Chapter VI: The Aggrandisement of France

Foreign policy of Richelieu--Territorial aggrandisement--Questions of the Valtelline and the Mantuan Succession--Intrigues of Richelieu in Germany--Interference of France in the Thirty Years’ War--Alteration of the character of the war--Unsuccessful operations of France--Conquest of Alsace--Revolt of Portugal and Catalonia--Position of France at the death of Richelieu--Policy of Mazarin--Battle of Rocroy--Conquest of the Upper Rhineland--Campaign of Turenne--Negotiations for peace--The peace of Westphalia--The solution of the religious difficulty--The beginning of modern Europe--Permanent advance of France--Desperate condition of Spain--Outbreak of the Fronde--Alliance of Mazarin and Cromwell--The peace of the Pyrenees.

[Sidenote: =Foreign policy of Richelieu.=]

When Richelieu in 1624 took the reins of government into his hands in France, the Thirty Years’ War was just about to envelope the whole of Germany in its fell embraces. The princes of the lower Saxon circle had begun to arm, the king of Denmark was about to take the lead of the Protestant forces, England had already taken active steps for the recovery of the Palatinate, and the reduction of the power of Spain. There was every probability that the whole energies of the Austro-Spanish House would be absorbed in the affairs of Germany for many years. The necessity of Spain and the Empire was ever in the seventeenth century the opportunity of France, and Richelieu realised by a flash of genius that the hour had arrived, which was to make or mar the influence of France in the world. Three things were necessary to the establishment of French supremacy in Europe, national unity, monarchical centralisation, and the extension and security of the frontiers. To attain these three objects, Richelieu devoted his life, and he was sensible enough to see that complete success in foreign affairs must do much to render success in the other two inevitable. If the crown of France by military and diplomatic conquest could push back the French frontier towards the Rhine, the Scheldt, and the Pyrenees, it need have little to fear from its internal foes. So Richelieu took up again the threads of policy, which had dropped from the lifeless hands of Henry IV., and directed all his energies to the resumption of the attack upon the Empire and upon Spain. But there was this difference between the two men. Henry IV. had dreamed of establishing the peace and good order of the world upon the ruin of the Habsburgs. Richelieu cherished no such illusions. Nakedly and avowedly he sought but the supremacy of France.

[Sidenote: =Its character.=]

Richelieu stands out upon the canvas of history as the first of that long line of statesmen who were actuated by purely selfish national interests. Unaffected by moral ideals, such as did so much to disguise the personal ambitions of the wars of the Middle Ages, uninfluenced by the religious motives, which often ennobled, even though they intensified, the ruthlessness of the wars of the sixteenth century, the rulers of the eighteenth and the latter half of the seventeenth centuries made war upon each other purely in the interests of their crowns and of themselves. Personal glory, territorial aggrandisement, commercial advantage were the motives which led to the great wars of Europe from the peace of Westphalia to the Congress of Vienna. Before the fierceness of those appetites the rights of nations, of races, even of humanity itself weighed not a feather in the balance. Germans must lose their speech and their fatherland, that France may push her boundaries to the Rhine. Poland must be wiped out of the map of Europe, that Prussia and Russia may be bigger and greater. Even African negroes must be torn from their homes, and sold as chattels in the market-places of the West, that the pockets of Englishmen and of English colonists might swell with gold. And if amid the dark scene of selfishness and rapacity there shines at times the nobler light which hallows the wars of liberty against the oppression of Louis XIV. and Napoleon, yet the shadows deepen as they gather round the career of Frederick the Great, and the closing acts of the Napoleonic drama at Vienna, and the historian has sadly to acknowledge that in them are to be found the characteristic scenes of eighteenth century diplomacy and war. It is the triumph of Macchiavellianism on the large scale in international politics. It is the adaptation to the affairs of nations of Hobbes’s description of the natural man. _Homo homini lupus._ Everything is permissible to a sovereign which tends to the security and greatness of his power, and nations are to one another as wild beasts. Man in his personal relations is civilised Christian and refined. Nations in their ordinary intercourse with one another are punctilious, courtly and even deferential, but when once selfish aggrandisement is possible, it becomes allowable. The thin veneer of civilisation and of consideration is rudely broken through, and nation stands out against nation in open and barbarous hostility on the principle of the old moss-trooper’s rule, that they shall win who have the power and they shall keep who can.

[Sidenote: =Territorial aggrandisement necessary to France.=]

From the point of view of the needs of the French monarchy, there was no doubt that Richelieu was right in urging France to a policy of territorial aggrandisement. She was better able to pursue it than were her neighbours, for she was sufficiently free from religious difficulties to be able to throw her sword into the Protestant or the Catholic scale as her interests might suggest. She had more to gain from such a policy than any other nation in Europe, for almost on all sides her land frontiers were a source of weakness. In the south the Spanish provinces of Cerdagne and Roussillon lay on the French side of the central ridge of the Pyrenees, and gave easy access to the Spanish armies into rich and disaffected Languedoc. The Italian frontier was in the keeping of the duke of Savoy, who, as long as he preserved his independence, was as likely to admit Spanish and imperialist troops into the valley of the Rhone, as French troops into the plain of Lombardy. To the east and to the north-east the frontier was still more insecure. Following roughly the streams of the Saone, the Meuse and the Somme, it brought the Empire and Spain dangerously near to Paris, especially as the intervening country was not easily defensible. It is true that on the eastern side a considerable access of strength had been gained by the occupation of the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun in 1552, which secured to France the important fortress of Metz, but they were not yet formally annexed to the crown of France, but only administered by French officials. A glance at the map will therefore show that the danger from Spain was considerable, and that, until she had succeeded in breaking the chain which bound her almost from the Pyrenees to the Straits of Dover, France could not make full use of her unrivalled geographical position.

