Chapter XLVII: Section II: Spanish Successes

[Sidenote: § 1. Failure of the French attack on the Netherlands.]

Precisely in the most ambitious part of his programme Richelieu failed most signally. The junction with the Dutch was effected without difficulty; but the hoped-for instrument of success proved the parent of disaster. Whatever Flemings and Brabanters might think of Spain, they soon made it plain that they would have nothing to do with the Dutch. A national enthusiasm against Protestant aggression from the north made defence easy, and the French army had to return completely unsuccessful. Failure, too, was reported from other quarters. The French armies had no experience of war on a large scale, and no military leader of eminent ability had yet appeared to command them. The Italian campaign came to nothing, and it was only by a supreme effort of military skill that Bernhard, driven to retreat, preserved his army from complete destruction.

[Sidenote: § 2. Spanish invasion of France.]

In 1636 France was invaded. The Cardinal-Infant crossed the Somme, took Corbie, and advanced to the banks of the Oise. All Paris was in commotion. An immediate siege was expected, and inquiry was anxiously made into the state of the defences. Then Richelieu, coming out of his seclusion, threw himself upon the nation. He appealed to the great legal, ecclesiastical, and commercial corporations of Paris, and he did not appeal in vain. Money, voluntarily offered, came pouring into the treasury for the payment of the troops. Those who had no money gave themselves eagerly for military service. It was remarked that Paris, so fanatically Catholic in the days of St. Bartholomew and the League, entrusted its defence to the Protestant marshal La Force, whose reputation for integrity inspired universal confidence.

[Sidenote: § 3. The invaders driven back.]

The resistance undertaken in such a spirit in Paris was imitated by the other towns of the kingdom. Even the nobility, jealous as they were of the Cardinal, forgot their grievances as an aristocracy in their duties as Frenchmen. Their devotion was not put to the test of action. The invaders, frightened at the unanimity opposed to them, hesitated and turned back. In September, Lewis took the field in person. In November he appeared before Corbie; and the last days of the year saw the fortress again in the keeping of a French garrison. The war, which was devastating Germany, was averted from France by the union produced by the mild tolerance of Richelieu.

[Sidenote: § 4. Battle of Wittstock.]

In Germany, too, affairs had taken a turn. The Elector of Saxony had hoped to drive the Swedes across the sea; but a victory gained on October 4, at Wittstock, by the Swedish general, Baner, the ablest of the successors of Gustavus, frustrated his intentions. Henceforward North Germany was delivered over to a desolation with which even the misery inflicted by Wallenstein affords no parallel.

[Sidenote: § 5. Death of Ferdinand II.]

Amidst these scenes of failure and misfortune the man whose policy had been mainly responsible for the miseries of his country closed his eyes for ever. On February 15, 1637, Ferdinand II. died at Vienna. Shortly before his death the King of Hungary had been elected King of the Romans, and he now, by his father's death, became the Emperor Ferdinand III.

[Sidenote: § 6. Ferdinand III.]

The new Emperor had no vices. He did not even care, as his father did, for hunting and music. When the battle of Nördlingen was won under his command he was praying in his tent whilst his soldiers were fighting. He sometimes took upon himself to give military orders, but the handwriting in which they were conveyed was such an abominable scrawl that they only served to enable his generals to excuse their defeats by the impossibility of reading their instructions. His great passion was for keeping strict accounts. Even the Jesuits, it is said, found out that, devoted as he was to his religion, he had a sharp eye for his expenditure. One day they complained that some tolls bequeathed to them by his father had not been made over to them, and represented the value of the legacy as a mere trifle of 500 florins a year. The Emperor at once gave them an order upon the treasury for the yearly payment of the sum named, and took possession of the tolls for the maintenance of the fortifications of Vienna. The income thus obtained is said to have been no less than 12,000 florins a year.

[Sidenote: § 7. Campaign of 1637.]

Such a man was not likely to rescue the Empire from its miseries. The first year of his reign, however, was marked by a gleam of good fortune. Baner lost all that he had gained at Wittstock, and was driven back to the shores of the Baltic. On the western frontier the imperialists were equally successful. Würtemberg accepted the Peace of Prague, and submitted to the Emperor. A more general peace was talked of. But till Alsace was secured to one side or the other no peace was possible.