being thus set in array, there
rose suddenly between them a political question of the most
disturbing character. It related to the right of succession to
an important duchy, that of Juliers, Clèves, and Berg. There
were several powerful claimants, in both of the Saxon
families, and including also the Elector of Brandenburg and
the Palsgrave of Neuberg, two members of the Union. As usual,
the political question took possession of the religious issue
and used it for its own purposes. The Protestant Union opened
negotiations with Henry IV. of France, who saw an opportunity
to weaken the House of Austria and to make some gains for
France at the expense of Germany. A treaty was concluded, and
Henry began active preparations for campaigns in both Germany
and Italy, with serious intent to humble and diminish the
Austrian power. The Dutch came into the alliance, likewise,
and James I. of England promised his co-operation. The
combination was formidable, and might have changed very
extensively the course of events that awaited unhappy Germany,
if the whole plan had not been frustrated by the assassination
of Henry IV., in 1610. All the parties to the alliance drew
back after that event, and both sides waited.

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In 1611, Rudolph was deposed in Bohemia, and the following
year he died. Matthias, already King of Hungary, succeeded
Rudolph in Bohemia and in the Empire. But Matthias was
scarcely stronger in mind or body than his brother, and the
same family pressure which had pushed Rudolph aside now forced
Matthias to accept a coadjutor, in the person of the vigorous
Ferdinand, Archduke of Styria. For the remainder of his reign
Matthias was a cipher, and all power in the government was
exercised by Ferdinand. His bitter opposition to the tolerant
policy which had prevailed generally for half-a-century was
well understood. Hence, his rise to supremacy in the Empire
gave notice that the days of religious peace were ended. The
outbreak of civil war was not long in coming.

Beginning of the war in Bohemia.

It began in Bohemia. A violation of the Protestant rights
guaranteed by the Letter of Majesty provoked a rising under
Count Thurn. Two of the king's councilors, with their
secretary, were flung from a high window of the royal castle,
and this act of violence was followed by more revolutionary
measures. A provisional government of thirty Directors was set
up and the king's authority set wholly aside. The Protestant
Union gave prompt support to the Bohemian insurrection and
sent Count Mansfield with three thousand soldiers to its aid.
The Thirty Years War was begun (1618).

Early in these disturbances, Matthias died (1619). Ferdinand
had already made his succession secure, in Austria, Bohemia
and Hungary, and the imperial crown was presently conferred on
him. But the Bohemians repudiated his kingship and offered
their crown to Frederick, the Elector Palatine, lately married
to the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I. of England.
The Elector, persuaded, it is said, by his ambitious young
wife, unwisely accepted the tempting bauble, and went to
Prague to receive it. But he had neither prudence nor energy
to justify his bold undertaking. Instead of strengthening
himself for his contest with Ferdinand, he began immediately
to enrage his new subjects by pressing Calvinistic forms and
doctrines upon them, and by arrogantly interfering with their
modes of worship. His reign was so brief that he is known in
Bohemian annals as "the winter king." A single battle, won by
Count Tilly, in the service of the Catholic League and of its
chief, Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, ended his sovereignty. He
lost his Electorate as well as his kingdom, and was a
wandering fugitive for the remainder of his life. Bohemia was
mercilessly dealt with by the victorious Ferdinand. Not only
was Protestantism crushed, and Catholicism established as the
exclusive religion, but the very life of the country,
intellectually and materially, was extinguished; so that
Bohemia never again stood related to the civilization of
Europe as it had stood before, when Prague was an important
center of learning and thought. To a less extent, Austria
suffered the same repression, and its Protestantism was
uprooted.

