Samuel Rawson Gardiner

“ The line which divided the Protestant from the Catholic princes formed almost an exact division between the Protestant and Catholic populations. The desire for making proselytes, once so strong on both sides, had been altogether extinguished by the numbing agony of the war. All Germany longed for peace with an inexpressible longing. The mutual distrust of Catholic and Protestant had grown exceedingly dull. The only feeling yet alive was hatred of the tyranny and exactions of the soldiers. ”

“ Gustavus had to face the old evil of the war, which had grown worse and worse from the days of Mansfeld to those of Wallenstein, the evil of a military force existing by itself and for itself. From far distant shores men practised in arms came eagerly to the summons; from sunny Italy, from hardy Scotland, from every German land between the Baltic and the Alps. Protestant and Catholic were alike welcome there. ”

“ The towns of the north had been dragged half against their will into the Danish war. To them the imperial sway was connected by a tradition of centuries with support against the encroachments of the princes. But they had no traditions in favour of an army living at free quarters amongst them, of bullying colonels and hectoring soldiers. Magdeburg braved all the terrors of Wallenstein's anger rather than admit a single company within its walls. Hamburg declared itself ready to submit to the Emperor's authority, but closed its gates against his army. ”

“ Every history, to be a history, must have a unity of its own, and here we have no unity of national life such as that which is reflected in the institutions of England and France, not even the unity of a great race of sovereigns handing down the traditions of government from one generation to another. The unity of the subject which I have chosen must be sought in the growth of the principle of religious toleration as it is adopted or repelled by the institutions under which Germany and France, the two principal nations with which we are concerned, are living. ”

“ Wallenstein was large-minded because he was far removed from the ordinary prejudices of men. He was no more affected by their habits and thoughts than the course of a balloon is affected by the precipices and rivers below. Gustavus trod firmly upon his mother earth. His Swedish country, his Lutheran religion, his opposition to the House of Austria, were all very real to him. His greatness was the greatness which rules the world, the greatness of a man who, sharing the thoughts and feelings of men, rises above them just far enough to direct them, not too far to carry their sympathies with him. ”

“ The revolution at Prague did not simply raise an otherwise powerless person into Ferdinand's place. It gave the crown of Bohemia to a man whose territories were already so extensive that if he managed to consolidate his new dominion with them he would unite in his hands a power which would be unequalled in the Empire, and which would bring with it the unheard-of accumulation of two votes upon one person at imperial elections. John George would descend from being one of the first of the German princes to a mere second-rate position. ”

“ The possession of Alsace and Lorraine rose into primary importance, not because, as in our own days, Germany needed a bulwark against France, or France needed a bulwark against Germany, but because Germany was not strong enough to prevent these territories from becoming the highway of intercourse between Spain and the Spanish Netherlands. The command of the sea was in the hands of the Dutch, and the valley of the Upper Rhine was the artery through which the life blood of the Spanish monarchy flowed. ”

“ But, as yet, the northern princes were unwilling to support him. In vain Gustavus reasoned with the ambassador of his brother-in-law, the Elector of Brandenburg, who had come to announce his master's neutrality. "It is time," he said, "for his highness to open his eyes, and to rouse himself from his ease, that his highness may no longer be in his own land a lieutenant of the Emperor, nay, rather of the Emperor's servant. He who makes a sheep of himself is eaten by the wolf. His highness must be my friend or enemy, when I come to his frontier. He must be hot or cold. ”

“ The year before, the Elector of Saxony, crushed and ruined by the Swedes, had consented to a separate truce, and now Turenne was commissioned to do the same with Bavaria. In August he effected a junction on the Lahn with Wrangel and the Swedes, and if Enghien had been there, history would doubtless have had to tell of another butchery as resultless as those of Freiburg and Nördlingen. But Enghien was far away in Flanders, laying siege to Dunkirk, and Turenne, for the first time at the head of a superior force, was about to teach the world a lesson in the art of war. ”

“ And if his soldiers bore hard upon burgher and peasant, he himself treated the princes with contemptuous scorn. He asked why the electors and the other princes should not be treated as the Bohemian nobles had been treated. The Estates of the Empire had no more right to independence than the Estates of the kingdom. It was time for the Emperor to make himself master of Germany, as the kings of France and Spain were masters of their own dominions. ”