[Sidenote: =Question of the Valtelline, 1622.=]

Such were the influences which impelled Richelieu to make the rectification of the frontier of France on the side of the Netherlands, the Rhine, and the Pyrenees, the first object of his foreign policy; and to launch France on that career of conquest and aggrandisement at the expense of the House of Habsburg, which has been from his time almost to the present day the central feature of European politics. From the battle of Nördlingen to the battle of Solferino, there has hardly been a great war in Europe in which the armies of France and of the House of Austria have not been arrayed against each other as enemies. Spain was the first foe to be dealt with, for Spain was the most dangerous to neglect, and the easiest to attack. The Spaniards who garrisoned the Milanese had, in 1622, seized upon the valley of the Valtelline, and occupied it by force, in order to secure their communications with the Empire; and had even obliged Chur, the chief town of the League of the Grisons, to receive an imperial garrison. This was undoubtedly an act of aggression on their part, and gave Richelieu the opportunity of striking a deadly blow at his enemy. The Valtelline is a broad and rich valley which runs in a north-easterly direction into the heart of the Rhaetian Alps from the top of the Lake of Como. About half-way up the valley a mountain pass, practicable for the passage of troops, leads to the east into the valley of the Adige a little north of Trent, from which by the well-frequented Brenner Pass communication with Innsbrück and south Germany was easy and safe. This was the only route which was certain to be available for the passage of troops and stores from the Empire to Milan, as the other mountain passes, which led direct from Tirol and Carinthia into Italy, opened into the territory of the republic of Venice, and Venice was usually not inclined to welcome the arrival of imperial troops. Provided, however, that the passage of the Valtelline was secured, the rest of the way was safe, as it lay through imperial territory. Hence the command of the Valtelline was absolutely essential to the maintenance of the power of the Habsburgs in Italy, but the valley itself was politically subject to the League of the Grisons, which as long ago as 1509 had come under the protection of France. So then, when Spain moved troops into the Valtelline, built a fortress in the valley, and obliged the Grisons to admit an imperial garrison at Chur, Louis XIII. as the protector of the Grisons had the right to interfere.

[Sidenote: =Its recovery for the Grisons, 1626.=]

Richelieu took his measures promptly. In 1624 he helped to bring about a marriage alliance between Charles prince of Wales and Henrietta Maria, the sister of Louis XIII., by which he hoped to gain the assistance of England against Spain on the sea and in the Netherlands, while he struck at the Valtelline. An army of the mountaineers of the Grisons under French leadership drove the imperial troops from Chur, and the papal troops from the Valtelline, where they had replaced the Spaniards. Lesdiguières, at the head of a French force, marched to the assistance of Savoy against Genoa. But just at that time the Huguenots of La Rochelle flew to arms, and Richelieu, afraid of finding himself involved at once in war at home and abroad, came to terms with Spain at the treaty of Monzon, concluded in March 1626, by which the Valtelline was to remain under the control of the Grisons.

[Sidenote: =The Mantuan succession, 1627.=]

For the next three years the whole energies of Richelieu and of France were engaged in the reduction of La Rochelle, and in the war with England, which followed hard upon, and indeed sprung out of, the marriage treaty of 1624. In 1629 he was once more at liberty to turn his attention to Italian affairs. In 1627 the duke of Mantua and Montferrat had died. His nearest heir was a Frenchman, the duke of Nevers. But the Emperor, at the instigation of Spain, not wishing to have a French prince so near the Milanese, determined to sequester the territory on the pretext of a disputed succession. Spanish troops at once overran both Mantua and Montferrat, and driving the duke of Nevers into Casale besieged him there. The Italian princes, however, were not inclined to submit without protest to this exercise by the Emperor of obsolete and doubtful rights. The Pope (Urban VIII.), who was strongly French in sympathy, combined with Venice to ask the assistance of France, and in January 1629 Louis and Richelieu crossed the Mont Genèvre at the head of a large army, captured Susa, relieved Casale, and forced the duke of Savoy to make peace. Again, however, a rebellion of the Huguenots obliged Louis to draw back in the hour of victory (March 1629), and in the summer of that year fresh troops, set free by the imperialist successes in Germany, invaded Italy under Spinola and formed the sieges of Mantua and Casale. In spite of the most strenuous efforts of Louis himself, who crossed the Alps at the head of the French armies in the winter of 1629–30, the combined forces of Spain and the Empire were too strong to be dislodged from Mantua or Montferrat. [Sidenote: =Peace of Cherasco, 1631.=] But the invasion of Germany by Gustavus Adolphus, promoted by France and even by the Pope, made the Emperor anxious for peace, and through the diplomatic skill of the papal agent, Giulio Mazzarini--afterwards to become so celebrated in French history--a truce was arranged, which afterwards ripened into the definitive peace of Cherasco (April 26th, 1631). By this treaty the duke of Nevers was invested with the duchy, and the fortresses were restored on both sides, except Pinerolo, which was still held by the French.

So ended the first great effort made by Richelieu against the House of Habsburg. Like most of his plans it was better conceived than executed, but it must be remembered that in carrying it out, he was sorely hampered by opposition to his authority at home both from the Huguenots and from the nobles. His Italian policy must not be considered by itself. It is part of a great whole. While he was openly attacking the imperial forces in Italy, his diplomacy was undermining the imperialist power in Germany, and if in 1631 he thought it best to rest content with the reduction of Savoy, and the acquisition of a passage through the Alps, it was because at that particular moment he could best effect his purpose by shifting his method from direct to indirect hostility, and the scene from Italy to Germany.

