Chapter XLII: Section II: Wallenstein's Attempt to dictate Peace

[Sidenote: § 1. Saxon negotiations with Wallenstein.]

Already, before the League of Heilbronn was signed, the Elector of Saxony was in negotiation with Wallenstein. In June peace was all but concluded between them. The Edict of Restitution was to be cancelled. A few places on the Baltic coast were to be ceded to Sweden, and a portion at least of the Palatinate was to be restored to the son of the Elector Frederick, whose death in the preceding winter had removed one of the difficulties in the way of an agreement. The precise form in which the restitution should take place, however, still remained to be settled.

Such a peace would doubtless have been highly disagreeable to adventurers like Bernhard of Weimar, but it would have given the Protestants of Germany all that they could reasonably expect to gain, and would have given the House of Austria one last chance of taking up the championship of national interests against foreign aggression.

[Sidenote: § 2. Opposition to Wallenstein.]

Such last chances, in real life, are seldom taken hold of for any useful purpose. If Ferdinand had had it in him to rise up in the position of a national ruler, he would have been in that position long before. His confessor, Father Lamormain, declared against the concessions which Wallenstein advised, and the word of Father Lamormain had always great weight with Ferdinand.

[Sidenote: § 3. General disapprobation of his proceedings.]

Even if Wallenstein had been single-minded he would have had difficulty in meeting such opposition. But Wallenstein was not single-minded. He proposed to meet the difficulties which were made to the restitution of the Palatinate by giving the Palatinate, largely increased by neighbouring territories, to himself. He would thus have a fair recompense for the loss of Mecklenburg, which he could no longer hope to regain. He fancied that the solution would satisfy everybody. In fact, it displeased everybody. Even the Spaniards, who had been on his side in 1632 were alienated by it. They were especially jealous of the rise of any strong power near the line of march between Italy and the Spanish Netherlands.

[Sidenote: § 4. Wallenstein and the Swedes.]

The greater the difficulties in Wallenstein's way the more determined he was to overcome them. Regarding himself, with some justification, as a power in Germany, he fancied himself able to act at the head of his army as if he were himself the ruler of an independent state. If the Emperor listened to Spain and his confessor in 1633 as he had listened to Maximilian and his confessor in 1630, Wallenstein might step forward and force upon him a wiser policy. Before the end of August he had opened a communication with Oxenstjerna, asking for his assistance in effecting a reasonable compromise, whether the Emperor liked it or not. But he had forgotten that such a proposal as this can only be accepted where there is confidence in him who makes it. In Wallenstein--the man of many schemes and many intrigues--no man had any confidence whatever. Oxenstjerna cautiously replied that if Wallenstein meant to join him against the Emperor he had better be the first to begin the attack.

[Sidenote: § 5. Was he in earnest?]

Whether Wallenstein seriously meant at this time to move against the emperor it is impossible to say. He loved to enter upon plots in every direction without binding himself to any; but he was plainly in a dangerous position. How could he impose peace upon all parties when no single party trusted him?

[Sidenote: § 6. He attacks the Saxons.]

If he was not trusted, however, he might still make himself feared. Throwing himself vigorously upon Silesia, he forced the Swedish garrisons to surrender, and, presenting himself upon the frontiers of Saxony, again offered peace to the two northern electors.

[Sidenote: § 7. Bernhard at Ratisbon.]

But Wallenstein could not be everywhere. Whilst the electors were still hesitating, Bernhard made a dash at Ratisbon, and firmly established himself in the city, within a little distance of the Austrian frontier. Wallenstein, turning sharply southward, stood in the way of his further advance, but he did nothing to recover the ground which had been lost. He was himself weary of the war. In his first command he had aimed at crushing out all opposition in the name of the imperial authority. His judgment was too clear to allow him to run the old course. He saw plainly that strength was now to be gained only by allowing each of the opposing forces their full weight. 'If the Emperor,' he said, 'were to gain ten victories it would do him no good. A single defeat would ruin him.' In December he was back again in Bohemia.

[Sidenote: § 8. Wallenstein's difficulties.]

It was a strange, Cassandra-like position, to be wiser than all the world, and to be listened to by no one; to suffer the fate of supreme intelligence which touches no moral chord and awakens no human sympathy. For many months the hostile influences had been gaining strength at Vienna. There were War-Office officials whose wishes Wallenstein systematically disregarded; Jesuits who objected to peace with heretics at all; friends of the Bavarian Maximilian who thought that the country round Ratisbon should have been better defended against the enemy; and Spaniards who were tired of hearing that all matters of importance were to be settled by Wallenstein alone.

[Sidenote: § 9. Opposition of Spain.]

The Spanish opposition was growing daily. Spain now looked to the German branch of the House of Austria to make a fitting return for the aid which she had rendered in 1620. Richelieu, having mastered Lorraine, was pushing on towards Alsace, and if Spain had good reasons for objecting to see Wallenstein established in the Palatinate, she had far better reasons for objecting to see France established in Alsace. Yet for all these special Spanish interests Wallenstein cared nothing. His aim was to place himself at the head of a German national force, and to regard all questions simply from his own point of view. If he wished to see the French out of Alsace and Lorraine, he wished to see the Spaniards out of Alsace and Lorraine as well.

[Sidenote: § 10. The Cardinal Infant.]

And, as was often the case with Wallenstein, a personal difference arose by the side of the political difference. The Emperor's eldest son, Ferdinand, the King of Hungary, was married to a Spanish Infanta, the sister of Philip IV., who had once been the promised bride of Charles I. of England. Her brother, another Ferdinand, usually known from his rank in Church and State as the Cardinal-Infant, had recently been appointed Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, and was waiting in Italy for assistance to enable him to conduct an army through Germany to Brussels. That assistance Wallenstein refused to give. The military reasons which he alleged for his refusal may have been good enough, but they had a dubious sound in Spanish ears. It looked as if he was simply jealous of Spanish influence in Western Germany.

[Sidenote: § 11. The Emperor's hesitation.]

Such were the influences which were brought to bear upon the Emperor after Wallenstein's return from Ratisbon in December. Ferdinand, as usual, was distracted between the two courses proposed. Was he to make the enormous concessions to the Protestants involved in the plan of Wallenstein; or was he to fight it out with France and the Protestants together according to the plan of Spain? To Wallenstein by this time the Emperor's resolutions had become almost a matter of indifference. He had resolved to force a reasonable peace upon Germany, with the Emperor, if it might be so; without him, if he refused his support.

[Sidenote: 1634.

§ 12. Wallenstein and the army.]

Wallenstein was well aware that his whole plan depended on his hold over the army. In January he received assurances from three of his principal generals, Piccolomini, Gallas, and Aldringer, that they were ready to follow him wheresoever he might lead them, and he was sanguine enough to take these assurances for far more than they were worth. Neither they nor he himself were aware to what lengths he would go in the end. For the present it was a mere question of putting pressure upon the Emperor to induce him to accept a wise and beneficent peace.