1622-3]

The War shifts to the north-west

85

II. THE LOWER SAXON AND DANISH WAR

(1623-9)

Even before the Ratisbon gathering of Princes had separated it was becoming evident that in the next stage of the Great War the chief theatre of military operations would be found in the north-west of the Empire. Mansfeld and his more impulsive associate Christian of Halberstadt had, on their dismissal by Frederick, transferred themselves to the Low Countries, whither they had drawn after them Cordoba and, in the first instance for the protection of the dioceses of the Middle and Lower Rhine and their neighbourhood, Tilly's able lieutenant Anholt. Mansfeld's commission under the States General, to whom he had rendered valuable service, expired in October, 1622; but the States of Holland knew it to be worth their while to take him provisionally into their pay. Thereupon, showing as little care for the inviolability of the frontier of the Empire as was exhibited by the Spaniards themselves, he took up comfortable quarters in East Frisia and the neighbouring Westphalian districts. His intentions were unknown; so late as June, 1623, he was still negotiating with the French Government.

In January, 1623, Mansfeld had been joined by Christian of the iron arm, and both captains manifestly looked forward to a renewal of the German War in the approaching summer. Already in September, 1622, Bethlen Gabor had once more begun to prepare for a forward movement, though it was not actually set on foot till a year later. Its end might be the restoration of Frederick to the Bohemian throne; and the Palatine agents in Copenhagen and at the north-German Courts, and at Paris, were straining every nerve. Unfortunately English money was not forthcoming to sustain this great offensive operation; for James I was making his final effort for peace, and in May even contrived to inveigle his son-in-law into a promise of abstaining from hostile efforts. But Christian IV of Denmark, greedy alike of fame and of territory, took a very different view of the situation; and in Germany itself Brandenburg and Hesse-Cassel, now the two chief remaining representatives of Calvinism, might be expected to take part in a new effort of resistance.

What between Denmark and the United Provinces, and the troops. of Mansfeld and his fellow-captain, the territories most likely to be much affected by the next campaign were those of the Lower Saxon Circle the north-western region of the Empire, washed by both the North Sea and Baltic, and made up of some four-and-twenty Protestant principalities and free cities, and of a series of more or less important Protestantised episcopal sees. In February, 1623, a meeting of the Circle at Brunswick agreed to put in the field a force of 18,000

86

The Lower Saxon Circle.

Battle of Stadtlohn [1623

men, under the command of Duke George of Brunswick-Lüneburg. True, the force was to be defensive only; and by the end of April nothing like a quarter of it had been brought together. On the other hand, apart from the fact that Christian IV of Denmark, by virtue of his "royal" portion of Holstein, was a member of the Circle, it had other willing supporters at hand. Christian of Halberstadt entered the service of his brother Frederick Ulric of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, nominally for the defence of the ducal territories; and in March William of Weimar had placed himself and his troops under Christian's command.

While, however, these proceedings were in preparation, Tilly, who had advanced his quarters as far as the Wetterau, was in February directly commissioned by the Emperor to march against Mansfeld and his adherents a commission supposed to carry with it the right of transit through the territories of any Estate of the Empire. At the head of some 17,000 men he in the first instance entered the HesseCassel dominions, occupying the abbey of Hersfeld, the important ecclesiastical principality appropriated a century before by Landgrave Philip; and then advanced towards the boundary of the Lower Saxon Circle, with the intention of breaking up the army of Christian of Halberstadt. Christian, who had not yet received the news of Bethlen Gabor's start, could not risk marching into Silesia to meet him; and, when the Estates at Lüneburg declared themselves ready to stand by the Emperor, who in return guaranteed them through Tilly their temporal as well as ecclesiastical possessions (July 23), Christian, baffled but not disheartened, decided on a rapid return into the hospitable United Provinces. It was at this time that he resigned his tenure of the see of Halberstadt. But Tilly, resolved to prevent his escape and still more to render impossible his junction with Mansfeld, followed Christian with a force superior to his both in quality and numbers, and, coming up with him at Stadtlohn in the diocese of Münster, inflicted on him a crushing defeat (August 6, 1623). Christian escaped, but two of the Weimar dukes (William and Frederick) were taken prisoners in the encounter. Tilly, after giving Lower Saxony a partial foretaste of the sufferings which it was to endure, then transferred his quarters to the still vexed districts of Hesse-Cassel. Before this Mansfeld had drawn back from the Münster country into East Frisia; whence, after handing over the strong places of the country to the States General for a money consideration, he withdrew to England, in order to study the opportunities of the situation created by the return of the Prince of Wales from Madrid and the revival of the national desire for the recovery of the Palatinate.