[Sidenote: =Intrigues of Richelieu in Germany, 1630.=]

Already he had endeavoured to keep the flame of opposition to Spain alive by granting subsidies to the Dutch, and directing Mansfeld’s army in 1624 to the Netherlands. In July 1630, he sent his most trusted agent the famous Capuchin, Father Joseph, to the meeting of the diet of Regensburg, where he laboured with notable skill and success to bring about the dismissal of Wallenstein, and to pave the way for detaching Maximilian of Bavaria and the League from their close alliance with the Emperor and Spain. In the autumn of the year before, another well-trained diplomatist, Charnacé, had travelled as far as Dantzig to offer the mediation of France in the quarrel between Sweden and Poland, and so removed one of the obstacles which made Gustavus Adolphus hesitate to take part in the German War. At that time Richelieu seems to have thought that he could use Gustavus merely as a fighting tool, and by offering him French money and a French alliance could make him fight the battles of France against the Emperor. But he was quickly undeceived. Gustavus definitely refused to allow his political or military independence to be impaired. He was quite willing that France should interfere openly in the war, if she chose to do so, provided she would limit her operations to the left bank of the Rhine; but he would not tolerate for a moment any interference with his own command. The utmost that Richelieu could obtain from him by the treaty of Bärwalde in 1631, in return for French gold, was the promise to observe friendship or neutrality towards Bavaria and the League, so far as they would observe them towards him. Nor was this promise of much avail, for when, after the battle of Breitenfeld, Gustavus determined to march upon central and southern Germany instead of on Vienna, all hope of detaching Bavaria from the Emperor had to be laid aside.

[Sidenote: =Open interference in Germany, 1632–1634.=]

As long as Gustavus Adolphus lived there was but little room for Richelieu in German politics. Had he survived a few years longer, it is not improbable that the world would have seen an alliance of the Moderates in Germany, under the leadership of Richelieu, supported possibly by both Maximilian and Wallenstein, against the Emperor and the king of Sweden. But the death of Gustavus quickly put the decisive voice in German affairs into the possession of France. Already in 1632 French troops had appeared upon the Rhine, and garrisoned the new fortress of Ehrenbreitstein at the invitation of the elector of Trier. In the same year Richelieu became a party to the League of Heilbronn, and so secured the right to interfere in German affairs. In 1633 a French army entered the old German territory of Lorraine and captured its capital Nancy, owing to the incessant intrigues against the all-powerful cardinal of which the duke had been guilty. The battle of Nördlingen in 1634 put Protestant Germany at the feet of Richelieu. The soil of Germany, harried and plundered, could with difficulty sustain the armies which devastated it. Sweden, poor and exhausted, could make no sacrifices. England was too much occupied with pecuniary difficulties at home to be able to send assistance to Germany. [Sidenote: =Declaration of war against Spain, 1635.=] France was the only power both able and willing to provide the sinews of war. She became the protector and director of the League of Heilbronn, took Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar and his army into her pay, claimed from the Swedes the custody of the fortresses held by them in Alsace, and on 19th May 1635 formally declared war against Spain.

[Sidenote: =The character of the war altered by French interference.=]

From that moment the character of the Thirty Years’ War profoundly alters. It is no longer a war of religion, to set limits to the progress of the Counter-Reformation or to save Catholicism or Protestantism from extinction. It is no longer a war of institutions, to maintain the authority of the Emperor or to preserve the sovereign rights of the princes. It is no longer a war of property, to resist the undoing of the territorial settlement of 1555. It is no longer a war for the re-settlement of Germany upon a new basis by military force. German interests no longer have a place in this terrible war waged for the destruction of Germany on German soil. Primarily, it is a war between the House of Bourbon and the House of Habsburg, to break the power of Spain and increase that of France, through the acquisition by the latter of Alsace and Lorraine. Secondarily, it is a war between the Swedes and the Empire, to gain for the former out of German soil an adequate compensation for the money which they had spent and the blood which they had shed. Two points of interest alone remain in tracing the melancholy story of the weary years, the gradual development of the power of France, and the brilliant achievements of skilful generalship.

The entrance of France into the war did not at first check the tide of imperialist success. Richelieu overestimated the resources and the military strength of France. [Sidenote: =Unsuccessful campaigns on the frontiers of France, 1635–1637.=] He put into the field no less than four armies, amounting in the aggregate to 120,000 men; but unaccustomed to war, ill disciplined, ill fed, ill paid, and badly commanded, they were no match for the veterans of Spain and the Emperor. It was the first time that the new monarchy in France had made war upon a grand scale, and it had to buy its experience. The campaigns of the years 1635, 1636, and 1637 told a story of almost unrelieved failure. In Italy the French armies just managed to hold their own. In Alsace and the Netherlands they were everywhere out-generalled and beaten back. In 1636, a Spanish army actually invaded France and threatened Paris. Had it not been for the skilful generalship of Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar in the Rhineland, and the signal success which attended the efforts of the Swedish army, it is not at all improbable that the Emperor would have been able to impose upon all Germany the conditions of the peace of Prague, and by procuring the retirement of the Swedes have narrowed the issues involved to the simple one of a national war between France and Austro-Spain. Already Bavaria and Catholic Germany, as well as Saxony, Brandenburg and nearly all the Lutheran powers, had accepted the treaty. Oxenstjerna and the Swedes had refused after protracted negotiations, only because the Emperor and John George would not hear of making over to them an inch of German soil. On their side they would not be content merely with a money indemnity. Saxony and Brandenburg accordingly joined their forces to those of the Emperor and determined to drive the Swedes back across the sea to their own country. [Sidenote: =Success of Baner in Germany, Battle of Wittstock, 1636.=] It was a critical moment. Had the Saxons pressed on vigorously after the final rupture of the negotiations in the autumn of 1635, they could hardly have failed to have crushed Baner the Swedish general at Magdeburg with their superior forces, but the opportunity was allowed to slip. Baner withdrew in safety to the north, and was there strongly reinforced. He now had under his orders an army sufficient to cope with his enemies, and after some marching and countermarching succeeded in throwing himself upon the Saxons and imperialists at Wittstock on the Mecklenberg frontier of Brandenburg on October 4th 1636, before the Brandenburgers could come to their assistance. The victory was one of the most complete won by the Swedes during the whole war. The elector’s army was almost annihilated, and Baner became as paramount in northern Germany as the imperialists were upon the Rhine until the following autumn when he was again driven back into Pomerania.

