The Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648

Section II. —The Revolution at Prague

1618. § 1. The Bohemians petition Matthias.

The Bohemians had thus to resist in 1618, under every disadvantage, the attack which they had done nothing to meet in 1617. Certain persons named Defensors had, by law, the right of summoning an assembly of representatives of the Protestant Estates. Such an assembly met on March 5, and having prepared a petition to Matthias, who was absent from the kingdom, adjourned to May 21.

§ 2. Reply of Matthias.

Long before the time of meeting came, an answer was sent from Matthias justifying all that had been done, and declaring the assembly illegal. It was believed at the time, though incorrectly, that the answer was prepared by Slawata and Martinitz, two members of the regency who had been notorious for the vigour of their opposition to Protestantism.

§ 3. Violent counsels.

In the Protestant assembly there was a knot of men, headed by Count Henry of Thurn, which was bent on the dethronement of Ferdinand. They resolved to take advantage of the popular feeling to effect the murder of the two regents, and so to place an impassable gulf between the nation and the king.

§ 4. Martinitz and Slawata thrown out of window.

Accordingly, on the morning of May 23, the 'beginning and cause,' as a contemporary calls it, 'of all the coming evil,' the first day, though men as yet knew it not, of thirty years of war, Thurn sallied forth at the head of a band of noblemen and their followers, all of them with arms in their hands. Trooping into the room where the regents were seated, they charged the obnoxious two with being the authors of the king's reply. After a bitter altercation both Martinitz and Slawata were dragged to a window which overlooked the fosse below from a dizzy height of some seventy feet. Martinitz, struggling against his enemies, pleaded hard for a confessor. 'Commend thy soul to God,' was the stern answer. 'Shall we allow the Jesuit scoundrels to come here?' In an instant he was hurled out, crying, 'Jesus, Mary!' 'Let us see,' said some one mockingly, 'Whether his Mary will help him.' A moment later he added: 'By God, his Mary has helped him.' Slawata followed, and then the secretary Fabricius. By a wonderful preservation, in which pious Catholics discerned the protecting hand of God, all three crawled away from the spot without serious hurt.

§ 5. A bad beginning.

There are moments when the character of a nation or party stands revealed as by a lightning flash, and this was one of them. It is not in such a way as this that successful revolutions are begun.

§ 6. The revolutionary government.

The first steps to constitute a new government were easy. Thirty Directors were appointed, and the Jesuits were expelled from Bohemia. The Diet met and ordered soldiers to be levied to form an army. But to support this army money would be needed, and the existing taxes were insufficient. A loan was accordingly thought of, and the nobles resolved to request the towns to make up the sum, they themselves contributing nothing. The project falling dead upon the resistance of the towns, new taxes were voted; but no steps were taken to collect them, and the army was left to depend in a great measure upon chance.

§ 7. The Elector of Saxony wishes for peace.

Would the princes of Germany come to the help of the Directors? John George of Saxony told them that he deeply sympathized with them, but that rebellion was a serious matter. To one who asked him what he meant to do, he replied, 'Help to put out the fire.'

§ 8. The Elector Palatine holds out hopes of assistance.

There was more help for them at Heidelberg than at Dresden. Frederick IV. had died in 1610, and his son, the young Frederick V., looked up to Christian of Anhalt as the first statesman of his age. By his marriage with Elizabeth, the daughter of James I. of England, he had contracted an alliance which gave him the appearance rather than the reality of strength. He offered every encouragement to the Bohemians, but for the time held back from giving them actual assistance.

Section III. —The War in Bohemia

§ 1. Outbreak of war.

The Directors were thus thrown on their own resources. Ferdinand had secured his election as king of Hungary, and, returning to Vienna, had taken up the reins of government in the name of Matthias. He had got together an army of 14,000 men, under the command of Bucquoi, an officer from the great school of military art in the Netherlands, and on August 13, the Bohemian frontier was invaded. War could hardly be avoided by either side. Budweis and Pilsen, two Catholic towns in Bohemia, naturally clung to their sovereign, and as soon as the Directors ordered an attack upon Budweis, the troops of Matthias prepared to advance to its succour.

§ 2. The Bohemians vote men, but object to paying taxes.

The Directors took alarm, and proposed to the Diet that new taxes should be raised and not merely voted, and that, in addition to the army of regular soldiers, there should be a general levy of a large portion of the population. To the levy the Diet consented without difficulty. But before the day fixed for discussing the proposed taxes arrived, the majority of the members deliberately returned to their homes, and no new taxes were to be had.

§ 3. They are not likely to prosper.

This day, August 30, may fairly be taken as the date of the political suicide of the Bohemian aristocracy. In almost every country in Europe order was maintained by concentrating the chief powers of the State in the hands of a single governor, whether he were called king, duke, or elector. To this rule there were exceptions in Venice, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, and by-and-by there would be an exception on a grander scale in England. But the peoples who formed these exceptions had proved themselves worthy of the distinction, and there would be no room in the world for men who had got rid of their king without being able to establish order upon another basis.