Not long afterwards another menace subsided. Though the news of the Protestant defeat at Stadtlohn had arrested the progress of Bethlen Gabor, who had begun his march in August, 1623, Ferdinand was unable to muster a force equal in number to half of those of the invader, with whom a Turkish host, set free by the conclusion of

1623-4] Bethlen Gabor. - Aggressive policy of Ferdinand 87

the Turco-Polish War, was prepared to co-operate. Thus the Imperialists under the Marquis di Montenegro, with Wallenstein second in command, declined to offer battle even after Bethlen had reached Moravia (October), whence he made diversions into Lower Austria. Fortunately, however, the Hungarian supplies soon fell short, and the truce urged by Wallenstein was offered by Bethlen himself (November 18). Soon afterwards he began his retreat; but it was not till May 8, 1624, that protracted negotiations resulted in a settlement which in all essentials renewed the conditions of the Peace of Nikolsburg.

Hitherto the Emperor had either stood on the defensive or carried on war in self-defence or as it were in the wake of the League. So late as 1624 he cannot be shown to have desired to extend the war in Germany or to take part in the renewed struggle of Spain against the Dutch; while Spain was sufficiently occupied by this struggle, and was soon to find herself involved in new complications. But Ferdinand had chosen his part from religious, even more than from political, motives; the influences around him interpreted his success as the beginning of a religious reaction on which the blessing of Heaven would rest; and Europe was thus once more confronted by an aggressive Habsburg policy.

No direct interference with the advance of this policy was, so far as Germany was concerned, to be looked for from England, even after James I had given up both the Spanish marriage treaty and the control of his own policy. Mansfeld, it is true, without much difficulty obtained ample promises of men and money in England; and in July, 1624, notwithstanding the untoward news of the Amboyna "massacre,” a treaty of defensive alliance was signed with the States General, by which the English Government undertook to maintain 6000 volunteers in the Dutch service. But before the end of the first year of the reign of Charles I England was engaged in war with Spain; and, though Charles anxiously kept in view the recovery of the Palatinate for his sister's family, this war, which after all was what the nation had mainly at heart, would have to be actually fought out at sea; nor were supplies now obtainable from Parliament for any other warlike purpose.

England being now on good terms with France (with whom a defensive alliance was concluded in June, 1624, followed by the marriage treaty of November, 1624), the two Powers might be expected to go hand in hand in opposition to the Austrian as well as the Spanish branch of the House of Habsburg. During the early years of the Great War, owing to the still dominant influence of Mary de' Medici, and to her and Louis XIII's strong repugnance to the privileges secured to the Huguenots by the Edict of Nantes, the French Government had not been unfriendly to the Emperor's interests. But the successful issue of his Bohemian War, and the continued Spanish occupation of part of the Palatinate with perhaps some suspicion of the transitory

