This motive was their avowed hatred of the religion which Austria
protected, and their enthusiastic attachment to a doctrine which that
House was endeavouring to extirpate by fire and sword.
protected, and their enthusiastic attachment to a doctrine which that
House was endeavouring to extirpate by fire and sword.
Schiller - Thirty Years War
It has been.
carefully revised, and is now, for the first time, published complete.
THE BRIDE OF MESSINA, which has been regarded as the poetical
masterpiece of Schiller, and, perhaps of all his works, presents the
greatest difficulties to the translator, is rendered by A. Lodge, Esq. ,
M. A. This version, on its first publication in England, a few years
ago, was received with deserved eulogy by distinguished critics. To the
present edition has been prefixed Schiller’s Essay on the Use of the
Chorus in Tragedy, in which the author’s favorite theory of the “Ideal
of Art” is enforced with great ingenuity and eloquence.
Contents:
Book I.
Introduction. --General effects of the Reformation. --Revolt of Matthias.
--The Emperor cedes Austria and Hungary to him. --Matthias acknowledged
King of Bohemia. --The Elector of Cologne abjures the Catholic Religion.
--Consequences. --The Elector Palatine. --Dispute respecting the
Succession of Juliers. --Designs of Henry IV. of France. --Formation of
the Union. --The League. --Death of the Emperor Rodolph. --Matthias
succeeds him. --Troubles in Bohemia. --Civil War. --Ferdinand extirpates
the Protestant Religion from Styria. --The Elector Palatine, Frederick
V. , is chosen King by the Bohemians. --He accepts the Crown of Bohemia. --
Bethlen Gabor, Prince of Transylvania, invades Austria. --The Duke of
Bavaria and the Princes of the League embrace the cause of Ferdinand. --
The Union arm for Frederick. --The Battle of Prague and total subjection
of Bohemia.
Book II.
State of the Empire. --Of Europe. --Mansfeld. --Christian, Duke of
Brunswick. --Wallenstein raises an Imperial Army at his own expense.
--The King of Denmark defeated. --Death of Mansfeld. --Edict of
Restitution in 1628. --Diet at Ratisbon. --Negociations. --Wallenstein
deprived of the Command. --Gustavus Adolphus. --Swedish Army. --Gustavus
Adolphus takes his leave of the States at Stockholm. --Invasion by the
Swedes. --Their progress in Germany. --Count Tilly takes the Command of
the Imperial Troops. --Treaty with France. --Congress at Leipzig. --Siege
and cruel fate of Magdeburg. --Firmness of the Landgrave of Cassel. --
Junction of the Saxons with the Swedes. --Battle of Leipzig. --
Consequences of that Victory.
Book III.
Situation of Gustavus Adolphus after the Battle of Leipzig. --Progress of
Gustavus Adolphus. --The French invade Lorraine. --Frankfort taken. --
Capitulation of Mentz. --Tilly ordered by Maximilian to protect Bavaria.
--Gustavus Adolphus passes the Lech. --Defeat and Death of Tilly. --
Gustavus takes Munich. --The Saxon Army invades Bohemia, and takes
Prague. --Distress of the Emperor. --Secret Triumph of Wallenstein. --
He offers to Join Gustavus Adolphus. --Wallenstein re-assumes the
Command. --Junction of Wallenstein with the Bavarians. --Gustavus Adolphus
defends Nuremberg. --Attacks Wallenstein’s Intrenchments. --Enters
Saxony. --Goes to the succour of the Elector of Saxony. --Marches against
Wallenstein. --Battle of Lutzen. --Death of Gustavus Adolphus. --Situation
of Germany after the Battle of Lutzen.
Book IV.
Closer Alliance between France and Sweden. --Oxenstiern takes the
Direction of Affairs. --Death of the Elector Palatine. --Revolt of the
Swedish Officers. --Duke Bernhard takes Ratisbon. --Wallenstein enters
Silesia. --Forms Treasonable Designs. --Forsaken by the Army. --Retires to
Egra. --His associates put to death. --Wallenstein’s death. --His
Character.
Book V.
Battle of Nordlingen. --France enters into an Alliance against Austria. --
Treaty of Prague. --Saxony joins the Emperor. --Battle of Wistock gained
by the Swedes. --Battle of Rheinfeld gained by Bernhard, Duke of Weimar.
--He takes Brisach. --His death. --Death of Ferdinand II. --Ferdinand III.
succeeds him. --Celebrated Retreat of Banner in Pomerania. --His
Successes. --Death. --Torstensohn takes the Command. --Death of Richelieu
and Louis XIII. --Swedish Victory at Jankowitz. --French defeated at
Freyburg. --Battle of Nordlingen gained by Turenne and Conde. --Wrangel
takes the Command of the Swedish Army. --Melander made Commander of the
Emperor’s Army. --The Elector of Bavaria breaks the Armistice. --He adopts
the same Policy towards the Emperor as France towards the Swedes. --The
Weimerian Cavalry go over to the Swedes. --Conquest of New Prague by
Koenigsmark, and Termination of the Thirty Years’ War.
HISTORY OF THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR IN GERMANY.
BOOK I.
From the beginning of the religious wars in Germany, to the peace of
Munster, scarcely any thing great or remarkable occurred in the
political world of Europe in which the Reformation had not an important
share. All the events of this period, if they did not originate in,
soon became mixed up with, the question of religion, and no state was
either too great or too little to feel directly or indirectly more or
less of its influence.
Against the reformed doctrine and its adherents, the House of Austria
directed, almost exclusively, the whole of its immense political power.
In France, the Reformation had enkindled a civil war which, under four
stormy reigns, shook the kingdom to its foundations, brought foreign
armies into the heart of the country, and for half a century rendered it
the scene of the most mournful disorders. It was the Reformation, too,
that rendered the Spanish yoke intolerable to the Flemings, and awakened
in them both the desire and the courage to throw off its fetters, while
it also principally furnished them with the means of their emancipation.
And as to England, all the evils with which Philip the Second threatened
Elizabeth, were mainly intended in revenge for her having taken his
Protestant subjects under her protection, and placing herself at the
head of a religious party which it was his aim and endeavour to
extirpate. In Germany, the schisms in the church produced also a
lasting political schism, which made that country for more than a
century the theatre of confusion, but at the same time threw up a firm
barrier against political oppression. It was, too, the Reformation
principally that first drew the northern powers, Denmark and Sweden,
into the political system of Europe; and while on the one hand the
Protestant League was strengthened by their adhesion, it on the other
was indispensable to their interests. States which hitherto scarcely
concerned themselves with one another’s existence, acquired through the
Reformation an attractive centre of interest, and began to be united by
new political sympathies. And as through its influence new relations
sprang up between citizen and citizen, and between rulers and subjects,
so also entire states were forced by it into new relative positions.
Thus, by a strange course of events, religious disputes were the means
of cementing a closer union among the nations of Europe.
Fearful indeed, and destructive, was the first movement in which this
general political sympathy announced itself; a desolating war of thirty
years, which, from the interior of Bohemia to the mouth of the Scheldt,
and from the banks of the Po to the coasts of the Baltic, devastated
whole countries, destroyed harvests, and reduced towns and villages to
ashes; which opened a grave for many thousand combatants, and for half a
century smothered the glimmering sparks of civilization in Germany, and
threw back the improving manners of the country into their pristine
barbarity and wildness. Yet out of this fearful war Europe came forth
free and independent. In it she first learned to recognize herself as a
community of nations; and this intercommunion of states, which
originated in the thirty years’ war, may alone be sufficient to
reconcile the philosopher to its horrors. The hand of industry has
slowly but gradually effaced the traces of its ravages, while its
beneficent influence still survives; and this general sympathy among the
states of Europe, which grew out of the troubles in Bohemia, is our
guarantee for the continuance of that peace which was the result of the
war. As the sparks of destruction found their way from the interior of
Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria, to kindle Germany, France, and the half
of Europe, so also will the torch of civilization make a path for itself
from the latter to enlighten the former countries.
All this was effected by religion. Religion alone could have rendered
possible all that was accomplished, but it was far from being the SOLE
motive of the war. Had not private advantages and state interests been
closely connected with it, vain and powerless would have been the
arguments of theologians; and the cry of the people would never have met
with princes so willing to espouse their cause, nor the new doctrines
have found such numerous, brave, and persevering champions. The
Reformation is undoubtedly owing in a great measure to the invincible
power of truth, or of opinions which were held as such. The abuses in
the old church, the absurdity of many of its dogmas, the extravagance of
its requisitions, necessarily revolted the tempers of men, already
half-won with the promise of a better light, and favourably disposed
them towards the new doctrines. The charm of independence, the rich
plunder of monastic institutions, made the Reformation attractive in the
eyes of princes, and tended not a little to strengthen their inward
convictions. Nothing, however, but political considerations could have
driven them to espouse it. Had not Charles the Fifth, in the
intoxication of success, made an attempt on the independence of the
German States, a Protestant league would scarcely have rushed to arms in
defence of freedom of belief; but for the ambition of the Guises, the
Calvinists in France would never have beheld a Conde or a Coligny at
their head. Without the exaction of the tenth and the twentieth penny,
the See of Rome had never lost the United Netherlands. Princes fought
in self-defence or for aggrandizement, while religious enthusiasm
recruited their armies, and opened to them the treasures of their
subjects. Of the multitude who flocked to their standards, such as were
not lured by the hope of plunder imagined they were fighting for the
truth, while in fact they were shedding their blood for the personal
objects of their princes.
And well was it for the people that, on this occasion, their interests
coincided with those of their princes. To this coincidence alone were
they indebted for their deliverance from popery. Well was it also for
the rulers, that the subject contended too for his own cause, while he
was fighting their battles. Fortunately at this date no European
sovereign was so absolute as to be able, in the pursuit of his political
designs, to dispense with the goodwill of his subjects. Yet how
difficult was it to gain and to set to work this goodwill! The most
impressive arguments drawn from reasons of state fall powerless on the
ear of the subject, who seldom understands, and still more rarely is
interested in them. In such circumstances, the only course open to a
prudent prince is to connect the interests of the cabinet with some one
that sits nearer to the people’s heart, if such exists, or if not, to
create it.
In such a position stood the greater part of those princes who embraced
the cause of the Reformation. By a strange concatenation of events, the
divisions of the Church were associated with two circumstances, without
which, in all probability, they would have had a very different
conclusion. These were, the increasing power of the House of Austria,
which threatened the liberties of Europe, and its active zeal for the
old religion. The first aroused the princes, while the second armed the
people.
