OPENING OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.

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ability, threw himself, as much from necessity as from choice, into the arms of the Catholic League. He manifested his ardor in the Catholic cause by an assiduous attention to religious services. For example, he took part in a procession in the midst of a storm of rain, emulating thus the zeal which the Emperor Julian displayed in celebrating the rites of heathenism. Thus the Austrian imperial house took up the work which had been laid down by Charles V., of defending and propagating Catholicism, in alliance with the Church. The Catholic Reaction, which had found a representative in Philip II., found another leader in the Emperor; and the two branches of the Hapsburg family were more united in religious sympathies. The Elector, Frederic, with his obtrusive Calvinism, and with a court whose customs and manners were not congenial with Bohemian feeling receiving little support, moreover, from the Protestant princes or from England-suffered a complete defeat. Lutheran prejudices and the fear of countenancing rebellion and the revolutionary spirit, deprived him of his natural allies. The result was that Bohemia was abandoned to fire and sword. In the frightful persecution which had for its object the eradication of Protestantism, and in the protracted wars that ensued upon it, the population was reduced from about four millions to between seven and eight hundred thousand! It was only when the Palatinate was conquered and devastated; when the electoral rank was transferred to the Duke of Bavaria, and with it the territories of Frederic, except what was given to Spain; and when the enterprise of banishing Protestantism was actively undertaken by the combined agency of the troops of the League and of Jesuit priests, that the Protestant powers took up the cause of the fugitive Elector. In 1625, England, Holland, and Denmark entered into an alliance for his

1 The Heidelberg Library was carried off to Rome.

restoration. Christian IV. of Denmark was defeated, and the Danish intervention failed. By robbing Frederic of the electoral dignity and conferring it on the Bavarian Duke, a majority in the electoral body was acquired by the Catholics. But the power and station which the Duke gained, separated, in important particulars, his interests from those of Ferdinand. It was through the aid of Wallenstein and his consummate ability in collecting and organizing, as well as leading an army, that Ferdinand was able to emancipate himself from the virtual control of Maximilian and the League.1 Wallenstein was a Bohemian noble, proud, able, and swayed by dreams of ambition; unscrupulous in respect to the means which might be required for the fulfillment of his daring schemes. He had rendered valuable military services to Ferdinand; and, on the suppression of the Bohemian revolt, had acquired vast wealth by the purchase of confiscated property. He offered to raise an army and to sustain it. He made it support itself by pillage. It was a period of transition in the method of prosecuting war, when the old system of feudal militia had passed away, and the modern system of national forces or standing armies had not arisen. Armies were made up of hirelings of all nations, who prosecuted war as a trade wherever the richest booty was to be gained; considering indiscriminate robbery a legitimate incident of warfare. The ineffable miseries of the protracted struggle in Germany were due, to a considerable extent, to this composition of the armies. Bands of organized plunderers, with arms in their hands, were let loose upon an unprotected population, captured cities being given up to the unbridled passions of a fierce and lawless. soldiery. The unarmed people dreaded their friends hardly less than their foes. The good behavior of the

1 Ranke, Geschichte Wallensteins (3d ed., 1872). This biography, as might be expected, is highly instructive on the whole subject of the thirty years' war.

THE EDICT OF RESTITUTION.

427

Swedes was a marvel to the inhabitants with whom they came in contact; and even the Swedes, after the death of their great leader, sunk down towards the level of the rest of the combatants in this frightful conflict. It is no wonder that Germany, traversed and trampled for a whole generation by these hosts of marauders, was reduced almost to a desert; that it endured calamities from which it has never entirely recovered.