In this sketch it is unnecessary to follow the details of the
frightful Thirty Years War, which began as here described.
During the first years it was carried on mainly by the troops
of the Catholic League, under Tilly, acting against Protestant
forces which had very little coherence or unity, and which
were led by Count Mansfield, Christian of Anhalt, and other
nobles, in considerable independence of one another. In 1625
the first intervention from outside occurred. Christian IV. of
Denmark took up the cause of threatened Protestantism. As Duke
of Schleswig-Holstein, he was a prince of the Empire, and he
joined with other Protestant princes in condemning the
deposition of the Elector-Palatine, whose electorate had been
conferred on Maximilian of Bavaria. King Christian entered
into an alliance with England and Holland, which powers
promised help for the reinstatement of the Elector. But the
aid given was trifling, and slight successes which Christian
and his German allies obtained against Tilly were soon changed
to serious reverses.

Wallenstein.

For the first time during the war, the Emperor now brought
into the field an army acting in his own name, and not in that
of the League. It was done in a singular manner--by contract,
so to speak, with a great soldier and wealthy nobleman, the
famous Wallenstein. Wallenstein offered to the Emperor the
services of an army of 50,000 men, which he would raise and
equip at his own expense, and which should be maintained
without public cost--that is, by plunder. His proposal was
accepted, and the formidable body of trained and powerfully
handled brigands was launched upon Germany, for the torture
and destruction of every region in which it moved. It was the
last appearance in European warfare of the "condottiere" of
the Middle Ages. Wallenstein and Tilly swept all before them.
The former failed only before the stubborn town of Stralsund,
which defied his siege. Mansfield and Christian of Anhalt both
died in 1627. Peace was forced upon the Danish king. The
Protestant cause was prostrate, and the Emperor despised its
weakness so far that he issued an "Edict of Restitution,"
commanding the surrender of certain bishoprics and
ecclesiastical estates which had fallen into Protestant hands
since the Treaty of Passau. At the same time, he yielded to
the jealousy which Wallenstein's power had excited, by
dismissing that commander from his service.

Gustavus Adolphus.

The time was an unfavorable one for such an experiment. A new
and redoubtable champion of Protestantism had just appeared on
the scene and was about to revive the war. This was Gustavus
Adolphus, King of Sweden, who had ambitions, grievances and
religious sympathies, all urging him to rescue the Protestant
states of Germany from the Austrian-Catholic despotism which
seemed to be impending over them. His interference was
jealously resented at first by the greater Protestant princes.
The Elector of Brandenburg submitted to an alliance with him
only under compulsion. The Elector of Saxony did not join the
Swedish king until (1631) Tilly had ravaged his territories
with ferocity, burning 200 villages. When Gustavus had made
his footing in the country secure, he quickly proved himself
the greatest soldier of his age. Tilly was overwhelmed in a
battle fought on the Breitenfeld, at Leipsic. The following
spring he was again beaten, on the Lech, in Bavaria, and died
of wounds received in the battle. Meantime, the greater part
of Germany was at the feet of the Swedish king; and a sincere
co-operation between him and the German princes would probably
have ended the war. But small confidence existed between these
allies, and Richelieu, the shrewd Cardinal who was ruling
France, had begun intrigues which made the Thirty Years War
profitable in the end to France. The victories of Gustavus
seemed to bear little fruit. Wallenstein was summoned once
more to save the Emperor's cause, and reappeared in the field
with 40,000 men. The heroic Swede fought him at Lützen, on the
16th of November, 1632, and routed him, but fell in the battle
among the slain.

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With the death of Gustavus Adolphus, the possibility of a
satisfactory conclusion of the war vanished. The Swedish army
remained in Germany, under the military command of Duke
Bernhard of Saxe Weimar and General Horn, but under the
political direction of Axel Oxenstiern, the able Swedish
Chancellor. On the Imperial side, Wallenstein again incurred
distrust and suspicion. His power was so formidable that his
enemies were afraid to let him live. They plotted his death by
assassination, and he was murdered on the 25th of February,
1634. The Emperor's son Ferdinand now took the command of the
Imperial forces, and, a few months later, having received
reinforcements from Spain, he had the good fortune to defeat
the Swedes at Nördlingen.

The French in the War.

