70 Frederick in exile. The Palatine breakdown [1620-32

When the breakdown of the Union had followed on the rout of the White Hill, the first act of the changeful drama of the Great War was really played out. The lackland" King and Queen of Bohemia," as they continued to call themselves, had passed on from Küstrin to Berlin, and thence, by way of Wolfenbüttel and Segeberg (in the royal portion of Holstein), into the Free Netherlands. To Segeberg Christian IV of Denmark in March summoned a few Princes of the Lower Saxon Circle, who passed some strong resolutions as to the defence of Frederick's inheritance. In Holland he and his consort were received by the population as the martyrs of its own cherished Calvinism; and a cordial welcome was extended to them at the Hague by Frederick's kinsman, Maurice of Orange (April, 1621). The Dutch truce with Spain was at this very time running out, and the arrogant Spanish demands rendered the renewal of war inevitable; so that already in December, 1620, the States General had pressed the defence of the Palatinate both upon the Union and upon Denmark.

Frederick's and Elizabeth's life of exile, which in the case of the heroic Queen lasted full forty years, cannot be described here. Notwithstanding his placidity of temper, Frederick was tenacious of his rights throughout; while in the earlier years of her exile Elizabeth Stewart's royal personality inspired a passionate loyalty in both the military champions and the diplomatic agents and helpers of the Palatine cause. With the aid of indefatigable servants such as Ludwig Camerarius and Johann von Rusdorf the Palatine family constituted the chief, and at one time almost the sole, nucleus of resistance to the victorious Catholic Reaction.

Frederick, whom the "pasquils" of the day treated with scant generosity, believed himself to be following his destiny, while in truth he was yielding to stronger wills than his own. There was some grandeur of purpose in their designs, and some genius in the devices which were to give effect to them. All the more humiliating was their utter collapse so soon as they were put to the touch. Their pivot was the establishment of a national Protestant monarchy in Bohemia. But not only had Thurn and Anhalt — the national leader and the political counsellor failed to secure a definite assurance of support from external allies. There was also wanting a sufficient and trustworthy military force, organised by the Bohemian insurrectionary government and assured of the support of the large majority of the nation. Thus the government of Frederick had really no chance of maintaining the offensive against Ferdinand, or afterwards of withstanding the combined attack of Emperor, League, and Spain. The rout of the White Hill and the abandonment of the Palatinate at once exposed the hollowness of the vast designs, and the futility of the elaborate apparatus, of the Palatine statesmanship, and put an end to the prominence which it had for a time occupied in the affairs of Europe.

1620-1]

The proscription in Bohemia

71

Christian of Anhalt's own political importance ended with this collapse. The publication of his papers seized at Prague had acted like the explosion of the master alchemist's alembic; while the great artificer himself made a noiseless escape into the protection of the king of Sweden. Within three years an elaborate negotiation secured him an Imperial pardon; and before his death in April, 1630, he not only placed himself under obligations to Wallenstein in order to serve the interests of his hardly-used principality, but actually received. favours from the Emperor. Of his companions under the ban, Hohenlohe likewise made his peace with Vienna; while John George of Jägerndorf ultimately made his way to Transylvania, and till his death (March, 1624) did his best to stimulate Bethlen Gabor to enter into the war. The effects of the catastrophe upon Bohemia and the adjoining lands, and upon the unoffending population of the Palatinate, were appalling. In Bohemia, though the authority of Ferdinand could not be at once restored throughout the kingdom and the "incorporated" States, more especially as a rough winter and a severe pestilence delayed the completion of the campaign, the Catholics were resolved to gather in at once the fruits of their victory. The Bohemian leaders were not prepared to rouse the kingdom to a popular resistance which even now might have proved irrepressible. As yet the excesses committed by the troops holding Prague had been relatively slight, and had mainly consisted (to the great loss of future students of Bohemian history) of the burning of books actually or presumably heretical found in the houses of the citizens. The Bohemian Diet had of course ceased to meet; and the politic Prince Charles of Liechtenstein (the founder of the fortunes of his House) was named regent, and afterwards governor, of the kingdom. The Archbishop of Prague (Lohelius) had returned early, together with other prelates and a large number of Jesuits, upon whose immediate recall Ferdinand had insisted. Though the Polish Cossacks had been sent home, carrying rapine and terror through the land on their way, and though Bucquoy had departed to Hungary with the body of Imperial troops, Tilly remained behind for a time to hold watch over Prague. Thus the punitive process could safely begin. During the night of February 10, 1621, the leaders of the recent insurrection were arrested and cast into various prisons; and on the following day an extraordinary tribunal was established for dealing with the delinquencies connected with the rising. Out of a list of sixty-one proscribed, forty-seven had been actually arrested, including eighteen former Directors; old Count Schlick was soon afterwards seized in the castle of Friedland. Thurn, Ruppa, and twenty-nine other defaulters were summoned to appear within six months. On March 29 a "rapid procedure" was instituted against the prisoners, and twenty-seven of them were condemned to death, while they were all declared to have forfeited their estates. The sentences were quickly confirmed at Vienna,