Victory attended the arms of Wallenstein and of Tilly, the General of the League. Brunswick and Hanover, Silesia, Schleswig and Holstein, fell into their power. The dukes of Mecklenburg were put under the ban of the Empire, and their territory given, as a reward, to Wallenstein (1627). He was anxious to reduce the German towns on the Baltic. But Stralsund offered a stubborn resistance which he could not overcome, although he vowed that he would have the town if it were bound to the sky by chains of adamant. His ambitious schemes were quite independent of the schemes of the League, which could not count upon his support. Such was their jealousy and animosity towards the commander who had made Ferdinand free from their dictation, that they induced him to remove Wallenstein from his command. Shortly before this, however, they had moved the Emperor to the adoption of a measure equally dangerous to his cause, and one that put far distant the hopes of peace. This was the famous Edict of Restitution (1629), which declared that the Protestant States, after the Treaty of Passau, had no right to appropriate the ecclesiastical benefices which were under their lordship, and that every act of secularization of this nature was null; that all archbishoprics and bishoprics which had become Protestant since that Treaty, must be surrendered; that the Declaration of Ferdinand I., giving liberty to the Protestant subjects of ecclesiastical princes, was invalid, and that such subjects might be forced to become

Catholics, or expelled from their homes. That is, the parts of the Religious Peace that were odious to the Protestants were to be enforced, according to the strictest construction, while the parts obnoxious to the Catholics were to be abrogated. Moreover, the Edict ordained that the Religious Peace should not avail for the protection of Calvinists, Zwinglians, or any other dissenters, save the adherents of the Augsburg Confession. The changes that had taken place since the Passau Treaty were of such a character, that the execution of the Edict would have brought a sweeping and violent revolution in the Protestant communities. It was evident that nothing less was aimed at than the entire extinction of Protestantism. The most lukewarm of the Princes, including the Electors of Brandenburg and Saxony, were roused by this measure to a sense of the common danger. Thus the Edict of Restitution and the removal of Wallenstein from his command, the two measures dictated by the League, aided the Protestant cause; the first by awakening and combining its supporters, and the second by weakening the military strength of their adversaries. Wallenstein was a sacrifice to the League and to the ambition of Maximilian.

In the second act of this long drama, Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden, is the hero. It had been his aim in a conflict of eighteen years, with Denmark, Poland, and Russia, to control the Baltic Sea. Not only was this political aim imperiled by the imperial conquests, but they involved the danger of a Catholic reaction in Sweden itself. Besides this motive, the Swedish King was impelled to intervene by a genuine attachment to Protestantism, such as had inspired German princes, like Frederic of Saxony, and Philip of Hesse, in the first age of the Reformation. He was not a crusader, who sought to exterminate the opposing faith. Rather did he wish both religious parties to respect each others' rights, and

DEATH OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS.

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dwell in amity. His interposition, full of peril to himself, was regarded by Brandenburg and Saxony with jealousy and repugnance. It was not until the barbarous sack and burning of Magdeburg by the savage troops of Tilly (1631), that the neutral party was forced to side with Sweden. The victory of Gustavus over Tilly, and the triumphant advance of the Swedes into the South of Germany, prostrated the power of the League. We find that Gustavus was regarded with suspicion by the princes but with cordiality by the German cities. Whether his plan of peace, which embraced the repeal of the Edict of Restitution, the toleration everywhere of both religions, the restoration of the Elector Palatine to his territories and to the electoral dignity, and the banishment of the Jesuits, contemplated his own elevation to the rank of King of Rome, must remain uncertain. No alternative was left to Ferdinand but to call back Wallenstein from his estates, and give him absolute powers in the conduct of the war powers which made him independent of all control, and exempt from liability to another removal. The battle of Lutzen, in 1632, was a great defeat of Wallenstein, and a glorious victory for the Swedes; but it cost them the life of their king.

In the new phase which the war assumed after the fall of Gustavus, the influence of Richelieu becomes more and more predominant. The policy of the Cardinal was to attain the end, which French politics had so long pursued, of breaking down the power of Hapsburg, and, at the same time, of profiting by the intestine conflict in Germany, by extending the French frontier on the East.

The ground on which Richelieu vindicated himself for lending aid to Protestants, was, that the war was not a religious, but a political one. It was the old contest of France against the ambitious effort of the house of Hapsburg, to destroy the independence of other nations, and build up a universal monarchy. This imputation was in