The Elector of Saxony, and other Protestant princes, then made
peace with the Emperor, and the war was only prolonged by the
intrigues of Richelieu and for the aggrandizement of France.
In this final stage of it, when the original elements of
contention, and most of the original contestants, had
disappeared, it lasted for yet fourteen years. Ferdinand II.
died in 1637, and was succeeded by his son Ferdinand III. Duke
Bernhard died in 1639. In the later years of the war,
Piccolomini on the Imperial side, Baner, Torstenson and
Wrangel at the head of the Swedes, and Turenne and Condé in
command of the French, were the soldiers who made great names.

Destructiveness of the War.

In 1648, the long suffering of Germany was eased by the Peace
of Westphalia. Years of quiet, and of order fairly restored,
would be needed to heal the bleeding wounds of the country and
revive its strength. From end to end, it had been trampled
upon for a generation by armies which plundered and destroyed
as they passed. There is nothing more sickening in the annals
of war than the descriptions which eye-witnesses have left of
the misery, the horror, the desolation of that frightful
period in German history. "Especially in the south and west,
Germany was a wilderness of ruins; places that were formerly
the seats of prosperity were the haunts of wolves and robbers
for many a long year. It is estimated that the population was
diminished by twenty, by some even by fifty, per cent. The
population of Augsburg was reduced from 80,000 to 18,000; of
Frankenthal, from 18,000 to 324 inhabitants. In Würtemberg, in
1641, of 400,000 inhabitants, 48,000 remained; in the
Palatinate, in 1636, there were 201 peasant farmers; and in
1648, but a fiftieth part of the population remained"
(Häusser).

The Peace of Westphalia.

By the treaties of Westphalia, the religious question was
settled with finality. Catholics, Lutherans, and the Reformed
(Calvinists), were put on an equal footing of religious
liberty. Politically, the effects of the Peace were radical
and lasting in their injury to the German people. The few
bonds of Germanic unity which had survived the reign of
feudalism were dissolved. The last vestige of authority in the
Empire was destroyed. "From this time Germany long remained a
mere lax confederation of petty despotisms and oligarchies
with hardly any national feeling. Its boundaries too were cut
short in various ways. The independence of the two free
Confederations at the two ends of the Empire, those of
Switzerland and the United Provinces, which had long been
practically cut off from the Empire, was now formally
acknowledged. And, what was far more important, the two
foreign kingdoms which had had the chief share in the war,
France and Sweden, obtained possessions within the Empire, and
moreover, as guarantors or sureties of the peace, they
obtained a general right of meddling in its affairs." "The
right of France to the 'Three Lotharingian Bishoprics,' which
had been seized nearly a hundred years before, was now
formally acknowledged, and, besides this, the possessions and
rights of the House of Austria in Elsass, the German land
between the Rhine and the Vosges, called in France Alsace,
were given to France. The free city of Strasburg and other
places in Elsass still remained independent, but the whole of
South Germany now lay open to France. This was the greatest
advance that France had yet made at the expense of the Empire.
Within Germany itself the Elector of Brandenburg also received
a large increase of territory" (Freeman).

Among the treaties which made up the Peace of Westphalia was
one signed by Spain, acknowledging the independence of the
United Provinces, and renouncing all claims to them.

France under Richelieu.