It is noticeable that both in diplomacy and war Richelieu improved his position year by year. Gradually he learned how to win campaigns, as he had learned gradually how to rule France. In the last four years of his life, he gathered the fruits for which he had so patiently laboured in the previous years. [Sidenote: =Capture of Breisach by Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, 1638.=] In 1638 Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar succeeded in making himself master of the upper Rhineland, and having defeated the imperialists at Rheinfelden occupied Freiburg in Breisgau, and on December 19th captured the important fortress of Breisach. Richelieu when he heard the news hurried to the bedside of his dying friend the Capuchin Joseph, ‘_Courage, père Joseph_,’ he cried, ‘_Breisach est à nous_,’ and with this characteristic viaticum to console and strengthen him in his last agony, the wily diplomatist passed from this world of intrigue, of which for the last ten years his subtle brain had been the master and the mainspring. [Sidenote: =Death of Bernhard. His army put under French command.=] In July of the next year Bernhard himself died, and his army, together with the conquests which it had made, passed directly under the command of the French. French governors ruled in the Alsatian towns, and from that time the annexation of Alsace to the French monarchy became one of the recognised objects of the policy of the Bourbons. The success of Richelieu did not stop with the land. Ever since the fatal day, when the capture of a few French ships by the Huguenot Soubise in the port of Blavet had sent the proud cardinal on his knees to England and the Dutch to borrow ships to use against the revolted Rochellois, Richelieu had devoted special care to the formation of a navy. In 1639 for the first time a French fleet appeared in the Channel, ready to cope with the huge galleons of Spain, and to cut the bond which united her to the Netherlands. France was now to play the same game at the expense of Spain which had been played by Elizabeth of England in the century before. But the time had not yet come when France was to wrest from Spain the command of the sea. [Sidenote: =Defeat of the Spanish Fleet in the Downs, 1639.=] The Spaniards succeeded in escaping the French fleet, but only to fall into the hands of their allies the Dutch. Sorely bestead by their quick-sailing antagonists, they took refuge in the Downs under the neutral flag of England, but even there the Dutch admiral pursued them, burned some of their ships, captured others, and forced the remnant to seek the friendly shelter of Dunkirk. From that time the passage of the Channel was closed to a Spanish fleet as long as Spain was at war with the Dutch or the French. [Sidenote: =Revolt of Portugal and Catalonia, 1640.=] In the next year still more serious misfortunes awaited the crown of Spain. Portugal assisted by French subsidies successfully reasserted its independence, and re-established its monarchy under the House of Braganza in December 1640, while earlier in the year the revolt of the high spirited Catalans effectually saved France from all danger of invasion from the south and opened her path to Roussillon, while in Italy the French flag was successfully planted on the walls of Turin. The two following years served to make good the ground thus won, and when Richelieu died in December 1642, he had the satisfaction of feeling that he had got his hand upon the throat of his huge antagonist and was choking her. With French armies strongly encamped on the Rhine and the plain of Piedmont, with French governors established in Alsace and Lorraine, with Roussillon and Cerdagne and the passes of Savoy in the possession of France, she had indeed acquired a frontier which not only preserved her from all danger of sudden invasion, but enabled her to strike a swift and deadly blow at her enemies, before they could have time to concentrate their forces against her. [Sidenote: =Improved position of France at the death of Richelieu, 1642.=] Richelieu in his eighteen years of power had given France concentration, unity, and a scientific frontier. Seated between the two seas, bounded by the Pyrenees the Alps and the Vosges, with her hand upon the Rhine and the Scheldt, France was prepared to strike for the supremacy of Europe.

[Sidenote: =Richelieu’s policy continued by Mazarin.=]

The direction of the policy of France passed on the death of the stern and uncompromising Richelieu into the hands of the supple and intriguing Mazarin, but the change made no difference to the conduct of foreign affairs. Louis XIII. followed his great minister quickly to the grave, and during the minority of his young son, Louis XIV., Anne of Austria, the queen-mother, who was entirely devoted to Mazarin, became regent, and the policy of aggrandisement at the expense of the Austro-Spanish House was vigorously carried on. Within a few months of the accession of the young king, his reign was graced by the most splendid success which had attended the arms of France since the capture of Calais by the duke of Guise. Don Francisco Mello, who had succeeded the cardinal-infant in the government of the Netherlands in December 1641, thought to take advantage of the weakness caused by the change of rulers in France; and sent the count of Fuentes at the head of all the available troops which he could muster, across the frontier. Mazarin, following his habitual policy of trying to attract the princes of the blood to his side, intrusted the command of the French army to the young duc d’Enghien, the eldest son of the prince of Condé, who found the Spaniards on the 19th of May 1643 strongly posted among the marshes which surround the little fortress of Rocroy. Condé, to give him the name by which he is best known, though he never in the course of a long training in war developed any of the higher qualities of a general, had that magnetic personal power over his men which is all-important on the battle-field. [Sidenote: =Destruction of the military power of Spain at Rocroy, 1643.=] They would follow him anywhere. The _furia francese_, which had been often remarked upon in the Italian wars of the sixteenth century, had been but the mad rush of an undisciplined mob, like the rush of African dervishes. Condé was the first great leader to utilise this power among disciplined troops, and to make the peculiar _élan_ of the French charge into one of the most decisive tactics of the battle-field. Ever since the days of the great captain, Gonsalvo da Cordova, the Spanish infantry had been the finest in the world. The solid mass of pikemen, wedged close together in a fortress-like formation, by their stubborn endurance could resist all cavalry attack, and by sheer weight bear down all opposition. But if once the mass became disorganised, it could never reform. Once break the ‘hedgehog’ of pikes, and the day was won. Gustavus Adolphus had shown at Breitenfeld how the superiority of artillery and musketry fire might open lanes in these mighty masses, into which the heavy cavalry might throw themselves, and overcome weight by weight in the shock of hand-to-hand conflict. Condé at Rocroy illustrated a similar principle by his mobile and disciplined infantry. Plunging a deadly fire into the dense immovable masses of the Spaniards, he waited for the moment when the falling men began to create confusion in the ranks, then against their front, and into their flanks he poured the lithe and well-trained infantry with irresistible effect. It was the story of the Armada and the English ships retold on land. The huge masses could do nothing against their swarming antagonists. Taken flank, front, and rear, they could not alter their formation, they could not adapt themselves to this new kind of warfare, they would not break and run, there was nothing left but to die. There is something inexpressibly pathetic in the figure of the old count of Fuentes, seated on his chair in the middle of the fast diminishing square of his choicest troops, for the gout would not permit him even to stand, calmly and patiently awaiting inevitable death, as the defending ranks became thinner and thinner, without the thought of surrender, without the power even of striking a blow in self-defence, the type of his country, and his country’s greatness, which was passing away with the shouts of victory which hailed the young conqueror of Rocroy.

