Chapter XX: Section IV: England and France

[Sidenote: § 1. Foreign powers ready to interfere.]

In the spring of 1624 there was rest for a moment. Mansfeld, having stripped East Friesland bare, drew back into the Netherlands. The only army still on foot was the army of the League, and if Germany had been an island in the middle of the Atlantic, exercising no influence upon other powers and uninfluenced by them, the continuance in arms of those troops might fairly be cited in evidence that the Emperor and the League wished to push their advantages still further, in spite of their assertions that they wanted nothing more than assurance of peace.

[Sidenote: § 2. Ferdinand's weakness.]

But Germany was not an island. Around it lay a multitude of powers with conflicting interests, but all finding in her distractions a fair field for pursuing their own objects. Ferdinand, in fact, had made himself just strong enough to raise the jealousy of his neighbours, but not strong enough to impose an impassible barrier to their attacks. He had got on his side the legal and military elements of success. He had put down all resistance. He had frightened those who dreaded anarchy. But he had not touched the national heart. He had taught men to make it a mere matter of calculation whether a foreign invasion was likely to do them more damage than the success of their own Emperor. Whilst he affected to speak in the name of Germany, more than half of Germany was neutral if not adverse in the struggle.

[Sidenote: 1623.

§ 3. Breach between England and Spain.]

England, at last, was giving signs of warlike preparation. Prince Charles had paid a visit to Madrid in hopes of bringing home a Spanish bride, and of regaining the Palatinate for his brother-in-law. He had come back without a wife, and with the prospect of getting back the Palatinate as distant as ever. He had learned what the Spanish plan was, that wonderful scheme for educating Frederick's children at Vienna, with all ostensible guarantees for keeping them in their father's faith, which were, however, almost certain to come to nothing when reduced to practice. And so he came back angry with the Spaniards, and resolved to urge his father to take up arms. In the spring of 1624 all negotiations between England and Spain were brought to an end, and Parliament was discussing with the king the best means of recovering the Palatinate.

[Sidenote: § 4. English plans.]

In the English House of Commons there was but little real knowledge of German affairs. The progress of the Emperor and the League was of too recent a date to be thoroughly comprehended. Men, remembering the days of Philip II., were inclined to overestimate the power of Spain, and to underestimate the power of the Emperor. They therefore fancied that it would be enough to attack Spain by sea, and to send a few thousand soldiers to the aid of the Dutch Republic.

[Sidenote: § 5. Question between the king and the House of Commons.]

James, if he was not prompt in action, at all events knew better than this. He believed that the Imperial power was now too firmly rooted in Germany to fall before anything short of a great European confederacy. From this the Commons shrunk. A war upon the continent would be extremely expensive, and, after all, their wrath had been directed against Spain, which had meddled with their internal affairs, rather than against the Emperor, who had never taken the slightest interest in English politics. The utmost they would do was to accept the king's statement that he would enter into negotiations with other powers and would lay the results before them in the winter.

[Sidenote: § 6. The French Government and the Huguenots.]

James first applied to France. He saw truly that the moment the struggle in Germany developed into a European war the key to success would lie in the hands of the French government. In that great country, then as now, ideas of the most opposite character were striving for the mastery. Old thoughts which had been abandoned in England in the sixteenth century were at issue with new thoughts which would hardly be adopted in England before the eighteenth. In France as well as in England and Germany, the question of the day was how religious toleration could be granted without breaking up the national unity. In England that unity was so strong that no party in the state could yet be brought to acknowledge that toleration should be granted at all. But for that very reason the question was on the fair way to a better settlement than it could have in France or Germany. When the nation was once brought face to face with the difficulty, men would ask, not whether one religion should be established in Northumberland and another in Cornwall, but what amount of religious liberty was good for men as men all over England. In Germany it could not be so. There the only question was where the geographical frontier was to be drawn between two religions. Neither those who wished to increase the power of the princes, nor those who wished to increase the power of the Emperor, were able to rise above the idea of a local and geographical division. And to some extent France was in the same condition. The Edict of Nantes had recognised some hundreds of the country houses of the aristocracy, and certain cities and towns, as places where the reformed religious doctrines might be preached without interference. But in France the ideal of national unity, though far weaker than it was in England, was far stronger than it was in Germany. In order to give security to the Protestant, or Huguenot towns as they were called in France, they had been allowed the right of garrisoning themselves, and of excluding the royal troops. They had thus maintained themselves as petty republics in the heart of France, practically independent of the royal authority.