The great gains of France from the Thirty Years War were part
of the fruit of bold and cunning statesmanship which Richelieu
had ripened and plucked for that now rising nation. For a time
after the death of Henry IV., chaos had seemed likely to
return again in France. His son, Louis XIII., was but nine
years old. The mother, Marie de' Medici, who secured the
regency, was a foolish woman, ruled by Italian favorites, who
made themselves odious to the French people. As soon as the
young king approached manhood, he put himself in opposition to
his mother and her favorites, under the influence of a set of
rivals no more worthy, and France was carried to the verge of
civil war by their puerile hostilities. Happily there was
something in the weak character of Louis XIII. which bent him
under the influence of a really great mind when circumstances
had brought him within its reach. Richelieu entered the King's
council in 1624. The king was soon an instrument in his hands,
and he ruled France, as though the scepter was his own, for
eighteen years. He was as pitiless a despot as ever set heel
on a nation's neck; but the power which he grasped with what
seemed to be a miserly and commonplace greed, was all gathered
for the aggrandizement of the monarchy that he served. He
believed that the nation needed to have one master, sole and
unquestioned in his sovereignty. That he enjoyed being that
one master, in reality, while he lived, is hardly doubtful;
but his whole ambition is not so explained. He wrought
according to his belief for France, and the king, in his eyes,
was the embodiment of France. He erected the pedestal on which
"the grand monarch" of the next generation posed with
theatrical effect.

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Three things Richelieu did;

1. He enforced the royal authority, with inexorable rigor,
against the great families and personages, who had not
learned, even under Henry IV., that they were subjects in the
absolute sense.

2. He struck the Huguenots, not as a religious sect, but as a
political party, and peremptorily stopped their growth of
strength in that character, which had clearly become
threatening to the state.

3. He organized hostility in Europe to the overbearing and
dangerous Austro-Spanish power, put France at the head of it,
and took for her the lion's share of the conquests by which
the Hapsburgs were reduced.

Mazarin and the Fronde.

The great Cardinal died near the close of the year 1642; and
Louis XIII. followed him to the grave in the succeeding May,
leaving a son, Louis XIV., not yet five years of age, under
the regency of his mother, Anne of Austria. The minister,
Cardinal Mazarin, who enjoyed the confidence of the
queen-regent, and who was supposed to enjoy her affections as
well, had been Richelieu's disciple, and took the helm of
government on Richelieu's recommendation. He was an adroit
politician, with some statesmanlike sagacity, but he lacked
the potent spirit by which his master had awed and ruled every
circle into which he came, great or small. Mazarin had the
Thirty Years War to bring to a close, and he managed the
difficult business with success, wasting nothing of the effect
of the brilliant victories of Condé and Turenne. But the war had
been very costly. Mazarin was no better financier than
Richelieu had been before him, and the burdens of taxation
were greater than wise management would have made them. There
was inevitable discontent, and Mazarin, as a foreigner, was
inevitably unpopular. With public feeling in this state, the
Court involved itself in a foolish conflict with the
Parliament of Paris, and presently there was a Paris
revolution and a civil war afoot (1649). It was a strange
affair of froth and empty rages--this war of "The Fronde," as
it was called--having no depth of earnestness in it and no
honesty of purpose anywhere visible in its complications. The
men and women who sprang to a lead in it--the women more
actively and rancorously than the men--were mere actors of
parts in a great play of court intrigue, for the performance
of which unhappy France had lent its grand stage. There seems
to have been never, in any other civil conflict which history
describes, so extraordinary a mixture of treason and
libertinism, of political and amorous intrigue, of
heartlessness and frivolity, of hot passion and cool
selfishness. The people who fought most and suffered most
hardly appear as noticeable factors in the contest. The court
performers amused themselves with the stratagems and bloody
doings of the war as they might have done with the tricks of a
masquerade.

It was in keeping with the character of the Frondeurs that
they went into alliance, at last, with Spain, and that, even
after peace within the nation had been restored, "the Great
Condé" remained in the Spanish service and fought against his
own countrymen. Mazarin regained control of affairs, and
managed them on the whole ably and well. He brought about an
alliance with England, under Cromwell, and humbled Spain to
the acceptance of a treaty which considerably raised the
position of France among the European Powers. By this Treaty
of the Pyrenees (1659), the northwestern frontier of the
kingdom was both strengthened and advanced; Lorraine was shorn
of some of its territory and prepared for the absorption which
followed after no long time; there were gains made on the side
of the Pyrenees; and, finally, Louis XIV. was wedded to the
infanta of Spain, with solemn renunciations on her part, for
herself and her descendants, of all claims upon the Spanish
crown, or upon Flanders, or Burgundy, or Charolais. Not a
claim was extinguished by these solemn renunciations, and the
Treaty of the Pyrenees is made remarkable by the number of
serious wars and important events to which it gave rise.