[Sidenote: =Conquest of the Upper Rhineland by the French, 1644–1645.=]

The victory of Rocroy made France the first military power of Europe, but it was on the Rhine and not in the Netherlands that she put forth all her energies. During the remaining years of the war, the chief struggle was for the possession of the upper Rhineland. France wished to secure her hold over Alsace by occupying both banks of the great river, and making herself permanently mistress of the fortresses of Breisach and Philipsburg. The Emperor and Maximilian fought stubbornly, the one to save the Breisgau, one of the oldest possessions of the House of Habsburg, from falling into the hand of the enemy, the other to defend the frontiers of Bavaria from insult and plunder. In the cautious Mercy, and the dashing Werth, they obtained the services of generals not unfit to be matched with Condé and Turenne. At Freiburg in Breisgau for three days the impetuous Condé dashed himself in vain against the intrenchments of Mercy in August 1644, neglecting the wiser counsel of Turenne, who showed how easily a flank march through the mountains in the rear must compel the Bavarian general to retire. Just a year afterwards, on August 3d, 1645, Condé won a Pyrrhic victory at Nördlingen by his reckless and irresistible attack, but at too great an expenditure of life to permit him to make use of it, although the Imperialists were sore beset at the time, and Vienna itself threatened by the Swedes under Torstenson.

The honour of giving the final determination to the war belongs to Turenne. In 1646 he found himself for the first time at the head of an adequate force, and his own master, and he at once determined to put a stop to the ruinous system of frittering away advantages by acting on two different centres. [Sidenote: =Campaign of Turenne and Wrangel, 1646–1647.=] By combining his army with that of the Swedes, he saw that he could oppose an overwhelming force to the enemy, and end the war at a blow. Having procured the assent of Wrangel to his plan, who had replaced Torstenson in command of the Swedes, Turenne crossed the Rhine at Wesel, below Köln, and effected his junction with Wrangel on the Main. Slipping cleverly between the archduke Leopold William and the Bavarians, who sought to bar their passage, the united armies marched straight upon the Danube, seized Donauwörth, and spread themselves over the rich plain of Bavaria, plundering and burning up to the gates of Munich, and even penetrating as far as Bregenz in the Vorarlberg. Maximilian in despair deserted the Emperor, and signed a separate truce with the allies in May 1647. He did not keep it long. Stung in conscience, and afraid of after all losing the electoral hat, which he had risked so much to win, he again joined the Emperor in September of the same year. Terrible was the retribution which awaited him. Turenne and Wrangel returned into Bavaria with an army swollen with campfollowers to the number of 127,000. Beating the elector’s troops at Zusmarshausen on May 17th, 1648, they fastened like locusts on the land, and soon reduced it to the state of desolation in which the rest of Germany lay. Maximilian summoned Wallenstein’s old general Piccolomini to his aid, and prepared to strike one more blow for house and home, but before the armies met, the welcome news came that peace had been signed on the 24th of October at Münster, and the Thirty Years’ War was at an end.

[Sidenote: =Negotiations for peace, 1642.=]

For some years the desire for peace had been getting stronger and stronger. In Germany it was felt that the main obstacles to peace had passed away with the chief actors in the struggle. Ferdinand II. had died in the year 1637, and his son Ferdinand III. was not bound in conscience or in policy to the Edict of Restitution. The Elector Palatine, Frederick V., had preceded him in 1632. Christian of Anhalt, Christian of Brunswick, Wallenstein, Gustavus Adolphus, and Bethlen Gabor had long passed away, and the policies which they had represented had taken other forms. There was no German question left seriously difficult of solution. The real obstacles of peace were the ambition of France, and the determination of Oxenstjerna to carve a territory for the Swedes out of the Baltic provinces of Germany. But they could not prevent the beginning of negotiations, though they could do much to hinder their progress, and in 1642 it was agreed that representatives should meet in Westphalia, at the towns of Münster and Osnabrück, to discuss the preliminaries of a treaty. [Sidenote: =Congress of Münster and Osnabrück.=] So many were the obstructions thrown in the way that it was not till 1644 that the congress actually met. At Münster, which was the meeting-place of the Catholic powers, there appeared under the presidency of the papal nuncio (Chigi) and the ambassador of Venice--the two mediating powers--the representatives of the Empire, of France, of Spain, of the Catholic electors, and the Catholic princes of the Empire. At Osnabrück were gathered the representatives of Sweden, of the Protestant electors, and the Protestant princes and cities of the Empire, together with envoys of France, which was thus represented at both places. It was one thing to get the representatives to meet, it was quite another to get them to set to work. The proposal of an armistice during the negotiations had been definitely refused, and consequently it became to the interest of each of the chief combatants in turn to delay or promote the conclusion of peace as the fortune of war shifted from one side to the other. Questions of precedence and etiquette, always dear to the diplomatic mind, raised themselves in plenty from the side of France or Spain or Sweden, whenever things seemed to be going too quick. Months accordingly passed away and no progress was made.