The abolition of a foreign jurisdiction within their own territories,
the supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, the stopping of the treasure
which had so long flowed to Rome, the rich plunder of religious
foundations, were tempting advantages to every sovereign. Why, then, it
may be asked, did they not operate with equal force upon the princes of
the House of Austria? What prevented this house, particularly in its
German branch, from yielding to the pressing demands of so many of its
subjects, and, after the example of other princes, enriching itself at
the expense of a defenceless clergy? It is difficult to credit that a
belief in the infallibility of the Romish Church had any greater
influence on the pious adherence of this house, than the opposite
conviction had on the revolt of the Protestant princes. In fact,
several circumstances combined to make the Austrian princes zealous
supporters of popery. Spain and Italy, from which Austria derived its
principal strength, were still devoted to the See of Rome with that
blind obedience which, ever since the days of the Gothic dynasty, had
been the peculiar characteristic of the Spaniard. The slightest
approximation, in a Spanish prince, to the obnoxious tenets of Luther
and Calvin, would have alienated for ever the affections of his
subjects, and a defection from the Pope would have cost him the kingdom.
A Spanish prince had no alternative but orthodoxy or abdication. The
same restraint was imposed upon Austria by her Italian dominions, which
she was obliged to treat, if possible, with even greater indulgence;
impatient as they naturally were of a foreign yoke, and possessing also
ready means of shaking it off. In regard to the latter provinces,
moreover, the rival pretensions of France, and the neighbourhood of the
Pope, were motives sufficient to prevent the Emperor from declaring in
favour of a party which strove to annihilate the papal see, and also to
induce him to show the most active zeal in behalf of the old religion.
These general considerations, which must have been equally weighty with
every Spanish monarch, were, in the particular case of Charles V. , still
further enforced by peculiar and personal motives. In Italy this
monarch had a formidable rival in the King of France, under whose
protection that country might throw itself the instant that Charles
should incur the slightest suspicion of heresy. Distrust on the part of
the Roman Catholics, and a rupture with the church, would have been
fatal also to many of his most cherished designs. Moreover, when
Charles was first called upon to make his election between the two
parties, the new doctrine had not yet attained to a full and commanding
influence, and there still subsisted a prospect of its reconciliation
with the old. In his son and successor, Philip the Second, a monastic
education combined with a gloomy and despotic disposition to generate an
unmitigated hostility to all innovations in religion; a feeling which
the thought that his most formidable political opponents were also the
enemies of his faith was not calculated to weaken. As his European
possessions, scattered as they were over so many countries, were on all
sides exposed to the seductions of foreign opinions, the progress of the
Reformation in other quarters could not well be a matter of indifference
to him. His immediate interests, therefore, urged him to attach himself
devotedly to the old church, in order to close up the sources of the
heretical contagion. Thus, circumstances naturally placed this prince
at the head of the league which the Roman Catholics formed against the
Reformers. The principles which had actuated the long and active reigns
of Charles V. and Philip the Second, remained a law for their
successors; and the more the breach in the church widened, the firmer
became the attachment of the Spaniards to Roman Catholicism.
The German line of the House of Austria was apparently more unfettered;
but, in reality, though free from many of these restraints, it was yet
confined by others. The possession of the imperial throne--a dignity
it was impossible for a Protestant to hold, (for with what consistency
could an apostate from the Romish Church wear the crown of a Roman
emperor? ) bound the successors of Ferdinand I. to the See of Rome.
Ferdinand himself was, from conscientious motives, heartily attached to
it. Besides, the German princes of the House of Austria were not
powerful enough to dispense with the support of Spain, which, however,
they would have forfeited by the least show of leaning towards the new
doctrines. The imperial dignity, also, required them to preserve the
existing political system of Germany, with which the maintenance of
their own authority was closely bound up, but which it was the aim of
the Protestant League to destroy. If to these grounds we add the
indifference of the Protestants to the Emperor’s necessities and to the
common dangers of the empire, their encroachments on the temporalities
of the church, and their aggressive violence when they became conscious
of their own power, we can easily conceive how so many concurring
motives must have determined the emperors to the side of popery, and how
their own interests came to be intimately interwoven with those of the
Roman Church. As its fate seemed to depend altogether on the part taken
by Austria, the princes of this house came to be regarded by all Europe
as the pillars of popery. The hatred, therefore, which the Protestants
bore against the latter, was turned exclusively upon Austria; and the
cause became gradually confounded with its protector.
But this irreconcileable enemy of the Reformation--the House of Austria
--by its ambitious projects and the overwhelming force which it could
bring to their support, endangered, in no small degree, the freedom of
Europe, and more especially of the German States. This circumstance
could not fail to rouse the latter from their security, and to render
them vigilant in self-defence. Their ordinary resources were quite
insufficient to resist so formidable a power. Extraordinary exertions
were required from their subjects; and when even these proved far from
adequate, they had recourse to foreign assistance; and, by means of a
common league, they endeavoured to oppose a power which, singly, they
were unable to withstand.
But the strong political inducements which the German princes had to
resist the pretensions of the House of Austria, naturally did not extend
to their subjects. It is only immediate advantages or immediate evils
that set the people in action, and for these a sound policy cannot wait.
Ill then would it have fared with these princes, if by good fortune
another effectual motive had not offered itself, which roused the
passions of the people, and kindled in them an enthusiasm which might be
directed against the political danger, as having with it a common cause
of alarm.
This motive was their avowed hatred of the religion which Austria
protected, and their enthusiastic attachment to a doctrine which that
House was endeavouring to extirpate by fire and sword. Their attachment
was ardent, their hatred invincible. Religious fanaticism anticipates
even the remotest dangers. Enthusiasm never calculates its sacrifices.
What the most pressing danger of the state could not gain from the
citizens, was effected by religious zeal. For the state, or for the
prince, few would have drawn the sword; but for religion, the merchant,
the artist, the peasant, all cheerfully flew to arms. For the state, or
for the prince, even the smallest additional impost would have been
avoided; but for religion the people readily staked at once life,
fortune, and all earthly hopes. It trebled the contributions which
flowed into the exchequer of the princes, and the armies which marched
to the field; and, in the ardent excitement produced in all minds by the
peril to which their faith was exposed, the subject felt not the
pressure of those burdens and privations under which, in cooler moments,
he would have sunk exhausted. The terrors of the Spanish Inquisition,
and the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s, procured for the Prince of
Orange, the Admiral Coligny, the British Queen Elizabeth, and the
Protestant princes of Germany, supplies of men and money from their
subjects, to a degree which at present is inconceivable.
But, with all their exertions, they would have effected little against a
power which was an overmatch for any single adversary, however powerful.
At this period of imperfect policy, accidental circumstances alone could
determine distant states to afford one another a mutual support. The
differences of government, of laws, of language, of manners, and of
character, which hitherto had kept whole nations and countries as it
were insulated, and raised a lasting barrier between them, rendered one
state insensible to the distresses of another, save where national
jealousy could indulge a malicious joy at the reverses of a rival. This
barrier the Reformation destroyed. An interest more intense and more
immediate than national aggrandizement or patriotism, and entirely
independent of private utility, began to animate whole states and
individual citizens; an interest capable of uniting numerous and distant
nations, even while it frequently lost its force among the subjects of
the same government. With the inhabitants of Geneva, for instance, of
England, of Germany, or of Holland, the French Calvinist possessed a
common point of union which he had not with his own countrymen. Thus,
in one important particular, he ceased to be the citizen of a single
state, and to confine his views and sympathies to his own country alone.
The sphere of his views became enlarged. He began to calculate his own
fate from that of other nations of the same religious profession, and to
make their cause his own. Now for the first time did princes venture to
bring the affairs of other countries before their own councils; for the
first time could they hope for a willing ear to their own necessities,
and prompt assistance from others. Foreign affairs had now become a
matter of domestic policy, and that aid was readily granted to the
religious confederate which would have been denied to the mere
neighbour, and still more to the distant stranger. The inhabitant of
the Palatinate leaves his native fields to fight side by side with his
religious associate of France, against the common enemy of their faith.
The Huguenot draws his sword against the country which persecutes him,
and sheds his blood in defence of the liberties of Holland. Swiss is
arrayed against Swiss; German against German, to determine, on the banks
of the Loire and the Seine, the succession of the French crown. The
Dane crosses the Eider, and the Swede the Baltic, to break the chains
which are forged for Germany.
It is difficult to say what would have been the fate of the Reformation,
and the liberties of the Empire, had not the formidable power of Austria
declared against them. This, however, appears certain, that nothing so
completely damped the Austrian hopes of universal monarchy, as the
obstinate war which they had to wage against the new religious opinions.
Under no other circumstances could the weaker princes have roused their
subjects to such extraordinary exertions against the ambition of
Austria, or the States themselves have united so closely against the
common enemy.
The power of Austria never stood higher than after the victory which
Charles V. gained over the Germans at Muehlberg. With the treaty of
Smalcalde the freedom of Germany lay, as it seemed, prostrate for ever;
but it revived under Maurice of Saxony, once its most formidable enemy.
All the fruits of the victory of Muehlberg were lost again in the
congress of Passau, and the diet of Augsburg; and every scheme for civil
and religious oppression terminated in the concessions of an equitable
peace.
The diet of Augsburg divided Germany into two religious and two
political parties, by recognizing the independent rights and existence
of both. Hitherto the Protestants had been looked on as rebels; they
were henceforth to be regarded as brethren--not indeed through
affection, but necessity. By the Interim, the Confession of Augsburg
was allowed temporarily to take a sisterly place alongside of the olden
religion, though only as a tolerated neighbour.
[A system of Theology so called, prepared by order of the Emperor
Charles V. for the use of Germany, to reconcile the differences
between the Roman Catholics and the Lutherans, which, however, was
rejected by both parties--Ed. ]
To every secular state was conceded the right of establishing the
religion it acknowledged as supreme and exclusive within its own
territories, and of forbidding the open profession of its rival.
Subjects were to be free to quit a country where their own religion was
not tolerated. The doctrines of Luther for the first time received a
positive sanction; and if they were trampled under foot in Bavaria and
Austria, they predominated in Saxony and Thuringia. But the sovereigns
alone were to determine what form of religion should prevail within
their territories; the feelings of subjects who had no representatives
in the diet were little attended to in the pacification. In the
ecclesiastical territories, indeed, where the unreformed religion
enjoyed an undisputed supremacy, the free exercise of their religion was
obtained for all who had previously embraced the Protestant doctrines;
but this indulgence rested only on the personal guarantee of Ferdinand,
King of the Romans, by whose endeavours chiefly this peace was effected;
a guarantee, which, being rejected by the Roman Catholic members of the
Diet, and only inserted in the treaty under their protest, could not of
course have the force of law.