Cardinal Mazarin died in 1661 and the government was assumed
personally by Louis XIV., then twenty-three years old.

England Under the Stuarts.

While Germany and France had, each in turn, been disordered by
extremely unlike civil wars, one to the unmitigated
devastation and prostration of the land, the other to the
plain putting in proof of the nothingness of the nation at
large, as against its monarchy and court, the domestic peace
of England had been ruffled in a very different way, and with
very different effects.

The death of Queen Elizabeth united the crown of England with
that of Scotland, on the head of James, son of the unhappy
Mary Stuart. In England he was James I., in Scotland James VI.
His character combined shrewdness in some directions with the
most foolish simplicity in others. He was not vicious, he was
not in any particular a bad man; but he was exasperating in
his opinionated self-conceit, and in his gaucheries of mind
and body. The Englishmen of those days did not love the Scots;
and, all things considered, we may wonder, perhaps, that James
got on so well as he did with his English subjects. He had
high notions of kingship, and a superlative opinion of his own
king-craft, as he termed the art of government. He scarcely
deviated from the arbitrary lines which Elizabeth had laid
down, though he had nothing of Elizabeth's popularity. He
offended the nation by truckling to its old enemy, the King of
Spain, and pressing almost shamefully for a marriage of his
elder son to the Spanish infanta. The favorites he enriched
and lavished honors upon were insolent upstarts. His treatment
of the growing Puritanism in English religious feeling was
contemptuous. There was scarcely a point on which any
considerable number of his subjects could feel in agreement
with him, or entertain towards him a cordial sentiment of
loyalty or respect. Yet his reign of twenty-two years was
disturbed by nothing more serious than the fatuous "gunpowder
plot" (1605) of a few discontented Catholics. But his son had
to suffer the retarded consequences of a loyalty growing weak,
on one side, while royalty strained its prerogatives on the
other.

The reign of James I. witnessed the effective beginnings of
English colonization in America,--the planting of a durable
settlement in Virginia and the migration of the Pilgrim
Fathers to New England. The latter movement (1620) was one of
voluntary exile, produced by the hard treatment inflicted on
those "Separatists" or "Independents" who could not reconcile
themselves to a state-established Church. Ten years later, the
Pilgrim movement, of Independents, was followed by the greater
migration of Puritans--quite different in class, in character
and in spirit.

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Charles. I.

James died in 1625, and the troubled reign of his son, Charles
I., began. Charles took over from his father a full measure of
popular discontent, along with numerous active springs in
operation for increasing it. The most productive of these was
the favorite, Buckingham, who continued to be the sole
counselor and minister of the young king, as he had been of
the older one, and who was utterly hateful to England, for
good reasons of incapacity and general worthlessness. In the
king himself, though he had virtues, there was a coldness and
a falsity of nature which were sure to widen the breach
between him and his people.