72

The confiscations in Bohemia

[1621-3 the penalty of death being, however, remitted in five instances, and some barbarous stipulations as to the mode of execution struck out. On April 5 sentence of death in absentia was pronounced on twenty-nine further delinquents, while the property of ten who had died in the interval was declared forfeited. On June 21 twenty-seven of the prisoners suffered death, and certain minor punishments were inflicted or sentences pronounced on the following day. Order was kept in the city by seven squadrons of Saxon horse, brought in for the purpose. No further executions took place; and from the spring of 1622 onwards the punitive measures of the Government were practically confined to confiscation.

But this proceeded on an enormous scale. To the proclamation bidding all landowners who had taken any part in the insurrection avow their guilt and throw themselves on the Emperor's mercy, more than 700 nobles and knights had responded. Their lives and honour were left untouched; but, in direct violation of a privilege of Rudolf II providing that forfeited estates should pass to innocent persons in the line of inheritance, one-third, one-half, or the whole of their respective lands were, in accordance with a scale elaborated by Slawata, declared to have escheated to the Crown. The confiscations continued till 1623, when a popular outbreak led to the closing of the proscription list; though payments continued to be enforced for many years, chiefly on petty offenders. It may be safely stated that by the end of 1623 nearly half of the landed property in Bohemia had passed into the hands of the Emperor, and that the confiscations arising out of the insurrection amounted in value to something between four and five millions of our money.

How was the Emperor to deal with so vast an amount of landed property? So early as September, 1622, he announced his intention. to sell large quantities of it for cash (of which he certainly stood in need) and to entrust both the conduct of the sale and the application of the proceeds to the Bohemian Government under Liechtenstein. Unfortunately they executed their task with reckless speed, disposing of the main mass of the estates within something like a twelvemonth. As a matter of course, enormous fortunes were made by the wary, and especially by persons claiming to be entitled to easy terms or even to free gifts-officials such as Slawata and Martinitz or military commanders such as Bucquoy, Maradas, and Aldringer. The most extensive operations, however, were carried on by Liechtenstein, Eggenberg, and above all by Albrecht von Wallenstein.

A member of a noble but not wealthy Bohemian family, Wallenstein had exchanged the creed of the Bohemian Brethren for that of Rome, and by his first marriage had attained to large possessions and a prominent position in Moravia. He had made himself useful to the Emperor Ferdinand by levying troops for his service, first, on a small scale, for

1617-24]

Rise of Wallenstein.

Religious reaction 73

his campaign against Venice (1617), then, in larger numbers, during the Bohemian War. In 1622 he was appointed to the command of the troops at Prague, and continued to oblige the Emperor with a series of loans which in the following year already exceeded a million of florins. A large share of the confiscated Bohemian lands was now directly or indirectly acquired by him- among them the domains of Friedland and Reichenberg on the Silesian frontier, and, a little more to the south, the town of Gitschin. By 1624 his acquisitions were valued at not far short of five millions of florins; and it was manifest that he designed sooner or later to make the lands in his possession the basis of an independent principality. The eminence which he had already reached was due to his services, to his wealth, and to his connexion with the great financiers of the day--above all, with de Vite, to whom about this time a patent had been granted for the purchase and recoining of all the silver in Bohemia. Wallenstein's interests had always been. bound up with the affairs of his native land. But, with the twofold object of obtaining a certain amount of money and rewarding many military commanders and others who had served him in the recent crisis, Ferdinand now introduced into the Bohemian landed nobility a number of new-comers of German, Italian, French, and Spanish origin, with the result of both denationalising the once powerful order into which they were admitted and rendering it subservient to the Crown.