If it had been opinions only that thus divided the minds of men, with
what indifference would all have regarded the division! But on these
opinions depended riches, dignities, and rights; and it was this which
so deeply aggravated the evils of division. Of two brothers, as it
were, who had hitherto enjoyed a paternal inheritance in common, one now
remained, while the other was compelled to leave his father’s house, and
hence arose the necessity of dividing the patrimony. For this
separation, which he could not have foreseen, the father had made no
provision. By the beneficent donations of pious ancestors the riches of
the church had been accumulating through a thousand years, and these
benefactors were as much the progenitors of the departing brother as of
him who remained. Was the right of inheritance then to be limited to
the paternal house, or to be extended to blood? The gifts had been made
to the church in communion with Rome, because at that time no other
existed,--to the first-born, as it were, because he was as yet the only
son. Was then a right of primogeniture to be admitted in the church, as
in noble families? Were the pretensions of one party to be favoured by
a prescription from times when the claims of the other could not have
come into existence? Could the Lutherans be justly excluded from these
possessions, to which the benevolence of their forefathers had
contributed, merely on the ground that, at the date of their foundation,
the differences between Lutheranism and Romanism were unknown? Both
parties have disputed, and still dispute, with equal plausibility, on
these points. Both alike have found it difficult to prove their right.
Law can be applied only to conceivable cases, and perhaps spiritual
foundations are not among the number of these, and still less where the
conditions of the founders generally extended to a system of doctrines;
for how is it conceivable that a permanent endowment should be made of
opinions left open to change?
What law cannot decide, is usually determined by might, and such was the
case here. The one party held firmly all that could no longer be
wrested from it--the other defended what it still possessed. All the
bishoprics and abbeys which had been secularized BEFORE the peace,
remained with the Protestants; but, by an express clause, the unreformed
Catholics provided that none should thereafter be secularized. Every
impropriator of an ecclesiastical foundation, who held immediately of
the Empire, whether elector, bishop, or abbot, forfeited his benefice
and dignity the moment he embraced the Protestant belief; he was obliged
in that event instantly to resign its emoluments, and the chapter was to
proceed to a new election, exactly as if his place had been vacated by
death. By this sacred anchor of the Ecclesiastical Reservation,
(`Reservatum Ecclesiasticum’,) which makes the temporal existence of a
spiritual prince entirely dependent on his fidelity to the olden
religion, the Roman Catholic Church in Germany is still held fast; and
precarious, indeed, would be its situation were this anchor to give way.
The principle of the Ecclesiastical Reservation was strongly opposed by
the Protestants; and though it was at last adopted into the treaty of
peace, its insertion was qualified with the declaration, that parties
had come to no final determination on the point. Could it then be more
binding on the Protestants than Ferdinand’s guarantee in favour of
Protestant subjects of ecclesiastical states was upon the Roman
Catholics? Thus were two important subjects of dispute left unsettled
in the treaty of peace, and by them the war was rekindled.
Such was the position of things with regard to religious toleration and
ecclesiastical property: it was the same with regard to rights and
dignities. The existing German system provided only for one church,
because one only was in existence when that system was framed. The
church had now divided; the Diet had broken into two religious parties;
was the whole system of the Empire still exclusively to follow the one?
The emperors had hitherto been members of the Romish Church, because
till now that religion had no rival. But was it his connexion with Rome
which constituted a German emperor, or was it not rather Germany which
was to be represented in its head? The Protestants were now spread over
the whole Empire, and how could they justly still be represented by an
unbroken line of Roman Catholic emperors? In the Imperial Chamber the
German States judge themselves, for they elect the judges; it was the
very end of its institution that they should do so, in order that equal
justice should be dispensed to all; but would this be still possible, if
the representatives of both professions were not equally admissible to a
seat in the Chamber? That one religion only existed in Germany at the
time of its establishment, was accidental; that no one estate should
have the means of legally oppressing another, was the essential purpose
of the institution. Now this object would be entirely frustrated if one
religious party were to have the exclusive power of deciding for the
other. Must, then, the design be sacrificed, because that which was
merely accidental had changed? With great difficulty the Protestants,
at last, obtained for the representatives of their religion a place in
the Supreme Council, but still there was far from being a perfect
equality of voices. To this day no Protestant prince has been raised to
the imperial throne.
Whatever may be said of the equality which the peace of Augsburg was to
have established between the two German churches, the Roman Catholic had
unquestionably still the advantage. All that the Lutheran Church gained
by it was toleration; all that the Romish Church conceded, was a
sacrifice to necessity, not an offering to justice. Very far was it
from being a peace between two equal powers, but a truce between a
sovereign and unconquered rebels. From this principle all the
proceedings of the Roman Catholics against the Protestants seemed to
flow, and still continue to do so. To join the reformed faith was still
a crime, since it was to be visited with so severe a penalty as that
which the Ecclesiastical Reservation held suspended over the apostacy of
the spiritual princes. Even to the last, the Romish Church preferred to
risk to loss of every thing by force, than voluntarily to yield the
smallest matter to justice. The loss was accidental and might be
repaired; but the abandonment of its pretensions, the concession of a
single point to the Protestants, would shake the foundations of the
church itself. Even in the treaty of peace this principle was not lost
sight of. Whatever in this peace was yielded to the Protestants was
always under condition. It was expressly declared, that affairs were to
remain on the stipulated footing only till the next general council,
which was to be called with the view of effecting an union between the
two confessions. Then only, when this last attempt should have failed,
was the religious treaty to become valid and conclusive. However little
hope there might be of such a reconciliation, however little perhaps the
Romanists themselves were in earnest with it, still it was something to
have clogged the peace with these stipulations.
Thus this religious treaty, which was to extinguish for ever the flames
of civil war, was, in fact, but a temporary truce, extorted by force and
necessity; not dictated by justice, nor emanating from just notions
either of religion or toleration. A religious treaty of this kind the
Roman Catholics were as incapable of granting, to be candid, as in truth
the Lutherans were unqualified to receive. Far from evincing a tolerant
spirit towards the Roman Catholics, when it was in their power, they
even oppressed the Calvinists; who indeed just as little deserved
toleration, since they were unwilling to practise it. For such a peace
the times were not yet ripe--the minds of men not yet sufficiently
enlightened. How could one party expect from another what itself was
incapable of performing? What each side saved or gained by the treaty of
Augsburg, it owed to the imposing attitude of strength which it
maintained at the time of its negociation. What was won by force was to
be maintained also by force; if the peace was to be permanent, the two
parties to it must preserve the same relative positions. The boundaries
of the two churches had been marked out with the sword; with the sword
they must be preserved, or woe to that party which should be first
disarmed! A sad and fearful prospect for the tranquillity of Germany,
when peace itself bore so threatening an aspect.
A momentary lull now pervaded the empire; a transitory bond of concord
appeared to unite its scattered limbs into one body, so that for a time
a feeling also for the common weal returned. But the division had
penetrated its inmost being, and to restore its original harmony was
impossible. Carefully as the treaty of peace appeared to have defined
the rights of both parties, its interpretation was nevertheless the
subject of many disputes. In the heat of conflict it had produced a
cessation of hostilities; it covered, not extinguished, the fire, and
unsatisfied claims remained on either side. The Romanists imagined they
had lost too much, the Protestants that they had gained too little; and
the treaty which neither party could venture to violate, was interpreted
by each in its own favour.
The seizure of the ecclesiastical benefices, the motive which had so
strongly tempted the majority of the Protestant princes to embrace the
doctrines of Luther, was not less powerful after than before the peace;
of those whose founders had not held their fiefs immediately of the
empire, such as were not already in their possession would it was
evident soon be so. The whole of Lower Germany was already secularized;
and if it were otherwise in Upper Germany, it was owing to the vehement
resistance of the Catholics, who had there the preponderance. Each
party, where it was the most powerful, oppressed the adherents of the
other; the ecclesiastical princes in particular, as the most defenceless
members of the empire, were incessantly tormented by the ambition of
their Protestant neighbours. Those who were too weak to repel force by
force, took refuge under the wings of justice; and the complaints of
spoliation were heaped up against the Protestants in the Imperial
Chamber, which was ready enough to pursue the accused with judgments,
but found too little support to carry them into effect. The peace which
stipulated for complete religious toleration for the dignitaries of the
Empire, had provided also for the subject, by enabling him, without
interruption, to leave the country in which the exercise of his religion
was prohibited. But from the wrongs which the violence of a sovereign
might inflict on an obnoxious subject; from the nameless oppressions by
which he might harass and annoy the emigrant; from the artful snares in
which subtilty combined with power might enmesh him--from these, the
dead letter of the treaty could afford him no protection. The Catholic
subject of Protestant princes complained loudly of violations of the
religious peace--the Lutherans still more loudly of the oppression they
experienced under their Romanist suzerains. The rancour and animosities
of theologians infused a poison into every occurrence, however
inconsiderable, and inflamed the minds of the people. Happy would it
have been had this theological hatred exhausted its zeal upon the common
enemy, instead of venting its virus on the adherents of a kindred faith!
Unanimity amongst the Protestants might, by preserving the balance
between the contending parties, have prolonged the peace; but as if to
complete the confusion, all concord was quickly broken. The doctrines
which had been propagated by Zuingli in Zurich, and by Calvin in Geneva,
soon spread to Germany, and divided the Protestants among themselves,
with little in unison save their common hatred to popery. The
Protestants of this date bore but slight resemblance to those who, fifty
years before, drew up the Confession of Augsburg; and the cause of the
change is to be sought in that Confession itself. It had prescribed a
positive boundary to the Protestant faith, before the newly awakened
spirit of inquiry had satisfied itself as to the limits it ought to set;
and the Protestants seemed unwittingly to have thrown away much of the
advantage acquired by their rejection of popery. Common complaints of
the Romish hierarchy, and of ecclesiastical abuses, and a common
disapprobation of its dogmas, formed a sufficient centre of union for
the Protestants; but not content with this, they sought a rallying point
in the promulgation of a new and positive creed, in which they sought to
embody the distinctions, the privileges, and the essence of the church,
and to this they referred the convention entered into with their
opponents. It was as professors of this creed that they had acceded to
the treaty; and in the benefits of this peace the advocates of the
confession were alone entitled to participate. In any case, therefore,
the situation of its adherents was embarrassing. If a blind obedience
were yielded to the dicta of the Confession, a lasting bound would be
set to the spirit of inquiry; if, on the other hand, they dissented from
the formulae agreed upon, the point of union would be lost.
Unfortunately both incidents occurred, and the evil results of both were
quickly felt. One party rigorously adhered to the original symbol of
faith, and the other abandoned it, only to adopt another with equal
exclusiveness.