Failing the Spanish marriage, Charles had wedded (1624) a
French princess, Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII. The
previous subserviency to Spain had then been followed by a war
with that country, which came to Charles among his
inheritances, and which Buckingham mismanaged, to the shame of
England. In 1627 another war began, but this time with France,
on account of the Huguenots besieged at La Rochelle. Again the
meddlesome hand of Buckingham wrought disaster and national
disgrace, and public indignation was greatly stirred. When
Parliament endeavored to call the incapable minister to
account, and to obtain some security for a better management
of affairs, the king dissolved it. Twice was this done, and
Charles and his favorite employed every arbitrary and
questionable device that could be contrived for them, to raise
money without need of the representatives of the people. At
length, in 1628, they were driven to face a third Parliament,
in order to obtain supplies. By this time the Commons of
England were wrought up to a high and determined assertion of
their rights, as against the Crown, and the Puritans had
gained a majority in the popular representation. In the lower
House of Parliament, therefore, the demands of the king for
money were met by a counter-demand for guarantees to protect
the people from royal encroachments on their liberties. The
Commons were resolute, and Charles gave way to them, signing
with much reluctance the famous instrument known as the
"Petition of Right," which pledged the Crown to abstain in
future from forced loans, from taxes imposed without
Parliamentary grant, from arbitrary imprisonments, without
cause shown, and from other despotic proceedings. In return
for his signature to the Petition of Right, Charles received a
grant of money; but the Commons refused to authorize his
collection of certain customs duties, called Tonnage and
Poundage, beyond a single year, and it began attacks on
Buckingham,--whereupon the king prorogued it. Shortly
afterwards Buckingham was assassinated; a second expedition to
relieve Rochelle failed miserably; and early in 1629
Parliament was assembled again. This time the Puritan temper
of the House began to show itself in measures to put a stop to
some revivals of ancient ceremony which had appeared in
certain churches. At the same time officers of the king, who
had seized goods belonging to a member of the House, for
non-payment of Tonnage and Poundage, were summoned to the bar
to answer for it. The king protected them, and a direct
conflict of authority arose. On the 2d of March, the king sent
an order to the Speaker of the House of Commons for
adjournment; but the Speaker was forcibly held in his chair,
and not permitted to announce the adjournment, until three
resolutions had been read and adopted, denouncing as an enemy
to the kingdom every person who brought in innovations in
religion, or who advised the levying of Tonnage and Poundage
without parliamentary grant, or who voluntarily paid such
duties, so levied. This done, the members dispersed; the king
dissolved Parliament immediately, and his resolution was taken
to govern England thenceforth on his own authority, with no
assembly of the representatives of the people to question or
criticise him. He held to that determination for eleven years,
during which long time no Parliament sat in England, and the
Constitution was practically obliterated.

The leaders of the Commons in their recent proceedings were
arrested and imprisoned. Sir John Eliot, the foremost of them,
died in harsh confinement within the Tower, and others were
held in long custody, refusing to recognize the jurisdiction
of the king's judges over things done in Parliament.

Wentworth and Laud.

One man, of great ability, who had stood at the beginning with
Sir John Eliot, and acted with the party which opposed the
king, now went over to the side of the latter and rose high in
royal favor, until he came in the end to be held chiefly
responsible for the extreme absolutism to which the government
of Charles was pushed. This was Sir Thomas Wentworth, made
Earl of Strafford at a later day, in the tardy rewarding of
his services. But William Laud, Bishop of London, and
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, was the evil counselor of
the king, much more than Wentworth, in the earlier years of
the decade of tyranny. It was Laud's part to organize the
system of despotic monarchy on its ecclesiastical side; to
uproot Puritanism and all dissent, and to cast religion for
England and for Scotland in one mould, as rigid as that of
Rome.

For some years, the English nation seemed terrorized or
stupefied by the audacity of the complete overthrow of its
Constitution. The king and his servants might easily imagine
that the day of troublesome Parliaments and of inconvenient
laws was passed. At least in those early years of their
success, it can scarcely have occurred to their minds that a
time of accounting for broken laws, and for the violated
pledges of the Petition of Right, might come at the end. At
all events they went their way with seeming satisfaction, and
tested, year by year, the patient endurance of a people which
has always been slow to move. Their courts of Star Chamber and
of High Commission, finding a paramount law in the will and
pleasure of the king, imprisoned, fined, pilloried, flogged
and mutilated in quite the spirit of the Spanish Inquisition,
though they did not burn.
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They collected Tonnage and Poundage without parliamentary
consent, and servile judges enforced the payment. They
invented a claim for "ship-money" (in commutation of an
ancient demand for ships to serve in the King's navy) from
inland towns and counties, as well as from the commercial
ports; and when John Hampden, a squire in Buckinghamshire,
refused payment of the unlawful tax, their obedient judges
gave judgment against him. And still the people endured; but
they were laying up in memory many things, and gathering a
store of reasons for the action that would by and by begin.