88

French antagonistic action interrupted

[1623-6

scheme of a Spanish frontier-state between France and Germany rendered it inevitable that French policy should once more return to the lines which it had followed before the death of Henry IV. Already in 1623 the Government of Louis XIII furnished a slight measure of aid to Mansfeld. After Richelieu had become first Minister, French policy was more and more affected, though not yet continuously determined, by the growing jealousy of the advance of the House of Austria. In 1624 diplomatic communications took place with the Elector of Mainz and the other Spiritual Electors, of which Maximilian of Bavaria certainly had cognisance. Of more importance was the mission of de Marescol, who succeeded in impressing George William of Brandenburg with the necessity of combined action among those who still upheld the Protestant cause. Moreover, the French Government concluded a liberal subsidy treaty with the Dutch, and granted freedom of transit through France to the soldiery recruited in England by Mansfeld for service in the Palatinate (1624). It is true that in the end this permission was withdrawn; and Mansfeld had to ship his levies, said to have amounted to 18,000 men, to the Low Countries, where, though supplemented by 2000 horse levied by Christian of Halberstadt in France, they soon dwindled away and proved unable to prevent the capture of Breda by Spinola (June, 1625). The Anglo-Dutch treaty against Spain of October, 1625, exercised little or no influence upon the progress of the German War; and in 1626 Richelieu consented to conclude peace with Spain at Monzon, leaving in the lurch Savoy and Venice, upon whom beyond the Alps an anti-Habsburg combination must essentially depend. Absorbed at home first by the struggle against himself and then by the conflict with the Huguenots, who were supported by England, he could till 1629 take no direct part in the affairs of the Empire. But his diplomacy continued active; and Pope Urban VIII, with whom the French Government were now on good terms, maintained his antagonism to the House of Habsburg.

Thus Buckingham's great scheme of an effective Western alliance against Spain and Austria practically fell through; nor indeed would it from the outset have suited Richelieu to throw the German Catholics into the arms of Spain, and to close the prospect of Louis XIII appearing, when the time arrived, as arbiter between the contending interests. On the other hand, France was quite ready to co-operate towards the recovery of the Palatinate and the restoration of a better balance between the parties in the Empire. But it was obvious that the mere goodwill of England and the guarded diplomatic support of France could not suffice to ensure success to a renewal of the struggle against the House of Austria and the League; while without the guarantee of such a success Bethlen Gabor would clearly not be induced to move again. It was therefore indispensable to secure the support of a strong arm and of substantial resources.

1621-4]

Christian IV of Denmark

89

For some time since, the attention of the German Protestants and their friends had inevitably been directed to Christian IV, who as has been seen was himself a member of the Lower Saxon Circle. As monarch of Denmark and Norway, he laid claim to a preponderance of power in the Scandinavian North a claim which the issue of the "Kalmar War" could not be said to have upset. His multifarious and eager activity (for he had a true despot's love of detail) in the maritime, industrial, educational, and military affairs of his government gave proof of an aspiring ambition; and his arrogance brooked no check upon his personal will. Thus he was tolerably sure to be ready to listen to an invitation to assume a leading part in the affairs of the Empire in the Protestant interest. He was connected by the marriages of three of his sisters with princely dynasties of the Empire - Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Holstein-Gottorp, and Electoral Saxony (another sister of his was Queen Anne of England, who had become estranged from the Protestant faith). Of his brothers, one, Ulric, had recently died as Bishop of Schwerin. The second of Christian's sons, Frederick, was Bishop of Verden (June, 1623), and had with some difficulty been forced by the King as coadjutor upon the Archbishop of Bremen, John Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp (1621). An attempt to secure in addition the coadjutorship of Osnabrück had been frustrated by the firmness of the Catholic Chapter there. These proceedings, besides alienating the Gottorp line, had added to the apprehensions aroused by Christian's imperious dealings with Hamburg, whose independence he openly threatened, and by his hostility to the commercial privileges and policy of Lübeck, and the Hanse Towns in general. His declared intention of making himself master of the mouths of the Elbe and Weser could not but alarm some of the Estates of the Lower Saxon Circle; and for a time he seemed to take up an attitude of reserve towards the overtures made to him by the supporters of a new Protestant coalition.

It was thus that he bore himself to Sir Robert Anstruther, who in the summer of 1624 proposed an alliance to him in the name of King James, and to Christian von Bellin, who shortly afterwards came to Copenhagen with a mission from George William of Brandenburg, and doubtless also from the ex-Elector Palatine. From Copenhagen Bellin went on to Stockholm, whither he had been preceded by Sir James Spens, another diplomatic agent of James I. Pending further information as to the intentions of the north-German Courts, it seemed expedient to sound Gustavus Adolphus.

Of the three wars bequeathed to him by his father Charles IX, Gustavus Adolphus had, as will be narrated elsewhere, by this time brought the Danish and the Russian to a more or less successful conclusion; the Polish he was about to renew (in 1625) on a wider scale and with a view to more decisive results. After his marriage in 1620 with George William of Brandenburg's sister Maria Eleonora, of which