[Sidenote: =Separate treaties made by Brandenburg, Saxony, and Bavaria.=]

The German princes, who saw their lands devastated, their villages burned, their towns depopulated, their subjects obliged to turn soldiers or brigands, or, where that was impossible, driven to stave off the pangs of hunger by eating grass and roots, and even human flesh, in order that France might annex Alsace, or Sweden seize Pomerania, soon lost all faith in the tortuous dealings of the diplomatists in Westphalia, and began to shift for themselves. On the 24th of July 1642, the young elector of Brandenburg, Frederick William, made a separate treaty of neutrality with the Swedes, which practically withdrew Brandenburg from the area of the war. On the 31st of August 1645, John George of Saxony followed the example of Brandenburg but on far worse terms. In 1647, as we have seen, even Maximilian of Bavaria was induced under stress of the invasion of Turenne to conclude for a short time a separate truce. These acts showed how passionately Germany longed for peace, but its actual conclusion was due to the pressure exercised upon the Emperor and Maximilian by the successes of Turenne, and upon Oxenstjerna and the Swedes by their young queen. [Sidenote: =Interference of Christina of Sweden in favour of peace.=] Christina, the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, had come of age in the year 1644, and had at once begun to show that masterful spirit and commanding ability which were to make her one of the most interesting characters of the century. Partly from a real desire to end the barbarities of the war, partly from the necessities of her crown, she at once applied herself to bring the Westphalian negotiations to a successful issue, sent a special embassy to the court of Paris, and insisted, sorely against the old chancellor’s will, upon accepting in behalf of Sweden far less than had hitherto been demanded.

[Sidenote: =The peace of Westphalia, 1648.=]

By the peace of Westphalia, signed at last on the 24th of October 1648, exactly thirty years and five months since the regents were thrown out of the window at Prague, the religious difficulty in Germany was met by the extension to the Calvinists of all the rights enjoyed by the Lutherans under the religious peace. [Sidenote: =1. Solution of the religious questions.=] The first day of the year 1624 was taken as the test day by which the question of the ecclesiastical lands was to be settled. All that was in Catholic hands on that day was to remain Catholic, all that was in Protestant hands was to remain Protestant. Roughly speaking the line thus laid down was the line which answered to the facts. It preserved the bishoprics of the south, which were avowedly Catholic, to the Catholics; and the secularised lands of the north, such as Bremen and Verden, Halberstadt and Magdeburg, where the Protestants were in a large majority, to Protestantism; and it secured to Catholicism the victories of the Counter-Reformation in the hereditary dominions of Austria, in Bohemia, in Bavaria, and in the upper Palatinate. Finally, the treaty provided for the equal division of the two interests in the imperial court of justice. There was little difficulty in thus finding a satisfactory solution of the questions connected with religion, which had been at the beginning of the war so grave and alarming. [Sidenote: =2. Territorial compensation.=] Both sides had by the process of time become aware that they could not destroy the other, and had learned, if they did not admit, the necessity of toleration. The serious problems for solution were those connected with compensation. Eventually, however, the following arrangements were agreed to.

1. Maximilian of Bavaria retained the electorate, which was made hereditary in his family, and was permitted to add the upper Palatinate to his duchy of Bavaria.

2. A new electorate was created for Charles Lewis, the eldest son of Frederick, Elector Palatine, and the lower Palatinate was restored to him.

3. Sweden received western Pomerania, including the mouth of the Oder, and the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden, which gave her a commanding strategical and commercial position on the German rivers, and the right of being represented in the German Diet.

4. Brandenburg was compensated for her loss of western Pomerania by the addition of the bishoprics of Halberstadt, Camin, Minden, and the greater part of Magdeburg, to her dominions; and by the confirmation of her inheritance in eastern Pomerania. In addition to this, she now obtained control over the duchies of Cleves, Mark and Ravensberg, which had been apportioned to her by the treaty of Xanten in 1614, but during the war had been occupied by the rival armies of the Spaniards and the Dutch.

5. France obtained possession of Austrian Alsace, including Breisach, and the right to garrison Philipsburg; but the free city of Strasburg was expressly reserved to the Empire. The three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun were formally annexed to the crown of France, while in Italy she received the fortress of Pinerolo.

6. Saxony retained Lusatia, and acquired part of the diocese of Magdeburg, and the independence of the Dutch and the Swiss was finally acknowledged.

[Sidenote: =The Peace, a solution of the religious difficulty.=]

