Chapter XV: Section III: Frederick's Allies

[Sidenote: § 1. Proposal to take Mansfeld into English pay.]

The winter was coming on, and there would be time for negotiations before another blow was struck. But to give negotiations a chance it was necessary that Mansfeld's army should be fed, in order that he might be able to keep quiet while the diplomatists were disputing. James, therefore, wisely proposed to provide a sum of money for this purpose. But a quarrel with the House of Commons hurried on a dissolution, and he was unable to raise money sufficient for the purpose without a grant from Parliament.

[Sidenote: § 2. England and Spain.]

James, poor and helpless, was thus compelled to fall back upon the friendship of Spain, a friendship which he hoped to knit more closely by a marriage between his son, the Prince of Wales, and a Spanish Infanta. The Spanish Government was anxious, if possible, to avoid an extension of the war in Germany. Though all the riches of the Indies were at its disposal, that government was miserably poor. In a land where industry, the source of wealth, was held in dishonour, all the gold in the world was thrown away. Scarcely able to pay the armies she maintained in time of peace, Spain had now again to find money for the war in the Netherlands. In 1621 the twelve years' truce with the Dutch had come to an end, and Spinola's armies in Brabant and Flanders could not live, like Mansfeld's at the expense of the country, for fear of throwing the whole of the obedient provinces, as they were called, into the enemies' hands. If possible, therefore, that yawning gulf of the German war, which threatened to swallow up so many millions of ducats, must be closed. And yet how was it to be done? The great difficulty in the way of peace did not lie in Frederick's pretensions. They could easily be swept aside. The great difficulty lay in this--that the Catholics, having already the institutions of the Empire in their hands, were now also in possession of a successful army. How, under such circumstances, was Protestantism, with which so many temporal interests were bound up, to feel itself secure? And without giving security to Protestantism, how could a permanent peace be obtained?

[Sidenote: § 3. Spanish plans.]

To this problem the Spanish ministers did not care to address themselves. They thought that it would be enough to satisfy personal interests. They offered James a larger portion with the Infanta than any other sovereign in Europe would have given. They opposed tooth and nail the project for transferring the Electorate to Maximilian, as likely to lead to endless war. But into the heart of the great question they dared not go, tied and bound as they were by their devotion to the Church. Could not Frederick and James, they asked, be bought off by the assurance of the Palatinate to Frederick's heirs, on the simple condition of his delivering up his eldest son to be educated at Vienna? Though they said nothing whatever about any change in the boy's religion, they undoubtedly hoped that he would there learn to become a good Catholic.

[Sidenote: § 4. Frederick not likely to accede to them.]

Such a policy was hopeless from the beginning. Frederick had many faults. He was shallow and obstinate. But he really did believe in his religion as firmly as any Spaniard in Madrid believed in his; and it was certain that he would never expose his children to the allurements of the Jesuits of Vienna.

[Sidenote: § 5. A conference to be held at Brussels.]

It was settled that a conference should be held at Brussels, the capital of the Spanish Netherlands, first to arrange terms for a suspension of arms, and then to prepare the way for a general peace. The Spanish plan of pacification was not yet announced. But Frederick can hardly be blamed for suspecting that no good would come from diplomacy, or for discerning that a few regiments on his side would weigh more heavily in his favour than a million of words.

[Sidenote: § 6. Where was Frederick to expect help?]

The only question for him to decide was the quarter in which he should seek for strength. His weakness had hitherto arisen from his confidence in physical strength alone. To get together as many thousand men as possible and to launch them at the enemy had been his only policy, and he had done nothing to conciliate the order-loving portion of the population. The cities stood aloof from his cause. The North German princes would have nothing to say to him. If he could only have renounced his past, if he could have acknowledged that all he had hitherto done had been the fruitful root of disaster, if he could, with noble self-renunciation, have entreated others to take up the cause of German Protestantism, which in his hands had suffered so deeply, then it is not impossible that opinion, whilst opinion was still a power in Germany, would have passed over to his side, and that the coming mischief might yet have been averted.

[Sidenote: § 7. His preparations for war.]

But Frederick did not do this. If he had been capable of doing it he must have been other than he was. In 1622, as in 1619, the pupil of Christian of Anhalt looked to the mere development of numerical strength, without regard to the moral basis of force.

[Sidenote: § 8. Frederick's allies.]

It must be acknowledged that if numbers could give power, Frederick's prospects were never better than in the spring of 1622. Mansfeld's army was not, this time, to stand alone. In the south the Margrave of Baden-Durlach was arming in Frederick's cause. In the north, Christian of Brunswick was preparing to march to the aid of the Palatinate. Such names as these call up at once before us the two main difficulties which would have remained in the way of peace even if the question of the Palatinate could have been laid aside.