Nothing could have furnished the common enemy a more plausible defence
of his cause than this dissension; no spectacle could have been more
gratifying to him than the rancour with which the Protestants
alternately persecuted each other. Who could condemn the Roman
Catholics, if they laughed at the audacity with which the Reformers had
presumed to announce the only true belief? --if from Protestants they
borrowed the weapons against Protestants? --if, in the midst of this
clashing of opinions, they held fast to the authority of their own
church, for which, in part, there spoke an honourable antiquity, and a
yet more honourable plurality of voices. But this division placed the
Protestants in still more serious embarrassments. As the covenants of
the treaty applied only to the partisans of the Confession, their
opponents, with some reason, called upon them to explain who were to be
recognized as the adherents of that creed. The Lutherans could not,
without offending conscience, include the Calvinists in their communion,
except at the risk of converting a useful friend into a dangerous enemy,
could they exclude them. This unfortunate difference opened a way for
the machinations of the Jesuits to sow distrust between both parties,
and to destroy the unity of their measures. Fettered by the double fear
of their direct adversaries, and of their opponents among themselves,
the Protestants lost for ever the opportunity of placing their church on
a perfect equality with the Catholic. All these difficulties would have
been avoided, and the defection of the Calvinists would not have
prejudiced the common cause, if the point of union had been placed
simply in the abandonment of Romanism, instead of in the Confession of
Augsburg.
But however divided on other points, they concurred in this--that the
security which had resulted from equality of power could only be
maintained by the preservation of that balance. In the meanwhile, the
continual reforms of one party, and the opposing measures of the other,
kept both upon the watch, while the interpretation of the religious
treaty was a never-ending subject of dispute. Each party maintained
that every step taken by its opponent was an infraction of the peace,
while of every movement of its own it was asserted that it was essential
to its maintenance. Yet all the measures of the Catholics did not, as
their opponents alleged, proceed from a spirit of encroachment--many of
them were the necessary precautions of self-defence. The Protestants
had shown unequivocally enough what the Romanists might expect if they
were unfortunate enough to become the weaker party. The greediness of
the former for the property of the church, gave no reason to expect
indulgence;--their bitter hatred left no hope of magnanimity or
forbearance.
But the Protestants, likewise, were excusable if they too placed little
confidence in the sincerity of the Roman Catholics. By the treacherous
and inhuman treatment which their brethren in Spain, France, and the
Netherlands, had suffered; by the disgraceful subterfuge of the Romish
princes, who held that the Pope had power to relieve them from the
obligation of the most solemn oaths; and above all, by the detestable
maxim, that faith was not to be kept with heretics, the Roman Church, in
the eyes of all honest men, had lost its honour. No engagement, no
oath, however sacred, from a Roman Catholic, could satisfy a Protestant.
What security then could the religious peace afford, when, throughout
Germany, the Jesuits represented it as a measure of mere temporary
convenience, and in Rome itself it was solemnly repudiated.
The General Council, to which reference had been made in the treaty, had
already been held in the city of Trent; but, as might have been
foreseen, without accommodating the religious differences, or taking a
single step to effect such accommodation, and even without being
attended by the Protestants. The latter, indeed, were now solemnly
excommunicated by it in the name of the church, whose representative the
Council gave itself out to be. Could, then, a secular treaty, extorted
moreover by force of arms, afford them adequate protection against the
ban of the church; a treaty, too, based on a condition which the
decision of the Council seemed entirely to abolish? There was then a
show of right for violating the peace, if only the Romanists possessed
the power; and henceforward the Protestants were protected by nothing
but the respect for their formidable array.
Other circumstances combined to augment this distrust. Spain, on whose
support the Romanists in Germany chiefly relied, was engaged in a bloody
conflict with the Flemings. By it, the flower of the Spanish troops
were drawn to the confines of Germany. With what ease might they be
introduced within the empire, if a decisive stroke should render their
presence necessary? Germany was at that time a magazine of war for
nearly all the powers of Europe. The religious war had crowded it with
soldiers, whom the peace left destitute; its many independent princes
found it easy to assemble armies, and afterwards, for the sake of gain,
or the interests of party, hire them out to other powers. With German
troops, Philip the Second waged war against the Netherlands, and with
German troops they defended themselves. Every such levy in Germany was
a subject of alarm to the one party or the other, since it might be
intended for their oppression. The arrival of an ambassador, an
extraordinary legate of the Pope, a conference of princes, every unusual
incident, must, it was thought, be pregnant with destruction to some
party. Thus, for nearly half a century, stood Germany, her hand upon
the sword; every rustle of a leaf alarmed her.
Ferdinand the First, King of Hungary, and his excellent son, Maximilian
the Second, held at this memorable epoch the reins of government. With
a heart full of sincerity, with a truly heroic patience, had Ferdinand
brought about the religious peace of Augsburg, and afterwards, in the
Council of Trent, laboured assiduously, though vainly, at the ungrateful
task of reconciling the two religions. Abandoned by his nephew, Philip
of Spain, and hard pressed both in Hungary and Transylvania by the
victorious armies of the Turks, it was not likely that this emperor
would entertain the idea of violating the religious peace, and thereby
destroying his own painful work. The heavy expenses of the perpetually
recurring war with Turkey could not be defrayed by the meagre
contributions of his exhausted hereditary dominions. He stood,
therefore, in need of the assistance of the whole empire; and the
religious peace alone preserved in one body the otherwise divided
empire. Financial necessities made the Protestant as needful to him as
the Romanist, and imposed upon him the obligation of treating both
parties with equal justice, which, amidst so many contradictory claims,
was truly a colossal task. Very far, however, was the result from
answering his expectations. His indulgence of the Protestants served
only to bring upon his successors a war, which death saved himself the
mortification of witnessing. Scarcely more fortunate was his son
Maximilian, with whom perhaps the pressure of circumstances was the only
obstacle, and a longer life perhaps the only want, to his establishing
the new religion upon the imperial throne. Necessity had taught the
father forbearance towards the Protestants--necessity and justice
dictated the same course to the son. The grandson had reason to repent
that he neither listened to justice, nor yielded to necessity.
Maximilian left six sons, of whom the eldest, the Archduke Rodolph,
inherited his dominions, and ascended the imperial throne. The other
brothers were put off with petty appanages. A few mesne fiefs were held
by a collateral branch, which had their uncle, Charles of Styria, at its
head; and even these were afterwards, under his son, Ferdinand the
Second, incorporated with the rest of the family dominions. With this
exception, the whole of the imposing power of Austria was now wielded by
a single, but unfortunately weak hand.
Rodolph the Second was not devoid of those virtues which might have
gained him the esteem of mankind, had the lot of a private station
fallen to him. His character was mild, he loved peace and the sciences,
particularly astronomy, natural history, chemistry, and the study of
antiquities. To these he applied with a passionate zeal, which, at the
very time when the critical posture of affairs demanded all his
attention, and his exhausted finances the most rigid economy, diverted
his attention from state affairs, and involved him in pernicious
expenses. His taste for astronomy soon lost itself in those
astrological reveries to which timid and melancholy temperaments like
his are but too disposed. This, together with a youth passed in Spain,
opened his ears to the evil counsels of the Jesuits, and the influence
of the Spanish court, by which at last he was wholly governed. Ruled by
tastes so little in accordance with the dignity of his station, and
alarmed by ridiculous prophecies, he withdrew, after the Spanish custom,
from the eyes of his subjects, to bury himself amidst his gems and
antiques, or to make experiments in his laboratory, while the most fatal
discords loosened all the bands of the empire, and the flames of
rebellion began to burst out at the very footsteps of his throne. All
access to his person was denied, the most urgent matters were neglected.
The prospect of the rich inheritance of Spain was closed against him,
while he was trying to make up his mind to offer his hand to the Infanta
Isabella. A fearful anarchy threatened the Empire, for though without
an heir of his own body, he could not be persuaded to allow the election
of a King of the Romans. The Austrian States renounced their
allegiance, Hungary and Transylvania threw off his supremacy, and
Bohemia was not slow in following their example. The descendant of the
once so formidable Charles the Fifth was in perpetual danger, either of
losing one part of his possessions to the Turks, or another to the
Protestants, and of sinking, beyond redemption, under the formidable
coalition which a great monarch of Europe had formed against him. The
events which now took place in the interior of Germany were such as
usually happened when either the throne was without an emperor, or the
Emperor without a sense of his imperial dignity. Outraged or abandoned
by their head, the States of the Empire were left to help themselves;
and alliances among themselves must supply the defective authority of
the Emperor. Germany was divided into two leagues, which stood in arms
arrayed against each other: between both, Rodolph, the despised
opponent of the one, and the impotent protector of the other, remained
irresolute and useless, equally unable to destroy the former or to
command the latter. What had the Empire to look for from a prince
incapable even of defending his hereditary dominions against its
domestic enemies? To prevent the utter ruin of the House of Austria,
his own family combined against him; and a powerful party threw itself
into the arms of his brother. Driven from his hereditary dominions,
nothing was now left him to lose but the imperial dignity; and he was
only spared this last disgrace by a timely death.
At this critical moment, when only a supple policy, united with a
vigorous arm, could have maintained the tranquillity of the Empire, its
evil genius gave it a Rodolph for Emperor. At a more peaceful period
the Germanic Union would have managed its own interests, and Rodolph,
like so many others of his rank, might have hidden his deficiencies in a
mysterious obscurity. But the urgent demand for the qualities in which
he was most deficient revealed his incapacity. The position of Germany
called for an emperor who, by his known energies, could give weight to
his resolves; and the hereditary dominions of Rodolph, considerable as
they were, were at present in a situation to occasion the greatest
embarrassment to the governors.
The Austrian princes, it is true were Roman Catholics, and in addition
to that, the supporters of Popery, but their countries were far from
being so. The reformed opinions had penetrated even these, and favoured
by Ferdinand’s necessities and Maximilian’s mildness, had met with a
rapid success. The Austrian provinces exhibited in miniature what
Germany did on a larger scale. The great nobles and the ritter class or
knights were chiefly evangelical, and in the cities the Protestants had
a decided preponderance. If they succeeded in bringing a few of their
party into the country, they contrived imperceptibly to fill all places
of trust and the magistracy with their own adherents, and to exclude the
Catholics. Against the numerous order of the nobles and knights, and
the deputies from the towns, the voice of a few prelates was powerless;
and the unseemly ridicule and offensive contempt of the former soon
drove them entirely from the provincial diets. Thus the whole of the
Austrian Diet had imperceptibly become Protestant, and the Reformation
was making rapid strides towards its public recognition. The prince was
dependent on the Estates, who had it in their power to grant or refuse
supplies. Accordingly, they availed themselves of the financial
necessities of Ferdinand and his son to extort one religious concession
after another. To the nobles and knights, Maximilian at last conceded
the free exercise of their religion, but only within their own
territories and castles. The intemperate enthusiasm of the Protestant
preachers overstepped the boundaries which prudence had prescribed.
carefully revised, and is now, for the first time, published complete.