But Ferdinand took but a slight personal interest in the landsettlement of his reconquered Bohemian kingdom; what he had at heart was the fulfilment of his vow to extirpate the heresy which had estranged the country from Rome. Notwithstanding the warnings of Bishop Carlo Caraffa (who had looked into the condition of things at Prague before proceeding to Vienna as Nuncio), the cautious counsels of Liechtenstein, of the Elector of Mainz, and of even Maximilian of Bavaria, and the danger of giving offence to John George of Saxony and his influential Court-preacher, Ferdinand, as early as March, 1621, ordered all clergy, University teachers and schoolmasters professing the doctrines of Calvin, the Picards, or the Bohemian Brethren, to quit the realm within three days. Next, a general attack was opened upon the adherents of the Confession of 1576. Before the spring was over no Protestant worship was any longer permitted in Prague, except in the German churches, or on any of the royal domains. Other measures ensued, and early in 1622 a series of tests was proposed to the Protestant clergy remaining in Prague which by October led to their expatriation, followed by that of their colleagues in other towns of the kingdom. In the same year the Carolinum at Prague was similarly purged; and its revenues and rights were made over to the Jesuit Clementinum, with which it was combined into a new University. After Ernest Albert von Harrach (a son of the Emperor's favourite councillor Baron Charles von Harrach, and a brother of Wallenstein's second wife) had succeeded

74

Persecution of the Bohemian Protestants

[1623-7

as Archbishop of Prague, the religious reaction passed all previous bounds. In 1623 the whole body of the Protestant clergy of all shades of creed were expelled from Bohemia; and in 1624 an Imperial edict, obtained through the influence of the Jesuit Lamormain, now the Emperor's confessor, prohibited any religious service except the Catholic, and excluded Protestants from all rights and privileges, whether civil or religious. The conversion of Protestants was systematically enforced by billeting soldiery upon the recalcitrant; and emigration was only permitted on condition of forfeiture of a considerable portion of the emigrant's property. Liechtenstein's proclamation of 1626, summing up the disabilities imposed on Protestants in Bohemia, is a document which it would not be easy to match in the entire history of religious intolerance.

The grotesque inquisitorial process for carrying out this cruel policy at Prague and then throughout the kingdom met with much violent opposition; but the instances of a persistent refusal to conform or emigrate were quite isolated. In 1627 Ferdinand II, when at Prague to secure the coronation of his heir, instituted a tribunal of "reformation," which fixed six months as the final term within which Protestant recusants must quit the realm after the sale of their property. It is reckoned that on this last occasion more than 30,000 domiciled families of all classes abandoned Bohemia. The country lost incalculably by this drain of warlike nobles, skilled professional men, accomplished scholars and artists, and for a long time to come fell back hopelessly in learning and culture; some of its neighbours, Saxony in particular, profiting in proportion by the immigration of Bohemian exiles. The royal towns were deprived both of their corporate property, which had formerly amounted to something like one-third of the lands of the kingdom, and of their self-government; and their utter decline entirely changed the face of the country and dried up the sources of the activity of the people. Such of the Bohemian-born nobles as remained in the land sooner or later became converts; while the peasantry, unable as a class to emigrate, sank into stagnation. The hand of Ferdinand, which cut into shreds the Letter of Majesty, seemed at the same time to have severed the sinews of the nation's vitality. The new Constitution (Landesordnung), carefully drafted by two reactionary Commissions, and signed by Ferdinand on May 23, 1627, besides establishing the hereditary right of the ruling dynasty, while it reserved to the King the right of summoning the Diet and the legislative initiative, also included provisions for putting an end to the ascendancy of the Bohemian tongue and thus preparing the extinction of the Bohemian nationality.

In Moravia the adoption by the Estates of Zierotin's advice to renounce further resistance on being assured of the preservation of their religious liberties had proved of little avail, for in an interview with the Moravian leader Ferdinand fell back on the authority of the Pope