[Sidenote: § 9. The Margrave of Baden.]

The Margrave of Baden-Durlach had long been notorious for the skill with which he had found excuses for appropriating ecclesiastical property, and for defeating legal attempts to embarrass him in his proceedings.

[Sidenote: 1616.

§ 10. Christian of Brunswick.]

Christian of Brunswick was a younger brother of the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. By the influence of his family he secured in 1616 his election to the bishopric or administratorship of Halberstadt. The ceremonies observed at the institution of the youth, who had nothing of the bishop but the name, may well have seemed a degrading profanation in the eyes of a Catholic of that day. As he entered the Cathedral the _Te Deum_ was sung to the pealing organ. He was led to the high altar amidst the blaze of lighted candles. Then, whilst the choir sang 'Oh Lord! save thy people,' the four eldest canons placed him upon the altar. Subsequently he descended and, kneeling with the canons before the altar, three times intoned the words 'Oh Lord, save thy servant.' Then he was placed again upon the altar whilst a hymn of praise was sung. Lastly, he took his place opposite the pulpit whilst the courtly preacher explained that Christian's election had been in accordance with the express will of God. 'This,' he cried triumphantly, 'is the bishop whom God himself has elected. This is the man whom God has set as the ruler of the land.'

[Sidenote: § 11. Christian's fondness for fighting.]

Christian's subsequent proceedings by no means corresponded with the expectations of his enthusiastic admirers. Like one who has been handed down to evil renown in early English history, he did nought bishoplike. He was not even a good ruler of his domain. He left his people to be misgoverned by officials, whilst he wandered about the world in quest of action. As brainless for all higher purposes as Murat, the young Bishop was a born cavalry officer. He took to fighting for very love of it, just as young men in more peaceful times take to athletic sports.

[Sidenote: § 12. He takes up the cause of Elizabeth.]

And, if he was to fight at all, there could be no question on which side he would be found. There was a certain heroism about him which made him love to look upon himself as the champion of high causes and the promoter of noble aims. To such an one it would seem to be altogether debasing to hold his bishopric on the mere tenure of the agreement of Mühlhausen, to be debarred from taking the place due to him in the Diet of the Empire, and to be told that if he was very loyal and very obedient to the Emperor, no force would be employed to wrest from him that part of the property of the Church which he held through a system of iniquitous robbery. Then, too, came a visit to the Hague, where the bright eyes of his fair cousin the titular Queen of Bohemia chained him for ever to her cause, a cause which might soon become his own. For who could tell, when once the Palatinate was lost, whether the agreement of Mühlhausen would be any longer regarded?

[Sidenote: § 13. His ravages in the diocese of Paderborn.]

In the summer of 1621 Christian levied a force with which he marched into the Catholic bishopric of Paderborn. The country was in the course of forcible conversion by its bishop, and there was still in it a strong Lutheran element, which would perhaps have answered the appeal of a leader who was less purely an adventurer. But except in word, Catholic and Protestant were alike to Christian, so long as money could be got to support his army. Castles, towns, farmhouses were ransacked for the treasure of the rich, and the scanty hoard of the poor. We need not be too hard on him if he tore down the silver shrine of a saint in the cathedral of Paderborn, and melted it into coin bearing the legend:--'The friend of God and the enemy of the priests.' But it is impossible to forget he was the enemy of the peasants as well. Burning-masters appear among the regular officers of his army; and many a village, unable to satisfy his demands, went up in flames, with its peaceful industry ruined for ever. At last, satiated with plunder, he turned southward to the support of Mansfeld.

[Sidenote: § 14. Mansfeld will not make peace.]

Such were the commanders into whose hands the fortunes of German Protestantism had fallen. Mansfeld told Vere plainly that whether there were a truce or not, he at least would not lay down his arms unless he were indemnified for his expenses by a slice out of the Austrian possession of Alsace.

[Sidenote: § 15. Tilly in the midst of his enemies.]

If the three armies of the Margrave of Baden, of Christian of Brunswick, and of Mansfeld, could be brought to co-operate, Tilly, even if supported by Cordova's Spaniards, would be in a decided numerical inferiority. But he had the advantage of a central situation, of commanding veteran troops by whom he was trusted, and above all of being able to march or remain quiet at his pleasure, as not being dependent on mere pillage for his commissariat. He was inspired, too, by a childlike faith in the cause for which he was fighting as the cause of order and religion against anarchy and vice.