THE BRIDE OF MESSINA, which has been regarded as the poetical
masterpiece of Schiller, and, perhaps of all his works, presents the
greatest difficulties to the translator, is rendered by A. Lodge, Esq. ,
M. A. This version, on its first publication in England, a few years
ago, was received with deserved eulogy by distinguished critics. To the
present edition has been prefixed Schiller’s Essay on the Use of the
Chorus in Tragedy, in which the author’s favorite theory of the “Ideal
of Art” is enforced with great ingenuity and eloquence.
Contents:
Book I.
Introduction. --General effects of the Reformation. --Revolt of Matthias.
--The Emperor cedes Austria and Hungary to him. --Matthias acknowledged
King of Bohemia. --The Elector of Cologne abjures the Catholic Religion.
--Consequences. --The Elector Palatine. --Dispute respecting the
Succession of Juliers. --Designs of Henry IV. of France. --Formation of
the Union. --The League. --Death of the Emperor Rodolph. --Matthias
succeeds him. --Troubles in Bohemia. --Civil War. --Ferdinand extirpates
the Protestant Religion from Styria. --The Elector Palatine, Frederick
V. , is chosen King by the Bohemians. --He accepts the Crown of Bohemia. --
Bethlen Gabor, Prince of Transylvania, invades Austria. --The Duke of
Bavaria and the Princes of the League embrace the cause of Ferdinand. --
The Union arm for Frederick. --The Battle of Prague and total subjection
of Bohemia.
Book II.
State of the Empire. --Of Europe. --Mansfeld. --Christian, Duke of
Brunswick. --Wallenstein raises an Imperial Army at his own expense.
--The King of Denmark defeated. --Death of Mansfeld. --Edict of
Restitution in 1628. --Diet at Ratisbon. --Negociations. --Wallenstein
deprived of the Command. --Gustavus Adolphus. --Swedish Army. --Gustavus
Adolphus takes his leave of the States at Stockholm. --Invasion by the
Swedes. --Their progress in Germany. --Count Tilly takes the Command of
the Imperial Troops. --Treaty with France. --Congress at Leipzig. --Siege
and cruel fate of Magdeburg. --Firmness of the Landgrave of Cassel. --
Junction of the Saxons with the Swedes. --Battle of Leipzig. --
Consequences of that Victory.
Book III.
Situation of Gustavus Adolphus after the Battle of Leipzig. --Progress of
Gustavus Adolphus. --The French invade Lorraine. --Frankfort taken. --
Capitulation of Mentz. --Tilly ordered by Maximilian to protect Bavaria.
--Gustavus Adolphus passes the Lech. --Defeat and Death of Tilly. --
Gustavus takes Munich. --The Saxon Army invades Bohemia, and takes
Prague. --Distress of the Emperor. --Secret Triumph of Wallenstein. --
He offers to Join Gustavus Adolphus. --Wallenstein re-assumes the
Command. --Junction of Wallenstein with the Bavarians. --Gustavus Adolphus
defends Nuremberg. --Attacks Wallenstein’s Intrenchments. --Enters
Saxony. --Goes to the succour of the Elector of Saxony. --Marches against
Wallenstein. --Battle of Lutzen. --Death of Gustavus Adolphus. --Situation
of Germany after the Battle of Lutzen.
Book IV.
Closer Alliance between France and Sweden. --Oxenstiern takes the
Direction of Affairs. --Death of the Elector Palatine. --Revolt of the
Swedish Officers. --Duke Bernhard takes Ratisbon. --Wallenstein enters
Silesia. --Forms Treasonable Designs. --Forsaken by the Army. --Retires to
Egra. --His associates put to death. --Wallenstein’s death. --His
Character.
Book V.
Battle of Nordlingen. --France enters into an Alliance against Austria. --
Treaty of Prague. --Saxony joins the Emperor. --Battle of Wistock gained
by the Swedes. --Battle of Rheinfeld gained by Bernhard, Duke of Weimar.
--He takes Brisach. --His death. --Death of Ferdinand II. --Ferdinand III.
succeeds him. --Celebrated Retreat of Banner in Pomerania. --His
Successes. --Death. --Torstensohn takes the Command. --Death of Richelieu
and Louis XIII. --Swedish Victory at Jankowitz. --French defeated at
Freyburg. --Battle of Nordlingen gained by Turenne and Conde. --Wrangel
takes the Command of the Swedish Army. --Melander made Commander of the
Emperor’s Army. --The Elector of Bavaria breaks the Armistice. --He adopts
the same Policy towards the Emperor as France towards the Swedes. --The
Weimerian Cavalry go over to the Swedes. --Conquest of New Prague by
Koenigsmark, and Termination of the Thirty Years’ War.
HISTORY OF THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR IN GERMANY.
BOOK I.
From the beginning of the religious wars in Germany, to the peace of
Munster, scarcely any thing great or remarkable occurred in the
political world of Europe in which the Reformation had not an important
share. All the events of this period, if they did not originate in,
soon became mixed up with, the question of religion, and no state was
either too great or too little to feel directly or indirectly more or
less of its influence.
Against the reformed doctrine and its adherents, the House of Austria
directed, almost exclusively, the whole of its immense political power.
In France, the Reformation had enkindled a civil war which, under four
stormy reigns, shook the kingdom to its foundations, brought foreign
armies into the heart of the country, and for half a century rendered it
the scene of the most mournful disorders. It was the Reformation, too,
that rendered the Spanish yoke intolerable to the Flemings, and awakened
in them both the desire and the courage to throw off its fetters, while
it also principally furnished them with the means of their emancipation.
And as to England, all the evils with which Philip the Second threatened
Elizabeth, were mainly intended in revenge for her having taken his
Protestant subjects under her protection, and placing herself at the
head of a religious party which it was his aim and endeavour to
extirpate. In Germany, the schisms in the church produced also a
lasting political schism, which made that country for more than a
century the theatre of confusion, but at the same time threw up a firm
barrier against political oppression. It was, too, the Reformation
principally that first drew the northern powers, Denmark and Sweden,
into the political system of Europe; and while on the one hand the
Protestant League was strengthened by their adhesion, it on the other
was indispensable to their interests. States which hitherto scarcely
concerned themselves with one another’s existence, acquired through the
Reformation an attractive centre of interest, and began to be united by
new political sympathies. And as through its influence new relations
sprang up between citizen and citizen, and between rulers and subjects,
so also entire states were forced by it into new relative positions.
Thus, by a strange course of events, religious disputes were the means
of cementing a closer union among the nations of Europe.
Fearful indeed, and destructive, was the first movement in which this
general political sympathy announced itself; a desolating war of thirty
years, which, from the interior of Bohemia to the mouth of the Scheldt,
and from the banks of the Po to the coasts of the Baltic, devastated
whole countries, destroyed harvests, and reduced towns and villages to
ashes; which opened a grave for many thousand combatants, and for half a
century smothered the glimmering sparks of civilization in Germany, and
threw back the improving manners of the country into their pristine
barbarity and wildness. Yet out of this fearful war Europe came forth
free and independent. In it she first learned to recognize herself as a
community of nations; and this intercommunion of states, which
originated in the thirty years’ war, may alone be sufficient to
reconcile the philosopher to its horrors. The hand of industry has
slowly but gradually effaced the traces of its ravages, while its
beneficent influence still survives; and this general sympathy among the
states of Europe, which grew out of the troubles in Bohemia, is our
guarantee for the continuance of that peace which was the result of the
war. As the sparks of destruction found their way from the interior of
Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria, to kindle Germany, France, and the half
of Europe, so also will the torch of civilization make a path for itself
from the latter to enlighten the former countries.
All this was effected by religion. Religion alone could have rendered
possible all that was accomplished, but it was far from being the SOLE
motive of the war. Had not private advantages and state interests been
closely connected with it, vain and powerless would have been the
arguments of theologians; and the cry of the people would never have met
with princes so willing to espouse their cause, nor the new doctrines
have found such numerous, brave, and persevering champions. The
Reformation is undoubtedly owing in a great measure to the invincible
power of truth, or of opinions which were held as such. The abuses in
the old church, the absurdity of many of its dogmas, the extravagance of
its requisitions, necessarily revolted the tempers of men, already
half-won with the promise of a better light, and favourably disposed
them towards the new doctrines. The charm of independence, the rich
plunder of monastic institutions, made the Reformation attractive in the
eyes of princes, and tended not a little to strengthen their inward
convictions. Nothing, however, but political considerations could have
driven them to espouse it. Had not Charles the Fifth, in the
intoxication of success, made an attempt on the independence of the
German States, a Protestant league would scarcely have rushed to arms in
defence of freedom of belief; but for the ambition of the Guises, the
Calvinists in France would never have beheld a Conde or a Coligny at
their head. Without the exaction of the tenth and the twentieth penny,
the See of Rome had never lost the United Netherlands. Princes fought
in self-defence or for aggrandizement, while religious enthusiasm
recruited their armies, and opened to them the treasures of their
subjects. Of the multitude who flocked to their standards, such as were
not lured by the hope of plunder imagined they were fighting for the
truth, while in fact they were shedding their blood for the personal
objects of their princes.
And well was it for the people that, on this occasion, their interests
coincided with those of their princes. To this coincidence alone were
they indebted for their deliverance from popery. Well was it also for
the rulers, that the subject contended too for his own cause, while he
was fighting their battles. Fortunately at this date no European
sovereign was so absolute as to be able, in the pursuit of his political
designs, to dispense with the goodwill of his subjects. Yet how
difficult was it to gain and to set to work this goodwill! The most
impressive arguments drawn from reasons of state fall powerless on the
ear of the subject, who seldom understands, and still more rarely is
interested in them. In such circumstances, the only course open to a
prudent prince is to connect the interests of the cabinet with some one
that sits nearer to the people’s heart, if such exists, or if not, to
create it.
In such a position stood the greater part of those princes who embraced
the cause of the Reformation. By a strange concatenation of events, the
divisions of the Church were associated with two circumstances, without
which, in all probability, they would have had a very different
conclusion. These were, the increasing power of the House of Austria,
which threatened the liberties of Europe, and its active zeal for the
old religion. The first aroused the princes, while the second armed the
people.