The peace of Westphalia, like the war to which it put an end, marks the close of one epoch and the beginning of another. It closes the long chapter of the religious troubles in Germany, which grew out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and it did so in the most satisfactory manner possible, not by laying down any great principle of religious toleration or religious domination, but simply by recognising accomplished facts. Calvinism had worked its way to an equal position with Lutheranism among the religious forces of Germany, and that fact was accordingly recognised. The supremacy of each prince in his own dominions over the religious as well as the political conduct of his people had been recognised by the peace of Augsburg in 1555, and been uniformly acted upon by Catholic and Protestant alike ever since. It was now definitely, if tacitly admitted, and possible evils guarded against by drawing the territorial line between Catholicism and Protestantism as nearly as possible to coincide with the actual difference of belief. It was still possible for a Protestant prince in the north to oppress his Catholic subjects, it was still possible for a Catholic prince of the south to banish all Protestants from his dominions, but the question henceforth was but a local one, a matter solely between the prince and his subjects, which imposed upon Protestants and Catholics elsewhere in Germany no greater duty and gave them no more right to interfere, than did the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. in France. Such a solution may not have been from the point of view of morals the best conceivable. It was under the circumstances of the time the best possible. To modern ideas it may seem that the negotiators of Westphalia lost a great opportunity of forcing into the unwilling hands of Germany the priceless boon of religious toleration. Had they attempted to do so, they would only have kept alive the spirit of religious animosity, and given to political ambition the right again to shelter itself under the claims of religion and renew the flame of war. By making the question wholly one between prince and people, they ensured that all the conservative forces of human nature, the forces that make against novelty, disturbance, and revolution, the forces which impel men and governments so powerfully to take the line of the least resistance, should be enlisted on the side of religious peace. If the door was still left open to an archbishop of Salzburg to banish all Protestants from his dominions, the paucity of such instances of oppression after the peace of Westphalia, is alone sufficient proof of the truce in religious affairs which it practically brought about; while the danger of a hundred such acts of tyranny cannot weigh as a feather in the balance against the unspeakable horror of a renewal of the war.

[Sidenote: =The Peace the beginning of modern Europe.=]

The peace of Westphalia is also the beginning of a new era. It marks the formation of the modern European states system. In Germany itself the central fact registered by the peace is the final disintegration of the Empire. The machinery it is true was still left intact. There was an Emperor and a diet, electors and an imperial court of justice, but all reality had passed away from them as a governing power in Germany. The German people were governed by the German princes, who had all the rights of sovereignty. They could coin money, make war, organise armies, and send representatives to other courts. [Sidenote: =1. The Empire becomes Austrian.=] The central authority was reduced to a minimum, and if the Emperor was still a power in Germany, it was not because he was Emperor, but because he was archduke of Austria and many other German duchies, king of Bohemia, and king of Hungary. The effect is at once visible in the policy of the House of Austria. The Emperor still maintained his interests in Germany and on the Rhine, still he stood forward as the champion of Germany to prevent France from dominating over Europe, still from time to time he waged war to check the growing power of Prussia, to develop schemes of commercial enterprise in the Netherlands, but nevertheless, irresistibly, in spite of tradition, and of association, his real attention became fixed more and more irrevocably on the east and on the south. His policy in fact in its heart of hearts ceased to be imperial or even German and became purely Austrian. He sought compensation on the Danube for his losses on the Rhine. He sacrificed much for a hold over Italy, which should give to his impoverished and land-locked country the riches of the plain of Lombardy and ports on the Adriatic. Insensibly and steadily he pushed his territorial frontier more and more to the east and south, while Brandenburg actuated by similar forces was pushing hers to the west and to the north.

[Sidenote: =2. Sovereignty of the German princes.=]

Set free from even the shadow of imperial centralisation, Germany was enabled to follow unimpeded her own laws of development. In central Germany the spirit of disintegration, and the fearful desolation caused by the war conquered all desire for unity. Almost to the present day it has remained a heap of undistinguished and undistinguishable atoms. [Sidenote: =3. Growth of Brandenburg and Bavaria.=] But in north Germany, the natural tendency of small states to coalesce with larger states began to show itself, and Brandenburg at once started on that career of conquest and aggrandisement which has brought her in our own day to the headship of Europe, while Bavaria, in alliance with France, bid with some success against the House of Austria for the leadership of south Germany, which since 1866 she has practically attained. Thus, with regard to the internal politics of Germany, the peace of Westphalia set in motion the forces, which, by ousting the Emperor from predominance in Germany, throwing the energies of the House of Austria towards Italy and the lower Danube, and enabling the House of Hohenzollern to strike for the leadership of north Germany and the command of the Rhine, have during the last two hundred years permanently affected the balance of power in Europe and the condition of the German people.

[Sidenote: =4. Diminished influence of the Papacy.=]

Outside the boundaries of Germany, the treaties of Westphalia mark no less a change in the relations of the great powers of Europe. It is the last time that the Pope appears as the mediator of the peace of nations. His refusal to sanction the treaties was simply set on one side by Catholic and Protestant powers alike, and from that time his influence in the international politics of Europe ceased. [Sidenote: =5. Transitory character of Swedish greatness.=] France and Sweden are the two nations who have most right to claim the peace of Westphalia as marking an epoch in their national history. With Sweden it is the high-water mark of her European influence. The treaties recognised her as one of the great powers of Europe, and secured to her the supremacy of the Baltic, and the right to claim the allegiance of north Germany, if she could win it. But the task proved beyond her capacity, and she slowly shrank before the advancing power of Brandenburg and of Russia, until before a hundred years had passed it had become abundantly clear that with regard to Sweden the peace did not mark the permanent inclusion of a new power among the great nations of Europe.

[Sidenote: =6. Permanent advance of France.=]

With France the case was quite different. The peace is but one step on the long road of territorial aggrandisement on which she had definitely entered at the bidding of Richelieu and Mazarin. She became by the war the first military power in Europe. By the peace she was planted securely upon the Rhine and acquired not merely a scientific frontier for offence and defence in the virgin fortress of Metz, the mountains of the Vosges, and the strongholds of Breisach and Philipsburg, but an incentive to future exertion, and a spur to criminal ambition, in the desire to make her hold upon the Rhine but the beginning of a vaster scheme of conquest. The _damnosa hereditas_ of the Rhine frontier for France, sanctioned in part by the peace of Westphalia, has been the chief disturbing element in European politics for nearly two centuries and a half, and the malignancy of its poison shows even now no signs of abatement. The great questions, which have agitated Europe during the years which have elapsed since the Thirty Years’ War, have mainly centred round the rivalry of Russia and of Austria for the command of the Danube and the inheritance of the Turk, and the rivalry of France and Germany for the possession of the Rhine. The great settlements of European affairs, which have taken place since that time at Utrecht, at Vienna, at Paris, and at Berlin, have been but the hatching of the fully developed chicks from the eggs laid in Westphalia in 1648.