Rebellion in Scotland.

At last, it was Scotland, not England, that moved to rebel.
Laud and the king had determined to break down Presbyterianism
in the northern kingdom and to force a Prayer Book on the
Scottish Church. There was a consequent riot at St. Giles, in
Edinburgh (1637); Jenny Geddes threw her stool at the bishop,
and Scotland presently was in revolt, signing a National
Covenant and defying the king. Charles, attempting to frighten
the resolute Scots with an army which he could not pay, was
soon driven to a treaty with them (1639) which he had not
honesty enough to keep. Wentworth, who had been Lord Deputy of
Ireland since 1632, and who had framed a model of absolutism
in that island, for the admiration of his colleagues in
England, now returned to the king's side and became his chief
adviser. He counselled the calling of a Parliament, as the
only means by which English help could be got for the
restoring of royal authority in Scotland. The Parliament was
summoned and met in April, 1640. At once, it showed a temper
which alarmed the king and he dissolved it in three weeks.
Again Charles made the attempt to put down his Scottish
subjects without help from an English Parliament, and again
the attempt failed.

The Long Parliament.

Then the desperate king summoned another Parliament, which
concentrated in itself, when it came together, the suppressed
rebellion that had been in the heart of England for ten years,
and which broke his flimsy fabric of absolutism, almost at a
single blow. It was the famous Long Parliament of English
history, which met in November, 1640, and which ruled England
for a dozen years, until it gave way to the Cromwellian
dictatorship. It sent Laud and Strafford to the Tower,
impeached the latter and brought him to the block, within six
months from the beginning of its session; and the king gave up
his minister to the vengeance of the angry Commons with hardly
one honest attempt to protect him. Laud waited in prison five
years before he suffered the same fate. The Parliament
declared itself to be indissoluble by any royal command; and
the king assented. It abolished the Star Chamber and the Court
of High Commission; and the king approved. It swept
ship-money, and forest claims, and all of Charles' lawless
money-getting devices into the limbo; and he put his signature
to its bills. But all the time he was intriguing with the
Scots for armed help to overthrow his masterful English
Parliament, and he was listening to Irish emissaries who
offered an army for the same purpose, on condition that
Ireland' should be surrendered to the Catholics.

Civil War.

Charles had arranged nothing on either of these treacherous
plans, nor had he gained anything yet from the division
between radicals and moderates that was beginning to show
itself in the popular party, when he suddenly brought the
strained situation to a crisis, in January, 1642, by his most
foolish and arrogant act. He invaded the House of Commons in
person, with a large body of armed men, for the purpose of
arresting five members--Pym, Hampden, Holles, Hazlerigg and
Strode--whom he accused of having negotiated treasonably with
the Scots in 1640. The five members escaped; the House
appealed to the citizens of London for protection; king and
Parliament began immediately to raise troops; the nation
divided and arrayed itself on the two sides,--most of the
gentry, the Cavaliers, supporting the king, and most of the
Puritan middle-class, wearing close-cut hair and receiving the
name Roundheads, being ranged in the party of Parliament. They
came to blows in October, when the first battle was fought, at
Edgehill.

In the early period of the war, the parliamentary forces were
commanded by the Earl of Essex; and Sir Thomas Fairfax was
their general at a later stage; but the true leader on that
side, for war and for politics alike, was soon found in Oliver
Cromwell, a member of Parliament, whose extraordinary capacity
was first shown in the military organization of the Eastern
Counties, from which he came. After 1645, when the army was
remodeled, with Cromwell as second in rank, his real
chieftainship was scarcely disguised. The decisive battle of
the war was fought that year at Naseby, where the king's cause
suffered an irrecoverable defeat.