The abolition of a foreign jurisdiction within their own territories,
the supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, the stopping of the treasure
which had so long flowed to Rome, the rich plunder of religious
foundations, were tempting advantages to every sovereign. Why, then, it
may be asked, did they not operate with equal force upon the princes of
the House of Austria? What prevented this house, particularly in its
German branch, from yielding to the pressing demands of so many of its
subjects, and, after the example of other princes, enriching itself at
the expense of a defenceless clergy? It is difficult to credit that a
belief in the infallibility of the Romish Church had any greater
influence on the pious adherence of this house, than the opposite
conviction had on the revolt of the Protestant princes. In fact,
several circumstances combined to make the Austrian princes zealous
supporters of popery. Spain and Italy, from which Austria derived its
principal strength, were still devoted to the See of Rome with that
blind obedience which, ever since the days of the Gothic dynasty, had
been the peculiar characteristic of the Spaniard. The slightest
approximation, in a Spanish prince, to the obnoxious tenets of Luther
and Calvin, would have alienated for ever the affections of his
subjects, and a defection from the Pope would have cost him the kingdom.
A Spanish prince had no alternative but orthodoxy or abdication. The
same restraint was imposed upon Austria by her Italian dominions, which
she was obliged to treat, if possible, with even greater indulgence;
impatient as they naturally were of a foreign yoke, and possessing also
ready means of shaking it off. In regard to the latter provinces,
moreover, the rival pretensions of France, and the neighbourhood of the
Pope, were motives sufficient to prevent the Emperor from declaring in
favour of a party which strove to annihilate the papal see, and also to
induce him to show the most active zeal in behalf of the old religion.
These general considerations, which must have been equally weighty with
every Spanish monarch, were, in the particular case of Charles V. , still
further enforced by peculiar and personal motives. In Italy this
monarch had a formidable rival in the King of France, under whose
protection that country might throw itself the instant that Charles
should incur the slightest suspicion of heresy. Distrust on the part of
the Roman Catholics, and a rupture with the church, would have been
fatal also to many of his most cherished designs. Moreover, when
Charles was first called upon to make his election between the two
parties, the new doctrine had not yet attained to a full and commanding
influence, and there still subsisted a prospect of its reconciliation
with the old. In his son and successor, Philip the Second, a monastic
education combined with a gloomy and despotic disposition to generate an
unmitigated hostility to all innovations in religion; a feeling which
the thought that his most formidable political opponents were also the
enemies of his faith was not calculated to weaken. As his European
possessions, scattered as they were over so many countries, were on all
sides exposed to the seductions of foreign opinions, the progress of the
Reformation in other quarters could not well be a matter of indifference
to him. His immediate interests, therefore, urged him to attach himself
devotedly to the old church, in order to close up the sources of the
heretical contagion. Thus, circumstances naturally placed this prince
at the head of the league which the Roman Catholics formed against the
Reformers. The principles which had actuated the long and active reigns
of Charles V. and Philip the Second, remained a law for their
successors; and the more the breach in the church widened, the firmer
became the attachment of the Spaniards to Roman Catholicism.
The German line of the House of Austria was apparently more unfettered;
but, in reality, though free from many of these restraints, it was yet
confined by others. The possession of the imperial throne--a dignity
it was impossible for a Protestant to hold, (for with what consistency
could an apostate from the Romish Church wear the crown of a Roman
emperor? ) bound the successors of Ferdinand I. to the See of Rome.
Ferdinand himself was, from conscientious motives, heartily attached to
it. Besides, the German princes of the House of Austria were not
powerful enough to dispense with the support of Spain, which, however,
they would have forfeited by the least show of leaning towards the new
doctrines. The imperial dignity, also, required them to preserve the
existing political system of Germany, with which the maintenance of
their own authority was closely bound up, but which it was the aim of
the Protestant League to destroy. If to these grounds we add the
indifference of the Protestants to the Emperor’s necessities and to the
common dangers of the empire, their encroachments on the temporalities
of the church, and their aggressive violence when they became conscious
of their own power, we can easily conceive how so many concurring
motives must have determined the emperors to the side of popery, and how
their own interests came to be intimately interwoven with those of the
Roman Church. As its fate seemed to depend altogether on the part taken
by Austria, the princes of this house came to be regarded by all Europe
as the pillars of popery. The hatred, therefore, which the Protestants
bore against the latter, was turned exclusively upon Austria; and the
cause became gradually confounded with its protector.
But this irreconcileable enemy of the Reformation--the House of Austria
--by its ambitious projects and the overwhelming force which it could
bring to their support, endangered, in no small degree, the freedom of
Europe, and more especially of the German States. This circumstance
could not fail to rouse the latter from their security, and to render
them vigilant in self-defence. Their ordinary resources were quite
insufficient to resist so formidable a power. Extraordinary exertions
were required from their subjects; and when even these proved far from
adequate, they had recourse to foreign assistance; and, by means of a
common league, they endeavoured to oppose a power which, singly, they
were unable to withstand.
But the strong political inducements which the German princes had to
resist the pretensions of the House of Austria, naturally did not extend
to their subjects. It is only immediate advantages or immediate evils
that set the people in action, and for these a sound policy cannot wait.
Ill then would it have fared with these princes, if by good fortune
another effectual motive had not offered itself, which roused the
passions of the people, and kindled in them an enthusiasm which might be
directed against the political danger, as having with it a common cause
of alarm.
This motive was their avowed hatred of the religion which Austria
protected, and their enthusiastic attachment to a doctrine which that
House was endeavouring to extirpate by fire and sword. Their attachment
was ardent, their hatred invincible. Religious fanaticism anticipates
even the remotest dangers. Enthusiasm never calculates its sacrifices.
What the most pressing danger of the state could not gain from the
citizens, was effected by religious zeal. For the state, or for the
prince, few would have drawn the sword; but for religion, the merchant,
the artist, the peasant, all cheerfully flew to arms. For the state, or
for the prince, even the smallest additional impost would have been
avoided; but for religion the people readily staked at once life,
fortune, and all earthly hopes. It trebled the contributions which
flowed into the exchequer of the princes, and the armies which marched
to the field; and, in the ardent excitement produced in all minds by the
peril to which their faith was exposed, the subject felt not the
pressure of those burdens and privations under which, in cooler moments,
he would have sunk exhausted. The terrors of the Spanish Inquisition,
and the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s, procured for the Prince of
Orange, the Admiral Coligny, the British Queen Elizabeth, and the
Protestant princes of Germany, supplies of men and money from their
subjects, to a degree which at present is inconceivable.
But, with all their exertions, they would have effected little against a
power which was an overmatch for any single adversary, however powerful.
At this period of imperfect policy, accidental circumstances alone could
determine distant states to afford one another a mutual support. The
differences of government, of laws, of language, of manners, and of
character, which hitherto had kept whole nations and countries as it
were insulated, and raised a lasting barrier between them, rendered one
state insensible to the distresses of another, save where national
jealousy could indulge a malicious joy at the reverses of a rival. This
barrier the Reformation destroyed. An interest more intense and more
immediate than national aggrandizement or patriotism, and entirely
independent of private utility, began to animate whole states and
individual citizens; an interest capable of uniting numerous and distant
nations, even while it frequently lost its force among the subjects of
the same government. With the inhabitants of Geneva, for instance, of
England, of Germany, or of Holland, the French Calvinist possessed a
common point of union which he had not with his own countrymen. Thus,
in one important particular, he ceased to be the citizen of a single
state, and to confine his views and sympathies to his own country alone.
The sphere of his views became enlarged. He began to calculate his own
fate from that of other nations of the same religious profession, and to
make their cause his own. Now for the first time did princes venture to
bring the affairs of other countries before their own councils; for the
first time could they hope for a willing ear to their own necessities,
and prompt assistance from others. Foreign affairs had now become a
matter of domestic policy, and that aid was readily granted to the
religious confederate which would have been denied to the mere
neighbour, and still more to the distant stranger. The inhabitant of
the Palatinate leaves his native fields to fight side by side with his
religious associate of France, against the common enemy of their faith.
The Huguenot draws his sword against the country which persecutes him,
and sheds his blood in defence of the liberties of Holland. Swiss is
arrayed against Swiss; German against German, to determine, on the banks
of the Loire and the Seine, the succession of the French crown. The
Dane crosses the Eider, and the Swede the Baltic, to break the chains
which are forged for Germany.
It is difficult to say what would have been the fate of the Reformation,
and the liberties of the Empire, had not the formidable power of Austria
declared against them. This, however, appears certain, that nothing so
completely damped the Austrian hopes of universal monarchy, as the
obstinate war which they had to wage against the new religious opinions.
Under no other circumstances could the weaker princes have roused their
subjects to such extraordinary exertions against the ambition of
Austria, or the States themselves have united so closely against the
common enemy.
The power of Austria never stood higher than after the victory which
Charles V. gained over the Germans at Muehlberg. With the treaty of
Smalcalde the freedom of Germany lay, as it seemed, prostrate for ever;
but it revived under Maurice of Saxony, once its most formidable enemy.
All the fruits of the victory of Muehlberg were lost again in the
congress of Passau, and the diet of Augsburg; and every scheme for civil
and religious oppression terminated in the concessions of an equitable
peace.
The diet of Augsburg divided Germany into two religious and two
political parties, by recognizing the independent rights and existence
of both. Hitherto the Protestants had been looked on as rebels; they
were henceforth to be regarded as brethren--not indeed through
affection, but necessity. By the Interim, the Confession of Augsburg
was allowed temporarily to take a sisterly place alongside of the olden
religion, though only as a tolerated neighbour.
[A system of Theology so called, prepared by order of the Emperor
Charles V. for the use of Germany, to reconcile the differences
between the Roman Catholics and the Lutherans, which, however, was
rejected by both parties--Ed. ]
To every secular state was conceded the right of establishing the
religion it acknowledged as supreme and exclusive within its own
territories, and of forbidding the open profession of its rival.
Subjects were to be free to quit a country where their own religion was
not tolerated. The doctrines of Luther for the first time received a
positive sanction; and if they were trampled under foot in Bavaria and
Austria, they predominated in Saxony and Thuringia. But the sovereigns
alone were to determine what form of religion should prevail within
their territories; the feelings of subjects who had no representatives
in the diet were little attended to in the pacification. In the
ecclesiastical territories, indeed, where the unreformed religion
enjoyed an undisputed supremacy, the free exercise of their religion was
obtained for all who had previously embraced the Protestant doctrines;
but this indulgence rested only on the personal guarantee of Ferdinand,
King of the Romans, by whose endeavours chiefly this peace was effected;
a guarantee, which, being rejected by the Roman Catholic members of the
Diet, and only inserted in the treaty under their protest, could not of
course have the force of law.