[Sidenote: =Desperate condition of Spain, 1648.=]

Spain was not included in the peace of Westphalia. The war between her and France still continued for twelve years more, though at the time the peace was signed at Münster it seemed as if the unwieldy monarchy was on the brink of dissolution. Portugal had asserted its independence, Catalonia assisted by a French army was in full revolt. Roussillon and Cerdagne were in French hands. Flanders and the port of Dunkirk had fallen under the spell of the conqueror of Rocroy. In 1646 a naval battle off the coast of Tuscany made the French for the first time masters of the Mediterranean. Finally in 1648 Naples revolted at the bidding of a fisherman named Masaniello, and, had Mazarin shown a little more vigour and decision, might have been entirely lost to the Spanish monarchy. Freed from the necessity of exertion on the side of the Rhine, Mazarin had but to press his victories home in the Netherlands and Catalonia to force Spain to a dishonourable peace. [Sidenote: =Spain saved by the outbreak of the Fronde, 1648.=] But suddenly all these advantages were lost, and the tables completely turned, by the grotesque outbreak of personal ambition, and constitutional factiousness, known as the Fronde. For six years the nobles and the citizens of Paris played at revolution, in order to wrest power out of the hands of Mazarin and transfer it to their own. Maddened by the spirit of faction, they did not hesitate to call in the enemy and join themselves to Spain, if thereby they could wreak their vengeance on the hated minister. Even Turenne and Condé were found at different times leading armies against France. But in the end the cleverness of the minister, the stubbornness of the queen-mother, and the influence of the royal authority prevailed; and in 1653 Mazarin returned from his second exile to take up again the reins of government which he held until his death.

[Sidenote: =Weakness of France after the Fronde, 1653.=]

How different were the circumstances under which he again resumed the war against Spain! The resources of France had been squandered, the armies of France had become demoralised, the authority of the government weakened, while Spain had profited by the difficulties of her enemy to recover the Netherlands and Catalonia, and, through the treason of Condé, was enabled to place one of the best generals of the day at the head of her armies. In 1653 he invaded France and threatened Paris, but was foiled by the superior strategy of Turenne, and obliged to retreat. In the three following years France slowly won back the frontier towns of the Netherlands. It was clear that neither side was able to inflict upon the other such a defeat as would end the war. [Sidenote: =Alliance between Mazarin and Cromwell, 1657.=] So in 1656 Mazarin, cardinal and absolutist though he was, sought for the alliance of Cromwell, the Protestant hero of the English revolution. Cromwell looked upon Spain with the eyes of Elizabeth, and saw in her but the chief supporter of Popery in Europe, and the chief obstacle to English trade. An agreement was soon arrived at by which 6000 of Cromwell’s soldiers, probably the best in Europe, were put at the disposal of Mazarin. In 1657 a change was quickly perceived in the war. Turenne, with the assistance of his new allies, defeated the Spaniards at the battle of the Dunes, captured Mardyke and Dunkirk, which was handed over to England, and overran the country almost up to Brussels in June 1658. This blow determined the Spanish government to treat for peace. Conferences were held between the ambassadors of the two countries on the Bidassoa during 1659, and on November 7th the peace of the Pyrenees was signed. [Sidenote: =The Peace of the Pyrenees, 1659.=] By it France acquired Artois, Roussillon, and Cerdagne, and the towns of Thionville, Landreçies, and Avesnes. She agreed to restore the duke of Lorraine to his duchy, on condition that the fortifications of Nancy were destroyed, and the armies of France allowed free passage through the country. Condé was pardoned and restored to his property and dignities. Finally the alliance was cemented by the marriage of Louis XIV. to Maria Theresa, the daughter of Philip IV., who on her marriage renounced on the part of herself and her children all claim to the throne of Spain, on receipt of a dowry of 500,000 crowns. This dowry was never paid, and in consequence it became a question whether the renunciation was of any effect at all.

[Sidenote: =Commanding position of France, 1660.=]

The peace of the Pyrenees is the complement of that of Westphalia. It marks the completion of the scientific frontier of France to the south. The primary work of Richelieu had been accomplished. On the south, on the south-east, and on the east, France was now possessed of a frontier not merely defensible, but equally available for offence or defence. Through the passes of the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Vosges, her armies could pour at a moment’s notice into the valleys of the Ebro, the Po, and the Rhine. Only to the north was the frontier still unmarked by natural boundaries. The annexation of Artois removed the danger some few miles farther away from Paris, but that was all. So grew up on the side of the Netherlands a desire for the Scheldt and the Demer as the natural boundaries of France to the north, analogous to the passion so fondly cherished by all French statesmen with regard to the Rhine to the east. The politics of the future were coloured and affected by the rivalry of the French and the Dutch on the Scheldt, as by the rivalry of the French and the Germans on the Rhine. Among the fondest dreams of French statesmen, second only to the acquisition of the Rhine, has been the annexation of the Netherlands as a legitimate object of French ambition, and it may be questioned whether any policy has cost France more blood and treasure than that which has turned some of the fairest and richest districts of the world into the cockpit of Europe. To Spain the peace of the Pyrenees is a great epoch. The peace of Vervins marked her failure, the peace of the Pyrenees marked her fall. She had once bid for supremacy over Europe and had failed. She had then entered the lists as the equal and rival of France and had been beaten. France issued from the contest victorious both by land and sea, and could condescend to take her former rival into protection and partnership. After the peace of the Pyrenees, France and Spain from being deadly rivals tended to become more and more the closest of friends, until the time came when, owing to the provisions of the peace, France stretched out its hands to absorb its mighty neighbour, and the family compacts of the Bourbons dominated the politics of the world.