“ He thought much of the maintenance of the imperial dignity, and the uprising of the electors was in some sort an uprising against himself. But the system which had fallen was the system of Wallenstein rather than his own. He had sanctioned the contributions and exactions, feebly hoping that they were not so bad as they seemed, or that if anything was wrong a little more energy on Wallenstein's part would set things straight. As to Wallenstein's idea of a revolutionary empire founded on the ruins of the princes, Ferdinand would have been the first to regard it with horror. ”

“ The appointment of Mansfeld was unfortunately in itself fatal to the chances of peace. Ever since the capture of Pilsen, his troops, destitute of support, had been the terror of the country they were called upon to defend. In those days, indeed, the most disciplined army was often guilty of excesses from which in our days the most depraved outcasts would shrink. The soldiers, engaged merely for as long a time as they happened to be wanted, passed from side to side as the prospect of pay or booty allured them. ”

“ Gustavus was beginning to fancy that he could do without France.
Then came the turn of Bavaria. As Gustavus rode into Munich, Frederick, the exiled Elector Palatine, was by his side, triumphing over the flight of his old enemy. It was not the fault of Gustavus if Frederick was not again ruling at Heidelberg. Gustavus had offered him his ancestral territories on the condition that he would allow Swedish garrisons to occupy his fortresses during the war, and would give equal liberty to the Lutheran and the Calvinist forms of worship. ”

“ When the nation was once brought face to face with the difficulty, men would ask, not whether one religion should be established in Northumberland and another in Cornwall, but what amount of religious liberty was good for men as men all over England. In Germany it could not be so. There the only question was where the geographical frontier was to be drawn between two religions. Neither those who wished to increase the power of the princes, nor those who wished to increase the power of the Emperor, were able to rise above the idea of a local and geographical division. ”

“ If he could only have renounced his past, if he could have acknowledged that all he had hitherto done had been the fruitful root of disaster, if he could, with noble self-renunciation, have entreated others to take up the cause of German Protestantism, which in his hands had suffered so deeply, then it is not impossible that opinion, whilst opinion was still a power in Germany, would have passed over to his side, and that the coming mischief might yet have been averted. ”

“ To stand above parties it is necessary to obtain the confidence of a nation, and how could men have confidence in Wallenstein? Durable institutions may be guarded by the sword. They cannot be founded by the sword. All that was known of Wallenstein in Germany was that he was master of an army more numerous and more oppressive than that of Tilly. German unity, coming in the shape of boundless contributions and extortions, and enforced by the example of starving peasants and burning villages, was not likely to prove very attractive. ”

“ No longer attacking any one of the masses of which the Spanish monarchy was composed, Richelieu placed his hands upon the lines of communication between them. He made his presence felt not at Madrid, at Brussels, at Milan, or at Naples, but in Alsace, in the Mediterranean, in the English Channel. ”

“ In England the sovereign could alter a hostile majority in the House of Lords by a fresh creation of peers, and the constituencies could alter a hostile majority of the House of Commons by a fresh election. In Germany there was no House of Commons, and an emperor who should try to create fresh princes out of the immediate vassals who were too weak to be summoned to the Diet would only render himself ridiculous by an attempt to place in check the real possessors of power by the help of those who had the mere appearance of it. ”

“ For a young Protestant of ability without wealth there was no room in Bohemia under the shadow of the great houses. With Ferdinand, as yet ruler only of his three hereditary duchies, he found a soldier's welcome, and was not long in displaying a soldier's capacity for war. To Wallenstein no path came amiss which led to fortune. A wealthy marriage made him the owner of large estates. When the revolution broke out he was colonel of one of the regiments in the service of the Estates of Moravia. The population and the soldiers were alike hostile to the Emperor. ”

“ For Wallenstein was already in communication with Gustavus, who, Protestant as he was, was avenging him upon the League which had assailed him and the Emperor who had abandoned him. He had offered to do great things, if he could be trusted with a Swedish force of 12,000 men. He was well pleased to hear of Tilly's defeat. "If such a thing had happened to me," he said to an emissary of Gustavus, "I would kill myself. But it is a good thing for us." If only the King of Sweden would trust him with men, he would soon bring together the officers of his old army. ”