If it had been opinions only that thus divided the minds of men, with
what indifference would all have regarded the division! But on these
opinions depended riches, dignities, and rights; and it was this which
so deeply aggravated the evils of division. Of two brothers, as it
were, who had hitherto enjoyed a paternal inheritance in common, one now
remained, while the other was compelled to leave his father’s house, and
hence arose the necessity of dividing the patrimony. For this
separation, which he could not have foreseen, the father had made no
provision. By the beneficent donations of pious ancestors the riches of
the church had been accumulating through a thousand years, and these
benefactors were as much the progenitors of the departing brother as of
him who remained. Was the right of inheritance then to be limited to
the paternal house, or to be extended to blood? The gifts had been made
to the church in communion with Rome, because at that time no other
existed,--to the first-born, as it were, because he was as yet the only
son. Was then a right of primogeniture to be admitted in the church, as
in noble families? Were the pretensions of one party to be favoured by
a prescription from times when the claims of the other could not have
come into existence? Could the Lutherans be justly excluded from these
possessions, to which the benevolence of their forefathers had
contributed, merely on the ground that, at the date of their foundation,
the differences between Lutheranism and Romanism were unknown? Both
parties have disputed, and still dispute, with equal plausibility, on
these points. Both alike have found it difficult to prove their right.
Law can be applied only to conceivable cases, and perhaps spiritual
foundations are not among the number of these, and still less where the
conditions of the founders generally extended to a system of doctrines;
for how is it conceivable that a permanent endowment should be made of
opinions left open to change?
What law cannot decide, is usually determined by might, and such was the
case here. The one party held firmly all that could no longer be
wrested from it--the other defended what it still possessed. All the
bishoprics and abbeys which had been secularized BEFORE the peace,
remained with the Protestants; but, by an express clause, the unreformed
Catholics provided that none should thereafter be secularized. Every
impropriator of an ecclesiastical foundation, who held immediately of
the Empire, whether elector, bishop, or abbot, forfeited his benefice
and dignity the moment he embraced the Protestant belief; he was obliged
in that event instantly to resign its emoluments, and the chapter was to
proceed to a new election, exactly as if his place had been vacated by
death. By this sacred anchor of the Ecclesiastical Reservation,
(`Reservatum Ecclesiasticum’,) which makes the temporal existence of a
spiritual prince entirely dependent on his fidelity to the olden
religion, the Roman Catholic Church in Germany is still held fast; and
precarious, indeed, would be its situation were this anchor to give way.
The principle of the Ecclesiastical Reservation was strongly opposed by
the Protestants; and though it was at last adopted into the treaty of
peace, its insertion was qualified with the declaration, that parties
had come to no final determination on the point. Could it then be more
binding on the Protestants than Ferdinand’s guarantee in favour of
Protestant subjects of ecclesiastical states was upon the Roman
Catholics? Thus were two important subjects of dispute left unsettled
in the treaty of peace, and by them the war was rekindled.
Such was the position of things with regard to religious toleration and
ecclesiastical property: it was the same with regard to rights and
dignities. The existing German system provided only for one church,
because one only was in existence when that system was framed. The
church had now divided; the Diet had broken into two religious parties;
was the whole system of the Empire still exclusively to follow the one?
The emperors had hitherto been members of the Romish Church, because
till now that religion had no rival. But was it his connexion with Rome
which constituted a German emperor, or was it not rather Germany which
was to be represented in its head? The Protestants were now spread over
the whole Empire, and how could they justly still be represented by an
unbroken line of Roman Catholic emperors? In the Imperial Chamber the
German States judge themselves, for they elect the judges; it was the
very end of its institution that they should do so, in order that equal
justice should be dispensed to all; but would this be still possible, if
the representatives of both professions were not equally admissible to a
seat in the Chamber? That one religion only existed in Germany at the
time of its establishment, was accidental; that no one estate should
have the means of legally oppressing another, was the essential purpose
of the institution. Now this object would be entirely frustrated if one
religious party were to have the exclusive power of deciding for the
other. Must, then, the design be sacrificed, because that which was
merely accidental had changed? With great difficulty the Protestants,
at last, obtained for the representatives of their religion a place in
the Supreme Council, but still there was far from being a perfect
equality of voices. To this day no Protestant prince has been raised to
the imperial throne.
Whatever may be said of the equality which the peace of Augsburg was to
have established between the two German churches, the Roman Catholic had
unquestionably still the advantage. All that the Lutheran Church gained
by it was toleration; all that the Romish Church conceded, was a
sacrifice to necessity, not an offering to justice. Very far was it
from being a peace between two equal powers, but a truce between a
sovereign and unconquered rebels. From this principle all the
proceedings of the Roman Catholics against the Protestants seemed to
flow, and still continue to do so. To join the reformed faith was still
a crime, since it was to be visited with so severe a penalty as that
which the Ecclesiastical Reservation held suspended over the apostacy of
the spiritual princes. Even to the last, the Romish Church preferred to
risk to loss of every thing by force, than voluntarily to yield the
smallest matter to justice. The loss was accidental and might be
repaired; but the abandonment of its pretensions, the concession of a
single point to the Protestants, would shake the foundations of the
church itself. Even in the treaty of peace this principle was not lost
sight of. Whatever in this peace was yielded to the Protestants was
always under condition. It was expressly declared, that affairs were to
remain on the stipulated footing only till the next general council,
which was to be called with the view of effecting an union between the
two confessions. Then only, when this last attempt should have failed,
was the religious treaty to become valid and conclusive. However little
hope there might be of such a reconciliation, however little perhaps the
Romanists themselves were in earnest with it, still it was something to
have clogged the peace with these stipulations.
Thus this religious treaty, which was to extinguish for ever the flames
of civil war, was, in fact, but a temporary truce, extorted by force and
necessity; not dictated by justice, nor emanating from just notions
either of religion or toleration. A religious treaty of this kind the
Roman Catholics were as incapable of granting, to be candid, as in truth
the Lutherans were unqualified to receive. Far from evincing a tolerant
spirit towards the Roman Catholics, when it was in their power, they
even oppressed the Calvinists; who indeed just as little deserved
toleration, since they were unwilling to practise it. For such a peace
the times were not yet ripe--the minds of men not yet sufficiently
enlightened. How could one party expect from another what itself was
incapable of performing? What each side saved or gained by the treaty of
Augsburg, it owed to the imposing attitude of strength which it
maintained at the time of its negociation. What was won by force was to
be maintained also by force; if the peace was to be permanent, the two
parties to it must preserve the same relative positions. The boundaries
of the two churches had been marked out with the sword; with the sword
they must be preserved, or woe to that party which should be first
disarmed! A sad and fearful prospect for the tranquillity of Germany,
when peace itself bore so threatening an aspect.
A momentary lull now pervaded the empire; a transitory bond of concord
appeared to unite its scattered limbs into one body, so that for a time
a feeling also for the common weal returned. But the division had
penetrated its inmost being, and to restore its original harmony was
impossible. Carefully as the treaty of peace appeared to have defined
the rights of both parties, its interpretation was nevertheless the
subject of many disputes. In the heat of conflict it had produced a
cessation of hostilities; it covered, not extinguished, the fire, and
unsatisfied claims remained on either side. The Romanists imagined they
had lost too much, the Protestants that they had gained too little; and
the treaty which neither party could venture to violate, was interpreted
by each in its own favour.
The seizure of the ecclesiastical benefices, the motive which had so
strongly tempted the majority of the Protestant princes to embrace the
doctrines of Luther, was not less powerful after than before the peace;
of those whose founders had not held their fiefs immediately of the
empire, such as were not already in their possession would it was
evident soon be so. The whole of Lower Germany was already secularized;
and if it were otherwise in Upper Germany, it was owing to the vehement
resistance of the Catholics, who had there the preponderance. Each
party, where it was the most powerful, oppressed the adherents of the
other; the ecclesiastical princes in particular, as the most defenceless
members of the empire, were incessantly tormented by the ambition of
their Protestant neighbours. Those who were too weak to repel force by
force, took refuge under the wings of justice; and the complaints of
spoliation were heaped up against the Protestants in the Imperial
Chamber, which was ready enough to pursue the accused with judgments,
but found too little support to carry them into effect. The peace which
stipulated for complete religious toleration for the dignitaries of the
Empire, had provided also for the subject, by enabling him, without
interruption, to leave the country in which the exercise of his religion
was prohibited. But from the wrongs which the violence of a sovereign
might inflict on an obnoxious subject; from the nameless oppressions by
which he might harass and annoy the emigrant; from the artful snares in
which subtilty combined with power might enmesh him--from these, the
dead letter of the treaty could afford him no protection. The Catholic
subject of Protestant princes complained loudly of violations of the
religious peace--the Lutherans still more loudly of the oppression they
experienced under their Romanist suzerains. The rancour and animosities
of theologians infused a poison into every occurrence, however
inconsiderable, and inflamed the minds of the people. Happy would it
have been had this theological hatred exhausted its zeal upon the common
enemy, instead of venting its virus on the adherents of a kindred faith!
Unanimity amongst the Protestants might, by preserving the balance
between the contending parties, have prolonged the peace; but as if to
complete the confusion, all concord was quickly broken. The doctrines
which had been propagated by Zuingli in Zurich, and by Calvin in Geneva,
soon spread to Germany, and divided the Protestants among themselves,
with little in unison save their common hatred to popery. The
Protestants of this date bore but slight resemblance to those who, fifty
years before, drew up the Confession of Augsburg; and the cause of the
change is to be sought in that Confession itself. It had prescribed a
positive boundary to the Protestant faith, before the newly awakened
spirit of inquiry had satisfied itself as to the limits it ought to set;
and the Protestants seemed unwittingly to have thrown away much of the
advantage acquired by their rejection of popery. Common complaints of
the Romish hierarchy, and of ecclesiastical abuses, and a common
disapprobation of its dogmas, formed a sufficient centre of union for
the Protestants; but not content with this, they sought a rallying point
in the promulgation of a new and positive creed, in which they sought to
embody the distinctions, the privileges, and the essence of the church,
and to this they referred the convention entered into with their
opponents. It was as professors of this creed that they had acceded to
the treaty; and in the benefits of this peace the advocates of the
confession were alone entitled to participate. In any case, therefore,
the situation of its adherents was embarrassing. If a blind obedience
were yielded to the dicta of the Confession, a lasting bound would be
set to the spirit of inquiry; if, on the other hand, they dissented from
the formulae agreed upon, the point of union would be lost.
Unfortunately both incidents occurred, and the evil results of both were
quickly felt. One party rigorously adhered to the original symbol of
faith, and the other abandoned it, only to adopt another with equal
exclusiveness.