§ 4. Help from Savoy.

Still there were too many governments in Europe hostile to the House of Austria to allow the Bohemians to fall at once. Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy, had just brought a war with Spain to a close, but he had not become any better disposed towards his late adversary. He accordingly entered into an agreement with the leaders of the Union, by which 2,000 men who had been raised for his service were to be placed at the disposal of the Bohemian Directors.

§ 5. Mansfeld.

The commander of these troops was Count Ernest of Mansfeld, an illegitimate son of a famous general in the service of Spain. He had changed his religion and deserted his king. He now put himself forward as a champion of Protestantism. He was brave, active, and versatile, and was possessed of those gifts which win the confidence of professional soldiers. But he was already notorious for the readiness with which he allowed his soldiers to support themselves on the most unbridled pillage. An adventurer himself, he was just the man to lead an army of adventurers.

§ 6. A forced loan.

Soon after his arrival in Bohemia, Mansfeld was employed in the siege of Pilsen, whilst Thurn was occupied with holding Bucquoi in check. The failure in obtaining additional taxes had led the Directors to adopt the simple expedient of levying a forced loan from the few rich.

§ 7. Success of the Bohemians.

For a time this desperate expedient was successful. The help offered to Ferdinand by Spain was not great, and it was long in coming. The prudent Maximilian refused to ruin himself by engaging in an apparently hopeless cause. At last the Silesians, who had hesitated long, threw in their lot with their neighbours, and sent their troops to their help early in November. Bucquoi was in full retreat to Budweis. On the 21st Pilsen surrendered to Mansfeld. Further warfare was stopped as winter came on – a terrible winter for the unhappy dwellers in Southern Bohemia. Starving armies are not particular in their methods of supplying their wants. Plunder, devastation and reckless atrocities of every kind fell to the lot of the doomed peasants, Bucquoi's Hungarians being conspicuous for barbarity.

§ 8. Scheme of Christian of Anhalt.

Meanwhile, Christian of Anhalt was luring on the young Elector Palatine to more active intervention. The Bohemian leaders had already begun to talk of placing the crown on Frederick's head. Frederick, anxious and undecided, consented on the one hand, at the Emperor's invitation, to join the Duke of Bavaria and the Electors of Mentz and Saxony in mediating an arrangement, whilst, on the other hand, he gave his assent to an embassy to Turin, the object of which was to dazzle the Duke of Savoy with the prospect of obtaining the imperial crown after the death of Matthias, and to urge him to join in an attack upon the German dominions of the House of Austria.

§ 9. Coolness of the Union.

The path on which Frederick was entering was the more evidently unsafe, as the Union, which met at Heilbronn in September, had shown great coolness in the Bohemian cause. Christian of Anhalt had not ventured even to hint at the projects which he entertained. If he was afterwards deserted by the Union he could not say that its members as a body had engaged to support him.

1619

§ 10. The Duke of Savoy gives hopes.

The Duke of Savoy, on the other hand, at least talked as if the Austrian territories were at his feet. In August 1618 he had given his consent to the proposed elevation of Frederick to the Bohemian throne. In February 1619 he explained that he wished to have Bohemia for himself. Frederick might be compensated with the Austrian lands in Alsace and Swabia. He might, perhaps, have the Archduchy of Austria too, or become King of Hungary. If he wished to fall upon the bishops' lands, let him do it quickly, before the Pope had time to interfere. This sort of talk, wild as it was, delighted the little circle of Frederick's confidants. The Margrave of Anspach, who, as general of the army of the Union, was admitted into the secret, was beyond measure pleased: 'We have now,' he said, 'the means of upsetting the world.'

§ 11. Conservative feeling alienated.

For the present, these negotiations were veiled in secresy. They engendered a confident levity, which was certain to shock that conservative, peace-loving feeling which the Bohemians had already done much to alienate.

Section IV. —Ferdinand on his Defence

§ 1. The Bohemians look for aid from foreign powers.

If the assistance of the Union was thus likely to do more harm than good to the Bohemians, their hopes of aid from other powers were still more delusive. The Dutch, indeed, sent something, and would willingly have sent more, but they had too many difficulties at home to be very profuse in their offers. James of England told his son-in-law plainly that he would have nothing to do with any encroachment upon the rights of others, and he had undertaken at the instigation of Spain a formal mediation between the Bohemians and their king – a mediation which had been offered him merely in order to keep his hands tied whilst others were arming.

§ 2. Attack upon Vienna.