Nothing could have furnished the common enemy a more plausible defence
of his cause than this dissension; no spectacle could have been more
gratifying to him than the rancour with which the Protestants
alternately persecuted each other. Who could condemn the Roman
Catholics, if they laughed at the audacity with which the Reformers had
presumed to announce the only true belief? --if from Protestants they
borrowed the weapons against Protestants? --if, in the midst of this
clashing of opinions, they held fast to the authority of their own
church, for which, in part, there spoke an honourable antiquity, and a
yet more honourable plurality of voices. But this division placed the
Protestants in still more serious embarrassments. As the covenants of
the treaty applied only to the partisans of the Confession, their
opponents, with some reason, called upon them to explain who were to be
recognized as the adherents of that creed. The Lutherans could not,
without offending conscience, include the Calvinists in their communion,
except at the risk of converting a useful friend into a dangerous enemy,
could they exclude them. This unfortunate difference opened a way for
the machinations of the Jesuits to sow distrust between both parties,
and to destroy the unity of their measures. Fettered by the double fear
of their direct adversaries, and of their opponents among themselves,
the Protestants lost for ever the opportunity of placing their church on
a perfect equality with the Catholic. All these difficulties would have
been avoided, and the defection of the Calvinists would not have
prejudiced the common cause, if the point of union had been placed
simply in the abandonment of Romanism, instead of in the Confession of
Augsburg.
But however divided on other points, they concurred in this--that the
security which had resulted from equality of power could only be
maintained by the preservation of that balance. In the meanwhile, the
continual reforms of one party, and the opposing measures of the other,
kept both upon the watch, while the interpretation of the religious
treaty was a never-ending subject of dispute. Each party maintained
that every step taken by its opponent was an infraction of the peace,
while of every movement of its own it was asserted that it was essential
to its maintenance. Yet all the measures of the Catholics did not, as
their opponents alleged, proceed from a spirit of encroachment--many of
them were the necessary precautions of self-defence. The Protestants
had shown unequivocally enough what the Romanists might expect if they
were unfortunate enough to become the weaker party. The greediness of
the former for the property of the church, gave no reason to expect
indulgence;--their bitter hatred left no hope of magnanimity or
forbearance.
But the Protestants, likewise, were excusable if they too placed little
confidence in the sincerity of the Roman Catholics. By the treacherous
and inhuman treatment which their brethren in Spain, France, and the
Netherlands, had suffered; by the disgraceful subterfuge of the Romish
princes, who held that the Pope had power to relieve them from the
obligation of the most solemn oaths; and above all, by the detestable
maxim, that faith was not to be kept with heretics, the Roman Church, in
the eyes of all honest men, had lost its honour. No engagement, no
oath, however sacred, from a Roman Catholic, could satisfy a Protestant.
What security then could the religious peace afford, when, throughout
Germany, the Jesuits represented it as a measure of mere temporary
convenience, and in Rome itself it was solemnly repudiated.
The General Council, to which reference had been made in the treaty, had
already been held in the city of Trent; but, as might have been
foreseen, without accommodating the religious differences, or taking a
single step to effect such accommodation, and even without being
attended by the Protestants. The latter, indeed, were now solemnly
excommunicated by it in the name of the church, whose representative the
Council gave itself out to be. Could, then, a secular treaty, extorted
moreover by force of arms, afford them adequate protection against the
ban of the church; a treaty, too, based on a condition which the
decision of the Council seemed entirely to abolish? There was then a
show of right for violating the peace, if only the Romanists possessed
the power; and henceforward the Protestants were protected by nothing
but the respect for their formidable array.
Other circumstances combined to augment this distrust. Spain, on whose
support the Romanists in Germany chiefly relied, was engaged in a bloody
conflict with the Flemings. By it, the flower of the Spanish troops
were drawn to the confines of Germany. With what ease might they be
introduced within the empire, if a decisive stroke should render their
presence necessary? Germany was at that time a magazine of war for
nearly all the powers of Europe. The religious war had crowded it with
soldiers, whom the peace left destitute; its many independent princes
found it easy to assemble armies, and afterwards, for the sake of gain,
or the interests of party, hire them out to other powers. With German
troops, Philip the Second waged war against the Netherlands, and with
German troops they defended themselves. Every such levy in Germany was
a subject of alarm to the one party or the other, since it might be
intended for their oppression. The arrival of an ambassador, an
extraordinary legate of the Pope, a conference of princes, every unusual
incident, must, it was thought, be pregnant with destruction to some
party. Thus, for nearly half a century, stood Germany, her hand upon
the sword; every rustle of a leaf alarmed her.
Ferdinand the First, King of Hungary, and his excellent son, Maximilian
the Second, held at this memorable epoch the reins of government. With
a heart full of sincerity, with a truly heroic patience, had Ferdinand
brought about the religious peace of Augsburg, and afterwards, in the
Council of Trent, laboured assiduously, though vainly, at the ungrateful
task of reconciling the two religions. Abandoned by his nephew, Philip
of Spain, and hard pressed both in Hungary and Transylvania by the
victorious armies of the Turks, it was not likely that this emperor
would entertain the idea of violating the religious peace, and thereby
destroying his own painful work. The heavy expenses of the perpetually
recurring war with Turkey could not be defrayed by the meagre
contributions of his exhausted hereditary dominions. He stood,
therefore, in need of the assistance of the whole empire; and the
religious peace alone preserved in one body the otherwise divided
empire. Financial necessities made the Protestant as needful to him as
the Romanist, and imposed upon him the obligation of treating both
parties with equal justice, which, amidst so many contradictory claims,
was truly a colossal task. Very far, however, was the result from
answering his expectations. His indulgence of the Protestants served
only to bring upon his successors a war, which death saved himself the
mortification of witnessing. Scarcely more fortunate was his son
Maximilian, with whom perhaps the pressure of circumstances was the only
obstacle, and a longer life perhaps the only want, to his establishing
the new religion upon the imperial throne. Necessity had taught the
father forbearance towards the Protestants--necessity and justice
dictated the same course to the son. The grandson had reason to repent
that he neither listened to justice, nor yielded to necessity.
Maximilian left six sons, of whom the eldest, the Archduke Rodolph,
inherited his dominions, and ascended the imperial throne. The other
brothers were put off with petty appanages. A few mesne fiefs were held
by a collateral branch, which had their uncle, Charles of Styria, at its
head; and even these were afterwards, under his son, Ferdinand the
Second, incorporated with the rest of the family dominions. With this
exception, the whole of the imposing power of Austria was now wielded by
a single, but unfortunately weak hand.
Rodolph the Second was not devoid of those virtues which might have
gained him the esteem of mankind, had the lot of a private station
fallen to him. His character was mild, he loved peace and the sciences,
particularly astronomy, natural history, chemistry, and the study of
antiquities. To these he applied with a passionate zeal, which, at the
very time when the critical posture of affairs demanded all his
attention, and his exhausted finances the most rigid economy, diverted
his attention from state affairs, and involved him in pernicious
expenses. His taste for astronomy soon lost itself in those
astrological reveries to which timid and melancholy temperaments like
his are but too disposed. This, together with a youth passed in Spain,
opened his ears to the evil counsels of the Jesuits, and the influence
of the Spanish court, by which at last he was wholly governed. Ruled by
tastes so little in accordance with the dignity of his station, and
alarmed by ridiculous prophecies, he withdrew, after the Spanish custom,
from the eyes of his subjects, to bury himself amidst his gems and
antiques, or to make experiments in his laboratory, while the most fatal
discords loosened all the bands of the empire, and the flames of
rebellion began to burst out at the very footsteps of his throne. All
access to his person was denied, the most urgent matters were neglected.
The prospect of the rich inheritance of Spain was closed against him,
while he was trying to make up his mind to offer his hand to the Infanta
Isabella. A fearful anarchy threatened the Empire, for though without
an heir of his own body, he could not be persuaded to allow the election
of a King of the Romans. The Austrian States renounced their
allegiance, Hungary and Transylvania threw off his supremacy, and
Bohemia was not slow in following their example. The descendant of the
once so formidable Charles the Fifth was in perpetual danger, either of
losing one part of his possessions to the Turks, or another to the
Protestants, and of sinking, beyond redemption, under the formidable
coalition which a great monarch of Europe had formed against him. The
events which now took place in the interior of Germany were such as
usually happened when either the throne was without an emperor, or the
Emperor without a sense of his imperial dignity. Outraged or abandoned
by their head, the States of the Empire were left to help themselves;
and alliances among themselves must supply the defective authority of
the Emperor. Germany was divided into two leagues, which stood in arms
arrayed against each other: between both, Rodolph, the despised
opponent of the one, and the impotent protector of the other, remained
irresolute and useless, equally unable to destroy the former or to
command the latter. What had the Empire to look for from a prince
incapable even of defending his hereditary dominions against its
domestic enemies? To prevent the utter ruin of the House of Austria,
his own family combined against him; and a powerful party threw itself
into the arms of his brother. Driven from his hereditary dominions,
nothing was now left him to lose but the imperial dignity; and he was
only spared this last disgrace by a timely death.
At this critical moment, when only a supple policy, united with a
vigorous arm, could have maintained the tranquillity of the Empire, its
evil genius gave it a Rodolph for Emperor. At a more peaceful period
the Germanic Union would have managed its own interests, and Rodolph,
like so many others of his rank, might have hidden his deficiencies in a
mysterious obscurity. But the urgent demand for the qualities in which
he was most deficient revealed his incapacity. The position of Germany
called for an emperor who, by his known energies, could give weight to
his resolves; and the hereditary dominions of Rodolph, considerable as
they were, were at present in a situation to occasion the greatest
embarrassment to the governors.
The Austrian princes, it is true were Roman Catholics, and in addition
to that, the supporters of Popery, but their countries were far from
being so. The reformed opinions had penetrated even these, and favoured
by Ferdinand’s necessities and Maximilian’s mildness, had met with a
rapid success. The Austrian provinces exhibited in miniature what
Germany did on a larger scale. The great nobles and the ritter class or
knights were chiefly evangelical, and in the cities the Protestants had
a decided preponderance. If they succeeded in bringing a few of their
party into the country, they contrived imperceptibly to fill all places
of trust and the magistracy with their own adherents, and to exclude the
Catholics. Against the numerous order of the nobles and knights, and
the deputies from the towns, the voice of a few prelates was powerless;
and the unseemly ridicule and offensive contempt of the former soon
drove them entirely from the provincial diets. Thus the whole of the
Austrian Diet had imperceptibly become Protestant, and the Reformation
was making rapid strides towards its public recognition. The prince was
dependent on the Estates, who had it in their power to grant or refuse
supplies. Accordingly, they availed themselves of the financial
necessities of Ferdinand and his son to extort one religious concession
after another. To the nobles and knights, Maximilian at last conceded
the free exercise of their religion, but only within their own
territories and castles. The intemperate enthusiasm of the Protestant
preachers overstepped the boundaries which prudence had prescribed.