On March 20, before the next campaign opened, Matthias died. Ferdinand's renewed promises to respect the Royal Charter – made doubtless under the reservation of putting his own interpretation upon the disputed points – were rejected with scorn by the Directors. The sword was to decide the quarrel. With the money received from the Dutch, and with aid in money and munitions of war from Heidelberg, Thurn and Mansfeld were enabled to take the field. The latter remained to watch Bucquoi, whilst the former undertook to win the other territories, which had hitherto submitted to Matthias, and had stood aloof from the movement in Bohemia. Without much difficulty he succeeded in revolutionizing Moravia, and he arrived on June 5 under the walls of Vienna. Within was Ferdinand himself, with a petty garrison of 300 men, and as many volunteers as he could attach to his cause. Thurn hoped that his partisans inside the cities would open the gates to admit him. But he lost time in negotiations with the Austrian nobility. The estates of the two territories of Upper and Lower Austria were to a great extent Protestant, and they had refused to do homage to Ferdinand on the death of Matthias. The Lower Austrians now sent a deputation to Vienna to demand permission to form a confederation with the Bohemians, on terms which would practically have converted the whole country, from the Styrian frontier to the borders of Silesia, into a federal aristocratic republic.

§ 3. Ferdinand resists the demands of the Lower Austrian Estates.

In Ferdinand they had to do with a man who was not to be overawed by personal danger. He knew well that by yielding he would be giving a legal basis to a system which he regarded as opposed to all law, human and divine. Throwing himself before the crucifix, he found strength for the conflict into which he entered on behalf of his family, his church, and, as he firmly believed, of his country and his God – strength none the less real because the figure on the cross did not, as men not long afterwards came fondly to believe, bow its head towards the suppliant, or utter the consoling words: 'Ferdinand, I will not forsake thee.'

§ 4. Rescue arrives.

To a deputation from the Austrian Estates he was firm and unbending. They might threaten as they pleased, but the confederation with Bohemia he would not sign. Rougher and rougher grew the menaces addressed to him. Some one, it is said, talked of dethroning him and of educating his children in the Protestant religion. Suddenly the blare of a trumpet was heard in the court below. A regiment of horses had slipped in through a gate unguarded by Thurn, and had hurried to Ferdinand's defence. The deputation, lately so imperious, slunk away, glad enough to escape punishment.

§ 5. The siege raised.

Little would so slight a reinforcement have availed if Thurn had been capable of assaulting the city. But, unprovided with stores of food or siege munitions, he had counted on treason within. Disappointed of his prey, he returned to Bohemia, to find that Bucquoi had broken out of Budweis, and had inflicted a serious defeat on Mansfeld.

§ 6. The Imperial election.

Ferdinand did not linger at Vienna to dispute his rights with his Austrian subjects. The election of a new Emperor was to take place at Frankfort, and it was of importance to him to be on the spot. To the German Protestants the transfer of the Imperial crown to his head could not be a matter of indifference. If he succeeded, as there seemed every probability of his succeeding, in re-establishing his authority over Bohemia, he would weigh with a far heavier weight than Matthias upon the disputes by which Germany was distracted. The Elector Palatine and his councillors had a thousand schemes for getting rid of him, without fixing upon any. John George of Saxony, in 1619 as in 1612, had a definite plan to propose. Ferdinand, he said, was not in possession of Bohemia, and could not, therefore, vote as King of Bohemia at the election. The election must, therefore, be postponed till the Bohemian question had been settled by mediation. If only the three Protestant electors could have been brought to agree to this course, an immediate choice of Ferdinand would have been impossible.

§ 7. Ferdinand chosen Emperor.

Whatever might be the merits of the proposal itself, it had the inestimable advantage of embarking the Lutherans of the North and the Calvinists of the South in a common cause. But Frederick distrusted John George, and preferred another plan of his own. John George lost his temper, and voted unconditionally for Ferdinand. Frederick, if he did not mean to be left alone in impotent isolation, had nothing for it but to follow his example. He had no other candidate seriously to propose; and on August 28, 1619, Ferdinand was chosen by a unanimous vote. He was now known as the Emperor Ferdinand II.

§ 8. Frederick elected King of Bohemia.

Two days before, another election had taken place at Prague. The Bohemians, after deposing Ferdinand from the throne, which in 1617 they had acknowledged to be his, chose Frederick to fill the vacant seat.

§ 9. He accepts the throne.

Would Frederick accept the perilous offer? Opinions round him were divided on the advisability of the step. The princes of the Union, and even his own councillors, took opposite sides. In his own family, his mother raised a voice of warning. His wife, Elizabeth of England, the beautiful and high-spirited, urged him to the enterprise. The poor young man himself was well-nigh distracted. At last he found a consolation in the comfortable belief that his election was the act of God. Amidst the tears of the good people of Heidelberg he set out from the proud castle, magnificent even now in its ruins as it looks down upon the rushing stream of the Neckar. 'He is carrying the Palatinate into Bohemia,' said his sorrowing mother. On November 4 he was crowned at Prague, and the last act of the Bohemian Revolution was accomplished.

CHAPTER III.

IMPERIALIST VICTORIES IN BOHEMIA AND THE PALATINATE